Travel

Ruzena Guttmannova
Bratislava
Slovakia

Growing up
During the war
Post-war
Glossary

Growing up

I was born in 1921 in Breznica, Eastern Slovakia, into a strictly Orthodox
family and have adhered to the Jewish traditions up until now.

My father, Aron Kleinmann, was born in 1880 in the town of Ladomirov, which
was in Austria-Hungary at the time. He owned a large estate in Breznica. We
had an inn, and in summer, we used to sit at the tables outside. I even
have a picture of this. We also used to congregate on a big porch in
summer. My father had a short beard and a moustache, always wore a cap, a
coat and a tie, and dressed in modern fashion.

My mother was born Ester Gruenwaldova in Breznica in 1882. She had two
brothers, Adolf and Toba. Malvina Gruenwaldova, who was born in Presov in
1907, is the daughter of one of my uncles. She was a housewife. My cousin
Malvina survived the Holocaust and died in Montreal, Canada, in 1980.

My mother also had a sister, who was very pretty and was always elegantly
dressed. In America she married a cousin called Friedman. He was born in
1899 in Breznica and became a successful businessman in the United States.
He owned some hotels. He died in New York in 1988.

My parents had eight children. My oldest brother, Nabel, was born in 1900.
In 1929 he went to America and worked as a servant first, and, after a
while, as a waiter. There he changed his name to Irving. I was 22 when he
left for America. I hardly knew him and we met for the first time after the
war, when he turned 75. Irving used to send us pictures from America.

All other children stayed at home and helped our parents on the farm. My
second oldest brother Emil, born in 1902, was married, so he wasn't with
us. My oldest sister, Tonci, was born in Breznica in 1910, then there were
my twin brothers Max and Adolf, born in 1914, then my brother Iosef, my
sister Malvina, born in 1919, and me.

We got along rather well with the non-Jews in our village. I remember that
we used to sit in the courtyard with Helena and Dulet Friedmanova; the
Friedman family were our neighbors. They were nice and very helpful. We
enjoyed friendly relations until the great tragedy came with the rise of
the war-time Slovak State and that state destroyed our whole family.

During the war

When the first deportations started in 1942, I was rounded up as a young
girl, the first one of my family. I was deported on 22nd March 1942 with
the first transport. I remember the despair of my parents when they learned
that I had to go; I packed my suitcase, my brother harnessed two horses,
and, along with my father and a policeman, I left. I still remember those
painful first moments in the assembly center in Poprad.

We were on the train for several days, and my first impression of Auschwitz
was that I had arrived in hell. I managed to stay alive for three years in
Auschwitz. I survived several selections and experienced Dr. Mengele's
periodic inspections. Toward the end of the war, I was forced out of the
camp and on to a death march. We went through several other concentration
camps. Until now, I have never returned to Auschwitz.

While still in Auschwitz, I learned from my neighbor, who was deported
later on, that my parents paid 4,000 Slovak crowns in order to obtain an
exception as economically important Jews because they had a big farm.
However, the very next day Slovak guards 1 came to pick up my parents. So
it seems the bribe they paid did them no good.

Many members of my family didn't survive the Holocaust. My father Aron and
my brothers Emil and Max were killed in Auschwitz. My sister Tonci, along
with her three little children, of whom one was only a baby, and her
husband Berkovic were all killed in Auschwitz, too, probably in 1942. My
mother Ester died in Majdanek concentration camp 2 in 1942.

Two of my brothers - Emil, who was 27 year old and already married, and
Max, who was 22 - didn't want to leave our parents and went with them to
the concentration camp. Max had served in the Czechoslovak army, so we have
a lovely picture of him in his uniform.

I remember my cousin Kosen Goldman, who was born in Ladomirov in 1907.
Before World War II he was a businessman. During the Holocaust he was taken
to Auschwitz, and killed there.

My brother Adolf and I survived together. My other brother, Iosef, also
survived because he had been in a forced labor brigade attached to the
army, and that's how he made his escape. And, of course, Irving, who had
left for America in the 1920s, also survived.

Post-war

After the liberation, I returned to Breznica for a while. However, our
house had been destroyed by bombs, everything was in ruins. But my brother
and I were well received by our neighbors and classmates. These good
relations have lasted until now.

I then moved to Stropkov in Eastern Slovakia along with my brother, and we
lived in our cousin's house.

I got married in Stropkov in 1946. My husband, Viktor Guttmann came from an
Orthodox family from Vranov. Out of six siblings, he was the only one to
survive the Holocaust.

We moved to Bratislava in 1949. Our first-born son lives in the USA now. We
had two more sons, one of them lives in Bratislava. Our family property is
now owned by an agricultural cooperative and as yet I haven't got any
compensation for it. I'm retired. After the death of my husband I live
alone, but keep in touch with my sons and their families.

My brother Irving worked as a manager after World War II. He was married to
Ester Kleinmannova, who was born in Poland in 1912. She was a housewife.
She died in Florida in 1999. Irving died in Florida in 1986. He suffered
from mental disorder. My other brother, Adolf, died in Israel in 1990.

I was at the funeral in the USA. Many people came to the ceremony and there
was a big mirror. Police were in the front, then the body was carried in a
car following the police and then people who attended the funeral were
following. There were about ten long big cars with about twelve people. I
attended this funeral where bodies in coffins were put into a wall. Ester
was put next to Irving.

Glossary

Fridric Iavet
Arad
Romania
Interviewer: Oana Aioanei
Date of the interview: April 2003

Mr. and Mrs. Iavet are together since they were classmates in school. Their daughters don't live in Arad, but their presence is felt everywhere in the house - photos of their families are displayed in the rooms. Also, in a glass case there is a picture with the Iavet family during their period in Uzbekistan. Mr. Fridric and Mrs. Iuliana are very hospitable. Probably that the period of time spent in Central Asia has a serious influence ... Their house is close to the center of Arad. It's not a very big house. Behind it there is a small garden with vegetables and a chicken coop. The dog, which is very playful, looks at us from outside trough the window during the interview. Now, retired, they spend most of their time in the house. Mr. Iavet is the one who goes shopping in the morning. On Friday evenings he takes part with his wife in Oneg Sabbath, and on Saturday mornings he goes to the synagogue.

My family background
Growing up
Our religious life
The pre-war situation in Cernauti
Our life in Uzbekistan during the war
Post-war
Married life
My daughters
Glossary

My family background

My maternal grandparents came from Poland, and their native tongue was German. Grandfather Hirschklau Jakob was born in Poland [Note: or more likely somewhere in Austro-Hungary, since he spoke German]. The Hirschklau grandparents lived in Hlyboka, called Adancata in Romanian. Hlyboka lies in the south of Ukraine (former Bukovina). There were many Ukrainians, Germans, Poles. Grandfather Jakob was a bookkeeper. He had a small mustache, and he was rather well off. He always wore a dark black suite and he had a hat. He wasn't very religious, but he came to the temple for the holidays. They were a big family. Grandparents had 7 children: mum was the eldest, then there was Manea, a sister, Frieda, Toni, Elsa and Berthold. They all lived in the same house. I don't know the name of my mother's mother, she died in 1910, when mum was 5 years old. My grandfather's second wife was called Frieda. She was the one I used to call 'grandmother', although she wasn't. I, as a child, did not even know that.

Grandfather Jakob had quite a big house, right on the way to Dymka (Dymka is at 4 km away from Hlyboka). The house was positioned with its length parallel to the street, it had two doors and four windows to the street, and the rest of the house faced the courtyard. The house was big, with a lot of rooms, I don't remember exactly how many. The furniture was massive, in gothic style. My grandparents had neither running water in the house, nor electricity. They used gas lamps, and the water was brought from the fountain. In front of the house there were a shop and a tavern - they belonged to the grandparents. The shop was mixed. As far as I know, somebody from the family sold in the shop and worked in the tavern. Probably the girls helped them out when they had time for it. On Saturdays, neither the tavern nor the shop were open.

My mother, Adela Hirschklau, was born on February 5th, 1905, in Hlyboka. During World War I she was in Vienna with her parents, and she went to school there. She was 10-12 years old by then. They took refuge there from Hlyboka. I don't know why they chose Vienna and I don't know what they did there for a living. Back then only my mother, Manea and Rosa were born. [The family came back, but Fridric doesn't know if his grandparents had had the shop before leaving to Vienna].

Manea was married to David Landberg, who worked as clerk at CFR ('Caile Ferate Romane', 'The Romanian Railway Company'). They had two sons: Leopold and Heine. Manea and Heine were shot by Romanian soldiers in Hlyboka at the beginning of the war, around July 1941. They hid in the cornfield, and when Heine ran away they caught him and shot him on the spot. Leopold was deported from Hlyboka and died in Transnistria. I was very fond of him. David was taken to Siberia. He is the only one left from the family. After he was imprisoned, he was drafted in the Russian army and he fought in both Japan and Germany. I remember he walked with a club, because of a leg injury.

Rosa had a daughter, Coca. They were both caught by the Germans in Poland and shot on the way. Her husband's name was Max. Elsa, Toni, Frieda, all three of them not married, died during the Holocaust. They were approximately 20 years of age when they died. They had just finished high school - Frieda was a teacher, and Elsa and Toni were clerks. Before the war they lived in Hlyboka.

My mother's brother, Berthold, was much younger than her. He was born in 1921 and he was drafted in the army by the Russians, in 1941. During the war he ended up in Moscow, where he settled in 1943. He married a Russian Jew, Esea, he divorced, and then he remarried - I don't know the name of the second wife. He did not have children with any of them. Berthold was an engineer and manager of a factory, but I don't know what occupations his wives they had. He was not a religious man. He visited us very often during my childhood. We got along very well with him, he was the only one of my mother's siblings that I dared to thou and thee. I met my uncle again when I visited Cernauti in 1968. He flew with the plane from Moscow. Uncle Berthold died in the 1980s. There's nobody else left from my mother's side now.

I remember that around the age of 5 or 6, my sister was ill. In order not to stay with her, I was taken to my maternal grandfather. It was like a holiday for me. My father came to me every day with a bag of chocolates. I had to be very good. I got along well with my grandparents.

Grandfather Jakob had a brother in Poland, who lived in Lvov. I do not remember his name. He visited us once, in 1938-1939, before the war, and he gave me 100 lei. A kilo of bread cost 1 leu and something back then, so with 100 lei one could to buy almost 100 kg of bread. 100 lei were a lot of money. I remember that we walked him to the train station. I do not know what happened with my grandfather's family from Poland. They all certainly died [in the Holocaust], when the Germans came.

I know a lot less about the family from my father's side. My grandparents lived in Dymka commune, in Bukovina (today Ukraine). I don't know where they were born. In Dymka the majority of the inhabitants were Romanians - it was a Romanian commune. My grandparents from Dymka spoke Yiddish (their native tongue) at home, although the commune was Romanian. My paternal grandfather, David Jawetz, was an intellectual, a merchant. My grandmother, my father's mother, was also called Frieda. My grandfather had a beautiful house, one of the most beautiful houses in Dymka. It was a newly built house. They had some forest and some land, but they didn't work it alone. They also had a mixed shop with everything. They got along very well with their neighbors. They were very well seen because they owned the only shop and they sold on tick. Surely the shop wasn't open on Saturdays - the Jawetz grandparents were religious, Orthodox Jews. Aside from taking care of the shop, they worked in it, they also had a milk machine - it produced the cream. They were rather well off. They had a garden, but I don't remember them having animals. They lived with one of the daughters, Sofia, and with my father's brother-in-law. Grandfather David was an ill man ever since I knew him. He lied in bed all the time and he wore a beard. There was no synagogue in Dymka, but I believe he said his prayers daily. He was religious - he wore a kippah, but I don't know if that was all the time, because I visited them rather seldom.

My father, Leon Jawetz, was born in Dymka on January 30th, 1899. He graduated from high school, and during World War I he served in the army under Austro-Hungary, and he was in Czechoslovakia. He learned to be a surgeon's assistant in the army. Dad had four sisters: Ieti, Sofia, Lotti and Berta.

Ieti had a shop and a tavern in Hlyboka together with her husband, Schnarch. They had two children: Jakob and Elka, and they were a religious family. Only Ieti and the children came back from Siberia, where they were taken during the Holocaust; her husband died there. Ieti emigrated together with Jakob's family, who was married to Rita, and Elka's. Until then, they stayed in Cernauti, where Jakob worked in a textiles factory, and Elka was a worker. There were around 35 000 of them in Cernauti. After emigrating, Ieti and Elka lived in Ramat Gan, and Jakob in Arad (Israel), where he worked in a textiles factory; he doesn't have any children. Elka is married to Leibu Meidler, an electrician; they have a son, Isiu. Elka is the one who always calls me, every year, on holidays.

Sofia married Daniel Fuchs. They are the ones who had a forest, a shop and a milk-cream machine in Dymka. They lived together with grandfather David. Sofia was taken to Transnistria, but she came back, she emigrated to Israel in 1948 and she was a housewife there. Sofia and Daniel had two children: Ariel and Efraim. Ariel was an associate in a lithography with Israel Schaumberger, a cousin. His wife is from South Africa, they live in Ramat Gan, and they have two children - a boy and a girl. Efraim was an officer, then a colonel in the army. Now he is retired and lives in Beersheva. He also has two children.

Lotti lived in Stanesti, about 20 km away from Adancata. All the family - husband and children - were taken to Transnistria. The parents died there during the Holocaust. Out of the three children, Jakob and Frieda died in Transnistria, but Ariel, whom we all called Leibu, and who in Israel was called Leon, came back. He stayed in Cernauti for a while and married Elka. He emigrated together with auntie Ieti, Elka, Jakob and Rita. Leibu died in Israel.

Berta, who was married with Sami Schaumberger, was taken to Transnistria, where she also died during the Holocaust. They had a handmade goods shop - they sold lengths of fabrics for suits. Their children - Gustav, Israel, Miriam - live in Israel. Gustav, the eldest, was in the Soviet army in Belarus, for about 3 years, after being liberated from Transnistria. He left for Israel after about 10-15 years, not at the same time with his brothers, who, being younger, left to Israel directly from Transnistria, as orphans of war. Gustav was a math teacher in Cernauti, as well as in Israel. He has two children: Igor and Sonia. Igor served the army in Israel, and then he set up a lithography with Ariel Fuchs. Miriam is married to Mordechai, who comes from Poland. They live in Tel-Aviv and they have a haberdasher's shop. They have two children: a boy, Schmulik, very religious, and a girl, Pitzi.

Growing up

My parents, Leon and Adela, got married in 1923. They also had a religious wedding at the synagogue in Hlyboka. It certainly was not an arranged marriage. My parents dressed according to the fashion, especially my mother cared about fashion. Lusia, my sister, was born on September 23rd, 1924, in Hlyboka. I was born on August 29th, 1930, also in Hlyboka.

Before having our own house, we rented a place from a German family, named Moor. I remember where the house was: on the way from the train station to the center of the town. I think we lived there since I was born until I was 6 or 7 years old. We had two rooms. They had a household - pigeons, hens. Back then, my parents had the shop in a different building. But there the shop was robbed several times by thieves from the neighboring villages. I remember that one time they made a hole in the wall. Then we demolished that building and we built our own house there. We had quite a difficult financial situation: daddy kept borrowing money from one place and giving it back to somebody else.

We built our house rather slowly, my dad built it, together with the shop, but it was not finished because of lack of funds. The foundation for the bathroom and two more rooms was built. 3 rooms, the kitchen and the hall were ready. The haberdasher's shop was in one room with a big window, facing the street, we had one more big room and a smaller one and across the big room there was the kitchen. The kitchen was not big. Mum, being a housewife, took care of it. We had a servant for a while, I think until 1940, but she didn't let her in the kitchen much, she didn't let her cook. The servant did the tidying around the house, the cleaning, maybe she peeled potatoes. In the shop my parents sold socks and buttons as well. I don't remember if it was open on Saturdays. When the Russians came, in 1940, instead of having the shop my father built a wall and turned it into a room.

We had massive furniture in our house. In my parents' room, above of the bed, there was a very delicate needlework in a big oval frame. My mum usually did a lot of needlework. I remember that we had a big picture made of linen, cut in bas-relief, so that human-like faces would appear. Back then people usually did a lot of needlework to put on the walls, for example, they embroidered on a piece of cloth with a different color, red or blue, a saying in German: "Arbeit macht das Leben" [There is no life without work]. She also liked to crochet.

We used wood for heating. We had a stove with an oven. In the courtyard we had a woodhouse made of timber. I worked in the garden together with my mum. We had a small garden, where we had beds with garlic, onions, carrots, peas. The garden was long; it was about 150 meters long. We also grew hens. We had a cat and a dog too. My dad had help when he worked with cereals.

We never went anywhere on vacation. I remember that my sister went to Campulung once, but we did not use to go anywhere with our parents. She left only once on a camp for children. My dad always found something to read in his spare time, and mum was busy with the household - she always had something to do in the house: needlework, she never went to bed early.

Dad was a radio salesman at Philips. He went from village to village and he received percents from what he sold. As it was a big town, 8.000-10.000 inhabitants, there were radios in Adancata. We also had a radio in our house. It ran on batteries, not with electricity. I think there was no electricity at that time, we used gas lamps. We had to change the batteries. I remember when I heard on the radio the Hungarian csardas [folk dance] for the first time. It impressed me very much, it was the first time I heard Hungarian music. There was also a Hungarian family from Szeged in Adancata. They were the only ones who spoke Hungarian. I learnt to say "one- two" in Hungarian from them.

In about 1936-1937 dad also had a manufacture. It produced fabric. Simultaneously with his work at Philips, my father worked at CAM ('Casa Autonom? de Monopol', 'The Independent Monopoly House'), also in Adancata. He was in charge of the wholesales, tobacco for example. Dad traveled a lot with his job. He was a representative, he did contracts with Philips, but he also marketed potatoes wagons. He went all the way to Constanta, Bucuresti, Ploiesti. I remember that in Constanta there was one man who always bought potatoes by the wagon - he was called Star Galateanu. From Bessarabia, my father brought around 10-15 cases of grapes. He always brought us something from his trips, toys for example.

My father's grandfather died when I was 6 years old, around 1936-1937, he is buried in Hlyboka in the Jewish cemetery. When grandfather David died I remember that my father traveled a lot. As he was on the train, when he had to recite the kaddish, he gathered 10 men and he recited the kaddish on the train.

As he was a good organizer, from 1940, when the Russians came to Hlyboka, until 1941, my father was a shareholder with 40% and manager in some sort of vegetables shop: they collected vegetables, fruits, cereals from villages and stewed them - for example the fruits - or shipped them in train wagons to Bessarabia or Dobrudja. Grandfather Jakob worked as a bookkeeper here because he had to give up his shop, due to the nationalization 1 of the houses. If I'm not mistaken, uncle Berthod, my mother's younger brother, was also my father's employee. I don't know if my father and my grandfather worked on Saturdays.

My father knew Yiddish, but he talked to us only in German, which was his native tongue, and ours too. Both parents spoke German. Although I don't speak Yiddish, I would understand it, because I speak German and Yiddish is similar to German. We had books at home, but when the legionaries 2 came to power, we buried two trunks with books in the back of the courtyard. Dad dug them out when the Russians came. Dad loved the poems of Heinrich Heine, Schiller, Goethe very much [some of the greatest German writers, 18th century] - slightly right wing writers. He liked to recite them in German. Dad also acted when I was small. So did mum. The acting evenings were held in a hall - cultural evenings were held. They read newspapers too - my father generally read German newspapers. He also had press subscriptions - he received magazines from Czechoslovakia too, because he liked politics, verses, and poetry a lot.

As far as politics in my childhood is concerned, dad was threatened that if he didn't quit politics he would be imprisoned. The commissary called my grandfather David's attention to it, and he came and he kneeled in from of my father, asking him to give up politics. I know he was also beaten once, he had his arm in plaster, and his bone didn't heal for a long time. I think my father's inclination towards politics appeared when he was a young boy - he was a party member in the Social Democratic Party, a party that was illegal back then, during the legionaries' time. My father was very good friend of Lotar Radaceanu, who later became Minister of Labor. He didn't live in the same town with us, but he was also from Bukovina, from Cernauti I think. He was also president of the Social Democrat Party for a while. When the communists came, in the 1940s, he died under very dubious circumstances. I think he attended a meeting in Helsinki, and he was liquidated. My father did social democratic propaganda; he spoke at the gatherings of the Social Democratic Party. He had the gift of speech. He wrote articles in the local newspaper, Neue Zeit ['New Times'], an independent German newspaper [edited in Cernauti]. My father was a very well known man.

Hlyboka looked very well when I was a child. It was quite a big settlement and very widely spread. That's why it is called Adancata. There was also a forest there. I remember that there were some hills where I sledged during the winter, skied or skated. I think that Wednesday was our market day. My mother was in charge of the market. There were around 70-80 Jewish families in Adancata. The Germans were also many. Our neighbors were Germans. Jews didn't live apart from the others, but scattered. We got along very well - we had German neighbors. Only when the war broke out they changed, they grew colder, but towards everybody. The typical Jewish occupation was commerce. There were doctors too - about 3 in Adancata, a postmaster, intellectuals, but mainly traders. Until 1941 they lived well.

Our religious life

There was only one synagogue in Adancata. There was no such thing as Neolog or Orthodox there. The ones who were more religious went there daily, the others once a week or only during the holidays. My father, for example, went there only during the holidays and on the anniversary of his parents' deaths. I never heard of Neolog and Orthodox until I came to Arad. I don't think we had a rabbi, but there has a cheder. I didn't go there, because my parents didn't want me to get spoilt. There were all sorts of children, they cursed sometimes, and they wanted to protect me. My father hired a melamed for me, but when nobody was home, I ran away. I locked him in the house and I left. My parents reproved me, but they didn't beat me - only my mother hit me sometimes. I remember the melamed taught me the alphabet and how to say the prayers. He was in his forties and he wore a beard. He went from house to house and the taught children, but he didn't have many students, because most of them went to the cheder. Dad wanted me to learn at least what was necessary for the bar mitzvah, which didn't actually happen, because of our leaving to Asia.

For me religion means to be human first of all: not to lie, not to steal, not to do bad things. My parents didn't preach me about religion, but I have inherited a lot from them. I never heard my parents lying to me or to others. I didn't see such things in our house. They really gave us an education. I remember mum reproved me once because she heard me cursing. When I was 8 or 9 years old she caught me smoking and she threatened that she would tell my father. I didn't smoke after that. I wasn't a smoker or a drinker. I never drank beer, let alone brandy. I probably tasted it for the first time when I was 20 years old, when I was in Arad. My parents weren't drinkers either.

On holidays mum made all sorts of dishes: you mixed scraped potatoes with egg and yeast, and then let it leaven and then put it in the oven. After that it was cut into slices - it was an extraordinarily tasty dish. I believe it was also a traditional Jewish dish. Mum also made maize cake, from a mixture of corn flour, eggs, sugar, which was left to yeast and then put in the oven. Mum made all sorts of dishes: marinated meatballs and she put raisins in the sauce. She also made triangular dumplings parties: you cut the dough in a triangular shape, then fill it with marmalade or potatoes with fried onion, then boil them. Once uncle Berthold wanted to make a joke and told mum to fill one dumpling with feathers and gave it to a certain person. Mum, instead of giving it to the person Bertold said, gave it to him. I believe the dishes mum made were specific for the Bukovina area; in fact, they were Austrian and German dishes. She also made oblong dumplings, from scraped potatoes and eggs. She put inside plums or cottage cheese: a sort of slightly peppered cheese. When the dumplings were ready she rolled them in fried breadcrumbs - they were very good. There were occasions when she made 7-8 types of cakes at one time.

Holidays were very beautiful in our house; we observed the traditions one hundred percent. Mum lit the candles on Friday evenings - until 1940 when we left. My family went to the synagogue only on the high holidays, on New Year and Long Day. Dad and mum fasted, I think, on the Long Day. I also liked Pesach. You could always tell when there was a holiday in our house. Mum prepared everything so that there was an air of feasting. Moreover, we dressed in a more special way. Although we were not religious, she made all the traditional dishes. My favorite holiday was Purim. On Purim she made hamantashen, marmalade triangular dumplings. She loved to cook, especially deserts. I ran into a cousin of mine not long ago, Gustav, son of Sami and Berta, who told me that mum was renowned for her cakes and for the fact that she cooked several types of cakes: chocolate cake, hazelnut cake, 'mezes' [honey in Hungarian] cake, 'colaci' [milk loaf], 'cremes' [cream cake] with very thinly spread dough, kuglof [ring-cake], but different from the one we have here, with cocoa, poppy cake, apple strudel. There wasn't one week left without a cake. Until 1941...

My parents weren't very religious, but on Pesach we changed the tableware with the one we kept in the attic. We couldn't wait for the tableware to be brought downstairs. We probably visited our relatives on Pesach. We went to my maternal grandparents because they lived there, in Adancata. My maternal grandfather led the evening. I remember that on Pesach, when I was 5-6 years old, I liked to wait for Eliahu to come and empty his glass of wine. My other grandparents, from my father's side, were much older. Grandpa David was a sick man, he always lied in bed.

We always had guests in our house, every week on Friday and Saturday evenings, or on the high holidays. My parents had a lot of friends. They met very often. A few families gathered and played cards or other fun games: for example, you had to jump over a chair, and if you couldn't, you had to take off your coat. I was a child, but I remember some things - they talked, played domino or some other game. They met almost every week. My parents' friends were Jews and non-Jews alike.

I went to a German kindergarten. When I was there I learnt to play the piano, and I also learnt to play the violin in private, but I didn't go on with any of them. I only studied piano for a year, when I was 6-7 years old. I studied the violin for 6-7 months as well. I went to school in Adancata. I liked mathematics the best. I learnt well, in general. I studied the first year of high school in 1940, in Cernauti. I was at Mihai Eminescu high school. Lusia, my sister, also graduated from the Fine Arts high school in Cernauti.

The pre-war situation in Cernauti

Cernauti was a very beautiful town. It was Romania's second most important city, a multi-national city, with universities recognized all over Europe, newspapers in different languages - German, Romanian, Ukrainian, Polish. There was the Neue Zeit ['Timpuri Noi', 'New Times'] in German. When I visited Cernauti in 1968-69 it looked terrible. The population also changed about 95 percent. When I was there it was a very clean town. Some time ago it was called the 'small Vienna'. Downtown there was a very beautiful street for walking, Herrenstrasse - that is the 'gentlemen's street', with all sorts of shops. There were also trolleybuses and trams. The city was up a hill, and the surroundings were beautiful. The university had, and it still does, a splendid building, of the kind I haven't seen in Romania yet. It was an industrial city, with a lot of textile industry.

The change of the population was because of the fact that about 80% of the Jews, Poles, Germans, Romanians there left, and Russians and Ukrainians came instead. In 1940, right before the war, the Germans left - I remember that German officers came to solve the problems of those who were leaving. These officers were invited in Cernauti at the Russian military parade in 1941, two or three weeks before the war started. It was a blitz krieg; nobody expected it, especially because the Germans had a friendship and non- aggression treaty with the Russians. 99% of the Jews were taken to Transnistria. However, in Cernauti many of them stayed behind [escaped] thanks to mayor Popovici, who saved thousands of Jewish citizens. He has a monument in Israel at Yad Vashem. I also have relatives who escaped thanks to him.

The atmosphere was already tensed before the war, after 1936, especially when the Cuzists 2 and the legionaries governed. There were many pogroms back then. When the legionaries ruled, the [Cuza-Goga] Government received an ultimatum from England and France to remove this legionary government. The government was removed in 2-3 weeks and after that the period when the Germans took over Austria and Poland followed.

In 1939, when there were massive concentrations, there was an infantry division from Dorohoi in Adancata. The concentrations took place before the war started in Poland. There were many 'teteristi'. The 'teteristi' were the ones wearing a red and white ribbon, a sign that they graduated from high school. [Note: 'teteristii' were soldiers in the Romanian army conscripted for a shorter period of time]. There were always 4-5 soldiers coming in our house as guests - father invited them. I remember 3 or 4 brothers from Dorohoi who played the violin and sang as well. They were extraordinarily nice people. They sang Jewish songs. They were a lot of fun. We served them lunch every time they could get away from their regiment. They did their military service in Adancata. O September 1st, 1939, the war broke out in Poland. Romania had really good relations with Poland. There were also lots of refugees coming - they came in carts, or with trains, and we took food to the train station to help them. They came by the thousands. Part of them stopped in Romania, but the majority left for France because they had traditional relations with France. [Note: they had to take a detour through Romania because the Germans were advancing from the West.] Many of them probably left from there to the USA, because there is a large Polish community there nowadays. There are also many Jews in the USA.

My father's involvement in politics was the main reason why we took refuge. If we hadn't taken refuge, we would have been the first on the list. We left all of a sudden and our relatives stayed behind. They thought the Romanians were coming to liberate them, but that didn't happen at all. When we left we knew from the radio what was going on in Germany and Poland. We knew about Kristallnacht 4 from Germany, that the Jews had to clean the streets and so on.

Our life in Uzbekistan during the war

During the war, between 1941-1944, we were all - our family - away in Uzbekistan. How did we leave for Uzbekistan? It wasn't our choice. There was no time for talks. Panic ruled. We traveled in a cart for two-three weeks to Ukraine and we stayed for a month there, in Zincov, Poltava region. Then they wanted to draft my dad in the army. He was very desperate, I went to the commissariat and I cried and I don't remember what happened, but they let him go. In Ukraine, where we first took refuge, people received us very well. They gave us food and I think we stayed in a rented house. Dad worked there for a month at the vegetables factory. After a month, the Germans drew closer. We went with the cart farther on, up to the town of Belgorod, region Voronezh, and then we got on a goods train and traveled as far as the train went. I don't know if my father knew or not the direction when we got on the train. We left the cart there. We passed through Ural, through Siberia, through Kazakhstan and we ended up in Uzbekistan, in the Buchara region. We lived in Kermine. When we got there, we slept in the street for a few nights. Mum had taken with her the eiderdown and pillows. Then we received a house, but there was no furniture in it - we slept on the floor. My dad and my sister started working. Mt father worked as a surgeon's assistant, and my sister was a clerk in a bread factory.

Everything was different: the population was Moslem, the traditions were different. I felt no rejection in Uzbekistan. Life was very hard, salaries were very small, the market was very expensive and generally their lifestyle was very different from ours. I was 11 years old when I arrived in Uzbekistan. I went to school there for only two years, but not all the time. I went to a school where they taught in Russian. I knew Russian from home because we had many Ukrainian neighbors, and Russian and Ukrainian are alike. There were native Jews in Uzbekistan, but there were also many Jews refugees from Ukraine, Bessarabia and Bukovina. From Ukraine there were also many Jews. I didn't make many friends there. I went to the market as well to earn money, although I was young. For example I bought sheets, which mother sew and made into clothes. The women wore veils. We went to the market in another commune or little town, mother stayed aside with the pile, and I sold two or three pieces at a time. The Uzbeks from villages used as means of transportation the donkeys and the camels. In the marketplace they came with the sacks on the back of the donkeys.

The food was very different from the one we had home. There was no pork or potatoes. Our greatest wish when we came back was for mum to make for us a pot of potatoes and a pot of corn mush. They ate turtle, though. Near our place there was a turtlery - they ate the liver and different parts of the turtle. The mutton was the most expensive, especially the 'caracal' kind. This kind of sheep had a tail that weighed 10-15 kg. Because it was too heavy, the Uzbeks put wheels under the tail, so that the sheep didn't get tired. You could also find horse and camel meat. The milk - camel's and sheep's milk - was very fat because of the climate. There was no cream - they used the skin of milk.

The fruits were very good, very sweet. The grapes had over 30% sugar, and people made raisins from the seedless grapes. The Uzbeks came to the marketplace with sacks of raisins to sell. They sold them in half a kilo or a kilo. If someone went into a teahouse, he would buy half a kilo of raisins to have with the tea. People drank a lot of tea in Uzbekistan, because the heat was very strong. We drank tea as well because the climate required it. They had a sort of green tea, which went very well without sugar, only with raisins. There were no chairs in the teahouse. People sat on the floor, and smoked pipe. They also sold peaches and apricots - fresh or dried. They were very tasty.

The cotton production was very high. There was also something similar to corn mush, made from some grains called 'jugara', a sort of corn with white ears. The taste was similar to corn. Uzbeks ate rice as well. The quality of the wheat was very good. The wheat harvest took place twice a year. The bread was light white - I have never eaten such good bread. After a while, because of the war, the bread started to be filled with straws. Those who didn't work received 300 grams of bread per day, and those who worked received 600 grams, it was very difficult. I helped a woman there who sold bread, and whatever she had extra she let me sell on the black market. They also ate something similar to the flat loaf of bread we had. The people had ovens in their courtyards. They used as fuel the dung from horses and cows: they gathered it in piles, dried it and they used it for heating. After the dug was dry, it caught fire, and when the oven was really hot, people stuck the flat loaves of bread to the oven walls; when they were ready, they fell from the walls into the oven.

My parents adopted a little girl from there - Alla. Dad worked in the hospital - the girl's father was on the front. Alla was born on March 31st, 1942, in Kermine. She was called Haia Katzefman, we gave her the name Alla, and then, after she moved to Israel, she got the name Haia back. I think the fact that she was Jewish was a coincidence. Her mother was hospitalized, and complained that she had a 6 weeks, or 6 months old child - I don't remember exactly - and dad said he would ask mum if she didn't want to take care of a child for 2-3 weeks. Mum agreed, and when Alla's mother died, people came to take her to an orphanage, but my parents didn't give her away.

During the war we listened to the radio every day, and I looked on the map to see where the front was, to know when we would leave home. I loved geography. Unfortunately I lived very hard times. I was 12-13 years back then and I listened to the radio daily, and I knew how the front advanced. At home we had listened Radio Free Europe 5, Voice of America, Kol Israel, but in Uzbekistan we didn't have a radio. There were only megaphones and newspapers, which said only what the Russians wanted.

Post-war

We decided to leave for Ukraine immediately after the liberation. They didn't want to release my dad from the hospital - under the Russians it wasn't easy at all to change your job, but we all left all the same. I also worked during the holiday at a shop that supplied the army with vegetables, I went in villages, I had a cart and I gathered vegetables. When I wanted to go back to school in the 8th grade they didn't want to release me from work. I don't know how we solved it in the end, but they released me after all.

We left Kermine by train in 1944. I don't remember how many times we changed the train. Generally the train was full with military on their way to the front. The trains were loaded with warfare. It was a train with several floors. I remember it was extremely crowded, we had nowhere to wash, there were lice...I don't know where we got the food from. It took us about two weeks to get home. At first we went to some relatives in Cernauti for a week, and then we went home to Hlyboka, where we lived from 1944 until 1946. Our house had a foundation for another two rooms. I remember I found an anti-tank bomb in the sand. Mum was very frightened.

When we came back from Asia there was already a certain hatred, because many had plundered and they didn't like the fact that we came back. When we came back no one admitted that they had taken things from our house. They didn't even give us back a document. On the other hand, when uncle Berthold from Moscow came back, a neighbor gave him back a sowing machine, pillows, an eiderdown, and some other things. We found our house inhabited by some Russians, but they released it immediately. Few Jews came back. The ones who were in Transnistria didn't even come back to Hlyboka, they went to Israel.

It was very sad when we came back from Asia, everything was like a graveyard. Both my maternal grandparents had been deported from Hlyboka: grandmother died on the way, and grandfather died during the Holocaust, in Transnistria. My paternal grandmother was shot on the way to Transnistria. Over 100 Jews were killed in Adancata in July 1941. They were buried in a mass grave. I went there with my wife and my cousins from my father's side - Gustav, Elka, Leibu, Jakob, who lived in Cernauti, in 1968. A monument was built with their names, but my cousin with his grandchildren and children were there last year [in 2002] and the monument was gone. It is like somebody wants to leave no marks.

Although we had obtained the house, dad decided that we should leave, thinking of us, the children. He knew we would have no future there. He went to Bucharest, where he knew Lotar Radaceanu, and he gave him a repartition to Arad. The prefect Vostinar from Arad gave his recommendation to UTA ('Uzinele Textile Arad', 'Arad Textiles Plants'); there was probably a vacancy. Dad worked during the first year as a stationary department inspector, and then he was head of the statistics department. He got along well with everybody. Mum and dad lived in Arad from 1946. Lusia worked as a clerk at UTA, and Alla went to school. I head about our house in Hlyboka that it was demolished and something else was built instead. It was in the very center of the town. We received no compensations for the house.

We officially came to Arad in 1946 - we were repatriated. I believe the motive in the papers was the departure for Israel. We came to Romania in a cart. From home to the border there were only about 30 kilometers. Bukovina was a very clean and rich region. The difference wasn't very big. Austro- Hungary had been there and here as well, so the differences weren't very big. Arad was much more quiet and cleaner than it is now. Dad had been to Arad in 1936-37 and maybe he was the one who chose to be repartitioned here.

When we moved to Arad in 1946 we lived for about 2 years on 6, Virgil Rotareanu Street. After that, one of my dad's bosses, Fischer, who had a very beautiful house (on Mihai Viteazu Street, were Dermatology is today, on the first floor) gave dad two rooms and the kitchen, because otherwise the house would have been taken away from him, because he lived there only with his wife. He trusted my dad a lot - they even had papers. When the hospital was built there we were given a place to live on 1, Grigore Alexandrescu Street, on the second floor. That's where we lived until we bought this house in 1951.

I remember that when my father and I were at work, we received some wood at home, and mother carried it to the cellar alone. Then she fell ill, and the doctors didn't know what was wrong with her. Her health had been affected by all the journeys to Central Asia, to Romania, she couldn't diet. The marks of the war took their toll: she died of jaundice. Mother died in 1948, when she was 43 years old, and she is buried in the new Jewish cemetery from Gradiste, here in Arad. After mum died, I ran away from school to recite the kaddish in the synagogue. I went there every day for eleven months, and when I was in school, I ran out the window. It was a sort of a soul duty for me. The entire time mother was ill Alla stayed in the house of my future wife.

I went to the professional school here and I am a dental technician. When I graduated professional school I was the first in my class and all the school. I learnt although I didn't cram at home. I always got along well with my classmates. My native tongue is still German, but I speak Hungarian, Romanian and Russian as well.

Married life

I am together with my wife Iuliana, nee Simon, since 1946. We got married in 1950. We didn't have a religious ceremony. She isn't Jewish and she was born on July 5th, 1929, in Arad. Her native tongue is Hungarian. She too is a dental technician - she graduated from the professional high school. After we got married we lived with my dad on Grigore Alexandrescu Street. My dad and my sister had one room, and we had the other; we shared the kitchen. Life was hard back then. Once I stood in a queue all night to get 3 meters of cloth for a suit. It was the first suit I ever had. It was dark blue with thin red stripes.

In 1950, when dad established that we would go and file for leaving for Israel, I didn't show up, and he realized that I wanted to get married, but that I was ashamed to confess it. After we got married, dad and Alla got the passport, but my wife and I and my sister didn't. We would have liked to go because life here was very hard and it had no perspectives for the future. We both agreed on that. Dad left for Israel in 1951, and I volunteered for army service because my wife was pregnant and I thought I had better get it over with sooner, so that I could go back home and help her. Dad would have wanted to give me a medical certificate to dodge the army, but I wanted to know everything was settled correctly. I served in Bucharest, in artillery, between 1950-1952. My wife managed in the meantime with her parents' help. Dad had left, but he had left the house to my wife's mother and sister.

My dad worked as a surgeon's assistant in Israel. He lived in Ramat Gan. When he arrived in Israel he found out the address of Alla's father [who lived in Russia, in the region of Bessarabia] from an uncle of hers who lives in USA. Alla went to meet her father in 1960 - she was about 20 years old. He received her coldly; she was upset that he didn't take an interest in her fate. Alla lived and worked as a kindergarten teacher in Mizra kibbutz. She met her husband, Sar-Shalom Eyal, there, in Mizra kibbutz, and they got married. He was an officer in the army, and 6 or 7 years ago he opened a salami factory in Iasi. Alla has four children: Gilad, Hila, Sai and Ran. I visited her for almost a month and I met her parents-in-law - they were from Poland: very nice people. Alla died in May 2003.

I think I got to have my own household easier than my parents. When I was 26, in 1956, I already had my house without any help. I worked very hard. I had a lab and I worked even 13-14 hours a day. I was already married and I had one of the girls. The other one was born at the end of 1956. We got married early - I hadn't turned 20 by that time. I was as conscientious as possible all the time. I was head of the laboratory for 30 years and whenever I had inspections, they would take me along to control somewhere else, my work was that well organized.

In 1958 we filed again for emigration to Israel. I kept in touch with dad very often by means of letters. Dad kept writing me that life in Israel was very hard: he said that one can still find work there until he is 40, but that after that it is harder, life wasn't that easy. He himself lived in a tent there at first. My father died in 1961 in Tel Aviv. When dad died I recited the kaddish in his memory as well. I received the passport in 1964. We were announced that a person from Securitate 6 had already come to move into our house. But we gave up leaving. I had just signed up to buy a car, a Fiat 8-50, Iudit was 12-13 years old, and Adela was 7, and I asked myself what would I do in Israel, with two children growing up, I had a house, a car...However, I had work colleagues who left for Israel. There were two emigration waves: one in 1951 and one in 1964, when I got my passport. Many from Arad left then. There were approximately 10000 Jews in Arad, now there are only 300, and most of the families are mixed.

I have always been interested in politics. I believed the state had to proceed in such a manner as to create jobs, so that those who didn't want to work wouldn't have a job, but those who wanted to work could have living conditions. Because of the anti-Semitism I have experienced, communism drew me at first, because it theoretically defended the rights of all nationalities. Because I was young, inexperienced, and because I was reading the newspapers and listening to the radio, I couldn't realize what the truth was, but later I began to understand. I did pretty well under communism. I was head of the laboratory and, compared to others, I cannot complain. I wasn't a party member, I was only in the UTM, The Young Workers Union, while I was in the army. I had a managerial position, but I wasn't a party member, although my boss, doctor Muresan, told me to become a member to strengthen my position. I told him that I cannot do something I didn't believe in and that I would do my duty without being a party member. He went on insisting until my daughter left for Israel, after that he didn't say anything to me anymore. If you had relatives abroad you were followed all the time and you had to be careful what you talked about.

Today I can make the difference between communism and capitalism although each has it good and its bad sides. For example, what is good in communism: it gives every man the possibility to work, gives him a place to live. But on the other hand, the one with the possibilities has to lower to the level of the one who doesn't work anything, and then everything is leveled and there is no advantage, or an encouragement for the one who can do more as compared to the one who does nothing. We had in our lab a dental technician, who was an exceptionally kind boy, but who had the vice of drinking. He had been disciplinary moved to our department, and I was afraid, so that an accident wouldn't happen to him, because we worked with engines. In vain I talked to the head of stomatology to have him moved from our department. The good part of capitalism is that the hardworking and resourceful people can thrive. Moreover, in capitalism there is no obstruction of religion: one has to have the liberty to believe in whatever he wants. For as long as I was in Uzbekistan, I never heard of somebody asking you what your nationality was. We have this carryover of nationalism from even before the war. In Arad, for example, whenever the price of hens, or of something else went up in the market, people would say that the Jewish holidays were drawing in. When it rained in September, people said that the Jewish holidays were coming. The primitive man believed anything he heard.

I went with my wife to the cinema very often in our free time. I liked history, war movies. I have seen many Hungarian and Russian movies. I remember the title of a Hungarian movie: 'Two by two suddenly makes 5', and another very good Russian movie, 'The eagle'. Before we got married we went to the movies every week so that we could be together. We also went to the theater or to the swimming pool. We went to the theater two-three times a year, especially when there was a folk music. I loved football very much. We went to the matches together, we never missed one. My wife entered the gate, and I jumped the fence. I also like basketball, and handball, but I like football best. I was a UTA member, but I didn't do sports, I just paid my due. I was at a match in Bucharest once. A man, a supporter of 'Progresul' team, died of emotion when our team, UTA, scored. I accompanied the team UTA to Hunedoara as well, we drove the motorcycle through the snow all the way to Cluj, we went to Timisoara countless times. But for the last two years we stopped going to matches because since I had my eye surgery my distance vision is not so good anymore.

We went on holidays all over the country. The first time we went by motorcycle in 1959, and we drove the car in 1964. I went for treatment in Covasna for 15 years in a row, I drove my motorcycle as far as Constanta, I saw the monasteries in Moldavia, I went to Poiana Brasov. We went with the tent around the country as well. We had one month vacation, and we shared it: we took two weeks one time, and then we left again. We went with the tent at the seaside as well, where we stayed for 10 days. We generally went with tickets from ONT. I also went with my wife to the restaurant: we listened to music, ate a grilled steak.

My daughters

We have two daughters, who were born in Arad: Iudit was born in 1951, and Adela in 1956. Iudit graduated from the dental techniques school in Arad. She observed the Christian holidays as well, because she grew up under the influence of her grandmother, my wife's mother. Adela, on the other hand, was very fond of me. I never influenced her. Adela also went to Talmud Torah classes. We observed both Christian and Jewish holidays at home, together. I didn't observe Sabbath because Saturdays were working days. The girls didn't have any problems because they were half Jewish. Adela even bragged about it. I didn't talk to them much about my time in Uzbekistan. I didn't want to influence them in any way. Iudit married a Jew from Arad, Stefan Weisz, an electrotechnics sub engineer, and Adela married an engineer from Gheogheni, Geza Geller, in 1984. Adela graduated from the Faculty of Stomatology in Cluj and she lives in Gheorgheni, Harghita county, where she is a stomatolog. Geza's father had been to Auschwitz, but he came back - he died about two years ago [approximately in 2002]. Adela and Geza met in Cluj. He studied electrotechnics and they met at the Jewish canteen. They got married in 1984 in the Orthodox synagogue in Arad, and rabbi Neumann from Timisoara came to officiate the wedding.

Iudit got married earlier, in 1970. Back then there was a rabbi in Arad. Iudit emigrated in 1973 with her husband. Iudit has two children, Ariel and Sandra. Ariel was born in 1974 in Israel. Iudit lived at first in Israel, and then she left for Canada so that she wouldn't have to go in the army. Her husband was always away in the army, and life wasn't easy. They had a probation period in Greece, where they both worked - she worked as a dental technician. She had just graduated sanitary school here. They stayed in Israel for about two years. She now lives in Canada, in Toronto, and she works as a dental technician. We keep in touch over the phone. She visits us when she's on vacation. Ariel started studying at the dental school here in Arad, but he gave it up after 6-7 months. After he went back to Canada, he married Angela (her parents are from Russia) and they have a girl, Vanessa. Ariel works at a telecommunications company. Sandra is 20 years old and she is a student.

My sister Lusia was a clerk in Arad, at UTA and at the Jewish community in Arad. She also got married here, in the synagogue. Her husband, Andrei Fuchs, was a bookkeeper at UTA. They had a boy, Stefan, who is an electronics engineer in Israel. She managed to emigrate in about 1982. She enlisted with her daughter-in-law, Agi. Her husband died here in the 1960s. She left with all her family and lived in Tel Aviv, where she was a pensioner. Lusia has two grandchildren - Roni and Dana. I have always kept in touch with my sister. She came very often in the country to visit us, every year. Every time she stayed for two-three weeks with us. In 1999 she suffered a severe accident - she was run over by a car and she was hospitalized. The last time she was in Romania was in 2000. I talked to her on the phone two days before she died, on February 26th, 2001, in Tel Aviv.

I have never had problems with anti-Semitism. But I don't like to hear the word 'stinking Jew'. I believe each nation should respect the others, because we are all people. I was happy when the Jewish state was born. After 2000 years, after being persecuted all the time, it was about time that Jews had their own state, where they wouldn't be cast out from. I was in Israel once before 1989 7. I was impressed. It is very beautiful. I was impressed first of all by the rapid growth - in only 50 years. I was in Israel for a month. I spent two weeks in the Mizra kibbutz. There was truly equality among people. Even if you were a professor, you still got your turn at cleaning, in the kitchen, at picking apples, at grooming animals. Hens laid eggs there twice in 24 hours, they had electric light day and night. Cows gave approximately 60-70 liters of milk per day. Everyone from the kibbutz had the right to have a vacation abroad once a year, at the kibbutz's expense. I was surprised in Israel by the big difference between an Israeli and an Arab village, the Israeli towns, which are very developed - everything is so beautiful, with water and greens. In Israel I was at the border with Lebanon, in Askelon, Arad, Ardot - a very beautiful town. I was alone in Israel. My wife went when Ariel was born.

I had a cerebral spasm about 7 years ago, in 1996, on a Saturday, August 13th. Adela had been here with her husband, and that very day they left for Gheorgheni, in the morning, about 8 o'clock. I was lying in bed, with my head against the bed frame, and all of a sudden I told my wife I was dying. I felt my head would crack open. I took medicines and I recovered, but after that, for 2-3 weeks, I grew so thin I could barely stand. Since then there are some things I don't remember. The doctor recommended that I should eat only vegetable margarine, and not eat pork, fats, and eat only one egg a week, because my cholesterol is a bit high.

I started going to the synagogue only recently. I think the life of the community had never been so well organized as it has been during the last 20 years, now that Mr. Ionel Schelssinger is president. Although the Jews are few, the activity is good. People can go do gymnastics, they can go to the library, to Oneg Sabbath on Friday evenings, which are held in the canteen. Before there had to be a list with the people coming to the prayer, so that there would be 10 people, now 13-15 come, without any appointment. The interest has increased. I go with my wife on Friday evenings, and on Saturday mornings I go alone. We also go together on Pesach. We also observe New Year and the Long Day, when I don't eat. During the day, I like to go to the market, listen to a match on the radio, or I like to read a book or the local newspaper, 'Observatorul' ['The Observer'], to which I have a subscription. I also read our community's newspaper, 'Shalom'.

Glossary

Fischer, Jan (1921)

Praha
Česká republika
Rozhovor pořídila: Silvia Singerová
Období vzniku rozhovoru: listopad 2003 - březen 2004

PLEASE NOTE - this is only the transcript of the interview, the final edited version will be uploaded later

Kazeta č. 1, strana A:
 

Q: Jak se jmenoval váš tatínek?

A: Richard Fischer.

Q: A maminka?

A: Julie Ledererová, rozená.

Q: Měl jste nějaký sourozence?

A: Bratra jménem Herbert.

Q: Staří rodiče od tatínka?

A: Dědeček se jmenoval Jakub Fischer a manželka Róza, Rozálie.

Q: A rozená?

A: Jeje... Musel bych se podívat. Dejte tam otazník, mám to tady, ale nevím to zpaměti.

Q: To nevadí. A maminčiny rodiče?

A: Maminčini rodiče, to je horší. Já o nich celkem nic nevím, protože nevím ani jak se jmenovala její maminka. To byla katastrofa celý ten příběh. Máma byla z chudý rodiny. Její máma se zamilovala do srbského.. to je taková historka romantická.. do Srba, který tady pracoval jako zlatník v Praze. Tedy byl goj, Árijec. Měl s mojí babičkou dvě deti, teda máma, ještě ta měla sestru. On se samozřejmě na ně vykašlal, utek jim. Moje babička mladá umřela, ty děti přišly do sirotčince a tak dále.. To byla historka jaksi smutná. Nemám o tom nic, materiály, jenom legendu z vyprávění.

Q: A jak se jmenovala vaše babička?

A: Nevím. Bohužel. Zřejmě mi to máma řekla, ale to už je 60 let. Já si nepamatuju babičku.

Q: A vače manželka?

A: Hana rozená Meisslová.

Q: A vaše děti?

A: Jan a Táňa.

Q: Kdy a kde jste se narodil?

A: 19.července, 1921 v Praze.

Q: Žil jste někdy jinde?

A: Jenom v Terezíně. Ne.

Q: A jaké školy jste absolvoval, vaše vzdělání?

A: Mám reálku s maturitou a 2 semestry DAMU a dost.

Q: V Praze jste chodil do školy?

A: Jo.

Q: Kde jste pracoval?

A: Toho bude moc. O co vám jde? Před válkou a za německé okupace jsem měl několik podružných míst, dělal jsem ve výrobě brejlí a tak. Po válce jsem už šel k divadlu. Začínal jsem jako herec a pak jako asistent režie, režisér. Celý život jsem dělal divadlo, s výjimkou když mě vyloučili z partaje a vyhodili ze všech míst, tak jsem dělal všelicos – čerpače vody, skladníka… ale to není podstatné.

Q: A kdy vás vyloučili ze strany?

A: 1971.

Q: Vrátíme se k dětství. Co si pamatujete na rodinný dům a vaši rodinu, co se týče židovských tradic.

A: Naše rodina byla asimilovaná, takže ty židovský tradice tam už byly jenom zprostředkovaný. Naše rodina nedodržovala, nejedli jsme kóšer, nechodili jsme do synagógy. Bylo to jenom jaksi v rodinné tradici to existovalo, takže se to jaksi respektovalo, ale neslavilo.

Q: Věděl jste od malička, že jste Žid? Věděl jste co to znamená?

A: Věděl, jenže to vědění obnášelo tehdy něco úplně jinýho, než si lidi dneska myslej. To nebylo nic zvlášť zajímavého, poněvadž jsme byli obklopeni lidmi podobného typu. Nebylo to nic výjimečného, to bylo jako kdyby jste byly v Sokole nebo co. Byl Žid, tak byl Žid. …Nebyli jsme praktikující…

Q: Stýkali jste se s židy?

A: Stýkali jsme se s židy stejného druhu, asimilovanými…

Q: Takže jste nikdy nechodili do synagogy?

A: Ne, nikdy. Ani rodiče ne.

Q: Jak jste mluvili doma?

A: Doma jsme mluvili německy a s personálem nebo v praxi česky. Já mám německý školy například. To je zase tím, že tatínek měl zastoupení pro Československo německých firem – Zeiss a Zeiss ikon optiku. Můj brácha studoval techniku, ten byl ten inteligent, já byl ten blbec, kterej měl převzít ten obchod. Tak jsem musel samozřejmě umět německy a ta němčina byla u nás jaksi zvyklá. Ale nebyli jsme.. němectví jsme nějak nerespektovali, to prostě bylo normální. Já nechci rozvádět historické výlety, ale… Ta první republika je dneska nepochopitelná, například si všimněte, že můj bratr se jmenoval Herbert a já Jan, což bylo jaksi masarykovství. Masaryk byl velkou modlou. Tudíž češství, židovství, němectví, proč? V demokratickém státě přece o nic nejde. Což pak samozřejmě dopadlo trošku jinak, ale tehdy se v to věřilo. I ta pokrokovost, náboženství se respektovalo, ale nemuselo se dodržovat.

Q: Takže jste mluvil německy a česky jste se naučil kde?

A: Ne, já jsem se naučil nejdřív česky kupodivu, poněvadž jsem měl slečnu k dětem, která se o mě starala. Já jsem uměl nejdřív česky jako dítě. A pak teprv začli s němčinou…

Q: Takže váš mateřský jazyk je čeština?

A: Abych vám řek pravdu, já to nevím. Kdyý to beret takhle ortodoxně, tak vlastně jo. Jenže ta úroveň češtiny a později tý němčiny byla kardinálně jiná. Pochopitelně jsem, když máte německý školy, tak literatura, jazyk, gramatiku, jsem byl v té němčině lepší. Ale ta čeština mi byla dost vrostlá, nebyla mi ničím cizí nebo podivná.

Q: Takže vy jste měli celé dětství slečny k dětem:

A: Ono to brzy skončilo. Nebyl průběh tak dobrej, takže další slečnu už si nepamatuju. To byla jenom tahle a pak už konec. No, ostatně tatínek s ní měl poměr, takže to byl dvojí účet.

Q: Jaký jazyky ještě umíte?

A: Umím slušně anglicky.

Q: Teď procházíme základní údaje, jestli chcete říct něco víc...

A: Nechci. Proč bych dělal nějaký proklamace.

Q: Byl jste na vojně jako voják?

A: Normálně na vojně jsem nebyl, já jsem byl v Terezíně, v Osvětimi. Pak jsem se vrátil na Slovensko, do Košic, tam jsem se dostal na Ministerstvo informací a dělal jsem v rozhlase. Vy jste příliš mladá, ale historicky možná, to je taková zajímavá kapitolka. Byl jsem na tom ministerstvu, tam u řeky byla taková patrová budova. V prvním patře byla česká vláda, to jsme měli dvě kanceláře, třeba vnitro si přišlo pučovat psacá stroj a dole byla slovenská národní rada. Tam jsem pracoval. A jednoho dne, poněvadž věděli, že jsem v Terezíně hrál divadlo, mě někdo vyzval, že potřebujou do rozhlasu, že se bude zase vysílat Čs. rozhlas. Tak jsme tam byli tři čeští hlasatelé, někdy v dubnu 1945. Pak přišla  mobilizace, já jsme musel vopustit rozhlas a šel do armády, byl jsem 2 a půl měsíce v armádě a pak byl konec války a já jsem koukal mazat z armády pryč. Byl jsem v Svobodově armádě, ještě nebyla československá, zahraniční armáda a tam jsem byl v důstojnický škole, takže na frontě jsem nebyl.

Q: To bylo všechno v Košicích?

A: Ne. V Košicích mě odvedli a dostal jsem se do Popradu do důstojnický školy. A šli jsme pěšky do Levoče myslím, nejezdili vlaky. Já na Košice vzpomínám moc rád. To bylo pár příjemných týdnů.

Q: Jenom týdnů?

A: No, jak dlouho jsme tam byli? Měsíc, 6 týdnů. Pak přišla mobilizace a šlus. Šli jsme pěšky do Levoče, nejezdili vlaky... Pojďme dále.

Q: Řekněte mi něco o vašem bratrovi.

A: Bratr Herbert studoval techniku, nepodařilo se mu dostudovat.

Q: Byl starší nebo mladší?

A: Narodil se 1915. O 6 let byl starší než já.

Q: V Praze?

A: Ano, my jsme pořád pražské děti.

Q: A jeho mateřština byla..?

A: To je to samý... Pak pracoval v podobné dílně jako já, vyráběli jsme brýle. Oženil se. Ona říkala že je Árijka a pak z toho vylezlo, že není, že je buď míšeňka nebo nevím co. A můj brácha ji zachránil, aby ona nemusela do lágru, tak se rozved, šel do lágru on a už se nevrátil... Svou dívenku zachránil.

Q: Děti neměli?

A: Ne.

Q: A víte, kdy ho zabili?

A: Ne, nevím, 1944 někdy, ale detaily nevím. On jel do Osvětimi transportem, zřejmě z Terezína, zřejmě šel do plynu… ale detaily nevím.. asi někdy ´44 ho zabili. Mámu taky nevím, ta skončila prý v Bergen – Belsen, ale… to jsou jenom takové matné stopy, že někdo říkal, že ji viděl…

Q: A vaše manželka? Kdy se narodila?

A: Jako já 1921, ale 1. ledna. Myslím, že se narodila v Praze, ale oni pak bydleli mimo Prahu, poněvadž její táta měl velkostatek, pak už byl jenom správce a pak to prošustroval… Ale do detailu nepujdete... Když to budu brát jako literárně, tak je to možná zajímavý, možná i historicky, společnost tý tehdejší doby, těch přesunů z tehdejší, chudší do bohatých... Měl jsem vám říct, že... Jak můj táta měl ty německé firmy, tak samozřejmě v 1938 ho zbavili toho zastupitelství. A on v tu dobu měl dluhy, protože samozřejmě německé výrobky se hůře prodávali. A tatíček, protože byl čestný obchodník tak, to že má dluhy a nemůže je zaplatit nesnesl a spáchal sebevraždu v ´38. Nám všecko sebrali, zabavili a zůstali jsme plonk, máma, brácha a já v podstatě bez peněz.

Q: Takže jste zústali sami s maminkou?

A: Jo.

Q: A kdy se narodil váš tatínek?

A: Datum přesný z paměti nevím, musel bych jít do papírů. Títa se narodil 1885, máma 1884.

Q: Narodil se v Praze?

A: Víte, že to nevím, ale myslím, že jo.

Q: Ale žil v Praze?

A: Jo, jo.

Q: Jaký měl vzdělání?

A: Myslím, že měl jenom maturitu. On měl Obchodní akademii a maturitou.

Q: Jeho povolání bylo obchodník, on vlastnil ty továrny nebo...?

A: Ne, v zastoupení cizích firem. Velkoobchod by se to dalo nazvat. Dostal zboží z Německa a tady to prodával obchodníkům.

Q: Říkal jste, že nepraktikoval náboženství?

A: Ne, ne... Oni byli liberální naše rodina a byli na to hrdí, že jsou.. bez náboženství, moderní. Táta sympatizoval se sociální demokracií. Byli liberální, lehce doleva.

Q: Některý asimilovaný chodili na velké svátky do synagogy.

A: To je možný, ale já si konkrétně nepamatuju. To uznávali, ne že by to zapírali, ale nepraktikovali.

Q: Jeho mateřština byla němčina?

A: Jeho mateřština byla němčina. Je to tak. Ale taky ještě se hlásil… Já jsem to zjistil, teprv když jsem se hlásil, já jsem to nevěděl, bylo sčítání lidu, myslím ´33 nebo ´34 a já jsem tam byl hlášenej jako Němec. Jsem měl nepříjemnosti z toho po válce…

Q: Kde byl na vojně váš tatínek?

A: Na vojně byl u 28. pluku, to byl pražský pluk. Za války byl v Bruck an der Mur, v Rakousku, v Korutanech. Tam sloužil.

Q: Měl sourozence?

A: Měl tři sourozence, dva bratry a sestru. Bratři byli Oskar a Erich Fischer a sestra byla Anna, která se provdala za dr. Altshula a umřela v Kanadě. Emigrovali těsně před válkou, za prvních zvuků děl se odebrali do Kanady, ještě jim potopili loď.

Q: Kdy se narodili a kdy umřeli?

A: (smích) Já to vím zhruba, můžem to rekonstruovat. Oskar byla si o 3-4 roky mladší, čili ten se narodil 1890. Erich 1893, nebo tak nějak. Anka 1895, tak nějak, v odstupu 2-3 let se narodili.

Q: V Praze?

A: Jo.

Q: Jaký měli zaměstnání?

A: Dědeček byl krejčí. Ta národnost byla otázka. On byl z Berouna, přišel do Prahy se učit krejčovině. Ty Židi venkovští museli samozřejmě bejt Češi. Protože na tý vesnici by jinak těžko přežili. Takže ta národnost byla u nich taková, řekl bych spíš pohyblivá. V Praze se vyučil krejčím, zřejmě byl dobrej, osamostatnil se a měl krejčovský salón, ale to už mluvil německy. Žil nejvíc z toho, že šil pro profesory pražské německé univerzity. Oni nosili tenkrát uniformu. To byla jeho klientela. Takže odvozuju z toho, že on musel šít Einsteinovi uniformu, když on přišel do Prahy. A měl tady asi 10 zaměstnanců, takže on byl dost movitý. Byla to slušně situovaná rodina.

Q: Byl praktikující žid?

A: Myslím, že jo. Babička Róza, tu si pamatuju, ta byla ještě praktikující. Dědečka už jsem neznal, ten umřel v roce, když já jsem se narodil ´21, babičku jsem ještě znal, ještě žila pár let.

Q: A umřel v Praze?

A: Jo... A ty bráchové, ten mladší Oskar, ten měl taky myslím Obchodní Akademii, ale táta když měl tu firmu, když dostal to obchodní zastoupení, tak ho vzal jako spolupodnikatele, měl třetinový podíl na firmě. Ten mladší Erich, ten se živil všelijak, ten moc štěstí nepobral. Pracoval jako zaměstnanec v různých firmách. Já ho pamatuju jak prodával pneumatiky… Ten se nedomoh velkého majetku.

Q: Byli ženatí?

A: Jo. Oskar si vzal Vídeňačku Vali rozená Pietschová. Německy psaný (smích). Ta tady s ním žila, to byla Árijka samozřejmě. Takže on šel do Terezína až na poslední chvíli, on to tady přežil. Neměli děti. Ale Erich měl, rozenou Weinerovou... Jak ona se jmenovala? To je jedno. A měli syna Jiřího, ten byl se mnou v Terezíně. Ten byl vyučenej instalatér a já jsem s ním dělal. To bylo velký štěstí pro mě, že jsem v Terezíně dělal s ním. Měl jsem dobrý zaměstnání, kde jsem byl relativně svobodnej. Tak to byla ta chudá větev, ten se dostal k instalatéřině.

Q: Oskar a Erich byli nábožní?

A: Ne. Nebyli nábožní, z té mladší generace nikdo. Prarodiče jo, ale rodiče už ne.

Q: A sestra tatínka?

A: To je to samý.

Q: Taky se narodila v Praze?

A: Jo.

Q: A jaký měla zaměstnání?

A: Vona myslím v práci nikdy nebyla. Ona si vzala toho Altschula. To je zajímavé. Rudolf Altschul, jeho táta měl velkoobchod v Praze s jižním ovocem. Tedy měli se celkem slušně.A von byl typickej židovskej intlektuál! Krásnej, ty brejličky, ten frňák a pleš a tak. A byl úžasná hlava! Začal studovat techniku, ale aby se uživil, uměl ještě těsnopis a chodil psát do parlamentu protokol. Ale poněvadž jeho tatínek dostal rakovinu... tak on přešel na medicínu, aby moh tátovi pomáhat. Tu medicínu vystudoval, na pražské německé univerzitě. Specializoval se na psychiatrii. Měl asi 2 semestry Sorbonny a pak když absolvoval, tak jel na praxi do Itálie, do Říma, tam byl nějakej slavnej profesor Mingazini se jmenoval, psychiatr světovej. Tam pracoval asi rok dva. Pak se vrátil, tady založil praxi, samozřejmě, že moc bohatej nebyl, bejt psychiatr německej v Praze, když už byl Hitler, nebylo moc dobrý. Já si pamatuju: už tenkrát z tý psychiatrie ho zajímala neurologie a přes neurologii až k histologii. Například mu posílali mozky různé, zvířat… A to pod mikroskopem studoval a psal několik prací. To už byl ženatej s mojí tetou. Ty svoje separáty, které rozeslal po světe, první odpověď dostal z Kanady a pak dostal daleko lepší z Ameriky. A říkal, ne Kanaďani byli první, jedu tam do Saskatonu. Jeli tou lodí Atény, to byla první loď, kterou Němci potopili, civilní. V ´39, někdy v říjnu nebo tak. Potopili ji u skotských břehů, ale oni se zachránili, do Kanady se dostali. On se tam stal profesorem na univerzitě, dostal Rockefelerovu nadaci, přešel definitivně na tu histologii. Měl několik zajímavejch prací. Arteriosklerozou se zabýval. Vymyslel nějaký léky a tak. Byl to nesmírně vzdělanej pán. Znal i literaturu, historii. Uměl italsky, francouzsky, anglicky, německy, česky a to perfektně! V těch jazycích on pracoval. Pak umřel poměrně brzy. Byl to takovej člověk, kterej přečníval vysoko průměr. Ale byl to nepraktickej žid, vobě ruce levý (smích). Ale intelektuál jak hrom.

Q: A děti?

A: Děti neměli, bohužel.

Q: Pamatujete si, kdy umřela ta vaše teta v Kanadě?

A: No... tak ještě myslím za bolčevika, 1987 tak nějak.

Q: A Oskar a Erich?

A: Erich umřel v Terezíně, to jsem ještě seděl u něho, to měl rakovinu žaludku a Oskar umřel ´62-3, tak nějak

Q: Takže Erich byl v Terezíně?

A: Jo. Oskar byl taky v Terezíně, ale ten už tam byl jako míšenec na závěr. Na konci tam byli míšenci a smíšené manželství. Na 3 měsíce jenom, v listopadu přijeli tak nějak.

Q: Ještě bych se vrátila k dědečkovi Jakubovi. Jaký měl vzdělání, on byl krejčí?

A: Detaily nevím, myslím, že byl vyučenej krejčí.

Q: Byl na vojně?

A: Nevím. Myslím, že ne. Nikdy jsem nezaslech ani zmínku o tom. Ale nevím, jak to tenkrát bylo v těch létech. Jestli musel nebo nemusel na vojnu v těch 80. nebo 90. letech 19. století.

Q: On se narodil v Berouně?

A: Ano. 1840, tak nějak. Já tady mám takovou starou rodinnou kroniku. Ale to není důležitý pro vás.

Q: Je, kvůli tomu, že to je archiv... aby se ty data uchovali. já si to pak opíšu. Víte něco o sourozencích vašeho dědečka Jakuba?

A: Ne. Myslím, že nebyli v Praze, něco bylo ve Vídni… Nemůžu vám posloužit.

Q: A babička?

A: Babička Róza byla babička Róza. Malá kulatá, roztomilá bába to byla. Byla s ní sranda, měla smysl pro humor…

Q: Oni s váma bydleli v Praze?

A: Ne. S náma nebydlela, nejdřív byla sama, pak bydlela jednu dobu u Oskara, poněvadž neměl děti, kdežto u nás byla rodina.

Q: Ona byla pražačka?

A: Ne, ne... Počkejte, přinesu rodinnou kroniku...

Q: Kdo to napsal tuhle kroniku?

A: Víte, že nevím. Oskar to zdědil někde… Tady je zauční list dědy...

Q: To je krásný.

A: Tady jsou nějaký dokumenty... Ani nevím co to je. Jo, Reissová se jmenovala babička, ano! A Ignáz Reiss, to už nevím... To byl asi její brácha. Švenkovi ty byli ve Vídni.

Q: Tady máte něco hebrejsky, vidíte?

A: No, tak máte co číst...

Q: To je jidiš. To já nepřečtu.

A: Já vám to samozřejmě pučim. Já jsem to nebyl schopnej prostudovat. To je pro historika práce... To je švabach... Brief meines Grossvaters an seiner Tochter Terese verehelichte Eisne. Vúbec nevím, nemám potuchy, kdo to byl!.. Tady jsou nějaký ty parte... No, jo tak to byla asi Kinder... A to jsou ty přiženěný. Tak Jákob Fischer si vzal Rózu Fischerovou, takže to byla máma báby. Datum 1896. A tady je Ignáz. Tak pro historika je to žrádlo, tohleto... Ale to podle mého názoru, to by chtělo asi pozornosř důkladnější. Dokud si to neprostudujete... Ale je to hezký.

Q: Když mluvili jidiš, to byli asi ještě praktikující?

A: Jo, tihle jo. Generace Jakoba ještě byli praktikující. Ono to souviselo asi s přestěhováním do Prahy. Na tom venkově. To tady máte v těch materiálech, co se tam dělo v těch rodinách. Ale když se přestěhovali do Prahy, asi s tím pak praštili... Tady je kresba dědečka na úmrtným loži, někdo to nakreslil. ´21. Mein teurer Vater Jakob Fischer, einem Tag von seinem Tode. Oskar to nakreslil! A tady máte rodokmen.… Tmáň, on je z Tmáně u Berouna... Zajímavý na tomhle pro mě je ta historie Židů. Jak se ta asimilace, ten přechod, to má co dělat taky s historií Rakousko – Uherska… My jsme na ně větčinou zlý, my Češi. Ale vono to tak úplně nená. Ten Franz Josef, byl sice blbec, zkostnatělej, ale nebyl ve všem reakční. Zákony byly liberální. Židům to velice přálo. Jedna věc, která je trošku problém tady v této zemi. Ty židi, od Josefa II., byli osvobozený, 1848 skončily úplně ghetta, tak Židi byli vděční té vládě, která je osvobodila, dala jim naprostou rovnost. Vemte si ty návaly, té Einsteinovy generace na univerzity, těch doktorů, profesorů, lékařů..! Židi se vrhli na vzdělání, z těch ghett se vyhrnuli a byli tomu Rakousko-Uhersku vděční, protože jim dal svobodu. Fakt je ten, že Vídeň byla dost antisemitská, Praha ne. To jsou takový detaily... Ale co jsme to chtěli.

Q: Chtěli jsme zjistit, jestli váš dědeček měl bratry a sestry.

A: No, jo tady jsme zjistili, že jich měl fůru. A to chcete napsat?

Q: Jestli mi to pučíte, já bych si to napsala a okopírovala.

A: Čestný pionýrský.. (smích)

Q: Víte, jak zemřela babička?

A: Nevím, asi na rakovinu, prostě zesnula. Ještě pčed válkou, v 30. letech. To tam najdete taky... A moje knížka na to vlastně navazuje.

Q: A ona byla ještě praktikující?

A: Jo, ano.

Q: Mluvila německy?

A: Mluvila německy a samozřejmě česky. To bylo normální. S personálem se mluvilo česky, doma německy.

Q: Ještě se vrátíme. Vaše manželka?

A: Meisslová Hana. Támle mám obrázek.

Q: To je krásnej obrázek.

A: Hezkej no. Předválečnej ještě.

Q: Byla židovka?

A: Jo. Narodila se v Praze, ale žili mimo Prahu, její táta byl velkostatkář.

Q: Její mateřština byla němčina?

A: Já vám to tady prostě nevím. Oni byli češtější...

Kazeta č. 1, strana B:

Q: Jaké měla školy?

A: Ona měla dvě třídy gymnázium, ale nedodělala to.

Q: A zaměstnání?

A: Zaměstnání? Vy nejste historička, takže vám to cpu zbytečně, ale.. Je zajímavý, že osud jejího otce a mého otce byly velice paralelní. Já znám ještě další. To bylo zákonitý za první republiky, jak to bylo s tou celou zemí. Po tom velkým rozmachu přišel pokles… Utíkáme trošku z reality do metafyziky, ale... To souviselo i s tou psychologií těch lidí, i s dějinami, s tím Hitlerem a vším. Velká krize, 30. léta, která hluboko zasáhla naši rodinu taky. Já si to pamatuju velice velice živě: tu strašnou atmosféru, furt zvonil někdo u dveří pro jídlo, na ulici upad někdo, tady v Košířích bydleli ve skalách lidi… Republika měla milión nezaměstnaných, to bylo strašně moc! Prostě, její tatínek byl velkostatkář, ale hrál na burze. Prošustroval velkostatek, pak byl správce, pak byl menším správcem a ještě menšího statku. Měl manželku. Mám tady jedinou fotku schovanou, byla to krásná ženská! Nóbl, taková elegantní fajnová dáma. Pak to šlo dolů, tak ona se s ním rozvedla. On spáchal sebevraždu, jako můj táta, střelil se do hlavy ale netrefil se. A moje žena a její ségra ho ještě ošetřovali než umřel… Ona mi to nikdy v životě neřekla, já jsem se to dozvěděl až po její smrti, to je zajímavý. Když se rozvedla její máma s jejím tátou, moje žena byla jaksi velice dotčena. Ta její máma si vzala... jako druhého manžela toho německého skladatele, který napsal toho Císaře z Atlantidy, před 5 lety to bylo strašně slavný, v Londýně to hráli… To jméno... A ten měl předtím tři děti. Prostě ona (manželka) utekla od rodiny, v 16 letech se osamostatnila a dělala učitelku gymnastiky. Ona pak tančila, moderní, ne balet, ale výrazové tance. Takže byla tanečnicí. A po válce, když jsme se vzali, tak šla dělat do kanceláře. Pak pracovala v ČET- ce jako korektorka. Léta.

Q: A její sestra?

A: Její sestra Dáša byla krásná, taky mám jedinou fotku, blondýnka, nebyly si vůbec podobný. Skončila v Aušvic. Což Hanka moje žena strašně těžko nesla smrt její sestry. Ty zářezy byly hluboký. Moje choť měla těžký válečný trauma. To, co tady děláme to před ní nebylo možný. Nesmělo se mluvit vo lágrech, vo Židech, absolutně to nesnášela, dostala okamžitě šok a utekla. Říkala, neříkej to, nechci to slyšet.

Q: Bylo to i kvůli tomu, že před válkou byli asimilovaní?

A: Já myslím, že ne. To bylo psychologicky jenom... Zřejmě na ní to bylo jako na mladou holku moc, ta sebevražda jejího táty. Takovej slavnej skladatel – jeden z těch co byli v Terezíně. 

Q: Vaše děti:

A: Mám dceru a syna. Mám dceru Táňu, nar.1947, syn Jan 1949. Dcera je herečka, toho času poslankyně parlamentu. Syn je podnikatel, má agentúru reklamní, propagační.

Q: Mají děti?

A: Syn má dvě děti, syna a dceru. Vnučka studuje ještě na vysoký škole, její brácha se vrh na reklamu, grafik… Teď se chce odstěhovat do Paříže. Krásný kluk to je, vysokej kluk, nápadnej. Dcera má syna, ten je ovšem mrzák, má mozkovou obrnu, je v ústavu. Vždycky ho na Vánoce a na léto na chalupu berem. Nemůže chodit, je na vozejčku.

Q: Takže máte 3 vnoučata.

A: Jo.

Q: Vaše děti byly vychovány jako židi?

A: Ne. Od malička myslím, že to nevěděli, my jsme jim to řekli, až když byli trošku starší. Oni samozřejmě hlásej se k tomu, ale ne nábožensky, ideově.

Q: K identitě se hlásí?

A: Ano... Táňa má teď holt jiné starosti v tom parlamentu. Ta to dotáhla z nás nejvejš, paní poslankyně... Ale já to vodskáču. Ona žije v jiným světě, ona se mi vzdaluje. Já nejsem politolog(...) Kdysi jsme byli oba od divadla a bylo to fajn. Teď je to horší, nemá čas na nic. Ona to bere vážně. Jdeme dál.

Q: Vaše maminka?

A: Julie. Milovala mého bráchu. Já jsem byl ten domácí kašpar, kterého všichni takhle poplácávali. Ta rodina byla vnitřně rozbitá, nebyla dobrá. Skončilo to pak tou sebevraždou táty, to souviselo i s tím, že on měl životní pojistku. Věděl, že když umře, tak my máme dostat sto tisíc, což tenkrát byly velký peníze. Leč on to měl u Fénixu a když umřel, tak v ´38. rok Němci stáhli kapitál z Fénixu a on skrachoval. To jsou takový anekdoty historický.

Q: Maminka byla pražačka?

A: Maminka se narodila někde.. a v Praze vyrostla. Já o ní celkem moc toho nevím. Ten srbskej zlatník. Bydleli tady někde na Starém městě v jedné místnosti, která byla rozdělená křídou a tam bydlely dvě rodiny. Její táta ten Srb, ani nevím jak se jmenoval. Utek a nechal tu rodinu v bídě. Ta máma umřela, moji mámu dali k nějaký tetě na vychování, tam samozřejmě byla jako ten cizí prvek. Pak se zamilovala do táty atd. A tak to pokračovalo abych tak řekl smutně dál.

Q: Jak umřela vaše maminka?

A: Nevím... Jela do Osvětimi samozřejmě, ...nechci o tom mluvit. Z Osvětimi šla prý do Bergen – Belsen, tam stopa končí.

Q: Měla nějaký zaměstnání?

A: To ne, byla doma. V týhle generaci to neexistovalo... Ten zlom je se stoletím, 20. stoletím.
...
A: Teta byla Videňačka. Její máma byla tajemnicí na nějakým ministerstvu ve Vídni a dělala poslední sekretářku panu Dolfusovi, kterého zastřelili nacisti. Ona byla u toho. Tak já měl líčení o tom jak zastřelili Dolfusa. Takže my jsme zdědili ten komplex toho strašnýho 20. století na plný pecky.

Q: Podíváme se na nějaký fotky.

A: To je Richard. Kde to je to nevím, ale je to za 1. světový války, zřejmě v nějakým vojenským objektu, jestli v Praze nebo v Rakousku, to nevím.
Tady je táta taky. Budeme muset pracovat energicky, protože jsou toho štosy.

A: Táta v Praze 1922. Vidím, že jsou tu pěkný poklady, já už na to zapomněl. To je strýc Oskar s Táňou, to je moje dcera... Tady to jsou sourozenci, Richard, Oskar, Erich a Anna. Zleva doprava podle věku... Tohle je taky krásný, to jsme měli asi nějaký auto takhle. Teď já se začínám rochnit v tom. To je Oskar... Hele, to je něco! Svatební fotka táty s mámou.

Q: To bylo v kterém roce?

A: To vám nepovím, před válkou, může to být tak 1910-11... Tady jsou pravé skvosty. Oskar na kole... Tohle je pravděpodobně děda, ale já to nevím... Tohleto je nádhera úplná, ale já vám nevím která z famílie to je. To je přece skvost! To je Josef Kajetán Tyl, můžem to dát na jeviště a jedem... Nadporučík na koni, ale von neuměl jezdit, jen tam tak sedí... To jsou tři bráchové. To je táta, Oskar, Erich.... Ale tohle je moc hezký! To už se málokdy vidí, ještě jak se to dělalo na ten karton...  To jsem já s bratrem.

Q: Víte v jakém roce?

A: Tady mě mohli být 3-4 roky, takže v 24 roce... Tohle jsou ty fotky co jsme tam měli venku na stěně.

Q: To si můžu půjčit? To jste vy s manželkou a kde to je?

A: Na Příkopech, tak 46´. zhruba.

Q: A tohle?

A: To je naše rodina, ´22-3. Ženská část rodiny. Já to léta neviděl, já se v tom nehrabu...

Q: Někdy je zajímavý se k tomu vrátit.

A: No, právě, já bych to dobrovolně asi neudělal... Je to nádhera... Je to hrozně smutný. Kolik hořkosti je v těch osudech, kolik hrůzy. To je babička Róza, to je moje máma, to ja Anka teta, brácha, já. To je někde na venkově na letním bytě. Mě tady byly tak 3 roky...

Q: Tady máte napsaný Karlák, to je na Karlovým náměstí?

A: To je zajímavý. Karlák, nevím o té zdi. Ale to je nedůležité. Tady máte dvakrát rodinný snímek bratři Fischerovi, brácha a já... To jsou legendy... Tohle je taky krásný: Rodina na Příkopech 26´. – 27. Teta Vali, ta Vídeňačka a maminka... Já vám nebudu všecko dávat... Tady jsem krásný mladý, před válkou ještě, to mi bylo tak 16-17 let... Tohle je hezká fotka. Tady pochopíte všecko. Já vám to nebudu vykládat, je to tam všecko „napsaný“. To je ta slečna, co mě učila česky. Je vám to jasný, podívejte se na ten ksicht tý mámy. Ta fotka mluví. Krásná.

Q: Tak já si to pučím.

A: No, to nemám radost.

Q: Jak se jmenovala ta slečna?

A: To nevím... Tady jsme měli nový auto, heleďte... Tady, tohle je krásná fotka! Táta, protože uměl fotografovat, tak on byl fotograf pluku. To je nějaká nádherná chlastačka za války, rakousko- uherskejch oficírů. Ta má úžasnou atmosféru. Šampus na stole, páni důstojníci, tady mají nějakou ženskou…  Tady je můj brácha, když mu byly asi tři roky a tady je napsaný Šono tóvo... Koukám, že tady máte žně!

Q: Máte krásný exempláře!

A: Že jo, já ani nevěděl... Erich, můj bratranec, táta, brácha. Brácha nevycválanej ještě, brácha nevycválanej... táta mladej.... Toto je komické! Svadba mého syna, to byl vlasatej ještě, jednou ho chytli policajti a vostříhali ho. ...Tohle je velice zajímavé, to musím opečovat tuhle fotku. Tohle je oficiélne zahájení Národního shromáždění. 28.10. A tady je táta s foťákem... Zřejmě tam něco fotil.

A: ...Bába Róza a dědeček Jakub. Tady je máte, to byl krásnej pár!

Q: Jaký jste měl vztah s dědečkem?

A: Já ho neznal. On byl prý velký srandista, on měl strašně rád zvířata, což v naší rodině se zdědilo, protože máme furt nějaký potvory kolem sebe. Měl boxera psa, který byl vycvičenej, vodil tátu když se ožíral v noci domů. A byla rodinná tradice, že máma ráno se přišla podívat a táta ležel na zemi a pes v posteli. A pak měli papouška, který uměl mluvit, měl  ho v dílně, jak šili. On se naučil prdět, když přišli zákazníci. (smích)... Tohle je Oskar mladej...

Q: To jsou poklady, tyhle starý fotky...

A: Tak to je rodina...

Q: Kdo je tohle?

A: Anna, Erich a ...cizí člověk. To je u dědečka v bytě.
A to už jsou divadelní fotky... Věc Makropulos... a tak dále.
...
Q: Jak probíhalo divadlo v Terezíně?

A: Proto je neopakovatelný… My jsme hráli špatně divadlo. Já jsem se neviděl samozřejmě, ale já nic neuměl, já byl začátečník. Většina z nás byli amatéři, někdo uměl.. My jsme nemohli dělat nějak zvlášť dobrý divadlo, ale o to tam nešlo. A tady začíná celej ten klíč k tomu. My jsme dělali divadlo, stejný lidi v hledišti a na jevišti. Tam nebylo, že jeviště a hlediště a hledají kontakt, chtějí vzájemně si něco říct. Všichni si říkali jedno a totéž. Celá ta souvztažnost divák, umělec, byla úplně jiná… Ta nečasovost tam hrála evidentní úlohu, protože nešlo o kariéru, nešlo o peníze, nešlo o lásku, to všecko neexistovalo. Šlo o nějakej zbytek duše, která zoufale volala o pomoc. O to byla silnější ta duše a o to to naše úsilí muselo bejt silnější… Já dávám hrozně rád k dobru historku, na kterou si moc dobře pamatuju: Už před těma posledníma transportama ´44., teda v létě, na podzim, ten film byl na jaře, tak se to hroutilo velice rychle, transporty jezdily jeden za druhým až jsme jeli i my. Ale v tom mezidobí, než se to začlo hroutit, než jsme viděli, že to ghetto se rozpouští, že tady se něco děje. My jsme seděli pohromadě a nevím kdo přines korespondenční lístek a říká tohle jsem dostal. Nevěděl odkud, bylo to z Osvětimi. Bylo to v těch několika řádcích, který byly dovolený a ty první písmena tam bylo GASTOD, jsme dešifrovali. A teď co? To je to co je neuvěřitelný, my vůbec nevěděli co to je! Protože přece nikoho nenapadalo, že jsou plynové komory, že se lidi likvidujou v plynových komorách! Zastřelit jo, pověsit jo, ubít palicí jo, ale plynový komory? My jsme tomu nerozuměli!... To je zvláštní detail toho, že člověk si neuvědomuje, že to co prožil, v něm leží. Že toho zážitku se nemůžete zbavit... To je jako, když někdo má nevybuchlej granát v sobě. Já dneska vím, že v tomhle věku už neexploduje, to je mi už jasný. Ale nicméně vím, že tam dělá, co se mi stalo s těma Italama (rozhovor o divadle), že jsem se najednou roztřásl…Ono mě to zranilo….

Q: To je asi všechno v podvědomí...

A: Ano. Já to neříkám proto, abyste mě litoval, hodnej, já ti koupím bonbón. Aniž bychom to věděli, jsme tím nutně poznamenaní.

Druhý rozhovor:
21.11.2003

Q: Jak si pamatujete na dodržování tradic u babičky?

A: Já jsem byl dítě, ona když umřela, tak mě bylo asi 10. Tak nevím, nakolik byla pobožná. Ale já měl ještě jednu tetu, ta byla pobožná! Tu jsem Vám zapřel… Děda Jakub měl sestru. Emma. A ta si vzala kantora z pražské synagogy. Ta byla praktikující, ta měla doma mezuze na dveřích, chodila pravidelně. Ta byla vopravdu svatá, bělovlasá… Já jí pamatuju. To byla židovská svatá, úžasná baba to byla, báječná, hodná!

Q: Vy jste se s nima stýkali?

A: Když jsem byl malý, tak jsme bydleli ve stejném domě, pak jsme se odstěhovali, tak jsem ztratil s ní kontakt. V Týnské ulici.

Q: Ještě jsem se zapomněla zeptat. Jak tam má v kronice váš dědeček ty výučný listy, tam jsem našla zajímavou věc, možná je to detail. V jednom je psaný česky Fišer a v druhým německy jako Fischer. Nevíte jestli si neměnili jméno? Třeba žili na tý vesnici tak se psali česky a když se přestěhovali tak německy?

A: Není mi známo, že by se měnilo jméno, ale z mého života je mi známo x-krát a dodnes, jeden to píše tak, jeden tak. Z českýho lajdáctví, tam dají es s háčkem. Já bych se dost vsadil, podle všeho co vím, že určitě nechtěli, aby se to psalo s háčkem. Oni spíš, ten sklon k němectví se držel až k mým rodičům, to se zlomilo až u mě. Takže nevím, proč by to dělali.

Q: Vy jste říkal, že jste byl psanej jako dítě jako Němec?

A: Ano 1933 když bylo sčítání lidu. Já to nevěděl samozřejmě. Až když jsem se vrátil a potřeboval jsem papíry, tak jsem zjistil, že jsem tam psaný jako Němec, bylo mi 10.

Q: A měl jste nějaký nepříjemnosti kvůli tomu?

A: Měl, samozřejmě! Poněvadž z toho lágru jsem neměl papíry, tak jsem potřeboval národnost doložit a ejhle! K tomu jsem potřeboval ten výpis. Manželka to vybíhala. Já jsem musel nějak žádat, aby mě uznali národnost českou. Ještě, aby mě vodsunuli…(smích) Nějakým lidem se to stalo samozřejmě, ale mě se to nestalo, díky tomu, že jsem byl v lágru.  Nikoho by nenapadlo, že bych přijel z Osvětimi a hlásil se k Němcům.

Q: Mě babička říkala, že po válce se na Slovensku nesmělo mluvit maďarsky. Bylo to tady takhle s němčinou?

A: To bylo s němčinou taky.

Q: Stalo se vám osobně něco?

A: Já jsem německy nemluvil! Já jsem od 1939 asi s němčinou skončil. Nevzal jsem ji do huby. To je taky jedna věc, o které by se dala napsat studie, – ty proměny nacionality. Já jsem léta letoucí byl toho názoru, že fašismus, holocaust je věc Němců. To je německá vlastnost. Dlouho mě to trvalo, než jsem na to přišel, že to není jenom německá věc, že jiný národy jsou téhož názoru! Samozřejmě to proměnilo můj vztah k Němcům, protože jsem zjistil, že  ne každý Němec je fašista. Kdežto když skončila válka… problematika odsunu Němců. To je moje subjektivní hledisko: Já když jsem se vrátil do Prahy, což bylo v červnu 1945 ještě v uniformě vojenský, tak samozřejmě s Němcema jsem skončil, Němci byli nepřátelé. I když si vzpomínám na tý cestě z Polska domů, taky jsme kusy šli pěšky a čekali na vlaky. Tam byl nějakej ruskej voják a měl tam 10 Němců vojáků zajatejch, něco na poli pracovali, uklízeli. Jsme se dali do řeči a on zjistil naše čísla, že jsme byli v konclágeru a tak a on mě dal automat a říká na, zahraj si s nima trošku, pocvič si s nima. A v tu chvíli mi najednou přišlo, že to nejde. Ty lidi, který neznám, nic o nich nevím, z motivace jenom, že jsou Němci, tak to nejde… To je myslím dost typický. Co já vím, většina lidí z lágrů, pokud nenarazili na nějakého člověka, kterého znali a věděli o jeho vině, tak nebyli krvelační. Poněvadž toho měli dost, nehodlali dělat stejné věci… Ale když jsem se vrátil, to byla situace, kterou si už málokdo vybavuje: za a/ v tý době od konce války až do podzimu vypukly všechny věci, který se za války nevěděli. Všechny ty lágry, všechny ty zločiny. Z českých archívů, co se dělalo tady, koho zastřelili… Čili najednou se na Němce vyvalilo strašně hrůzy, kterou způsobili za tý války. Samozřejmě ty lidi, který nejmíň trpěli, byli největší mstitelé, ti kluci z těch RG – Revolučních gard – já jsem se s nima moc do styku nedostal – ty se chovali velice špatně. To byli frajeři, kteří teď byli najednou velcí, to byli ušlápnutý kluci protektorátní… Ty brutality, který se s Němcema děli, já připisuju těmto lidem, kteří sami patrně vůbec nic neprodělali, ale chovali se jako mstitelé celého národa. My jsme to rozhodně nebyli. Ale na druhý straně... vím, jak jsme se dovídali, co se tady dělo za revoluce, věci který nebyly známý… Čili všechno zlo se na Němce vyvalilo, v národě byla strašná nálada:  musíme si to s nima vyřídit. To je za a/ - ta první vlna pomsty, hněvu, nenávisti. Lidi si vyřizovali, někteří, který měli, někteří si vyřizovali jenom vztek, nebo kradli.. Vždyť víte, že většině židů ukradli téměř všechen majetek. My jsem taky přišli o všechno. A za b/ - s touto náladou v zádech, samozřejmě Beneš měl své subjektivní důvody, jeho komplex mnichovský je známý. Oni pochopitelně měli udělat to, co se dělalo v Německu, kde byla okupační armáda, denacifikace, stanný soudy. Jenže my jsme neměli nic. Já jsem byl v tý Svobodově armádě a skončil jsem v červnu nějak, mě propustili… To se odehrávalo u náhradního pluku, kterej byl v Kroměříži. To byla jediná armáda kterou jsme měli, ta Svobodova. Ta protektorátní armáda částečně byla v Itálii a částečně měla 5-8 tisíc, to nebylo nic… Měli jen lehký zbraně. Tahle armáda byla k ničemu. A ta Svobodova byla v šíleným rozkladu. Když jsme byli v Kroměříži, tak se to všechno rozpouštělo, ty lidi samozřejmě toužili domů, domů, domů. Tady ta vláda neměla ani peníze ani program co s tou armádou dělat. Nikoho nenapadlo tady tu armádu držet, dát do kasáren cvičit a nasadit někam. Ta se rozpustila. Jak měla tato česká vláda dělat nějaký organizovaný věci s Němcema? Měly být tábory organizovaný, mužstvo, dozor, soudy, policie.. Protektorátní policie byla prolezlá, nebyla spolehlivá. Naše vláda poválečná neměla prakticky možnost nijakým způsobem realizovat denacifikaci, tak se na to vykašlala! Samozřejmě, že když viděli, že je zle a začíná to bejt skandál, tak… začli trošku to přibrzďovat, ale v podstatě neměli ani možnost do toho zasáhnout. To by se nemělo nikdy zapomenout.. V Německu měli pevný armády, organizovaný... my jsme ji neměli. Vemte si jak vypadali úřady po revoluci. Ty byly prolezlý náckama, fašounama… O to se nedala opřít žádná organizace. A to se zapomíná. Půl to byla taky jejich chyba, půl to byla taky jejich bezmocnost. Fakt je, že velká snaha nebyla... Ale v tý špičce benesovský museli vědět, že nemají žádný trumfy v ruce.

Q: To je zajímavý.

... A: Dělal jsem v Německu představení, tak jsem tam měl výtvarníka, s kterým jsem to musel domluvit. Taky jsme seděli a něco vychlastali při té příležitosti a on byl (ve wehrmachtu, jako voják. Ptal jsem se ho, kdy jsi zjistil, že Hitlerovi se nedá věřit? Někdy začátkem 1945. A to byl inteligentí, mladý kluk!).

Kazeta 2, strana A:

Q: Zeptala bych se na dvě jména. Jak se jmenovala žena vašeho bratra Herberta?

A: Jmenovala se Marta, ale nevím jak dál. Nevzpomenu si. Vypadlo mi to.

Q: Stýkal jste se s ní po válce?

A: Minimálně jsme byli v kontaktu. Tady byl ten stín, že on kvůli ní se rozved, tím se odsoudil k smrti, ale pak vylezlo, že ona je položidovka, takže ona vlastně nás podvedla všechny. A hned si taky vzala nějakýho. Byla trošku tedy… do luftu. Nechci říct, že byla špatná, ale nebyl to nějak moc kvaltině vnitřní člověk. A já když jsem s ní ztratil kontakt, než jsem ji našel po válce, než jsme se sešli, tak žádnej kontakt nevznikl... Pak byla nemocná, s nohou, nemohla chodit... Z toho nebylo nic. Jakoby byla z jinýho typu člověka. Nepatřila do rodiny.

Q: Jak se jmenovala manželka vašeho strýce Ericha?

A: Weinerová rozená, křestní jméno... Možná, že si vzpomenu.

Q: Ještě by mě zajímalo, jak to bylo po válce? Kdy jste se oženil?

A: V roce 1947.

Q: Kde jste bydleli a jak jste si hledali živobytí?

A: To je těžký zkrátit. Dělat škrty v životě... Já když jsem se vrátil, tak jsem stál před problémem, co mám vůbec dělat. Ničím jsem nebyl, byl jsem jenom maturant na německý škole, ale to nehrálo roli. Nevěděl jsem, co mám dělat. Možná bych byl studoval, ale když je člověk sám, nemá zázemí a nic, tak to je těžký. Taky jsem nevěděl co, tak jsem se rozhod pro to, co jsem měl nejradši, tj. divadlo, který jsem dělal v Terezíně... Sešli jsme se ještě pár lidí, který jsme to dělali v Terezíně, bylo nás asi tři nebo čtyři. Dali jsme se dohromady. Nejdřív jsem bydlel u lidí tady v Praze, s kterými jsem se seznámil, přes kumšt a tak. A pak jsem s Františkem Jíškou, kamarádem, taky hercem, jsme požádali o byt a dostali jsme byt, dvoupokojovej. Tak jsme tam spolu bydleli. On se pak oženil, tím pádem mě vyhodil a já jsem se přestěhoval k mojí budoucí manželce, která měla garsoniéru. Ona přišla do Prahy dřív než já, ona se vrátila do Terezína transportem. Řada transportů se vrátila zpátky do Terezína, poněvadž je neměli už kam dát. Takže ona tam byla hned na konci války a jela do Prahy a tady se jí podařilo.. oni dávali byty lidem z koncentráku. Dostala garsoniéru.

Q: Museli jste se hlásit tady na obci?

A: Kdo chtěl tak samozřejmě se mohl hlásit na obci, ale stačilo na Národním výboru, taky jsme neměli papíry žádný. Ty byty nám taky přidělovali dokud byly. Začal jsem dělat to divadlo, nebylo to moc lukrativní, poněvadž jsem nic neuměl. Manželka pracovala někde v kanceláři, hned po válce a taky tancovala. My jsme se poznali v Terezíně. A dál jak ten život pokračoval? Bydleli jsme v garsónce, samozřejmě jsme byli chudý jak kostelní myši, ale to nám nějak vůbec nevadilo. Ta svoboda a najednou ta možnost žít a něco v životě udělat a to divadlo nás bavilo. To mělo různý peripetie, nakonec já jsem se dostal do Vinohradského divadla jako asistent, slavného režiséra Frejky, což mě velice vnitřně uspokojovalo. Prachy to byly ubohý, ale manželka taky pracovala v ústřední radě odborů.

Q: Už jste měli děti?

A: Ještě ne. 1947 se narodila dcera. Celkem dost spokojeně jsme žili…

Q: Jaký jste měli kamarády:

A: Těch bylo víc. Pár lidí bylo ještě tedy z lágrů, někde se vyskytli kolem nás. A pak byli noví kamarádi z toho světa, kde jsme pracovali, v divadle zejména.

Q: Pamatujete si, že by po válce byl antisemitizmus tady?

A: Tahle otázka je dost záhadná. Já jsem po válce neměl pocit, musím říct, že ne. Kromě drobností, ale v podstatě velkou roli to nehrálo. Ex post ovšem po létech, když jsem se zamyslel nad tím, když jsem viděl víc do věcí a do charakteru lidí, tak jsem si uvědomil, že řada nehod nebo špatných výsledků se možná měli připsat antisemitismu.

Q: Pracovní myslíte?

A: Pracovní jo. Privátně nikdy jsem se nesetkal v lidské společnosti.

Q: Když se podíváte na židovskou obec po válce?

A: Neměl jsem na to čas ani chuť se věnovat židovský otázce, poněvadž, když pracujete v divadle, tak máte strašně blbej rozvrh, máte dopoledne zkoušky a večer představení. Moc času vám nezbývá. Ale já jsem nebyl bez kontaktu s kile. Občas jsem jim pomáhal nějaký Pésach nebo něco, nějaký věci sestavit, nebo občas jsem tam zašel na oběd a tak. Měl jsem takové řídké kontakty. Oni o mě nestáli, nebo já o ně, nevím, nějak jsme se moc neskamarádili. To se ovšem změnilo teď. Teď jsem na ně vyloženě naštvanej! Jednak židovská obec tady nikdy nebyla ortodoxní. Pan rabín ačkoli je to spisovatel a kdysi disident a prima chlap, tak dneska je to konzervativní zaprděnej dědek. Oni například pro tu kulturu nedělaj ale vůbec nic! Nehnou prstem! Interně na obci to jo. Oni pro kulturu neudělali nic. Například já jsem napsal tu svou knížku, poslal jsem jim to samozřejmě, ani mi nepoděkovali, ani neřekli bú, akorát ve Věstníku vyšel, od Mirka Kárnýho, kterýho jsem znal z Terezína, taková recenze. Prostě je to nezajímá. Oni nepodporujou lidi. A nemyslím tohle, že je jediná kultura. Divadelnictví, v muzice, oni nepodporujou lidi, nezvou je na konzerty…

Q: Myslíte, že to bylo jinak těsně po revoluci.

A: Po revoluci to byly jiný starosti, restituce a tak.

Q: Měl jste snahu se tam angažovat?

A: Neměl jsem snahu se tam angažovat. Oni mi to nabídli, v 50. letech nebo tak nějak, jsem sehnal nějaké lidi, aby zazpívali a tak. Říkali, že jsou rádi, když pro ně pracuju, ale že by chtěli, abych se přihlásil jako člen obce. Já jsem řekl, nezlobte se, ve mně to přesvědčení není. Rád s váma budu pracovat, ale nechtějte po mě vyznání víry. Tenhle problém známe. Ta situace v Praze nebo v Čechách, že náboženství neznamená moc. Já nejsem neznaboh, ale církev mě jaksi… Já jsem neměl chuť stát se subjektem církvi. Jenom bejt nominálně členem nějaký církvi? To je neupřímný.

Q: Vnímal jste svoje židovství ne jako náboženství, ale...?

A: Já jsem to svoje židovství nikdy nezapíral taky. Některý lidi si měnili jméno a tak, to jsem nikdy nedělal, já jsem to klidně přiznával. Ale po stránce náboženské, já nevím jestli jsem žid nebo křesťan, že věřím v pánaboha, ale ne v určitého, který má určitý znamení.

Q: Snažil jste se nějak ovlivnit děti?

A: S dětma jsme na to téma dlouho nekomunikovali, až když byli větší. Oni oba dva to přijali velmi pozitivně.

Q: Ptali se vás na holokaust?

A: Jo, jistě. Moje žena měla velké trauma poválečný, před ní jste nesměl říct žid, nesměl jste říct koncentrák... Ale mezi řečí, nebo když jsme byli sami, já jsem to nijak netajil před dětma. Oni to samozřejmě věděli. Pochopitelně jim nelíčíte ty detaily. Já jsem vám říkal jak vznikla ta knížka?

Q: Ne.

A: Děti už léta říkaly, měl bys to někdy napsat, to je škoda… Já jsem říkal, ale jděte s tím do háje, o tom se napsalo dost. A když mě umřela manželka v roce 1997, umřela v létě tady, jsme ji pohřbili a já jsem jel na chalupu. Jako každej rok dcera Táňa v červenci odjela, koncem srpna, já jsem poprvé v životě zůstal sám na chalupě. To byl takovej zvláštní pocit, vnitřní meditativní situace. Najednou mě napadlo, že teď, když jsem tady sám, bych to moh napsat. Teď se stalo něco, co je zcela zvláštní. Já jsem si nikdy o sobě nemyslel, že umím psát. Já jsem spíš myslel, že je to obor, kerej mi opravdu nejde. Takže jsem moc toho v životě nesepsal. Překládal jsem. (…) Teď se stalo něco, co je možná hrozný a krásný. Já jsem si vzal tušku a psal jsem. Já jsem nemusel přemýšlet, škrtat nic. Jak tu knížku znáte, tak je to vod a do zet.  …To mi říkaj všichni, že je to napínavý, hezký. Ale já jsem došel k tomu závěru, že to jsem nepsal já, to psal opravdu pánbůh, jako něco o čem jsem nevěděl, mě to diktovalo... To je neuvěřitelný. Já jsem ani nepřemýšlel. Nutně v tom je moje erudice jazyková, divadelní, to je někde uvnitř, nemáte to srovnaný vědecky, systematicky. Ale když máte úkol, tak se najednou ta systematika dostaví sama. Najednou ta osa tady je a vy ji sledujete, aniž by jste věděl proč. Ale já jsem ani nepřemýšlel.

Q: Děti to znali už předtím?

A: V podstatě jo. Některé věci ne, ty osvětimské, ty jsem spíš tajil. Spíš to všecko znaly heslovitě, protože v tý knížce jsem to líčil víc do detailu. Když s někým sedíte a bavíte se, tak přece jen nepopisujete, jak vypadalo krematorium. To můžete v literatuře. Ale i v tý knížce je to napsaný dost zkráceně. Měl jsem pocit, že kdybych víc to rozváděl, dostalo by to zcela jinou atmosféru než chci… Já jsem nechtěl napsat, jako jakej jsem chudák… To se dostáváme k velmi příbuznému tématu: Koncentrák a co z toho? To je strašně složitý poněvadž je to velmi subjektivní a kořeny tý reakce se dají těžko vysledovat. Ta naše rodina předválečná nežila příliš šťastným životem. Tu otcovu smrt jsem prožil jako velkej šok, ale spíš objektivně než subjektivně. Já jsem ho měl rád, ale nebyla to pro mě osobní tragedie, my jsme k sobě tak blízkej kontakt nikdy neměli. Byla to spíš katastrofa toho postavení ve světe a v živote. Žádný peníze, žádný zázemí, žádná budoucnost. Byl to absolutní krach jednoho světa. Tady skončila jedna éra, jmenovala se první republika. Tady jsme se dosatli k jednomu tématu. Ten krach v roce 1938, po Mnichovu, on zemřel o měsíc pozděj,… tady byla tragédie antisemitizmu, fašizmu českého… (...) Nevím proč teď vytáhli kritiku Karla Čapka. Kritizovat ho teď, je nepatřičné z pohledu 50 let později. Tenkrát znamenal něco jinýho, než co znamená teď. Nicméně ten byl ten lidskej, Masaryk a Čapek patřili k jádru tý republiky. Třeba Válka s mloky je zdviženej prst proti fašizmu, nebo Továrna na absolutno... Hlásil se k tý první republice. To byl ten nejtragičtější moment. Mě bylo 17. Nabízí se fráze, zhroutil se jeden svět. Bylo to první obrovské zklamání lidstva. Jako takového, nejenom, že se ukazovali fašisti a Vlajka noviny, ale taky lidi Vám blízcí se najednou strašně změnili. Ne, že jste je viděl v jiným světle, to taky. Ale oni Vás viděli v jiným světle! Do tý doby to slovo žid nic neznamenalo. To bylo spíš něco jako menšina, brali jsme to jako fakt. Moji rodiče byli velcí masarykovci. Já jsem byl Jan bratr Herbert podle masarykových synů. To jsem x-krát dětem vykládal. To byl větší šok než okupace Němců! Poněvadž to byla vnitřní zrada. Najednou jste viděla, že jste žila na tenkým ledě… Že pod tím je něco, co jenom tušíte a můžete jenom instinktem odhadnout, protože oficielně to není. Když jste mluvila o tom antisemitismu, teď je to taky na místě. Protože je i teď… (...) Když se podíváte na tu dnešní politiku, tak taky ten antisemitizmus není moc populární, oni vědí, že na něm by nic nevidělali, ale kdyby mohli vydělat... Klidně. Vnitřně mají pořád odstup k těm židům, keré nemaj rádi atakdále... To, co bylo potom, byl jenom důsledek toho zhroucení obrazu člověka. Pak se jenom projevoval hůř a hůř. Ale už nebyl novej. Novej byl po Mnichově. Znáte tu poesii Halase a Siferta, tam je to nejlép vyjádřeno. To ve mně leží daleko víc, než ta Osvětim, to strašný zklamání, že ten člověk Ansich, je něco úplně jinýho než si člověk myslel. A proto jsem strašně nedůvěřivěj vůči lidem…

Q: Měl jste po válce problém komunikovat tady s lidma?

A: Ne. Měl - neměl.

Q: V souvislosti s tím, že se proměnili...?

A: Jenže na opačnou misku vah padla ta druhá stránka človečenství. A to vám neříkám nic novýho, kdyby v lágrech nebylo, a to vždycky vnější tlak upevňuje vnitřní, nebejt přátelství, nebejt kontaktu člověka k člověku, tak to nebylo o přežití. Bez kamarádů, bez soudržnosti, to nešlo přežít.

Q: S přátely po válce jste se o tom bavili?

A: Minimálně. Jenom když jsme se sešli, kamarádi z lágru. Lidi, který nebyli s náma, říkali, vy jste ale příšerný cynici. Poněvadž my jsme si z toho ex post dělali srandu… (smích) To nemůžu vysvětlit, ale to je osvobození od strašnýho traumatu, takže jsme vypadali jako cynici příšerní. 

Q: A povídali jste si o židovství obecně?

A: Ne. To židovství přišlo zase na řadu v 50. letech, Slánského procesy, ty to zase oživily. I když já bych řek, že většina českých intelektuálů to odmítala. To byl spíš folklor namířenej dolů a ne do těch vyšších kruhů. V těch divadlech jsem moc fašismu nezažil... Já jsem na antisemitismus strašně choulostivej! Ambivalence člověka… teď jsme zase u jiný otázky.

Q: Snažil jste se to židovství předat dětem, ne v tom náboženským smyslu...?

A: To židovství předat, ani ne… To ódio toho Poláčka, samozřejmě to mám v sobě a oni se ho naučili taky. …Ale já bych to tak ostře neohraničoval, oni se cítej jaksi spřízněni se židovstvím, abych to změkčil. Mají k tomu vnitřní vztah. U těch dvou mých nemanželských dětí, který nebyly vůbec vychovány židovsky, poněvadž máma byla árijka a z kruhů ne příliš intelektuálních, tak ty, když jsme se dostali na jednu loď, ty to židovství velmi rychle převzali. Ta Zora je z nás všech nejvíc Židovka, chodí na kile, má tam známý a dělá pro ně něco. Já ji k tomu nikdy neved, ona si to sama. To je zajímavý.

Q: A vnuci to taky nějak vnímaj?

A: To už moc ne. A vnuci, to už moc ne. Syn si vzal árijku, Táňa se nikdy nevdala.
...Židovství má dvě stránky, jednu tu racionální, druhou tu iracionální. O té druhé geneticky daný, jestli věříme na tradici, nebo na duši, tam jsem asi mnohem víc žid. To cítění tady je, a zřejmě i u dětí se objevilo. U těch vnuků ne... Ta třetí generace už ne...

Třetí rozhovor:
18.3.2004

Q: Mě zajímá to poválečný období. Jak probíhal po válce proces se změnou na českou národnost?

A: Já o tom vím velice málo, protože to vyběhávala moje manželka. Velice pilně. Na nějaký úřady se muselo jít a musela se podat nějaká žádost, ale šlo to bez problémů, protože jsem jednak byl v komunistický straně a jednak jsem byl v koncentráku.

Q: Setkal jste se s podobnými případy?

A: Ne. Nesetkal jsem se s žádnýma podobnýma lidma, jednak to každej tajil... ale je to blbost, protože copak já za to můžu, co v r.´33 otec za mně napsal?

Q: Pamatujete si, jestli to bylo součástí Benešových dekretů?

A: Myslím, že ano. Německá národnost musela opustit tuto zemi, pokud neprokáže, že nebyl fašista. Což u mě nebyl problém, že jo.

Q: To byla česká nebo československá národnost?

A: To, co jsem dostal, jo? Já myslím, že to už byla česká národnost, československá byla jen za první republiky.

Q: Takže to bylo rychlý?

A: No, žádný zvláštní potíže si nepamatuju. První byl ten šok, když jsem to zjistil. Já to nevěděl přece. Ježišmarjá seš Němec, co s tím budeme dělat?... Já už ani nevím, v kterým roce to bylo. Mám dojem, že už to bylo po únoru. Nevím.

Q: A s tám, že jste měl německý školy, s tím vám nedělali problém?

A: Ne.To spadalo do stejný krabičky, německé národnosti, německé školy, ale on žádnej Němec není... Ale já pro ně nebyl vůbec zajímavej. Asistent režie.

Q: A mezi lidma s touhle národností jste neměl problémy?

A: Von to nikdo nevěděl! Já jsem to sám nevěděl dlouho a když jsem to zjistil, tak jsem to nechodil roztrubovat, pochopitelně.

Q: Mluvil jste česky, že?

A: Samozřejmě.

Q: Ještě by mě zajímalo, jak jste říkal, že jste změnil názor na Němce. Jak jste k tomu došel?

A: To nebyl impuls, to bylo pomalé, ale smutné poznání skutečnosti. To samozřejmě souviselo s tím, jak se odkrývaly karty v Rusku. Komunizmu. Najednou člověk zjistil, že fašizmus, tedy jinými slovy, agresivita, násilí.. není, což jsem do té doby myslel, že to je nějakou specifikou německého národa, tato teorie se taky velice rozšířila. To je na dlouho, chcete to na 10 minut nebo na 5?

Q: Povídejte...

A: To je složitá věc, protože tady se míchají emoce s vědomím nebo politickým národem. Ty emoce, to nejde jenom o mně, závisí na tom, co daný člověk prožil. Jestli někdo prožil protektorát tady v klidu a míru a ještě si přikrádal něco, jeho emoce možná nebyly tak silný, možná dokonce byly pozitivní, protože  z toho měl zisk, výhody. Kdežto u lidí, kteří to prožili krutě, samozřejmě ty emoce byly silnější. Já si ovšem myslím, že nejsilnější byly uprostřed. Faktem je to, že 90 procent lidí, který byli v koncentráku, brutalitu nesnášeli. To byla životní zkušenost, že nic není horšího než člověka zbavit lidskosti a zbavit ho práva atd. Takže brutalita nám byla cizí. Nevím o moc případech, že by lidi z koncentráku se osobně mstili. Pravý opak to bylo u těch, kteří to měli jen zprostředkovaně, jenom zboku, to byli většinou lidi, kteří sami nic neprodělali. To je taková pastička, která je dost složitá a nemůžete to nějak definovat... Taky to souvisí s výchovou, s náboženstvím... Ten agresivní postoj k životu... Takže já jsem samozřejmě Němce nenáviděl, ale nenáviděl jsem je, abych tak řekl lidsky, neměl jsem nikdy choutky k nějakým agresím. Poněvadž jsem Němců znal víc, tak mi jich částečně bylo líto, to byli slušní lidi. Nicméně tady byl jeden problém, který se nejmenoval Němec ale esesák. Ten problém, jak vyrobit esesáčka, ten ve mě žil strašně dlouho. A žije ve mě vlastně dodnes, ale má už jinou vlajku. Něco co jsem nedoved pochopit. V tý knížce taky o tom píšu. Takový primární zážitek, když jsme přijeli do Osvětimi a jak nás vedli nahoru do lágru a ten esesáček s flintou kšeftoval, říkal: máte někdo hodinky, prstýnky... A on je kšeftoval. A byl to Volksdeutsche, mluvil nějakou provinční němčinou, nebyl to žádný rodilý Němec. A jak jsme takhle šli a on kšeftoval, tak z lágru vybíhali holky, v kombiné a tak, nevoblečený, jestli nemáme něco k žrádlu. My jsme měli kousek chleba, tak kluci házeli přes plot. A von takhle kšeftoval, a najednou se otočil sundal pušku a udělal pif a říká: tak co máš ty za hodinky? To byl šok! Člověk, který jen tak mimochodem zastřelí ženskou, kterou nezná a pak se věnuje zase svým šmejdům... To byl ten velkej otazník, jak vyrobit tohoto netvora?! Jak se to dělá? Kde se to rekrutuje? To byl ten kardinální problém, který se na ty Němce dost rozšířil, málo platný, s německými dějinami to mělo souvislost. Stalo se to v té zemi, za těch a těch okolností. S tím jsem si dlouho lámal samozžejmě hlavu a furt to ovlivňovalo můj vztah k Němcům. Člověk nevěděl dost dobře jakej postoj zaujmout. Je to něco jinýho k jednotlivci, kterýho potkáte a víte co je zač a k národu... Bylo mi jasný, že nelze nenávidět dlouho národ. Shrnout to všecko pod jednu střechu a nenávidět. Například tento problém, já jsem jednou hostoval v Německu... s jedním výtvarníkem, to byl fajn chlap. Jsme popíjeli, kecali. A jednoho dne jsem se ho zeptal, jsem měl dojem, že jsme dost kamarádi, tak jsem říkal: Poslouchej, řekni mi... (kdy jsi na to přišel, co se děje za Hitlera?)

Kazeta č. 2, strana B - prázdná

Kazeta č.3, strana A:

A: ...ten Němec na to přišel v zimě ´45, nebo na jaře, v lednu. To samozřejmě souvisí s tím, že on byl ve Wehrmachtu poddůstojník. Někde na frontě, nevím kde. A samozřejmě už prohrávali. Takže tady byl tlak nejenom ten myšlenkovej, ale byl tlak abych tak řekl fyzickej. Tedy, že se blíží průšvih. S tímhle hochem, kterýho jsem považoval ne za nacistu, ale za  solidního, slušnýho člověka, tak tohle mě strašně zarazilo, jsem si uvědomil, že voni skutečně nevěděli. Teď se dostanete do toho problému: Co to je nevědět? Nevědět a nevědět to je dvojí. Můžu nevědět z blbosti a taky můžu nevědět, protože nechci vědět. To asi v těch kolejích se pohybovalo celý. V podstatě ten antisemitismus a ta agresivita jim vnitřně vyhovovala. Nesmíme zapomenout, že chyba už se stala předtím, že Francouzi tomu Německu nadiktovali po první světový válce, takový strašný podmínky, že tam byla bída... a z toho vylez Hitler, z této situace. Tam už bylo zaděláno na nenávist a pomstu... a na tyhle pudy lidský, který jsou strašně silný. Dyť se podívejte kolem sebe. Furt pomsta, pomsta, budou se věčně mstít. Já nevím, kdy pomsta pomine. Teď ta zpráva v tom Kosovu, někde se mordovali děti... nemůžou zapomenou.

Q: A jak jste si to spojil s tím Ruskem, jak jste říkal?

A: Tak samozřejmě... Po Stalinově smrti, když začly vylejzat ty reálie, když člověk si uvědomil, že něco podobného, i když ty informace jsme dostávali velmi pomalu. Přece jenom ze západu se něco dozvěděl člověk. Tak jsme si uvědomovali, že ten komunismus se tak velmi nelišil. Čili esesáčka vyrobili i tam.

Q: To už jste si uvědomoval tehdy v 50. letech?

A: Ne. Postupně. Ono to tak kách nešlo, ale taky já jsem tak inteligentní nebyl, abych si to skloubil všecko...

Q: To byla taková propaganda, že to asi ani nešlo vědět.

A: No, právě. Zase na druhý straně, ta propaganda. Tlak budí protitlak, že jo. Jak se člověk jednou vymanil z toho komunistickýho vlivu, najednou pochopil, že je na tý špatný straně jak ten Němec. Tak samozřejmě hledáte argumenty, ty opačný. Ty se pak začli zbírat a nakonec jsme vyděšeně... Já vím, že když Chruščov odhalil Stalina. To nikdo netušil, že Stalin je vrah, milion násobný vrah, jak se choval k lidem a tak. Člověk časem zjistil, že to není národnost, ale spíš sociální a politické podmínky, které esesáčka pomůžou vyrobit. Samozřejmě nějaká ideologie k tomu bejt musí. Musíte kápnout kapku jedu do tý polívky, aby jste ji úplně votrávil. Ale není to tedy tak těžký. To víme dneska všichni, tenhle můj úžasný objev, který se zrodil někdy kolem těch 60.let.

Q: A když byl Slánskýho proces?

A: Moc silně, samozřejmě! To byl pro mě šok, tedy pro všechny židy... Najednou tady vyvstal... Zejména moje choť, která měla válečný trauma, těžký, nesnesla o židech a o lágru, tak ta byla taky v šoku. Když jste otevřeli noviny a tam stálo židovského původu tak.. co to je?! Takhle se to po kouskách...

Q: A v osobním kontaktu v těch 50. letech nestalo se vám... nějaký narážky...?

A: Ne, ne, ne. Přece jenom jsem měl jisté negativní zkušenosti. Nešlo jenom o Slánskýho a o židovství vůbec, vono šlo o to odhalovat nepřátele uvnitř Strany. Nepřítel nemusel být zrovna špion, ale i člověk, kterej to viděl špatně, nebyl na správný linii. A do toho mě chtěli šoupnout. Ještě když jsem byl v městských divadlech, tak začli na mě říkat, že se chovám blbě k nestraníkům. Idioti. Někdo to vymyslel. Ono se to pak uhasilo ten oheň, nic se nestalo.  Pak ještě jednou se mi stalo, ale z jiné polévčičky. Když začla nová vlna antisemitizmu, někdy koncem 50. let – kosmopolita! To mě označili za kosmopolitu. Vím, že... nebudu jména říkat. Na ministerstvu kultury byla jedna známá, báječná ženská, kterou jsem léta znal, říkala: No, seš báječnej režisér, ale jako Tyla nemůžeš režírovat, seš přece kosmopolitní. Říkám? proč? -No, to víš! Věřili takovým blbostem! Jak na někoho přilepíte takovou pomluvu, to se lepí velmi dobře. Když budu o vás roznášet, že nosíte kalhoty, poněvadž máte křivý nohy, tak polovina lidí tomu uvěří.

Q: Oni vám diktovali co máte režírovat v těch 50. a 60. letech?

A: Ne. Vždycky se přiděluje režie.

Q: A nebylo to, že by vám zakázali něco?

A: Ne, ne, ne. To nikam nedospělo, protože pak byly ty poměry v divadlech takový a onaký. Pak to úplně zhaslo, ale byl to zas jeden z těch pokusů, jak vyřadit, furt se hledal ten nepřítel. To byla nemoc komunistů, voni neustále hledali nepčítele. A nakonec ve mě ho našli, protože mě když vyloučili ze strany... Ta komise to byla smutná sranda, trapný, absurdita, takový idioti... mě obvinili, že já jako starej soudruh jsem měl vědet! To, co jsem neudělal. Za to mě vyloučili, že jsem nebyl na tý správný straně. Co jsem neudělal! Ty, si měl vědět. Zřejmě jsem se nechoval podle normy, že jsem fandil Dubčekovi a celý tý obrodě.

Q: Ještě se chci zeptat, jak jste mi říkal, že tady byly ty revoluční gardy...

A: Ty já znám jenom z doslechu, já tu nebyl při revoluci.

Q: To byli nějaký místní vojáci?

A: Nevím, kde se rekrutovali. Byli to mladý lidi, mezi 20 a 30. Jestli byli samozvaní, nebo kdo jim dal... Měli odložené německé letní uniformy, takový kaki a rudou pásku RG. Řádili jak černá rota, bylo bezpráví, policie byla zalezlá, ta zmizela, intoxikována Němcema. To jsou ty chvíle, který se v dějinách opakujou. Bezprívá, nezákonnost se vždycky zneužijou.

Q: Takže to bylo jako odboj?

A: Ale ne! Ty byli po revoluci. To nebyli ti co bojovali předtím, partizáni. Revoluční gardy, asi se zúčastnili část z nich boje, v revoluci pražský, pražskýho povstání. Ale ty povstaly až po, když skončilo povstání, najednou se objevili v uniformách a tak, prohlíželi byty, zabavovali, hlídali Němce, fackovali. To byla taková banda lidí bez nějakýho názoru, prostě využili situace...  ...Ptejte se, já jsem povinen vám  odpovídat. Ne, já to cítím jako povinnost, já chci, aby lidi pochopili o co vždycky kráčelo a o co vždycky kráčí. Na co si dát bacha a čeho se vyvarovat.

Q: Tak ještě jsem se chtěla zeptat něco z vaší rodiny. Váš děda Jakub bydlel někde na venkově a pak se přestěhoval do Prahy. Vy jste říkal, že on na tom venkově mluvil česky a pak až mluvil německy, nebo...?

A: Já vám to nepovím, já už jsem ho nezažil... On umřel přesně v ten rok, kdy jsem se narodil. Vím to všechno jenom z doslechu. Já si myslím, nevím to jistě, že ono to souvisí taky ještě s jednou jinou věcí. Tenhle problém je dost zamotanej a já ho nemůžu objasnit, protože vím příliš málo, jenom si to rekonstruuju. Souviselo to s rokem 1848 a s tím, že otevřeli ghetta, že židi dostali přístup k občanskému životu... Tím pádem ty židovské enklávy v těch malých městech či vesnicích, já nevím 2 rodiny, 4 rodiny, se jim najednou otevřeli dveře. A protože politická nálada byla samozřejmě protirakouská, demokratická mezi lidmi, tak najednou ty otevřený dveře se ukázaly jako přijatelný pro obě strany.  Židi se začli aklimatizovat a Češi se k nim začli chovat jinak, ne jako k Rakušákům. Protože na tom českým venkově, oni... ti, co měli vyšší vzdělání, samozřejmě museli chodit na školu, ale nevím jestli židovský školy.... hlavně mluvili asi jidiš a česky. Nemůžu si pomoct. Na tom Berounsku, já pochybuju, že tam proč by tam mluvili německy. Neměli s kým. Leda s vrchností. Já nevím, kdo měl německý školy, ale to taky asi pčed rokem 1848 asi moc nebylo.

Q: Myslíte, že je možný, že se naučil německy až v Praze?

A: Já si myslím, že jo. On inklinoval asi hlavně z obchodních důvodů k Němcům. Na druhý straně on se učil... u Orlíka. Teď se mluví o tom malíři, jeho brácha byl krejčí, toho Emila Orlíka. Můj dědeček se u toho bratra malíře Orlíka, učil. On měl firmu tady na Národní třídě. Tam zřejmě se mluvilo německy. Můj dědeček potom, když si otevřel svoji firmu na Jungmannově náměstí, tak se specializoval, nevím jak k tomu došel... hlavně šil pro německé profesory uniformy... Tenkrát se nosili uniformy a ty von dělal. Čili z toho jsem vydedukoval, že Einstein si u něho musel nechat ušít uniformu... Víte, když člověk ty kořínky rozplétá, tak zjistí, jak je to strašně složitý a teď z toho udělejte ještě obraz... politicko- psychologický.  Uvědomte si, co to bylo za lidi, jak mysleli, to je strašně těžký. Tak jasný je, to je fenomén dodnes platnej, když jsme už začli u Orlíka a Einsteina, když se podíváte na seznam Nobelových cen, tak tam máte, já nevím, jestli to někdo spočítal, podle mého odhadu aspoň třetina jsou židi. A jsou to židi z tohoto milieu, o kterém teď mluvíme. Hlavně středoevropský... Francouzů ani Angličanů ani ne... hlavně odsud jsou to hlavně německá jména, Polsko, Rusko, ta jidiš oblast. Člověk si uvědomuje, že to musela být obrovská exploze, to osvobození, to otevření. Zase nesmíme zapomenou, jak to Rakousko- Uhersko nemáme rádi, tak oni se v tomto ohledu chovali solidně. Oni skutečně antisemitizmus potírali. Byl tam samozřejmě, ale na jiný úrovni, ale nebyl jaksi podporován. Židi získali úžasnou svobodu a sebevědomí. Jelikož tady byl zjevně.. a to je moje teorie, nějakej potenciál, kterej neumím pojmenovat. Ať už to byly školy, jako třeba židovský chedery, ať už to byla znalost písma a čtení, filosofie – Talmud, prostě tady byl úžasný potenciál, který se osvobodil, tak najednou začal explodovat. Doktoři... advokáti, profesoři, najednou úžasná exploze vzdělanosti. Což jako je příjemné vědět a poslouchat. Tak, kde on ten dědeček v této melangi zrovna stál, na kterým místečku, to nevím. Intelektuál von nebyl, v naší rodině žádný intelektuálové nepovstali, žádný inženýr, učitel, profesor, všecko obchodníci... Tam jenom čichám, ale nevidím to tam.

Q: Pak tady mám, že váš táta když chodil do školy.. psal jste takovej termín „Einjährig Freiwilliger“.

A: To byl rakousko- uherskej institut, že maturanti se mohli přihlásit na 1-roční dobrovolnou vojenskou službu, tím ji zkrátil. A oni většinou z nich udělali ty... adepty, tedy důstojníky, aspiranty důstojníků. To máte Švejka, Biegler, jednoroční dobrovolník. Takže von měl zkrácenou vojnu, ale musel mít maturitu a dostal nějakou... praporčík.. no byl to nejnižší důstojnická hodnost.

Q: A tam na tý fotce s fotoaparátem?

A: Ne, to už byl důstojník. Von byl porušík nebo dokonce nadporučík na konci války.

Q: Strýc Oskar, co dělal po válce?

A: Zajímá vás lidský vztah? Von už nedělal nic, už byl v penzi. Celou válku přežil, protože jeho manželka byla árijka Vídeňačka.

Q: Oni se nerozvedli, že?

A: Právě, že ne!... On šel do Terezína, to byl listopad, někdy na podzim, byl tam 3,4 měsíce. Ty už nebyli ohrozený transporatama, neměli moc žrádla, ale jinak se jim tam celkem nic nedělo. Němci už taky byli vychladlý... v zimě 1944-45.

Q: Takže žil po válce v Praze?

A: Jo. Jeho pak ranila mrtvice, ochrnul, seděl doma. Z něho se pak stal se z neho strašnej komunista. Tím, že byl raněn mrtvicí a byl deklasovanej... takhle von byl velice krásný nladý muž. Nějakou dobu se tradovalo, že chodil s Jarmilou Novotnou, prej. Chodil na plesy a tancoval. Byl takovej... jak se to říká, společenskej tvor. Neměl žádný povolání, táta ho vzal do obchodu, mu dal třetinovej podíl, ale pak to zkrachovalo, když táta spáchal sebevraždu... tak von chtěl nějaký peníze, prostě rozhádala se rodina. My jsme spolu nemluvili, tedy naše rodina s jejich, protože oni nás zradili. No já do toho neviděl. Takže po válce, já jsem se k němu hned nehrnul. Až po nějaký době jsem je vyhledal. Samozřejmě se to všecko smazalo. Jak vám říkám, on pak byl raněnej mrtvicí. Seděl doma a čet Rudý právo, poslouchal rádio. Neměl kontakt s lidmi. Když jsem tam přišel, tak jsme se pohádali obyčejně o politice... Prostě primitivní takový, ale za to on nemoh, byl raněnej mrtvicí, to je nemocnej člověk, co s tím. Jinak na tom případě Oskara není nic zajímavýho.

Q: Je pohřbený tady v Praze?

A: Oni jsou pohřbený na Podolským hřbitově... Já jsem to léta platil, pak mě neposílali upomínku a pak jsem zjistil, že ten hrob zrušili. Že jsem neplatil. No to jsou svině, to dělaj naschvál, víte? Já jsem to několik let platil na 5 let dopředu... Měli hrob zase na prodej... Ale to je taky jeden ze znaků, které mě a podobné lidi liší od ostatních. Já ty symboly smrti neznám, nemám. Z celý rodiny není nikdo, není žádnej hrob a já myslím, že ani hrob nemusí bejt. Manželku jsme spopelnili a máme ji za chalupou pod obrovským stromem a já tam chci taky. Takže mě ani není líto, že není hrob. Kolik milionů hrobů není.

Q: Nemáte nikoho z rodiny pohřbenýho na židovským hřbitově?

A: Mám tam tu babičku Rózu, ale ani nevím, kde to je. Tam jsem byl na pohřbu samozřejmě, to si pamatuju, to mi bylo asi deset. V Praze na židovským hřbitově... Já tam vždycky chodím k doktorce, a to se tam vždycky zastavím u tý druhý brány a koukám na Františka Kafku, ten mě vždycky přitahoval ten hrob. A vždycky tam  někdo dá kytky (smích).

Q: Máte vy nebo někdo v rodině židovský jméno?

A: Ne.

Q: Ani nevíte o někom, že by měl?

A: Ne. V mém obzoru tedy ne...

Q: Říkal jste, že jste měl jednu tetu, když jste byl malej, která byla za kantora provdaná. Oni asi byli pobožní.

A: Jo, ta byla pobožná. Teta Ema. To byla svatá žena, tu jsem měl strašně rád. To byla typická babička jako z pohádky. Bělovlasá s drdůlkem a vždycky něco dobrýho k jídlu udělala, byla strašně hodná a milá. ...Nepochybně ty židovský jména, někde kolem tety to bylo, ale u toho Jakuba, to muselo už skončit.

Q: Říkal jste, že o rodině vaší mámy nevíte vůbec nic.

A: Strašně málo, poněvadž ona o tom odmítala mluvit. A oni tedy samozřejmě byli asimilovaní, židovství tam určitě nehrálo žádnou roli, už vůbec ne, v tý rodině. Poněvadž oni byli velkostatkáři, já nevím, jak se k tomu ta rodina dostala, pak to ten táta prošustroval na burze a šli dolů a dolů. Ale například vím historku, že... měli sousedy nějaký, nějakou šlechtu, on je pozval. To byla moje máma malá u toho, lítal, měl letadlo a teď říkal, milostivá pani teď uvidíte něco, co jste ještě neviděla a spad a zabil se. To byla taková rodinná historka, že teď uvidíte, co jste ještě neviděla a bum ho (smích). Takže oni se spíš orientovali an tyhlety kruhy, nóbl, bohatý. A tam došlo k tomu, že ta babička moje.. já mám jen takovou malou fotičku, to byla velice krásná ženská, taková nóbl, ta mu to vyčítala, von se picnul, to jsem vám říkal.  ...On byl jen správce statku, pak šel ještě dolů, rozpor v rodině, nemluvili spolu a tak dále. Rozvedli se, moje máma  (žena) v 17 utekla z domova, najala si v Praze garsoniéru a  žila jako učitelka gymnastiky a moderní tance dělala. A táta se střelil, ale nezastřelil... A vona a její sestra, která byla velice blondýnka, nádherná, goj dítě. Tak ty holky toho tátu ošetřovali, zatímco máma si vzala německýho skladatele, co napsal tu operu v Terezíně, Císař z Atlantidy... dyť je slavnej. Kaiser von Atlantis. Byl to Němec, dvakrát rozvedenej. A moje máma (žena) ho strašně nenáviděla, chvíli u nich žila a pak utekla. A Dáda, její sestra, ta bohužel zahynula v lágru a to byl její celej nejhorší komplex. Z rozbitý rodiny šla do lágru a přišla o všecko. Prostě zhroutilo se to, s velkým výbuchem, tragicky... Všude se to zhroutilo výbuchem, tím, že oni toho tátu ošetřovali a že máma si vzala toho...

Q: On byl Srb?

A: Ne. To byl mý matky, teď jsme u manželky...

Q: A od vaší maminky. Její táta byl Srb a tu babičku jste neznal?

A: Maminka – babičku jsem neznal. Nevím ani jak a kdy umřela. Nevím nic.

Q: Byli manželé?

A: Myslím, že ne. Moji mámu adoptovala nějaká teta, ta se jmenovala Ledererová. To byla adoptivní teta. Poněvadž ta máma zřejmě umřela. Máma měla ještě sestru, tu jsem zažil, ta byla v ústavu, na vozejčku, tu jsem viděl 2 krát v životě. To byla sestra mojí matky.

Q: Ta maminka byla židovka, tedy i vaše maminka byla židovka?

A: Moje máma? Byla, ale jaksi nepraktikovala náboženství... Já nevím, kdo byli ti Ledererovi. Vím, že když si táta mámu vzal, von si vzal  chudou hodnou židovku...  sirotka. A taky to špatně dopadlo... jak to bývá mezi lidmi obvykle... Když se ptáte genealogicky.. ale já nevím, vy se ptáte o tom pozadí, ale o jakém - politickém, národnostním, sociálním, to pozadí je různobarevný.

Q: Vlastně se to odvíjí z toho osobního vztahu k těm lidem.

A: U mě?

Q: No.

A: Ten je chabej, protože mě pomřelo... Já když jsem byl malý, tak jsem měl jenom jednu babičku. Žádná rodina nebyla... Ty správný židovský rodinný vazby, ty jsem já nezažil.

A: (...) To byla taková velice avantgardní, tedy tenkrát levičácká, dělal jsem s Burianem a tyhlecty pokrokový, Voskovce a Wericha, měla taneční studio a taky měla gymnastky, kde patřila pak i moje manželka. Několik holek, se kterýma ona dělala choreografie, zejména do činoher. Tam jsem taky, ne nepoznal, my jsme se znali z Terezína, ale jenom povrchně a v Praze jsme se setkali právě v divadle. Ona tam tancovala a já tam dělal asistenta, tak jsme to dali dohromady.

Q: Říkal jste my minule, že máte 3 vnuky, potřebuju ty jména.

A: Teď přemejšlím, kolik jich vlastně je.. (smích).

Q: Vy máte nevlastní děti? To jste mi neříkal!

A: To jsem vám zamlčel! Já mám 2 děti nemanřelské, jménem Zora a Jinda, ty maj taky vnuky, tak jich mám hodně, ale není tady ta vazba nějaká. Oni žijou každý jiným způsobem...  Táňa má syna, to je Kryštof a syn má Martina a Valiku, Valérii. To jsou 3 legální. Pak mám ještě 4 ilegální...

Q: S nevlastníma dětma se stýkáte?

A: Jo, dokonce velice čile.

Q: Oni se hlásej k židovství?

A: To je zajímavý... To bylo pro mě veliký překvapení. Já jsem to mojí nevlastní dceři řek, to její máma ještě žila, ta byla taky tanečnice. Při premiéře, to bylo v ´70 a tam jsme seděli a já jsem jí to řek, s vědomím její mámy. Ona to ví od těch šasů. Dokud žila manželka, nechtěl sjem ji tahat do rodiny, tak jsme se stýkali jenom občas. Takže jsem ji ztratil trošku z dohledu. Pak manželka umřela a my jsme se začli stýkat hojně, tak jsem zjistil, že oni se přiklonili k židovství, zejména ta Zora. Ona chodí na kile... Jindra taky, ale neprovozuje to nějak. Přihlásili se k židovství. Mě to taky překvapilo. Já jsem je nenaváděl.

Q: Radili se s vámi o tom nějak, když se šli přihlásit za členy obce?

A: Já myslím, že nejsou členy, ale maj tam kontakty. Zora jezdí na hory s partou z kile. Maj tam kontakty, který já nemám. Já jsem se tam nikdy nespřátelil.

Q: A jejich děti, vnuci?

A: Ne. Ty děti jsou velký. Ona si vzala psychiatra, kterej se odstěhoval do Německa a ona s ním šla do Německa, ovšem legálně a tam se ty děti narodili. Takže oni maj německý školy. A on je položid. Což jsem já léta nevěděl. Takže tady ještě ty děti její mají tátu položida a matku taky položidovku. Ty se k tomu nepropracovaly. Tím, že se narodili v Německu. Tak ten kluk ten Honza má občanství německé i české. Ta Mariána, její dcera, ta žije s Angličanem... teď jsou v Budapešti. A ještě abysme okořenili polívčičku, Honza si namluvil Čiňanku, z Tchajwanu. Fajn holka....

Q: To jste kosmopolitní rodina.

A: Jo... Seznámili se na internetu.

Q: Vážně?

A: Jo! Korespondovali si, našli se a pak jednoho dne on tam odletěl... Holka byla tady a byla sympatická, ona tady chtěla poznat... A na podzim chce tady zůstat. Ale to máte tady ten kosmopolitismus. Ty děti vyrostly v Německu, tak ztratily kontakt, schválně se tady vyhýbám výrazu s vlastí, s domovem. A jelikož ten táta je podivnej člověk, je takovej. Takže tady máte zaděláno na to jaksi.. ten výraz vykořenění je silný. Každej je přímo vodněkud a voni nejsou přímo vodněkud, takže to tak nepociťovali...

Q: A Jindřich má taky děti?

A: Má taky děti, dva kluky. Sem tam mě přídou navštívit.

Q: Jak se jmenujou?

A: Jeden se jmenuje Vašek a druhej musím říct, že nevím, protože se mu říká Hužva... Tyhle věci jsou tak složitý, to lidstvo... Teď jsem čet Halíka, on tam má kázání o rodině... Přiznejme si, že o čem tady mluvíme, tři čtvrtiny souvisí s rozpadem rodiny v Evropě, ve světě. Způsoben taky Hitlerem ale v podstatě ten rozklad dál pokračuje. A tady je celá tragédie lidstva. Ne, že by konzervativně všecko muselo být patriarchální rodina... Vztahy se rozvíjejí... jak bych to řek... morálně i sociálně. Ta klasická rodina měla jakýsi statut, jakousi tradici, byla daná a nutná. Převažovalo zemědělství a malovýroba, takže ta rodina spolupracovala. Když táta je támhle v kanceláři a máma je v národním výboru, tak co? Takže rozklad rodiny nám přivádí ty největší trable, protože morálka je v čudu. Láska, k mámě, k dětem, soudržnost... A to tady se promítá i v naší rodině, poněvadž ten můj syn Jindra se  oženil s holkou, kerou si musel vzít... teď jsou nepřátelé...  Ten rozklad musí přijít. Nejdřív to začíná u rodiny. Ten kluk co ubodal toho učitele. To je všecko takový typický příklady toho, že ta entropie, která není národní, která není... má souvislost s civilizací, s civilizačním proudem, my jsme zřejmě na tom jako kdysi v roce 300 - 400, jako rozklad toho celýho systému je očividný. A pozor podle mého názoru zatím to nebezpečí zatím nehrozí, ale není to zanedbatelné. Podívejte, co se jim zase povedlo. Já jsem dost vyděšenej...

Kazeta č. 3, strana B:

A: Řekněte mi, jak se díváte na bejvalýho domovníka? On byl na jedný straně... takovej a takovej. A to je problém celý historie, poněvadž záleží na tom, z jakýho konce se na to díváte. Takže najít nějakej pevnej bod, že kterýho byste se orientovala, jako z toho majáku koukala na to 20. století, to je strašně těžký. A relativizovat taky nemůžete, protože začnete omlouvat, chápat. Ono je to šíleně těžký! Proto jsem se ptal, jestli děláte tu hebraiku taky jazykově nebo jako jenom historicky.

Q: Já nejsem historik.

A: To je jasný, ale museli ste tím projít. To je strašně těžký. Aby člověk věděl, kdo vlastně je, to je strašně těžký. Fanatik to má jednoduchý. Ten to ví okamžitě.

Q: To je docela dobrá útěcha...

Fira Shwartz
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya
Date of interview: October 2002

Fira lives in a big comfortable apartment in Troyeschina - a new neighborhood in Kiev. One can tell that the family cares for one another and keeps the home in good order. Fira is a very sociable lady, although interviewing her is a bit tough: she only talks about what she wants to talk about and avoids any subjects that may bring back heart-rending memories.

I have no information about the family of my father Israel Shwartz. He perished when I was a small child. I've never met anybody from his family. I don't even know where my father was born. We only have a death certificate stating that he died at the front near Leningrad in 1942 at the age of 41. Therefore, he must have been born in 1901.

I know more about my mother's family. My grandfather on my mother's side, Itzyk Borodianskiy, was born in Gornostaypol, a small town near Chernobyl, in the 1860s. He came from a poor family with many children. His parents were religious and observed all Jewish traditions. My grandfather studied at cheder and at 10 he became an apprentice to a glasscutter. He worked as a glasscutter in Gornostaypol for his whole life. He owned a small shop where he received and carried out orders.

My grandfather was married twice. He had two sons from his first marriage: Samuel, born in 1892 and Yankel, born in 1897. My grandfather's first wife died shortly after Yankel was born. About a year after his wife's death my grandfather remarried. His second wife, Esther, was ten years younger than my grandfather. Her family lived in Chernobyl. She came from a poor family, was the younger daughter and had no dowry. Esther was a housewife and a very nice woman. My mother, Rosa Borodianskaya, was born in 1905. My grandmother died in 1932 during the famine in Ukraine 1. She died before I was born, and all I know about her is what my mother told me. We also kept a photograph of her.

They lived in a small wooden house in Gornostaypol with three small rooms and a kitchen. My mother took me there once when I was 5 years old. I have some dim memories of my grandparents' house. There were earthen floors with quilted rugs on them. It was dark in the rooms because the windows were very small, and there were trees around the house. There were two stoves in the house: one in the kitchen, which was used for cooking and heating one room, and one to heat the two other rooms. The stoves were stoked with wood because charcoal was too expensive at the time. The ceilings were low and whitewashed. I remember a big nickel-plate bed, in which my mother and I were sleeping during our visit. The letter 'E' was embroidered on the sheets, and my mother told me that my grandmother Esther did the embroidery. There were also woolen carpets on the walls embroidered by my grandmother. They had a garden and a kitchen garden near the house.

My mother's older brothers studied at cheder. They also completed seven years of the Jewish lower secondary school in Gornostaypol. My mother studied at secondary school for eight years.

My mother's parents were religious. Her father read religious books after work. He prayed in the mornings and in the evenings. I don't know for sure whether there was a synagogue in Gornostaypol, but I believe there must have been one. Uncle Samuel told me that there were quite a few Jewish families living in Gornostaypol. My mother's family celebrated Sabbath and all Jewish holidays. I know this from my mother's brother Samuel, who later replaced my parents.

Gornostaypol was a small and quiet town. All stormy events shattering the country at that time - Jewish pogroms, the Revolution of 1917 2 and the Civil War 3 - didn't affect the town. I know that the Revolution didn't change anything in the life of my mother's family: They had been poor before and they remained poor afterwards.

My grandparents' children left the house when they grew up. Samuel became a tailor in Gornostaypol and moved to Kiev when he was 17. He got a job at a military tailor's shop where they made uniforms for soldiers and officers. He was an apprentice there at first, but he was very good at sewing and soon became one of the best tailors of the shop. He married a Jewish girl called Rosa. She came from Kiev. They had two children: a son called Semyon, born in 1922 and a daughter, Bella, born in 1928.

Yankel moved to Baku, Azerbaijan [2,000 km from Gornostaypol]. He went with his former classmate whose brother had moved to Baku two years before. I know very little about Yankel's life in Baku. He worked at a plant. He married a Jewish girl from Baku named Diphia, and they had two children: a daughter called Beba and a son called Naum.

After finishing school in the 1920s my mother moved to Kiev. Uncle Samuel convinced her that there were more opportunities in a big town. I know very little about my mother's life before I was born. She told me that she worked as a nurse in a kindergarten. I don't know how she met my father. He was a forwarding agent at the railway post office. My parents got married soon after they met. My mother was 24; my father was four years older. They had a civil ceremony at the registry office. Weddings were considered to be a bourgeois vestige, so they had no wedding party.

My father lived in a communal apartment 4. There were two other families living in this apartment. My father's room was small and dark. Its only window faced an entry corridor of the building. There was a wardrobe, my parent's bed, my bed, a table and a few chairs in the room. There was a big common kitchen where each family had its own Primus stove. There was a strong smell of kerosene in the kitchen due to kerosene containers that were kept there. My mother worked for some time after she got married, but she quit her job before I was born and stayed at home afterwards.

I was born in Kiev in April 1936. My mother called me Fira. Actually, this is affectionate for Esphir, but Fira was the name my mother gave me and the name written on my birth certificate.

I remember very little of my childhood before the war. I didn't go to kindergarten. My father often went on business trips, and I recall how happy I was when he returned from his trips. He took me out and bought me ice cream. I don't think my parents were religious. At least, I don't remember any celebrations of Jewish holidays or Sabbath at home. At that time religion was viewed as a thing of the past. Many young people rejected religious traditions and rituals as something outdated and unnecessary. We spoke Russian and celebrated Soviet holidays when my father was home. My mother cooked and we had my father's colleagues over as guests.

Grandfather Itzyk visited us quite often. He was living alone in Gornostaypol at the time. I remember him praying every morning and every evening. He put on his tefillin before saying his prayers. He explained to me what it was. My grandfather also had a tallit. that was like a big white scarf with black stripes and frange on edges. My mother cooked Jewish food when my grandfather visited us: she made gefilte fish, chicken broth with dumplings and baked strudels. My mother told me that she learned how to cook Jewish food from her mother. My grandfather wore a black velvet kippah at home and a black cap to go out. He wore a long black jacket and striped black trousers. He had a small gray beard. My grandfather was short and very vivid. My mother and father spoke Yiddish with him, but he spoke Russian with me. He liked me a lot and called me ketsele [kitty]. My grandfather was an old man, and our neighbors treated him with respect.

I was 5 years old when the war began. I remember that my father and I were planning to go for a walk on the slopes of the Dnepr River that Sunday, but in the morning he told me that it was cancelled. I burst into tears, because I was so unhappy about it. My mother cried, too, and I thought that she was disappointed by not going to the park. Only later did I understand that she was crying because of the war.

My father was released from service in the army because he was a railroad employee. He also received a railroad carriage at his disposal for the evacuation of his family. We all went to evacuation in this carriage at the beginning of July 1941: my mother's brother Samuel, his wife and daughter Bella, my father's fellow worker, his wife and two children, and our family. Uncle Samuel was not subject to recruitment due to his age. Samuel's son, Semyon, was recruited to the army during the first days of the war even though he should have been released from the army because he had one shorter leg and walked with a limp. He perished at the front in the battle for Moscow in 1941. My mother's other brother, Yankel, lived in Baku throughout the war. He was ill and released from service in the army.

We had very little luggage with us. We only took the most necessary clothing, my toys and children's books, my bed linen and a few casseroles. My father told us that we would return home soon. I don't know how it happened that Grandfather Itzyk stayed behind in Gornostaypol. When the town was occupied by the Germans in September 1941 my grandfather went to Kiev on foot. He walked about 100 kilometers. Kiev was already occupied by the Germans. My grandfather didn't find us and was ordered to go to Babi Yar 5 along with many other Jews on 29th September 1941. Wwe heard about this after we returned to Kiev in the fall of 1944.

We didn't know where we were going. I remember the first bombing near Kharkov. The train stopped and we jumped off the train to hide. I saw a German plane flying very low and I thought that the German pilot also saw me. After the bombing we returned to the train. We saw another train at the station. It had been destroyed by the bombing and many dead bodies were lying around it.

Uncle Samuel and his family got off the train at Buzuluk station - his acquaintances were living there. We moved on. The train stopped at Magnitogorsk, Cheliabinsk region [2,500 km from Kiev]. We got off there. All evacuated people settled down in the barracks there. There were two families in each room. The so-called 'rooms' were separated by sheets that served as 'partials'. We lived with my father's co-worker, his wife and children. My father worked at the railway station in Magnitogorsk. At the beginning of 1942 he was recruited to the front. He wrote us a single letter from there. A few months later we received the notification of his death. It said that he perished close to the village of Malyie Krestsy, near Leningrad. Regretfully, I have never been to the place where he was buried.

My mother and I were starving and freezing because we didn't have any winter clothes with us. I stayed inside the room for the whole winter. My mother had to go out to get some food in exchange for ration cards. She had to stand in long lines for hours and hours. I remember her buying a small fur tree on 31st December 1942. Then she went to the store. She came back with a face white as chalk and put a bag of food on the table. She went to bed saying that she was going to stay there and get warm. She never left the bed again. A week later she died of pneumonia.

I was staying with our co-tenants. They took me to the morgue to say farewell to my mother. My mother was lying on a steel table and there was a layer of ice on her face. I could never forget this image. Even after finishing school, when I would have been admitted to Medical College without exams, I recalled my mother's face under ice and realized that I couldn't study there. I wasn't allowed to attend my mother's funeral. She was buried in a common grave. There was not even a sign with the names of those that were buried there.

My mother had asked our co-tenant to write to her brothers. At the beginning of January 1943 Uncle Samuel came to pick me up and take me to Buzuluk. His family became mine. I started school in Buzuluk in 1943. I have no memories about that school. I only remember that I wanted to sing in the choir, but I wasn't admitted because I was too short.

In September 1944 we returned to Kiev. My uncle's apartment was occupied by a 'politzai' [expression used for former fascist menials]. We stayed with one of his acquaintances. My uncle returned to his former job at the tailor shop. He soon managed to get back his apartment, and we moved in there. It was a two-bedroom apartment in a two-storied wooden building in the center of Kiev. It used to be a communal apartment, but later it was refurbished into a two-bedroom apartment. There was gas heating and running cold water. We had a kitchen that had served as a corridor before; it was long and narrow. I lived in this apartment until the house was pulled down a few years ago.

In Kiev I studied in the 2nd grade of a Russian secondary school. I became a Young Octobrist 6 and later a pioneer. I loved dancing and begged my uncle to send me to a ballet school, but one had to pay for it, and he didn't have money to pay for my studies. My uncle didn't adopt me. He was my guardian so I received monthly allowances for my father, who had perished at the front. . My uncle treated me very kindly and supported me with everything I needed.

I was a sociable girl and made friends with almost all my classmates. The teachers and pupils were sympathetic to me. There were quite a few schoolchildren that had lost one parent to the war, but there weren't many that had lost both parents. I had free meals at the school canteen and received clothing and stationery every now and then. Half the pupils in my class were Jewish. There were also Jews among our teachers. I never really faced anti-Semitism in my whole life. Only once did some boys shout 'zhydovka' [kike] at me on my way home from school. I was taken aback but pretended that I hadn't heard them.

My uncle and his wife Rosa celebrated Sabbath and other Jewish traditions. I don't think they managed to follow the kashrut at that time. There was no place to buy kosher products. They never kept meat and dairy products in the same spot though, and there was no pork in our house. I became familiar with Jewish traditions through them. My uncle's wife always wore a shawl or a kerchief, even at home. At Chanukkah children were always given some money, although the family was poor. Every Friday Rosa cooked enough food to last for two days. She always managed to get some fish at the market. She made gefilte fish and baked challah in the oven. We prayed on Friday evenings, then Rosa lit the candles, and we sat down at the table for a festive dinner. My uncle had a tallit and he always wore his little cap and Rosa always wore a shawl.

Saturday wasn't a day off at that time. My uncle went to work in the morning whereas Rosa stayed at home and tried not to do any work. She used to say that her husband had to go to work, but that she had an opportunity to follow God's covenants.

At Pesach my uncle bought matzah at the only operating synagogue in Podol 7. Matzah was expensive; besides, it was rather difficult to get it at Pesach, because there were so many people that wanted matzah for this holiday. There was no bread at home at Pesach. Besides matzah we ate corn porridge on this holiday. Rosa cooked gefilte fish, boiled chicken and chicken broth with corn dumplings. She also made sponge cakes. My uncle conducted the seder, said the prayers and read the Haggadah.

At Purim Rosa always made hamantashen. Uncle Samuel and Aunt Rosa went to the synagogue at Pesach, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. They also prayed at home and they fasted at Yom Kippur. My cousin and I didn't fast. We thought religious holidays to be a thing of the past, but we loved and enjoyed delicious food on holidays and always looked forward to such holidays. My aunt and uncle observed traditions but kept it a secret from their neighbors and acquaintances and told us to remain silent about it. They explained to us that my uncle might have problems at work if they found out about his religious conduct.

At school we celebrated Soviet holidays and the New Year. 1On 1st May and 7th November [October Revolution Day] 8 everyone at school went to the parades and afterwards we gave concerts at school. My uncle and his family didn't celebrate Soviet holidays, but they enjoyed being off work. My cousin and I celebrated Soviet holidays with our friends.

After finishing lower secondary school I had to learn some profession and earn money for my living. I entered the Library Faculty at the College of Culture and Education. There were only girls in my group. Many of them came from villages. Only two of us were Jewish: I and another girl called Tverskaya. She was nice and we became friends. I knew from my uncle that she was Jewish. There was no anti-Semitism as far as I noticed. I got along well with my co-students and had many friends. I studied in college for three years and finished it in 1954.

I became a Komsomol 9 member in college. I was eager to become a Komsomol member. I liked to go to the movies and all the pretty and successful girls in these movies were Komsomol members. I believed that being a Komsomol member would change my life for the better.

I was 17 when Stalin died. I was never interested in politics and felt quite indifferent about his death. Besides, I had an appendicitis surgery at the time that took all my attention.

After finishing college I got a job assignment in the village of Vysokoye, Zhitomir region [200 km from Kiev]. Graduates usually got assignments in distant locations. I became a librarian there, but I had a very small salary - 400 rubles. My mandatory job assignment was to last three years. [This was a standard requirement that was to be followed by all graduates from higher educational institutions]. I rented a room from an old woman and had hardly enough money to make a living. Every now and then my uncle and his wife sent me food parcels. I had to stay in this village for another half year until they found a replacement for me.

I returned to Kiev in 1957, but I couldn't find a job as a librarian there. I couldn't live at my uncle's expenses and thus went to work in a shoe factory. At first I was a laborer at the storage facility, and later I became a laborer at the shop of the factory. I liked my job. The majority of the employees at the factory were Jewish. The director and chief engineer of the factory were also Jews. Of course, there was no anti- Semitism at the factory.

I met my future husband, a Jew by the name of David Kargorodskiy when I returned to Kiev. David was born in Kiev in 1936. Aunt Rosa and David's mother were close friends. David finished the Communication Faculty of the Mining College and got a job assignment in the Ural where he stayed for three years. His mother wanted David to meet a Jewish girl. She met me during one of her visits to Rosa. She liked me and when her son came to Kiev on vacation she introduced us to one another. We began to see each other.

David's mother, Haya Kargorodskaya, was a pensioner when we met. She had worked as a secretary at a plant before. Her husband, Leib Kargorodskiy, worked at the same plant. David's father was a very religious man. He always read the Talmud and the Torah at home, even after the war. He went to the synagogue on holidays. David's mother wasn't quite so religious. They always celebrated Sabbath: David's mother cooked a festive dinner, and they lit candles at home. David's parents celebrated all traditional Jewish holidays: Pesach, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. They often talked in Yiddish, but David was far from being religious.

We got married in 1959. We had a civil wedding and a wedding party afterwards. There were many guests at the wedding. My Uncle Samuel, who was my guardian, received my monthly allowances for my father. He had been putting the money into my bank account, and my wedding was arranged from that money.

After our wedding David had to go back to the Ural where he was working. I quit my job and followed him. David was a communications supervisor. We got a room at the family hostel. I stayed there for a year after which I had to return to Kiev. I had to make sure that I kept my residence permit 10 in Kiev. A few times a year militia authorities sent their representatives to check whether tenants where residing in the apartments they were assigned to. My uncle sent me a telegram notifying me that I had to come back to Kiev in order to keep my permit to live in the apartment. Every member of the family living in one apartment had a stamp in his passport - parents had stamps in their passports for their children - and those stamps served as a residential permit. The authorities strictly checked that people were registered and resided where they were assigned to. So I went back to Kiev and my husband joined me after about a year's time, in 1960.

David's parents lived in one room in a communal apartment with many tenants. My husband and I moved in with my uncle. My cousin Bella was married by that time and lived with her husband. My husband and I were living in the room where my cousin and I had lived before. We got along well with my uncle and aunt. We were a family. Although we were atheists we celebrated both Soviet and Jewish holidays with them because we respected my uncle's religiosity.

My husband got a job at the Giprosviaz Communications Design Institute. More than half of the staff of the institute was Jewish. David had no problems getting this job. I worked at the library. My husband and I didn't feel Jewish. We spoke Russian. I didn't know Yiddish at all, and David could only remember a few words from his childhood. We were an ordinary Soviet family and we felt like Soviet people. We raised our children that way, too. Our daughter, Margarita, was born in 1961 and our son, Igor, followed in 1968. My mother-in-law was helping me to look after Margarita, but as soon as a kindergarten opened near our home I took her there. Igor also went to nursery school and to kindergarten, and I went to work soon after he was born.

My uncle Samuel died in 1962. He was the only member of our family that was buried according to Jewish tradition. Such was his will and we fulfilled it. We buried my uncle at the Jewish cemetery in Berkovtsy [a neighborhood in the outskirts of Kiev]. The former rabbi of the Podol synagogue conducted the funeral. He was also buried in this cemetery when he died. Rosa, who died 6 years after her husband, and David's parents were buried without any rituals.

My mother's brother Yankel visited us in Kiev several times after the war. We corresponded but later he stopped writing. I have no information about him or his wife and only a bit about their children. Yankel's son Naum lived in Kiev after the war. He died before he turned 50. Yankel's daughter Beba got married. She had two children: a daughter called Galina and a son called Edik. After Beba's husband died in 1991 she moved to Germany with her daughter's family. They live there now.

In the early 1970s many Jews were moving to Israel. I wanted to move, too, but my husband was strictly against it. He said he grew up here and wouldn't be able to adjust to life in a capitalist country. I believed that our children would gain a lot by living in Israel and mostly wanted to go for their sake. I tried to convince him but he stood his ground. So we stayed in the USSR.

Neither my husband nor I were members of the Communist Party. In 1973 my husband insisted that I got a job at the Giprosviaz Institute where he was working. I got a job as an assistant secretary there. I made copies, did the typing, purchased new books for the institute and performed other small errands.

Our daughter Margarita finished lower secondary school and entered a medical college. After finishing this college she got a job as a masseur at a clinic. She Margaret got married in 1987. Her husband was a Russian. David and I weren't against their marriage. We had nothing against her Russian husband. We wanted my daughter to be happy. My granddaughter Karina was born in 1991. Unfortunately, Margarita got divorced. Her ex-husband supports her and Karina a lot though. We live with my daughter and granddaughter now. I retired after my granddaughter was born. My husband also retired after working in the institute for 43 years.

My son Igor studied at trade school after finishing secondary school. He became a mechanic and got a job at a vehicle maintenance yard. He was recruited to the army from there in 1987 and returned in 1989 after his service was over. It was difficult for him to find a job when he returned. This was already during the perestroika and unemployment was high. My son married a Ukrainian girl when he returned from the army. Their daughter Natalia was born in 1991. My son had to support his family. He got a job as a laborer. I feel very sorry for him, but this was the only job that he could get. In 1995 Igor's son Sergey was born. My son lives with his wife's family. They have a nice three-bedroom apartment in a new neighborhood in Kiev.

In recent years, after Ukraine gained independence, the life of Jews has changed a lot. There are many Jewish organizations. We get much assistance from Hesed. My husband and I receive food packages. We appreciate this support a lot, especially when considering that we receive such small pensions. We also receive medication from Hesed and other medical services. We often attend lectures or other cultural activities. This is a great opportunity for us to communicate and socialize with others.

I have come closer to the Jewish identity of my family. I study the history of the Jewish people and take much interest in it. My Ukrainian friend took me to her church a few years ago. I've attended the Jewish messianic congregation for several years [the Jews for Jesus congregation]. Jews in our church are converted into Christians. Hesed doesn't acknowledge this community. We are viewed as renegades there.

It has become my road to God though. We don't study the Talmud there, we study the Bible instead. We have a very good pastor. There are over 1,000 people in this community. We often have visiting priests from abroad. I enjoy attending this community. We have services twice a week and I try to attend them all. There's a choir and a dance group. This group is called Glorification. We sing religious Christian and Jewish folk songs. Regretfully, my husband doesn't believe in God. I feel so sorry about it. But I accept and respect his views. Different opinions must not separate people in the family or in this world. I wish politicians would understand that. I start each day with the quotation of a song that we sing in the community: 'God has given us this day to rejoice!'

Glossary

Leontina Arditi
[Leontina Samuilova Stoyanova]
Sofia
Bulgaria
Interviewer: Patricia Nikolova
Date of interview: May 2003-March 2004

Leontina Samuilova Stoyanova is known as an actress under her maiden name Leontina Arditi, which was also used in her biography. Leontina Arditi is a part of the history of Bulgarian theater. She was among the first to successfully introduce one-(wo)man performances, or the so called 'theater with one actor', as a separate art category in Bulgaria. A character actress of vast and flexible range, she has played dozens of brilliant comedy and drama roles. Her hard life path as an actress in the communist regime in Bulgaria prevented her from immigrating to Israel. The love of the Bulgarian culture and society induced her to become a stage- director. She has been teaching half-professional and amateur teams for several decades, coming to know the 'charm discreet' of the Bulgarian province. The international awards that followed proved that she had made the right choice. One of Leontina's unexpected talents turned out to be writing. Her autobiography 'Sahraneni broenitsi' ['Safe-kept Rosaries'], which concentrates on the period of the Holocaust, or to be more precisely the Law for the Protection of the Nation in Bulgaria, is written in the rarely found succinct and precise, schooled style of a writer. 'Safe-kept Rosaries' was translated into German and published in Austria under the title 'In meinem Ende steht mein Anfang' ['In my End is my Beginning']. The book attracted the interest of a broad public at its presentation in Vienna last year. Israel has also expressed interest in translating the story of an early Jewish childhood transposed over the prism of horrible historical events. Despite the poverty and humble style of living - a two-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of Sofia - Leontina's home is warm and hospitable, although it creates a bit of a sad impression. This is due to the fact that she lives alone, away from her daughter and her granddaughters, repatriated to Israel. They are the only thing that still makes her believe in life, apart from the Arts and Theater that she is still involved in as a stage-director.

Family background
Growing up
During the war
Post-war
Glossary

Family background

When the Spanish Queen Isabel and the Spanish King Fernandez expelled the Jews from Spain in 1492, some of them went to Western Europe, others to Russia [Editor's note: there was no significant Sephardi settlement on Russian territory.] and the remaining part to the Orient [also see Expulsion of the Jews from Spain] 1. The Turkish people, for example, are thankful up to the present day that Jews have come to them, because they were doctors and as a whole people with intelligent professions. As far as my kin is concerned, they were a part of one group of Jews who got to Italy this way. They lived in the Ardennes, one of the borders of what was then Italy. [Editor's note: this is only a supposition of Leontina Arditi, since the Ardennes are actually in Belgium, Luxemburg and France.] That's where my name comes from - Arditi. Italians gave a gun, ten she-goats and two or three sheep to each family and told them to protect the borders. 'Arditi' - 'Ardennes' - that's the most probable etymology of my family name. At the beginning, in the 16th and 17th century, these Jews expelled from Spain lived in lairs dug by themselves in the caves. They were mere nomads. They were religious, I suppose. I don't know anything else about them.

My kin that came from Italy and settled in Ruse, northeastern Bulgaria, was my father's family. All of them had a strong sense of humor. They played the guitar, the mandolin; they used to sing Italian songs and speak Ladino. They were dark, emotional and swarthy like the Spanish. In Ruse the Arditi family had a very severe argument. I don't know the reason, but it was about money, I suppose. That's why one part of the family ran away as far as Pazardzhik, southwestern Bulgaria. I'm from the Pazardzhik branch of Arditi, while my relative, Elias Canetti 2, my father's cousin, is from the Ruse branch.

My maternal grandmother, granny Mazal [Uziel], almost always covered her head with a kerchief. She used to put something on my head, too, but I don't know what it was. She spoke Ladino. The whole Jewish neighborhood in Sofia, or Koniovitsa, Pernik Street, where my grandmother lived, spoke Ladino or the so-called Spaniol in Bulgarian. It was a very poor quarter. The way of living itself - with those huts, with those cortijos ['small gardens' in Ladino], and the fountains in the yards - all that was 'borrowed' from Spain. The Jews of the neighborhood used to speak Turkish too and some of them spoke Arabic as well. Their Bulgarian was very funny. [i.e. they spoke grammatically incorrect Bulgarian]. More refined Jews would definitely speak French. [Ottoman Jews traditionally enrolled in French language high schools instead of Turkish or Bulgarian ones in the late 19th century.] I don't know if they spoke Hebrew, but I have seen some books in the houses of both my grandmothers. I've never seen a Jewish woman wearing a wig in Bulgaria. I haven't seen a Jewish man wearing a kippah either, nor do I remember a Jew walking down the streets with a black hat. Kippot were worn only in the synagogue.

Granny Beya [Arditi, nee Tadzher], my father's mother, was married to a very rich Jew, the banker Aron Arav, in her second marriage. They owned several huge houses, each one with several floors. They had Persian carpets, wonderful expensive furniture and a piano. They also had many cats. They had a housemaid and a cook at their place. The cook's name was Berta and she felt pity for my father, because he wasn't allowed to live with his mother and his stepfather, and was treated like an orphan. He had been sent to live in the basement, so he grew up around Berta the cook. The family spoke French, which was considered an aristocratic language at the beginning of the 20th century. Even later my mother, who was of humble origin, used to feel humiliated because she didn't speak French and this language was spoken in her presence.

I know little about the military experiences of my relatives. I was told that my grandfather when he was a soldier, although wounded, saved a man. He dragged him 16 kilometers at the front during the Balkan War [see First Balkan War] 3. After the war this man showed his gratitude in a very bad way. I don't know anything about my grandparents' brothers and sisters. I've been told only about the brother of my paternal grandmother Beya - colonel Avram Tadzher. He was very clever and brave, a famous big shot with free access to the palace. He fought in the Bulgarian army in World War I [see Bulgaria in World War I] 4 and was awarded two military crosses for his bravery.

My father Samuil Moisey Arditi was a very intelligent and interesting, sweet-tempered man with a very rich inner life. I think he brought me up well. He taught me not to get dead set against anybody and anything. One of his major gestures towards me was that he sold his wedding-ring in order to buy me a violin. He felt I had an ear for music; I was only four then. The neighbors reproached him for this, because 'a musician can't make a living for a family', especially if the musician is a girl.

My father often used to read me books and acquainted me with the works of the authors of the world. Anatole France was his favorite writer. Under my father's influence I started to like Edmond Rostand and his play 'Cyrano de Bergerac'. [Editor's note: France, Anatole (pen name of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault, 1844-1924): French novelist, poet and critic, most famous for his novel 'The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard'; awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1921. Rostand, Edmond (1868-1918): French playwright, 'Cyrano de Bergerac' being the most famous example of the poetic romantic drama he created.]

Although he originated from the Italian Jews, papa didn't have an ear for music. He was born in Belogradchik in 1902. After he got married, he lived in Sofia. My father specially showed me a paper issued by His Majesty King Boris III 5, which read: 'I hereby declare the Italian citizen Samuil Moisey Arditi a Bulgarian citizen - the same'. He needed this document so that he could marry in Bulgaria. So, he became a Bulgarian citizen before I was born. We used to celebrate Noce di Sabbath [Erev Sabbath] systematically in our family, mastika 6 would be drunk and the Jewish appetizers would be prepared under the Italian influence - with spaghetti: spaghetti with vinegar, since there were no lemons here, served cold and with pepper.

My father had suffered a lot in his life, but he was a man of great dignity. He was half an orphan: as I mentioned before, his mother - granny Beya - had a second marriage, to the banker Aron Arav, a fabulously rich man, who couldn't stand his stepson, that is my father. Thus, being in a huge and expensive house, my father was thrown to live in the basement, and the only person who used to take pity on him was Berta the cook, around whom he grew up. Despite his merciless fate, my father managed to set off legally for France but in a goods wagon. There he started working jointly with some gypsy tinsmiths. Then he was accepted to study juridical sciences in Montpelier or in Toulouse, I don't know where exactly. As a student he found a job in a cathedral: washing the windows, cleaning, sweeping. He had worked for quite a long time there when one fine day somebody told the priest that 'he is a Jew and desecrates the church'. They fired him. After that he was a door-keeper in some French bar.

I have to tell you a funny little anecdote in regard to this: My maternal grandmother didn't like much my other grandmother because she had abandoned her child. And when she was angry, she would always feel pity for my dad: 'This golden youth, who worked in a cabaret at the door and the cloak room, where there is always such a draught! ...' And my mother when in a row with my father always used to shout: 'Of course, how can I be your favorite woman! You have seen so many naked women in this cabaret...!' My father would always set himself right with her: 'I wasn't allowed in at all.' Papa always insisted on his being a Jew. But he would say: 'I'm a Bulgarian Jew first of all.'

My father wasn't in favor of the communists. He was an antifascist. He used to say that the communist idea was wonderful in that everybody wanted to live in fraternity and equality. That it all was amazing, but it was a utopia, because man is imperfect and pollutes the good. However, to a certain extent his views were leftist. When he came back from France in 1925, he was recommended for the position of a stenographer in the Parliament by Josif Herbst [famous journalist and publicist of Jewish origin, the first director of the state Bulgarian Telegraphic Agency (Press Bureau), who was killed during the events of 1925.] A little later Josif Herbst was killed. Somebody then noticed this recommendation and my father was entered in a list of people recommended by the Jew, the journalist with left views, Josif Herbst. And, as far as I know, my father was put in the Lovech forced labor camp which later was called 'Slanchev Briag' ['Sunny Beach'] [also see forced labor camps in Bulgaria] 7. This was a camp for Jewish antifascists, but I'm not quite sure of these facts.

My mother Mariika Samuil Arditi was born in 1906 in Sofia, but her father was from the village of Kalishte, Radomir region. She had only elementary education but was intelligent by nature. She insisted on calling herself a Jew and brought home to us that the Jewish people are clever and that I shouldn't make an exception to this rule. She was tolerant to all nations. She had a gypsy woman for a friend; our house was always crowded with kadin [Turkish for married women] and so on. That's why I think the Balkans are the midpoint of the greatest culture in this world and I am convinced that it is a fortune that so many ethnic communities live in one and the same place.

My mother was an extremely beautiful woman. She became a seller in a perfumery as early as the age of 14. Once a wagon with perfumes was arranged outside and my mother was set to sell them. My father passed by chance and bought a bar of soap for shaving. That's how he met her. That happened in 1927. It was raining one the day of their first date. He was waiting for her in front of the Halite trading center and my mother was speeding with the umbrella so much so that she fell over and tore her, as my father used to say, 'veiling' stockings. When they had a quarrel later she used to say: 'Don't think I am nuts on you!' and he would calmly reply: 'You don't say; you nearly died for me, remember the veiling stockings?' They got married the same year in Sofia's [Great] Synagogue. 8

I know very little about my parents' brothers and sisters. I am, however, most familiar with my maternal relatives, especially with my mother's sister - auntie Lisa. Her husband's name was Bentzion Bar David. He was from Kyustendil, where he worked as a tinsmith. It may sound strange, but his workshop in Kyustendil was named 'Silence'. Later they left for Israel and lived in Kfar Hanagid and had an orange tree garden there. In fact, their daughter, Zelma, first immigrated to Israel and settled in Rehovot, where she married a Polish Jew, but I don't remember his name. The names of my mother's brothers were Benjamin or uncle Buco, and Rahamim or uncle Raho. They immigrated to Israel, too. They lived in Haifa, working as stevedores at the port. Then they went to Jaffa working again as porters. After that they opened jointly a grocer's shop. When I first went to Israel - in 1964 - they had already bettered their position a lot. Each one had a grocer's of five square meters. They lived in Arabic houses, which were miserable, without fridges and without air conditioning.

Growing up

I was born in Sofia in 1929. I know my mother had difficulties having children. I was born in the seventh month and they suffered a lot because of that. They didn't have any children after me at all. They had wanted many children, because all the Jews had many children then. My parents used to dress fashionably for their time - European style, elegant and neat. I want to underline that the Jews in Bulgaria, even up to their ears in misery, were very clean people. Despite the poverty, their houses were shining, no matter if hens strolled in front of them.

The financial situation of my family was very bad. We lived in the so- called 'Slatinsky redoubt'; there my parents had built a house, having bought the plot beforehand with my mother's dowry and hired a gypsy - according to the superstition of the time - to bring them good luck. The plot was abound in clay. The gypsy and my parents made clay bricks, burnt them and built a house: a room, a kitchen and a foyer. Oh, at the beginning we used to walk over some planks and often fell into the basement because we didn't have a floor, but after that they bought some furniture and took some things from my grandmother, the rich one, my father's mother; we even had an upholstered armchair. We had running water and a toilet only in the yard. We had hens, rabbits and cats. My father dug a pit in the ground and filled it with water so that we could have ducks. We even had a dog but a car ran over it. We heated the house gathering fir-cones from the wood for kindling.

Once dad told my mother: 'Come to me on Sabbath all of you. I will take you to a restaurant.' He worked as a typist in the center of the town. And he added: 'But you will come by foot'. The restaurant was in fact a shed. We go there and he says: 'Today nobody came to me for me to write him an application, but don't worry.' We ate soup and kebapcheta [grilled oblong rissoles] and he said: 'Write it over there'. That is, we had our food on credit. That's what our financial situation was like. However, despite this absolute poverty, my parents regularly bought me children's books, because in our house we used to read a lot. Newspapers, books - all of them secular, no religious ones. Two thirds of them were in French, all bought by my father. I still have a 'Mister Pickwick' in French.

'Zora'[Dawn], 'Zaria'[Sunrise], 'Utro' [Morning] were the [leftwing] newspapers, which my father used to read. Mum didn't read newspapers. She loved the works of Anatole France, Balzac, Zola etc. [Editor's note: Zola, Emile (1840-1902): French writer and critic, leader of the naturalist school.]. Papa recommended me to read Jules Verne, Karl May and Stefan Zweig 9, and once he bought me Jack London's 'Martin Eden'. He registered me as a reader at two libraries of the capital - the municipal and the town library. My parents loved reading books aloud at home. This way they read Gustave Flaubert's 'Madame Bovary' for example. My mother felt pity for her. When we were to be interned [see Internment of Jews in Bulgaria] 10, my mother sold a lot of things but the books we brought to Professor Kamen Popdimitrov - uncle Kamen - my violin teacher. He put them away in the attic. And when we returned [from the internment], he gave them back to my father, who said: 'Well, now I know I'm happy.'

My parents weren't very religious, especially my father - he was an atheist. My mother used to prepare matzah and tarhanah [dough, turned into sheets of pastry which are left to dry out and then sliced to thin stripes resembling macaroni] for Pesach, but we used to eat pork at home and my parents always made fun of themselves when they ate pork. We always observed Rosh Hashanah. My father wouldn't go to work. We would put our new clothes on and pay visits to people. We didn't observe Sabbath in our family, but we used to go to my grandfather's, my mother's father, whom I hardly remember. We observed the religious holidays only as a tradition. We gathered with my maternal relatives at Purim and we, the children, wore masks. For example, [as a 'disguise'] I wore my father's coat turned inside out. I should say my father respected all religions. I remember him talking to me for hours about the Catholics, about Joan of Arc and the history of France.

I've never entered a synagogue in my life. Neither of my parents ever took me to one. Well, I recently went to Sofia's synagogue to see how they restored it, but that's it. I've never studied Ivrit, but my parents taught me morals with their behavior, and I'm thankful for that. I've never seen quarrels at home. Well, my father was very jealous, all the more so because a Russian guardsman once fell in love with my mother. All this passed quickly, but when in a certain moment I did something wrong with my life, my mother called me and said: 'Las judias son onoradas' [Ladino, meaning 'The Jewish women are honest.']

Papa regularly attended Jewish gatherings in Bet Am 11 and especially so after 1944. My mother didn't. I haven't seen them going there together. I remember my father coming back home and my mother saying: 'What's up, walkie, what's there in Betama [Bet Am]?' And dad would say: 'Jidios, jidios, jidios - munchos jidios' [Ladino, 'Jews, Jews, Jews - a lot of Jews.'] I want to underline that after 1944 my father sent me to Bet Am, where the great Bulgarian stage director, Boyan Danovsky, also of Jewish origin, gathered young Jews for his class in acting. There I played violin in Mario Menashe Brontsa's orchestra. We had a wonderful big symphony orchestra. My first theater recital was held at the library club of the Jewish Center years after that.

I was small then and I remember vaguely the famous manifestation of 24th May 1943 12 when the Jews marched to tell the King not to expel them. As a matter of fact 24th May 13, the day of the Slavic alphabet, as well as of the saint brothers Cyril and Methodius 14, who created it, was my favorite holiday. I was 14 years old then. I remember I had put on my red blouse. Suddenly the people who participated in the events started running because there was mounted police that scattered them. I was playing in the street; mum came, collected me, brought me home and said: 'Take off this red blouse! You have chosen a bad moment to wear it!' [red as a symbolic color of the communists] It was this day that I first heard of the word 'anti-Semites'. I heard: 'The anti-Semites battered to death the Jews!' I didn't know what it meant; I couldn't even pronounce it. We were six Jewish children, who studied in the Bulgarian school, but nobody bothered us, nobody maltreated us.

We, the Jewish children, were taken to a Jewish summer school. We were fed; our heads were cleaned from the lice, and we weren't in the streets - so that our mothers could be calm while working for a piece of bread. I used to play the violin at these summer schools; we gave performances and we were entertained with art and literature all day long. The persons in charge were boys and girls from Hashomer Hatzair 15, teenagers. One of them was the great Bulgarian writer-to-be, the fabulist Albert Dekalo. Then he was 19 and I was 11 or 12. This happened in 1943 well before our deportation.

I remember the prettiest holiday parade in my childhood. My mother used to take me with her every time. The whole Jewish neighborhood flocked there. We were together - Bulgarians and Jews - to celebrate 24th May. It was the loveliest thing to see: the kids with the fanfares singing 'Go, oh, nation, reawakened'. We danced and applauded and our parents bought us Bulgarian flags; and this flag was hanging for a year at home after that. I also remember the traditional military parade on 6th May [St. George Day] 16. We used to go there to see the handsome soldiers with their weapons.

As a child I didn't attend Hashomer Hatzair. But my mother's sister, auntie Lisa, had a daughter, Zelma, who participated in Hashomer Hatzair. She was one or two years younger than me. Suddenly Zelma set off for Israel by boat; this was before 9th September 1944 17 or maybe it was this very year. Their departure was arranged through Hashomer Hatzair, but I don't know anything else about it. Zelma lives in Rehovot up to the present day, where she retired as a teacher several years ago. Following her departure, her parents, who came from Kyustendil, went to Israel. They were accommodated in Kfar Hanagid, were they had an orange tree garden.

I have paid a visit to Zelma; she is what a Jew must be: religious and so on. Her husband is from Poland but I don't remember his name. His parents were gassed in a concentration camp and he was saved. His story is horrible. He was small when the Nazis found room for themselves in their house in Poland. Some good people hid him this way: there was a plank toilet in the yard, but another one was dug for the Nazis. Polish people who saved this child used to let him down to the bottom of this toilet every day and he had to go through everything in order to avoid the Germans' suspicion of his presence there. The neighbors took him out by night, washed him and let him down the other day again. That's how Zelma's husband survived the Holocaust as a child. He has passed away by now, but I think he wrote a book about his fate, if I'm not mistaken, and it was published in Israel.

I have lived between two classes. I remember that the Jews were on friendly terms with the Bulgarians as well as with the other nations. There were as many Jews at a Jewish celebration as were Bulgarians, Turks and even gypsies. As a whole, I've grown up in the surrounding of horses, carts, hens, gypsies, Turks, Wallachians, Russian guardsmen. I've grown up in a healthy atmosphere. We are talking about my childhood years in Mezdra. It was a small town with some 2,000 to 3,000 inhabitants, where no other Jews lived except my family. And I never heard offenses.

I had a very happy childhood. I learnt how to walk in Dolni Dabnik, and began going to school in Mezdra. My father worked in a mill and my mother was a housewife but she managed to breed simultaneously two geese, twenty hens and God knows how many ducks. My mother used to stuff the geese with maize so that they would get fat. She had learnt that from her mother. My poor granny Mazal had a strange nickname: the Courtier. The history of her nickname was the following: She was close to a cook of King Boris III, who liked meals with goose very much. Once her friend the cook told my grandmother: 'Mazalika [diminutive from Mazal], if you can bring me four geese a month you will earn a lot of money'. She didn't earn much money, but she kept on taking four geese a month to the palace, stuffing them with maize the same way my mother showed me. The geese swell this way only for a month or two.

The most special occasion in Mezdra was when in the evening the women would take the men's arms, the children behind them, and go to the station. The train from Sofia passed through there and had a stop at Mezdra station. We weren't rich, so my mother used to take a slice of bread from home and used to buy me a kebapche from the station. I remember once I was taken ill with diphtheria and was crammed into a train to Sofia, where I was to be treated. After that I took pride of place among the children of Mezdra, who had never entered a train. As a child I never got in a car, of course, but I often took rides in a cart.

I met my first love when I was seven - Geshko Lishkov, a small gypsy. His father ran the roundabouts near the station. We decided to get married, Geshko and I. He would let me in to the roundabouts ... With the children in Mezdra, mainly gypsies, we played all day long.

When my family moved to live in Sofia I was growing up in the poor Jewish quarter Koniovitsa. We lived in the house of my maternal relatives and it looked very bad. It consisted of a primitive room with a small corridor, without running water and electricity, but still five or six people lived there. When we got interned we went to live for a while there again. Then we had to go to Dupnitsa.

During the war

One fine day my father came back from work at an unearthly hour bringing something in an envelope and some buttons scattered on the floor. And he put a piece of cardboard on the table. My mother and I asked: 'What are these yellow buttons?' And he answered: 'These are the stars and they have to be sewn on all clothes.' - 'And this cardboard, what is it?' - 'A Jewish house'. Mum put the sign 'A Jewish house' outside and there came the neighbor auntie Mika, a Bulgarian, to ask us for something - some salt or vinegar, it didn't matter. And she cried: 'My word, what's that? Oh, Gosh, take this bullshit out of here.'

Our deportation was very fearful. We were already in this den, the house of my mother's parents, which was situated on Pernik Street in Koniovitsa. We brought out all our belongings and started selling them. Dad was sent to a forced labor camp and my mother was cleaning the casks of some Jews, who intended to sell them. As a matter of fact, my father was sent to four Jewish forced labor camps. The first was in the village of Izvorche, Lovech region, the second in Shiroka Poliana, Batak region, the third in Dupnitsa, and I don't know were the fourth was. The last time my father came back from a forced labor camp his back was all in violet straps from beating. He never told us why he was beaten. I know he arrived by train at 3am, but he didn't call us until 6am. He stayed at the front door stairs in order not to wake us up. He was afraid he was infested with lice. Then mum undressed him in the yard, kindled a big fire and boiled all his clothes in a cauldron. After that she wrapped him in a bed sheet; it was snowing outside! Then she cleaned him from lice in the house.

My mother's encounter with the commissioner Belev 18 of the so-called Committee on Jewish Affairs 19 in 1943 was interesting. The Committee was formed after the arrival of the Germans in Bulgaria, that is after the Law for the Protection of the Nation 20 was passed. Mum herself insisted to meet him at the time when they intended to expel us from our house. Her meeting was organized by a friend of a friend of Julia de la Gnese, who was in turn my father's friend. She was a very decent woman; she taught me French for free. She fell in love with some German and we used her contact. Although pointless, this encounter was remembered. I accompanied my mother - Belev appeared to me tall and sinister, with a yellowy-white face, pale as a dead man. My mother entered and came out again immediately. And said: 'Impossible'. That meant, we had to leave our house; we weren't allowed to stay there. But I remember well the cleaning woman at the Committee, who was sweeping and in front of her some young Germans in uniforms were sitting and smoking. She cursed them in the face: 'Got smite them', she shouted, 'and me, to sweep their shits here! Who brought them here...' And so on. A man heard her and said, 'What the hell are you talking! They will hear you!' 'You don't say! They don't speak Bulgarian let alone Shopski dialect.' [Editor's note: the northwestern part of Bulgaria is popularly called Shopluk or Shopsko.]

As a matter of fact this Julia had a very tragic fate. When the Germans came to Bulgaria in 1943 she fell in love and got engaged to one of them. But he went to fight at the Eastern front. He got killed and she suffered a lot. She had even got pregnant from him and mum took her somewhere to procure an abortion. Julia was a teacher in Italian and French. After 9th September 1944 she suddenly disappeared. She was slandered for having been a Germans' slut and was put in a very severe forced labor camp. My father was off to look for her. My mother went to search for her. They were told she had died.

Before our departure I studied in a Bulgarian secular school. I hated geometry. And the hateful teacher was Miss Yankova, our maths teacher, of course. I was a poor student. When I received a satisfactory mark [3 out of 5] my mother would make a pudding for me. And she would give the women from the neighborhood a treat. My parents even hired a private teacher for me, but it was fruitless. I liked geography a lot and I loved literature and the Bulgarian language. I knew by heart half of the 'Epopee of the Forgotten' by Ivan Vazov 21. I loved my teacher in literature, Mrs. Kateva, and I remember her even now as if she was standing right in front of me.

Once people came to summon students for Brannik 22 in our school. And my classmates put their names down. We had a very stupid boy in our class, Haim, and I often had fights with him. He said: 'I also want to write my name down'. They told him: 'We don't accept Jews.' Some teasing was heard: you the Jews are such and such. Then Mrs. Kateva turned red and said: 'I won't tolerate such things in my class.'

I remember another interesting story of this period. Apart from my pointless private tuition in mathematics and the wonderful lessons in French with Julia I took up lessons in music for free. As I mentioned before, my violin teacher was uncle Kamen, the famous violinist Kamen Popdimitrov, my father's friend from his years in France. Well, when we were to be interned, in my third year in the junior high school, I had a final poor mark [2, that means failed] in geometry. Everybody graduated and I had to sit for a make-up exam. We set off for the province. We were first allocated to Haskovo, but I was summoned to the police for some verses I had written. Then they sent us to Dupnitsa, where I wasn't accepted to enroll in the high school, because I didn't have a diploma for the junior high school. They wanted at least some document stating that I had studied up to the third class of the previous level. Then mum wrote a letter to uncle Kamen. As a response he sent me a grade book for a completed 3rd class of the junior high school. My maths teacher, Mrs. Yankova, had been my nightmare; she used to give me only poor marks; I had wanted to suffocate her... And now we read that there are two good marks [4 out of 5] in the certificate for completed third class - one in geometry and one in maths. What had this man done? In which way had he spoken with Mrs. Yankova? What could he have said to her? I don't know, but this cruel woman for me became a saint, despite the fact that I wasn't accepted in the high school but in the business school. Never mind! What does this mean? It means that two Bulgarians had tried to give a blunt-witted Jewish child as best as they could, a chance to continue her studies.

I've had a lot of friends; I was an exceptionally friendly and sociable person in contrast to now. I had friends everywhere - in the villages where I grew up, at elementary school, at high school, at drama school, at the conservatory and in the theaters where I practiced as a beginning actress. These people were always tolerant towards me, so I didn't suffer from anti- Semitism. All the more, I remember in those hard days of our internment to Dupnitsa that the grandfather of my friend and classmate Lili, who was a miller, came to my mother. And he came from a village far away from Dupnitsa to say: 'If you need to escape, if you are to leave the country, I have men in the mountains, they can save you.' So I nearly became a partisan since the old man, who wanted to hide us, was obviously a supporter. And I don't even know his name.

In Dupnitsa we were rationed two or three cups of soup every noon. My father would also come to take his soup when he was back from the forced labor camps. As a matter of fact, soup was rationed then everywhere in the country. There was some talk that an officer in Haskovo was putting naphthalene in the soup for three consecutive days and the Jews couldn't have their meals. But one fine day - here we have an instance of anti- Semitism - one of my classmates in a Brannik uniform, Lida Zhadrovska from Dupnitsa, took my stove and began kicking it around, shouting: 'And we are going to feed these chifuti 23?' She tried to hit me. And I couldn't hit her because she was fat and two times as heavily built as me - a small Jewish fry.

I remember very clearly the bombardment of Dupnitsa in 1944. It was a terrible bombardment in a small town. The population was approximately 5,000 to 6,000 and 100 died because it was a market day. There were rumors that several Jews died in a house, but I don't know exactly how many. They gathered there on Friday, because Sunday was to be the wedding day of their children. And then a bomb fell.

I remember another event. It was a great occasion for me when King Boris III died, a king whom my family respected. He died on 28th August [1943] but the funeral was on 1st or 2nd September in Rila Monastery. The train, the cortège with his body was to pass through Dupnitsa. We, the kids of between eight and ten years of age, climbed a hill, which stood exactly over the tunnel where the train had to pass. We got on there and started waiting for it. And we saw it - an open wagon with the King's body and four guardsmen who were standing straight. The train was moving very slowly with the coffin, covered with a wine-red cloth. It passed slowly and then it was gone. I remember the little boys taking off their hats. An old woman brought us a loaf of bread and shared it between us saying: 'Even though from another religion, he was your king too, and a mortal man as he was.' I remember this scene very clearly.

After 9th September 1944, we moved from Dupnitsa, where we were interned, to Sofia to live in the small house built by my father, my mother and the gypsy. Then two Russian women-soldiers were accommodated with us, one of who turned out to be a Jew. Her name was Lida Kunkunina. The name of the other one was Mira. By night these girls disappeared somewhere and came back in the mornings. Then they would take off their clothes and walk topless to the tap to wash themselves before the critical eyes of the whole neighborhood. Of course people talked: 'These are sluts. By night they attend to the needs of the army and then they come back here to have a wash. Mariika, what an evil has entered your house!' One morning they didn't come back. Sergeant-major Derepchiisky who accommodated them with us and was also a Jew came home in tears. Their beds were taken away and it wasn't until then that we understood the two girls had been bombarding Belgrade every night. We were told they were killed. I came to love these unknown girls, who left us books and who left us guns. They had brought me a pair of boots, because I was walking barefoot then in the bitterest cold, muddy up to the ears. I didn't have anything to put on.

A little later my father and sergeant Derepchiisky went to the synagogue together. In fact the fate of this sergeant was also very tragic. He came from Vinitsa. His wife was also a Jew; they had a daughter, Ezdra. Derepchiisky always used to say: 'You will study with Ezdra'. His daughter played the violin. One night he got drunk; my father treated him to vodka. And he told us that when he had got back to Vinitsa during his leave in place of his house he had found only a pit filled with water. Neither his wife was alive, nor his daughter. And he showed us a photo which I remember very clearly: it was of his wife who was wearing a single plait.

Post-war

After 9th September 1944 I joined the UYW 24. I entered this left movement thankful I had survived. After that I joined the Communist Party with the thought it would offer me protection. I was given free education. At a certain point the arts became more important for me than everything else and I withdrew from the Party. In spite of that, up to the present day I still have left views.

The typical Jewish professions in Sofia these days were mainly those of small tradesmen and small craftsmen, for example cobblers. Some were kebapche makers; others were selling things at the market: needles, threads, vegetables arranged on a hand cart. There were no Jewish tavern- keepers, because Jews didn't drink and that was very important. But they had small grocer's shops. At a certain stage the Jewish quarter Koniovitsa was transformed into a ghetto. There was no electricity, no running water. From all the houses from three streets there was only one with a radio and we all used to go there to listen to it. Even now I can still smell the absolute poverty when I pass through there. But there was no anti-Semitism. I remember I was six or seven years old when a kid told me: 'You are Jewish', and I answered: 'What's that?'

The market of the past was fabulous - a diversity of colors and melodies from all languages. I used to steal fruits because I didn't have the money to buy them. A friend of the family, a Bulgarian policeman, often went to this market. His name was uncle Doncho. He used to say to my father: 'Today I'll fill my bag and I'll be in pocket from your Jews.' And he pursued those who hadn't paid their taxes or the fees for selling goods at the market. In the evening my father would say: 'What happened with my Jews?' And his friend, the policeman replied: 'I got hold of what I could. Here - I've brought three heads of cabbage, two kilos of waffles...' They gave him these things as a bribe for him not imposing fares on them. Would you call that anti-Semitism?

As I've already said, I started going in for the arts more seriously in my school years. Then I was in the 5th or in the 6th class of the business high school in Sofia. Simultaneously I was playing the violin in the symphony orchestra of the Jewish Center, conducted by the superb Mario Menashe Brontsa. At the same time I took up the drama course of the great Jewish stage director Boyan Danovsky, who formed a class in acting at the Jewish library club. The first he gave us to work on was: 'For lunch at Bear's Place', a well-known fable by Krylov. [Editor's note: Krylov, Ivan Andreyevich (1769-1844): Russian fabulist, playwright and journalist; famous for his short fables in verse. The best-known of his dramatic works are 'The Fashionable Shop' and 'A Lesson for Daughters'.] It must have been 1945-1946, because I was accepted at Sofia's Theater School as a full-time student in 1946-1947 and as an extra violin student at Sofia's Musical Academy.

I don't remember precisely the other students in Danovsky's drama course, but I remember an outstanding performance of poetic art from 1944, presented in Bet Am by the great director Grisha Ostrovsky, then an actor, the famous violinist Yosko Rozanov and Viza Kalcheva who drowned the following year. I was 15 years old then and this event definitely helped me in choosing the profession of an actress.

The Theater School, where I was accepted as a student in acting, offered a two-year course then. In 1947, following a decree of the National Assembly, it was transformed into DVTU [Public Higher School of Theater], which was known as VITIZ [Higher Institute of Theatrical Art] in the totalitarian period [Communist regime] and as NATFIZ [National Academy of Theater and Film Arts] after 10th November 1989 25. We, the students, had just finished our second year. We were told that one may graduate and have a lower educational degree or may choose to continue his studies for two more years completing his education in the newly formed Public Higher School of Theater. Some of us, including me, stayed in the school, others scattered to the theaters to perform there.

In my third and fourth year at DVTU I started making records for the radio. Then I experienced my first meeting with a great writer - the living classic Elin Pelin [Dimitar Stoyanov, famous under his literary pseudonym Elin Pelin (1877-1949): among the greatest masters of the short story in Bulgarian literature, a 'painter' of Bulgarian village life.] It must have been in my fourth year, in 1950. I partnered with the unique actor Konstantin Kisimov and I nearly lost consciousness with those two classics around me. We were recording 'Choheno kontoshche' ['choha' is the Turkish word for a silky thick cloth, while 'kontosh' is a Persian word for a short outer garment to the waist]. When we came out of the room, I was introduced to Elin Pelin and he asked me: 'Where have you mastered our dialect from?' I told him I had grown up in the country. Then he offered me to perform some other of his works. This gave me wings. I performed 'Pizho and Pend?' as a one-man show - my first performance - and it became part of the repertoire of the Army Theater in Sofia after its premiere. It was presented hundreds of times over several decades and is now in the golden fund of the National Radio. I was then being sent to different regions of Bulgaria to present it, especially to military audience, at garrisons, and in library clubs.

I graduated in acting in 1950. I had a one-year probationary period at the National Theater. Meanwhile the Army Theater organized a casting for its troupe; I applied and was accepted. The same year I got married. My first working day was the day of my wedding - 11th September 1951. Of course I didn't go to work; I went to marry my husband, Dilo Dikov Stoyanov, who was of Bulgarian origin. I was immediately assigned some roles by the theater, but I had already got pregnant. I gave birth to my daughter Tatyana in 1952. That's why I played my first role as late as 1952 - in 'Song for the Black Sea People' by Lavrenev.

The first person who gave a one-man recital in Bulgaria was the actress Slavka Slavova with 'You Can Endlessly Recount for Mothers' based on a piece by Maxim Gorky 26. Those days in Bulgaria such performances which represented the so-called 'theater with one actor' were a very rare occasion. The following were the actors Spas Dzhonev with 'Song of the Songs' and Tanya Masalitinova with 'Anna Karenina'. And I was the fourth person, namely with Lermontov's 27 'Daemon'. The dressed rehearsal with audience took place in the building of the Jewish library club.

More than ten of my performances were banned during the totalitarian period [communism]. The reasons: 'snobbism and unhealthy western influence', 'cosmopolitanism' and 'eclectics'. These were especially my performances of 'Vanity Fair' based on Thackeray, 'Crime and Punishment' based on Dostoevsky 28 and '24 Hours from the Life of a Woman' based on Zweig. Those three were banned en block for 'snobbism and unhealthy western influence'. 'The Researcher or Don Quixote Fighting' by Vadim Karastilev was stopped for political reasons. 'Earth, Wait' - same thing. They didn't even explain to me why 'In the Sun and in the Shade' was stopped. The commission just saw it and gave me a curt refusal. However, I think the reasons were neither political, nor anti-Semitic. In my opinion, it was due to the famous envy that colleagues in the theater harbor against each other.

I met my husband Dilo by chance. I was a student in the third year when I suddenly got paralysis nervi facialis - a disgusting distortion of the face caused by stiffened muscles. The reason was perhaps some kind of flu. It passed, but the doctor recommended me in any case to go to a brigade 28 so that I could have sunbaths. That's how I found myself in the students' camp at the Black Sea. There my husband-to-be was, suffering from some kind of illness on his legs; apart from that he was studying to become a hydro- engineer. There I was continuously playing the violin, because I was to have an exam at the Conservatory. He was often listening to me. And that's how we met.

Our daughter Tanya [short for Tatyana] had hard childhood years. She was a well cared for but very unhealthy child. She grew up in sanatoria. At the age of nine she had a serious cardiac malfunction. She had to study at the sanatoria, we often called her tutors home, because she wasn't allowed to go to school. Tanya wanted to become a painter. But she completed her education at HTI [Higher Institute of Chemical Technology] in 1975 or 1976. First she was a professor at HTI, but she worked as a painter, too. She had cardiac surgery when she was 27. The annual exhibition of the Union of Painters in Bulgaria was opened on the day of her operation and she received an award for the original puppets she had made. Then she became a member of this union and was sent as its representative to an international competition and puppet exhibition in Poland, wherefrom she returned with a gold medal. 59 countries took part. After that she received the award of the children audience at this competition. She and her two daughters, Leontina and Maria, immigrated to Israel in February 1996, where she is a well-known puppet designer and teacher, and a member of UNIMA - the international union of puppet makers [Union Internationale de la Marionette].

My granddaughters, the twins Leontina and Maria, were born on 13th October 1982. Maria is the elder - by four or five minutes. I helped with their bringing up until they turned 14. They had just finished the Jewish elementary school in Sofia and were accepted to elite schools: Leontina to NGDEK [National Lyceum for Ancient Languages and Cultures] and Maria to the Spanish High School. Several months after their acceptance they immigrated to Israel. In Tel Aviv Leontina graduated from the most prestigious local high school, in which Yitzhak Rabin had studied. Maria graduated from an art school. She is now professionally in coiffures and maquillage. Leontina graduated concurrently from a music school, directed by Russian teachers in Israel. When she graduated she was offered a chance to give a Mozart violin concert. But she didn't want to continue studying music, because in Israel the situation is like this: you can find a good violinist at every corner. She is of such nature that she chose a male profession to establish herself. She went to the hardest army in Israel - 'Kravi'. She became an officer there and 30 boys were entrusted to her care. Even now, Leontina continues serving at the hottest spots in Jerusalem.

I first went to Israel in 1964. The second time was shortly before 1989 - I was invited as a guest artist with the act '24 Hours of a Life of a Woman'. After 1997 I visited my daughter and granddaughters three or four times, and I am going to visit them this spring again. Although this is a very beautiful and intelligent country I have never felt cozy there, partly because of the Israeli way of thinking. Otherwise it is a very precious country to me.

I was happy on 10th November 1989, although I keep my left views. But I gradually got aware of the fact that we go from a certain lie to another. I am still sorry for the totalitarian period because one could do everything then, despite the immense difficulties that I encountered. And now one just has to have money and be an insolent lout in order to make one's way in life. Once there also were such kind of people, but the strong and the intelligent managed to make their way. The period that has come to our country is pernicious and corrupt, especially for the young people.

Glossary

Lubov Ratmanskaya
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Yulia Smelianskaya
Date of interview: November 2001

My family backgrownd

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family backgrownd

I am Lubov Ratmanskaya. I know only about my grandfather and I know nothing about my great-grandfather. I was born when my grandfather died. His name was Leib Ramantsky. That's why all girls who were born to the Ratmansky family were named Lubov, and all the boys, Lev. Kiev was outside the Jewish Pale of Settlement 1, but my grandfather was allowed to live in Kiev as a craftsman. He was an ink maker - he made ink according to his own recipe. His sons were allowed to live in Kiev until they came of age, and his daughters, until they got married. His family lived in Podol 2.

Grandmother Etya-Hannah Zlotchenko was born in the town of Talnoye, Kiev region. I don't know much about my grandparents' life. They had a very good family. That's why their children turned out very well. They had seven children: Aro-Shloyme, Tsipa, Noah, Vera, my father Isay, aunt Manya and aunt Makhlya. All the children had some profession.

My grandparents were religious. Some of their children and grandchildren were religious, too, and some weren't. My father didn't tell me about the life of his family before the Revolution of 1917 3. Before 1917 they didn't hide their Jewish origin, but afterwards, somehow it didn't seem the right time to talk about it. I only know that the family was very poor.

My father's elder brother, Aron-Shloyme, moved to America. He invited his brother Noah to America - the brothers found jobs there. But I don't remember what their professions were. I think something to do with commerce. And later Noah invited his nephew Mikhail. Aron-Shloyme's children were committed communists. His son, Misha Ratmansky, was born in 1900. He was head of the Podol District Committee of the Komsomol 4 in Kiev. In 1919 he was the commissar of a unit made up of Komsomol members from Kiev who went to fight the ataman Zeleny. People say that a note was pinned on the doors of that district committee, which read, 'Committee closed. All gone to the front.' Misha died in July 1919. A street in Kiev was named in his honor.

Aunt Manya was a nurse, and during World War II she was at the front. In general she worked in different military hospitals. Aunt Vera and aunt Makhlya were tailors.

My father, Isay Ratmansky, was born in the 1870s. He went to cheder for a short time. While he lived with his parents, until he came of age, he studied embroidery - he worked on special embroidering machines. There are no such machines any more; they disappeared during the war. My father's teacher was Russian, and my father often stayed at his house. My father was very talented. He embroidered dresses, fabric. I had a coat made of astrakhan fur, and even though we were so poor that I couldn't get buttons for it, it was very nicely embroidered. Unfortunately, I have nothing left of his works; everything has been destroyed. There were many Russian embroiderers in Kiev. I remember Fedorov very well. I remember him because when Petliura 5 came to Kiev, he brought his banner to my father to embroider. My father refused. My mother begged him on her knees. It was very dangerous for him to refuse. Then I, a preschooler, was sent to Fedorov, who embroidered that banner and we gave it back to Petliura's soldiers.

My mother and father got married through embroidery. Traveling to different cities in search of a job, my father found himself in a workshop where my mother was sewing coats, and my father began to work there as an embroiderer.

My mother, Sofia Ratmanskaya [nee Smekhova] came from the town of Pogar, Belarus. She was born in 1886. Her father was a tin-maker. He also had seven children: Monya, Khaya, Etya, Sosha, my mother Sofia, Riva, and Yakov. There were two brothers (the elder one died of tuberculosis) and the rest were women. By the way, uncle Yakov was also a tin-maker. His son Ilya was a pilot during World War II, later he was a colonel and lived in Leningrad.

My mother and father got married in Pogar. It was a small town. My father was involved in some revolutionary group, so he was given a false passport under the name of Pasternak and he was illegally sent to Tsaritsyn. My mother went with him. My elder brother Abram was born in Tsaritsyn in 1908. I don't know any details of my father's revolutionary activities. He never talked about it. But my brother was Jewish, so he was circumcised in secret: father found a rabbi in Tsaritsyn and received a special certificate for Abram. Abram is Jewish, but his skin is very dark. Later, the group that helped my father sent him to Vladikavkaz. It was some time around 1909.

There was a good Jewish community in Vladikavkaz, but my father had a passport under the name Alexander Sokolov. [He was given this typical Russian name to hide his Jewish origin.] My sister Vera and I were born in Vladikavkaz. We weren't registered anywhere because my father was only able to register us later - that's why my passport says that I was born in 1911, whereas I was actually born in 1909. Vera was born in 1912. We were beautiful children.

Growing up

We lived in an underground flat, and my mother told me how scared she was every time the police came. The flat looked like a sewing workshop. My mother worked as a tailor and sewed dresses and some other things, pretending she had other sewers there, while my father embroidered. I remember when we already lived in Kiev and our house hadn't been bombed yet, I saw a postcard from some general's wife, saying 'Mrs. Sokolov, please prepare this and that for my arrival'. My mother was a fully-fledged member of the revolutionary organization.

My mother told me how once the police misunderstood the name of a person and for some reason came to our house to look for somebody called Shimon Sak. There may have been such a person in another organization. My mother showed them the documents for Alexander Sokolov, and the police left. Then my parents immediately decided to move from Vladikavkaz. It was in 1917. We left the town immediately after the February Revolution. I remember Vladikavkaz only a little.

At the end of 1917 we came to Kiev, to my father's parents. My grandfather had already died, but grandmother continued to live in the same house. My father's older sister Tsipa also lived there. The flat was big. I remember one very big room where all the Ratmanskys who lived in Kiev at the time came together once - I'm not sure why, maybe it was a holiday or someone's birthday. Aunt Tsipa and her husband had horses and a stable. Her husband drew horses very well. Every time we would come over, he would draw horses for us. Their son Pinya became an artist. His children still live in the same street that we lived in.

Later, because my father was an embroiderer and his work was in demand, my parents found a flat. It was a 5-storey building made of bricks. We lived on the first floor, but it was high. We had a separate flat. There was one small room, which my brother and I often entered through the window. It was hard to climb through that window, but my brother could do it. Then we had a big room and the third room opened from here, but it was right next to the toilet, so it was practically impossible to live in it. We lived there for a short time but then it became impossible - we hardly ever entered it. To get to the kitchen we had to go downstairs, to the end of the long corridor. The kitchen was small, but it was ours, separate from the neighbors.

After my sister Nadya was born, we four children, our parents and one of my father's relatives lived in this flat. My father's youngest sister Makhlya and her husband lived with us for a long time. Then Manya also lived with us for a while. Sometimes we rented that room out.

We lived very poorly. For instance, I can't even remember my bed. Our sister Vera was always very weak and neither Nadya, Abram nor I ever complained that she alone slept in a real bed. That bed stood in the small room where our parents slept, and Vera and later our youngest, Nadya, slept with them. In the beginning we children slept in the children's room, but later it was impossible to stay there. I remember we had scarlet fever there and we stayed in bed; naturally, we weren't allowed outside. So our friends - children from our backyard - jumped in front of our window and talked to us. Whilst I was suffering badly from the disease, Abram and Vera stood at the window and talked to them. Those children called to us, 'Come outside!' My brother answered, 'We can't we have scarlet fever!'

Our life was very hard because when the Reds, the Whites or the Poles came it was hard for my parents to decide whom they should embroider for and whom not. When the NEP 6 began life became better. We even had enough to eat: we had white bread, butter, and when mother went to the market, I usually went with her. But in general we were always thin and weak and never had proper clothes. Vera was sick almost all the time. We had one coat that our mother sewed for us from an overcoat, and we wore it in turns when we had to go to school.

We certainly had no new toys, but our relatives brought old ones sometimes. All the Ratmanskys treated each other very well. Most of the time we sewed dolls on our own.

But we always celebrated holidays. My father was religious and raised us the same way. So I knew everything from an early age. In spite of being an atheist later, I still know all about Jewish traditions. And this is due to my father. We had celebrated seder night. We always celebrated all holidays, even when we had to hide in order to celebrate.

On Chanukkah I remember that mother lit candles and we knew why she did that. For some time she also lit candles on Sabbath, but then she stopped because she was afraid and also because we didn't have any money. I also remember Purim, when mother made hamantashen, and we threw a lot of herbs for some reason.

Most of all I remember Passover. We had a table laid with matzah and other necessary stuff: a piece of meat, maror, etc. We even found the hidden afikoman, and then asked presents for it. We sang along with my father. He was a wonderful singer! All members of our family sang well. The grandson of my father's eldest brother graduated from a music college and won a lot of competitions. Vera is a wonderful musician. Her teacher was Henrich Neigauz [a very famous Russian pianist]. When he heard her he took her to Moscow right away. My brother Abram sang in the synagogue where my father took him. My father also sang in the synagogue. Abram sang well. And when the Opera wanted to have a children's choir, the leader of the choir took him to the Opera and Abram sang there as well. The Opera wasn't far from us and my brother ran home one evening, grabbed me by the hand and pulled me to the Opera. That's how I saw the first opera in my life. I also remember that my brother sang in Carmen. This gift for music came from our father. We sang a lot at home. My father didn't only sing Jewish songs: before I went to the music school I knew all the arias from the operas because my father sang them all. Sometimes he sang revolutionary songs. He would put Nadya, Vera, me or Abram on his lap and sing and embroider on his machine. And thus we remembered all the songs. I can still sing some things, but the songs I learned in the music school and the songs I learned from him are a little mixed up in my memory. But father sang many songs that we were never taught at the music school, for instance, some spiritual songs.

My parents had practically no education. I have some of their letters and I can see that they were not very well educated. But my father knew literature very well. Mother liked to read very much. During military communism we lived in a house in Proreznaya Street and when there were shootings we hid in the basement. There was no light in the basement, and my father would recite works by different writers by heart to all who hid with us. I should add that all the Ratmanskys were very talented; it was a wonderful family, where each member felt the need to learn always more and more.

My mother read Russian literature. She couldn't read in Yiddish. She spoke Yiddish very well and knew about Mendele Moykher Sforim 7 and Bialik 8. She told me that in our room in Proreznaya Street the portraits of her parents hang on one wall and the portrait of Mendele Moykher Sforim, on the opposite wall.

When my brother went to school I was very jealous and I insisted on going to school as well. I was 6 years old when I first went to school. I went to school at a young age and at first they didn't want to admit me. The school was Russian, but there were many Jewish children. I remember that the director treated me very nicely.

I also remember that we had to wear school uniforms: a brown dress and an apron, first white and then black. We didn't have money to buy the uniform, so my mother sewed me a uniform from two pieces of material. But when I - being very proud of my new uniform - came to school in it, my director told me, 'Don't wear it anymore. It's not supposed to look like that.' With tears in my eyes I came home and my mother said, 'Oh, right, I forgot.' There were several children who didn't wear uniforms.

The director was a good woman. I liked her. I only got very worried when she checked how clean we were. During those checks we had to take off our clothes and I was very ashamed of having old underwear, sewn from different pieces because there were other children with beautiful new underwear. I hated those checks. They took place three times a year and they brought me severe sufferings.

We had good old teachers there. One of them, Yekaterina Alexandrovna, organized balls at school and taught us to dance. Once my father came to watch the ball and danced mazurka with this teacher! Can you imagine? Neither he nor my mother ever learned how to dance but they could dance all the fashionable dances.

There were many interesting things for me at school. I wasn't very good at mathematics. I was the weakest student, probably because I was the youngest. But my teacher, Feofan Kondratyevich, drew the class' attention to how I asked questions and didn't pay much attention to how I solved mathematical problems. He treated me very well. He once even asked my parents to come to school (closer to my graduation) and told them that I should go to the theatrical college. But my parents were skeptical about it; moreover, I was already studying in the music school.

But I was very good at reciting poems. Once, the son of a watchmaker invited my friend, Sarah Shkurovich, who was from quite a rich Jewish family, to take part in a competition of reciting poems. She refused to go alone and said she would take her friends. So, she took Sonya Grif, me, and I took my sister Vera, and we all went to the competition. And all of us recited poems. And I won the first prize. I was awarded a book for this, but it remained in Kiev and was certainly destroyed during the war. My teacher of mathematics gathered children who could recite poems at school. And he invited me too. He gave me poems to learn and I recited them at different competitions.

We spent most of our free time in the yard. We had a wonderful yard. I even have pictures of my friends from my backyard. We had mostly Jewish friends. There was only one German girl, Kaufman, but she was older than us. There was also a shoemaker who lived under our flat. He was a drunkard but a very nice man. He had a daughter, Nastya, who visited him often, and I made friends with her, too. The rest of my friends were Jewish: Sonya Grif, Luba Grif, Sarah Shkurovich (they moved to America). We played different games, but our favorite one was hide-and-seek. We also liked to stage different plays in the yard. We played in the yard, our audience was made up of other children, and we came up with ideas for the plays. Most of the plays were about fairies and queens.

I don't remember any Jewish traditions in the yard, but my father took my brother and me to the synagogue - not often, on major holidays only. Once my friend Sonya invited me to the wedding of her aunt Tanya. There for the first time I saw a chuppah. There were also boys of our age who helped with the wedding. It was a rich family, they had a store where they melted figures for tombstones, made decorations and sculptures. It was right next to our house. They had a wonderful signboard, but the workshop was in the basement.

On the other side of this store was a store that sold furs. It belonged to Rozenberg who had a daughter called Khaya. They lived in our house on the fourth floor, if I'm not mistaken, and they were very rich. They had a dacha, and once their mother took me to the dacha with them but I didn't like it there, it was a very different atmosphere.

I heard about pogroms mostly at the music school. There were many children from families that suffered pogroms. I was told that the Russian and the Polish elite lived in our building in Proreznaya Street. During the Civil War 9, in the yard of No. 19 - it's a cinema or a club now, back then it was a headquarters - I saw dead bodies. But I can't tell you for sure that it was a Jewish pogrom. I only know that when the Germans came there were no dead bodies in that yard. I never thought much about my Jewish identity. Maybe because my whole environment was Jewish.

We got into the music school very simply. Abram sang in the choir of the Opera and the leader of the choir once asked him, 'Abram, do you have any brothers or sisters?' He said, 'Yes, I have sisters.' The teachers said, 'Why don't you bring them here?' So, we came and were tested and admitted. All of us, even Nadya who couldn't walk very well yet. I was her tutor. I always held her by the hand. We were taken by different teachers: Abram was taken by Rabinovich, Vera and I were taken by Zovitskaya, and Nadya was taken by Israilevich. But Nadya couldn't be taught music. She had a musical ear, just like Vera and Abram. And she never wanted to play from music. Everything she played, she played by ear. So, she finally ran away and didn't go to music school any more. She was a wonderful musician. Finally, she went to work as a sound technician at a film studio.

My ear was a little worse. As Abram's teacher Rabinovich said, if I had been alone, without Vera, Nadya and Abram, I would be outstanding. But I went to music school almost every day, because we didn't only have piano lessons - we also studied history and listened to music. We had wonderful teachers: Pelman, Razumovskaya, Yavorsky, Beregovsky. Yavorsky came to teach us occasionally, Balchevsky-Balch, Bertye. My teacher, Zovitskaya, was outstanding.

There were a lot of concerts. At the park where symphonic concerts were given tickets were very expensive. So, Steinberg, who was very kind and loved children, issued us a ticket for 20 people! He once met us when we came to the rehearsal, talked to us, saw that we understood and felt music; he also listened to some of us playing (the best ones, of course, not me). So, he saw that we lived with music and supported us. That's why he issued us a ticket for 20 people and said, 'Please, come, even though it's bad for you to walk late at night, still please come.'

Once my friends and I couldn't get in to a concert. But we still wanted to go very much. So, I climbed through some fences and dirt, but I was caught by the guards. I said, 'Steinberg invited me!' Of course they didn't believe me. But suddenly Steinberg was walking up to us. The guards said, 'Listen, this girl claims that you've invited her. Tell her to stop lying!' And he said, 'Oh, of course she's invited!' And I was allowed in to the concert. He liked everybody who loved music so much. Later I met him in Moscow. He lived in the dormitory of the Conservatory. He recognized me and invited me to visit him. He was a very, very good man.

At home we only spoke Russian. In the beginning we didn't know Yiddish at all. We heard it for the first time when we moved to Kiev. Sometimes father and mother spoke in Yiddish, and we would say, 'Oh, our parents are speaking 'kalya-malya-fe' again. Vera began to go to a Jewish school, so she could read and write in Yiddish a little bit. But that school was far away and it was hard to get there, whereas my school was very close, so Vera was transferred to the same school as me. So, we spoke Russian, while students of the Culture League spoke Yiddish. They laughed at us a little bit, but we taught everybody to speak Russian.

The school of the Culture League gave us everything. That's why I want to do so much in my life, to get everyone 'infected' with my school. Our school was wonderful and our teachers were wonderful. It was at the school of the Culture League that I first realized that I was Jewish. It was a real Jewish school. Before that I had no idea that people were different. But here we were given Jewish books and we had Itsik Fefer and David Gofstein come and teach us. Noah Lurye taught literature. He organized a literary club. He told us about Bialik, Mendele, Sholem Aleichem 10. He also told us about Russian poets and writers. I still remember poems from that school. We had a very good newspaper in Yiddish and Russian that we wrote. We also had some real poets visit us. We were always very impressed when it happened. They talked to us, recited their poems. Then we would recite poems to them.

It was a purely Jewish school. It was in this school that I learned to speak Yiddish; only Yiddish was spoken there. But we weren't only taught Jewish subjects. M. Beregovsky led our children's choir. We sang Jewish folk songs that he brought from his expeditions. One of the girls, Feigele Zelikovskaya, that finished our school became a popular singer. She had a wonderful voice and I still remember the song she sang in our choir. We also sang Mozart's Requiem and staged an opera in which children acted and sang. Then we decided to compose our own opera. We wrote a libretto, music (Vera did most of that) and staged it. It was called Fairy Tale about Fairies. I played a prince. He had different fairies come to him: fairy of freedom, fairy of beauty. And at the end we sang together. The opera was in Yiddish.

As pioneers we also staged some plays, but these plays were distinctly proletarian. They were about fighting and revolution. We knew very well that there were rich people and poor people. For instance, rich kids learned how to play musical scales first. At our music schools we never learned that. We learned to play real works of music from the very beginning. We always laughed at those rich kids who had to learn those special scales and exercises. We also had eurhythmics at school, and our teacher, Marya Petrovna Levitskaya (who was Jewish) always told us that eurhythmics was more important than ballet. But my friend Veta Feldman and I liked ballet more and we secretly took ballet classes.

We always walked around together with friends and our pioneer leader Vitya. We went to see many plays at the theater. It was all very spontaneous. We were silly. We couldn't even speak Yiddish or Russian correctly. Vitya Khanchin taught us to speak Russian properly. He then married an artist from our school, Riva Magid.

Most of the children in the school were 8 to 15-16 years old. Many were from the Jewish shelter, the orphanage. The orphanage was in the center of Kiev. It was a big flat on the fourth or fifth floor. One room was for the girls - for younger and older girls - but they didn't have many boys for some reason, so the boys had a small room to themselves. There were around 50 children, mostly from outside Kiev, from very needy families or families that suffered from Jewish pogroms. Food was good there: potatoes, cabbages, sometimes even meat. It was always enough. When we had nothing to eat at our home we were sent there for a while and we gained some weight. There were three teachers and a governess - Tsipa Ratmanskaya [Lubov Ratmanskaya's cousin]. The owner was both a teacher and the director. The children did everything with their own hands. The Fourth Printing House in Kreschatik Street [the main street of Kiev] helped this orphanage financially. We gave concerts at this orphanage and also in some clubs.

Our life was very hard, and, in 1926, I went to work. Everybody wanted to be a worker with a red scarf back then. I was sent to work in an office, and at first, I was horrified by this work. But I got a wonderful profession there. I worked in a bank in Kreschatik Street and soon became a bookkeeper. Then I entered the English department at university. Then I went to Moscow to the Institute of Foreign Languages. At that time it was called the Institute of New Languages. But this institute was merged with a technical institute and we were supposed to become engineers who knew a foreign language. Well, we learned neither technical things nor language. So, I transferred to the economics department. Finally, in 1932, I found myself in the Engineering and Economics Institute, which I finished in 1937. Part of my diploma project was in English.

I went to Moscow because my sister Vera went to study at the Moscow Conservatory because of Genrich Neigauz. We were afraid to leave her alone, so I went to Moscow. Vera was a very talented pianist. In the morning I'd go and feed her, and then I went to work and to study.

At my Institute I suddenly learned that two boys from our group were arrested. They were simple Russian boys. They disappeared. And other people disappeared as well. At the university we organized a registry office for those students who wanted to get married. We were afraid to live together without getting married. I got married then. My husband's name was Vanya. He was a Cossack. We registered at our students' registry office because we were of different nationalities. We lived together for 4 months, and then he was arrested. He was arrested because he studied at the French department where there were only two boys: my Vanya and a French Jew. They were good friends. So, the French Jew was arrested first, and then, Vanya. Once I sent him some money (10 rubles) when he was in prison, but when I came the next time I was not allowed to pass him money. There were many officers in the reception room, and one of them told me in whisper, 'Girl, don't ever come back here.'

During the war

I got married a second time in 1941. My husband's name was Izya Kogan, he was Jewish. I worked at a radio plant, and he, at the sound recording factory. He recorded the speeches of Stalin and others. On the first day of World War II, he went to join the propaganda unit. He came home twice and the last time he came he brought four kilos of chocolate. Four kilos, when nothing at all could be bought in the stores! I didn't work then. And he got this chocolate and brought it to me. Then he left and I never saw him again. We lived together for one-and-a-half months.

During the war I lived not far from the Red Square. I was left absolutely alone because many people evacuated. I was working at the State Department for Highway Control, whose chief was my friend's husband. I didn't have any documents (they went to evacuation) but he knew me well, so he hired me. I worked there till 1942, when I learned that my mother died in Tashkent.

This is how she and my sister Vera got to Tashkent: they were at a dacha in Svyatoshino in the summer of 1941. Usually, Vera's husband, Kayum Kayburov, a famous violin player, took her to a sanatorium in the summer, but that summer there was some cultural festival and he had to be in Kazan. He was highly evaluated as one of the few Kazakhs with a university education, and he was also a wonderful violin player. They met at the Conservatory. So, in the summer of 1941, my mother went with Vera instead of Kayum. The war broke out unexpectedly. What could they do? Nadya and her film studio [Dovzhenko] were evacuated to Tashkent, and she insisted that mother and Vera should also go there. When I learnt that my mother died, I went to Vera in Tashkent. I cried all the way because I knew that my mother had died but Vera was told that she hadn't died, but that she had lethargic sleep. I brought Vera to Moscow from Tashkent, but I couldn't save her. She died in 1943 of a heart attack.

Father stayed in Kiev. I still have his letters. He never asked for anything in his life, but this time he suddenly wrote me and asked for money because he had nothing to eat. I sent him the money and, miraculously, he got it! He wrote me that he went to the market and bought meat. And I wrote him to leave Kiev immediately, but he didn't want to. He remembered the behavior of the Germans during World War I, so he stayed. After the war, Vera was told that when everyone was told to gather their belongings and go to the square our father said, 'We will be led to death,' and didn't take anything. He was killed in Babi Yar in 1941 11. My brother Abram was also killed, just as his wife Musya Rudnik, and their children Gena and Lara, and Musya's mother, and father's sister Vera Lyakhovetskaya. We aren't sure whether she was shot in Babi Yar, or whether she just died. But she died.

My mother's family lost my cousin Anya Rodnyanskaya [the daughter of her sister Khaya Smekhova] and her little daughter, and Bella Frumkina. They were killed in Belarus.

We had very big family - about 80 people: 32 cousins, with children and grandsons, 10 aunts and uncles. Some left for Israel, some went to America. Some of them (father's nephews) stayed and still live in Kiev. My cousin Lev Gertsenshteyn is the leader of one of the Jewish communities in Moscow. We have always made an effort not to lose contact and wrote each other letters. Some came to my 90th birthday. In order to mention all of them I'd have to write a long book.

After the war

After the war I lived in Zubovsky Boulevard and worked at the housing department as the chief of the planning department. But then two departments merged and I was fired. Later I was asked to return to work because I was good at accountancy. But my boss, Puchkov, was an awful anti- Semite; he tried to make me sign some papers about the fulfillment of plans that had never been fulfilled. He yelled at me, tried to throw me out of his office. But I was bold. I told him, 'I didn't come to work for you, but for the Soviet power.'

It was at that time that I entered the Institute of Foreign Languages. But my boss wouldn't let me off work to take exams. He said to me: 'Who will let you go to university? You're Jewish!' But I still graduated from this institute. Then the campaign against cosmopolitans 12 began and I was fired because my boss found somebody else for my place. I was fired despite the following facts: I had two university degrees, Y. I. Pisareva only had secondary education. I had worked for 10 years and lived in Moscow since 1930. She had only worked for less than 2 years and lived in Moscow since 1950. I lived in an official flat (I lost my own during the war). She had her own flat and lived there with her husband. I was a member of the Communist Party, and she was not. I was Jewish and she was Russian.

I believe no commentary is needed. According to the first four items they had to keep me. But because of the item 5 13 I was fired. For a long time I couldn't find a job. My friend, a Russian, who had studied at the Institute of Foreign Languages with me, said to me, 'I don't believe that you can't find a job because of your nationality. Our department needs a person who speaks English. I'll talk to my chief about an interview. If you don't get this job, I'll believe that it's because of your nationality.' I went to the interview, interpreted some conversations on the phone in English, got answers to a number of questions, and made a written report to the chief. He was very pleased with me and wrote a note to the chief of the personnel department. The chief of the personnel department sent my documents to the personnel department of the Ministry. I didn't get this job. My friend said, 'You were right, it was only because of item 5. Then another friend suggested that I should go to another institute to ask for work. The chief of the information department there asked me to translate an article, then took me personally to the chief of the personnel department. The chief of the personnel department opened my passport and asked in astonishment, 'How dare you to ask for a job here!' When the chief of the information department learned about this he said, 'Well, the personnel department will probably start doing our work soon.'

I had five friends at that time, all Jewish, and we were like sisters. We often discussed dangerous topics and were very concerned about Israel. I am still concerned whether Israel will withstand everything or not, and this relates to the question of whether the Jews will survive or not. If only one [nuclear] bomb is thrown at Israel, she will be gone and with her, a great number of Jews, too. That is why we were against the creation of the State of Israel, just because it was dangerous and would make it possible to get rid of many Jews at once. We talked a lot about it. We knew very well where Golda Meir 14 lived and we often went to that street. We wanted to go and visit her some time, but we understood that we shouldn't.

When I was working at the sanitary-engineering company, the chief engineer there was a Jew. He once whispered to me, 'If I could, I would walk to Israel on foot.' And he had a Russian wife.

I had very good bosses at the sanitary-engineering company. At that time I met Lev Susovich. In the beginning I didn't think anything. I was 40 years old and I thought my life was over. Suddenly he invited me to the stadium. I said I was not interested in such things. He said, 'But what if I'm trying to court you!' I asked, 'Why would you?' and he said, 'What if I want to live my life with you?' He was very handsome, highly educated; I could talk with him about everything. But I told him that I wasn't interested in married men. He asked, 'Who told you I'm married?' (Before that he had told me something about his daughter). I asked, 'How come you're single and have a daughter?' And he said, 'Different things happen in this life.'

Lev came from Volnovakha. When he was a boy he ran to the front to fight in World War I. By the way, this saved his family. His father, a Jew, was a merchant of Guild I 15. And only because Lev had fought at the front were they allowed to sell their house and his father was not arrested. They moved to Donetsk. Lev studied there, but he didn't finish university because the authorities suddenly remembered that he was 'socially inappropriate'. He worked with Bulganin 16 in Moscow, then he was arrested with all of them, then he fought at the front during World War II. He worked at a company next to ours, and that's how we met.

Lev courted me for 2 years. We got married and lived together for 25 years until his death. He was always very caring and nice. He had a daughter, Natasha. Her daughter Katya is like a granddaughter to me. Katya is now married to Dima Shekhtman, who is a professor, physicist and mathematician. They live in France. But they come here twice a year. Katya's children, Masha and Sholom, are my great-grandchildren. They call me Luba.

I'm retired. I worked until 1989. I was 80 when I retired. And I retired only because our institute was closed down, otherwise, I would have kept working. I always want to learn new things. Right now I would gladly start learning about computers.

Regrettably, I have never been to Israel. I always wanted to visit it, but it didn't happen. At the time it wasn't possible. When I was young I wanted to leave for Israel forever, but even to think about this was dangerous before the 1980s. Afterwards, when they all started to leave, I was already over 70. But at such an age it's much more difficult to change from an accustomed lifestyle.

Glossary

Ilona Seifert
Budapest
Hungary
Interviewer: Dora Sardi and Eszter Andor

My grandfather, Bernáat Riemer was born in ÓObuda. He studied bakery as an apprentice and then became a baker's journeyman. He worked diligently, and later bought the bakery where he had worked. Next to the bakery there was a shop where different kinds of breads, baker's wares, and all kinds of other foodstuffs were sold. They made challah too. Besides this, grandfather had a soda-water workshop.

My grandmother Júulia Krausz was born in Vienna. Her mother tongue was
German, but she could speak perfect Hungarian. They had eight children:
three boys and five girls.

All the children finished middle school, but one of my uncles graduated
from secondary school because he loved studying. My grandfather taught all
his sons the bakery trade because he said it was a very good trade; because
no matter what the world came to, people would always need bread and water.
So, all of his sons became bakers.

The girls were brought up to work too, they had to learn to tend the
counter in the shop and they worked there until they got married. There
were four girls; two were always in the shop, in fact only family members
worked there. Grandmother also worked in the shop and usually sat at the
cash till. Apart from having to work, the girls were given everything:
they got the nicest clothes, the best education, they learnt languages,
played the piano, and went out with their mum. Grandfather and grandmother
put a lot of emphasis on taking the children to many balls in the winter.
The girls got beautiful ball gowns, and they didn't want for anything, but
they were in the shop all year long.

Among the workers of the bakery there were Jews and non-Jews as well, but
that didn't matter. Grandfather had such a good social sense, that
everybody who worked there and all members of the family ate lunch at the
same table at noon. This is what it was like: The apartment was almost next-
door to the shop, and there was a long table in it where about twenty-two
to twenty-four people sat every day. Everybody ate the same meal together,
as grandfather didn't distinguish between family and the workers, however
everybody had to be extremely punctual for lunch, because he was awfully
fussy about that.

At grandfather's place, a cook made the meals and there was also a maid to
care for the apartment, because it was quite large. There was a huge
bedroom, a huge dining hall where the forty-two of us sat at Seder night,
plus a parlor, and two or three bedrooms where the children slept. In the
dining room there was a great big dining-room side-board and another
smaller one, both packed with beautiful porcelain ware and glassware.
Granddad and grandma went to Karlsbad for three or four weeks every summer,
and they always brought back a lot of porcelain-ware, and, of course
souvenirs for the children and grandchildren. My parents and the other
children who were married at the time always got a porcelain set or a set
of drinking-glasses. And we, the younger children got silk underwear,
because there they could get this Milan underwear, which it was not
possible to get here in those days.

Every day, a barber came to the house to give my grandfather a shave. My
grandmothers (both paternal and maternal,) had hairdressers come every
morning to help them with their hair; At the time they wore their long hair
up, with a bun in the middle, and they couldn't comb it themselves.

At grandfather's they had several coaches, both open and closed ones, which
they went out in. They had horses and a stable, and carriages for the
bakery, because they delivered to other shops as well.

My grandparents were very religious; they were not orthodox, but they
observed all the holidays. They didn't work on the Sabbath and the bakery
and the shop was not open then, but they were on Sundays. At Pesach they
had to "sell" the whole bakery. It was a kind of mock-sale, as it was
always sold to one of the leading baker's journeymen.

At the holiday times, the family assembled. The children and grandchildren
came, though other relatives usually did not, with the exception of one
uncle, Miksa Riemer (my grandfather's brother) who was widowed. He was
always invited.

Grandfather died in 1927, and following his death, the bakery and the shop
closed down. None of his children took them over, because they all had
their businesses own already. Grandmother lived until about the end of the
1930's. When she couldn't be at home any more, she moved into a very, very
elegant nursing home somewhere in Zugliget. That was a strictly Jewish
kosher place and she received the best care.

My maternal grandfather Samu Wollner was born in Ozora, and my grandmother
in Szenc. They also had a bakery, and a bakery shop, too. But unlike the
one owned by my paternal grandparents, it was smaller (they only had about
8-10 workers) and the common lunch was never introduced there and so
everybody went and ate separately. The boys were taught the bakery trade,
but the two girls didn't work, I think. Grandmother was in the shop on her
own, and when it was a business was brisk, there was a helper in the
bakery.

The Wollner grandparents had an apartment with four rooms plus a hall,
which I can also remember. It was nicely furnished too, but they didn't
have as large a collection of porcelain as my other grandparents did,
because they didn't go to Karlsbad. There were very nice carved pieces of
furniture, a standing clock - which was fashionable then - and a lot of
silverware. I remember that the display case was always full of silver:
trays and tableware. They had only one coach, and they had a coachman for
it, too. They did not have financial problems either, although they were
not as rich as my other grandparents.

Although grandmother loved cooking, they had a cook for a while. And
later, when they were left alone with grandfather, then they didn't need a
cook. There was a general housemaid, one of the little village girls
grandmother liked to train. And there was the washerwoman, who did just one
great big wash every month, though this took about 2-3 days.

I spent much more time at these grandparents. They lived much closer than
the Riemer grandparents did, and grandmother allowed much more. For
example, if somebody bought a kilo of bread, I could take handle the money.
Or when, at the weekends, the cholent was brought in dishes and a number
had to be labelled onto each pot, and the owner of the pot got the same
number: I was allowed to cut the number off the block, stick it onto the
pot and place it in its owner's hands. So she was much more grandmotherly.
The other grandmother was rather distant and more spoiled - we had to kiss
her hands in the formal way. I visited them about once in a month with
daddy.

We liked being there (at our maternal grandparent's) a lot. Grandfather
taught me to play chess and we would play for hours. He had time for me
during the day, as he didn't have much to do then, although he was down in
the bakery at five in the morning. He always used to take a nap in the
afternoon, and then go to the baker's casino every day (my other
grandfather went there less frequently).

They were very strictly religious, but they were also not orthodox. My
grandmother was the most religious of my grandparents. She began to make
the kosher dishes for Pesach months early. They belonged to the Páava
street synagogue-district, and they donated money for the construction of
the synagogue.

My mommy had four siblings, three boys and a girl. The first one was Pali,
who died for his country in World War I. Then there was Oszkar who married
my daddy's younger sister, Iréenke. The third boy was Sáandor, who was a
baker too, and also had a shop next to the bakery. My mommy's sister was
Kláara. She married a man named Sáandor Beck and gave birth to a little
boy. They also had a bakery, and Kláara worked in the shop.

My father was born in Budapest in 1894. He also learned the bakery trade,
just like his brothers. My mother was born in 1897, also in Budapest. They
got married in 1917, and they bought this house then. It was a single story
house and they extended it by building more stories on top. We lived in it,
and it also housed daddy's mechanized bakery and soda-water workshop. My
father's bakery was the first one to use a steam oven for baking bread.
There were two additional floors above the bakery. On the first floor
potatoes were kept. People liked potato bread a lot at that time, and every
day many hundredweight of potatoes arrived; There were about forty women
who peeled the potatoes. Then they were boiled, and put in the potato
masher, and sent straight down to the ground floor where there was the
trough in which leaven was mixed with a mixing machine. On the second floor
were at least eight apartments for the permanent staff members. These
apartments had all modern conveniences, including kitchens.

We had a lot of workers, and carriages and horses, there were about 22
horses, if not more. The workshop was in the backyard along with a stable
for the horses and a carriage-house for the carriages. We already had an
automobile quite early in the beginning of the thirties. There was a live-
in chauffeur, who took us to school every day and then brought us back home
again later. Father also drove and mommy took the 'automobile driver's
examination' as well, but when they went out somewhere, the chauffeur
drove; That was chic.

There was a terrace rather than a roof, on top of the house and my parents
had a garden made for us there, with a child's sandbox, a flower garden and
beautiful garden furniture set. There were eight rooms in our apartment:
bedroom, children's room, parlor, dining room, drawing room, living room.
The parlor was beautiful. It had golden furniture in, including two large
standing mirrors with golden frames. Then there was a drawing room for
daddy - with a suite of furniture, bookshelf and a filing cabinet. The
living room was a great big room and we actually spent the whole day there.
We even dined there sometimes.

Then there was a huge dining hall. It was a special room with lovely
furniture and carpets, which had to be taken care of: you couldn't drop
crumbs or make them dirty every day. We used the dining room when we had
company at the house. There were plenty of guests in our house because at
the time social life was very fashionable. My parents usually invited
factory owners like themselves, wholesalers, merchants, district borough
members and suchlike. I loved the guests, and we were dressed nicely on
these occasions. I sang, and mommy played the piano. My sister did not
often come in, because she was shy. After supper the women usually went
into the parlor had a chat there, and the men stayed in the parlor or went
to the drawing room.

The children's room was furnished with white pieces of furniture. Our
'fraulein' slept there with us. There was one room just for the live-in
cook and another small room for the maid. Nobody slept in the kitchen.

Naturally there was a bathroom with running water and a tub connected to a
bathroom stove that had to be heated up. At that time people took a bath
only on Sundays, and if someone took a bath every day she was considered
kind of a bad girl. But we took a bath least every other day or so.

I was born in Budapest in 1921. I was named after one of my aunts. She had
died in 1918 during the Spanish flu epidemic, and my grandmother asked her
daughter-in-law that if her child was a girl, she should be named Ilona, in
her honor.

Not long after my birth a German 'fraulein' came to us from Graz, Austria.
Herta spent eight years with us, and our first language was German. We
spent the whole day with our 'fraulein': we spoke, sang and played with
dolls. We went for walks with her; 'Ferenc téer' was close to our home, and
I loved going, because there were always so many children there. There were
times when we went for a walk with mommy, and we would go to a
confectioner's and drink hot chocolate, or coffee with cream.

We observed all the religious holidays before the War. We were not
orthodox, but we took chicken to the shochet we bought meat in kosher
shops. We observed the Sabbath: there was no lighting, nor were the meals
heated-up. Later, after the war it was no longer that strict. In our house
the typical Friday night meal was gefillte fish, meat soup, and, I think,
breast or back of goose, mashed potato and pickles. I remember as it got
closer to Pesach, they began preparing the ovens for the holiday and there
were special Pesach dishes. Seder nights too, remain unforgettable. Every
other year the first Seder was always held at my maternal grandmother's
house and the second at the paternal grandmother's, and in the following
year, the situation was reversed. There were more children at my paternal
grandparents', so there were about 34-36 of us there, and 28 at the other
place. We children had small colored drinking glasses and we got a tiny
drop of wine, and we had fun together at the end of the table.

We spent every Sunday with our parents. We talked a lot and we also went to
the movies, when we were a little older. I remember we went to the Corvin
cinema every Sunday, where a ticket cost one pengo, and we always sat in
the same place. We were taken to theatrical plays that were held on Sunday
afternoons and on such occasions our 'fraulein' also came along with us. My
parents went to the theatre but not often. Sometimes when the weather was
nice, we went to Lake Balaton, but we never had our summer holidays there.

We went to Abbazia (Opatia, in Croatia today) and to Semmering (Austria)
for summer holidays from early childhood until quite late. We went to
Semmering supposedly to give us a better appetite, because we were so
skinny. Daddy came to Semmering only at the weekends. We spent a month at
both places. In Abbazia, he was with us for a few days, sometimes even for
two weeks, but we were there with mommy for a month (and in Semmering too).

The whole extended family went down to Abbazia at the same time. We went
there by train. Oh, that was a big journey, it took almost a whole day, and
we also had to change trains at Fiume (Rijeka today, in Croatia) with our
large amounts of luggage. We all lived in Breiner Hotel, which was a
strictly kosher hotel. I remember that the meat table and the meat section
were set with red covers, and the milk ones with nice blue tablecloth. You
could eat meat or milk-based meals, but the two parts were separated. This
one was the only kosher hotel in Abbazia, so all our Jewish acquaintances
also went there. The family all went together, my mother and the two of us
children, the two of us (and of course the fraulein - if she worked all
year, it was natural that we didn't leave her out and go on holiday without
her!) My mother's younger sister with her two sons went, as did the
grandparents, and I think, others as well. There were a lot of children in
Abbazia, acquaintances, lots of relatives and neighbors. Everybody knew
everybody. There was also always a rabbi, who spent his summer holiday
there, because the place was kosher enough that he could come. And he gave
a religious service every Sabbath, as there was a synagogue there too.

I went to elementary school in Mester street. That was a prole (working
class) neighborhood; children of workers went there and we, who came from
better-off houses, were told to bring double portions of elevenses (second
breakfast) so the children who didn't get it from home, could also have a
share. It was assigned who should bring two of what, and we gave it all to
the schoolmistress in the morning, so that no-one actually saw who got
whose elevenses, but the poorer children got the same thing as the children
of richer households. In the elementary school I didn't make many friends
among my classmates, because when we came out of school our fraulein was
always already waiting for us, and we went to Ferenc square and played
there, where we had friends who were Jewish too.

After the elementary we both my sister and me got into Veres Páalnée High
School. We had to wear uniforms at school. They were a dark-blue 'bocskai'
[Hungarian national dress] for weekdays, striped linen in the spring, and
for holidays, there was a white blouse. There were more Jews in the class
than non-Jews: There were about 42 in total and 24 of us were Jews. But
there was not a single Jew amongst the teachers, except the religious
studies teacher. However the Jews and the non-Jews got along perfectly well
with each other, so well that the class have been meeting almost every
three months or so since graduation right up until the present day. There
was only a single anti-Semitic statement by someone but she has since
protested a million times that it was a misunderstanding. When we wore
rosettes of the national colours on March 15 (national holiday of Hungary,
anniversary of the revolution in 1848) she said: " It's a good mask for you
Jews, that you wear it, too." Veres Páalnée was an excellent school. It was
the school of the National Woman's Training Association, and the first all-
girls high school in the whole of Budapest.

During high school years, from 1937-1938 there were so-called house-
parties. I remember that we had Jewish company and not many Christians were
there. From the parties we were not allowed to go home alone, and the
parents would come to fetch us. We went to the theatre too, but then as
well, the father or mother of one of us always came to collect us
afterwards, as we were not allowed to go alone in the evening. Later, when
we were about 16-17 years old, we were allowed to go on hikes and biking
too.

I was about 14-16 years old when I went to Gizi Utasi for a few years. She
had a school, where she taught stage dance and acrobatics. I always loved
gymnastics, and loved going there. At the end of the year, there always was
a performance in the operetta-theatre of the capital, in which the students
sang and danced. There were at least 10-12 of us. We learnt to play the
piano at home as the piano teacher always came to us and we learned
languages (French) at home too.

While I was still at high school I got accepted to the singing faculty of
the Academy of Music, because I had a very good voice, I went there for two
years, and then as a consequence of the anti-Jewish laws I did not have the
opportunity to study further.

In 1939 I graduated from high school and I went to work in my father's
workshop. I was in charge of the whole soda-water workshop, because my
father, who was the president of the trade - didn't have enough time for it
himself. He was awfully proud of me. I learnt a lot there, such as
determination, leadership skills, and it really determined my whole life.

(Mrs Seifert declined to talk of the Holocaust or of the family members she
lost)

I was neither in the Budapest ghetto, nor deported during the Holocaust; I
just went into hiding. My sister and I were hidden in many, many different
apartments and we were helped by very many non-Jews. Mommy was hiding too,
mostly with daddy. Some sort of instinct suggested not going anywhere where
many Jews were being gathered together. On the 15th of November 1944, I was
drafted into the national clothing collecting unit, which was situated in
the former Jewish school in Abonyi utca. The whole family went there and it
was from there that we were liberated.

In 1945 my parents reopened the soda-water workshop in place of the old
one, which had been looted. In the mornings I went to the district of Pava
utca. Out of the old believers only a very few came back and a couple of
the children were found. But there was nowhere to put the children, and the
adults could not work. So I proposed to building a nursery. I learnt that
the first delegation of Joint (American Jewish Joint Distribution
Committee) had arrived in Budapest, and I went to them to ask them for
their help with the nursery. They offered to open not only a nursery but
also a day care home for older children. They also set up a kitchen, and
covered all its costs.

The nursery was ready in a very short time. Most of the leaders of the
Jewish community of Budapest came to the opening and people came from
abroad too. When the inauguration was over, the district ceremony's speaker
was asked to thank Miss Ili Riemer for the huge amount of work she had
done. I didn't know who was going to do this, but shortly I found out that
it was Dr. Geza Seifert, (attorney at law). His family lived there in the
district, and he attended the synagogue in Pava utca, too. When I first saw
him I said to myself: "I've dreamt about a man like him my entire life, and
he, and only he, could become my husband." And then I went along to the
synagogue with daddy on Friday nights, and after prayer daddy kindly lagged
behind and so my future husband always walked me home. A few months later
he asked me if I was willing to board a ship of which he was the commander.
I replied that it would be the most beautiful moment of my life. Our
wedding was in 1947 in the Dohany utca synagogue. Our daughter was born in
1948. (She now works as a graduate and has a son who has also graduated
from university.)

We kept a kosher house with my husband (it loosened up only after his
death). I had a cook who knew everything about the kosher household. She
said she had served only good houses and wouldn't have been employed if she
hadn't known so much about how to manage a kosher house. And she even said
that she wouldn't work for anyone but Jews, because she'd once been at a
non-Jewish family where the staff hadn't had the same meals the family ate,
and it had really hurt them. At Jewish households however, this was not he
case: what the family ate, was also eaten out in the kitchen and the meals
were not portioned, there was always plenty to go around. Then I had
somebody to look after the child, which was her only task the whole day,
but I was the only one to take her for walks.

From the time I got married, my husband didn't allow me to work. He said: I
earn enough that we can live very well, and what I like is that when I come
home my wife is there, so you shall just be my wife and our child's mother.
Until he closed his eyes forever, I had never had a job; I had only taken
part in Jewish matters, and helped him. But I was always busy doing
something.

My husband had his own attorney's office. It was a co-operative at the
time, but he asked for, and got, permission to work his office hours at
home, since the apartment was large enough. Two weeks after we were married
I went to learn typing and shorthand. He already had two secretaries and
two trainee lawyers in the office, but I adored him and I wanted to be at
his disposal in every way. So on Saturday nights and Sundays he dictated to
me. During the week I went to the court and I copied out the files of my
husbands client's in his criminal cases. My husband also entrusted me with
managing releases and such.

We received a car quite early on, the basis that my husband simultaneously
administered the duties of the deputy president of Jewish Community of
Budapest (Israelite Community of Budapest.) and his position at the lawyer
co-operative. Since he was first elected president then deputy president
and he was elected to be the vice-president of the National Representative
Board of Hungarian Israelites in 1966. (He performed this duty until 1976
when he closed his eyes.) So we got "the Moskvich". We used to be very
proud because when we went walking on Vaci utca after the office, whe'd
always return to the car to find 10-15 people around it: squatting, looking
underneath it. We would just watch them. Later better cars came along, but
none of the others attracted the same admiration as the Moskvich had.

I spent my entire life in service for Jews. Since I was a young girl, I had
worked in the youth group, which was under the auspices of the district
woman's group. Since there were poor families at that time too, (not
everybody was rich or wealthy) every boy and girl in the youth group was
allocated a family in great need. Naturally, we asked money from our
parents to support them, and they gladly gave, because they were happy that
we were learning about social Jewish life, and that giving to help others
is one of the most beautiful things. So we supported them. Izrael Klein was
my family, they had seven children. But I provided them with everything.

After 1945 I participated in rebuilding Jewish life as a member of the
youth group. Later I became a member of the Jewish community woman's group.
I began in Pava utca, then the central woman's section of BIH (Israelite
Community of Budapest) was formed and when the president died, I was
elected and went on to be the president of the woman's section for twenty-
something years.

When my husband was elected, first as deputy president, then as president,
he was invited abroad a lot for Jewish matters, owing to the leading role
he played in the Jewish world congress. I always went with him, as he
accepted these invitations only on the condition that he could take me
along. We went to almost all the cities of Europe.

After the death of my husband I was invited (by the State Office of
Religious Affairs) to be the general secretary of the Israelite Community.
I told them that I would take the position only after asking the orthodox
president and the chief rabbi, and they agreed to this. When I went and I
told them the offer I had been made, the chief rabbi said: " It doesn't say
in the Sulkhan Arukh that the general secretary of the BIH has to be a man,
so why can't a woman do that? But on one condition: that you walk the same
path your husband did". And then he said afterwards: "Let me the first one
to bless you" So, in 1976 I was elected to be general secretary, and I
filled this position for 15 years. Then I went to work for Joint. This is
how it happened.: The Joint came to Hungary in 1945, to help rebuilding
Jewish life here. When after the Six-Day War, the Israeli ambassador was
sent home, the Joint was also closed down. And when Jewish groups came here
from abroad, there was nobody to welcome them, and they always phoned me
from Joint to do it. This way I played a key role between the Jewish
community and the Joint and they knew me well.

When the 15 years as the general secretary of BIH was about to end, Joint
asked me how long I wanted to stay general secretary. I told them that I
would be resigning at the next election. To this they replied: "so, it may
be possible for you to come over to us?"

I said: "To be honest: it has been my dream and desire all my life, to work
for Joint, because there is no more beautiful work than helping people." So
the Joint came back, and they asked me to open the office on the first of
July 1990. Since then I have been a protocol chief, and with God's blessing
I managed office affairs and foreign relations.

Lydia Piovarcsyova
Bratislava
Slovakia

Family background

Growing up

During the war

Post-war

Glossary

Family background">Family background

I was born on 2nd April 1933 in Bratislava into an urban Jewish family,
whose Bratislava roots date back to the first half of the 19th century. The
Steiner family came to Bratislava in the 18th century. One could say that
our prime began in 1846, when my great-grandfather established a second-
hand bookshop he named after himself, Steiner. Today the store is managed
by my cousin Selma and I'm proud to say that it is one of the most
important cultural centers of Bratislava. It is the heart of the old town,
and the front of the store looks like it did a hundred years ago.

On the Steiner side, I didn't know my great-grandparents. When I was born
they were already dead. My grandfather Sigmund Steiner was born in Kojetin,
then Austria-Hungary, in 1821. As far as I know he was an Orthodox Jew. He
was married to Josephine Steinerova, nee Bendinerova, my grandmother, who
was born in 1814 and died in 1891 in Bratislava. They had a big family; ten
children: Jozef, my father, who died in Auschwitz in 1942, and then my
aunts and uncles Nely, Wilhelm, Moritz, Siegfried, Esperance, Max, Margit,
Gustav and Josefine.

Three Steiner brothers fought as soldiers in World War I. For some military
achievements - I'm not sure what exactly - they were all awarded medals.
The oldest of the three was Doctor Siegfried Steiner, Zelma's father. The
second was Jozef, my father, and the third one was Max, who was later the
owner of the Steiner bookshop along with my father. All the Steiner
brothers and sisters lived in Bratislava, except for their sister Margit,
who is buried in the Orthodox cemetery in Bratislava, next to my
grandmother.

My mother Margita Steiner, nee Abrahamova, was born in Banovce nad
Bebravou. Her father Jakub Abraham was a watchmaker. He was born in Tarnov,
then Austria-Hungary in 1876, came to Slovakia as a businessman and settled
in Zabokreky nad Nitrou. He fell in love with my grandmother Ella, they got
married and lived in Banovce nad Bebravou on the village's beautiful
square. He and my grandmother were both very good-looking people. He was a
Nordic type, blonde with blue eyes. My grandmother was of Spanish origin.
Her family left Spain when the inquisition expelled the Jews; their Spanish
name was Aguilar. She had a typical Spanish appearance, black hair, big
dark eyes and pale skin. In a picture of her, taken when she was fifty, she
looked like Jose Careras. I think they must have had the same ancestors; in
the family there were many singers, even opera singers. Many intellectuals,
university professors, in Vienna and other places, were from that family.

When my grandmother got married they lived in Banovce. From Banovce they
moved to Kezmarok in 1942 to live near their daughter Irenka. They learned
that their son was again wanted by the police and the police wanted to
arrest them as hostages. So they left for Kezmarok to avoid this. Later my
grandmother went to Budapest with Irenka. My grandfather Jakub died during
an operation in 1948; the doctors didn't know that he had high blood
pressure. He is buried in the Orthodox cemetery in Kosice.

My grandparents had a shop and lived with the Weinberger family. There was
a long yard, on one side there was the watchmaker and jewelry shop of my
grandfather, and just opposite was the big grocery store of the
Weinberger's. They were a big family; their daughter was called Renka. All
of them died in the gas chambers in 1942.

My grandparents on my mother's side had three children. The eldest son was
called Viliam. He was an educated man, a pharmacist and a chemist as well.
He was an illegal activist during the war. [Editor's note: He was most
likely an illegal communist] He was hiding, then he was arrested in Ilava
and imprisoned in solitary confinement. He learned several languages there.
He spoke ten languages. When he was released he worked in Smolenice with a
Hungarian pharmaceutical family. He lived there until 1944. He invented a
medicine against chin cough. He gave it to poor children for free. When the
Germans found out, they asked him to give them the medicine. He refused, so
they took him away and deported him to a concentration camp. He died of
typhoid fever in Landsberg concentration camp. I don't know where is it, I
just know that he died there. [Editor's note: Landsberg concentration camp
was situated near munich, today Germany.]

My mother had a twin sister, Irenka, who got married to Mr. Winczer in
Kezmarok. They had a son called Palo. Her husband was killed in a
concentration camp, they threw him down the hill on a pile of stones in a
stone quarry. The boy stayed alone. He lived in Poland for several years
and when they learned he was of Slovak origin from Kezmarok, they contacted
the police and the boy came back to Slovakia. Irenka married for the second
time in Budapest, then she lived in Kosice and died in Bratislava in 1997.
She is buried in the Neolog 1 cemetery in Bratislava under the name
Galambosova. When we went to see Irenka, she needed a lot of nursing: to
iron, to tidy, to do some shopping. There was always very little time, we
were in a hurry and had no time to see the cemetery.

My father was born in 1895 in Bratislava, Slovakia, then Austria-Hungary.
He also ended his life in the Holocaust, in Auschwitz concentration camp in
1942.

Growing up">Growing up

I often stayed with my grandparents in Banovce nad Bebravou during
holidays. At home I had a nanny because my mother worked. I have to say
that I was never really close to my mother. She never had time for me, so I
don't know much about her.

I studied at an Orthodox Jewish school on Zochova Street in my first and
second years, and Vilma Lowyova was my teacher. I remember one girl from
school. She was an orphan; her name was Kaufmanova. She died in the
Holocaust. We weren't friends. The children played together in groups
according to their social status. Children from better-off families were
grouped together and didn't know the others.

My best friend was Sulamit Nagelova. Her father had an antique shop on
Kapucinska Street, but a library is there nowadays. Sulamit was a blonde
girl with blue eyes and I loved her very much. She also died in the
Holocaust. One girl survived; she was called Ullmanova. One of her
relatives was a journalist. She had wavy hair, was so beautiful and so self-
confident - even as a child. I cannot remember the other children because I
grew up in quite some isolation. I had a nanny and wasn't allowed to play
with other children. I always had to play alone.

On Saturdays we used to visit our family, so I knew my cousins, but I
couldn't play with other children; they couldn't come to see us and I
couldn't really go anywhere. I don't know why it was like this. I had to
speak English at home. I could speak English perfectly then because Zigi's
mother was an Englishwoman and she spoke to me in English only. But I was a
lazy girl and I forgot all my English.

During the war">During the war

During the war the Jewish Center was on Kozia Street, in the house where
Mrs. Alexandrova lives today. I have a photograph of my mother taken on
17th July 1941. She looks terribly worried in that picture. My mother was
very pretty, and they used to speak about her as the beauty of Bratislava.
But in this picture her worries are already visible in her features. My
mother died in Auschwitz in 1942.

She filled in the mandatory Jewish identity card with her own handwriting;
she had a very nice handwriting, inherited from her mother. I would like to
donate that photograph to an institution, because I think it has historical
value. I tried to make a copy of it, but the copy wasn't good. The yellow
color of the card must be seen because I think it's symbolical; the
photopaper simply must be yellow.

During the war my grandparents and aunt in Kezmarok took care of me. After
the Slovak National Uprising 2 started and after Slovakia's occupation by
the German army, I stayed in Bratislava. In 1945 I was imprisoned by the
Gestapo and taken to Theresienstadt 3, where I went through atrocities
and sufferings. Finally, after May 1945, I was able to return home.

Post-war">Post-war

After the Holocaust, I lived with my relatives in Kezmarok. I graduated
from high school in 1952. Later on I enrolled in Economic University in
Prague and graduated in 1957. A few years before that, in 1953, I married
my non-Jewish friend Karol Piovarcsy with whom I have been living until
now. My husband and I returned to Slovakia, to Poprad, where he was
employed by an industrial company. My father's hair was thick and wavy; my
son Karol, born in 1953, inherited it, it's just not as pitch-black as my
father's. And in fact, I inherited it, too. The Steiner family had mostly
wavy hair, a bit African, I suppose you could say. Who knows where we
really come from.

Some members of our family are buried in Kosice, in the Orthodox cemetery.
It's very sad that there is nobody taking care of this cemetery. I've never
been to Kosice since the war. And we've only visited my grandmother's grave
twice.

Not long after the war I visited Banovce with my husband. The house was in
its place, and they even let me see the apartment where my grandparents
used to live. Later, when I was there on a business trip, I was completely
shocked. Not only that the Jews were all gone - everybody perished in the
Holocaust - but they had also destroyed the town. I mean that literally;
even the beautiful square was demolished during the Communist rule. In
Bohemia they would have never demolished such a beautiful square with its
typical one-storied houses. All the shops were owned by Jews.

The Steiner children who survived the Holocaust, apart from me, because I
didn't live in Bratislava are: Cvi, Cipora, Natan, Shoshana, David, Chana,
Jehoshua. All of them live in Israel now, only Cipora died long ago in
Israel. She was married to an Israeli scientist and her daughter is an
artist.

I worked as a high school professor in Poprad. In 1972 we moved with our
two children Karol and Jana, born in 1958, to Bratislava. I worked there
until I retired three years ago. At present, I work at the Bratislava
Jewish Community Center.

Glossary">Glossary

Yakov Driz
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya

My family background
Growing up
School years
During the war
Post-war
Anti-Semitism
Married life
Glossary

My family background

I was born in the town of Tomashpol, in the Vinnitsa region of
Ukraine, on 3 July 1937. I was given the name Shloima-Yankel, in honor of
both my grandfathers. The origin of our family name Driz is as follows: In
the 1700s my great grandfather was to enlist in a 25-year term of service
in the tsarist army. Such military service was very difficult, and so to
spare him this hardship, his family decided to hide him somewhere far away
from Tomashpol. Since he had no education and could barely write out
Gaisinskiy, his last name, they decided to give him a new last name. They
just made one up, and all his descendants were called by this new family
name - Driz.

Shloima Driz, my father's father, was born in 1860. All I know about
him is what my parents told me, as he died before I was born. My
grandfather was an educated man for his time. He could play the violin, he
loved music, and he read a lot. He owned a store that sold all kinds of
merchandise - from food products to fabrics and shoes. My father worked as
a clerk in my grandfather's store. From time to time my grandfather took
business trips abroad. He usually traveled to Poland, where he purchased
fabrics. In 1920 the Soviet power expropriated my grandfather's store. My
grandfather couldn't overcome this shock. He contracted tuberculosis and
died in 1921.

My grandmother Eheived (this was her real name, and she was also
called Eva), born Averbuch, was a modest, religious woman. The family lived
in Tomashpol, one of many Jewish towns in the Vinnitsa region. My
grandmother was born the same year as my grandfather. My grandmother
Eheived starved to death in 1933 during the famine in the Ukraine1. Like
my grandfather, she was buried at the Jewish cemetery in accordance with
all Jewish traditions. She gave birth to ten children, eight of which
survived. My father, Abram Driz, born in 1884, was the oldest. The youngest
was Boris (Borukh) Driz, born in 1904. The difference between their ages
was 20 years. I can't remember all of my father's brothers and sisters, but
I can tell briefly about those I knew. One of his brothers, Nuhim, was an
active revolutionary and a Komsomol activist2. In 1919 he was killed in
Kiev while trying to escape from prison. He may have been killed by a
Denikin gang3. Another brother, Shmul or Samuel, was a poet. He and two
sisters who were dentists moved to the United States of America in 1919 or
1920. My father was not able to move to America with his brother and his
sisters, because as the oldest of the children, he had to support his
family by working, and did not have the opportunity to continue his
education. My father had only a primary school religious education. There
were two other brothers - I can't remember their names. One of the brothers
lived in Odessa. I don't know what he did to earn a living. In 1941 he and
his family - his wife Rieva and his daughter Tsylia perished in the Odessa
ghetto. His second brother - I don't remember his name - lived in
Privokzalnaya Street in Vinnitsa. Like my father, he was uneducated, and
worked as loader and carrier at the market to support his wife and two
children. They were killed by the Germans in 1941. Boris, my father's
younger brother, served in the Soviet army and then resumed his
agricultural studies, graduating from Moscow's Academy of Agriculture. He
enjoyed farming. Later, he became director of the first vehicle and tractor
maintenance facility in the Ukraine, located in the Odessa region. When the
war began he went to the front. In 1945 he served in the Soviet army in
Eastern Prussia. From there he was transferred to the Japanese front.
Later, the Ministry of Agriculture requested his return, as he was an
experienced specialist. He became director of the selection facility for
grain crops. He became Chief Agriculture Specialist in the Ulianovsk
region. Boris spent his last years in Ulianovsk, where he died in the
1960s.

Yiddish was spoken in my father's family, which was religious. They
always celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays and strictly observed all
Jewish traditions. My grandmother, Eheived, followed the kashruth and often
went to the synagogue. My father told me that they had beautiful Pesach
dishes in the house.

My parents married in 1917. My mother's name was Tsypa; her family
name was Zeltser. She was born in the Jewish town of Miastkovka - now
Gorodovka - not far from Vinnitsa, in 1893. The only thing I know about my
mother's parents is that her father's name was Yankel. After their wedding
my parents moved to Tomashpol. My mother's parents died before I was born.
My mother often told me that she was a granddaughter of the Miastkovka
rabbi, even at that time when it was dangerous to mention such facts. They
had three daughters in the family. My mother was the youngest. Their oldest
daughter, Haika, born in 1890 moved to the village of Velikays Kostnitsa
near Bessarabia, in the Vinnitsa region, on the Dnestr River. My aunt's
husband worked at the local mill. They had no children. At the beginning of
the war Aunt Haika's husband went to the front. There, he fell in love
with a nurse and never returned to my aunt after the war. She moved to
Tomashpol and lived there with my parents until she died. The second sister
was born in 1892. I don't remember her name. She and her husband David
Krivoviaz died during some epidemic. They had a daughter named Manya. My
parents took Manya to live with us, and she stayed until she got married.
We spoke Yiddish in our family. The daughters were educated at home, and
didn't go to school, but had private teachers teach them to read and write,
as well as the rules of conduct in society, good manners and foreign
languages - German, French.

My mother was very well educated for her time, she could read, write,
and even knew Latin. She worked at the drugstore before she got married.
She had beautiful handwriting. My mother learned to play the guitar before
she got married. When I was small Mama liked to sing a certain song in
Yiddish, accompanying herself on her guitar. This song was played at her
wedding. I remember some rhymes from this song in Yiddish: "Der shnei ist
geyongen drai Teig der Hanond", which means "It snowed 3 days in a row...",
etc. Later this guitar lay broken in our attic, but my mother couldn't
bring herself to throw it away. My mother didn't have a perfect voice, but
she was very musical.

My parents met in a very typical manner for their time. My mother was
living in Miastkovka and my father lived in Tomashpol. At that time, there
were people called "shathen" in Yiddish, who were engaged in matching
couples. They told my father's parents about a girl from a good family who
was of age to get married. My parents were introduced to each other and
soon married. They had a traditional Jewish wedding with a huppah. My
father was a shy, hard-working man. My mother told me that she liked him at
once. After the wedding, my father worked at grandfather's store for some
time. Later, after the store was expropriated, he went to work as a laborer
at the Tomashpol sugar factory. My parents had no children for almost ten
years. I was born on 3 July 1927 when my father was 43. In two years' time,
on 25 June 1929, my sister Polia was born.

Growing up

I remember my town, Tomashpol, since about 1933, when I was six. My
grandmother died at this time and this was during the period of famine in
the Ukraine. I remember seeing in the streets people swollen from
starvation. Some were still alive, but couldn't get up, and others were
already dead. All corpses were put on a horse-driven cart and taken away.
We were very poor. I remember my mother going to the market on
Sundays. She used to buy one glass of sour cream. We spread it on slices of
bread in very thin layers. But that sour cream didn't last long, and too
quickly, my sister and I found ourselves looking forward to the next
Sunday. My father continued working at the sugar factory. I knew the way to
the factory, so almost every day, mother sent me out to bring lunch to my
father. With spades, father and the other laborers packaged sugar in bags,
sealed them and loaded them on racks. At night, to earn some extra money,
my father worked as a night watchman.

In 1932, to save the family from starving to death, my parents had to
move to a village in the Kryzhopol district. There they got a job at the
mill. Father was paid with grain and this saved our family from starvation.
My sister and I stayed behind with grandmother and grandfather in
Tomashpol. My grandfather left us a house. There were three rooms and a
cellar where we kept food products and wood. It was a solid, warm wooden
house. My grandfather also left us some furniture. I remember a huge
cupboard with bunches of grapes carved on the doors. There was a shed in
the yard. During the occupation, when we were moved to the ghetto, our
houses remained empty, and people from neighboring villages removed windows
and doors and everything that was left in the houses. Later, the remains of
our house were removed to serve as firewood for heating the German and
Rumanian commandant's offices. It turned out that they sent people from the
ghetto to do this work, and I was among those who were sent to remove our
house. We were to take the wood to the gendarmerie. Chopping this wood was
a very difficult job. The house was made of hard oak beams and we had only
blunt saws with which to chop the beams into firewood.

My parents were religious. They went to the synagogue once a week, on
Friday. I remember there were two synagogues in Tomashpol. The big one was
called "Bes midrash". When I was five or six years old the authorities
closed and then removed this synagogue. But people kept coming to this
place like to the Wailing Wall to pray. The other synagogue was smaller
and was near our house. It was a long, one-story building with a basement.
On holidays they took the Torah out of this basement. Children carried the
Torah on holidays. My father had a thales and a tefillin at home. When I
reached the age of thirteen, my parents arranged a Bar Mitzwvahu for me,
and the rabbi conducted the ritual. We had many people at home on this day
- many friends and relatives came to the party. My mother lit candles every
Friday to pray. My father also prayed.
We also had ceders, everything that a traditional Jewish family would
have. I asked my father four traditional questions. I remember them until
now.
We observed all Jewish holidays at home. I especially remember Pesach
and Hanukkah. Pesach was a very festive holiday. When we were small they
took special dishes from the attic for Pesah festivities and we always
looked forward to these days. We got used to our dishes in the course of
the year and it was so exciting to view patterns on our Pesah dishes. A few
days before Pesach my parents and I went to buy flour - one and a half
pounds (one pound - 16 kg). We took this flour to the house where they
baked Matzoh. Jewish women worked there. They made dough and baked Matzoh
in big ovens. We always looked forward to eating Matzoh. We took a big bag
of Matzoh from the bakery home. During Pesach we helped our mother to make
flourt from this Matzoh. Later, Mama made delicious biscuits, cookies, and
pancakes that were called latkes from this flour. My mother cooked
traditional Pesach dishes: stuffed fish, clear chicken soup with dumplings
made from Matzoh and eggs, chicken neck stuffed with liver, and strudels
with nuts and raisins. We also had seder dinners at Pesach, everything that
a traditional Jewish family would have. I asked my father the four
traditional questions4. I remember them even now.

I also remember Hanukkah - my sister and I got some change from our
relatives on this day. We could buy some ice cream or toys with this money.
We always looked forward to Hanukkah, because, as I said, we were poor. And
some small change to buy an ice cream or a ticket to the cinema was a quite
an amount for us.

About 80% of the population in Tomashpol was Jewish. There were
Ukrainian villages near Tomashpol: Tomashpilka and Beloye. We children
went to one and the same school. Many Ukrainian children from the
neighboring families and my classmates knew Yiddish. They often came to
our house and we talked in Yiddish. There were no Jews left in Tomashpol
after the Great Patriotic War. Many of them were killed, the rest of them
left, but many people living there still speak fluent Yiddish and remember
Yiddish songs. We cared not about the nationality in those years. I mean,
we were aware that we were Jews and they were Ukrainian Christians and
there were gypsies nearby, but we never focused on it.

School years

In 1934, when I was seven, I went to the Jewish school. Children were
supposed to start school at eight, but I was eager to study. My cousin
Manya decided to help me. Manya was older than I and she studied at school.
She took me to the director and said that my mother had typhoid and had
asked her to accept me into the first grade Of course, this was a lie but
Manya told me to keep silent about it. Manya said that I was eight years
old already, but that we couldn't bring my birth certificate as it was
under my mother's pillow. The director didn't want to see my birth
certificate after she heard that my mother had typhoid. So I went to
school. I was the youngest in my class, but I did well in all subjects. All
subjects were taught in Yiddish. We even read the books of Russian writers
translated into Yiddish. However, we didn't have any subjects related to
Jewish tradition or history. We studied all the typical subjects taught at
any other Soviet school. Our school was the best in the neighborhood.
Teachers paid much attention to our involvement in after-class activities.
We had three orchestras, a choir that had Jewish and Ukrainian songs in its
repertoire, and a theatrical studio. We had a club where we had concerts
and performances. There were two Ukrainian schools in Tomashpol - secondary
and primary. Schoolchildren from these schools often came to our club.
There was no national segregation.

I studied for four years in the Jewish school. Unfortunately, in 1937
my parents transferred me to the Ukrainian school. The majority of children
from our school went there, too. There were no schools where we could
continue our education in Yiddish. After finishing Jewish school one had to
enter a Ukrainian or Russian institution for higher education. At that time
we didn't quite realize that it was the policy of our state to destroy
nationalistic priorities. I was successful at my Ukrainian school as well.
All pupils from the Jewish school spoke fluent Yiddish and Ukrainian. We
had a benevolent reception at our new Ukrainian school. Half of the
schoolchildren in our class were Jewish and the rest of them were
Ukrainian, from Tomashpol and the surrounding villages. I had both Jewish
and Ukrainian boys as friends. I still have a Ukrainian friend from my
childhood - Tolya Pokynchereda, who now lives in Chernigov.

I was eager to become a Pioneer. I didn't become a Pioneer while
attending the Jewish school, but when I went to the Ukrainian school I put
on a red necktie and from then on I acted like a Pioneer.

My mother was a rabbi's granddaughter and she wanted me to become a
rabbi's pupil, to study Hebrew and prayers. Rabbi Yankl came to our house
two days at week to teach me. I knew Yiddish and there is some resemblance
between Yiddish and Hebrew. I learned to read and then the rabbi began to
teach me to translate. I was learning some prayers by heart. I still
remember them. It lasted until I bumped into an astronomy textbook for
senior students, where I learned more about the world, and where what I
learned didn't quite agree with what the rabbi was telling me. I believed
that God created the world in six days but I also knew that there were
other planets besides the Earth, and other galaxies. The rabbi wasn't
always happy with what I was learning, but he continued to visit us until
he grew too old. Thus, we terminated our classes in 1936.

In 1936 disaster came to our family. I mentioned already that we were
very poor. Once Mama said that they would be selling the cheapest black
cotton in our store. We were standing in line the whole night taking turns.
A few hours after the store opened my mother came home, bringing 10 meters
of this cotton, with which she intended to make some clothing for us. In a
month's time someone suggested that my mother should sell this cotton for
20 kopecks more per meter than she had bought it. We needed money, and so
she sold the cotton. But someone informed the local authorities, and my
mother was arrested and taken to court. It was an open court, to show
others what punishment people would be subject to. For selling 10 meters of
cotton, my mother was sentenced to five years at the camp in Kem in the
Kolskiy peninsula in the North of the Soviet Union. I was in the second
grade then. My sister Polya didn't go to school yet. Aunt Haika, my
mother's older sister, took Polya into her family. I stayed with my father
and my cousin Manya. Then a new judge was appointed. His name was Fedyuk.
Manya arranged an appointment with him and told him that my mother had been
sentenced for nothing, actually, and that my father was left alone to take
care of two children. My father could hardly earn enough money to feed us.
The judge came to our home to see how we lived. He asked me whether I could
write. I told him that I was in the second grade and could write. Then the
judge said that we should write a letter to Stalin. He dictated the letter,
and I wrote "Dear Mr. Stalin ...." I wrote that my mother was sentenced to
five years in prison for selling some fabric, and that our father was
raising two children, and told him how poor we were, etc. At the end of
this letter I was asking Stalin to release my mother. A few months passed
and my mother returned home. She had spent about nine months in the camp.
She was very thin and took to smoking. We were happy to have our mother
back. However, my sister was living with her Aunt, and liked it there, and
stayed. Until 1940 there were four of us: my father, my mother, Manya and
I. In 1940 Manya married a young Jewish man from Tomashpol and moved in
with him. Then before the war my sister Polya joined us at home.

We heard on the radio and read in newspapers that Hitler had come to
power in 1933. The Jewish population of Tomashpol, especially the
intellectuals -people who remembered pre-Revolutionary Germany - were
continuously saying that they didn't believe that Germans could kill people
and that they were cultured people. We leaned about what was happening in
Germany from radio programs and newspapers. Later we watched movies. I
remember "The Swamp Soldiers" and "Professor Mumlock". These movies
described Hitler coming to power, the attitude towards Jews in Germany, and
the pogroms. The radio mentioned the "Crystal night" in Germany and the
massive riots against Jews.

The year 1937 is known for the arrests and obliteration of the best
representatives of the intellectuals5. Some of our acquaintances were
repressed, too. Judge Fedyuk, the judge who helped me to write the letter
to Stalin was arrested. He was a very nice and kind person, and he helped
many people. I was in the 6th grade then, and I remember my classmates
crying at school in the morning because their fathers had been arrested the
previous night. We believed that their parents were enemies of the people
- that was what we were told to believe - so we didn't sympathize with our
classmates.

At school, I was fond of painting. I liked to paint portraits. I made
portraits of great physicists: Galileo, Ohm, Volt and others. I made
drawings because my parents couldn't afford to buy paints. Once in 1940 I
was awarded a prize for my drawings. My mother wanted me to study music but
we couldn't afford it as we were poor.

During the war

In 1939 the war with Finland began. I saw people who returned from the
war to our town Tomashpol. There were many Jews among them. Among them were
victims of frostbite, others that had been wounded, and some who had lost
legs or arms. I remember this war. I also remember our army "liberating"
the Western Ukraine and Byelorusse. Of course, the official version was
that we were liberating our land in Western Ukraine and Western Byelorusse.
The population was enthusiastic about it. There were posters everywhere
with our Soviet soldier in hardhat embracing a Western Ukrainian peasant.
When Germans occupied Poland, we had a feeling of the inevitability of war.
We felt it, but we couldn't quite imagine the upcoming war. We watched such
Soviet movies as "If there is a war tomorrow..." and others, and all of
them stated that if the enemy attacked us we would put an end to him
promptly and on his territory. We were convinced that we were strong and
that nobody could defeat us. I remember a song from this period "If there
is a war tomorrow and if we have to leave tomorrow - you must be prepared
today!" Then they executed a Non-Aggression Pact with Germany6.
Ribbentrop, Germany's Minister of Foreign Affairs, visited our country and
we read about it in the newspapers. We were all happy that there would be
no war and Germans would not advance further than Poland.

On 20 June 1941 I passed my last exam at school. I finished the 7th
grade and was 14 years old. 22 June7 was Sunday. Our house was near the
market and many people passed by our house. One of the passersby said, "Did
you hear on the radio the announcement about the war? The Germans bombed
Kiev and attacked the Soviet Union". It came as a complete surprise to us.
Then Molotov8 spoke on the radio at noon. However, nothing changed in
Tomashpol in the first days. Then we heard that they were going to evacuate
the sugar factory. The Party and administrative authorities were gradually
leaving town. However, in Tomashpol common and religious Jews were the
majority. We were waiting until our turn came to evacuate. The Germans were
advancing rapidly. After all the officials had left Tomashpol, we got horse-
driven carts and prepared to leave on them. Several families were supposed
to leave on each cart, so we couldn't take a lot luggage with us. This was
the middle of July. All these carts headed to the east in the direction of
Vinnitsa. We were about 15 km away when the bombing began. The planes
dropped two bombs. Nobody was injured. We moved on. We met a group of
military motorcyclists. They stopped and asked us where we were going.
Someone in the head cart replied that we were evacuating in the direction
of Vinnitsa. Then the man who had asked this question told him that
Vinnitsa was already occupied by the Germans. So we had to return to
Tomashpol. On 20 July 1941 Germans quietly entered Tomashpol. We saw their
troops on motorcycles, horses, cars and bicycles. They were the front
troops and they didn't touch the population. A German soldier came to our
house and asked my mother to give him some water. She did. He drank the
water and said to my mother that he wanted to give her a present. He took
his wallet out of his pocket and showed my mother a picture of a young
woman standing beside a rose bush. The German soldier told my mother that
this woman was his wife. Then he took out a dried rose wrapped in paper and
said that his wife gave him this rose for good luck and that he wanted to
give it to my mother. He also wrote down his address and invited us to
visit him after the war. His name was Alfred Klemmer. After he left, my
mother said that those people that warned that Germans would do us no harm
were probably right.

In 3 days Paraska Shpileiko, our Ukrainian acquaintance living in the
neighboring village came to see us. Her family were friends of my parent's.
She told us to hide because Germans were killing the Jews. It turned out
that the front troops were followed by other military troops that were
grabbing Jews in the streets and from their houses. They got over 120
people and chased them to the Jewish cemetery in the outskirts of
Tomashpol. They forced them to dig up a grave and shot them all. My
classmate Fira Shwartz, Tomashpol Shoihet and many others perished there.
In the 1980s a monument was installed at this location. There is an
engraving on the obelisk on the common grave, which reads, "To the citizens
of Tomashpol, brutally shot by fascist occupants on 4 August 1941". We
escaped, firstly, because our house was in the outskirts of town, and
secondly, because Paraska let us know in advance. We hid in the cellar,
locked up our house and stayed in our shelter for two days. The Germans
left in two days, and they appointed my classmate's father, Slobodianyuk,
to be a village warden.

At the end of July this warden came for my father. My father told us
later that he and several other men were sent to bury the corpses of the
Jews that were shot. The corpses decomposed during all this time so that
they were unrecognizable. My father smelled so much of putrefaction that it
was hard to wash that smell out.

The shops and the market were closed. We were able to get some food
from local peasants in exchange for some clothing. At the beginning of
August people elected the Jewish council that was responsible for sending
Jews to do work at the direction of the village warden. It consisted of
older people. Young people all went to the front.
After the Germans, the Rumanians came to the town. There were two
Germans left to give orders to the Rumanians. The Jews were ordered to wear
bands with David's hexagonal star. In two weeks they cancelled this order,
because the policemen also wore white armbands and it was unclear from some
distance whether one was a policeman or a Jew. With one day's notice, we
were then ordered to sew a yellow hexagonal star on the black background on
our clothes. We had some black fabric at home, but no yellow cloth. Our
neighbors had a yellow undershirt and they tore it to pieces and shared
them with all neighbors. Two weeks passed and we were ordered to move to
the ghetto. They fenced one street and all Jews from Tomashpol and the
surrounding villages were moving there. There were several families living
in each house. Our family got accommodation in the basement of a wooden
house. This basement was formerly used to store coal and wood. We moved
beds from our house and took apart wardrobes for wooden planks to install
on the ground floor. My parents, my sister Polia, a distant relative from
Yampol, Manya and I lived in this basement. There were over one thousand
people in the ghetto. Half of them starved to death or died from diseases.
On 19 May 1941 Manya gave birth to two twin girls: Polia and Dora. Manya's
husband and his two brothers went to the war where they perished. Manya and
her children lived in this ghetto for two years and eight months. We lived
behind the barbed wire fencing with no money or food. It was so hard to
raise these baby girls. Manya died in 2001 and her girls are still living.
Of course, the years they spent in the ghetto had an effect on them; they
are sickly, but they are still alive.

Before the war, I learned from our neighbor, a tinsmith, how to make
buckets and other tin goods. This helped us to survive in the ghetto. Every
day we went to work chopping wood or carrying water to the commandant's
office. In the evenings I made buckets and my mother and sister gave them
to peasants in exchange for food. Once a week they opened a gate to the
ghetto. Rumanians with guns and dogs and policemen were posted at the gate
to the ghetto. The inmates of the ghetto were allowed to go out to the
nearby market for one hour. We had only this one hour to buy or exchange
something and come back. We didn't need to be watched. We had yellow stars
on our clothing and couldn't run away. There was no place to run. We
thought of the ghetto as our last shelter. We tried to be back on time. If
somebody was late Rumanian gendarmes beat him or her with whips, as they
were not trusted enough to be given guns, at least, at that time. On our
way back we tried to get a potato or a beet, or to pick an apple to put in
our pocket. This supplemented our food supply. Tomashpol's Ukrainian
population sympathized with us. When the policemen turned away, the
Ukrainians tried to give us food. Paraska, the woman who told us to hide
when the Germans were approaching, came to the ghetto on Sunday and waited
for Mama and my sister to give them some food.

We did all kinds of work. We shoveled snow in winter. When Germans
occupied our town they ordered me to take off my boots. I was 14 years old
then. After I finished the 7th grade my mother had bought me new boots.
This was quite an occasion in our family. But that German ordered me to
take them off, so I did. I didn't have any shoes until our liberation in
March 1944. In summer I walked barefoot and in winter I wrapped my feet in
rags tying them with a rope or even with wire. I came back from work
starving and frozen. We didn't get any food while we were at work. I still
have rheumatic pains in my feet at night. I also got abscesses on my legs.
We had no medications to treat them. No iodine or bandages, and no medical
facility in the ghetto. However, there were doctors and nurses among the
inmates of the ghetto. We tried to hide our ailments from the
administration of the ghetto, especially when the diseases were infectious.
My former schoolmate Tolia Pokynchereda sent some iodine to me in the
ghetto.
I collected tin to make buckets near the houses. The tin was old and
rusted and this rust seeped into my sores when I was busy making the
buckets. Soon I couldn't walk at all. At that period they stopped sending
me to work. However, previously I was sent to work almost every day and we
had to work promptly. If somebody fell the supervisors beat him or her with
a whip. Often, my mother could not go to work. She was not young and often
felt ill. Women did all kinds of work: they peeled potatoes, washed the
floors, cleaned up, and carried wood. When I couldn't walk any more my
father replaced me at work. Rumanians rarely came to the ghetto. The
policemen and the Jewish council were in charge there. The Rumanians were
afraid to enter the ghetto due to the terrible sanitary conditions. They
were afraid of catching infection. Many people in the ghetto got ill and
died.

The policemen raped girls, but the girls' parents tried to hide this.
And every day somebody would say that he knew for sure that the next day we
would be all shot. So we were living with the fear that every day was to be
our last day. Members of the Jewish council often came to pick up some
valuables to bribe the Rumanian gendarmes.

We didn't hear any news from the outside world. Later, Boria
Slobodianyuk, my former schoolmate and the son of the Tomashpol warden
started sending me newspapers, and we could read about the war, but this
was towards the end of 1943.

There was a rabbi in the ghetto. Religious people got together in
secret to pray. My father also went to some house of prayers to pray. They
got together a minian9 of at least 10 people.

Young people were falling in love. Life was going on even under such
difficult conditions. We celebrated Pesach, although we couldn't have any
Matzoh.

In the fall of 1942 we learned that the administration was planning to
get all Jews between 16 and 55 yeas old. I was 15 and my father was 59, so
we were relatively calm about it. I was not on the list, but just in case,
I decided to hide in the attic of an empty house. My sister Polia knew
where I was hiding. The Jewish officials announced that people had to take
enough food to last for three days, and some warm clothes, although it was
still warm outside. On this day, policemen came to our basement to enquire
about my whereabouts. My parents said they didn't know where I was, and the
policemen beat them up with their whips. They threatened to shoot them if
they didn't inform them where I was. Polia ran to find me to tell me the
whole story and I went home. As soon as I entered, the policemen whipped me
so hard that I fainted. My mother got me some food to take with me: a few
apples, some bread, cereal and a bar of soap. And she gave me my jacket and
a hat to take along with me. My father gave me his old boots. They were
sewn up with wooden pegs that hurt when I put on the boots. Nobody knew
where we were heading from the ghetto. I was waiting for our departure when
all of a sudden a Rumanian soldier called me to the exit door. My father
was there and he took my bag from me and went in. I went home. The soldiers
put all the people onto a truck and drove away. At home they told me that
my parents asked some Jews from Bukovina who spoke Rumanian to talk to the
Rumanian soldiers about replacing me with my father. My parents were afraid
of what was awaiting me. Besides, I could make buckets and provide for the
family, but my father couldn't earn anything.
Half a year passed, and we didn't know where my father was, or whether
he was still alive. Then we heard a rumor that those that couldn't work any
more were coming back. And they did. They were in terrible condition.
Previously healthy men looked like old people, so exhausted were they. They
told us that they had been working in the Nikolaev region. Germans were
building a strategic bridge across the Bug and the construction itself was
performed by Jews and captives. The Jews lived on the bank of the Bug. They
dug holes in the ground and put in some hay to sleep on it. By the way, the
father of my sister Polia's future husband was also there with my father.
He died there because fleas ate away his eyes. My father told us later that
the hay was stirred up by fleas. My father said that they got potatoes that
were boiled, unwashed and dirty for meals. Many people were dying but my
father survived. Later a commission arrived to inspect the progress of the
construction. German engineers were in no hurry to complete the
construction. They felt more comfortable in the rear. When the commission
asked what the reason for the delays was, the engineers blamed the Jews,
saying that they were lazy and didn't want to work. The commission then
gave the order to hang ten people from each crew. All Jews were lined up
outside, and asked which of them wanted to go home. A few people stepped
forward. Soldiers took them away, and the following day carpenters
installed gallows in the square. Ten people were brought back in front of
the line of Jews. Jews from the crowd were to put nooses around the necks
of the sentenced and push the boxes they stood on out from under their
feet. If somebody refused he was hanged as well. If somebody approached the
barbed wire fencing, the Germans shot them, too, and their corpses were
hung on the wire for several days.

My father was also supposed to return home with the first group of
people, but he was not among them. We thought he must have died on the way.
But my father had gotten off the train to go to the toilet and fainted
there from exhaustion. Only on the following day did the cleaning women
find him. My father was sent to prison in the Balta Odessa region. He
shared a cell with a communist who was later hung. He gave my father his
leather belt and my father brought it home to me. He was getting some food
in prison and his condition improved. When he was released from prison, he
went home. He got on the train that headed for Yampol instead of Tomashpol.
The Rumanian commandant sent my father to the "Pechora" camp 2 km from
Tomashpol. This was a horrific death camp. About 10,000 people starved to
death there. This was already 1944. Kiev had been liberated, but we were
still under the occupation. The security guard in the camp was loosened and
people could go out at night to get something to eat in the surrounding
villages. In this way, my father survived.

I remember our army coming to the village. The Germans and Rumanians
were running away in retreat. We saw two tanks with young men sitting on
top of them. They asked us where the Germans and Rumanians were and
suggested that I go with them to show them the way. I grabbed a German
rifle - there were weapons all around - and charged it. I was showing them
the way. It was on 16 March 1944. The regular Soviet army was at the
Vapniarka station then. These tanks were an investigation group. They shot
at the retreating Germans. I also took a few shots. Later, our army and
partisans entered Tomashpol. One of the partisans was a young Jewish girl
riding a horse. I asked her, "Have you and the Soviet army come here
forever?" and she answered, "Yes". I felt sad because my father wasn't with
us and we thought that he had perished in the camp.

One particularly horrible event occurred during the liberation of
Tomashpol. A young man, one year older than I, a blacksmith's son and a
blacksmith himself, fell in love with a very pretty girl in the ghetto. She
loved him, too. When all of us came out to meet our armies, this young
couple was also out there. A cavalryman saw them together and cried out
"What?! You are strolling around when we are going to war?!" and he shot
the young man, who had survived all the horrors of the ghetto and
occupation, only to be killed by a Soviet soldier. I don't know what
happened to the young girl afterwards.

We temporarily settled down in an empty house. My mother asked the
military to sell her a pair of boots, as I had nothing to protect my feet.
And they gave me yellow American boots as a present. We were living all
together: my parents, my sister Polia, Manya and her twin daughters. A
little later my mother's sister Haika also moved in with us. In 1944 I went
to the army. Later my parents rented a room. They never had their own
apartment and lived a very poor life. They didn't have any furniture, just
some boxes they used as furniture.

My father returned home before I went into the army. Our neighbor's
daughter came to tell me that my father was coming home. I didn't believe
her, but went out anyway, and saw an old, old man, exhausted, in some gray
clothing, barefoot, though there was still snow on the ground, and carrying
a stick. It's difficult to express what I felt when I knew that the man was
my father. As I said his clothing looked gray, but it was gray from the
fleas that it was covered with. This was horrible. We took off all his
clothes and burnt them. My father was ill for a long time afterwards.

After Tomashpol was liberated, the mobilization of young people over
17 to the front began. Young people under 17 were mobilized to the so-
called fighter battalion. We had trophy rifles and bullets and were helping
the military to guard the captives or transport them. Once we even were
ordered to look for parachute forces in the woods.

I also went to school and studied in the 8th grade before I was
recruited to the army. We went to the military registration office in
Vinnitsa, from where I was sent to the Far East. This was in the winter of
1944. We traveled across Siberia for 43 days. In the Far East I was sent to
the Pacific Ocean Navy. I participated in the war with Japan.10 After the
war we stayed in Port Arthur in China. We were liberating China, Korea and
Manchuria from the Japanese. We stayed to serve there after the war. My
service lasted six years. Later, this Pacific Ocean fleet separated into
two fleets - number 5 and number 7. My service was in fleet number 5, which
spread from Vladivostok to Port Arthur. . Photo # 7 I had friends there and
still meet with them annually. They are Jews, Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars
and members of many other nationalities. Ivan Khometsky, a Ukrainian, was
my closest friend then. We spent time together talking about our plans for
the future and about our lives.

Post-war

Those were difficult years. I remember the famine of 1947. I was in
the service then and I didn't suffer hunger - we were getting our meals and
life was not as bad as it was for civilians. But I knew that my parents
were suffering a lot. My father's body swelled from starvation.
Fortunately, his younger brother Boris took him to Ulianovsk. My mother and
sister survived this famine of 1947. In 1948 I came home on vacation. As a
gift, I brought my parents half a pound of rice (8 kg) - this was all I
could get.

My father and mother were still religious after the war. But there was
no synagogue and minians got together in private prayer houses. My father
always went to pray. The rabbi died in the ghetto. One man who knew the
prayers well led the minians for many years. Old people got together in
this way and the authorities didn't persecute them.

The struggle against cosmopolites that started in 1948 had an impact
on our family. Ovsey Driz, the son of my father's cousin and a famous
Jewish poet, wrote his poems in Yiddish. They were translated into Russian
by the famous Russian poets Mikhalkov and Marshak. In the early 1930s when
Ovsey Driz was beginning to write, a very famous Jewish poet, Lev Kvitko,
was helping him. Many of Ovsey's books were published before the war. After
the war no books in Yiddish were published. Ovsey's Russian was excellent
but when I asked him why he didn't write his poems in Russian he said that
he could, but then they wouldn't be his poems. When the struggle against
the cosmopolites began Ovsey couldn't provide for his family. His books
were not published and he was about to be expelled from the Association of
Writers of the USSR. Ovsey turned to the Soviet poet Marshak for help, but
he couldn't do anything for him. When I went to Moscow I often stayed at
Ovsey's home and was the first to hear his poems. Ovsey died in 1971 .

By that time, my sister had married our neighbor Abram Gedrich, a Jew.
She studied for seven years at school and then took a course in accounting.
She worked as an accountant in the Tomashpol hospital until her departure
to Ber-Sheva in Israel in the early 1990s. In 1962 Elena, the daughter of
Polia and Abram, was born. Lena and Polia live in Israel now. Lena
graduated from a music school in Vinnitsa. She has a daughter Asia, born in
1984.

I demobilized from the army at the end of December 1950. They wanted
me to stay for an additional term and offered me an apartment in Port
Arthur. But I couldn't stay, as I knew that my parents were living in
poverty. In 1951 I passed my exams for ten years of secondary school. At
that time I worked as a lab assistant at the physics laboratory, as I just
had to be earning money. In 1951 I entered Kiev's mining college. I chose
this educational institution because, as a participant in the war, I could
enter this school without having to take entrance exams. They also paid the
stipend that enabled me to study and live. I also had 2-3 months training
sessions in Donbass, which enabled me to support my parents as well. I
worked as a miner and was paid well. In 1955 I finished my studies in the
electromechanical department of this college. At first I couldn't find a
job. My eyesight was poor as a result of my experiences in the ghetto, and
to get a job as a miner I had to go through a medical examination. The
medical commission didn't issue me a work permit. I had problems finding a
job.

Anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism at that time was both on the state and everyday level. I
obtained my diploma without a mandatory for that time job assignment, and
returned to Kiev. I went through job announcements and found one for a
foreman in the electric shop at a certain plant. I arranged an interview
with the manager of the human resources department. We discussed the
vacancy and then he asked me to show him my documents. He took my passport
and saw that my nationality was a Jew. He immediately told me to call back
in 2-3 days. I came back in two days and he said they had no vacancy for
the position of foreman, only for an electrician in that same shop. He
didn't expect me to agree to take this job. But I thought it would only do
me good to go through all levels, from beginning to end, to gain
experience.

In 1957 I got a job as a foreman at a military plant. Later, I was
promoted to Deputy Manager of the electromechanical shop. In few years I
became Chief Engineer at the plant. I worked there for 24 years and had
excellent performance records. I received a two-room apartment. But still I
felt some discrimination towards me, especially during the last year. In
particular, when the manager of the maintenance shop went on an extended
business trip for two years and I was offered the chance to replace him.
But I also had to keep my job responsibilities. I agreed. After some time,
the assistant accountant asked me about my salary rate, which I didn't
know. But I hoped that it would at least be equal to that of the former
manager of the shop. I asked the director, and it turned out that besides
not being paid for doing two jobs, I had a lower salary than my
predecessor. The director had realized that I would have to accept and was
taking advantage of my situation. If I quit this job, it would be difficult
for me to find another due to my Jewish nationality. And I had to stay at
this plant. In 1978 I got a job offer from another plant and agreed to take
it at once. I was appointed manager of the electromechanical shop at this
plant and from there I retired in 1987. But I decided to continue working
and got a job as a communications specialist. I quit finally in 1999.

Stalin's death in 1953 was a shock for me. I didn't believe the
country could live without him. People were crying. I think, these were
sincere tears. Later we recovered and life went on. Our thinking was
changing gradually and denunciation of the cult of Stalin and the speech at
the Party Congress11 was kind of expected event.

Married life

I got married in 1956. My wife Tamara Batenko is Ukrainian. Tamara was
born in 1934 in the Fastov Kiev region. At the time we met, Tamara was a
student in the Economics Department of Kiev University. We met at a party
and fell in love. Contrary to my expectations, my parents had nothing
against my marrying a Ukrainian girl. They must have changed their attitude
to such mixed marriages, regardless of their religiosity. They liked Tamara
very much. My mother always called Tamara her little daughter. Tamara got a
job at the Institute of Public Economy after graduating from the
University. Later, she obtained a job at the Academy of Sciences. But,
unfortunately, she was very sickly and had to retire because of poor
health. In the fall of 2002 we shall celebrate the 46th anniversary of our
wedding. On 20 July 1957 our son Alexander was born. He was born into a
mixed family and got no religious education. He is an atheist and a
cosmopolite - a man of the world. He obtained his education at the Kiev
Communications College. He is a colonel now and works at the army
headquarters. as chief editor of military TV broadcasting. His wife
Tatiana, a Ukrainian, is a housewife. We have two granddaughters: Katyusha,
born in 1984, and baby Mashenka, born in 2002. Katia is finishing school
and is going to continue her studies. My son's family live separately, but
every single day they call us or drop by for a chat.

In 1963 my mother died. She was in poor health after the years she
spent in the camp and in the ghetto. My mother was buried in Tomashpol in
accordance with Jewish traditions. My wife and I decided to take my father
to Kiev. By that time he was almost blind - he had cataracts in both eyes.
He lived with us for almost 15 years. After two surgeries, he could see
again. My father admired everything that we had: the tap with running
water, the TV and telephone. My father put on his thales and prayed twice a
day: in the morning and in the evening. Only in the last years of his life
he couldn't do it: he was too old to remember the prayers. My father died
in 1979 at the age of 95. He was buried at the Jewish cemetery in Kiev.
There was no rabbi at his funeral and I said Kaddish, which I remembered
from childhood.
My sister Polia moved to Israel. Unfortunately, I didn't dare to go.
My wife isn't a Jew and I was afraid that she would go through prejudiced
attitudes in Israel similar to the ones I experienced in the Soviet Union.
I have been to Israel twice and I now realize that I was wrong. But we are
old people now and it is too late to change our life so dramatically. I
liked Israel, our country. I admired the blooming Israel - the country
where ancient history and modern life have entwined so organically. It's
hard to imagine all the hard effort involved in turning the desert into a
blooming oasis. I respect and feel grateful to the people of Israel. I
visited my sister Polia in Ber-Sheva. She and her family enjoy living in
their new Motherland.

Many things changed after Ukraine gained its independence. Of course,
it will take some time before life improves, but I can see big changes.
There is no or almost no anti-Semitism in the new Ukraine. There is none on
the state level, and if there is some remnant of it, it comes from older
people. Young people have different outlooks. Jewish people hold management
positions and nobody has anything to say against it. I am not a religious
person, and do not visit the synagogue. A Jewish way of life is also
restoring. We have Jewish newspapers and magazines in Yiddish and in
Russian. I receive "Jewish news" and it is free for me. There are Jewish
performances and concerts. Hesed does a lot to support us physically and
spiritually. I attend very interesting lectures about the history of the
Jewish religion and celebrations of Jewish holidays. This is just
wonderful.

I don't want you to think that the life of our generation is a chain
of calamities. We lived through a lot of terrible things: famines,
repression, war, struggle against cosmopolitism and suppression of the
Jews. Many members of our family perished. At that most difficult time we
used to say that if we survived - although we didn't believe we would - we
would only talk about what we had to go through for the rest of our life.
But the years went by and I came to understand that people forget the bad
things and remember the good ones for a long time. I would like to address
all those who are going to read my story to try and do everything we can to
prevent any repetition of the past.

Glossary

Ivan Pasternak
Bratislava
Slovakia

My name is Ivan Pasternak, I'm from Bratislava, and I was born during the
Holocaust. My mother and me survived; my father died in Dachau. I was
hiding with my mother with the help of the Habel family from Devinska Nova
Ves near Bratislava. Grandmother Fanus Habel, Ludvicek, Ilonka, Jozinko and
children from Devinska Nova Ves helped us. The grandmother always knew in
advance about the fascist roundups. When it was announced for Devinska Nova
Ves, we had to move to Lamac to her relatives. And when the roundup was
expected in Lamac, we moved back to Devinska Nova Ves. The roundups
happened very often. They were looking for Jews. I wonder if it was due to
my mother's upbringing or if it was God's will, but I never cried on such
dangerous occasions. After the Holocaust we visited this family for the
first and unfortunately last time in 1947. The grandmother got ill; the
children moved to various places. We are still in correspondence with them.

Family background">Family background

My parents come from Presov. My mother's maiden name was Preisova. My
grandmother was Helena Preisova, nee Rotmanova. My grandfather was called
Eliezer Preis. We have a menorah at home with the engraving Eliezer Preis.
Their three daughters Katarina, Nely and my mother Marta attended school on
Konstantinova Street in Presov. My mother was born in August 1916. My
grandparents lived in a house with a nice verandah on Sabinovska Street.
The eldest daughter, Katarina, liked to sit there in a wicker-chair reading
novels. My mother used to tell her: Don't read so much, your eyes will get
bad. Now, that she is 80, she is partially blind.

The head teacher of my mother and her sisters was Ms. Bednarova, who was a
nun and a good friend of our family. The nuns were prosecuted later, in the
communist era, and they were forced to move from Presov to Bacs near
Dunajska Streda. I saw Ms. Bednarova when she was over 70 on the occasion
of the visit of my aunt Nely, who lived in Nairobi, Kenya. My uncle Sani
Gellert and Aunt Nely lived in Nairobi during World War II. They could save
their lives thanks to businessman Bata 1. He could see that the situation
in Central Europe wasn't good for Jews so he decided to send them to his
branch in Nairobi. My aunt and her daughter were cooking for the workers in
the Bata factory and this way earned money to survive the war. My uncle
Sani fought in the Czechoslovak Army in Egypt. All the family survived and
after the war a son, Andrew, was born, my cousin, who lives in London.

Our family has always been keen on sports. I have photos of both my
mother's sisters at a Presov swimming pool near the Torysa river. The
Jewish youth, members of the Maccabi 2 association, used to meet there.
Both sisters and their husbands liked to go for long walks. Both husbands
graduated from Charles University in Prague and then became doctors in
Zlin. They used to play tennis in Zlin.

During the war

Sad memories are connected with the early 1940s. The eldest sister,
Katarina, who lived in Kosino, which was part of Hungary then, came to
visit her parents. They didn't know that this was to be their last
encounter. My grandparents died in the Holocaust. They were deported in
1942 and perished in Auschwitz in 1945.

My father's family was called Pasternak. They were forwarding agents but
they were very keen on giving their children the best education possible.
My father's best friend was an English teacher. My grandmother was Rozalia
Pasternakova, nee Grossmanova; she died in 1944. My grandfather was called
Emanuel Pasternak. In June 1941 the whole family was still in Presov. They
lived on 14, Kovacska Street. I have a picture of the whole family in the
backyard of the house. My parents are sitting on the bench. My father's
younger brother Vojtech Pasternak is there with his wife Etela. At that
time he was a soldier with the Czechoslovak Army in Ruthenia [see
Subcarpathia] 3. I didn't know his brother Zoli; he died in the
Holocaust. William Pasternak, my father's other brother, was a high
military officer. He was a representative of the Jewish community in Presov
and a deputy of the Presov council. He had a son, Tomas, my cousin, who
died along with his father and my father in Dachau in 1945. Members of the
family, who escaped deportation for a certain while, had a special
exemption for 'economically important Jews'.

Presov was the first town where Jews had to be specially marked. They had
to wear white strips even before the rule about wearing yellow star came
into effect. I have a photo of my father that was taken for the
registration in police archives.

My parents Teodor Pasternak and Marta Pasternakova, nee Preisova, got
married on 1st January 1940. The wedding was held in a Neolog 4 synagogue
on Konstantinova Street in Presov. Their friends Edita and Pali Fraenkl got
married on 26th January 1941. The Fraenkl family survived the Holocaust by
escaping to Hungary. Once they were hiding in Gzongzos, when Horthy 5
groups were doing a roundup searching for Jews. The Fraenkls were hiding in
the loft and when the soldiers came to the fifth floor the whistles ordered
the soldiers to leave. More than 50 Jews were arrested and deported from
that house only. The Fraenkls had two children: Jancsi, who was born in
December 1945 and Elzi, who followed five years later. Their son Jancsi is
still a member of the Presov Jewish community.

My parents were very sociable people. The Jewish social life in Presov was
quite rich. The Jewish youth used to meet at a place where a swimming pool
was built later. They established a Jewish association called Fortuna. They
organized trips, social events and religious ceremonies in Presov.

The Maccabi association organized trips on the river Torysa, to the High
Tatras and also abroad. My father used to plan the trips. Already in 1926
Maccabi had over 50 members interested in tourism. They were mostly men,
but also about ten women. Most of my parents' friends, for example the
Gellert family, didn't survive the Holocaust.

My father was an eager football player. He played for Maccabi Presov. This
was a strong team; on 31st May 1924 the Maccabi football club won 2:1 over
Torokves in Presov. Torokves played in the National Football League,
whereas the Maccabi players were all amateurs. The football team was based
in a working class district nicknamed Mexico Platz [Mexico Square].

Post-war">Post-war

My mother and me survived and came back to Presov after the war. Our return
was a bit delayed because the trains only started running in June or July
twice a week from Bratislava to Zilina. In Zilina we had to wait for a day
for a train from Zilina to Kosice and from there we continued on a horse
carriage to Presov.

I graduated from university and stayed in Bratislava. I'm a teacher. My
mother lived here too; she died a while ago. I'm married, my wife's name is
Zuzka. She is a doctor and she is Jewish. We have two sons, Teodor and
Peter, who are both single.

Glossary">Glossary

Matilda Hrabovecka
Bratislava
Slovakia

My family background
Growing up
During the war
Surviving Auschwitz
My return to Slovakia
Married life
Glossary

My family background

I was born into an Orthodox Jewish family, which had several rabbis, in
Presov region. My mother Dorota Friedmannova, nee Weil, was born in 1886
and came from Poland. My father Jozef Friedmann came from Stropkov and was
quite well off. He was born in 1884.

My maternal grandfather's surname was Weil. I don't know his first name. He
was born in Jaslo, Poland, and died before World War II, in the 1930s.

I would say our family was rather bohemian, although the men grew beards
and were religious. My father was also religious; he graduated from a
yeshivah, but I remember seeing him, when he thought nobody could, turn on
the radio on Saturday, although this was considered work.

Growing up

My parents had eight children, me being the youngest. My two older sisters
were Lujza and Anna or Anusa. Both worked and supported the family. Lujza
was the oldest. She was born in Presov in 1910. Before World War II she
finished an accounting course. She was deported to Auschwitz with the last
transport in 1942, along with her husband, Bela Wohlwert, and in December,
during the last selection, she was sent to the gas chambers. She spent
three months in the concentration camp. Her husband was also killed in
Auschwitz in 1942.

Anusa was born in 1912, also in Presov. She was good at music and played
the violin. She married Sandor Abrahamovic in 1937. He was born in Presov
in 1905. Before the war he worked as a shop-keeper. She was killed in
Lublin ghetto in 1942 at the age of 30. Anusa and Sandor had a son,
Herbert, who was born in Presov in 1938. He was deported to Treblinka,
where he died at the age of four. My youngest sister, Alzbeta, was born in
Presov in 1926. She was killed in Treblinka in 1942, only 18 years old.

My mother was the one who took care of the family, not only by keeping the
household, but also by trying to help financially, which wasn't really
common at that time. Our family wasn't very well-off because my father got
involved in a rather dubious business with gas stations and went bankrupt,
although one could argue that his bankruptcy was mainly the consequence of
his gambling habit; he liked to play cards. Despite their poverty my
parents tried really hard to provide education for all of us.

My oldest brother, Bernardt, left for France to stay with his uncle. My
younger brother, Henrich, became a locksmith, and the rest of us, girls,
attended a Neolog 1 school and later on a gymnasium. All the siblings
worked hard to support the family.

The Presov Neolog school was mainly attended by students from more well-to-
do families, thus I experienced the meaning of social differences in my
early years, which motivated me to join the Hashomer Hatzair 2 and later
the Communist Youth Organization.

Hashomer Hatzair was very important to everyone in our group of youngsters.
My youngest sister Alzbeta would go there with me, and the Kamenski
brothers, Pali and Lori, also came. Lori was really smart and quite
talented in school. He didn't survive the camps. Except for Rosenberg
Imrich, who was in Theresienstadt 3 during World War II, all the others
from our Hashomer Hatzair group were killed during the Holocaust.

I really loved going to school, mainly because we had wonderful teachers.
The headmaster's name was Svarc; we all loved him and referred to him as
,Svarc bacsi' [Uncle Svarc]. Then there was Mr. Reich, who was teaching
religion and Hebrew and then our class-teacher Mrs. Kleinova. She was the
mother of Professor Fischer, who taught in the physics department. It's a
sad thing to mention that from all the people I went to school with, only
about eleven survived. The others were killed during the Holocaust.

In 1939, when the first anti-Jewish legislation [see Anti-Jewish laws in
Hungary] 4 started to be introduced, I was learning to become a tailor.
Unfortunately, I never learned very much since they used to have me do all
sorts of odd jobs instead.

My sister Malvina, or Manci, was born in Presov in 1920. She graduated from
a high school, then we stopped going to school because of the anti-Jewish
measures. I went to work for a wood seller, who was Jewish and for whom my
sister was also supposed to work. But my father sent me without her and
Manci stayed home. He was always worried about her, since she was so
beautiful.

During the war

In 1942 they drafted me as the first member of my family and I was deported
in the first wave. One of my cousins fled to the Soviet Union. Later we
found out that he died in one of the Gulag 5 camps, so his escape from
the fascists didn't help him.

We left Presov for Poprad by train. It was my first trip on a train, and I
thought of the irony of life, whether this train trip was also to be my
last one. The people in Presov were horrified by what was happening to us,
Jews, but already in Poprad the atmosphere changed completely: Slovak
guards were beating us like crazy. They loaded us onto cattle cars and
transported us to Auschwitz.

My sister Manci went to the gas chamber along with my parents. It makes me
cry when I remember what a cute little thing she was, with those blue eyes
and dark hair. I really loved her. Sometimes I think of her, even today,
when I see her friend Katka Hexnerova, who lives in Kosice now.

Surviving Auschwitz

I spent three years in Auschwitz, full of suffering, selections and finally
a death march out of the camp. While I was in Auschwitz, I found out that
my friend from Hashomer Hatzair, Halmos Nusi, was there. Halmos came from a
rather wealthy family. Her parents had divorced years ago; she was an only
child, and, I would say, she was spoiled. She was sick as soon as she
arrived in this hell, and was taken to see a doctor because she was
complaining about a sore throat. Poor Halmos was dead even before they took
the rest of her group to Birkenau, but I don't know exactly what happened.

I could say that because of the horrors I witnessed, I developed my own
philosophy for staying alive in such a hell. To be frank, I find it painful
to say what that philosophy is today. The things I went through in
Auschwitz influenced my whole life: I always avoided standing in the back
of any group, or on the side. And I would never stand in the front, either,
so that I would never be seen as not being part of the crowd. And in
Auschwitz I survived, in fact, to the detriment of those who happened to be
standing on the sides. To put it bluntly, that means every survivor lives
on the grave of someone else, and I still find this hard to deal with.

From my entire family, my parents and sisters were all murdered along with
a number of relatives-even my four-year-old nephew Herbert. I survived
along with my sister Blanka and brother Bernardt. After I returned to
Slovakia, I realized at once how much my way of thinking and my values had
changed after three years spent in hell.

My return to Slovakia

It took me some time to come back. I took the last repatriation bus and
arrived in Neustvelica, near Neubrandenburg. I came back to Prague, but was
scared of the disappointments I knew were waiting for me at home. I didn't
know what to expect from those people and what freedom meant.

On the way, several Yugoslav women were trying to convince me to go home
with them, but I decided to go to Presov first and see if anybody had
survived. My sister was working as a clerk, and amazingly, she had somehow
managed to escape the concentration camp. I didn't blame her for that, but
she was nothing but a huge disappointment after keeping me waiting until
her lunch break! I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive her for failing
to understand what I had gone through.

I had too many ideals about the Slovak National Uprising 6 and everybody
who took part in it; everything seemed to be perfect to me. Suddenly, I
idealized the whole society and the situation that we were living in,
although I was worried about the future.

Then I enrolled in high school. I crammed four years into one year and
graduated in Kosice. But, it wasn't all so nice and easy. I was really
poor. I didn't even go to my own sister's wedding because I had nothing
nice, or even decent, to wear.

And, anti-Semitism wasn't exactly dead. Once I lined up for lunch tickets
at work. The line was long, and when people saw the number on my arm, they
said, 'Look at this Jewish woman. Hitler didn't manage to kill them all;
more of them came back than there were before!' I was horribly upset and
ran to the police to report it, hoping that this would be a solitary
incident. Evidently, my view of life was very distorted then, I'm sorry to
say.

Married life

I continued with my education and studied in Prague later on, where I met
and married a Jewish man from Presov, Mikulas Hrabovecky, who survived the
Holocaust in Slovakia. I married a Jewish man because I wanted to avoid
being called stinking kike when I became an old woman. If your spouse isn't
Jewish, you can never be sure that he won't call you names during some
crisis.

After school, my husband Mikulas and I moved to Bratislava, where I joined
the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia 7 and became a civil servant. My
status changed for the worse during the personality cult in the fifties,
when my brother, a convinced communist and party member, ended up being
imprisoned.

Nowadays, after my retirement, I take care of my granddaughters. I have two
wonderful daughters Katka and Viera, and they, along with their children
Zuzka, Nina, Jozef and Daniel, are the joy of my life. I'm also involved in
the Documentation Center of the Holocaust, which I helped establish. I
wrote a book of memoirs on my time in Auschwitz.

Glossary

Rahela Perisic
Bosnia
Interviewer: Klara Azulaj

My name is Rahela Perisic (nee Albahari) and I was born in 1922 in Sanski Most. My father, David Albahari, was born in 1889 in Tesanj (Bosnia) and my mother, Luna Albahari (nee Levi), was born in 1899 in Kladanj (Bosnia).

We lived in Sanski Most in a one-story garden house. Upstairs in this house we had a three room apartment and on the ground floor my father and his brother had a dry goods store. Next door to us lived my father's brother Jakob. They also had a garden house but their garden was much nicer than ours. Jakob's wife, Rena, grew beautiful flowers and had an orchard. My sisters, brother and I liked to stay at their house and play with their children. My father and his brother Jakob, two brothers, married two sisters, my mother and her sister Rena. Thus we lived liked one family.

A great number of Jews lived in Sanski Most. They had many professions among them: merchants, craftspeople, pharmacists, lawyers, etc. All in all it was a beautiful Jewish community, one that knew how to get along and was always ready to jump in and help someone when it was needed. There was a temple. It was an old modest building where all the Jews of Sanski Most gathered and marked their holidays.

My father and uncle's business did not go well and they decided to leave Sanski Most. My family went 12 kilometers away from Sanski Most to a place called Lusci Palanka. My uncle and his family went to Sarajevo.

We were the only Jewish family in Lusci Palanka. My father, who was a very sociable man, made a lot of friends quickly. Soon after our arrival he also established the first library and reading room and a group of mandolin players. My mother was well received by the other women and she was always willing to help the other women especially when it came to advise about running a household and taking care of children.

In Lusci Palanka my sisters and I went to elementary school. Since Lusci Palanka did not have a temple we went to Sanski Most for Rosh Hashanah, Sukkot and sometimes for Pesach. While there we stayed with our relative Avram Atijas and his wife Mazalta. For us children Chanukah was the best. I loved to light the candles. I remember before Pesach my mother would take all the dishes to the garden where she cleaned each plate. She also had a special trunk with dishes only for Pesach. Regardless of the fact that there was no temple in Luka Palanka my family always washed before the Shabbat and wore nice clothes. My father wore a dress suit as if he had come back from temple. Then he would read a prayer and after dinner we would go for a walk.

We did not stay in Luka Palanka for long. My father had to move because his business was not going well. This was not an industrialized environment in fact it was exclusively an agricultural region. In 1930 we moved to Drvar. Drvar was an industrialized town rich in wood. There was a cellulose factory and a big sawmill. The Grmec mountain was exploited by the sawmill and many people were employed in this industry. Unfortunately, we found that we were once again the only Jewish family. My father found a very good space for our future shop and very quickly the seeds of his and my mother's work began to appear. As very social people, they quickly had a steady clientele and my father was able to buy many shares and we had a solid savings.

When we finished elementary school my sisters, Flora, Judita and I continued our schooling in Banja Luka because there was no secondary school in Drvar. We lived with our aunt Rena and her husband Jakob who had relocated from Sarajevo to Banja Luka. My uncle's business did not go well and his family lived very modestly. My father helped him a lot.

My sisters and I joined the Jewish youth group in Banja Luka. There was a big temple and next to it a space for Jewish youth activities called Ken. In Ken we learned Hebrew, songs and Jewish games and we organized trips out of Banja Luka. Older girls and boys always went with we younger ones and they paid strict attention to our behavior. When we passed through the town everyone knew that we were Jews because we were dressed in clean clothes, not luxuriously, but very neat, and we were always well behaved.

My mother's brother, Haim Levi, also lived in Banja Luka. He had a big hairdresser salon. Frequently, he told me stories about his parents, Haim and Flora Levi. Since they died before I was born I listened to his stories with great interest. The story of my great-grandfather, Salomon, my grandmother Flora Levi's father, was especially moving and interesting. My great-grandfather was a banker of sorts. He had a currency exchange. He would take foreign currency and go from Banja Luka to Prijedor to change the money from Turkish currency to Austro-Hungarian. (Editor's note: we assume she is speaking of pre-1878, when Banja Luka was still in Turkish hands). He traveled a lot for this work. Once, while he was in Prijedor, someone noticed that he had a big bag from which he took out foreign money and changed it. Thieves waited for and killed my great-grandfather and took the money. His horse and dog returned home by themselves. My great- grandmother Bikina organized a search party and with help from the horse and dog she found the place where the crime occurred. The killer was quickly found and taken to prison.

My grandfather Haim and his wife Flora had a small shop. They sold mostly leather good including: saddles, horse harnesses, leather bags and other household goods. They lived modestly and observed all the holidays and customs because they were very religious. When their daughter Rena married she had to go to the ritual bath. For this ritual bath all the girls discreetly accompanied her to a place on the Vrbas River and helped her with the bath. Her hair was very long and they put some fragrant grass in her hair and on the way they sang. My mother told me about how wonderful these songs were. After the bath the bride was decorated and adorned until the morning. My grandmother Flora knew how to make the nicest tukada. A tukada is a hat which is placed on the bride and made from pearls and brocade. These were real pieces of art work. The young couple married under a traditional Jewish canopy and it was an event which all the young people of Banja Luka took part in. Six children were born from this marriage: Rena, Haim, Sarina, Luna, Leon and Matilda. Unfortunately, Matilda died very young. My mother's brother, Leon, was seriously injured during WWI. He never recovered from the injuries and died in 1923. His wife, Sida, died very quickly after him and the care of their three children: Zlata, Flora and Haim, was taken over by the remaining family members.

My paternal grandmother, Rahela Albahari (nee Atijas), was born in 1855 in Travnik.

She lived in a big family and had a lot of brothers and sisters. She was born while Bosnia and Hercegovina was under Turkish control. In Travnik there were a lot of Jewish families, more Sephards than Ashkenazis. There were rich and poor families. My great-grandfather was a small merchant and lived very modestly with his family. The male children learned a trade and female children did not go to school. My grandmother Rahela was very adroit, hardworking and curious about everything. She and her brothers learned Hebrew script and read religious books. Since the prayer books had Ladino (a medieval Spanish dialect written with Hebrew characters; Ladino, or Judeo-Espanol, was to Spanish what Yiddish was to German), she was able to use the Ladino to learn Hebrew. She spoke Ladino, Turkish, Hebrew and Serbian. She went to temple regularly, which was rare for female children at the time. She married Moshe Albahari when she was 17 years old. My grandfather Moshe's family lived in Travnik, and later moved to Tesanj, a small place in Bosnia. Moshe and Rahela lived in Tesanj and had a small shop. Rahela gave birth to 7 children: Salamon-Buhor, Jakob, Sabetaj, Leon, Gedalja, Ester and David. The children all left the house early; they learned a trade with friends or relatives in Travnik, Zenica and Sarajevo. When they finished their schooling, they got married, started their own families and lived in different places in Bosnia and Hercegovnia. Grandfather Moshe was sickly and he died of pneumonia around 1910. Since the children had moved away and she was left alone, Rahela decided to fulfill her longstanding wish to move to Israel and to die in the Holy Land. Her son Gedalja accompanied her to the ship, which sailed from Split.

When she arrived in Israel she educated Jewish children since she new Jewish history and how to read and write Hebrew quite well. She was in Israel when WWI broke out. Nostalgia and sadness overcame her. She was worried about her children. Unfortunately, she only managed to return to Bosnia in 1918. She died in Sarajevo in 1930. Before her death my father, my mother and my two sisters and I went to visit her. That is the first and last time I saw her. My father, David, was her youngest son and she was very close to him. I remember when we kissed her hand, first my father, then my mother and then the children and she kept repeating: "David, my sweet child."

Sometime around 1934, one could feel that bad times were coming. Fascism could already be felt in the air. After the unification of the Third Reich in 1938 (editor's note: this is how the respondent refers to the German takeover of Austria), many Jews arrived in Banja Luka from Austria. My uncle Salomon Levi took in one of these families. They left all of their property behind in Vienna. I was still too young to fully understand their situation. But, unfortunately, the hard times soon befell me too. For the 1940-41 school year I was enrolled in Prijedor. During this school year I started to have problems because my history professor was a fascist sympathizer and he always humiliated and insulted me in front of the whole grade. I cried after almost every class with him. My three school friends: Sveta Popovic, Joca Stefanovic and Milan Markovic were a great consolation to me. They would tell me: "Don't give in to him, hold your head up high, proudly, high, you are not going to let one fascist make you suffer." I listened to them. Numerus Klausus, a law which restricted the number of Jewish children who were able to go to school, had already been enacted. They carried this out especially rigorously with those boys and girls who were supposed to enroll in the higher grades of the gymnasium. At the teacher's meeting the director of my school insisted that I be thrown out, but I was lucky and my physics, geography and literature professors lobbied for me to stay. Their argument was that it would be better to dismiss a younger student who had time to transfer to some trade school rather than me. In the end they did not throw me out. I learned about this incident during the war when I met one my professors.

War broke out in 1941 and a German unit entered Drvar. Not much time passed before my father, mother and younger sister Judita, and my younger brother Moric, who was eleven, were taken to what was called a reception camp in Bosanski Petrovac by the Ustashe [Before and during WWII Ustashe were an extreme right wing political and military organization of Croatian nationalists on the German's side. They ruled Croatia from 1941-1945]. When this happened I was at my aunt's house. The Ustashe told her that she must send me to the camp but I did not go and I ran away instead. I hid in surrounding villages, however in the end I fell into the hands of the Ustashe and I suffered terribly when they took me to prison. But something happened to save me. Serbs, who were also mistreated by the Ustashe, attacked Drvar. I was liberated at that time. I immediately registered to help at the Drvar hospital. Salomon Levi, who I knew from before, worked there as a doctor. I contacted him and told him that I wanted to help in the hospital since before the war I had learned first aid in school. From that day I became a fighter against fascism. From then until 1945 I held a variety of different responsibilities and positions. Once the enemy attacked liberated territory and the people began to flee. Many mothers fled with weak children. Many children ran around like mad, fell in flames and disappeared. At the time I was in the 10th Krajiski brigade. I gathered these children, saved them from a sure death and took them back to a safe place. They were put up in a children's dormitory in Lika, which was established during the war. In honor of my effort to save as many children as possible, I was decorated with a medal of courage.

In the meantime, my parents along with Judita and Moric were supposed to be transferred from the reception camp to Jasenovac. However, my father was clever and while they were in the cattle cars waiting for the train tracks at the Prijedor station to be fixed he told my brother and sister to ask to the officers if they could use the toilet. Since there was not a normal toilet, they went a little behind the wagon and they managed to cross over the narrow-gauge railroad tracks. Shortly afterwards my parents managed to escape unnoticed and caught up with them. All four of them got on a train for Sanski Most. In Sanski Most they hid for some time; they wanted to reach Drvar because the Italians were there and they did not practice the same abuse the Germans did. With a lot of hardship they finally reached Drvar. I was ordered to stay in Drvar from the time the Italians took over to do illegal work. My father and mother spent the entire war running from place to place as liberated territories changed. My sister and brother were in the partisans.

In 1944 I caught pneumonia. The war efforts, hunger, walking, exhausted me terribly. My unit decided to transfer me to liberated territory from the medical facility. As soon as I got a little better I began to work in the youth organization in the liberated territory. This was in Bosanski Petrovac in Grahovo, in Jajce and in Travnik. At that time I was selected to be part of the top leadership for Bosnia and Hercegovina in the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Youth. My work was a great help to our army. I organized youth to help carry the wounded, to plow, dig, sow since all the food was sent to the front lines. We started a literacy course, we taught the youth many useful things and skills. For this work I was also awarded. I received a lot of recognition. I received awards for serving Bosnia and Hercegovina, for contributing to the fight, and after the war for my work with children. I was in Bugojno until 1945 when I heard that Belgrade was liberated. Naturally we were overjoyed, however all of Yugoslavia was still not liberated. Fortunately that too happened.

The members of my family and I were reunited in Sarajevo in 1945. We all came to the family house. My father was very happy that all of his children had survived and said: "Children, do not worry as long as your head is on your shoulders, we will start over and there will be everything."

After the war we children continued our schooling, we went to so-called courses for one year and finished two grades. We all finished gymnasium. School was hard, there was no paper to be used and we were all greatly impoverished, but we were all ecstatic to be liberated. The Jewish community in Sarajevo received aid from different organizations like the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, so that we Jews had clothing and we received eggs, powdered milk, rice, etc. My father was very active in the Jewish community. Later he got work as the head of a shop and while at this job he found himself. He worked with such enthusiasm in this store. Frequently he told me how he wanted to teach young people that commerce could be an honest trade. Not to steal and lie. My mother Luna devoted herself to the house. She met each of us and picked each of us up. In this time of poverty and lack of food she managed to make all sort of things out of nothing. Everyone loved her. In our family house in Sarajevo she waited for each of our surviving relatives. They slept on the floors until they found something. She had to clean, do laundry and cook and she never complained, she was so happy to have her children around her.

My parents were proud of each of their children because they all finished some form of higher education. My sister Judita finished agronomy and lived in Sarajevo. She married and had a daughter Tanja. My brother Moric finished forestry faculty and at the same time went to pilot school. He married a Jewish woman named Rahela Maestro. My father was very happy that there would be at least one heir. Rahela and Moric had a son who they named after our father. My sister Flora finished a commercial academy.

In 1946, I participated in the building of the Brcko-Banovici railroad line. After finishing the work I met a wonderful young man, my current husband, Ilija Perisic. He was active in aviation. Very soon after we met we married, in 1950.My two sisters and myself all married Serbs. My father wanted Jewish son-in-laws, but nonetheless he respected our choices. My father died in 1973.

My husband went to an advanced military school and finished a degree in political science. He is very responsible; he worked hard in the air force war division. He retired as a general lieutenant colonel.

My mother was in Sarajevo during the summers because we, her children, came there on our holidays. Those were wonderful days when the family gathered together. During the winters my mother would visit the three of us in Belgrade. She died in 1993.

My husband was a pilot, an officer in the Yugoslav national army and was transferred from Sarajevo to Belgrade. In the meantime, I managed to enroll in a two year teachers' college and right when I graduated my husband was transferred to Nis. My first teaching position was in Nis. We lived in Nis seven years and at one time I worked in the Museum of National Liberation Battles.

In the meantime we had three children. While the children were small they went to stay with my parents in Sarajevo for the school holidays. My parents celebrated all the Jewish holidays, so that from a young age my children knew everything about the holidays. Since Jewish holidays in essence mark historical events of the Jewish nation, their grandfather and grandmother explained to them the importance of all the holidays. My husband and I are atheists and in our house we celebrated neither Jewish nor Serbian holidays. My children are from a mixed marriage and feel like both Jews and Serbs. My eldest son Simo, finished the construction faculty and currently works for Energoprojekt as a deputy director. He is married and his wife works as an editor at the daily newspaper Politika. They have three children: Ana, a university student studying political science, Maya a fourth grader in middle school and Djordje a high school student in the II grade. My middle son, Predrag, finished the technological faculty and has a master's degree. He is married and has two sons Nenad and Mladen both of whom are students. My youngest son, Miljenko, finished the construction faculty and works. He has a daughter, Darja, who is in the V grade of elementary school. All of my sons and their families are members of the Jewish community. Sometimes my grandchildren go with the rest of the Jewish children to the (Joint Distribution Committee/Lauder Foundation) summer camp in Hungary.

We were once again transferred to Belgrade in 1959. I became employed at the Institute for History of the Workers' Movement. I worked there processing documents from the National liberation battles until my retirement in 1969.

I get much satisfaction and joy from grandchildren. They are my greatest treasure.