Travel

Samuel Coyas

Samuel Coyas with his son Yasef

Samuel Sami Coyas
Istanbul
Turkey
Date of interview: January 2005
Interviewer: Tuna Saylag

Samuel Coyas is an 82-year-old, caring and happy man. He doesn’t really look his age. He has been an accountant for 60 years. This year he and his wife Berta Coyas celebrated their 54th wedding anniversary. Even though he is retired, just in the name of keeping busy, he goes to a friend’s office in Eminonu [a business district on the European side of Istanbul] four days a week to do his accounting. He is an enthusiastic newspaper reader, and follows national and international developments closely. He is fond of solving crossword puzzles. He has some health problems like heart disease, and sometimes feels short of breath. Our interviews took place at their house on Hamam Sokak, in Caddebostan [a neighborhood on the Anatolian side, with a concentrated Jewish population] in which Samuel Coyas and his wife have been living for 28 years. They live on the eighth floor of a modern apartment building, which has nine floors and 30 apartments. Their apartment is spacious and well-lighted, and has four rooms.

Family background

My paternal grandmother’s name was Neama Eskenazi Coyas and my grandfather’s name was Samuel Eskenazi Coyas. I never met them. They used to live in Haskoy [a Jewish district on the European side of Istanbul], and later on they moved to Yedikule [a district of mainly Greek population on the European side of Istanbul]. My grandfather had died long before I was born. I don’t know how and when he died, but I guess he died in 1917. My grandfather was buried in the Haskoy cemetery, but I couldn’t find his name in the files. My grandmother, on the other hand, immigrated to the United States with my uncles after World War I, in 1918. My grandfather must have been an educated man. He was working at the Kazlicesme Leather Factory as an accountant. As you can see, being an accountant runs in the family.

My grandmother Neama dressed in a very stylish way. She wouldn’t go out without wearing all of her jewelry. That’s why they would say, ‘Esta pasando la de las djoyas’ meaning ‘the lady with the jewelry is passing by’, when she went out. In time, Coyas [meaning jewelry in Ladino] had become the nickname of the family, and started to be used along with Eskenazi. Because Eskenazi was a very widespread surname, we were given only the surname Coyas, when the ‘Surname Law’ 1 was passed in 1934. There is no other family in Turkey bearing this surname. As far as I can remember, my grandmother died in New York, in 1936 or 1937.

The roots of the Amon Family go all the way to Serez [today Makedonia province, Greece]. In the past, the Amons were a family who raised rabbis. It has been said that esteemed cabbalists were among them, but I don’t know the names of any. My maternal grandfather’s name was Izak Amon. I never met him either, and my mother didn’t speak about him much. I guess he died young, but I don’t know the date. My grandfather’s brothers, one of whom was Rav Nisim Amon [‘Rav’ was the way the rabbis were and still are addressed], and his cousins, Rav Sabetay Amon and Rav Moshe Amon, were among the most prominent and respected rabbis of the time. Rav Sabetay Amon would go to the synagogue in Kuzguncuk [a district on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus in Istanbul] with his followers on Friday nights. In doing so he would pass through the bazaar, and if he saw an open shop owned by a Jew, he would immediately warn the man with a sharp look. Upon this warning, the shop owners would close their shops immediately, and go to their homes. He would also give Hebrew and Tora lessons to children in the synagogue.

My maternal grandmother’s name was Estreya Amon [nee Illel]. Her family was from Haskoy. Later on they moved to Daghamam [a district on the Asian side of Istanbul]. I can still vividly remember my grandmother. She was a very nice and energetic woman. She would cover her head with a white scarf when she went out. She always spoke Spanish [Ladino] and knew how to write using the Rashi alphabet 2. In those times, nobody knew Turkish anyway, especially the women. All the Jews would speak Judeo-Spanish amongst themselves. The ones who spoke Turkish had a very bad accent. I learned Turkish when I started elementary school.

The Amon couple had three children: Vitali, Mazalto and Nisim. My grandmother lived with Nisim Amon, her younger son, till she died. He was a bachelor and was living with them when her husband was still alive. My uncle was the breadwinner of the house. My grandmother was very good at housekeeping. She would always cook and manage everything in the house until her son got married. She never got along with Sofi Taragano, her daughter-in-law. Due to the intense quarrels at home, she aged early, and died in 1934; she wasn’t able to see my bar-mitzva. She was very fond of my mother, her only daughter, me and my brother. There was a dish which my grandmother would cook seasonally and which I liked very much called ‘balkaba kon zirguela’ [Ladino for ‘pumpkin dish cooked with damson plums’]. The pumpkin was cleaned, washed, then sliced and placed in the pot. After oil and salt was added, the damson plums, with their seeds, were placed over the pumpkin slices. The damson plums would add a sour taste to the dish.

My father, Yasef Eskenazi Coyas, was born in Haskoy. He worked at the Kazlicesme Leather Factory, as a blue-collar worker. He took part in the Gallipoli War (1915-1916) 3 when he was doing his military service, and was taken prisoner by the British. He was kept under arrest for two and a half years in London. His family couldn’t get any news about him and thought that he had died. I don’t have any information about the days he spent under arrest there.

My father had eight siblings, two of whom were women, and the rest were men. All of them, except his sister Rashel Deleon [nee Eskenazi Coyas], emigrated to the United States after World War I. [The Ottoman Empire in World War I] 4 Nisim, Sultana Matalon [nee Eskenazi Coyas], Eliezer and Eliya emigrated to the States. Rafael first immigrated to Britain and then to France, and Jak and Leon immigrated to France. The whole family was scattered. At that time, the Ottoman Empire was going through its last and most difficult days. There was a lot of unemployment. The foreign countries provided the immigrants with a lot of facilities. During that period, it was even said that a very large non-Muslim community, mostly Armenians and Syrian Christian Orthodox living in Harput [Elazig province, Eastern Anatolia], had all immigrated to the States.

All of my father’s siblings were single when they left Turkey. The ones who immigrated to France got married to Christians, while the ones who immigrated to the States got married to Jews. All of them had children and grandchildren. When my father was set free, and returned home, he had no one from his family left in Turkey, except his sister. According to what my mother used to tell me, the day my father arrived in Istanbul, he went to see his sister Rashel Deleon. That night, it was the first anniversary of his father’s death, and a meldado [prayer, yearly commemoration of the dead, the equivalent of the Ashkenazi yahrzeit] was being chanted at home for his soul. My father hadn’t known about his father’s death up until then. According to this event, it is possible that my grandfather died in 1917, but I don’t have any information about the circumstances of his death. On the same day, my father also learned that his whole family had immigrated.

During certain periods of my life, I often met with my uncles – Rafael, Jak and the youngest one, Leon – who had immigrated to France. They sometimes came with their families to Istanbul. They – Jak and Leon; Rafael never came – usually stayed with us or over at my cousin Kemal Deleon’s house. During one of their stays, we took them to the Yalova Spa Hotel, and stayed four or five days there. [Yalova is a district on the shores of the Marmara Sea. People used to go there for the summer.]

My wife, our children and I would sometimes go to Nice. We would either stay over at Leon’s house or at a hotel, depending on the circumstances. We would go to Juan Les Pins [a neighborhood in Nice, famous for its beaches] to swim every day. We would greatly enjoy ourselves and laugh at the jokes Lucienne [nee Loubeau], Leon’s wife, used to tell, even though neither I nor my wife could speak French well. We liked each other a lot.

All of the three siblings were engaged in the shoe trade. Jak and Rafael owned one shoe shop in which they were partners, and Leon owned another shoe shop of which he was the sole owner. The two shops were in different neighborhoods, but ‘JOYAS’ [Coyas spelled the French way] was written in capital letters on the signs of both of them. Their houses and business premises were across each other. Rafael’s wife’s name was Louise. They had no children. Jak’s wife’s name was Henriette, and they had a daughter named Jacqueline. Their youngest, Leon, was married to Lucienne, and they had a son named Michel Sami and a daughter named Daniela.

Living in Nice, a city that wasn’t near Paris, and having Christian wives helped my uncles to survive World War II, without being sent to the camps. [Nice was in Vichy France, a German satellite lead by Marshal Petain, and not under direct German administration like the northern part of the country, including Paris.] But they used to say that they had had very difficult days. Leon had joined the [French] Resistance, who were fighting against the occupation forces, and he lived with them in the mountains. He had a serious complication related to his heart, probably due to the exhausting days he spent with the opposition forces. Though he was the youngest one amongst the uncles, he was the first one to die, sometime in the 1970s; I don’t remember the exact date. Jak died next, and then Rafael. I don’t remember the dates either. Later on, though we wrote a great many letters to their wives, we didn’t receive any answers. I don’t have any information about what their children are doing. We lost contact with them completely.

Unfortunately, I never met my uncles who lived in the States. I remember them exchanging letters with my mother when I was young, and helping her a little bit financially when she became a widow. Also once, my cousin Leon Eskenazi in the States, the son of Uncle Albert, and his wife, and Norma Matalon, the daughter of Aunt Sultana, came to Istanbul in 1965. Though we met then for the first time, we immediately established a strong rapport and chatted for hours. Unfortunately, I couldn’t receive any information about them either later on.

My mother, Mazalto Fortune Coyas [nee Amon] was born in 1893 in Daghamam, Istanbul. She was a tall, fair-skinned and very good-looking lady. She didn’t cover her head. She went to the Alliance school [see Alliance Israelite Universelle] 5 in Kuzguncuk. She spoke French, Spanish and Greek, and knew how to write using both the Latin and the Rashi alphabets. The Amon family settled down in Kuzguncuk when their house was burned down during the legendary Daghamam fire 6. My mother, who was newly wed at the time of the fire, used to tell us frequently about this fire: how horrifying it was, how fast it had spread, how the people had fled in panic and didn’t have time to save anything from their homes. A lot of Jewish families lost their houses in this big fire.

My father met my mother through his sister Rashel. They were distant relatives anyhow. They got married after a certain period of time and settled down in Yedikule. My father continued working at the leather factory while my mother was a housewife.

Growing Up

I was born in our house in Yedikule in January 1923 [28 Tevet 5683 in accordance with the Hebrew calendar]. My brother, Izak, was born two years later. We were both sent to the Mestra [Greek kindergarten]. I learned Greek there. It was like my mother tongue. When they asked me something in Turkish, I would reply in Greek and say ‘Postelani?’ meaning ‘how would you say it?’ and search for the Turkish words in my mind. We had a dog named Florika and I liked him very much.

There was a great love between my mother and father. Unfortunately when my father died of pneumonia at a very early age in 1927 [23 Sevat 5687], my mother felt very desperate and sad. She had become a widow at a very early age, with two little children, and started struggling for existence. I was four and my brother was just two years old. That’s why I remember my father very vaguely. I only remember him taking me to the bazaar in his arms. This is the only memory left in my mind related to him. My mother dressed in black for a year, wore a black hat and covered her face with a black scarf when she went out. But her mourning lasted all her life. She always talked about our father with love and longing.

My uncle Nisim Amon, who was living with my grandmother on Simitci Tahir Street in Kuzguncuk, took us to live with him when my mother became a widow. That is how we moved to Kuzguncuk. Nisim was very fond of his elder sister, my mother. My uncle supported us both financially and morally, as a father would do. My aunt Rashel also frequently welcomed us at her house in Yedikule. We would stay there for days. In those times, family ties were very close, and there was a great mutual support amongst relatives.

My uncle’s house was quite big. It was three-storied, so we all fitted in easily. There was a living room, hall and kitchen on the ground floor. On the second floor, there were three bedrooms, a large hall and a toilet. On the last floor, there was the attic where all the junk was stored away. We slept on the second floor, in the same room as my mother. I slept on the floor, while my brother slept in my mother’s bed. The other rooms were used by my uncle and grandmother. Because the table in the hall on the second floor was bigger, we would use it to dine at when we had guests. We didn’t have electricity at home, but we had running water. We would use the brazier for heating. Our cat would always lie down under the hot brazier.

My uncle had had to quit his education in medicine and start working in order to support his family, after he had lost his father. He was a responsible person. He used to speak good French. He was working at a big store and had a good salary. He was a very fastidious man. He would examine his water glass in the light to see whether it had any spots on it or not. He would wear a robe called ‘Kurdi’ 6, with fur lining, when it got cold in winter. During the weekdays, all the men, young or old, would wear long robes called ‘entaris’ 7 at home.

My grandmother’s brother Nesim and his wife Klaris would frequently visit us. They didn’t have any children. They lived in a neighborhood on the European side. They would stay for one or two months, when they came in the summer. Then the house would cheer up. They were very joyful people. In this way, my mother’s sadness would fade away, if only for a short while.

My elder uncle, Vitali, wasn’t like his brother Nisim at all. He was handsome, and full of life. He really liked enjoying himself. He wasn’t like my younger uncle, who was sensible and responsible. He would never help his younger brother, who took care of both his mother and us. When he was doing his military service in Tekirdag [a city in the Thrace region, where many Jews lived], he met Merkada Saltiel, the daughter of one of the rich families of the city. They fell in love and got married. They immigrated to Cuba in 1924, due to unemployment, after their three daughters – Estreya, Vida and Fortune – were born. There, they had a son, whom they named Izak. They stayed in Havana for six years, and returned to Istanbul in 1930, when the circumstances over there also got worse. I remember the day on which they arrived, on a big ship, at the Istanbul Port, very well. We – my mother, my uncle and I – went to meet them. They settled down in Azap Kapi [a district on the European side of Istanbul] later on. His wife was a dressmaker. My uncle, on the other hand, never had a decent job all his life. He did everything, but never stuck to any of his jobs. At some stage, he even opened up a hamburger-shop in Persembe Bazaar [a trade center in Karakoy]. He died in hospital in 1955 having lost his sanity because of diabetes.

During the years we used to live with my uncle Nisim, my mother was trying to make some money by buying sewing supplies from the wholesaler and trying to sell them to her friends. Our comfort lasted for five or six years, till my uncle Nisim got married. From then on the atmosphere at home became uneasy. Sofi Taragano, my uncle’s wife, was disturbed by our presence in the house. Upon this, we moved into the attic. As I mentioned earlier, my grandmother and Aunt Sofi didn’t get along with each other either. Their fights were so famous in the neighborhood that we, the two siblings, would run to our mother in fear, when the screaming started. My mother, who couldn’t stand this uneasy atmosphere, decided to leave the house after a while, in 1933, though my uncle never wanted her to do so. After this incident, a coldness between the two siblings started, and they stopped seeing each other.

We then rented an apartment in a house that belonged to an Armenian named Araksi, on the same street. The apartment had two rooms. We had a wooden divan, a table, and a few chairs. I would sleep in the living room, while my brother slept in the same bed as my mother. We didn’t have electricity; our only means of lighting was a gas lamp. We had running-water and would use a brazier for heating. We would heat the water, and wash ourselves in the wash-basin at home. Sometimes we would go to the hamam [Turkish bath]. My mother would wash the clothes by hand on a wash-board, and would do the ironing with the iron, which she warmed on the brazier. She used to cook our food on a coal stove called ‘furfur’ [‘ornaya’ in Ladino]. The ‘furfur’ was either fixed at the kitchen counter or was portable. It looked like a 10-kg oil can. First clay, then coal was placed in the stove. And a heat resistant grill was placed at the very top of the stove so you could place a pot on top of it. After lighting up the coal, the fire was fanned to keep it going.

That year, my mother started to work for an Armenian dressmaker in Uskudar [a district on the Asian side of Istanbul] for one lira a day –´our monthly house rent was 4 liras – in order to make a living for us. She would leave home in the mornings, and go to work on foot, in order to save money. The distance between our house and her workplace was three kilometers. She would prepare our lunch before she left. I was ten and my brother was around eight years old. We would play with the ball or marbles in the street all day long till my mother came home. We would play with the ball reluctantly, fearing that our shoes, which were already old, would wear out even more. My mother, who had become desperate once, had cut the upper parts of her boots, which were left from her teenage years, and gave me the cut boots to wear.

I often saw my mother crying, and cried as well because I couldn’t bear to see her cry. We had a lot of difficulties getting by. We bought our coal from the coal-seller Anastas [Greek name] either weekly or in kilograms. We couldn’t afford to buy good oranges, and bought from the rotten fruits called ‘tokadikas’ [meaning ‘touched’ in Ladino] because they were cheaper. Whenever my mother was hard up, she would cut a piece from her ‘kolana’ [gold chain necklace in Ladino], which my father had bought her, and sell it, in order to be able to pay the rent. The necklace was one meter long.

Later on, when she became tired of going to work, she left her job in Uskudar and started sewing ties at home. One day, a thief broke into the house and stole her sewing machine when we had gone out to take some air. My mother felt very sad. Her livelihood was gone. A few days later, she sold the chain-watch, the last memory left to us from my father, and bought a new sewing machine.

My mother didn’t lose contact with my aunt Sultana and my uncles, my father’s brothers, who had immigrated to the States. She often exchanged letters with them. They would sometimes send money, in small amounts, to help us. When my aunt Sultana once sent a check for 150 dollars, we had to go to the Ottoman Bank on Voyvoda Street in Karakoy to cash it. We settled our rent and coal debts first, and then we went shopping. We were so happy that day, as if it was a festival! I’ll never forget that day.

I started school at the 45th state Jewish elementary school in Kuzguncuk in 1929. The school changed its building three times. Finally, it moved to the very big house of Marko Pasha 9, which was situated in the upper part of Kuzguncuk. Turkish grammar was the subject which I liked most and was most successful at in school. I was a good student, in general. Our next-door neighbor, Madam Viktorya, taught me French for free. I owe the little bit of French I speak today to her. We didn’t have much of a regular reading habit. There were only religious books in French and Hebrew, which had been left from my grandfather, at home. Later on, as I grew up, I started reading novels by writers like Alexandre Dumas [(1802-1870): French novelist and dramatist], and Michel Zevaco [(1860-1918): French novelist, professor and filmmaker] in Turkish. I even used to read one page to my mother each night. She liked this very much.

Like all other children of the age of six or seven, my brother and I went to the Mahaziketora, or to prayers in the afternoons for two hours. My mother attached a lot of importance to this. However, we only went on weekends during the school season. In the summertime, during holidays, we would go three to four times a week. One year a hazan [chazzan] came to Kuzguncuk, and set up a children’s choir. We would sing some of the prayers, all together.

We weren’t very religious, but trefa [treyf] meat definitely didn’t enter our house. My mother would neither work on Shabat [Sabbath], nor touch the fire. We liked all the holidays and celebrated them according to the traditions. My mother would always sew us new cotton flannel pajamas during Rosh Ashana [Rosh Hashanah]. The Pesah [Pesach] preparations would start days before, and the whole house would be cleaned. The loksa [Pesach dishes] came out. There was even a special frying pan used for burmuelos 10. It was taken out of the closet and made ready for use. My mother would cook the ‘Chufletes’ dish, special to this holiday.

I couldn’t go on with my education after elementary school because our financial situation wasn’t good and I had to work. Poverty and having no father had matured me at a young age. Meanwhile the time for my bar-mitzva had come. My mother started preparing for it according to her means. She took me to Bahcekapi [a shopping street in Eminonu], and bought me a proper suit for my bar-mitzva. I didn’t want her to have any expenses. Though I told her that this much preparation wasn’t necessary, she didn’t listen to me and said, ‘Whatever is needed, will be done. I will not make you feel that you have no father.’ She had Rav Avram Amram prepare a speech for me.

We celebrated my bar-mitzva at the upper synagogue [Virane Synagogue, built in 1840]. I gave a long speech, about ten pages, in Spanish, which I had memorized with a lot of difficulty. It was a very emotional speech, which also referred a little to our situation. Generally it was composed of sentences, which emphasized growing up without a father, and how our mother made sacrifices and raised us all on her own. All of the guests’ eyes were filled with tears. We didn’t make any other preparations besides this. Because I went to the synagogue, I knew all the prayers by heart. Then all the relatives came home to congratulate me. The house was filled up. We offered them lemonade and almond candy with a spoon. I don’t remember receiving any presents. My mother was content for having been able to organize a ceremony, however small, for her elder son.

Two years later, unfortunately, we didn’t have the same means for my brother. We celebrated Izak’s bar-mitzva in the same synagogue without a speech having been prepared, only by carrying out the basic religious requirements.

Religion was a way of life in those times. Naturally, most of the families were devout. They would definitely send their children to the synagogue, and to the Mahaziketora. There were two synagogues in Kuzguncuk. The name of the first one, in the lower area close to the sea and the main street, was Kal de Abasho [lower synagogue] or Beth Yaakov [the big synagogue, built in 1878]. The name of the other one, in the upper part, on the corner where Tinman Musa and Yakup Street intersect, was Kal de Ariva [upper synagogue] or Virane Synagogue. In fact, they were close to each other. [These synagogues are still in use today]. Four tefilas [tefillah] were conducted every morning, and the synagogues would fill up for all four.

There were a lot of rabbis and hazans in Kuzguncuk. Rabbi Sabetay Amon, Rabbi Simon Benshushe, Rabbi Avram Amram and Rabbi Michel Abut were only some of them. They all had long beards. There was also a shohet [shochet]. There wasn’t a mikve [mikveh], but there were two hamams. Dag Hamam was on Icadiye Street, and Little Hamam was on Meshruta Street. There was no yeshiva. When there was a meldado, all the rabbis would drop by that house, and would read the mishna, till meldar [prayer] time. This was called ‘Ezger’ [a group of mainly old people who read the tefilin for people who do not have the time or the inclination to do so themselves. They got paid for it. They also went around houses to read for the souls of the dead].

We would definitely go to the prayers on Saturdays. The fire wasn’t touched on Shabat. The gypsies did this job, and they would go around the streets and let the families know that they had arrived by shouting ‘Bellows, bellows’. Also on Saturdays, the rabbis and religious men would gather in the synagogue’s courtyard and read religious books, the Gemara. Afterwards they would summarize and debate it. In the afternoons, seuda shlishit [last Sabbath meal after minha] was always served. Most of the families in Kuzguncuk were engaged in the paper trade, were poor and had difficulties getting by. These people wouldn’t buy their coal all at once, but in kilograms. The rich ones would bring charcoal on ox-carts to their houses. This was burned on the braziers.

When a patient who couldn’t walk had to be taken to a doctor or hospital, howdah-like stretchers, which were covered by curtains on all sides, and carried by a few people, were used. These were called ‘Mafa’. On the other hand, horse carriages called ‘Talika’ were preferred for going around. A taxi in Kuzguncuk would be an extraordinary event. Everybody would gather around the taxi, and watch it. The streets were cobbled. There was no fixed marketplace. We had mobile greengrocers, yoghurt and fabric-sellers, who came to our doors. They would go around selling their goods which were loaded on donkeys.

We didn’t have a club or an association. People would get together either in the synagogues or at homes. The synagogues had taken the role of social clubs in Kuzguncuk. The Jews lived in ghettos like Haskoy, Balat, Kuledibi and Ortakoy [see Jewish residence in Istanbul] 11. [Editor’s note: There definitely existed a synagogue in these neighborhoods. The Jews lived in places around the synagogue, and had their own way of life.]

Kuzguncuk had been a Jewish town since the beginning of the 17th century. Many Jews and Greeks lived there. On the other hand, the number of Turks and Armenians living in Kuzguncuk was small. The Jews of old times [pilgrims] thought the Kuzguncuk area was very sacred because they believed that this land was the last stop on their way to Jerusalem. Therefore, the religious Jews preferred to be buried in the Kuzguncuk cemetery in Nakkastepe [district on the Asian side of Istanbul], in cases when they didn’t reach the Promised Land. The house in which the Chief Rabbi Deputy elections were held, is also there. [The Secular Council met there in 1872 to elect the Chief Rabbi. After much debate they selected Moshe Halevi as the Hahambashi of Istanbul.]

We were all like siblings. In general we weren’t subjected to any hostile behavior from Turks. There wasn’t any anti-Semitism in Kuzguncuk when I was young. But there always existed an uneasiness and fear within us, Jews. We tried to keep a low profile. Our mother would always warn us and say: ‘Don’t ever get involved in fights with the Turks.’ We lived in a passive and introvert manner. We had slowly started to feel that the tolerant atmosphere we had had during the Ottoman period, wasn’t present any more after the [Turkish] Republic 12 was founded. I suppose, this was the greatest factor in constituting our low-profile life model. Besides, incidents like the rising nationalist movements, assimilation efforts, and the Thrace Events 13 had made us very cowardly, especially when the many families who had escaped the Thrace Events settled down in Kuzguncuk. There was nobody around us who showed interest in politics. Anyhow, the number of non-Muslims taking part in politics and state affairs declined after the Turkish Republic was founded.

The most important political event I remember from my childhood is the death of Ataturk 14. I went to Dolmabahce Palace, like all the citizens of Istanbul. The line of people extended for kilometers. They were waiting to pass by his corpse and see Ata for the last time. The visit lasted for three days and three nights. All of Istanbul was there during the funeral. A lot of tears were shed. Ataturk’s corpse was brought to the Seraglio, on a military carriage pulled by the generals, after a march which lasted hours. Then it was placed on a war ship, which then went to the Haydarpasa Train Station, in order for the corpse to be taken to Ankara. It was so crowded everywhere, that I was only able to watch the ceremony from Yuksek Kaldirim [the steep slope which connects Karakoy to Tunel]. A great ceremony was also prepared in Ankara. We all felt very sad. We couldn’t accept that he didn’t exist anymore. Turkey had lost her father.

There were a lot of Jewish tradesmen in Kuzguncuk, like the grocer, the butcher, the greengrocer, the dressmaker, people engaged in the textile business, and the cobbler. Besides, there were also educated people like the pharmacist Gabay [Sephardic name], and the doctors Dr. Amon, Dr. Robert Karmona, Dr. Pizante, Dr. Jozef Bardavit, and merchants, who were engaged in the dye and paper trade. Of course, there existed a class distinction between the certain levels of society. The ones who were rich lived near the sea, whereas the poor ones lived around the river bed region called ‘Vinya’ [vineyard]. The neighborhood relations were very sincere. When we made visits, we would offer to each other coffee, and sometimes ‘atramus’ and ‘liparidas’. [Atramus: a kind of legume like the broad bean. The grains of the bean were washed and left in salty water for two days. The grains, which became yellowish, were peeled and eaten. Only Jews ate this. Liparidas: a kind of salted and dried fish.]

Men would spend their time either at the coffee houses or by going around with their friends, when they didn’t work. Everybody could go to these coffee houses. They played either cards or backgammon and chatted while drinking tea and coffee. These places were favored especially after work and during holidays. Women would usually stay at home. Families would sometimes go to Baglarbasi [a neighborhood, where mostly Armenians lived], to watch the theatrical company. The most famous actor of the company was an Armenian named Karakas. He used to play all the leading roles. Someone from the company would come on a horse carriage, and announce the program with a megaphone: ‘Othello or The Wife of an Arab [this was a slogan of the announcer of the play Othello, refering to Desdemona, the wife of Othello, the Moor or in other words Arab] is going to be staged in our theater this Sunday’. They would go through all the remote streets making this announcement.

Later on, when the era of cinema began, we started watching silent films on a raised deck. When the film started, a man would go to the piano next to the curtain and start playing it. In this way, the silence was broken. I watched the first sound movie at the Beylerbeyi Cinema, which our school had taken us to. It was Tarzan. I remember watching the film and being totally amazed. I liked it very much. From that moment on, we kept shouting ‘Aaaaaaa’, like Tarzan did in the movie.

On [Turkish] Independence Day 15 arches were set up, students and soldiers would perform official parades on the main streets. Apart from these kinds of celebrations, Ayios Pantelemion, the Greek Church in Kuzguncuk, would prepare a big fair once a year and the whole of Icadiye Street would be decorated with flags. This day, which coincided with the summer season, was celebrated as the Saint’s Day, if I’m not mistaken, the one who gave the church its name. The Greek coffee houses would all set up their tables outside. Greeks from all over Istanbul would come and pray first, and then would drink the healing water from the spring of the church. Entertainment was prepared at night. Everybody would dine, sing, and dance together. Jew or Turk, we would all go to the fair and enjoy ourselves. Everybody was looking forward to this day with anticipation. Besides, also during Easter, which coincided with our Pesah holiday, Icadiye Street was decorated with flowers. We would sing and dance, with the hand organ accompanying us. As the poetess Beki L. Bahar said, Kuzguncuk was a town, where ‘the ezan [the call to prayer for Muslims], the can [church bell], and the hazan lived together in love.’

Our very religious neighbor, Marko Cerasi, found me my first job. Monsieur Cerasi would say ‘al ken va vinir a la tefila, le var topar echo’ meaning ‘I’ll find jobs for whoever comes to tefila’. In this way, he encouraged us to go to the synagogue every morning. My first job was to work with a cap dealer on Mercan Slope [a trade center in Sultanhamam, on the European side of Istanbul] for 1.5 liras a week, at the age of 13. My job there was to cut the rough material around the caps, and arrange them. But the regular cutting work damaged my hands within a short period of time. All my fingers got swollen. Besides, the money I received was only sufficient for my ferry ticket. I quit working there after a month and started at another place, which made military uniforms. I also quit that job, because I was paid monthly, not weekly. My mother didn’t have enough to provide for my travel expenses, all through the month.

After a little while, Sami, the son of our neighbor Baruh, placed me as an apprentice at the Farhi Textile Wholesale Shop in Sultanhamam. I used to do all the cleaning and office-boy jobs there. Within time, I started measuring the fabric rolls. The same firm had a retailer branch in Karakoy. Later on they placed me there to work. I stayed in that firm till I was drafted. The Farhis were a rich family. They used to live in the well-known Cumhuriyet Apartimani [Republic Apartment in Taksim, a luxurious apartment building which housed the richest families of the time]. Mr. Farhi’s wife was the sister of Albert Siyon, the ‘glass king’ of the time. Unfortunately, the Siyons lost all of their fortune after the Wealth Tax 16 was introduced. The Wealth Tax didn’t affect us, because we were poor. But we heard that a lot of wealthy Jewish families like the Siyons suffered from it.

During the War

I was drafted at the age of 19, on 25th October 1942. World War II was going on with all its violence. I did my military service for three and a half years, in Akhisar, Adana and Ankara. They gathered all of us at the Sultan Ahmet Mosque in Eminonu [also known as the ‘Blue Mosque’] before the first distribution to our units. We were crammed into the mosque. They kept us waiting there for three days. We slept on the floors. The toilets were very dirty. They took us to a hamam, near the Sirkeci synagogue on the last day. The water wasn’t running properly. We stepped into the showers with our shoes on. They put our clothing into very hot pipes called ‘irons’, and killed all the microbes. Then the posting started. They put us on ships filled with sheep and goats, and took us to Bandirma [the Asian side of the Sea of Marmara]. There, we were placed one over the other in black wagons, which were like the ones that carried the Jews during World War II.

In the morning, we arrived in Akhisar [a suburb in the Aegean Region]. They gave us a ration of food, comprised of olives, raisins and tahina. Then, carrying heavy backpacks, we walked for 25 kilometers till we reached the 18th battalion. They vaccinated everyone for typhoid fever. After we had worked in road construction for two months, they sent us to Devebagirtan. There, they separated the Jews and the Armenians, and sent us, the Jews, to Manisa [a town in the Aegean], to the so-called Jewish Farm. [The so-called Jewish Farm was Kayalioglu School, built by Jews that had settled in Akhisar (near Konya). Students would learn about agriculture, applying its theories in the gardens and fields that belonged to the school and they even had a winery in the basement of the school building.] It had a big siyon [magen David] at its gate. Jews used to live there in the past. After staying there for one or two days, they sent us to Ankara.

There were a lot of young Jews who were doing their military service at the Ankara Youth Park. They sent me to the Cubuk Dam, which was in the vicinity. The soldiers used to drink alcoholic beverages regularly there. When a group of us, and I was part of that group, complained about this to the higher officials, we were sent to the Adana Road Headquarters Seyhan River regulator construction for being informers. [Adana is a town in the Mediterranean.] The Germans were responsible for the construction and used the soldiers as workers. Three of us would walk, the dam’s water running below us, on the narrow wooden beams, which were 50-60 meters high, and carry another beam on our shoulders. My legs used to shake with fear.

A few days later, the commander took me on as an adjutant upon his wife’s wish, who had just given birth to their child. Most of the people in road construction were rough people. 95 percent of them were Armenians. I guess, the commander had chosen me because I was young and had decent looks. As an adjutant, I did the cleaning and shopping and so forth, in other words everything that was asked from me. In this way, I was saved from carrying beams up on the heights. After two months, when the commander was assigned somewhere else, I asked to be appointed to another post in order not to have to return to my old one. Upon this, I was assigned to the Taskopru [an administrative district of Adana] Team Chief Commandership, as a typist. I learned how to type there. The other soldiers were working in road construction. The famous singer Dario Moreno 17 was also with us. He used to sing and play his guitar at the Adana Officer’s Club.

Each time some part of the road construction was completed, our unit would move on towards the border. Except for the work, life was very monotonous there. We were in the middle of open fields, like deserts, and slept in tents. There were a lot of Armenians among us. Anyways, the Armenians were always assigned to road-works. One of them was a skilled actor; I don’t remember the name now. One day he asked our commander for permission to stage a play. He started to prepare things once our commander had given him permission to do so. He gave a job to everyone. Soon, a stage was constructed with the beams and pieces of wood that were scattered around. Our actor friend gave everyone a part to play and put on the play ‘A good judge of people’. [The play was based on a novel by Andre Maurois (1885-1967): pseudonym of Emile Herzog: French biographer, novelist and essayist.] I played a woman’s role because of my ‘petite’ looks. I don’t remember the plot, but the play was a comedy. We had rehearsed a lot and memorized our lines. Most of our Armenian friends were talented when it came to the arts, and thus created all of our costumes, make-up, and sets. They had me wear a dress and a bonnet, and with the make-up done, they turned me into a good-looking lady. We performed the play three or four times. The commanders and the other soldiers watched us and burst out laughing.

The road had reached Ceyhan [an administrative district of Adana]. The commander here would drink at night and then go into the tents of the soldiers and either make them sing or beat them.

Due to the events that had taken place in history, they would approach the Armenians suspiciously, and didn’t want to let them out of their sight. Furthermore, when one day the news spread that President Ismet Inonu 18 would pass through Adana, as a precautionary measure, they withdrew the Armenians from the construction site for a few days. They usually had the Jews work for airport construction at the Air Force Headquarters.

The road construction in Adana reached Hassa [border gate of Iskenderun with Syria]. We were changing places according to the construction. One day, in 1944, we heard that 18 Jewish soldiers working in road construction, two of whom were from Kuzguncuk, had fled to Israel [British Mandate Palestine] via Syria [French Mandate]. I was the first one to hear the news because I was working in the office. That year they abolished the Road Construction Units 19. They sent me and two of my friends to do office work at the Ankara Mobilization Head Office. There, we had the chance to read top secret documents; they had two moons on them as a marker. Most of them included warnings about Armenians, saying that they should be watched closely. We demolished all the documents by tearing them apart.

It was the war years. In the military we didn’t receive much information from the outside world. We sometimes learned from friends who were discharged how the war went on, and what the Germans’ situation was. But we learned everything when we returned to civil life. We had heard about the ship, Struma 20, which departed from Constanta [today Romania], and was sunk in the Black Sea; but the Wealth Tax, was the thing most spoken about. It was said that many people had gone bankrupt and that some non-Muslims had been deported to Askale, due to the Wealth Tax. There were also wealthy young men in the military. These would cry whenever they heard from their families. Their fathers were taken away. Everything they had – even their coffee cups – were taken.

My uncle Nisim Amon also lost all of his fortune during this period. He had three children, one of whom was a girl, Estreya, and the two others were boys, Izak and Jojo. Before the Wealth Tax, he used to run a haberdashery store and had a Turkish partner. His business was quite good. But when he was asked to pay the Wealth Tax, he had to sell his share to his partner, in order to pay the Wealth Tax. He had to move from the house he lived in to a smaller, cheaper one. Later on, he had to work as an office-boy at the firm he had once owned. His former partner had become his boss. He couldn’t accept the situation and changed jobs. At his new workplace, they often sent him to Anatolia, to sell goods. His standard of living declined considerably. His financial situation never got back to its former state.

The ones who were drafted to the 20 military reserve classes 21 did their military service at the same time I did. These people were up to 30 years old and had been drafted before. During that period so many people were drafted that most of the families were left without men. Especially in small cities, only the old, women and children remained. Many years later, my father-in-law, Hayim Baruh, would tell us that he too had been sent to Askale. During that period, his wife was the one to support the family, taking care of both the business and home.

I spent the last years of my military service in Ankara. It was very cold there. Close to the time of my discharge, I got pneumonia. They took me to Ankara Gulhane Military Hospital [today’s Gulhane Military Medical Academy, founded as a military school and hospital in Topkapi, Istanbul in 1898 and transferred to Ankara in 1941.] I came very close to death. I remember the doctor having a consultation about me, as if I was an important case, with his students. Later, because a nurse gave me a wrong calcium shot, my arm was left damaged. Upon this, they gave me six months’ leave and sent me home. In this way, my military service ended in 1945. My brother Izak was drafted and sent to Sivas six months after my discharge.

I never met any refugees from Europe. Only before the war, in 1935-1936, I had heard that the Brod brothers, who were among the biggest textile traders of Sultanhamam, and of German Jewish origin, protected the Jewish factory owners, who had fled from the dreadful turn of events in Germany and come to Turkey. I also heard that the brothers had helped the ones who wanted to go to other countries.

The war years were tough years. The conditions in both civil and military life were really hard. People suffered under food scarcity. It wasn’t possible to find flour. Sugar and bread were bought by ration books. Raisins were used instead of sugar. There was blackout each night. We would cover our windows tightly with thick, dark curtains. We lived in fear that the Germans would attack any minute. Rumors were spread among the Jews, that gas chambers were being prepared in Edirne. [Editor’s note: After Germany occupied Greece and Bulgaria they were at the Turkish borders in Thrace and rumors were spreading that as soon as the Nazis arrived in Istanbul, they would use the ovens of the local Balat bakery, ‘Los Ornos de Balat’, to exterminate the Turkish Jewry. This created considerable anxiety among the latter, though the story, apparently was entirely without foundation.]

Sometime after I came back from the military, I started working at the Bedikoglu firm on Cakmakcilar Slope [the slope extending from Mercan to Beyazit in Eminonu], which was engaged in textile business. I measured the fabric rolls and sold the material. My boss was of Syrian origin. My salary was more satisfactory compared to the past. We were again living in Kuzguncuk.

All of my friends were Jewish. We weren’t members of any association or club. My greatest hobby was the cinema. On weekends we would go to the cinemas in Beyoglu, and then to the Greek pastry shop in Tepebasi, to eat a special kind of cake, ‘milfoy’ [‘millefeuille’ in French, a small layered cake made of puff pastry filled with custard and cream]. Cars were very rare. We would always use the ferry and the tram, and sometimes go in horse carriages. We didn’t go on holidays, but went swimming, to Buyukada [the biggest of the Prince Islands in the Sea of Marmara, near Istanbul], and met friends on Sundays.

My best friend was Izak Bonofiyel. He lived in Kuledibi [district around the Galata Tower in Istanbul]. He was two years younger than me. He was very tall. He was engaged to Suzan, who was one of our female friends, and got married before me. They had two sons. We couldn’t keep our close relationship after the military service was over. I think they now live in Nisantasi [district on the European side of Istanbul].

We especially met with my aunt Rashel very often. Because they lived in Yedikule we would first take the ferry from Kuzguncuk to Eminonu, and then get on the train in Sirkeci to go and see them. [Sirkeci is the main railway station on the European side for trains to and from Europe.]

After the War

When the state of Israel was founded in 1948, we felt so happy that we celebrated it like a festival. Especially the day the Israeli Consulate was opened in Taksim was worth participating. A large crowd had gathered. All of us were shouting ‘Long live Israel’, with Israeli flags in our hands. It was an unforgettable day. Turkey was one of the first countries to recognize Israel. I don’t know whether we could have this kind of public celebration today or not, if the same event was to take place again. During that period, a big immigration wave from Turkey to Israel took place. There was a lot of propaganda. Many of our acquaintances and relatives left. Some stayed, some returned many years later.

In time, especially after my son went to study at the university in Israel, the idea of emigrating started to take shape in our minds. We even started financial preparations for it. But we couldn’t make it, couldn’t change our way of life. The ones who went and returned depressed us. Life conditions weren’t easy there. We gave up. But we still go visiting the country every year.

I went on with my work at the Bedikoglu firm. Meanwhile, the government had made the keeping of an accounting book obligatory for all merchants. Upon this, a young man named Zeki Abaci, who had a degree in economics, was employed to do the job. Since I helped him, I started learning about accounting as time went by. I was quite eager for knowledge. I went to Bab-i-ali [a neighborhood near Eminonu, where a large number of bookstores and newspaper printing houses were located] to buy books on accounting. I expanded my knowledge. Zeki would check the things I did. He encouraged me by saying: ‘You can do this work. And I’m here, whenever you need me.’ I started to become known in the market. Within time the number of the firms whose accounting I did increased to 20. Back then we didn’t have calculators, and I would spend hours at night after dinner, trying to balance the books. When the first calculator appeared, I immediately bought one. I don’t remember the brand, but the second one I bought was a Facit [Swedish mechanical calculator, the first model came out as early as 1918]. My children grew up, listening to the sounds of this machine.

In business life I met some donme 22 people from Salonika, who were of Jewish origin, but had become Muslims later on. But none of them were my friends. Most of them knew Spanish. Their cemeteries were in a different place. They were in Uskudar-Bulbul Deresi [see Donme Cemetery in Uskudar] 23. All of them were well-educated and owned businesses. They were regarded as non-Muslims [by the state authorities] during the Wealth Tax period, and had become liable for the Wealth Tax.

I got engaged twice, after the military. But we didn’t get along, and I was separated from both of them. Later on, I got engaged to Bulisa Baruh, who was born in Tekirdag in 1932, through ‘proposition’ [arranged marriage]. My cousin Jak [derivative of Yaakov] Deleon introduced us. Jak’s wife Viktorya and Bulisa’s uncle Aron Ojalvo were siblings. Bulisa would sometimes come to Istanbul to visit her uncle. Once it was clear that we liked each other, my uncle Jozef Deleon and Bulisa’s father, Hayim Baruh, got together and came to an agreement. I received 3,000 liras as dowry. A few months later, my mother, my brother, my aunt Rashel and her husband Jozef, their son Cako [derivative of Yaakov] and his wife Viktorya, and my cousin Estreya, uncle Nisim Amon’s daughter, all went to Tekirdag by bus for the engagement. In those times, we could either go to Tekirdag by bus in four hours or by ship in six hours.

The Baruh family lived in the Jewish neighborhood. There, we were welcomed in a very nice way. The house was filled with friends and relatives, who had come to congratulate us. Long tables were set up, we ate and drank, and stayed over at their house for two days. Some of them went to my mother-in-law’s sister to stay over night, as there wasn’t enough space left for them to sleep. My uncle Jozef Deleon slipped our engagement rings on our fingers. I had brought a red heart-shaped box of chocolates, as a present. We were engaged for a year [before we got married].

Bulisa was educated up to the elementary level. During that period, Tekirdag wasn’t a developed city. Girls weren’t sent to secondary school, but were apprenticed to dressmakers to learn the job. My fiancee spoke Turkish and Spanish, and like all the other girls who grew up in the provinces, knew how to sew and do needlework. During our engagement period, she often came to Istanbul and stayed over at our place. Meanwhile, we had moved to a larger house – my brother, mother and I – again in Kuzguncuk.

Later on, we started calling my wife Berta, to be more modern. We would always speak Spanish amongst ourselves. My fiancee had five siblings, of which three were girls – Neli, Ester and Mari – and two were boys, Izak and Liya. Berta was the eldest of the siblings, and thus the biggest helper of her mother. She brought up the youngest one, Liya, or Eli.

My mother-in-law, Rebeka Baruh, was a housewife. She was very capable. She could do anything from planting seeds to cobbling, and from painting walls to sewing. At the same time she was very ‘aver livyana’ [Ladino for ‘humorous’].

My father-in-law, Hayim Baruh, was originally from the Island of Marmara [in the Marmara Sea]. He owned a textile and a grocery shop in Tekirdag. He worked together with his elder son, Izak.

Their house, located in the Jewish neighborhood, was two-storied. There was a big hall, a room, a large kitchen, and a toilet at the entrance. On the upper floor there was again a large hall and two rooms. The furniture was composed of a cupboard made out of wire, a table, a sofa, four or five chairs, and a few beds. They had a small garden, in which they planted vegetables. There was also a well in the garden. In order to keep the melons, watermelons and the drinks cool in summer, they would hang them in the well. They were middle-class people. My mother-in-law and my father-in-law always spoke Spanish. They knew the Rashi alphabet. They were moderately religious. They would celebrate the holidays and go to the synagogues. They didn’t pay much attention to Shabat.

As the years passed, all of my wife’s siblings except Liya got married when they were still quite young. Izak got married to Suzi Nasi, the daughter of the Jewish neighborhood’s chief in Tekirdag. They had two sons, Vitali and Yuda. They lived in Tekirdag for a long time. But when their children came to Istanbul for their education, and the Jewish population in Tekirdag started decreasing, they sold all their possessions, left Tekirdag and came to Istanbul to settle down here.

Neli got married to Jak Malki, a cheese manufacturer from Edirne, and went there as a bride. They had two sons, Beto and Vitali. They came to Istanbul for the same reasons I just mentioned, and at about the same time. The other two girls also came to Istanbul and settled down here.

Ester married Avram Mizrahi, from the same neighborhood, and Mari married Hayim Barokas, from Corlu [a city in Thrace]. Ester and her family lived in Kuledibi, while Mari and her family lived in Ortakoy. The Mizrahi family immigrated to Israel in 1968, after their two sons were born.

Mari had two daughters whose names were Suzi and Beti. But unfortunately she lost her husband at a very young age [in 1981], and then her elder daughter, who had leukemia, at the age of 23. She didn’t get married again. She lives with her daughter and grandchildren in Istanbul.

We used to go to Tekirdag with the children for 15 days in the summertime to visit my in-laws, when they were still living there. The other sisters would also come with their families, and the two-storied house would be filled up to the last mattress. It was delightful. Especially on Shabat mornings, when the men came home from the neighborhood’s synagogue, all the family would sit at the ‘dezayuno’ [breakfast] table, which was prepared by my mother-in-law, and had everything on in, from pastry to watermelons, and raki 24, cooled in the well. We could never get enough of it. Then we would go to the seashore, for long walks. We chatted with relatives and friends, who we met on the streets.

Years later, at the beginning of the 1970s, if I remember correctly, when my mother-in-law and my father-in-law learned that their youngest son, Liya, who had become a doctor and was in London then, had decided to emigrate to Israel, they decided to leave their business and house in Tekirdag to their eldest son, Izak, and emigrate to Israel. They did so and lived in Bat Yam till the end of their lives. Both of them died in 1981, 26 days apart from each other. Liya specialized in ophthalmology and became a very famous doctor [Dr. Eli Baruh], and the pride of the family.

Our official wedding ceremony took place in the Beyoglu registry office on a Saturday. Our close relatives didn’t leave us alone. Our witnesses were my uncle Jozef Deleon and Albert Eleviy, who was a very close family friend. We received a lot of flowers from our friends and colleagues. After the ceremony we gave out ‘bonbonyeras’ [wedding candies] to everyone. My wife wore a tailor-made black suit and a pink hat. She held a bouquet of gladioli in her hand.

Our wedding took place in accordance with our traditions in the Beth Yaakov Synagogue in Kuzguncuk. We were married on 31st December 1950. All of our relatives and friends attended the ceremony. Chela, the daughter of my cousin Cako and Viktorya, was the flower girl. They had her wear a long dress, which looked like the wedding-dress. Later on, all of us went to the Reks Studio in Kadikoy to have our photograph taken.

We had borrowed Berta’s wedding-dress, from our Greek family dressmaker, Eventiya, who lived in Yedikule. My mother had known her for years. When my mother went to Eventiya to have a wedding-dress made, she told my mother that her own, which she had sewn herself, was in quite a good condition. Upon this, my fiancee decided to try it on, and saw that the moiree gown fitted her as if it had been made for her. We rented my black tuxedo from the ‘Horozlu’ shop. This shop was in Tunel, on Galip Dede Street. It was a very old company. The owners were the Taragano family. Especially the Jewish men would rent what they needed such as a black tie, hat, gloves and bow ties for their weddings from this shop. The shop still exists today.

In the evening, we gave a dinner-party for all our relatives and friends at home. But after a few hours we left them at home and went to the Park Hotel in Yesilkoy, for our honeymoon. We stayed there for three days. It was one of the nicest hotels at the time.

My mother and my brother were living with us. Our house was quite big. My son, Yasef Jojo Coyas, was born on 3rd June 1952 at Zeynep Kamil Hospital in Uskudar. We had his brit milla at home. At that time, moel Geron used to perform these operations. A circumcision robe was sewn from crepe de Chine for the baby. My mother carried and placed him on a pillow which was on my uncle Nisim’s lap – finally the two siblings had become reconciled – and then the circumcision took place. All of our relatives and close friends were present at the ceremony. Later on, a big table was set up. We all dined together, and handed out candies, as had become the custom. He was the first grandchild of both families [the Baruh and Coyas family], and hence the darling of his uncles and aunts. He was a very naughty child. We sent him to the Mestra nearby, at the age of three. Atina, Marika and Pandeli, two Greek sisters and their brother, were looking after small Jewish children in their small and simple home. This was the only kindergarten facility in Kuzguncuk.

In the meantime, I had managed to buy a small refrigerator and an Orion brand radio for our home.

We had another son in 1954, who we named Hayim. But he was only able to live for a month, due to a sickness [intestine abnormality] from birth. He was at the hospital throughout this month, with his mother.

In 1955, I bought the second floor of a three-storey apartment building [Sumbul Apartments] that had been built in front of our home. We moved there.

In 1955, the events of 6th-7th September 25 happened. That day, my uncle Leon and his wife Lucienne, my cousin Kemal Deleon and his wife Merso, were over at our house for a visit. My wife was pregnant with our third child. All of a sudden, we heard noises coming from the street. When we went down, we saw that everything was in flames and that some people were attacking the homes of non-Muslims. At that time the newspapers published a second print run, saying that the Greeks had burnt Ataturk’s house in Salonika. The public was enraged. Our guests had left to go to the ferry station, but they came back upon witnessing the chaos. My uncle who was living in France said that ‘they had seen World War II, but nothing like that’. Our Turkish neighbors saved us from absolute disaster by telling the attackers that there weren’t any Greeks or Jews there, but only Muslims. They saved our lives. We all hung Turkish flags on our balconies in an attempt to prevent the attacks.

The next day we had to go to Beyoglu for some business. The scene was unbelievable. Shops had been burnt and looted. Silverware, furs, fabrics, refrigerators, furniture and many valuable goods were scattered in pieces on the muddy ground. All doors and windows were broken and stores had been looted. There were rumors of rapes in Yedikule, which had a large Greek population. Towards the evening, going out into the streets was banned, and tanks started patrolling the streets. But it was too late. It was witnessed that some people became rich in two days after the incidents. After a while, the Cyprus conflict 26 started.

My daughter, Fortune Tuna Saylag [nee Coyas], was born on 19th March 1956. She was also born at Zeynep Kamil Hospital. On the 40th day we had the vijola 27 at home. My daughter had black hair unlike my son. She was a better-behaved child, compared to her brother. She didn’t crawl on her knees, but on her bottom, by rubbing it from left to right over the floor. Everyone who saw her laughed. When she turned three, we also sent her to the Mestra.

My brother, Izak Coyas, was born in 1925 in our house in Yedikule, just like me. We grew up like twins. We lived through our childhood difficulties together. Though I was only two years older than him, he put me in place of our father. My mother also sent him to the Mestra, then to the Marko Pasha elementary school and the Mahaziketora. After his bar-mitzva, which took place at the Beth Nisim synagogue, he started working for a cap-dealer. After I came back from the military, he was drafted as a soldier and went to Sivas for 36 months. He lived with us till he got married. He got married in 1954, to Kadem Sevevi, the daughter of a family from Ankara, through proposition. He left us and settled down in an apartment with his wife, near our place.

In 1956 they had a son named Jojo, and then, in 1960, a daughter named Fortune. After a while, he bought the apartment below mine on the ground floor and became my neighbor. In this way, we were all together again. Our wives also got along very well. We lived in peace and love for years. We celebrated the holidays together, usually at my place. Our children grew up like siblings.

My brother was very fond of my son, Jojo, as he was his first nephew. He used to take him out quite a lot, especially when he was single. As he was a very patient person, who loved children very much, this habit of his continued after he had his own children. He would gather both mine and his children, and take them to the cinema, or to Luna Park [amusement park], or to the parks on Sundays. He would usually buy presents and have little surprises for them. My brother, in a way, was the Santa Claus for our children. His wife was like a second mother to my children. When I went on trips with my wife, we always left our children with them. My son and daughter would feel happy about our leaving instead of feeling sad.

Izak was engaged in the shirt trade with an Armenian partner at Cakmakcilar Slope for many years. They lived in Kuzguncuk till 1977. When the Jewish population in Kuzguncuk decreased, they sold their house there and moved to Caddebostan. He retired after marrying off his children. When they lost their daughter-in-law at a very young age to cancer, five years ago, they moved closer to his son, who had become a widower with two children, in order to support him. This went on till his wife Kadem had a stroke. Upon this, they returned to their home. His daughter immigrated to Israel with her family seven years ago. Our relation, based on love, is like in the old times. We visit them every week, on Saturdays.

In 1958, on the 10th anniversary of the foundation of the state of Israel, I went to ‘la Medina’ [Ladino for ‘The State’, here meaning Israel] for the first time. The country was developing slowly. Immigrants were being given encouraging rights [aid and support]. I visited relatives, and did some sightseeing.

I was very fond of traveling and seeing new places. We went on our first boat trip to the Mediterranean countries in 1962. From then on we spent all the summer holidays either going to Israel or visiting other countries. Most of the time, we would take the children with us.

We had a large and harmonious circle of friends in Kuzguncuk. We still meet with the ones who are still alive today. We would always speak Spanish among ourselves. All of our children were mostly the same age and would spend their time together. We would gather in our houses by turns on Saturday nights. We would have dinner, chat, play cards, and enjoy ourselves. The men would play poker and the women, cooncan. Our friend, Izak Franco, had a very nice voice. He would sing Greek songs or Turkish Classical Music, and we would listen to him with great pleasure. Sometimes we would go to the cinema, theater, or to the fish restaurants on the Bosphorus – mostly to the Kuyu Restaurant in Arnavutkoy, on the European side – or to night clubs that had music like Guney Park, Sato, and Gasgonyali Toma. There was the Sunar Cinema and the City State Theater, near our place, in Uskudar.

When the weather was good, we would go for picnics on Sundays, to Polonezkoy, Sile, Yakacik, and Kulaksiz. [Towns on the Anatolian side, within two hours’ reach of Istanbul.] We would also go to the Kucuksu Beach [a neighborhood on the Anatolian side of the Bosphorus, half an hour’s drive from Kuzguncuk] for swimming. When we went for picnics, each mother would prepare something to eat, like dry koftes [meat balls, popular in Turkey and the Balkans], stuffed peppers, and ‘filikas’ [Ladino term for flaky pastry, filled with cheese/minced meat/aubergines]. Then we would eat all together, sitting in the grass, in the open air. Our laughter and jokes could be heard all over the place.

We would usually get on the public bus, and go to Kanlica [a neighborhood on the Bosphorus, famous for its yoghurt], to eat yoghurt by the sea. Our children also had their share in all these trips. Neither of us had their own private cars, but we were so many that we rented either a bus or a minibus to go for picnics or swimming. We usually went to Yalova or Cinarcik [a town near Bursa, famous for its hot springs] all together, for holidays, and stayed there for seven to ten days. Especially in the spring, we would go to the Camlica Hill, to get some fresh air. In order to go to Camlica, we first climbed up a long, steep slope, which connected Kuzguncuk to Fistikagaci, then we took the tram to Kisikli, and then we would walk all the way to Camlica. Those places were untouched then. Istanbul’s population wasn’t as intense as it is today. There were no settlements or establishments on Camlica.

The Kuzguncuk hills, or Bella Vista, were also very nice. Especially the hill called ‘Three Pine Nuts’, taking its name from the three old and big pine-nut trees on it. We would go around the green fields and pick daisies and poppies. Today, instead of the green, you can see the slums covering the hills of Kuzguncuk.

We were always in contact with our relatives. We would always visit our elders, during the holidays, especially my uncle Nisim and my aunt, who used to live in Kadikoy. We used to meet with our siblings every week. I got along especially well with Hayim and Avram, my wife’s sisters’ husbands. Avram and Ester Mizrahi, used to live in Kuledibi, while Hayim and Mari Barokas lived in Ortakoy. Because we lived in Kuzguncuk, we always used the ferry to go the European side. The Bosphorus Bridge hadn’t been constructed yet.

We were carrying on with our traditions, celebrating Purim, Hanuka [Chanukkah], Kipur [Yom Kippur] and all the other holidays. We would go to the synagogue during Pesah and Rosh Ashana, we would get together with my brother, and the two families would have the holiday meal at our house. The usage of loksa didn’t exist anymore. We would chant the Agada [Haggadah] for two nights at Pesah. Special dishes were prepared for the holidays. My wife could cook very well, just like her mother. I liked albondigas de prasa [leek meatballs] the most.

Usually we didn’t pay much attention to the kasherut [kashrut], but we never ate trefa meat during the holidays. We didn’t pay much attention to Shabat either, but usually our wives wouldn’t cook or work on Saturdays.

On Shabat days a different atmosphere prevailed in Kuzguncuk. After having breakfast at home, the Jewish ladies would put on some make-up and their most stylish dresses and go out for a walk. The public watched them in admiration. The ladies would go to the tea house near the ferry station and would watch the sea, while eating pumpkin seeds, and chatting. Everybody knew that the day was special for Jews.

Because we didn’t know how they would react, and whether or not they shared our feelings, we didn’t speak about Judaism or Israel with the broad public. We spoke Spanish and Turkish with our children. But they always replied in Turkish to us. They understand Spanish very well, but can’t speak it well enough.

We buried our elders in the Jewish cemeteries and had religious ceremonies. We chanted the Kadish ourselves. In the old times, we would say the yearly prayers for the souls of those we lost at home, and we would have dinner afterwards. But in recent years we have been doing this in the synagogue because we have grown too old [to organize it at home].

My boss closed down the shop in 1963 and emigrated to the United States. I opened up a new store and took over the customers. I knew most of them anyways. I also started running an accounting office at the same place.

At the beginning of the 1970s, the good middle-class families of Kuzguncuk started to leave the place slowly because migration had started to Kuzguncuk, and the quality of the people who came wasn’t the same. Some of the Jews moved to Moda, others to Sisli, which was the most popular neighborhood at the time. The ones who didn’t want to leave the Anatolian side, preferred Kadikoy and its vicinity. The old way of living didn’t exist anymore. We moved to Nisantasi reluctantly, after a while, when all of our friends had left Kuzguncuk. Our house there was on rental. Our daughter was happy with this situation, because she was close to both her school and her friends.

We started going to Buyukada in the summer. We used to rent a house, which belonged to a Greek baker, near the ferry station. Some of our friends were also here. We weren’t members of a club. Generally we would swim, or sit in tea gardens in the open air and chat. Since there weren’t any motor vehicles, the air was calm and clean. It was the women and the young who enjoyed the place most. Our summer adventure lasted for five or six years, till our daughter got married. Later on we moved to Caddebostan, and hence didn’t go to a summer house any more.

Probably because I hadn’t been able to study, I attached as much importance to my children’s education as I could. My son started to study at the Marko Pasha School when he reached the age of elementary school education. Anyway, we didn’t have any other school in our neighborhood. Meanwhile, he attended the Mahaziketora three times a week. All of his friends were from here. He started to attend the private Tarhan College, which had just opened then, after finishing elementary school. The curriculum concentrated on teaching English. In those times, the Jewish school in Sishane, Bene Berit was how people used to call it, wasn’t very good.

We celebrated my son’s bar-mitzva in 1965, in the Beth Yaakov Synagogue in Kuzguncuk. His uncle Liya prepared his speech. All the family bought new outfits for this special day. My wife had the dressmaker Evantiya sew a new dress for her to wear at the synagogue and the festive dinner, given at night. She rented her hat from the famous hat-dealer Katya in Beyoglu. The synagogue was filled with our friends, relatives and neighbors. We gave out candies at the end of the ceremony. We also entertained our close friends at a dinner party, which we gave at the Lido Hall in Ortakoy. It was summer and hence the party took place outside, near the pool. The guests were entertained with dance music played by an orchestra. Lido was among the most popular entertainment halls of the time. I danced the first dance with my daughter, while my wife danced with our son.

At that time, my wife’s youngest brother, Liya, was studying medicine in Istanbul. He was living with us, while his family was in Tekirdag. He was like a son to us. He graduated from the Faculty of Medicine the same year my son graduated from High School, in 1969. [see English High School for Boys] 28 We decided to send both of them to a language school in London, in order for them to improve their English. We arranged the school and the places where they would stay. I went with them and helped them to get settled. A year later, my son and his uncle informed us that they had decided to go to Israel and continue with their studies there. Two years before that, my son had joined a 45-day trip, organized by the Israeli Consulate for the presentation of Israel, and had come back very impressed by Medina. During that period, many young people were emigrating. Also at that time, a lot of confrontations were taking place, between the rightist and leftist students at the universities in Turkey. [see Terror at Turkish universities] 29 It was impossible to get a proper education here.

My son graduated from the Sociology Department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem 30. In 1981 he married Melek Gundogan, a pharmacist from Adana. We had the wedding in Israel, in a Sephardic Kal [synagogue] on Allenby [a major street in Jerusalem.]. Afterwards we had a dinner party for our guests in the hall of the synagogue. All of our friends and relatives came to the wedding, but nobody was able to come from Turkey, except for my daughter.

Today they have a 19-year-old daughter called Lisa and an 18-year-old son called Shmuel. My son is working in the administrative department of a hospital and his wife in a pharmacy. They live in Bat Yam. My grandson has just finished high school. He will start his military service in two months. We visit them frequently.

My daughter Fortune Tuna went to the newly opened Uskudar Turkish Girls College for her elementary education. She was hard-working like her brother. Then she took entrance exams for a few private French schools. She passed them all, but we preferred the Saint-Benoit Girls High School because the transportation situation was easier.

When my daughter was a young girl, the friends she hung out with were all Jewish. She used to go to Judaic clubs like Amical 31 and take part in their social activities. She would organize parties and quizzes, and perform in plays at these clubs. After finishing high school with a good grade, she took her university entrance exams. She was admitted to the Business Administration Department of Marmara University. In the meantime she was dating Albert Baruh Saylag, whom a relative had introduced to her. After four of five months his family came and asked for our permission for their son to marry her. We accepted, and they got engaged.

My son-in-law had graduated from the Pharmaceutical Faculty shortly before. His father was a gynecologist. They lived in Fenerbahce [a district on the Asian side of Istanbul]. He worked in the State Railroads Hospital. His wife didn’t work.

At the end of 1975, we agreed to this marriage. Immediately after that my son-in-law went first to Samsun and then to Bandirma, to complete his military duty of 18 months as an officer. We performed the engagement ceremony in the house, within the family, in April 1976. My uncle Nisim, who was still alive then, slipped the rings on their fingers.

Because of the situation in the universities in those days, we didn’t want our daughter to continue going to school. But she insisted and started university. Her wedding took place on 9th October 1977 when she was in her second year. Before the wedding, my daughter and I went to Paris. In this way, we were able to make a trip together while she was still single. They got married at the Neve Shalom Synagogue. 32 It was a very nice and crowded ceremony. Everyone was excited because this was the first wedding in the family. My son in Israel and some relatives had come to Istanbul for the wedding. We gave a dinner party for friends and relatives at the Tarabya Hotel. There was also live music. Everyone danced and had fun. The newly-weds went to Izmir for their honeymoon.

We moved to our new apartment in Caddebostan after the wedding. The apartment below us was vacant. My daughter and son-in-law rented it. We watched our grandchildren grow up. As the conditions didn’t permit it, my son-in-law couldn’t work in his field, and started working for a company owned by three Jewish partners involved in selling tires. He is still working there. My daughter didn’t work since her husband didn’t want her to. Their first daughter, Sara Selin, was born in 1980, and their second daughter, Lisya, in 1984.

My family is an inseparable part of the Turkish Jewish Community. Maybe we are not very religious, but we have a very strong feeling of belonging. I believe we have passed this feeling on to our children and grandchildren, too. My daughter and grandchildren are members of many Jewish organizations, like GKD 33, and FKD 34. They spend their spare time there doing voluntary work. They organize parties, conferences and theater shows with their friends, and educate children. My daughter writes articles on art for the Jewish newspaper, Shalom. 35

We are members of a nearby Jewish club [Goztepe Cultural Association]. We frequently take part in the activities, like going to concerts and the theater, celebrating the holidays, but are not working actively.

The way I practice religion hasn’t changed. However, my son-in-law and grandchildren have been following the kasherut laws for seven or eight years.

I go to the synagogue on holidays or whenever there is a religious ceremony. My wife gathers the family frequently. She cooks traditional Sephardic dishes she has learned from my and her own mother, and teaches her grandchildren how to make them. Previously we would be more people getting together on holidays. My son-in-law’s parents’ uncle and aunt would join us too. Since we lost them, except the aunt, the number of people has decreased. Sometimes we go to Israel to my son’s, to celebrate Pesah.

My wife meets with her friends twice on weekdays, and plays cards. Other than that, we spend our time together. We go to restaurants, to the theater, and shopping. Sometimes we gather at home with friends and chat or watch television. We go on vacation in summer. We mostly go to a hotel on the beach. We can’t go abroad as much as we used to, due to our age.

Four days a week, between 10am and 3pm, I go to a friend’s shop and do the accounting. The purpose is to get out of the house.

I had a serious heart attack after a Far East trip in 1995. I’ve been through very hard times. They treated me with the ‘balloon’ method [percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty]. That same year I sold my shop and retired.

The synagogue attacks in 1986 [see 1986 Terrorist Attack on the Neve-Shalom Synagogue] 36 and 2003 [see 2003 Bombing of the Istanbul Synagogues] 37 were terrible. Innocent people unaware of anything were killed. We lost friends in both incidents. We felt so sad, and miserable.

At this age my and my wife’s only expectation from life is good health and the well-being of our children and grandchildren. I think that our grandchildren have a bright future. They are both well-educated, responsible young girls. Selin works as an architect, and Lisya is on her way to becoming a mathematician [computer programmer].

And our duty is to live the life God has assigned to us, without being a burden to anyone.

GLOSSARY:

1 Surname Law

Passed on 21st June 1934, in the early years of the Turkish Republic, requiring every citizen to acquire a surname. Up to then the Muslims, contrary to the Jews and Christians, were mostly called by their father’s name beside their own

2 Rashi alphabet

A Hebrew alphabet traditionally used for Rashi (Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac, 1040-1105) commentaries of the Bible and the Talmud, it is also the traditional alphabet of Judeo-Spanish. The Judeo-Spanish alphabet also used certain characters to denote the Spanish sounds that are alien to the Hebrew phonetics. Judeo-Spanish religious as well as secular texts were written in Rashi letters up until the introduction of the Latin alphabet, first by Alliance Israelite Universelle after 1860.

3 Gallipoli War

In order to establish contact with Russia through its Black Sea ports occupying the Ottoman Straits (Dardanelles and Bosphorus) was of strategic importance for the Entente at the beginning of World War I. In March 1915, 16 British army divisions landed in Gallipoli (European side of the Dardanelles) and attacks followed in April and in August. The war resulted in immense losses and sufferings on both sides. Although two beach heads were established the British were not able to further penetrate into Ottoman lands against the army of Mustafa Kemal Pasha (later Kemal Ataturk) and finally evacuated in February 1916.

4 The Ottoman Empire in World War I

The Ottoman Empire entered the war on the side of the Central Powers in October 1914, as they were the ones fighting the traditional Ottoman enemy: the Russian Empire. During the winter of 1914-15 the Ottomans launched an ill prepared campaign in the Caucasus against Russia with the hope to be able to turn the local Turkish-speaking Russian subjects (Azerbaijan) to their sides. Instead the Russian counter-offensive drove the Ottomans back behind the borders and Russia occupied North Eastern Anatolia. In the spring of 1915 the Entente was to occupy the straits (Bosphorus and Dardanelles) and ensure the passage of supply to the Russian Black Sea ports. British troops landed in Gallipoli (Dardanelles) but were not able to expand their beachheads against the army of Mustafa Kemal Pasha (later Kemal Ataturk); they evacuated in February 1916. Although the Ottomans were able to resist the British in Mesopotamia (Iraq) in 1915, they finally took Baghdad in 1917 and drove the Ottomans out of the entire province. Although the Russians made further advance in Eastern Anatolia they left the war after the October Revolution and according to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (March 1918) the Ottomans were able to regain Eastern Anatolia. Due to the Arab Revolt supported by the British as well as the direct British military intervention the Ottomans lost both Palestine and Syria; Mustafa Kemal was able only to withdraw his forces intact to Anatolia. Sultan Mohammed VI (1818-22) was forced to sign an armistice with the Entente (October 1918) and as a result British and French battle ships reached the port of Istanbul. The Sultan finally signed the Peace Treaty in Sevres in August 1920, according to which the Arab and Kurdish provinces and Armenia were lost as well as the whole of European Turkey with Istanbul, and the Aegean littoral was to be given to Greece.

5 Alliance Israelite Universelle

founded in 1860 in Paris, this was the main organization that provided Ottoman and Balkan Jewry with western style modern education. The alliance schools were organized in a network with their Central Committee in Paris. The teaching body was usually the alumni trained in France. The schools emphasized modern sciences and history in their curriculum; nevertheless Hebrew and religion were also taught. Generally students were left ignorant of the Turkish language and the history and culture of the Ottoman Empire and as a result the new generation of Ottoman Jews was more familiar with France and the west in general than with their surrounding society. In the Balkans the first school was opened in Greece (Volos) in 1865, then in the Ottoman Empire in Adrianople in 1867, Shumla (Shumen) in 1870, and in Istanbul, Smyrna (Izmir), and Salonika in the 1870s. In Bulgaria numerous schools were also established; after 1891 those that had adopted the teaching of the Bulgarian language were recognized by the state. The modernist Jewish elite and intelligentsia of the late nineteenth century Ottoman Empire was known for having graduated from alliance schools; they were closely attached to the Young Turk circles, and after 1908 three of them (Carasso, Farraggi, and Masliah) were members of the new Ottoman Chamber of Deputies.

6 Daghamam fire

took place in 1921 and spread in the direction of Uskudar-Yeni Mahalle-Icadiye-Sultanbeyli; 600 houses were completely burned down.

7 Kurdi

Long Turkish home gown, lined with fur.

8 Entari

(from the Turkish word ‘entari’) long-sleeved loose robe for both men and women; came in a variety of cuts for men.

9 Marko Pasha (1824-1888)

born as Marko Apostolidis into a Greek family on Siros Island, he finished his medical education in Istanbul and settled there. He was the first doctor to be given the highest Ottoman title of ‘Pasha’. He was the founder of the Turkish Red Crescent (equivalent to the Red Cross). Marko Pasha was known for spending time with his patients and offering them psychological help. In time, he became so renowned for this specialty of his that a saying began to be spread among the people: ‘Go and tell Marko Pasha about your troubles’, meaning ‘there is no one but Marko Pasha who will listen to your troubles.’ He is buried in the Kuzguncuk Greek Cemetery.

10 Burmoelos (or burmolikos, burlikus)

A sweetmeat made from matzah, typical for Pesach. First, the matzah is put into water, then squashed and mixed with eggs. Balls are made from the mixture, they are fried and the result is something like donuts.

11 Jewish residence in Istanbul

In the Ottoman Empire, due to the status of the non-Muslim but monotheist communities (Jews and Christians) in the Muslim state, regulated by the Sharia (Muslim religious law) the European style of ghettos did not evolve. Jews and Christians, however, usually resided in their own ‘mahalas’, that is neighborhoods in the Ottoman cities. Although forbidden to settle near mosques, Jews were allowed to reside virtually anywhere, yet it was the Jewish ‘mahala’ that remained the typical way of settlement up until recently. In Istanbul, Jews constituted the majority in some areas (e.g. Haskoy), in others they were substantial but still in minority (e.g. Uskudar). There were also cases when Jews lived in mixed neighborhoods, together with Christians and Muslims, sometimes sharing even the same apartment building.

12 Turkish Republic

The Turkish Grand National Assembly gathered for the first time on 23rd April 1920, which signaled the foundation of the Republic. The Assembly organized and directed the Turkish War of Independence. On 1st November 1922, the Assembly abolished the Sultanate, thereby cutting off all ties with the Ottoman Empire. On 29th October 1923, after coming out victorious from the War of Independence, the Turkish Republic was formally established. The Assembly accepted democracy as the way of rule and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was elected the first president. On 30th October 1923, with the premiership of Ismet Inonu the first government was formed.

13 The Thrace Events

In 1934, after the Nazis came to power in Germany, anti-Semitism was rising in Turkey too. In fear of disloyalty the government was aiming at clearing the border regions of the Jewish population. Thrace (European Turkey, bordering with both Bulgaria and Greece) was densely populated with Jews. As a result of the anti-Semitic propaganda of the rightist press riots broke out, Jewish property was looted and women were raped. This caused most of the Jewish population to leave (mostly without their belongings) first for Istanbul and ultimately for Palestine.

14 Ataturk, Mustafa Kemal (1881-1938)

Great Turkish statesman, the founder of modern Turkey. Mustafa Kemal was born in Salonika; he adapted the name Ataturk (father of the Turks) when he introduced surnames in Turkey. He joined the liberal Young Turk movement, aiming at turning the Ottoman Empire into a modern Turkish nation state and also participated in the Young Turk Revolt (1908). He fought in the Second Balkan War (1913) and World War I. After the Ottoman capitulation to the Entente, Mustafa Kemal Pasha organized the Turkish Nationalist Party (1919) and set up a new government in Ankara to rival Sultan Mohammed VI, who had been forced to sign the treaty of Sevres (1920), according to which Turkey would loose the Arab and Kurdish provinces, Armenia, and the whole of European Turkey with Istanbul and the Aegean littoral to Greece. He was able to regain much of the lost provinces and expelled the Greeks from Anatolia. He abolished the Sultanate and attained international recognition for the Turkish Republic at the Lausanne Treaty (1923). Under his presidency Turkey became a constitutional state (1924), universal male suffrage was introduced, state and church were divided and he also introduced the Latin script.

15 Turkish Independence Day

National Holiday in Turkey commemorating the foundation of the Turkish Republic on 29th October 1923. The annual celebrations include military parades, student parades, concerts, exhibitions and balls.

16 Wealth Tax

Introduced in December 1942 by the Grand National Assembly in a desperate effort to resolve depressed economic conditions caused by wartime mobilization measures against a possible German influx to Turkey via the occupied Greece. It was administered in such a way to bear most heavily on urban merchants, many of who were Christians and Jews. Those who lacked the financial liquidity had to sell everything or declare bankruptcy and even work on government projects in order to pay their debts, in the process losing most or all of their properties. Those unable to pay were subjected to deportation to labor camps until their obligations were paid off.

17 Dario Moreno (1921-1968)

born as David Arugete into a Sephardic family in the Mezarlikbasi neighborhood of Izmir. After his father’s death the family moved to the Asansor neighborhood, where Moreno became famous for his Neapolitan songs. Early in his career, he moved to Paris where he became an internationally acclaimed singer and actor. He performed alongside Brigitte Bardot in ‘The Female’ (1959) and Eddie Constantine in ‘Ladies First’ (1963) as well as in the film classic ‘Hotel Paradiso’ (1966). In addition he appeared on stage with Jacques Brel, among others. (Information for this entry culled from http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0603916/ and other sources)

18 Inonu, Ismet (1884-1973)

Turkish statesman and politician, the second president of the Turkish Republic. Ismet Inonu played a great role in the victory of the Turkish armies during the Turkish War of Independence. He was also the politician who signed the Lausanne Treaty in 1923, thereby ensuring the territorial integrity of the country as well as the revision of the previous Treaty of Sevres (1920). He also served Turkey as prime minister various times. He was the ‘all-time president’ of the CHP Republican People’s Party. Ismet Inonu was elected president on 11th November 1938, one day after Ataturk’s death. He was successful in keeping Turkey out of World War II.

19 Road Construction Units

Non-Muslims were drafted there to make sure by the military elite that all those, considered irreliable are at one place, under control and without arms. These measures were taken by the military elite, without legal authorization though.

20 Struma ship

In December 1941 the ship took on board some 750 Jews – which was more than seven times its normal passengers' capacity – to take them to Haifa, then Palestine. As none of the passengers had British permits to enter the country, the ship stopped in Istanbul, Turkey, in order for them to get immigration certificates to Palestine but the Turkish authorities did not allow the passengers to disembark. They were given food and medicine by the Joint Distribution Committee and the Jewish community of Istanbul. As the vessel was not seaworthy, it could not leave either. However, in February 1942 the Turks towed the Struma to the Black Sea without water, food or fuel on board. The ship sank the same night and there was only one survivor. In 1978, a Soviet naval history disclosed that a Soviet submarine had sunk the Struma.

21 The 20 military classes

In May 1941 non-Muslims aged 26-45 were called to military service. Some of them had just come back from their military service but were told to report for duty again. Great chaos occurred, as the Turkish officials took men from the streets and from their jobs and sent them to military camps. They were used in road building for a year and disbanded in July 1942.

22 Donme

Crypto Jews in Turkey. They are the descendants of those Jews who, following the example of Shabbatai Tzvi (leader of the major false messianic movement in the 17th century), converted to Islam. They never integrated fully into the Muslim society though and preserved various distinctions: they married among each other, performed services in distinct mosques and buried their dead in separate cemeteries. Up until the Greek annexation of Southern Macedonia (1912, First Balkan War) they lived in Salonika and were relocated to Ottoman territory (mainly to Istanbul) with most of the rest of the Muslim population later.

23 Donme Cemetery in Uskudar

The predominantly Muslim Uskudar contains no Jewish interest apart from the cemetery in Bulbuldere Street. Opened in the early 20th century, this cemetery serves the Donmes (Jews converted to Islam in the 17th century, yet not fully absorbed in the Muslim society) who had fled Salonika after the city was annexed to Greece (1913). They also maintain a small mosque (Tesvikiye mosque) on the cemetery grounds. The Donmes share the cemetery with other Muslim communities marginal in Istanbul (i.e. Shiites).

24 Raki

Anise liquor, popular in many places in the Balkans, Anatolia and the Middle East. It is principally the same as Greek Ouzo, Bulgarian Mastika or Arabic Arak.

25 Events of 6th-7thSeptember 1955

Pogrom against the ethnic Greeks in Istanbul. It broke out after the rumour that Ataturk’s house in Salonika (Greece) was being bombarded. As most of the Greek houses and businesses had been registered by the authorities earlier it was easy to carry out the pogrom. The Greek (and other non-Muslim communities) were hit severely: 3 people were killed, 30 were wounded, also 1004 houses, 4348 shops, 27 pharmacies and laboratories, 21 factories, 110 restaurants and cafes, 73 churches, 26 schools, 5 sports clubs and 2 cemeteries were destroyed; 200 Greek women were raped. A great wave of immigration occurred after these events and Istanbul was cleansed of its Greek population.

26 Cyprus conflict

At the Treaty of Berlin (1878) the Great Powers, aiming to resolve the ‘Eastern Question’ by multilateral acts, limited both Ottoman and Russian influence in the ‘Near East’. Independence was granted to most of the Balkan states and Cyprus was put under British rule. Greek Cypriots were continuously seeking the unity with Greece and widespread campaigns of terrorism were launched, especially after British authorities deported Archbishop Makarios, leader of the Greek nationalists, in 1956. Turkish Cypriots, with the backing of Turkey, on the other hand were demanding the partition of the island. In 1960 independence was granted and Makarios was elected as president. Large-scale fighting between Greek and Turkish Cypriots erupted several times and finally a UN peacekeeping force was sent in 1965. Turkish Cypriots demanded official recognition of their organization (which exercised de facto political control in the 30 Turkish enclaves) and the stationing of Turkish troops on the island to offset the influence of the Cypriot National Guard, which was dominated by officers from Greece. In 1974 the Makarios government was overthrown by the National Guard. Both Greece and Turkey mobilized their armed forces. Citing its obligation to protect the Turkish Cypriot community, Turkey invaded Northern Cyprus (20 July), occupied over 30 percent of the island, and displaced about 200,000 Greek Cypriots. In 1975 the island was partitioned into Greek and Turkish territories separated by an UN-occupied buffer zone. In 1983, Turkish Cypriots declared themselves independent from Cyprus; the resulting Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, with Rauf Denktash as president, was recognized only by Turkey. By the late 1990s it was estimated that over half the population of Turkish Cyprus consisted of recent settlers from Turkey. Cyprus joined the European Union in 2004, but the north was excluded.

27 Vijola

Sephardic name-giving ceremony for girls at the age of eight to forty days. It is celebrated by the family in the presence of a rabbi, who blesses and gives the child her name.

28 English High School for Boys

Founded in 1905 in the district of the Galata Tower by the British Consulate, primarily to provide comprehensive education for the children of the British colony in Istanbul. In 1911, Sultan Mehmet V gave the British Embassy a 5-storied wooden building in Nisantasi for exclusively schooling purposes. The school gained the status of high school in 1951 and also became coeducational. In 1979 it was nationalized and renamed as Nisantasi Anatolian Lycee.

29 Terror at Turkish universities

In the period of 1975-1980 extreme tension arose between the so-called leftist and rightist fraction of the student body. The fight was about whether making the Turkish Republic a religious Islamic state (leftist position) or preserve the secular nature (rightist position). There were further fights within the leftist fraction too, between the communists and socialists. University education turned into chaos already in 1975: instruction almost stopped, and many students were scared to attend classes, as there were a great number of murders. The only university that was able to continue with instruction was Bosphorus University, mainly because all of its student body was basically leftist. It took five years for the government to finally pacify the situation by a military coup in 1980.

30 Hebrew University of Jerusalem

In accordance with the idea of Zionism of founding a university of the Jewish people in the land of Israel, the cornerstone of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was laid atop Mount Scopus in 1918, and the university was ceremoniously opened on 1st April 1925, in the presence of world Jewry and British dignitaries. The First Board of Governors of the University, chaired by Chaim Weizmann, included such personalities as Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Martin Buber, Harry Sacher and Felix M. Warburg as well as leading men of letters, religious and academic figures of international renown. By 1947, the university had grown to a large, well-established research and teaching institution, encompassing humanities, science, medicine, education and agriculture (the latter at a campus in Rehovot); the Jewish National and University Library; a university press; and an adult education center. In 1981, the historical Mount Scopus campus again became the main home of the university. It has since continued to grow, with the addition of new buildings, establishment of new programs, and recruitment of outstanding scholars, researchers and students, in fulfillment of its commitment to excellence.

31 Amical

Jewish youth club, formerly located on the first floor at the back of the Sisli Beth Israel Synagogue in Istanbul, and frequented by university students, who took part in social and cultural activities like theater performances, conferences and dance parties.

32 Neve Shalom Synagogue

Situated near the Galata Tower, it is the largest synagogue of Istanbul. Although the present building was erected only in 1952, a synagogue bearing the same name had been standing there as early as the 15th century.
33 GKD: Goztepe Cultural Association, Jewish social club for people of all ages, founded with the aim of preventing assimilation.

34 FKD

association for protecting the poor, formerly the Bnai Brith of Istanbul.

35 Shalom

Istanbul Jewish weekly, founded by Avram Leyon in 1948. During Leyon’s ownership, the paper was entirely in Ladino. Upon the death of its founder in 1985, the newspaper passed into the hands of the Jewish community owned company Gozlem Gazetecilik. It then started to be published in Turkish with one or two pages in Ladino. It is presently distributed to 4,000 subscribers.

36 1986 Terrorist Attack on the Neve-Shalom Synagogue

In September 1986, Islamist terrorists carried out a terrorist attack with guns and grenades on worshippers in the Neve-Shalom synagogue, killing 23. The Turkish government and people were outraged by the attack. The damage was repaired, except for several bullet holes in a seat-back, left as a reminder.

37 2003 Bombing of the Istanbul Synagogues

On 15th November 2003 two suicide terrorist attacks occurred nearly simultaneously at the Sisli and Neve-Shalom synagogues. The terrorists drove vans loaded with explosives and detonated the bombs in front of the synagogues. It was Saturday morning and the synagogues were full for the services. Due to the strong security measures that had been taken, there were no casualties inside, however, 26 pedestrians on the street were killed; five of them were Jewish. The material loss was also terrible. The terrorists belonged to the Turkish branch of Al Qaida.

Sami Schilton

Family souvenir

Sami Schilton
Istanbul
Turkey
Interviewer: Yusuf Sarhon
Date of Interview: April 2005

Sami Schilton is a healthy and friendly 84-year-old. He has a very warm personality which is reflected in his kind and smiling face and he is always ready to socialize with his dear friends. He lives in Kurtulus, a district in the European side of Istanbul, with his wife Suzi, to whom he has been married for 47 years and his son Robert. They live in their own flat in an apartment building. They spend their summers in their own flat in Suadiye, a district in the Asian side of Istanbul. Sami and his wife like to go to the cinema, theatre and opera a lot and they also like to travel whenever the opportunity presents itself. The only problem we encountered during the interview with Sami Schilton was the fact that although he could remember names and facts, he could not remember any dates.

My family background

The paternal side of my family came to Turkey from Austria and settled in Bursa [a city in the Marmara region of Turkey, close to Istanbul]. My paternal great-grandparents used to live in Vienna. That is why our surname is written as ‘Schilton’, the same as in German because we came here from Austria. Our surname is still written in German in our official documents like passports and identity cards. One of my paternal greatgrandfathers was the Hahambashi [Grand Rabbi] of Vienna and then they gave him the surname of “Deschilton”. Our real surname therefore is Deschilton, a title of nobility that the Austrian government bestowed on my great-grandfather. [Editor’s note: De Schilton may be the Frankofied version of the name that was most probablty von Schilton in the German original.] However, afterwards the family thought it was too much and we did not use that part of our name and only used Schilton. They used to speak German in Austria and of course did not know Turkish. The Austrian government gave us Italian citizenship after World War I, in other words they abandoned us. My great-grandparents were living in Bursa with Austrian passports, but during World War I, the lands where my family members had been born in were conquered by the Italians and that is why we were given the Italian citizenship. [Editor’s note: Probably they lived in those parts of Austria-Hungary that were annexed to Italy after WWI: South Tyrol, Gorz and Gradisca, Istria, Fiume (Rijeka), Zara (Zadar) and some northern Adriatic iselands.] We have had Italian citizenship since then. That is all the information I have on my paternal side.

As to my maternal side, I know nothing about them except that they were from Istanbul.

My father’s father, Avram Schilton, was born in Bursa. I do not remember the dates at all. He lived in Bursa, but later on he came to Istanbul. They lived in Bursa for long years, but during World War I 1, the Greeks came to Bursa, so probably because they wanted to be safe they came to Istanbul. My paternal grandfather dealt in trade, he was a very good businessman. He was a very serious person. He dressed very fashionably, he was always very smart. He was tall and very handsome. He did not have a beard but he did have a mustache. They did not change their family name. They were Deschiltons. Later on I took out the “de” at the beginning. My grandfather could speak Turkish, Judeo-Spanish and French. They used to speak in Judeo-Spanish amongst themselves. He did not have anything to do with politics or any political party. He did not take part in any social or cultural activities either.

My father’s mother, Bulisu Schilton (nee?), did not wear a wig but she did wear a scarf over her head. She also dressed fashionably and liked to wear a lot of jewelry, necklaces, bracelets etc... She would mostly wear her kolana [Ladino for gold chain].

That is all I know about my paternal grandparents. I do not know anything about their siblings, either. At that time they did not use to tell children anything, that is why we know very little about them. If they had told us, we would have known of course, but they never did.

My mother’s father, Avram Danon, was born in Istanbul. Again I do not remember any dates. My mother’s family was called Danon and they never changed their name. My mother’s father was a businessman and he advanced a great deal in life. He used to dress very fashionably, whatever the fashion was, you could see on my grandfather. He was of medium height; a very quiet and serious man. He was a seller of sundries. He knew Judeo-Spanish, Turkish and French. They always spoke in Judeo-Spanish amongst themselves. My mother’s father had a white beard and he used to wear a kipa. He wasn’t involved in any political or social activities. They were simple people.

My mother’s mother, Sultana Danon, did not wear a wig but she wore a scarf. Otherwise she dressed quite fashionably. She loved jewelry. She always went around with necklaces and bracelets and kolanas.

My mother’s father’s side of the family lived in Kuzguncuk [a district in the Asian coast of the Bosphorus]. When my family and I came from Bursa to Istanbul, when I was about one year old, we lived with them for a couple of years. They had a house with a garden and they had chickens in the garden. There weren’t any servants. Only a daily cleaning woman would come, probably once a week, to do the washing and the cleaning. They were very religious. They followed all precepts. They practised kasherut, and Shabat. Friday night was very important. They used to go to the synagogue every Friday night, and on all festivals. All the festivals were always celebrated at home, too. They had very good neighbors. They were mostly Jewish of course, but they had Greek neighbors, too. They got along with their neighbors quite well. I do not remember their ever going on holiday somewhere. I do not have any information about their siblings either.

My father, Robert David Schilton was born in Bursa. He was a good and kind-hearted man. He was quite talkative and had a very modern mentality. He was a serious man. He had a lot of friends and he liked his friends very much. They were very intimate, and the same with his neighbors, too. They were all like brothers and sisters, I remember quite well. My father studied until secondary school. He studied at the Alliance Israelite Universelle 2 school in Bursa. After he finished secondary school [8 classes] he started to work. My father did not do military service because he was a foreigner, he had a foreign citizenship. His mother tongue was Judeo-Spanish. He also spoke Turkish and French. With my mother and his parents however, he used to speak in Judeo-spanish. My father’s business was very good in Bursa. They lived there for many years. He used to be in the insurance business. The reason they came to Istanbul was the war. During the war they had problems with the Greeks and they had to run away. They came to Istanbul in a hurry to escape the Greeks. They came to Istanbul to live more comfortably. I was about one year old at the time. They did not have a home when they came to Istanbul and they went to live with my mother’s family. They lived with them for 2 years. When they came to Istanbul, their economic situation was average. My father worked at a bank in Istanbul, in the insurance department. The bank’s name was “Banque Francaise des Pays d’Orient” [the French Bank of Oriental Countries]. It used to be located in Karakoy [a district in the European side of Istanbul] at that time. He worked there for many years.

My mother, Dina Viktorya Schilton (nee Danon) was born in Istanbul. My mother was also like my father, with a very modern mentality. She dressed in the modern way and got along with everybody. My mother was a serious but talkative person, who was also very understanding. My mother also studied until secondary school. She studied at the Alliance Israelite Universelle school in Ortakoy [a district on the European coast of the Bosphorus]. After she finished school, she did not do anything, she became a housewife. Her mother tongue was Judeo-Spanish. She also spoke Turkish and French. However, the language of communication in the family was Judeo-Spanish. Apparently my mother and my father met through a matchmaker but they never told me how they met and got to know each other. They got married in Bursa. My mother went to Bursa from Istanbul and the wedding took place there. I do not know when they got married but they were married at the Bursa synagogue 3.

Both my parents used to dress nicely and simply. They did not use to go to any library but they both liked to read a lot. They had a lot of books in Judeo-Spanish and they read them. These were novels about love, or they were books with anecdotes and light reading material in them. They also read newspapers in Judeo-Spanish. I remember the names of two of them for example: El Jugueton 4 and La Boz de Turkiye 5. Apart from those, they would also get the Turkish papers of the time, too.

My parents were religious. They practised kasherut [kashrut] and Shabat [shabbath] and celebrated all the festivals. They went to the synagogue every Friday and on all the festivals. We used to celebrate all the festivals at home, too. For example, the whole family would gather in Pesah [Pesach] and we would read the Agada [Haggadah] in Judeo-Spanish. We would always visit our relatives during the festivals, like Rosh Ashana [Rosh Hashanah] and Pesah [pesach]. We would go from one relative to the other on those days.

My parents had Jewish neighbors and they got along very well, they all were like brothers and sisters. They were together every day, all the time. They had their tea and coffee together always. There were relatives, too of course. Both relatives and neighbors would gather in a house and then they would enjoy themselves. In those times, there was no radio or television for entertainment, people would entertain themselves by chatting. They used to talk about everything. They did not use to go on holidays then. They did not have the habit of travelling.

My parents were of course members of the Jewish community but they were not active inside the community. They were not involved in any political, social or cultural organization.

Both my parents died in Istanbul, but I cannot remember the dates. They are both buried in the Jewish cemetery. They are buried in the Italian Jewish cemetery 6 in Sisli [a district in the European side of Istanbul]. They were buried with a religious ceremony. There was a rabbi at the funeral and I recited the Kadish [kaddish]. Every year we have a meldado [the equivalent of the yahrzeit in the Ashkenazi rite] at the synagogue for them.

My father had three siblings. The first was Yomtov Schilton, who was born in Bursa. He married Rita Danon and they had two sons, Alber and Mishel Schilton. Yomtov was in the stock exchange and was very well off. However, I don’t remember exactly when, there was a crisis at the stock exchange once and he lost heavily. I remember, he went to Paris in a panic, on his own. His wife and sons stayed with us while he was in Paris. They stayed with us for 2 years. During that time, my uncle Yomtov went into the insurance business. When he ameliorated his situation, his family went to Paris, too. Then he had a daughter there, Suzi Schilton. Yomtov died in Paris, but I do not know when.

My father’s sister, Luiza Abuaf (nee Schilton) was also born in Bursa. She married Salamon Abuaf. Salamon Abuaf had been born in Istanbul. They had two daughters, Sara and Fortune. Luiza died in Istanbul and her husband, Salamon died in Izmir.

Yet another brother of my father’s was Viktor Schilton. He was born in Bursa and married a girl called Cecille Leibowitz. They had three children: Nina, Bernar, and Alfred. After Nina got married, her husband’s business did not go well, so they left and went to settle in Mexico. Alfred wanted to live in Brazil and he went and settled there and married there. As to Bernar, he lived in Istanbul and became a businessman. My uncle Viktor went to live with his daughter in Mexico after his wife, Cecille died. He died in Mexico.

My mother had 4 siblings; three brothers and one sister. Jozef Danon, Beno Danon, Rita Danon and Izidor Danon.

Izidor left very young and he went to live in Mexico. He lived there all his life. He was in the hotel business. He had a hotel there. He died in Mexico.

Beno lives in Istanbul. He used to be in the leather business. His business was in Karakoy.

Rita lived in Paris and died there.

Jozef lived in Istanbul. He grew up in Ortakoy and was a good businessman. I do not know the birth and death dates of any of them.

As for me, we were 4 siblings, 2 boys, Alber Schilton and me; and 2 girls: Sara Schilton and Suzi Schilton.

Sara was born in Istanbul and unfortunately died when she was 17. Before that she studied at the St. Benoit high school [French Catholic high school in Istanbul]. She studied in the girls’ school. At that time, girls and boys studied in different schools. She studied primary school there, too. She was a very good student. She spoke excellent French. Unfortunately, she got tuberculosis and died at 17. I do not know how she got that disease, there wasn’t any epidemic or anything, but she caught it. After she got ill, she wouldn’t eat and she got very thin. I was quite young at the time but I remember, they were trying to cure her. We used to go to the Italian hospital at Tophane [a district in the European side of Istanbul] to see her. They tried to save her but they couldn’t. My mother was terribly affected by the death of her firstborn. I remember quite well, I was 6 or 7 at the time and I remember the state my mother was in. They were very difficult times for our family.

Alber Schilton finished the Jewish Lycee. He studied at the Bene Berit Jewish Lycee 7 from primary school to the end of the lycee. I still remember the name of the headmaster of the school; it was Dr. Markus and the teachers were French. After he finished school, Alber worked in different places as a clerk. He worked as a translator at a translation bureau in Karakoy [a district in the European side of Istanbul]. Then when he was 23-24 he got it into his head to leave for Israel. At that time people were contracting what was called “marriage blanc” [french for ‘white marriage’, meaning a marriage in name only to serve a certain purpose, in this case, entrance to Palestine] in order to go to Israel [Palestine]. They married some girl or boy and divorced when they got to Israel. That is what my brother did, too. He married a girl and they left for Israel. There they got divorced and my brother went to a kibbutz. I don’t remember the dates really. He stayed at different kibbutzim for 2-3 years. He went to the Kibbutz Massada [in the Jordan valley] and stayed there the longest. I don’t remember the names of the other kibbutzim he stayed at. He did a lot of different kinds of jobs there, picking bananas, cleaning etc... He would do whatever they told him to do. Then suddenly we heard he had become a soldier. This was during World War II, 1939-1945. In those times de Gaulle was in France and he was calling for volunteers to the French army. And Alber, while in Israel, joined the French army. He liked France and the French very much and he joined their army. He went to Africa with de Gaulle’s army. They fought there for a long time against the Germans and then they went to Italy. He used to write us letters, saying he was OK, or saying that they were having very difficult times. Then he wrote that he hoped to come back from the war alive and we understood here that his life was in danger. He was fighting the Germans. They fought them in Africa and they fought them again in Italy. The French army was allied to the American and British armies. There was a big battle at a place in Italy called [Battle of Monte] Cassino 8, near Naples. Alber died during that battle. They buried him at the military cemetery in Naples. He had died during a bombardment.

One day, (I don’t remember when) I received a letter from the French Consulate in Istanbul and the letter said that they regretted to inform us of the death of my brother. They wrote that he had died in such and such a place and in such and such conditions, and that they wanted to talk to me. So I went to the consulate. The Consul himself received me and told me in a very serious and calm manner what had happened. He gave me my brother’s belongings and told me how he had died. There was a terrible battle at [Monte] Cassino and Alber had died during the bombardment together with all his soldier friends who were with him at the time. The Consul gave me a big envelope and Alber’s belongings that were in his room. His wallet, photos and all our letters were inside the envelope. Then the Consul told me that the French government was going to give my mother a lifelong salary and they did until she died.

My sister Suzi was born in Istanbul. She studied at the Italian secondary school; she did not go on to study lycee. Then she worked as a secretary at the import-export firm called Anatolian Contoir. She also knew Italian, French and Turkish. Then she married Alex Samuel and they had a daughter called Doli. Then Doli married a guy called Ahituv.

Growing up

I was born in Bursa in 1921. I lived there until I was one, and then my family and I moved to Istanbul and went to live in my mother’s father’s house in Kuzguncuk. My mother raised me. We did not have a nanny or “mademoiselle” [governess], and I never went to kindergarden either. I did not have many friends when I was little; my mother’s friends came to visit and I would sit with them. There were not any children my age at that time among my mother’s friends so I did not use to play.

The house in Kuzguncuk had two floors, it was made of wood and had a very nice garden. There were chicken coops in the garden. They did not use to plant anything in the garden. I remember there were also cats. I can’t remember how many rooms the house had, but there was a kitchen and a bathroom. The furniture was of the kind everybody had at that time, and they were quite mediocre. We had water from the taps but we did not have electricity, we had gas lamps. We also had braziers and stoves for heating. I remember the books that my grandfather had in the house. My grandfather always read religious books in Hebrew. He was very religious and knew Hebrew very well.

We stayed in Kuzguncuk for 2 years and then moved to Galata [the Galata Tower district on the European side of Istanbul]. My childhood passed in Galata and I also went to school there. There were many Jewish families around where we lived. We had wonderful neighbors; we were like siblings with them. The Jewish community used to be quite big then. We had a synagogue in Kuledibi [Galata Tower district] and there was also the Italian synagogue 9. Our Italian synagogue had a hazan [chazzan] and a haham [hakham]. The haham’s name was Monsieur Gabay. We also had a mikve [mikveh], a talmud tora [talmud torah] and a yeshiva [yeshivah].

Jews at that time used to live in big crowded groups. We were at Galata, but on the other side of the Golden Horn there was Haskoy, and then there was also Ortakoy, where many Jews lived. I remember there being lots of small tradesmen, like the shoemaker, the tinman, the junkman etc etc, they were all Jewish. We did not have a hamam [Turkish bath] in our district, there was one further away. We used to go to that hamam quite often. We went there with my father; we went to the hamam, washed and came back. I do not have any specific memories of the hamam.

I did not come across any antisemitism when I was little, I never heard of such a thing. We never even knew what antisemitism was.

I remember there being military parades and days on which the Turkish independence [Day 10] was celebrated. It was really very nice. Soldiers used to pass all along the streets. The military parades were very colorful.

I went to primary school at the Italian San Pietro school [Italian Catholic high school in Istanbul]. This school was beside the San Pietro Church in Kuledibi. I studied there for a year. From there I transferred to the Italian school [Italian Catholic high school in Istanbul] in Tophane and studied there until grade five, in other words I finished primary school there. These were all schools that belonged to the Italian government and they were free. Everything was free, not only the schools but the books and notebooks and uniforms, they gave all that for free. It was something really wonderful.

One of the lessons I liked most was mathematics. I liked it a lot and I was really very successful at it. I was always first in my class in primary school. From grade 2 till grade 5, I was first of my class every year. I was first of my class for 4 years. When I was in primary school I liked my Italian language teacher very much. He was a very nice man and he liked me a lot, too. There was also a gym teacher that I did not like very much; I did not hate him but I didn’t like him. He was a very strict teacher and I couldn’t do most of the exercises he wanted us to do. For example, there was jumping and I had difficulty doing those jumps and he used to get angry with me. Then there was climbing ropes but I couldn’t do that either, the rope used to slip from my hands and I couldn’t climb, so he would get angry again. I didn’t like his getting angry with me. So I went to his classes very unwillingly only because I had to. That is why I did not feel very nice towards that particular teacher.

At that time, in our school we didn’t know what antisemitism or such thing was. There was no differentiation between Jewish, Catholic or Muslims. We had students who belonged to all three religions but there was never a day when one told the other “you are like that, we are like this”. It was really very nice then.

I did not have any private lessons in music or languages. We had such lessons in school. We had lovely music lessons, we had singing lessons. We learned how to read music and we used to sing all together. We never learned to play an instrument though.

When I was a child we used to go to the movies on Sundays in winter, and the beach in the summer. We used to go with the whole family. We used to go to the islands [Prince Islands of the Sea of Marmara] for swimming.

In my family, my father used to do the shopping, my mother never did. There used to be a place called Salipazari in our district, near the St. Benoit school [French Catholic high school in Istanbul], and this was an open market. Salipazari was a very famous market and my father used to do our shopping there most of the time. He also used to go to the grocer’s in our street.

After primary school I continued my education at the Italian Lycée [Italian Catholic high school in Istanbul]. I studied from grade 6 to grade 12 there. Our school was next to the Italian Consulate. They taught Italian, Turkish, French and English in this school. Those who preferred, could take French or English as a second foreign language. I chose French. We also had to choose between Accounting and Latin; I chose Latin because those who studied Latin at high school could go and study the university in Italy. Those who chose Accounting could not go on to university. At that time I was planning to go to Italy for my university studies. My goal was to become an engineer.

At high school, my favorite teacher was our geography teacher, Prof. Faro. He was not Jewish. He was a very good teacher and was friends with all the students. He used to treat us as a friend, he used to tell us stories and then he would begin classes. He used to start the class by talking to us for the first 5-10 minutes to relax us, and then he would say, “Come on kids, open your books now so we can start class”. All the students liked him as much as I did. There were not any teachers that I disliked.

The headmaster of our school was quite a hard man. He was Italian, he came from Italy. He was very strict and had quite a temper. He got angry real fast, and we were all quite frightened of him. I wanted to go to Italy after high school and become an engineer but it wasn’t to be. My family’s economic situation was not good so I had to start working. I finished high school but couldn’t go on, I started to work.

I remember Ataturk’s death 11 very well indeed. There was a magnificent ceremony for him in Turkey. I remember going to the Dolmabahce Palace to see him but it was so crowded that we couldn’t get in. There used to be the mounted police then. On that day, we got scred of the crowds and returned home. That night there were even people who died in the crowds. We told ourselves that we would not be able to make it inside in that terrible crowd and we went back home. We had gone there with our neighbors. There were about 8-10 of us, and we really wanted to see Ataturk but had to go back home without seeing him.

I also remember the Wealth Tax 12, but as we had foreign nationality they did not take anything from us. They did not interfere in our business because we had foreign passports. For us, it was as if the Wealth Tax did not happen. It did not affect us at all. However, we did hear about what was happening to others. We heard about acquaintances being sent to Askale, but we did not live any of this.

I had a lot of friends outside school. I had a friend called Hayim, another called Davit. There were many of them but now I cannot remember. I also had Jewish friends from school. There was a Toledo, a Papo, then Hayim who became a dentist and is still alive. The others are not. We used to go out together, go to the movies, go on outings, sit at cafés. Especially in the summer, we would go to garden cafés, sit in the garden and chat.

On Saturdays and on our holidays, we would spend our leisure time at a friend’s house if it was winter, and we would always go swimmimg if it was summer. I would always go out with friends, not with my family.

It so happened that we had many a meal at restaurants with my friends. There was a fast food kind of place at Tunel, called Mandra and there was also a restaurant called Fischer. The Fischer that exists today in Taksim used to be in Tunel in my time. We used to eat at restaurants a lot.

When we grew older we started going out in mixed groups, boys and girls. We met the girls! We had a wonderful time with them. There was Ester Toledo, for example, from the group. She still lives. There was also Beti Konfino. Beti Konfino was my ex-fiancée, whom I had met in that group. We were friends for a time, then we started going out together and then we got engaged. We were engaged for 8 months but we didn’t get on very well, so we broke up. In our time mothers used to live with their children. For example, when I got married I had to live with my mother. Beti did not want that, she wanted us to live on our own. That’s why the disagreements started and then both parties decided this wasn’t going to work. In the end we broke up amicably enough.

When we were old enough and were going out with girls, we used to go to dancing matinées. There were alot of dancing places. In the summer, we used to go to Caddebostan [a district in the Asian side of Istanbul, which used to be a summer until the late 1970s but is a popular reisdential area nowadays]. We would first go to the beach there and then we would go to the music garden next to the beach where there was an orchestra that played music during the matinée, which was around 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. We would leave the beach in our swimsuits, had something to eat first and then the music would start, dancing and songs. We used to have a great time. Afterwards we would take the boat from the port at Caddebostan and return to Galata.

I lived in Galata until I got married. I lived in the street across the St. Benoit Lycée. I got married 47 years ago and came to live in Kurtulus [a district in the European side of Istanbul].

I never had a lot of hobbies. I loved to read and to go to the movies. There were a lot of adventure films in my time, cowboy films, you know. I also liked to go to the theatre. At home both my mother and my father read a lot and they always advised me to read, too. I used to read books in Italian in my free time. I liked to read about the lives of poets etc... and also novels. I have not read much in Turkish because we had gotten used to reading in Italian always in school. I also read in French.

I did not participate in any political or cultural activity. I wan’t a member of any club, either.

When I was a kid, we used to apply all Jewish traditions in our home. We practised Kasherut [kashrut], we celebrated all the holidays, and of course we read the Agada [hagaddah] at Pesah [pesach]. We used to go to the synagogue on all the Jewish holidays. We sometimes went on Saturday morning as well. I often accompanied my father to the synagogue. I, myself went every Friday evening.

I learned Hebrew and got a religious education, too. I was privately tutored by our previous Chief Rabbi, Rav David Asseo 13. I was his student. I did not go to the synagogue for lessons, our teacher used to come to our houses. David Asseo was not the Chief Rabbi then, he was a professor of Hebrew. 8-10 of us used to gather in a home, every week a different home and he used to come and teach us Hebrew and the Tanah [tanakh]. I never went to the Yeshiva or the Mahazike Tora. My family never taught me anything, they just made sure I got lessons. I used to pray and read the Tora [Torah] on Saturdays; my father usually didn’t.

We celebrated my Bar-Mitzva [bar mitzvah] at the Zulfaris Synagogue 14 in Karakoy. I went on the teva [tevah]; there was no tradition of making speeches then; we only did the berahot [brochot] and the sefer-tora [Sefer Torah] ceremony. Afterwards, our relatives came to visit to our home and we had a meal together. In my time, these ceremonies were much lighter than they are today. They were much simpler and less of a show off.

The Jewish holidays I liked best were Rosh Ashana [Rosh Hashanah] and Kipur [Yom Kippur]. These holidays affected me a lot with their meanings. Pesah [Pesach] is a difficult holiday and I don’t like too much. We can’t eat bread, there are a lot of fried dishes and therefore the food is really heavy and there is not much choice either.

There have been a few Salonikan donmes 15 among my friends. A colleague of mine at work was a donme Muslim, a Salonikan. He used to say quite honestly: “I came from Salonika, and we settled in Istanbul; now we are Muslims and have forgotten that we are Salonikans”. He liked us a lot and would always praise Jews.

During the holocaust in Europe I did not notice any increase in antisemitism in Turkey. What I remember about the war is the experiences of my aunt, Rita Schilton. They used to live in France with their children. They ran away from France at the time of Hitler. They sought refuge in Italy because they were of Italian citizenship. They lived in Milan for two years. They returned to Paris after the war. The fact that they had Italian citizenship saved them.

We heard about what happened to the Jews in Europe at first in very very light dozes. There were rumors at first, so there wasn’t too much of a reaction in Turkey. We did not understand what was happening. It was later that we slowly got to know what really happened and we were of course devastated. We couldn’t believe that something like that could have happened. It wasn’t only me, everyone thought the same. There were some refugees who were able to escape Europe but I did not get to know any of them.

I do not know the details about the Struma [ship 16] tragedy but I think it was a terrible thing that happened. They left those people on the boat, they couldn’t come to Turkey, they were not given permission, and then the boat sank and the passengers all died. Everyone in the Jewish community then was terribly sad and sorry about what happened.

As far as I can remember, the Thrace events 17 were terrible. A lot of horrible things occurred, there were lootings and Jewish families had to run away. Some of them settled in Istanbul, a lot of them went to Israel.

There was also a “Vatandas, Turkce konus” [Citizen, speak Turkish] 18 policy in those days. I remember that it was a slogan that was constantly repeated at one time. Everyone started to speak Turkish. Before that everyone used to speak their own language. The Jews used to speak Judeo-Spanish in very loud voices in the streets, on the boats, everywhere. The Turks felt uncomfortable with that and then gradually everyone started speaking Turkish. In fact so much so that today it is only us who can speak Judeo-Spanish. Young people do not know it, they don’t understand it nor can they speak it.

Family life

My wife, Suzi Behar Bitek, was born in Ortakoy. Her native language is Judeo-Spanish. My wife’s real surname was Behar. When the Surname Law was passed, some Jews took Turkish names, and my wife’s family added the name Bitek [turkish for only one] to their surname. My wife’s father, Menahem Behar bitek was from Ortakoy, and he was very religious because his own father, Moshe Behar was a rabbi. Menahem Behar therefore raised his daughter with a very strong religious identity. Her mother, Rebeka Rifka Behar (nee Azuz) was a dressmaker. She used to go to the houses of ladies and sew all day.

My wife, Suzi graduated from the St. Benoit Lycée [French Catholic high school]. We are distantly related to her family actually. Our relatives in Ortakoy used to praise this girl a lot. After I broke up from my first fiancée, Beti Konfino, our relatives said Suzi was a great girl, a very good girl. So I made a decision and one day they introduced us at one of our relative’s homes. Then they said, “now that you know each other, why don’t you go out together for a while”; so we started going out to get to know each other better. This did not last long because my wife’s father was a very strict man; he did not think we should go out together for 6 or 8 months. After a short time he wanted me to make a decision, it was either Yes or No. So I said Yes. But he said, “It is not enough for you to say, yes, I agree. You have to get engaged”. So we got engaged in a matter of 1-2 months.

Our engagement was celebrated at home. These things always happened at home in those days. All friends and family were invited, long tables were set, rings were put on each other’s fingers and all in all it was a very nice day. We got married 8 months after the engagement. The fact that my wife was Jewish was an important factor in our marriage because at that time it was very unusual to hear about marrying someone who was not Jewish. That was a very very rare thing. Our wedding took place at the Italian Synagogue in 1957. The wedding was really very nice. There was quite a crowd at the Italian synagogue and the atmosphere was great. We had our party that night at the Lido Restaurant/night club in Ortakoy. The Lido was a very famous place at the time and it was ideal for these kinds of celebrations. We had dinner there and it was really a very nice evening all in all.

My wife never worked, she is and has always been a housewife. She is a wonderful cook, she cooks great Jewish dishes. My favorite Sephardic dishes are, ‘koftikas de prasa’ [leek meatballs], ‘pishkado kon guevo i limon’ [fish with an egg-an-lemon sauce] and borekitas [pastry].

We had two children. The elder, Rita Schilton (now Rasier) was born in Istanbul in 1958. My daughter Rita went to a Turkish school first, called Tarhan Koleji and then she went to St. Pulcherie French school. [Catholic secondary school, 6th to 8th grades only with two preparatory classes at the beginning] Then she went to St. Benoit [French Catholic high school, 6th to 11th grades with two preparatory classes at the beginning] for the lycée. We did not have a Bat-Mitzva [Bat Mitzvah] for our daughter because there was no such tradition at that time. Rita married Cako Rasier when she was 20. They had actually been together for 7 years before that, since she was 13. They had two children; a boy, Ralfi Rifat Rasier born in 1980, and a girl Meyzi Rasier born in 1987.

My younger child, a son, Rober Schilton was born in Istanbul, in 1964. He was born at the French Hospital and his brit-mila [brit milah] was also done there. My sister’s husband, Aleks Samuel held him and my sister brought my son to the hall. Then there was a buffet for the guests. When our son was 13 years old, we also had a Bar-Mitzva [Bar Mitzvah] for him. We had the religious ceremony at the Sisli Synagogue 19. Then that night we had another celebration at the Tarabya Hotel ballroom. A lot of guests and relatives came, there was great entertainment, live orchestra etc... Then we cut a big cake, and all in all it was a beautiful fiesta [Ladino for celebration]. He recited a speech both at the synagogue and at the ballroom.

Rober studied primary school at the Kurtulus Primary School [public school], then he went to High School [English High School for Boys] 20 for secondary school and he wento on to Robert College 21 for the lycée. Then he studied Business Administration at Marmara University 22 and did his Master’s degree at Bogazici University 23. He was a very good student and was able to get a very good and very strong education. He is a talkative person who likes to tell things in detail. He will give every detail of even the smallest thing he is talking about. He never cuts things short, so much so that sometimes we tell him “just cut it short and come to the point”; but he answers “oh, no you are going to listen from beginning to the end”. He never comes to the point quickly but he tells a good story.

We always spoke Turkish with our children. We used to go to the movies with them when they were kids. We had mostly Jewish friends with whom we went to the movies, the theatres, on picnics etc... We would also frequently gather in houses and enjoyed ourselves. When we got together our children would play with the children of our friends of course.

We raised our children according to Jewish traditions. We taught them about all the holidays, Pesah [Pesach], Rosh Ashana [Rosh Hashanah], Kipur [Yom Kippur]. We got them used to fasting since they were quite young. At Pesah [Pesach], the seder was celebrated at our house with our family and my wife’s father who lived with us. It used to be a very nice seder and we read the Agada [Hagadah] beautifully. We weren’t crowded, just our own close family. Our children go to the synagogue during the holidays.

We weren’t able to send our children to the Jewish youth clubs. My daughter got tied up with her husband very early in her life and so she had no time for clubs. They were together since she was 13. And my son somehow never wanted to go. We always insisted that he go but he never wanted to.

We did not go abroad on holidays with my family. My wife and I went quite a few times but not with the children. We used to go to the [Prince’s] islands on a daily basis, not for the whole summer. We went to Suadiye [a district in the Asian side of Istanbul which used to be a summer resort until the 1970s.] for the summer. We have a house there and we have been going there for the summer for the last 40 years.

We learned about the foundation of Israel from the newspapers and the news on the radio. We were strongly affected emotionally and were very happy. We never thought of making aliyah however, because it was a very difficult thing. We didn’t know the language, we didn’t know anybody; on the other hand, we were born here and we were used to the life here, we had an order in our lives here.

In our family, my sister Suzi Samuel’s daughter, Doli went to Israel in the years 1965-1970 and settled there. She stayed there for a few years and then her father said “it’s enough, come back” and she came back.

Today we are not members of any Jewish club or organization but we go to conferences from time to time. We do not take part in any of the volunteer activities.

Our religious practices today are just as they were before. There haven’t been any changes. We go to the synagogue during the holidays. I go to the Italian and Sisli synagogues and in the summer to the Caddebostan synagogue.

We have not had any conflicts with our children about their raising our granchildren according to Jewish traditions. Our grandchildren are not religious but we do not say anything about this. We do not force them into anything. We let our children make their decisions. Today we still gather the family and cook for them. When we are alone with my wife we speak Judeo-Spanish, but with friends and our children we speak Turkish.

Our granchildren did not go to the Jewish school 24; they went to Turkish schools. My granddaughter is at university and my grandson has finished university and has become a doctor. He is an occulist.

My granddaughter participates in community activities. She is taking part in a play that is being performed at the ‘Dostluk Yurdu’ [Jewish youth club in Istanbul founded in 1966].

As for my wife and me, we sometimes go out with friends. My wife goes to play cards with her friends once a week. The men used to gather for poker once every two weeks but we don’t any more, we do not enjoy it as much any more. We go to the movies, the theatres and operas with friends quite frequently. We also have a vacation at least once or twice a year inside Turkey or abroad.

I heard about the 1986 Neve Shalom massacre 25 from friends at first. I was in Kuledibi [Galata Tower region, European side of Istanbul, over the Golden Horn] that day and saw that people were running. I was curious and wanted to know what was happening. At that moment I saw a friend of mine, Izi Levi, who was also running. “What is going on, Izi?” I asked him. “There has been a massacre at the Neve Shalom and a lot of people died” he said. That’s when I learned about it. I waited outside for a while and then I left. I did not want to go inside; I felt terribly sad and a terrible weight on my chest.

During the 2003 bombing of the synagogues 26, we were here at home and we heard a terrible explosion. We wondered what was going on and turned on the TV and learned about the bombings at the Neve Shalom and Sisli synagogues. Of course we were terribly sad about it all.

Glossary

1 Alliance Israelite Universelle

2 The Ottoman Empire in World War I

The Ottoman Empire entered the war on the side of the Central Powers in October 1914, as they were the ones fighting the traditional Ottoman enemy: the Russian Empire. During the winter of 1914-15 the Ottomans launched an ill prepared campaign in the Caucasus against Russia with the hope to be able to turn the local Turkish-speaking Russian subjects (Azerbaijan) to their sides. Instead the Russian counter-offensive drove the Ottomans back behind the borders and Russia occupied North Eastern Anatolia. In the spring of 1915 the Entente was to occupy the straits (Bosphorus and Dardanelles) and ensure the passage of supply to the Russian Black Sea ports. British troops landed in Galippoli (Dardanelles) but were not able to expand their beachheads against the army of Mustafa Kemal Pasha (later Kemal Ataturk); they evacuated in February 1916. Although the Ottomans were able to resist the British in Mesopotamia (Iraq) in 1915, they finally took Baghdad in 1917 and drove the Ottomans out of the entire province. Although the Russians made further advance in Eastern Anatolia they left the war after the October Revolution and according to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (March 1918) the Ottomans were able to regain Eastern Anatolia. Due to the Arab Revolt supported by the British as well as the direct British military intervention the Ottomans lost both Palestine and Syria; Mustafa Kemal was able only to withdraw his forces intact to Anatolia. Sultan Mohammed VI (1818-22) was forced to sign an armistice with the Entente (October 1918) and as a result British and French battle ships reached the port of Istanbul. The Sultan finally signed the Peace Treaty in Sevres in August 1920, according to which the Arab and Kurdish provinces and Armenia were lost as well as the whole of European Turkey with Istanbul, and the Aegean littoral was to be given to Greece.
3 Gerush Synagogue: One of Bursa’s Synagogues, renovated in its present form in the 18th Century. It is light, airy and attractive,with an unusual floor plan: a circle of pillars surround the bimah in the center of the room, supporting a dome. Benches are along the walls; the ark is opposite the entrance, and there are attractive stained glass lights over the entrance door. The Gerush's Torahs were brought from Spain by Sephardic immigrants.

4 El Jugueton

Four-page Ladino weekly satirical newspaper, published by Elia Karmona in Istanbul, between 21st April 1909 and 27th June 1931. On 25th April 1914 it was temporarily closed as it used a certain style considered inappropriate when talking about the Grand Rabbi of the time, Rav Hayim Nahum Efendi. Later it resumed publication until a month before the death of Elia Karmona.

5 La Boz de Turkiye

Ladino periodical, published once every two weeks in Istanbul between 1939 to 1949 by Albert Kohen. It was written with Latin letters and concentrated on science and literature.

6 Italian Jewish Cemetery

It was founded in 1866 in Sisli, a district in the Asian side of Istanbul. The cemetery was dedicated to the use of the Italian Jewish community by an order of Sultan Abdulaziz (1830-1876). It has been in use ever since, though today not exclusively by the Italian community.
7 Bnai Brith Jewish Lyceum: With the outbreak of World War I, the Ottoman government froze the activities of foreign educational institutions in the country. The Jewish youth who used to study in those schools were left helpless owing to the lack of Jewish secondary educational institutions in Turkey. Hence the Bnai Brith secondary school was established in 1914 by the Jewish educator Yosef Niego, who remained its director until 1917.
8 Battle of Monte Cassino: Also known as the Battle for Rome, it was a costly series of battles fought by the Allies at a strategic hill, with an ancient Benedictine monastery, with the intention of breaking through the Gustav Line and seizing Rome. The first battle started on 4th January 1944 and the monastery was destroyed by Allied bombing on 15th February. During three failed attempts to take the heavily-guarded monastery of Monte Cassino, the forces of the USA, the UK, India, Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand lost approximately 54,000 men yet did not manage to seize the city or the castle. The Fourth Battle of Monte Cassino was fought by the 2nd Polish Corps under General Wladyslaw Anders (11th-19th May). The first assault (11th-12th May) brought heavy losses but also allowed the British Eighth Army under General Sir Oliver Leese to break through German lines in the Liri river valley below the monastery. The second assault (17th-19th May), carried out at immense cost by the Polish troops and the key outflanking movement in the mountains by skilled Moroccan soldiers (French Expeditionary Corps CEF), pushed the German 1st Parachute Division out of its positions on the hills surrounding the monastery and almost surrounded them. In the early morning of 18th May a reconnaissance group of the Polish 12th Podolian Uhlans Regiment occupied the ruins of the monastery after it was evacuated by the Germans. The capture of Monte Cassino allowed the British and American divisions to begin the advance on Rome, which fell on 4th June 1944 just two days before the Normandy invasion. Over 74,000 soldiers, including over 1,000 Poles, were killed in the battle. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_18)

9 Italian Synagogue

‘Kal de los Frankos’ in Ladino. The Italian Jewish Community of Istanbul (Comunita Israelitico-Italiana di Istanbul) was founded in 1862, when the community bought a building in Zulfaris street in Karakoy and started using it as a synagogue. The first rabbi of the community was Bensiyon Levi. In 1886 the synagogue was moved to Kuledibi Sahsuvar street. The Italian Synagogue became the cultural center of Istanbul’s Jews with its series of conferences organized every year during the 12 weeks preceeding Pesach. Important intellectuals, such as Rav David Asseo, Rav Isak Rofe, Prof. Eliezer Menda, Moiz Alboher, Rav Eliyahu Kohen, Dr. Yomtov Garti, Dr. Moiz Aksiote, Isak Misistrano, Daniel Behar, Kemal Levent and countless others lectured on subjects pertaining to religion, ethics and morality. The synagogue was restored in 1980 and continues to serve the Jewish community of Istanbul.

10 Turkish Independence Day

11 Ataturk, Mustafa Kemal (1881-1938)

12 Wealth Tax

13 Asseo, David (1914-2002): Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Turkey (1961-2002), Rabbi Asseo was born in Istanbul and attended schools in Haskoy, the city's Jewish quarter. In 1933 he graduated in Rhodes with a diploma qualifying him to teach Hebrew and Jewish religious subjects. In 1933 he began teaching Hebrew at the Jewish High School in Istanbul. In 1936 he became member of the bet din (rabbinical court), later becoming its secretary as well as private secretary to Chief Rabbi Rafael Saban (served 1940-1960). In 1955, Rabbi Asseo also became headmaster of an academy of Jewish learning in Haskoy of which he was co-founder. He was elected chief rabbi by Turkey's Jewish community (Hahambashi) in 1961. As the years passed, he conferred with successive leaders of the Turkish government, cabinet ministers, lesser government figures and leaders of political parties. He also stayed in touch with high-ranking religious figures of Islam and Christianity (Roman Catholicism and Greek and Armenian Orthodoxy). He was also the Secretary of the Conference of European Rabbis.

14 Zulfaris Synagogue

Recorded in the archive of the Chief Rabbinate as ‘Kal Kadosh Galata’, it is commonly known as the Zulfaris Synagogue, named after the former name of the street of location. There is evidence that this synagogue preexisted in 1671,however, the actual building was re-erected over its original foundations in the early 19th century. In 1890 repair work was carried out with the financial assistance of the Camondo family (major Jewish bankers of Istanbul) and in 1904 restoration work was conducted by the Jewish community of Galata. In 1968 it went through a substantial renovation and in 1979 was assigned to the Thracian (European Turkey) Jewish resettled in Istambul. Since 2001 it functions as the Museum of Turkish Jews. (www.muze500.com)

15 Donme: Crypto Jews in Turkey. They are the descendants of those Jews who, following the example of Shabbatai Tzvi (leader of the major false messianic movement in the 17th century), converted to Islam. They never integrated fully into the Muslim society though and preserved various distinctions: they married between each other, performed services in distinct mosques and buried their dead in separate cemeteries. Up until the Greek annexation of Southern Macedonia (1912, First Balkan War) they lived in Salonika and were relocated to Ottoman territory (mainly to Istanbul) with most of the rest of the Muslim population later.

16 Struma ship: In December 1941 the ship took on board some 750 Jews – which was more than seven times its normal passengers' capacity – to take them to Haifa, then Palestine. As none of the passengers had British permits to enter the country, the ship stopped in Istanbul, Turkey, in order for them to get immigration certificates to Palestine but the Turkish authorities did not allow the passengers to disembark. They were given food and medicine by the Joint Distribution Committee and the Jewish community of Istanbul. As the vessel was not seaworthy, it could not leave either. However, in February 1942 the Turks towed the Struma to the Black Sea without water, food or fuel on board. The ship sank the same night and there was only one survivor. In 1978, a Soviet naval history disclosed that a Soviet submarine had sunk the Struma.

17 The Thrace Events

18 Citizen, speak Turkish: In the 1930’s and 1940’s, the rise of Turkish nationalism affected the Jewish community as well. A former Salonikan Jew, Moise Cohen (1883-1961), who had been in close touch with the Young Turks earlier and took the Turkish name Tekinalp led a campaign among his fellow Jews to encourage them to speak only Turkish to integrate them fully into Turkish life. His slogan was ‘Turkey is your home, so you should speak Turkish’. His attempts of the policy ‘Citizen, speak Turkish’ were largely seen as pressure put on the minorities to speak Turkish in public places. There was a lot of criticism and verbal attacks and jeers on those who did not comply with this social rule.

19 Sisli Beth-Israel Synagogue

Founded in the 1920s by restoring the garage of a thread factory. The first weddings took place in the early 1940s. In the 1950s, with the demographic movements of the Jewish populations from Galata towards the Sisli area, the need to have a larger synagogue became prominent. Two architects, Aram Deregobyan and Jak Pardo designed the project. The new enlarged synagogue started its services in 1952.

20 English High School for Boys

21 Robert College: It was founded in 1863 by American educators. Until 1971, there were two campuses, one for boys (with the name of Robert College) and one for girls (with the name of American College for Girls). In 1971, the Arnavutkoy girls campus started co-education under the name of Robert College. On the same date, the boys campus became Bogazici University (Bosphorus University), an English-medium state university. Robert College and today’s Bogazici University were and still are the best schools in Turkey, having students from the top 1% of the student population. Through the years, these schools have had graduates in the top positions in Turkey’s business, political, academic and art sectors.
22 Marmara University: It was founded in 1883 under the name of "Hamidiye College of Higher Commercial Education" in Cağaloğlu neighbourhood in Istanbul. At the time, it was the only leading higher education institute for studies in economics and commerce. In 1923, with the declaration of the Turkish Republic, the Institute was located in the Rectorate Building in Sultanahmet (historic old city). From 1923 to 1959, the college was called the "Higher Education School of Economics and Commerce". In the year 1959, its name was changed to "Academy of Economics and Commercial Sciences". Finally in the year 1982, the name was changed to "Marmara University". Currently, there are 14 faculties, 9 schools, 11 institutes and 28 research centers.
23 Bogazici University: Successor of Robert College, the old (founded in 1863) and prestigious American school in Istanbul. With the consent of the administration of Robert College it was founded jointly with the Turkish state in 1971. Since then the University has expanded both physically and academically and today it is growing in popularity.

24 Beyoglu Jewish Lyceum

Opened in Sishane by Bnai Brith in 1911, it replaced the Alliance Israelite Universelle schools during WWI as they were banned being supported by France. In the interwar period the institution was Turkified and Hebrew studies were de-emphasized after the 1932 law, that forbade religious instructions in Turkish schools. Today it is located in Ulus and called ‘Ulus Ozel Musevi Lisesi’, meaning Private Ulus Jewish Lyceum.

25 1986 Terrorist Attack on the Neve-Shalom Synagogue

26 2003 Bombing of the Istanbul Synagogues

Janet Arguete

My youth

Janet Arguete
Istanbul
Turkey
Date of Interview: August 2006
Interviewer: Feride Petilon

If you see someone with silver hair, sparkling eyes and a young heart on the streets of Buyukada, do not refrain from approaching her. She is Camila Arguete. Even if her name on her birth certificate is Camila, this sweet lady who goes by the name Jana or Janet, has without fail, a message to give to you, or a joke, or a riddle. I shared a few summer mornings with her pleasantly. Here is what she recounted...

Family background

I never knew my father’s father Menahem Sages and my father’s mother Camila Sages. The only information I have about them are their images on faded pictures. My grandfather with a fez, and my grandmother with a headscarf, they had to live during the time of the Ottoman Empire. During the period of Ataturk’s 1 reforms 2 Menahem Sages and Camila Sages was a family who observed religious rules meticulously, who spoke Turkish but did not consider Turkish to be their mother tongue. They lived in Bursa [It is a city in the region of Marmara. It was the capital for a period of time during the Ottoman Empire, with an old historical background, famous for Uludag (Mt. Olympus), its hot springs and silk commerce. Today Uludag is a ski resort].

Menahem Sages and Camila Sages were members of the Jewish community who resided in Bursa (Bursa was the most advanced Jewish community of its time. There were 3 synagogues. Yirush, Mayor, Etz Hayim. All of these synagogues served their own Jewishs population flawlessly. The community in Bursa had a Jewish club also. Balls would be organized in these clubs). Among the family members I can remember are Tia Sultanicha and Tia Mazaltucha (Tia: aunt in Judeo Spanish). While my older brother got a spanking for his misdeeds, I would silently laugh to myself, and Tia Sultanicha or Tia Mazaltucha would say “I tu mereses haftona” [Judeo-Spanish term for: And you deserve a spanking] and incite my father needlessly. Words and discipline methods were futile, they did not serve anything. My father would insist doing it his way and showed me preferential treatment over my older brother.

Since Tia Mazaltucha and Tia Sultanicha’s financial situation wasn’t too good, on Thursday evenings, they would take their share of the food cooked for the Sabbath. Even though I don’t have much information about their spouses, I know that Tia Mazaltucha had two children named Michel and Ester, and Tia Sultanicha, Leon and Viktorya. I did not see these children very often in the following years.

My mother’s mother Flor Abravanel and father Senor Abravanel on the other hand were a family from Salonika [Today it is a city in Greece. But during the years we are talking about Bursa and Salonika were cities of the Ottoman Empire]. My mother’s father Senor Abravanel was a manager of a bank in Salonika. In those days, being a highschool graduate was quite a big deal. His brother Jozef Abravanel was the ambassador for Portugal. His wife Viktorya and only son Jak were the other members of the family. My maternal grandmother Flor Abravanel was a teacher in Salonika. [The information given uses the term “profesora de eskola”: school teacher. This indicates an elementary school teacher rather than a teacher of a specific subject].

I remember my maternal grandmother living across the fire station in Sishane [Sishane is the district where Neve Shalom synagogue 3 is today. During that time the Jewish community lived in this district. The area they called “Kula” was the surrounding area of Galata Tower. A lot of merchants from the fish seller to the sundries/notions store manager were Jewish. The largest fire organization of Istanbul was at the Sishane plaza. Only Jews lived in a lot of the houses then. Fresh Han is an example of this]. When I came to Istanbul from Bursa, the city that looked so big to me would seem even bigger from the iron-barred windows of my grandmother’s. Flor Abravanel who remains in my memory with her wrinkled face and the pieces of cake she gave me would seat me on the corner of the window at her house with a pillow and enable me to see the surrounding area. I still like sitting at the window, watching the people passing by in the street probably as a habit acquired from those days.

Through the eyes of a child, Sishane appeared to be fun, mysterious and quite entertaining to me. Across the largest fire organization in Istanbul, the red trucks that moved with sirens, the Jews that lived all together in this neighborhood that was at the heart of Istanbul, moved me.

When we compare my father’s and my mother’s families, we encounter different things. The Jews of Salonika, that is to say, my mother’s side were people with a more modern outlook. There were differences in the education levels as well. Salonika was a European city nonetheless, whereas Bursa was an Anatolian city. [This difference wasn’t really considered in those days because both cities, Bursa and Salonika were cities that belonged to the Ottoman Empire. With the downfall of the Ottoman Empire and the declaration of the Turkish Republic, Salonika and Bursa took their place in history as a city in Greece and Turkey respectively].

I do not know how Menahem Sages and Camila Sages, and how Senor Abravanel and Flora Abravanel met or married. These subjects were not broached next to us.
.
My father Jak Sages was the son of a very crowded family with 9 siblings.
The oldest brother Albert Sages was married to Kler Bensason. He had two sons named Menahem and Moshe. When the older son was in the military, Kler Bensason started having irregular periods. While the various doctors they went to recommended different therapies, Kler was pregnant with her third baby. And Michel was born 9 months later. This child who could only be circumcised three months later, whose arms looked like pencils and his fingers like strings brought luck to the family. Their financial situation improved. The children of Albert and Kler Sages, who immigrated to Israel continued living in Israel. Today Michel who still calls me often, has a personality that values family relationships.

My father’s second brother, Michel Sages had contracted tuberculosis. Michel married a lady named Margeurite and passed his illness to her. When Margeurite died, Michel Sages married a lady named Judit this time. Judit took very good care of my uncle Michel. When my mother was warning us not to even drink water when we went to my uncle’s house, Judit would use the same handkerchief she used to wipe my uncle’s sweat, to wipe her own. And Judit did not contract the disease. Judit was left alone with the death of my uncle Michel and remarried. You can only call it fate that she infected her new husband with tuberculosis. My uncle Michel Sages did not have any children from his first wife Margeurite or his second wife Judit.

Another one of my father’s siblings, Isak Sages went with the flow of the times and ran away to France at the age of 17. [It was very common for the young people to seek their future out of the country. At times you even lost communication with the people who left. Because the only form of communication at the time was letters. Letters sometimes got lost in the mail and you might not hear from the person who left for a long time. France, Canada, Argentina, and the United States were the countries that were favored]. He married Albertine Elkabes; had three daughters named Janine, Arlette and Suzi. He and my father never lost touch.

Now it is the girls’ turn. Ester married and went to Adana [a city on the south of Turkey, on the coast of the Mediterranean] as a bride. She had a daughter named Leonora.

Sinyora went to the United States for a marriage arranged by matchmaking. Matchmakings like these were done in those days. First they would send each other pictures, then either the girl or the boy would travel and try to get to know their spouse. Sinyora went to the United States for such a prospect. After an unsuccessful attempt, reason unknown, she returned “Kon los mokos enkolgados” [Judeo-Spanish idiom meaning: “with her mucus hanging”; that is to say “without gaining anything from this enterprise”.] She married Monsieur Semo in Bursa and had four sons named Menahem, David, Sami, and Nesim.

Oro married Isak Tovi in Bursa; had children named Kemal, Sara, and Camile.

Coya married Monsieur Sevia and had two children named Janet and Jak. Jak served as ambassador of Israel.

Rebeka married Monsieur Bensason. She had three sons named Menahem, Rıfat and Albert.

My father Jak Sages was born in Bursa (1881). He came and went to Istanbul often. He wasn’t very educated but he was an esteemed merchant. My father’s good looks were legendary. He had good relationships with the women in his factory. He was a tough father. He had an authoritarian attitude with his wife and son, but when it came to me, he melted down. He was cool toward religious matters, some of the arguments he had with my mother were even about how to apply our religious traditions. When the usher knocked on our door on Saturday mornings and yelled “Monsieur Sages al kal” [Judeo-Spanish term for: Mr. Sages to the synagogue], I would respond “En la fabrika de Paskal” [Judeo-Spanish term for: at the factory of Paskal meant to rhyme with the previous sentence in a mocking way]. During the hours when the usher came to the door and encouraged the community to go to the synagogue, my father would be at the factory to prevent the silk cocoons from tangling with each other. Silk commerce was his life. There was a concept of spinning wheel for silk. He was an expert in this subject. He knew how to produce more silk from less cocoons. [Even today Bursa is at the heart of textile commerce]. He always protected his good name in the commercial circles.

In the last years of his life, he moved to Istanbul with my mother at the insistence of my older brother. Unfortunately the disagreements between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law are like a law of nature and happened between my mother and my sister-in-law. Of course quietly... In those days the problems within a family were not brought out to the open. They were kept within the family as much as possible or the saying “les linges sales se lavent en famille” [French for: dirty laundry is washed within the family] was observed. My father died in Istanbul in 1975.

My mother was also the daughter of a family with a lot of children like my father.

The older daughter Rasel Saporta was already a widow when I knew her. She did not have children.

Another sister, Henriette Konfino lived in Romania. What took her away from Turkey was marriage chords. But the nostalgia for her native country was an unbearable longing for Henriette. She burned with the desire to come to Turkey. When her older brother fulfilled her wish, it probably was too late already because Henriette was too sick to even know that she had come to Turkey. And she closed her eyes here for the last time. She did not have children.

Lucy Abravanel married David Abravanel. The fact that Lucy and David had the same last name was not a coincidence, it was an indication of an interfamily marriage. Lucy and David were cousins. Even though their first child Arman Abravanel was a healthy child, the second child Neli was deaf and mute. Lucy Abravanel left her spouse in Istanbul and went to Israel with her daughter Neli. She provided a special education for her daughter in Israel and she learned sign language. Neli married there. Neli’s first child was born normal and learned how to talk from grandmother Lucy. Unfortunately the second child was also deaf-mute and the grandhild did not learn how to talk because the grandmother was not alive.

Ester Molho used to live in Salonika. They were a family affected by the horrors of Second World War. Her son who was a bank manager and her husband were deported. No one heard from them again just like no one heard from the 6 million Jews...

Another sibling was Anjel Karako. She was married to Isak Karako. Their daughter Ester Cakartas and her husband lost their life in a traffic accident. Ester’s daughter Gila married a prince in France. I think this prince was Jewish because the maternal grandmother Anjel Karako went to Paris to hold the thallis over her grandchild. Everything really started like a fairy tale. But just as everything that shines is not gold, this reality was also true for Gila. Gila stayed married for only 6 months. The prince was not a good man. Maybe he was a fake prince, it was rumored that “no era ombre ansina diziyan” [Judeo-Spanish for: “he was not a man”, this saying is used for homosexuals]. Gila suffered a great depression and paid for this marriage by sinking into darkness. Gila had therapy in La Paix [one of the Mental Hospitals in Istanbul] and in other places after returning to Istanbul. She is currently hospitalized in Balikli Greek Hospital [one of the mental hospitals of Istanbul]. Ester’s son Isak on the other hand left the country. No one heard from him again.

Jak Abravanel was the oldest of the brothers. He searched his luck in Argentina. None of his siblings saw Jak except in photographs. Even if some pictures were received from the communications with his sons, the siblings were never able to reunite.

Another one of the older brothers, Isak Abravanel was married to Viktorya Levi. He had four daughters named Flor Benzonana, Eliza Elver, Sol Bener and Coya Kohen. Coya Kohen and her husband took their daughter-in-law to France to prepare her dowry. The plane that crashed on the return trip was the end of this story. They all lost their lives together. (Coya Kohen’s son had stayed in Istanbul. The mother and father of the bride never lost touch with the son-in-law throughout their lives. This young man even married and had children. The mother and father of the girl who died remained as part of this family).

Ida - David Tasman are another sister and brother-in-law of my mother. David Tasman was a Russian refugee. He was a true Russian aristocrat. He had studied dentistry in Russia and practiced this profession for a long time. Later he ran away from the mismanagement of Russia and the pogroms and came to Istanbul. Rumor had it that David Tasman had a son named Boris that he left back in Russia. His wife had died but this child never came to Istanbul. There was no communication between father and son. After David Tasman came to Istanbul, he worked with another dentist since he did not have the right to open a clinic. He was a very well-mannered and dignified man. He provided very well for my aunt. They celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. He died at the age of 80. He loved me a lot too. Only, you should never play cards with him. Because he always wanted to win. This is a joke I remember about David Tasman. Ida’s child died while still in her womb because of the cord that was wrapped around its neck. She did not have a child again.

My mother Mari Sages’ last name before she was married was Abravanel. Mari Sages was an educated woman. She was a teacher. When she came to Bursa as a bride, the siblings of her husband were not married yet. They all started living together. My mother’s French was advanced. Her religious beliefs were very strong. She used to light the Sabbath candles, she tried to observe the rules of kashrut. The hardest days of our home were the days close to Passover. My mother would clean the whole house from top to bottom and did not want us to enter the place she cleaned until Passover. This was called “Ya entro pesah en esta kamareta” [Judeo-Spanish for: Passover has arrived in this room]. When it was the turn for the diningroom, my father would start getting upset. Because he did not like eating in the entrance hall that we called kortijo at all, he used to topple the table over. My mother, on the other hand, continued Passover preparations with a lot of calm. My mother who liked to get dolled up never refrained from putting on her lipstick before my father came home from work, and would put on her necklace and earrings a lot of the times too.

When there was a wedding in Bursa, the women of Bursa would go to Istanbul to have an outfit sewn. All the ladies would seek a tailor that was popular in those days at the same time, and the tailor would sew the same outfit for all of them, and all of them would be identical during the wedding. They would not learn a lesson from this and continue the same procedure in the next wedding. When the smell of coffee started to permeate from one of the gardens in the afternoon, it was the sign of the women of the neighborhood starting to congregate. The biggest pastime during those days was to gather together to prepare the homemade pasta, to prepare tomato sauce or talk about the food that was going to be cooked for Friday. All this important business was embellished by coffee breaks. My mother died just as she wished. One night, when they were returning from an outing, she did not feel good, and that was it. The calendar showed the year 1968.

When the children of two large families, the Abravanel’s and the Sages’, were married, they started living in Bursa. I know they married in the matchmaking style. My mother came from Salonika, my father lived in Bursa. In Bursa, family gatherings were important. There was a Jewish association. Balls would take place and my mother and father participated in these balls. There wasn’t a luxurious life in Bursa, but there was an orderly and good life.

I am the second child of this family.

My older brother Menahem Sages was born in 1921 in Bursa. He continued his education in St. George High school [Austrian missionary school]. But he could not finish it. I know he went to this school for a few years but I do not have any information as to why he wasn’t able to finish. In reality, it wasn’t possible to question some things, especially by children. If he quits school, he quits, and if he continues, he continues. “No es komo la espesutina de agora” [Judeo-Spanish for: It isn’t the same hassle as today]. His wife Rene Nahmias was the sister of my uncle Michel’s first wife Margeurite. She was a very beautiful woman but she was too meticulous, she was obsessively meticulous. When we went to her house, she would look at your shoes before she looked at your face. She had a very good relationship with her son. She took care of him like a baby, she paid a lot of attention to her husband too but we generally did not go to my older brother’s house, he would come to our house to see me. My brother and my childhood were not alike at all. Because our personalities were not alike. He was calm whereas I was naughty and mischievous. He did not like drinking alcohol or gambling. He did not smoke. But for whatever reason he was always the one spanked during the childhood years. I would climb trees, he would sit at home.

His son Jak Sages was born in 1946 in Istanbul. After attending elementary school in Kurtulus Elementary School, he went to the British High school 3. And then he went to Israel. Adventure. Later he immigrated to Canada. Currently he lives in Canada, in the city of Victoria. In those days naming after the grandfather or grandmother was a tradition. Meaning the son of Menahem carries my father’s name. My older brother did not want his son to do military service in Turkey, for that reason, especially encouraged him to go out of the country. His going to Canada was an adventure like his going to Israel but it was as if my older brother continually encouraged this adventure. My older brother died in Canada where he went to see his son in 1984.

Even though I carry my grandmother’s name according to traditions, Camila is only my name on my birth certificate. I am called Janet or Jana in my daily life. I remember being Camila only when I use my passport.

Growing Up

I was born in 1924. The house where we lived when I was born was the same as the house I lived in when I went to Istanbul as a bride. That neighborhood was called “La Juderia”. All of the Jews in Bursa lived on the same street. On both sides of the hill full of trees houses were lined up. Only Jews lived there until the place we called Catalfirin [Forkbakery]. We had 3 synagogues: Yirush, Mayor and Etz Hayim. We were crowded, we were like siblings. We would eat and play together with the daughters of the poor families who came to our house as helpers. Mrs. Hanife who came from the factory every day would take food to my father. Mrs. Hanife was one of the workers in the factory. My father who liked to eat fresh food, preferred eating lunch with the food that was cooked that day rather than the leftovers from the previous night. When Mrs. Hanife came, the food that was placed in the thermos would go to my factor at the factory.

On a day I took advantage of the fact that my mother was making dessert. I ran away and continued walking in the street. When my mother realized I was not home, she rushes out to the street with her apron and finds me in the hands of a woman. My mother screams “Give me my child”. The woman calls the police and invites my mother to prove that she is my mother. My father being a well-known person and his good relationship with the people around him enables the problem to be solved. Is there an end to my mischievousness? One of my favorite things was our hill that would be under snow on cold winter days. When I put my bag under my butt, I would slide quickly from top to bottom.

In our street, the yoghurt-seller, the poultry man, the egg-seller would pass. The yoghurt-seller would carry his pans full of yoghurt on strings that were attached to a pole. We would buy this yoghurt sold by kilogram into our pans. We would joke saying “Los guevos del dede son grandes” [Judeo-Spanish for: The grandfather has big eggs, meaning balls]. The poultry man would bring the chickens, my mother and her neighbors would bring the chickens to the rabbi to check if they are kosher or not and would cut them according to the rules of kashrut. They would put aside some chickens as non-kosher. The chickens that were cut were taken to Jewish women to have their feathers removed this time. Those women would almost memorize which chicken belonged to whom but once in a while, the chicken of Madam Rebeka would get mixed up with the chicken of Madam Zelda. But the smell of the cooking chicken would spread to the neighborhood. On Saturdays the firesetter would pass through the neighborhood. The Jews who did not consider it appropriate to light a fire on the Sabbath were able to light the lamps or stove thanks to the firesetters who were Muslim. Even though this tradition was applied by my mother, my father would turn on the lights before he left for the factory.

We have to add the cotton fluffer who was a tradesman of those days who passed through the neighborhood. The fluffer was the one who renewed our mattresses at certain times, who beat the cotton inside with a mallet to air it. The same person sewed the comforters. The work of the cotton fluffer would be very intensive especially in summer and fall cleanings.

Even if shopping was done from retailers in Bursa, the heart of commerce was in the Closed Bazaar. Towel sellers, fabric merchants were inside this bazaar. At the end of the Closed Bazaar you could find Salt Bazaar. Silk cocoons would be displayed as if in an auction during the season. There would be lawyers’ offices or offices associated with commerce on the top floors. My uncle was a representative of Michelin [French tyre company] and had an office in the Closed Bazaar.

The house we lived in had three stories. Like the twin houses of today, we could go to the neighbor’s house from the stairs in between. The basement of this house where the ground floor was a grocery store, served almost like a refrigerator. Every kind of document and food was kept there. On the top floor, in the entrance which was called “kortijo”, were the kitchen, bathroom and laundry. We even called the laundry lady who came to the house Tia Rahelina. [She indicates that they considered the lady who came to do the laundry part of the family and addressed her as tia-aunt]. When Tia Rahelina tackled the laundry, the whole place would smell clean like white soap, the whites would be boiled in large pots with bluing [a substance used in the old times to whiten laundry]. The laundry that was hung to dry in the garden would sway in the wind. Coal stoves and braziers would be lit on laundry days, food would be cooked on the same stoves. Tia Rahelina’s sons later became very rich and saved their mother from this job. In reality, after we came to Istanbul, we did not see Tia Rahelina for very long years. Later on they became in-laws to some distant relatives and we saw her sons and her at a wedding. We learned that her sons were in the tin and oil business. In our times the women did not know much the work that the men did. Men did not explain, and the women would not be interested. But I know that Tia Rahelina’s sons were in commerce.

We had a sofa, armchair and a table with a golden mirror in our living room. When I see these end tables in decorating magazines, I understand that the saying “If there was a demand for old things, flea markets would flourish” is not very valid. The floors were linoleum, the stairs made of wood. Sparkling the linoleum was a symbol of cleanliness. The wooden stairs, on the other hand, squeaked. The cleaning supplies were not as strong probably. Soft soap, white soap, bleach was used. Clean water flowed from the taps always, there were heating stoves in each story, and in the kitchen stoves were lit.

In those days, the traffic did not resemble today’s mess, there were few motorized cars, and one horse-carriages were vehicles that were used [she used the ladino term “talika brijka” for the horse-carriage]. Obviously in a neighborhood where automobiles were seldom seen, even if there weren’t playgrounds designed for children, the streets, the gardens were our play areas. We grew up with this distinction, the orchards and gardens were ours. We would play hopscotch (We would draw squares in the street with chalks, would skip on one foot to move the stone while not letting it touch the lines. In every neighborhood, different rules would be applied to the game of hopscotch. We would explain those who came from other neighborhoods the rules of that neighborhood. For example, holding the stone on top of your foot while playing would make it more difficult, but that was another rule) in the streets, jump rope.

The hamam is one of the biggest features of Bursa. The mikveh habit of older ladies would be satisfied in the hamam too. It was customary to prepare food for the hamam entertainment. One of the favorite pastimes of those days was for a few families to get together to go to the Gonlu Ferah Hotel in Cekirge [Cekirge is a district of Bursa famous for its hot springs. It has hamams that are left from the old times. It is known that these waters are therapeutic and you could go there for medical purposes. Until a short while ago, taking baths as a cure for rheumatism with a doctor’s recommendation was a valid procedure].

Going to the Gonlu Ferah Hotel was the favorite entertainment of those days. There were one-story hotels, rooms with their private hamams, and multiple room hotels also in Cekirge. When you went to Cekirge, you would sit in the gardens. Chatting in gazebos covered in vines was one of the preferred pastimes of our elders. Sometimes these outings were not for one day, but could last a few days, because the men went to and from work in Cekirge.

Picnics were part of life in Bursa that you couldn’t do without. We would go up to Uludag with buses. Barbecues were brought but the meat would be carried from home. The rules of kashrut were always in effect. Even the dolmas and salads were prepared from home. The breaking of the ropes of melons and watermelons that were thrown down wells to keep them cold at times would cause disappointments (Because using refrigerators wasn’t widespread in those days, melons and watermelons would be tied up and lowered to wells in summer to keep them cold. Sometimes the watermelon or melons would be too heavy, the rope would break and the watermelon and melons would fall into the well).

I used to go to a school named “mestra” before I started school. Mestra was a kind of preschool like the ones that exist today. Ms. Suzan who spoke French would gather a few kids in her house, play games, and supposedly teach them French. Ms. Suzan was a spinster, she was thin and scrawny. Whoever saw her would utter “poor thing”. Mr. Geron on the other hand was big and burly. When you compare it to the preschools of today, the children were raised in primitive conditions there.

I started school in a Jewish school, then I transferred to Istiklal School. We met again with friends with whom we studied together, years later. None of us had changed, only our birth certificates had grown old. We would visit each other with these friends. They would not look down on us. They would not regard us as inferior because we were Jews, on the contrary, they wanted to be with us. In Bursa, the holiday visits were important too. We socialized with our school friends and their families. They were all children of intellectual families. We had very good relationships with the teachers in our school too. I remember Mr. Halit and Mrs. Muazzez among the teachers. We thought that these two teachers flirted with each other in school. When we saw them next to each other, we would start giggling right away. But we were never disrespectful toward our teachers, we did not step over our boundaries. I loved Mr. Halit most among the teachers. We would go to kiss their hands on holidays.

I loved reading a lot. I bought all the magazines that came out in those days. Solving puzzles is a habit left over from those days. There were no puzzle books of course, we waited for the puzzles section of the newspapers impatiently. Afacan Çocuk [Mischievous Child], Ses [Voice], Hayat [Life] magazines, Dogan Kardes [Brother Dogan] were among my favorites.

Among my childhood memories, the bar-mitzvah of my older brother is prominent. We had visitors at home for three days and three nights. We distributed food to family and friends for two days, and to the needy for one day. We the children, played around. Towels, pyjamas and socks were among the preferred gifts. 6 monetary units (of the time) were considered a good gift, and would be saved by the mother. My older brother had gone to the synagogue with only my father. My mother waited for them at home, and immediately started giving out sweets. The children of that time had limited means but were happy, today they have everything but they are tense.

Bursa’s summer resort was Mudanya [A neighborhood on the border of the sea around Bursa]. When my uncle’s family went to their summer resort, they would take me with them. I would show my wild side over there too, and would climb to the top of trees. My father loved Buyukada a lot. [Buyukada is one of the islands in the Princess Islands group on Marmara sea. The others are named Kinaliada, Burgazada, and Heybeliada. Today Burgazada and Buyukada are summer resorts that are in demand by Jews]. In those days, the upper crust people especially went to Buyukada for the summer. Attire and clothing was important in Buyukada, ladies went around with hats, and would go to meet their husbands from the dock.

We would go to the Cankaya Hotel in Buyukada for a month. Such a vacation was a luxury in those days. My father would rent a room every summer in the Cankaya Hotel for 1,5 months. The hotel was all inclusive. We ate our meals there, in the hotel. When summer came, we would take our suitcases and settle there. The clothing to be worn in Buyukada was separate. A separate shopping was needed. Because my mom liked to dress fancy and would not go down from her room without her necklace and her earrings. I would go to Degirmen Beach ever morning with my friends [One of the most famous beaches of Buyukada. Now it is a club, only members can go in. Another one of the beautiful beaches in Buyukada at the time was Yorukali Beach]. My mother did not swim in the sea. My father only came in the weekends. My mother would play cards with her friends or go down to the dock to sit in the tea gardens. I and my friends would enjoy summer vacation thoroughly.

During the War

When I became a young woman, around the 1940’s, it was the period when antisemitism was prevalent in Bursa. They called us “Chifut” [Jew]. When we returned home from school we would walk without looking around. All of us (my cousin Ester Carktas, myself and the other Jewish girls) were attractive girls. That is why we were very scared of being approached or made improper advances to. “Citizen, speak Turkish” 4 was one of the most important events of our time. There was a fine of 5 units of money for people who did not speak Turkish. There is even a joke about this subject. An official from the public registrar’s office came to a house and asked what is your name. Rebeka asked Moshon: “Ke disho, ke disho? [Judeo-Spanish for: What did he say, what did he say?] “Komo te yamas?” [Judeo-Spanish for: What is your name?] Moshon answers “Rebeka and Moshon”. The official continued asking. “Your year of birth?” Rebeka asks “Ke disho, ke disho? [Judeo-Spanish for: What did he say, what did he say?] “En ke anyo nasimos” [Judeo-Spanish for: What year we were born]. Moshon answers again. While this continued, the official asks “What is your mother tongue?” Rebeka asks again “Ke disho, ke disho? [Judeo-Spanish for: What did he say, what did he say?] Moshon: “Kuala es muestra lingua maternal?” [Judeo-Spanish for: what is our mother tongue?]. Rebeka immediately answers “Turkchas, turkchas” [Turkish, Turkish].

We were very afraid during the 2nd World War, there were even rumors that ovens were prepared for us. From our family, my aunt Esterina Molho who lived in Salonika, her husband who was a bank manager, her children and her grandchildren were all sent to concentration camps. They were a very esteemed family, and they were very wealthy. Unfortunately in the following years, this money was squandered on attorneys. When the sisters researched this wealth they took part of what was theirs but they did not fight hard enough. The real estates was all lost. Whatever the lawyer wanted to show that is what he showed and that was it. What could my mother do other than grieve. We were not aware of this right away. We became aware in time. When we were made aware it was too late anyways. When the sisters looked for this wealth, they received a portion of what was rightfully theirs.

My mother-in-law had two brothers. One was named Leon Ancel, the other Jojo Ancel. Leon Ancel lived in France. He was able to hide himself by marrying a Christian woman named Helen. I had the opportunity to meet Dominique, the son of Uncle Leon who was saved thanks to his wife in the later years. The other brother Jozef Ancel lived in Switzerland anyways. He was not affected by the war.

I heard about the Thrace Events 5, but noone from our family was unjustly treated.

The Wealth Tax 6 left a lot of people in hardship. My father was registered as a janitor in the factory, therefore he was not affected much. But some families had everything taken from them. There were those who went to Ashkale and of course those that were not able to come back.

I was already in Istanbul during 6-7 September events 7. I had come to Istanbul in 1946. There was a Greek grocer under the home of my mother-in-law, Lucy Arguete in Dereboyu [Main street of Ortakoy. Greeks, Jews and Muslims lived alongside each other on this street. A river ran through the middle of this street, and crossing from one sidewalk across to the other was by bridges. Ortakoy is one of the first places in Istanbul that the Jews who ran away from Spain settled in when the Ottoman Empire accepted them. It is situated on the shores of the Bosphorus in Istanbul]. Looters entered the house and cut up my mother-in-law’s rugs. My mother-in-law escaped with her nightgown and came to us. When I went out the next day, my heart ached. There were refrigerators, washing machines, rolls of fabric, sacks of all kinds of produce dragging through the streets. It looked more like a war zone than a looting zone. What attracted my attention most was the Greeks still continuing to speak in Greek fearlessly.

My husband Avram Arguete was a very principled man, hard-working and honest. At first they were very rich. His father Albert Arguete’s nickname was “Golden Bee”. They had a haberdashery store in Ortakoy. He was born in Ortakoy. That store was the one with the most variety at the time. But I was not around for the times of wealth. Yo me topi en la aniyud [Judeo-Spanish for: I was around for the poverty]. The Wealth Tax erased all of this wealth. My father-in-law did not have a single experience with the police in his life. Police officers came to his store during the Wealth Tax. He fell ill with that stress and died in 1946.

His mother Lucy Arguete’s maiden name was Ancel. Lucy Arguete was of medium height, could be considered on the short side and had gray hair. Lucy Arguete’s story is quite interesting. When my mother-in-law was in her first marriage, it was the time for the flu epidemic. This epidemic was called the Spanish flu. This epidemic was in the news in the newspapers too. Her husband died on the night of the wedding before they could even have any relationship. Lucy became a widow with her wedding gown, as a virgin maiden. This flu that was called the Spanish flu, is considered an epidemic historically. A high fever and sudden death were the typical symptoms of this illness. Lucy Arguete lived through such a tragedy on the night of her wedding to her husband.

Lucy turned her back to life with this disappointment. She went to visit her relatives in Ortakoy. In reality the reason they called her to Ortakoy was to introduce her to my father-in-law Anri Arguete. At the time, a widow had to be very careful about the steps she took. Lucy, in reality, was a very optimistic and luminous woman. She loved giving out presents. That is why her purse was always full of candy and chocolates. When children saw her, they always approached her. This woman who was of short stature, who put her long gray hair up in a bun on her neck, agreed to marry my father-in-law Anri Arguete who was a widower with one child, with the mentality of those days. Anri Arguete had lost his wife in Ortakoy. He was a very religious, quiet and inoffensive person. There was an age difference with Lucy. Along with the age difference, there was a cultural difference and a difference in life style. Lucy was a modern person who liked to go out, to spend money, to strengthen her dialogue with people. My father-in-law Anri on the other hand, was an introverted person who was lost among religious books, who spent his life within religious books. There were differences from their family structures. Lucy had an aptitude for western cultures, due to her siblings and her connections outside the country. Anri on the other hand, was a good person, and that was it. Lucy never treated Anri’s daughter from his first wife Suzan any different from her own children. When Lucy was married, Suzan was 5 years old. But she became the apple of Lucy’s eye. Suzan knew that Lucy was not her mother. Besides, the mother’s family used to come to see Suzan. But because Lucy did not distinguish Suzan from her own children, she even showed her preferential treatment at times. When she went out, she always took Suzan with her.

Suzan was a lively, cheerful girl. In later years, she turned out to be a very capable woman. Suzan shared a similar fate with my mother-in-law Lucy. When Suzan married Albert Cukran, Albert’s wife had died in childbirth and left her daughter Beki without a mother. In those days, Beki was given her dead mother’s name. Suzan took the baby to her heart since she knew the feeling. She did not even tell the three sisters she gave birth to, Juliet, Sara and Zelda this step-daughter situation for years. Beki was told the truth by her fiance. Beki’s first reaction was “It does not matter, Suzan is my mother. Please don’t tell it to my sisters”. Every sister was told that they were of different mothers by their fiance, and the sisters never talked about this amongst themselves during their lifetime, in reality. In Suzan’s old age, her sons-in-law competed to take her into their house.

Juliet married Jojo Franko (another last name is Aker). She has two children named Sami and Ari. Sara married a gentleman named Ibrahim, she has three daughters. Zelda married Refik Celik. Refik also had a daughter from his first marriage. (When Lucy Arguete married, she found Suzan. When Suzan married she found Beki. Suzan’s one other daughter Zelda, when she married, she married a gentleman who had a daughter from his first marriage. In this way, three generations of women married men who were on their second marriage and found a daughter each).

My mother-in-law’s daughter Ceni Arguete was married to Marko Uziyel. She had one daughter named Bella. Ceni was a chubby woman of medium height. She lived with her mother Lucy. Marko Uziyel’s financial situation was not very bright. Ceni-Marko Uziyel lived in Nisantas [One of the best neighborhoods of Istanbul] in a basement flat. That house was a humid house. My mother-in-law had succeeded in making that house cozy. Lucy used to receive financial help from her siblings who lived in Switzerland. She in turn gave it to her daughter. Ceni’s daughter Bella did not grow up as the daughter of a family with no means. The best of everything was always at Bella’s disposal. Bella married but became a widow at a very young age. She had only one son. Her son is a tutor who prepares students for the university exam.

Yomtov Bonjur Arguete on the other hand, was the apple of the family’s eye. He was married to Keti Frankfort. Keti was a German Jew. Her father owned a bank. He did not know Judeo Spanish 8, when this language was conversed within the family, his face became sullen. The Frankfort family was an aristocratic family. Komo se dize, guantes blankas [Judeo-Spanish for: How do you say this—white gloves. It is a saying indicating you were speaking to someone from the upper crust, i.e. you need to have white gloves to be able to address them]. I would be amazed when I went to their house. Starched white table cloths, starched napkins. I would be face to face with a different world view.

My husband Avram Arguete had the nickname “Fuhrer” in Ortakoy because of his adherence to his principles and his harsh reactions. Just think about it. He was of short stature, always in a hurry, someone who walked fast and who was anxious. Our meeting was the result of a coincidence. In reality, when I started to grow up and to develop, it was an indication that it was time for matchmaking for me. I came to Istanbul for this purpose, but when it was found out that the person they were thinking of introducing me to wasn’t appropriate, I started waiting for the return trip. They had told me that the hand of the boy they were proposing for me was disabled. In the meantime, my husband had broken up with his first fiancee. I do not know the reason for this separation, but within years, when the two ex-fiances met, they would greet each other in a civilized way. I also would greet this lady and talk to her on the streets of Buyukada.

My husband encounters a friend while walking absentmindedly in the street after this separation. He tells him of his troubles, the solution is a new matchmaking, looking for a new fiancee. Mrs. Rosa Palashi was our neighbor. She was a family friend of theirs. When Mrs. Rosa Palachi learned about Albert Arguete’s situation, she opened her house to us. We met there. My husband was a handsome, well-dressed man. I was there too. My father and my husband went to the back room. I waited in the livingroom. When their discussion was finished, they told me I was promised. My father did not even ask me, the apple of his eye, if I liked Albert or not. I did not react at all to this event, it was as if what needed to happen, happened. It seemed to me that that was what was supposed to happen. My husband did not react at all too. He accepted it very coolly.

The next day, there was a meeting again, tratos [Judeo-Spanish for: negotiations, i.e. the money that the girl’s side is supposed to give to the man for a marriage] started. My husband’s aunt Tant Regina acted as the go-between. My mother-in-law had a voice, but she never used it. Tant Regina finished it. They settled on three thousand liras. Because my husband was a very honest man, he clarified that he was going to give one thousand liras of this money to his sister Ceni who was going to get married before us. In this way, two thousand liras would be left in my husband’s hands. When the negotiation ended, we, the two fiances, went out. My husband took me to my aunt’s house whose housekey I had, upon a pretext, and asked me to clean up all the make-up on my face. His jealous nature was evident at that moment. Yes, he really was very jealous, he did not even want me to go to Bursa. No seya ke me arevaten los flortes de Bursa [Judeo-Spanish for: Maybe the boyfriends of Bursa would grab me].

After the War

The engagement party took place in an establishment called Belle Vu. I don’t even remember if there were rings exchanged. We got engaged on June 24th, 1946, the civil marriage was on October 24th, 1946, and the wedding on November 24th, 1946 in the Zulfaris Synagogue 9. One of the most famous traditions of Bursa was the showing of the dowry. My mother prepared a beatiful dowry, the dowry was shown in the accompaniment of the lute. My mother-in-law did not pay much importance to such stuff. She had just been widowed when I got married anyways. She did not have the state of mind to deal with this stuff. But tradition was tradition and it was done. A black coat, light-colored coat, black suit, light-colored suit, silk broidered nightgowns, tablecloths were integral parts of a dowry. On the wedding night we went to the Park Hotel [in Taksim, one of the most luxurious hotels of the time] in great secrecy. The two of us were alone and no one had been made aware. I still haven’t understood the reason for this secrecy. Nothing was ever told to anyone in the family. As if, if it was kept secret and nobody knew, my husband’s business would go better. He thought this way. He was afraid of a lot of things, the evil eye, the jealous eye, he did not like to be talked about. From this point of view, he would do everything in secrecy, and prevent being talked about in his own way.

Our first house was behind Tokatliyan Passage [a passage in Beyoglu. The area where the entertainment places were in the old times] for a rent of 40 liras. My husband was paying half the rent and my father the other half. This wasn’t a dowry agreement but my father did everything in his power so we would not have difficulties. Even the laundry would go to Bursa, get washed and ironed and return. Some of our basic necessities like cheese or butter would come from Bursa too. Everything was a principle for my husband. He would do anything in the name of honesty. He did not like debts or such. When we were setting up our house a lot of things came as gifts. Lamps, tables, chairs all came as gifts. We bought a bedroom for 400 liras that someone had been using for 40 years. Right now, a piece of that bedroom set still exists. It is almost an antique piece.

My older brother wanted me to choose between an armchair and a radio for a wedding gift. I was already feeling wretched and preferred the radio. I made a divan from orange crates. My husband opened a hardware business with whatever was left from the dowry. He started commerce with two thousand liras. My husband’s business slowly took off. He always said “you brought me luck” to me. He never let me work, I wish I had worked, but his jealousy exasperated me. No going out, no coming in, going to Bursa absolutely not. We fought a lot. My husband, in addition to sticking to his principles, was very easily offended. For example if I didn’t say “to your health” after he shaved, he would get cross with me. Another thing that is a reality is that a girl who has been raised in a wealthy family, if she marries someone of lesser means and cannot find what she is looking for, gets stressed. This stress amplifies in the woman, the struggle of the man who is trying to attain that lifestyle makes her irate. Sometimes I would win these fights, sometimes my husband. That is how a life was spent.

My husband adored children. When I had my period, all hell would break loose. He would wail “I won’t have children”. My mother-in-law consoled him “be smart Albert, there is no reason not to have any”, she would say. When I became pregnant with Lucy, it meant the world to him. But I had such a difficult pregnancy, such a difficult birth, and a difficult postpartum period that the guy did not want a child again. When Lucy was born she was the sweetest baby in the world, or it seemed that way to me, but I would faint all of a sudden. My mother took me to Bursa during this period, cured me and sent me back to Istanbul again.

My house during this period was at Kuledibi. It was very small, humid and full of mold. We changed houses within a short period and moved to our house where we resided for 11 years. A house in Cihangir [A neighborhood in Istanbul. This neighborhood underwent a lot of changes with time. First it was one of the most exclusive neighborhoods of Istanbul. Good families resided in the homes with a view of the sea. Later the image changed. This time it became the place of transvestites. Nowadays it is a candidate to be an artists’ neighborhood. Those beautiful homes are finding the old owners back] with a sea view, but the moving-in price is 500 liras. Where would we find this money. Friends prove their friendships in such days. A friend, again from my family’s side lent us money. We paid back the money we owed in a short time. My husband always said that I brought him luck anyways. Later on we moved to Pangalti [A neighborhood in Istanbul].

My daughter Lucy (naturally she carries my mother-in-law’s name) was born in 1948. Just as is the case for every baby, a festive wave spread through the family. But I remained very weak after the birth, and I would faint all of a sudden while nursing the baby. My mother came from Bursa and took care of me. After a while, she had to go back to Bursa because our house was very small. She took me and the baby, and cared for us in Bursa, returned me to my good health and sent me back to Istanbul. During this period, my husband used to come to Bursa too in the weekends. I prepared wonderful birthdays for my daughter. The neighbors, the cousins would come. I would go to Beyoglu on every birthday [The favorite shopping street in Istanbul. Stores were lined on both sides of the sidewalk. Famous restaurants were lined on this street alongside stores with European merchandise. Movie theatres were in Beyoglu too. Women do not go out without wearing a hat. Men went around with canes and felt hats. The tram was also a mode of transportation], I would buy her a dress from the best store, take her to a studio and have a picture taken.

My daughter was a very good student starting in elementary school. According to her father, her grades had to be 9’s or 10’s all the time. It was that way anyways. After finishing Saint Benoit French Junior High, she entered Notre Dame de Sion [French Catholic schools]. My daughter became engaged to Eliya Barokas before she turned 18. I can say she was obliged to get engaged, to say it more correctly. My husband investigated and found my daughter’s spouse from the commercial circles. As you can understand, she married through matchmaking in 1965 at the Neve Shalom synagogue. We went to Lido in the evening, very few people, no friends, there were limited amount of people from the family. Of course my daughter’s matchmaking was not like mine. My son-in-law would come, pick my daughter up and go out. On their first meeting, Eliya came and picked my daughter up. We went out, they in front, and us in the back. Later they stayed engaged for 1.5 years, and had opportunities to meet each other during that period. One day before the wedding my husband told me that we were having our son-in-law as a live-in [“mezafranka”: to help curb the expenditures for the newly weds, the girl’s family takes in the son-in-law and takes care of all their needs]. He had decided this without asking me, as was the case in a lot of other occasions. Even if he asked, I did not have the luxury of expressing my opinion. I wasn’t asked my opinion very often. Of course this upset me a lot. But because I did not know otherwise, this seemed right to me.

I rearranged my house for the newlyweds. I allotted them the main room and bought a new bedroom set. They lived with me for three years, summers and winters, and 5 years only summers. But my son-in-law is truly a great kid. He had asked for the dowry before getting married. These procedures were not looked upon warmly then. Some said “Albert loko sos tu dota se da de antes?” [Judeo-Spanish for: Albert, are you crazy, dowry shouldn’t be given before the wedding]. My husband said “Si me las komyo las paras ke me las koma, ma a la ija ke no me la keme” [Judeo-Spanish for: if he burns through my money, let him burn it, but my daughter let him not burn]. I cut up a very beautiful fabric for the wedding and took it to a tailor. The fabric was a little expensive. I did not know how to tell my husband. But he liked it too and did not say much. My husband in the meantime started becoming successful in commerce. He dabbled in a lot of stuff like textiles, and dry goods and notions. In the end, he was in the underwear business before he retired. He used to send undershirts and underwear to Anatolia. He died in 2003. He had difficulty breathing. He had a problem in his bronchial tubes. He passed away after a short period of illness, around 6 months.

Lucy Barokas has a son named Semi born in 1969 who currently resides in Israel, and a daughter named Zelda, born in 1972 who lives in Istanbul. My husband Albert Arguete was a man devoted to his children, he would especially die for his grandchildren. When my daughter Lucy went on a trip, the children would stay with me. Then Albert would act like a child, even more than they did. He would exhaust me with his nagging “Ya komyo no komyo, ya tosyo, ya sudo” [Judeo-Spanish for: he/she ate, didn’t eat, he/she coughed, sweated].

My grandchildren mean everything to me. I love them very much. Semi studied hotel administration. He served as bartender in the Sheraton Hotel. Later he decided to live in Israel where he had gone for an internship. He went to Israel right after his mother’s 25th wedding anniversary to realize his dreams. He married Ronit Simonpur. I have two grandchildren named Linoy (born in 1998) and Maya (born in 2003).

Zelda (she was born in 1972) on the other hand grew up in my house. She is an extremely pleasant girl. Las piedras de la kaye la konosen [Judeo-Spanish for: Even the stones on the street know her]. She was living apart from her family, keeping up with the times. When she started earning her own money she moved to her mother and father’ flat in Ortakoy [a neighborhood in Istanbul on the shores of the Bosphorus]. Her father was a little conservative. But he could not deal with her. There would be a row at every Sabbath meal. “Who are you going out with? What time are you coming back” were among the questions asked in raised voices. One day when she was out with the boy she was dating, she realized she had lost the ring her mother had given her and she was very upset. Her friend Vedat Eskinazi claimed that she was a messy person and that she lost everything. Later on they went on a trip to the far east together. At dinner, Zelda saw a bouquet of flowers on the table, she thanked her friend. Her friend suggested she take a look inside the bouquet. There was a box and a ring inside the bouquet. After this romantic proposal, they called us and told us they were engaged. The mystery of the lost ring was solved too, her friend had taken it to have it sized.

I was very happy when Zelda Barokas and Vedat Eskinazi had their civil marriage. This ceremony was done in Bozcaada [Bozcaada is an island on the Aegean sea famous for its grapevines], they loved Bozcaada a lot. They wanted it to be different. All the guests made their reservations in the hotel. A private van was rented and we went to the place where the civil marriage was going to take place. All the guests, men and women had worn white. The bride came on a tractor. Even the geese had bows on. The friends of the groom carried white pigeons from Istanbul and released them in Bozcaada in honor of the young newlyweds. The offerings were like the offerings of the most luxurious hotel. Vedat Eskinazi exports handbags, belts and accessories. Zelda works at a bank. She went to the United States to learn English. She went to Italian classes in Istanbul. My husband could not see all these wonderful things.. But according to my grandchild, he was watching us from wherever he went. She told me that she went to his grave, and told him about her engagement, her civil marriage and her wedding. She had “Lokum [Turkish delight—a type of candy] papi, I love you very much” inscribed on his tombstone.

My husband, that is to say, Albert Arguete was a very good Jew. He went to visit the dead every year. First we would visit his mother and father in Ortakoy cemetery, and later his sibling and my mother and father in Arnavutkoy [the largest cemetery in Istanbul is in Arvavutkoy. There are two cemeteries adjacent to each other, the Ashkenazi and the Sephardic]. He wished to ask for a haftorah at the synagogue for all the deceased members in his family in the month of July [one of the prayer rituals]. He reminded his son-in-law about this as soon as July came around. In any case, when he died, there was a notebook found in his pocket showing the death and burial dates of all the members of the family. Our family is very sensitive on this subject. I still remind my husband’s brother, Yomtov Arguete about his mother and father’s yartzheits.

My daughter Lucy Barokas and son-in-law Eliya Barokas try to obey the religious rules. My daughter eats kosher meat, and prepares for crowded tables on holidays and Shabbat evenings.

I was in Bolu [A city between Istanbul and Ankara. It is a mountain. It has several hotels. It is a place that a lot of people go to relax] during the 1986 massacre in Neve Shalom 10. We were shaken by the tragedy we heard on the radio. The name of Eliya’s uncle was read. Our family had a victim of terror. We cut our vacation in half and returned.

I was at my home during the bombings in November of 2003 11. First there was a loud noise. We thought it was a gas tank explosion. Then sounds of ambulances, sirens and chaos.... I grabbed the telephone, called Lucy. “Where is Eliya?”, I asked. “Mommy, hang the phone up immediately, Eliya is wounded” she said. My son-in-law was at the Sisli synagogue 12. He was taken to Florence Nightingale Hospital. My husband had just died and I was wearing black clothes that are a sign of mourning. My first instinct was to take off the black clothes, get a box of chocolates and rush to the hospital where my son-in-law was. Thank G-d that he recuperated quickly. Eliya is a gem of a guy. May G-d grant peace to all the deceased, and patience to their loved ones.

I am slowly getting to the end of my story. I want to wrap it up with a beautiful event. One of the important days of my life is my 50th wedding anniversary (1996). One Sabbath evening, Eliya put two tickets in my hand. He said “I want you to celebrate your 50th wedding annivesary in Israel”. My grandson Semi Barokas picked us up at the airport and took us to his home. We were in Israel for more than 20 days. We went all the way to Eilat, my husband bought me a necklace [she showed the necklace around her neck and said that she never took it off after that evening]. Another Sabbath evening, my daughter said “we are going out to dinner on Sunday night, get ready, I will come and pick you up”. When we went to a fish restaurant on the Bosphorus, we saw the surprise; every member of the family apart from me had helped Lucy organize this. It was a wonderful evening. We celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary by cutting a cake.

Now my life is spent among my grandchildren, my children, my memories and my friends....

We wish dear Camila Jana Arguete all the best...

Note: Jana was so happy while this interview was taking place, that at times, when she received phone calls, she would say ‘’No te puedo avlar tengo echo. Me estan azyendo reportaj vana eskrivir la vida mia (I cannot talk to you now, I am busy. They are interviewing me, they are going to write about my life). She answered the questions with a lot of care and sincerity

GLOSSARY

1 Ataturk, Mustafa Kemal (1881-1938)

2 Reforms in the Turkish Republic

After the establishment of the Turkish Republic (29th October 1923) Kemal Ataturk and the new Turkish government engaged themselves in great modernization efforts. Fundamental political, social, legal, educational and cultural reforms were introduced in the 1920s and 30s in order to bring Turkish society closer to the West and shape the republican polity. Ataturk had abolished the Sultanate earlier (1922); in 1924 he did so with the Caliphate (religious leadership). He closed down the dervish lodges, the turbes (tombs of worshipped holy people) and forbade the wearing of traditional religious costumes outside ceremonies. According to the Hat Law the traditional Ottoman fes was outlawed; surnames were introduced and the traditional nicknames were outlawed too. International measurement (metric system) as well as the Gregorian calendar was introduced alongside female suffrage. The republic was created as a secular state; religion and state were divided: the Shariah (Islamic law) courts were abolished and a new secular court was introduced. A new educational law was created; the institutes of Turkish History Foundation and Language Research Foundation were opened as well as the University of Istanbul. In order to foster literacy the old Arabic scrip was replaced with Latin letters.

3 English High School for Boys: Founded in 1905 in the district of the Galata Tower by the British Consulate, primarily to provide comprehensive education for the children of the British colony in Istanbul. In 1911, Sultan Mehmet V gave the British Embassy a 5-storied wooden building in Nisantasi for exclusively schooling purposes. The school gained the status of high school in 1951 and also became coeducational. In 1979 it was nationalized and renamed as Nisantasi Anatolian Lycee.

4 Citizen, speak Turkish policy

In the 1930s–1940s, the rise of Turkish nationalism affected the Jewish community as well. The Salonican Jew Moise Cohen (1883-1961), who had been in close contact with the young Turks in his home town in the years preceding the restoration of the Constitution, took the old Turkish name Tekinalp. He led a campaign among his fellow Jews to encourage them to speak only Turkish to integrate them fully into Turkish life, declaring that ‘Turkey is your home, so you should speak Turkish.’ In the major culture however, the policy of ‘Citizen, speak Turkish’ was seen as pressure put on minorities to speak Turkish in public places. There was a lot of criticism and verbal attacks and jeers on those who did not comply with this social rule.

5 The Thrace Events: In 1934, after the Nazis came to power in Germany, anti-Semitism was rising in Turkey too. In fear of disloyalty the government was aiming at clearing the border regions of the Jewish population. Thrace (European Turkey, bordering with both Bulgaria and Greece) was densely populated with Jews. As a result of the anti-Semitic propaganda of the rightist press riots broke out, Jewish property was looted and women were raped. This caused most of the Jewish population to leave (mostly without their belongings) first for Istanbul and ultimately for Palestine.

6 Wealth Tax

7 Events of 6th-7thSeptember 1955

8 Ladino

also known as Judeo-Spanish, it is the spoken and written Hispanic language of Jews of Spanish and Portugese origin. Ladino did not become a specifically Jewish language until after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 (and Portugal in 1495) - it was merely the language of their province. It is also known as Judezmo, Dzhudezmo, or Spaniolit. When the Jews were expelled from Spain and Portugal they were cut off from the further development of the language, but they continued to speak it in the communities and countries to which they emigrated. Ladino therefore reflects the grammar and vocabulary of 15th century Spanish. In Amsterdam, England and Italy, those Jews who continued to speak ‘Ladino’ were in constant contact with Spain and therefore they basically continued to speak the Castilian Spanish of the time. Ladino was nowhere near as diverse as the various forms of Yiddish, but there were still two different dialects, which corresponded to the different origins of the speakers: ‘Oriental’ Ladino was spoken in Turkey and Rhodes and reflected Castilian Spanish, whereas ‘Western’ Ladino was spoken in Greece, Macedonia, Bosnia, Serbia and Romania, and preserved the characteristics of northern Spanish and Portuguese. The vocabulary of Ladino includes hundreds of archaic Spanish words, and also includes many words from different languages: mainly from Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, Greek, French, and to a lesser extent from Italian. In the Ladino spoken in Israel, several words have been borrowed from Yiddish. For most of its lifetime, Ladino was written in the Hebrew alphabet, in Rashi script, or in Solitreo. It was only in the late 19th century that Ladino was ever written using the Latin alphabet. At various times Ladino has been spoken in North Africa, Egypt, Greece, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, France, Israel, and, to a lesser extent, in the United States and Latin America.

9 Zulfaris Synagogue/Museum of Turkish Jews: This synagogue, recorded in the Chief Rabbinate archives as Kal Kadosh Galata, is commonly known as Zulfaris Synagogue. The word is derived from the former name of the street in which it is located: Zulf-u arus, which means Bride’s Long Lock. Today the street is called Perchemli Sokak which means Fringe Street. There is evidence that this synagogue preexisted in 1671, when Haim Kamhi was Chief Rabbi, as the foundations date from the early 15th century Genovese period. However, the actual building was re-erected over its original foundation, presumably in the early 19th century. In the 1890s, repair work was carried out with the financial assistance of the Camondo family and in 1904 restoration work was conducted by the Jewish community of Galata, presided over by Jak Bey de Leon. (Source: www.muze500.com)

10 1986 Terrorist Attack on the Neve-Shalom Synagogue

11 2003 Bombing of the Istanbul Synagogues

12 Sisli Beth-Israel Synagogue

Istanbul synagogue, founded in the 1920s after restoring the premises of the garage of a thread factory. It was rebuilt and extended in 1952.

Yuri Fiedelgolts

Yuri Fiedelgolts
Moscow
Russia
Date of the Interview: January 2005
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya

When I called Yuri Fiedelgolts and asked for an interview, he refused first, saying that he did not feel very well. Then, he agreed for a short meeting.

I understood that it was hard for a man with poor health to recall dreadful events even to break the subject about them, so I was ready for a short life story of Yuri and his family. Yuri and his wife met me very amiably.

Yuri is a lean man of medium height. He has thick grey hair and bright young-looking eyes. Victoria, his wife, is a delicate, petite woman. She is calm and poised.

Those traits of hers must have been very helpful in the family life as Yuri is even now rather hot-tempered. They live in a 2-room apartment in an old house, located on the small quiet street in the center of Moscow.

The promised short interview turned out to be long and detailed. Yuri was carried away by his story line and his philosophy of life. Yuri was taken to Gulag when he was in the first year of the histrionic department of theater institute.

Of course, there was chance for him to resume studies after he was released from Gulag. During the interview I could not help thinking that the Soviet Regime had bereft us of a wonderful actor.

When Yuri was telling about a certain person, he did not merely depict him, but assumed his role- as if it was him in real life, talking to me.

My family background
Growing up
During and after the War
Later life
Glossary

My family background

My father’s family lived in Gomel [Belarus, 320 km to the west from Minsk]. Before 1917 it was the territory of Poland, being the part of Russian Empire. [Partition of Poland] 1 Now Gomel is a district center of Belarus, being the chief town of the district. Gomel was a part of the Pale of Settlement 2, so there were a lot of Jews. There were several synagogues in Gomel and a large Jewish community. Jews were not merely craftsmen; there were also representatives of town intelligentsia. My grandfather Gersh Fiedelgolts was one of them. I do not know where my parental grandparents were born. They lived in other Belarusian cities when they were single. I know the family story how my parents were wed. They met when my grandmother was married and had two children. I forgot the name of the elder son, the younger one was named Shloime. The last name of grandmother’s first husband was Slavin, I do not remember his first name. My grandfather was a smart and handsome man. Besides, he was a good company. One day he met grandmother. I do not know the details, all I know that they fell in love with each other. Their love was crowned with bereavement of granny. She left her rich husband and two children and eloped with grandfather.

It was an improbable story for those times. They settled in Gomel. Grandmother’s first husband must have divorced her, so that they had a chance to get married. So they settled down in Gomel. I do not know what education my grandparents got, but they were educated people. Grandfather was a medical attendant, at that time the latter were much more educated and qualified than nowadays. Grandfather treated patients, even made uncomplicated operations. His patients were not always in Gomel. Quite often he was called to other towns. Grandmother was not a housewife after getting married, which was not customary for the married Jewish women back in that time. They lived in the center of the town, by the market square. Grandmother opened pharmacy right in her house. She was both the owner and a pharmacist. I do not remember my grandparents, as they died when I was a small boy. What I know about them is from my father’s tales.

There were 4 children in the family. Maria was the eldest. She was followed by the second daughter Asya (Jewish name Asna). Then two more sons were born- the elder Mikhail and the youngest in the family- my father Levi. My father was born in 1899. Later on, he was called Russian [common] name 3 Lev.

Grandparents were religious in spite of being educated. Jewish traditions were observed at home. Sabbath and Jewish holidays were marked. They went to the synagogue. Father enjoyed telling me about Jewish traditions, holidays, dainty things grandmother was cooking for the holidays. I remember father’s story how grandmother used to bake a lot of poppy pies of a triangle shape, hamantashen, and take them to her relatives and acquaintances. My father told me when grandfather carried out the first Paschal seder, father asked grandfather the traditional four questions as he was the youngest. My father did not tell me those things in detail to get me acquainted with the Jewish traditions - it was a mere idyllic recollection of the childhood. Any human being finds certain recollections from childhood wonderful and my father is like that. Moreover, father had a happy childhood.

Both father’s elder brother Mikhail and my father went to cheder at the age of 5. Father got proper Jewish education, but grandparents were aware that secular education would be important for the career. Boys went to the lyceum named after A.Е. Ratner, which was open in 1907. The doctor Arkadiy Efimovich Rartner was the founded of the school. In 1911 private Jewish lyceum accounted for 400 children, whose parents were mostly lower middle class and merchants]. It was the only private Jewish lyceum in Belarus. Of course, Jewish children were admitted there without 5%-quota 4, existing in Tsarist Russia. The studies at the lyceum were not free of charge. The Jewish children throughout Belarus came to study there. The lyceum students had the uniform and the cap with the lyceums blazon. Wonderful teachers taught at the lyceum.

Father was keen on mathematics. He said his mathematics teacher Krein, should be taken credit for that. Krein’s teaching method made all students take an interest in the subject. Besides, Krein was wooing father’s elder sister Maria, so they had even friendly relations, closer than teacher-student relations. My father succeeded in studies. Parents facilitated in that a lot. Not only grandfather, but also grandmother was very educated. Apart from being well up in pharmaceutics and Latin, she also was fluent in several European languages: French, German, English and Italian. My father was also fluent in those languages. At a mature age he looked up only for a special terms in the dictionary, terminology was the only stumbling stone. Grandfather had a great library containing the books in Hebrew and Yiddish as well as secular books in Russian and foreign languages. Grandfather had a large collection of classic music records. All those things were available to the children.

There were Jewish pogroms in Gomel both before revolution as of 1917 5, and during civil war 6. Father had to experience one of them in 1905. Pogromers were mostly the chandlers and sellers from the market. A huge crowd was moving towards the main thoroughfare of Gomel, crashing things on their way. They broke in Jewish homes, cutting the pillows and feather beds making the down flying around, breaking windows, dishes and furniture. There were even cases of beating and murder. My father’s family did not suffer form that. One of my father’s patients, Russian noble man, the officer, sheltered them in his house and did not let the pogromers to enter the house.

Having finished lyceum in 1916 father at the age of 17 went to study in Petersburg. There was a cult of medicine in the family and father was firm to become a doctor. It was very hard to enter the higher educational institution as there was a 5% admission quota for the Jews. Father was lucky and he was admitted in the university. There was the physiology chair on the faculty of the natural science, headed by the renowned and decent doctor-physiologist Leon Orbeli [Orbeli Leon Abagarovich Abgarovich (1882-1958) Russian physiologist, one of the founders of evolutionary physiology, academician of the Academy of Science of USSR, Academy of Science of Armenia, the Hero of Social Labor, general-colonel of medical service]. He ignored the admission quota for the Jews, and accepted as many Jews he considered appropriate judging by the results of the examinations and interlocution.

My father was admitted by Orbeli. Father was an excellent student and did well in studies. When the entire family moved to Moscow, father was transferred to Medicine Department of Moscow University. Father was in the fourth year. Later on in 1926, when the medicine faculty was transferred into 1st Moscow Medical Institute, father went to Moscow. Orbeli played an important role in the life, he gave the recommendation to the rector of 1stMoscow Medical Institute. Orbeli wrote in his letter that a very gifted student would come over to his university and he asked to assist. Father was not specialized in neurology, so he was sent to study to be taught by the famous neurologists. After graduation father was offered a job to teach at 1stMedical University. He became a post-graduate student, defended his thesis, he was an assistant professor, when he was teaching. He also was involved in practical work. He published over 40 works. Unfortunately, the Great Patriotic war 7 haltered his intention to defend the doctoral dissertation [Soviet/Russian doctorate degrees] 8, which was almost complete.

Father was a stickler of communistic ideas in the youth. He welcomed the revolution as of 1917. When the civil war was unleashed, father discontinued his studies and joined the Soviet army 9. as a volunteer. He also joined the Bolshevik 10 party. Father worked in the political department of the party, but he had to take part in the reconnaissance and in battles. He sincerely adhered to ideas of world revolution 11. Being an adolescent when he was in Gomel, he listened to the speech of Trotsky 12, which made a deep impression on him. Father told me how eloquent and convincing his speech was. Trotsky was a great orator. When the civil war was over, father came to the university and regained studies.

Father’s elder sister Maria got married in Gomel before the revolution. Her marriage caused a tiff between her and grandparents. Maria fell in love with a Russian man Voronov and he fell in love with her. Jews were not the only ones who did not approve of the mixed marriages. Orthodox [Christians], whom the Voronov family belonged to, disapproved such marriages too. Jews were especially intolerant as they thought they had enough from Russian pogroms, so they were against marriages with Russians. Neither Maria nor her husband received the blessing from parents, but still they decided to get married. There were certain complications in betrothal. Maria did not want to profess the Orthodox religion, but she had to become Lutheran for them to get married.

Grandparents were at loggerheads with Maria and her husband and did not keep in touch with them for a long time. They buried the hatchet only after Maria came to the parental house with the first born. First, parents did not want to see neither Maria not the child. Then the baby started crying and grandmother’s woman heart went pit-a-pat. She took the baby in her hands, and started comforting and tendering it. Since that time there was peace. After revolution, Maria and her husband moved to Moscow with 2 sons. Her husband was involved in foundation orphanage schools. There were a lot of vagrant children at that time. Maria finished the medical institute and worked as a doctor. In early 1920s grandparents and father’s elder brother Mikhail moved to Moscow. Maria helped them with the lodging and took care of parents.

Maria’s elder son graduated from the university. He was a zoologist, the professor of Moscow University. The younger, Stanislav, went through the WW2 and entered the military academy with the rank of the officer. He was a career military and retired as a colonel. Maria died before WW2. Her death was absurd. She was afflicted with highmoritis and she died from pain shock resulted in paracentesis of sinus.

Father’s second sister Asya was very beautiful. Having finished lyceum Asya went to Strasbourg and graduated from Medicine Department of Strasbourg University. She did not want to return to Gomel. She went to the Polish town of Przemysl and started to work as a dentist. She got married there. Her husband was a wealthy Jew, but much older than her, about 25-30 years. Her husband was also a dentist. They were well-off. They had a large house and servants. Both of them were popular with the inhabitants of Przemysl. They did not have children. In 1935 Asya came to see us and brought a lot of presents. She was confounded that my father was so poor, though he was an excellent doctor. She also was surprised with the friendly relations between «lords» (the way she called directors) and common citizens. She stayed with us for a while and came back to Przemysl. When in 1939 Poland was attacked by Germany, Asya did not want to leave the country, but I do not know why. As soon as Germans occupied Przemysl, her husband was shot like many other Jews and Asya had stayed in ghetto for 2 years and was finally shot.

Father’s elder brother Mikhail also graduated from the lyceum named after Ratner. He did not take effort in studies. Mikhail was capable, but he was lazy and negligent. That was the way he lived his life. Having finished lyceum He did not want to go on with his studies. He was at a loose end. He had odd jobs to get by. He did not have a family. During WW2 he was selling something on the market, and he was nabbed by militia men and arrested. He was charged with spivvery in the court and imprisoned. He died in jail in 1942.

Father’s elder step brother (grandmother’s son from the first marriage) immigrated to the USA before revolution. I corresponded with him before war. It was dangerous after revolution as the soviet power disapproved of those people who kept in touch with relatives abroad 13. People could be blamed in the espionage and imprisoned. Father was very watchful and was not very willing to answer the letters of the American relative. First he was the railroad worker, who installed the ties. Then he went to study and became an officer and finally came into money. He had a large family and he sent the photographs of his prosperous family. All of them looked American, very different from the local town Jews. They were well-groomed and smiley. They were well-off and I remember how I was impressed by that. I was amazed that they had a car.

In USSR it was a rare thing for people to own a car. Uncle always enclosed many beautiful stamps in the envelope for me. When I was arrested in 1948, father was seriously appalled in the period of struggle against cosmopolites 14. He had the relatives abroad and his son was «peoples enemy» 15. Father abruptly discontinued corresponding with the relatives and even did away with the correspondence and pictures of the relatives so there was no evidence against him. That was the only straw to hang on, so there was no other way to keep in touch with American kin.

The second step brother Shloime lived in Moscow. We rarely met. There is hardly anything I know about him. Of course, he is deceased as he was much older than my father.

Grandmother died in 1928. Grandfather passed away in a year. Both of them were buried in the Jewish Vostriakovskiy cemetery in Moscow.

My mother was born in Moscow suburb, in Bronnitsy [50 km from the center of Moscow]. I have never seen Philip Titov, my maternal grandfather. I know that he was the assistant of the merchant. The merchant was involved in the trade of tea and sent grandfather to China, Japan rather often. It was a very wealthy family. There were 12 children in the family, but I did not know many of them. I only remember three of mother’s sisters, who lived in Moscow- Anna, Tatiana and Maria. I heard about the rest from my mother. My mother Capitolina was born in 1899. She was the youngest in the family. Grandfather made sure that all his children were educated in lyceum, mother also finished the full lyceum course. There is a dacha place in the vicinity of Moscow, called Kratovo [40 km from the center of Moscow]. My maternal grandfather built 12 houses over there for each of the children. Of course of that property was sequestrated by soviet regime. My grandpa was reported missing. He must have been shot. Grandmother died during civil war.

Mother’s elder brother Dmitriy Titov went to study at the officer’s school after having graduated from lyceum. With the outbreak of revolution, Dmitriy joined Bolsheviks. During civil war he fought in guerilla squad. He was captured. The captives were taken away by train, which stopped at every station. Some captives were shot at every station as the edification for the local population. Dmitriy was lucky because the train, he was taking, was attacked by guerilla squad, which rescued the captives from Kolchak 16. Of course, Dmitriy joined the Bolshevik party. When civil war was over he became the prosecutor of the Siberia district. He settled in Omsk [over 2000 km from Moscow]. There were times of hunger and typhus fever epidemic in Moscow in that period. Dmitriy called mother from Moscow and found a job for her as the culture worker in the prison. Mother said that there several members of the Provisional Government 17 in that prison. Being a prosecutor Dmitriy was supposed to sign the fusillade lists. Soviet regime exterminated its enemies. It was deemed it would be better to shoot 10 innocent than to miss one guilty. Such a proportion must have been in the aforementioned lists. There were a lot of Dmitriy’s friends from officers’ school, who did not accept revolution. Of course, it was hard for him and he became demented. During one of his fits he committed suicide.

Mother’s second brother Alexander, mining engineer, lived in Petrograd and died from tuberculosis in early 1920s. Mother’s sister Serafima committed suicide. Another mother’s brother Konstantin Titov also committed suicide. During great patriotic war he was a private in the army and the officer slapped him because he had a bad stature. Konstantin pierced that officer with the bayonet in front of the aligned soldiers. Then he dashed under the train. There was an inherited predisposition to the mental suicidal disease in the family. Fortunately, mother was not affected by that. This is all I know about mother’s family.

My parents met, when father was practicing medicine and was in the last year of the institute, internship. He was assigned to hold internship in tuberculosis sanatorium in Moscow suburb. Mother was afflicted with tuberculosis as a result emaciation from hunger during revolution and civil war. The doctors sent her to the sanatorium for a treatment course. My parents met there and fell in love with each other. My mother’s feeling was even stronger than love – it was adoration, worshiping. I cannot even put in words. The picture on my table tells a lot about them. Father was looking ahead of him, and mother looked as if she only needed father in her life. It has always been like that between them.

Growing up

When parents decided to get married, father’s parents were not against it. It was the second mixed marriage in the family. Aunt Maria took the hardest hit. Grandparents were now complaisant to the father’s marriage. They came to love mother. But it was not that easy with the mother’s relatives. Not everybody approved of mother’s intention to marry a Jew. There were anti-Semitists among her kin. Mother made an ultimatum in the family – either her family accept father as their own, treat him with well-deserved respect, or she would not keep in touch with them. Mother was firm, at times tough. Her family must have accepted her requirements. Parents got married in 1926. They merely got registered in the state registration authority. They moved to the communal apartment 18 in Moscow working district. I was born in 1927. I was named Yuri.

Mother was on maternal leave, while I was an infant. When I was more or less independent, at the age of 5, mother enrolled on the courses of laboratory assistant. She worked in clinics of Moscow Medical Institute as a microbiologist- laboratory assistant. Mother was a good worker, then she was promoted even to the medical position though he did not have higher education. I was raised spending a lot of time outside. I liked all kind of escapades, hooligan pranks. I found my place among the local hooligans and felt rather comfortable among them. I had a lot of friends. There were Jews among them.

Lev Feigin, a Jewish boy from our yard, was my bosom friend in my childhood. He was short and plump. When we were about 6, both of us fell in love in one girl, also a Jew, Lena Tankus. But our rivalry did not stand in the way of our friendship. I enjoyed reading and collecting stamps. But I liked to fight as well. It seemed romantic for us, boys. We felt ourselves musketeers, pirates. We played all kinds of games in yard. We had so-called wars- when the boys from one house were at war with the boys from another house. Recalling those things I understand that it was in a noble and chivalrous way. Our disputes were settled by the duel- and nobody interfered in the fray. Our boys were referees observing the fight and making sure that none of the boys hides a stone or metal. The fight was face-to-face, only by using buffets and before the first blood. If there was blood, the referee stopped the fight and declared the winner.

Anti-Semitism was concealed in that time. I remember there were times when father was walking along the yard and local youngsters were crying out: «Fiedelgolts is walking by, Fiedelgolts is walking by!», and I understood he was not very pleasant to hear. Sometimes I heard somebody say carelessly «little Yid» [Yid is a pejoratory way of calling Jews in Russian]. At that time people watched out what they said, not like it happened later. I was very touchy in childhood and maybe that was the reason why I felt that. At home my parents always convinced me that people were equal in our country in spite of the difference in nationality. andthere was no way we could have racism. If somebody hissed so offensive words, he could be judged for that. It was true, before war many people kept silent, having grit their teeth.

When I turned 7, I went to compulsory Russian school, located nor far from our house. There were a lot friends from the yard in my class. I was a good student mostly because of capability rather than sedulousness. I went through all required stages at school: was a pioneer 19, Komsomol member 20. Both my peers and teachers treated me well.

In 1937 mass repressions commenced [Great Terror] 21. I was in the 3rd grade, so I could not understand the political meaning. I had my personal worries. In my childhood I was friends with two boys –Zerkalovs, who lived in our house, and studied in my school. I did not know their father, but their mother was a rigid woman, who also wore a red kerchief on her head. She was a worker at the plant of the rubber articles Caoutchouc. She was an ordinary proletarian woman, a communist and was a leader among common people. Her sons were good boys, and many guys from our yard kept friends with them. In 1937 she was arrested and both of her sons were taken to the orphanage. I have never seen them again. We lived in a poky room in the communal apartment.

Our neighbor’s son Latsek stood out from our boys from the yard. Latsek wore a checkered suit and we teased him by calling him ‘bourgeois’. I often called on Latsek. His mother, an elegant blond, often took us to the cinema. We watched all children movies, which were released. I envied Latsek, when his father’s car was driven in the yard. Latse’s son often went for a ride. Once I asked to take me for a ride as well. Then in 1938 Latsek’s father was arrested. I remember how Latsek’s mother gloomed, her features sharpened and her dresses did not seem so elegant and unique. Latsek stopped playing with us in the yard, and was hiding. When my parents found out about arrest of Latsek’s father, my mother asked me not to play with him, otherwise all of us would suffer. I felt some tension at home. I think it was a fear for arrest. My father never broached political subjects, he even avoided that among his friends. At that time our family was not touched.

During my childhood soviet holidays were always celebrated at home. My parents were very buoyant. They invited a lot of people for celebrations. We had fun. Our kin and friends came over to have a good time dancing, singing, staging home performances. Mother was friends with father’s elder sister Maria. Father’s brother Mikhail. Mother’s sister Tatiana also came over very often. The relative from both sides admired our family. Love between my parents was worth fascination. My father was worshiped as he did well in science. Father was a developed man- he was well-up in literature, music, mathematics. Of course, he focused on medicine, and neurology. Aunt Tanya always used to ask mother why Lev was always with the books.

I admired my father. Sometimes I was scared of him. He might punish me by slapping my cheek or I could get a box in the ear. His punishment was fair and unavoidable. He was just, so I never bore grudge against him. I would even forgive injustice only because of father’s talks with me. Father came home, had dinner and invited me for a walk. We were strolling in the street and could talk on any subject. Sometimes father’s friend from lyceum, mathematician Shneerman, also joined us for a walk. He became academician at the age of 24. Both of them talked to me as if I was equal and I imbibed their words.

My father knew very many different people. Of course, many of his acquaintances were doctors. He met with Lina Stern 22. They spent hours on talking about medicine. She came in Moscow from Switzerland in the middle 1920s and stayed in the USSR. She was captivated by the communistic ideas and was eager to help soviet regime. She taught at Moscow 2nd Medicine Institute, and was the head of the chair. She was an interesting person, the zealot of medicine. She did not marry and devoted herself to the science. She spoke only French. During war she was the member of the Board of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee 23, and was arrested during Doctors Plot 24. Fortunately, she was exonerated after Stalin’s death 25. Father also knew the sister of the great poet Mayakovskiy 26. He also knew actors and musicians.

Father had a peculiar Jewish feature- he liked to banter at his interlocutor or the subject of the conversation. He liked the humor. I remember his talks with mother at night. Sometimes I could hear what they were talking about as we lived in one room. There were times when father touched the subject of Stalin’s personality. Father was skeptical to Stalin. Coming of intelligentsia father took Stalin as a nouveau riche and barely educated man. Father was skeptical to Stalin’s views.

During and after the War

On 22nd June 1941 we found out about the outbreak of war from Molotovs’ speech. He said that Germany violated peace treaty [Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact] 27 and attacked USSR. Of course, we were confounded, but I was sure that the war would not last long. Soviet propaganda was constantly making us convinced that our army was the strongest in the world, and any war would be finished on the territory of the adversary within days. We had stayed in Moscow by October, 1941.

In middle October 1941 state of the siege was declared in Moscow. We with colleges and students of the medical university we were evacuated in Central Asia. First we came to Tashkent[over 3000 km from Moscow], wherefrom we went to Namangan. We did not stay there for a long time and finally stayed in Fergan. Mother noticed hostility coming from Uzbeks when we came to Tashkent. The life of local people became harder with the surge of so many evacuees. Food cards [Card system] 28 were introduced, prices for food escalated. People were starving, getting sick and the evacuees were blamed for that. Besides, Uzbeks were drafted now though they had never been drafted before neither in Tsarist army nor in Soviet. I remember the wail of women when they were seeing off the draftees at the platform of the train station.

Then Uzbeks on purpose caught venereal diseases in order to avoid the draft. Father was assigned the member of the medical board of the military enlistment office. He told me how young guys came over for commission and proudly declared that they were syphilitic. First the afflicted were sent home, but when it turned out to be in masses, they forced the boys to go through medical treatment and then they were sent to the front anyway. Local inhabitants were also blaming Jews for that. They said that their children perish because Jews are not at war. There were local Bukhara Jews 29, but the Uzbeks treated them well. Though Bukhara Jews were looking very much like Uzbeks, having the same manners and clothes.

They were also considered local, but they were antagonistic towards the evacuated Jews. Apart from working in the medical board by the military enlistment office, father also worked in the military hospital. Anti-Semitism was thriving there. I could felt it at school as well. Some of the teachers were evacuated Jews from the Western Ukraine and Poland, who came over here to escape Germans. Of course, they were very different as they were assimilated. They were Jews only by blood, but they did not know their language [Yiddish] or customs. Local students ignored such teachers and made anti-Semitic remarks in the middle of the class. I was hot-tempered and was always ready to fight after being insulted. Mother had to come to school rather often and hear complaints against me. She had never reproached me though.

Only father worked in evacuation. Mother had to take up the hardest job- to feed us and to get foods by the cards. She had to spend almost the whole day in the lines. Sometimes we starved, because all we had she gave to father. It was the most important for her that father was OK. Mother did not only forget about herself in her cherished love for father. She also forgot about me. I felt hurt, and I envied those children whose mothers took care only of them in the first place. At times I even thought of leaving home. To a certain extent, mother was right neither I nor she worked, and our father was the only bread-winner. But still, I do not think it was the main factor for her. In evacuation father was afflicted with typhus fever and survived only owing to mother’s care.

I was missing Moscow so much during evacuation! When in summer 1943 evacuated were on the point of return to Moscow, I was also eager to home. Father could not leave his job, and mother could not leave father. I talked my parents into letting me go by myself. It was decided that I would stay with mother’s sister Tatiana before parents’ return. She lived in Kratovo. Father made arrangements with the trainmaster of the military and sanitary train and was sent to Moscow. On my way to the aunt I saw many devastated houses. Many people still had not returned. On the fence of the house I saw a sing in bold font written by chalk: «Fight Yids and save Russia!». I was shocked by that line as well as by the fact that nobody had erased that.

I came back to school. Anti-Semitism was in the full swing. I did not feel it towards me as I was among my friends from childhood. I had to receive passport at the age of 16. There was the section in the passport called ‘nationality’ 30. Before getting my passport it was the first time when I heard from my mother that it would be better for me to be Russian. I said that I would have written Jewish in my passport and mother had never touched the subject again. It was my well-thought intention. My last name was pure Jewish Fiedelgolts, how could I say that I am Russian...

When I was transferred to the 10th grade, I entered preparatory department of the Steel Institute. I met Jew Boris Leviatov and Russian Valentin Sokolov. We were the boys from intelligentsia families. We used to discuss all kinds of subjects starting from the sense of life and up to the political disputes, Stalin’s dictatorship and NKVD 31, subordinated to Stalin or Nietzsche 32 and all kinds of things. Each of the interlocutors was trying to show off his erudition depicting the revolutionary hero or the movie character. Nobody could ever perceive what would be the outcome of such games of ours. It was a mere adolescent romance and the desire to stand out. After preparatory course we did not keep in touch. Leviatov and Sokolov were drafted in the army and I did not enter the steel institute. Parents were insisting for me to carry on the family tradition and to become a doctor.

Mother was the most persistent as she was in love with the father and she wanted me to follow in his footsteps, thinking that only father was doing the right thing. I was convinced that I would have a bright future; fathers name would help me in the first phase and then I would become a good doctor myself. I entered the Medical Institute and in my first year I understood that it was not my cup of tea. I did not stand learning things by rote- having to memorize 200 different names of canaliculate for one temporal. When we had to work on anatomy, I finally understood that I did not want to be a doctor! I still remember how I was sent to the basement to take formalinized corpses for the anatomy class, then I was forced to make a ripping cut cranium with the help of the saw. I still remember those splashes on my face. I could not stand it and decided to leave the institute. In 1947 I entered Theatre Institute, the Department of actor's skill. It appealed to me. The teachers were happy with me and they said I would have a bright future. I was an avid reader. I was took an interest in the history of the theatre, biographies of great actors. I thought I liked what I was doing. I was happy. I was not interested in politics at that time.

At the end of the first year in 1948 I was arrested. I was taken straight from the classes and sent to the department of the reconnaissance SMERSH 33, located at Kropotkinskaya street. It is still there. They needed at least a formal confession of guilt for my case to file to court. I was pushed hard in the house of detention. I was blamed in foundation of the anti-Soviet circle and participation in its activity. Then I found out that Valentin Sokolov was the stooge. At that time I thought that he did it because he was a coward, being afraid of the beating and torture. In the 1990s I had a chance to look at my case and I saw the reference to be submitted to the martial court stating that Sokolov was the agent of the KGB Secret Service 34 and had the nickname ‘Rodionov’. I did not pay that much attention to that. Maybe that reference was one of KGB schemes. Who knows, may Sokolov was the agent. At any rate, the case was filed against the three of us. Sokolov was the witness at the line-up, both with me and Boris. When the search was made in our house, they found my diaries. They played an important role on the trial and were used as material evidence. I described all kinds of events in my life in the diary and admitted rebellious thoughts. It was the time when the struggle was actively taken against rootless cosmopolites and the three of us perfectly fit the article.

I would have run amuck if I had been interrogated longer. The sleuths were putting both moral and physical pressure. There were two interrogators- ‘kind’ and ‘evil’. The kind one, captain Demurin, looking very polite and proper, was as if protecting me. He said that I was kept in the house detention because my comrades on the freeside would have killed if they had found out that I was anti-Soviet with counterrevolutionary ideas. They, interrogators, are here to protect me from the public perturbation and wrath. They would make a man from me. I would go in the camp, do some physical work and come back home being strong and healthy and say: Hello, mama! I should not think of suicide, just to confess in mistakes and sign where it is required, and keep on living with a clear conscience. Such were the words …

The second one was hitting hard on the table and yelling: «You scum, Yid mug!». His family name sounded Russian, Maximov, but his appearance looked purely Jewish. It was the time when the employees of the ‘punitive agencies’ had the alien names… Maximov was constantly deterring me, making threats. He also resorted to beating. He was taking the interrogation minutes, where fibs were written in a beautiful handwriting and orthographic mistakes. Once he gave me such protocol to sign that I hurled it in his face. First he shook my stool with his leg, and when I fell on the floor, he hit me hard in the abdomen, and then in on the head. I lost consciousness and I was hauled in the corridor. When I came around, I was taken back in Maximov’s office where there was another colonel, a good-looking one. I did not know who he was. Maximov and I had squabble. When Maximov saw me, he ordered the guard to give me a double mattress. I was happy. I did not have a mattress in my cell and I hoped that I would sleep off! It turned out that ‘double mattress’ was a wet cell, located in the basement on the level with metro, where he could here the clatter of trains. Water was dripping from the walls and from the ceiling, the wooden bunk was drenched.

There was no place to sit, nothing to say of lying down. I was constantly feeling sleepy. It must have been a protective mechanism of my organism to relieve constant strain. I was about to swoon and was ready to fall asleep even standing. The turnkeys did not let me sleep. I do not know how long I had stayed in that cell in a semiconscious state. When I was being to the interrogation and had to walk along the ‘warm’ corridor as compared to the cell, I felt chilled. Now I was interrogated by a kind sleuth. He asked me with a tender and ingratiating voice why I was flagellating myself and was looking like the rack of bones. Then he told the guard to bring me a sandwich with the cottage cheese and a cup of coffee with milk. He also told me to eat and ponder over whether it was time for me to confess. Again there were interrogations … Then they were sick and tired of me and sent me to the prison for ‘additional effect’. Those people framed a mythical anti-Soviet organization from our circle, consisting of three people, and enjoyed awards and promotion. My father was also affected with my arrest. He was interrogated for couple of times. It was very rough and humiliating. They even used expletive words and threats. Of course, it was very unpleasant for him. By the way, during interrogation they kept on saying that father and I were Jews.

When our case was in the court, my parents hired renowned attorneys. My father hired attorney Otsep, the professor of jurisdiction, a great lawyer. Father’s colleagues told him that he was making me a high-class funeral by hiring Otsep. They were right- his services cost a lot of money, but the result was predetermined. The trial took place in the premise of martial court, located in Arbat [the main promanade of Moscow]. I remember that during the trial Otsep could not bring forth any defense arguments. He was putting an emphasis that I should go through the medical examination at the institute of the court psychiatry; because he was sure that I was demented. That was all he could come up with. All he said looked so cowardly, and everybody noticed that. He was trembling and feeling afraid.

Then the prosecutor, lieutenant colonel Vinogradov, took the floor. His face was in high color. He looked muzzy. Looking straight in Otsep’s eyes he said that it was strange for a famous lawyer to talk like a pro-American cosmopolite and he said he could not comprehend whether Otsep was a soviet person or not? I saw the famous Otsep cower. He was despondent ands kept silent by the end of the trial. In accordance with the article 58 [It was provided by this article that any action directed against upheaval, shattering and weakening of the power of the working and peasant class should be punished] we were charged with anti-soviet activity, they also added item 11, group actions. We were sentenced to 10 years in the maximum security camp [Gulag] 35 (we were lucky to be sentenced to 10 years, we might have got 25), and we were bereft of rights for five years, i.e. exiled. I was also sentenced to hard physical labor as the most malicious criminal. The three of us were separated. I was sent to the maximum security camp Gulag, located 4000 km away from home. I was sent to work on the automobile repair plant. I had not stayed there for a long time.

My wretched parents managed to get the permit to visit me in the camp. I did not know how they had done that – usually political prisoners were not allowed to have dates, besides I did not stay in the camp that long. My parents came and saw me for couple of minutes in the presence of the guard. Shortly after seeing my parents I found out that I was included in the squad to be sent to Kolyma 36. I think my date with parents also affected my fate– certain type of the prisoners was not to have any contacts with the free people. Those who violated that condition, were punished. Our squad was put in the crammed car for cattle and taken to the port of Vanino, where Kolyma camp was being formed. There I met a young Moscow doctor, a Jew, Joseph Malskiy. He was sentenced to 5 years in camp as a socially jeopardous person. His parents, old Bolsheviks were repressed and he was arrested for being their son. His wife and a little daughter stayed in Moscow. Joseph knew my father. We decided to stick together and help each other.

Our squad came to Vanino Sea Port [port town in the Russian Far East, 4500 km to the North-East from Moscow]. Let me dwell upon things I noticed in the replacement depot. Now there is nothing of the kind. Only from tales of those who were there, one can imagine that horrible picture. A spacious territory bounded by the sea, and circled by high blind fence and watchtowers, was divided into rectangular zones and cordoned with the rows of barbed wire. There were low clapboard barracks, located parallel to each other. There were 4 zones. One of them was taken by criminals, the other ones by ‘suka’ [Bitch, a curse in Russian. In this case it refers to rapists and murderers, rascals and traitors, people, who came down – the most dangerous and despised category of prisoners.], the ones who were at fault with their criminal accomplices, i.e. a robber, who gave testimony against his accomplice and others who violated the laws of the criminal world. The next zone was called– «mayhem»: deserters, card-sharpers, sadists, rapists and other riff-raff. And finally we, sentenced as per article 58 ‘fascists’ as we were called. It was not allowed to mix those categories neither in the zones nor in squads: they did away with ‘aliens’ ruthlessly, and a quick death would be a mercy.

Each zone had its own laws and orders. The privileged caste was criminals, whom the authorities called ‘social close’, whereas we were called ‘socially alien’. Criminal authorities were calling shots at Vanino replacement depot and in the camp. Of course, they had certain benefits from the guards. Their food was cooked separately and was much different from the scraggy potage the ‘fascists’ were having. Like we say in modern times, it was a well organized mafia, which had contacts with the camp authorities. There was a collective guarantee: «You concede, and I concede». The head of the zone made some concessions to the criminals under condition that they established order. The criminal leaders assigned the strongest and the cruelest criminals to be the foremen for them to make ‘fascist’ work. The criminals were not involved in hard physical labor, political prisoners were supposed to do their daily work as well as the daily work of the criminals. Some of those criminal leaders looked rather imposing, like scientific workers for instance. When looking at them it was hard to picture that each of them was tried for several times and was involved in deaths of many people. By the way, I also noticed that there were quite a few Jews in the criminal world. These were so-called ‘intellectuals’, who were using rather grey cells than hands. I did not see robbers-murderers among Jews-criminal leaders. They were genius thieves – con artists, the so-called generators of the ideas and steps for larceny.

There were the following zones at Vanino replacement depot: administration, decontamination zone, sanitary zone, hospital, where really feeble people were taken. Our squad was taken to the sanitary zone, because our train was from the camp, wherein was the outbreak of some kind of epidemic. The most appalling was to be sent to Kolyma. We had to exert our every effort to stay here as long as possible to postpone the trip to the place, wherefrom would be no escape. Malskiy and I decided to probe the option with the sanitary unit as it was possible to stay here with the steady job. The head of sanitary unit, a young lady, lieutenant dressed in the uniform with the white robe over it, suggested that Malskiy should look into the next zone. In her words recently doctor and medical assistant were killed with the knife, and there was no one to supply for them. We had to agree, as we had no way out. Joseph did not want to go there by himself, so he introduced me as medical assistant.

We went to the sanitary unit. Nobody convoyed us; we were shown to the inpatient-department for 20-30 people. There were double plank beds instead of the bunks. The regime was totally different from our political zone. Even the turnkeys were kind of home-looking people. The convicts, dressed in coats and suits were walking around the zone. We were not allowed to wear civilian garment. If we did, we would be sent to the lock-up cell. We wore striped wrappers. Hardly had we come in, fierce looking criminals, tattooed all over rushed the room and offered us a deal: we were supposed to give the criminals places in the in-patient clinic for them to escape the squad to Kolyma and the most important thing was to provide that pack with the drugs, it was morphine, on regular basis. Many of them used the drugs and for that they offered their patronage.

Many of those ‘mayhem criminals’ turned out to be interesting people, gifted, preserving certain human qualities. Levka Bush was one of the criminal leaders I met at Vanino replacement depot. First there were rumors in the zone that Bush himself would be coming to Vanino with the next squad. I was curious what kind of person he was to be so revered by the gangsters. Soon, I had to meet him. Joseph and I lived in small room by the barrack of the sanitary unit. All of a sudden, the door was open and some people were taking the suitcases in front of us. Then a huge guy, a body guard with two knives in his belt, stood in the doorway. We were sitting still, and a rather high-brow young man, truly Jewish, dressed in fashionable coat and tie came in. His face was immaculately handsome: thin classic profile, a goatee and beautiful almond eyes. He came up to us and said very politely. I still remember his worlds and the pitch of his voice: «Doctors, let me introduce myself, Lev Bush. I am a big collector, I am drug addict, and my syringe went bad on my way. Could you borrow me one from your arsenal? You would not regret doing a favor to me».

Of course, there was no way we could refuse him. moreover he made a pleasant impression on us. Joseph suggested that he should stay in our sanitary unit as a patient, and Bush was happy to agree. He settled in our sanitary unit. Bush behaved like a lord. His servants, criminals, made bed for him, took off his boots and cleaned them. Our sanitary unit looked much better now: there were mirrors on the walls, snow white linen. Cakes and wine were brought from the free side. The management overlooked all that, because such criminal leaders were calling the shots in the zone, and established a relative order. If they were taken away, there would be constant scuffle and massacre. Bush enjoyed talking to us. He considered us his ‘equal’ and was eager to tell us about him. Bush’s father was the KGB colonel.

When Lev was about 14, he was seduced by a housekeeper, who was connected with the criminal world as it turned out. She was his first woman and totally putting him under her thumb. She forced him work for her by selling the stolen things on the market. Of course, he was nabbed, was tried and sent to the camp. He left the camp and got the criminal education. His ‘job’ was complicated, requiring intelligence and – Bush robbed banks by using forfeited documents, produced by him. He was a professional con artist – collector. The guy was also the artist among the forgers (counterfeiters) being able to forge any stamp, he knew the handwritings and signatures of many dignitaries in militia. It goes without saying, he might become a good famous artist under different circumstances, alas! Though, Bush was a criminal he sincerely despised his ‘colleagues’ specialized in marauder and murder. He had such qualities as kindness, tenderness, compassion to the suffering of common people. That young, brave and handsome man took a keen interest in philosophy, art and books. We often conversed about different subjects, discussed books and performances. Lev strove to understand whether there was justice in the world and how to exterminate the chains of slavery.

He could not stand being imprisoned and escaped many prisons and camps. The last escape to Vanino was unsuccessful in spite of office’s uniform and forfeited ID certificate. Unfortunately, I do not know what happened to Bush, though I would like to know. There were other Jews. There was one Jewish pickpocket Yashka, good humored and nimble guy from Odessa. He was called diamond fingers for his fine work. Mechanism of red tape legal proceedings swept the weeds like orach and wheatgrass together with the grains. “Re-upbringing’ in the camp did no good, and incurred recurrent crime and contagious deceases. Very many fates were crippled. What to say about our article 58. In the replacement depot we found out that ossification and sluggishness of our criminal investigation department and legal department as a whole, were incompetent as compared to the criminal world, rapidly changing its strategy and applied with new facilities. Hard-core offenders knew the Penal code and laws better than militiamen and lawyers.

We treated dysentery in the zone during the outbreak of epidemic. At times, we had to give criminals some drugs and put them in an in-patient clinic. We could not hospitalize all of them, and some were discontent. However, as compared to the previous camp doctors we managed to cure patients, soon we respected. Then the replacement commenced. More and more squads of the criminals were taken onboard of the ship. They stopped sending us the drugs. Once, at night, a pack of the criminals broke in our room, pushed us to the wall and started ransacking the room. Then Joseph was told to follow them in the barrack. They did not ask me to, but I joined Joseph for him not to be by himself. The criminals blamed Joseph for hiding the drugs and not saving anyone from the trip to Kolyma. We leaned against wall and were waiting for our fate to be decided. There were 2 of us against 200. They could kill us any minute, but luckily there were some of them with common sense. One of the criminal leaders, Uzbek with the nickname Ugolok [Nook] stood up for us. Joseph saved him when he had the overdose of drugs. Squabbles and discord started and we were taken back tacking advantage of the hassle. In several days both of us were assigned in the support staff of the ship for prisoners ‘Ermak”. The holds with the 3-tiered bunks, were crammed with prisoners. We were placed separately in a small section under the ladder. We were given two backpacks- one with the medicine, another with canned fish and bread. We had to service all holds.

Beside Malskiy and me there were some more medic workers-prisoners. We were allowed to walk around the deck. The guard soldiers took off the heavy lids of the holds and took us down. Suffering prisoners, craving for medical assistance were waiting for us in dim light. Rocking, puking, stench, excrements, turoid water in rusty kegs, rime on the lags. Water splashes from waves reached the deck. The rigging was covered with ice. It snowed for couple of times. So Ermak entered Nagaisk bay, breaking through the icy waters. At nights we were getting settled. Being the medics we first were put in a very clean and tidy barrack of the sanitary unit, pertained to the central replacement depot. Then we were sent to the ‘mayhem’ zone. We had to run away from there. We found out from pickpocket Yashka that we would be in trouble as there were some angry people plotting a murder. Our roaming on the replacement depot seemed to be over when we settled on the zone of robbers, but it did not last long. I was taken from there and sent to Berlag 37 accompanied by severe convoy. Our trips with Malskiy diverged.

Again, I became a mediocre worker, no different than the rest. Again I was given the toggerty: sailor’s jacket, quilted pants and jacket. There was a painted number on our toggery, and it could be seen from distance. There was the same deaf and humble mass of heterogeneous people: Latvians, Estonians [Deportations from the Baltics ] 38, Ukrainians, politzei and former militaries, as well as such people as I ‘peoples’ enemies’.

I was double pressed in the camp. I was ‘peoples’ enemy’, who could be beat and robbed by any ‘socially close’, besides I was a Jew. There were people who served for German police, the fascist agents, flagrant anti-Semitists- Lithuanian, Estonian, Ukrainian and even Georgian nationalists, who served in German fascist groups. They were elbow deep in Jewish blood. The administration and the guards were also as anti-Semitic as them. I do not know I was managed to survive. It was a miracle. I took all anti-Semitic escapades very acutely. I was involved in fights and did not spare myself. I was not that physically strong, but I was rather decisive and could stand up for myself. I would never let anybody push me under the bunk. Such a person was reckoned finished, and anyone could tease him without being punished for that.

I was ready to face death rather than face disgrace. I fought tooth and nail. I turned hot-blooded during the fight and felt neither pain nor fear. I was not afraid to be killed, nor I was scared to kill. They were scared off from me like from a rabid dog, and watched out. There were all kinds of things before I gained such a status. In my first camp in Berlag I was attacked by a very physically strong man- anti-Semitist. He was saying something like ‘beat the Jews’ and tying to hit me with a heavy wooden swab. I understood that he could break my spine, cranium. One time when he brandished with the swab, I managed to dodge, but I understood that I would be over with if took a hit. I did not have anything to use as a weapon. I jumped on him and clenched my teeth on his neck. He fell down.

All kinds of people attacked me with the sticks, clubs and fists trying to unclasp my mouth. I could feel the taste of his blood, and some abdominal feeling was aroused in me. I did not want to let go of him. They managed to unclamp my teeth and turn me out from the workshop. I could not break his throat, but he was so scared, besides he was left with the scar. Of course, authorities found out about that and I was put in the lock-up for five days without bread and water. When I left the lock-up being feeble and emaciated, I came up to that man the fist thing and whispered in his ear ‘I would finally kill you, viper’ and swore like a bargee. I gave him such creeps that when he saw me he was bowing to me from the distance. He was really funky. It was the law of the jungle, but it was better to be governed by the law of jungle than by the law of meanness. It is my opinion. But it is story still went on. I was called in the administration of the camp. There were several people. The officer asked me why I had attacked the criminal. I said that when a man who was elbow deep in Jewish blood, called me ‘Yid’ and began beating, I had not choice but protect myself and sell my life at a higher cost.: «You even cannon kill, this is your weakness». he meant ‘Jews by ‘you. I did not say anything. Of course, if I killed the guy, I would be added 10-15 years to my sentence.

There was another case in the workshop. There was a Ukrainian nationalist in the workshop, who had been saying insulting things against Jews all day long. I still was feeble because of the lock-up and kept silent. Then he put a rotten rat in the spindle of my tool. When I turned it on, the rat came out and was about to hit my face. I came up to him and asked: «Was it you. He smirched and said yes. I took the hammer from the bench and him on the forehead hard. He fell. His buddies were chasing me along the workshop thrusting sledge-hammers and crow bars at me. Of course, they might have killed me. The guards transferred me to the barrack of the fortified security. Then I had to stay in the lock-up for 20 days until it would be known whether the guy would survive or not. I was lucky that the guy survived and they did not expand my sentence. In short, I had to protect myself in any cost. I was not crouching. I despised and hated people who succumbed to the rough force, and fawned up the nihilities. I still hate them.

Still, I was lucky to meet good people there, who supported and assisted me. There was even one Ukrainian nationalist, who liked me. He just adored me. He said: «Yurko. You are Ukrainian, you are no Yid!». I waved off and he still used to say that. I met a lot of intelligent and interesting people in the camp. There was the period when I worked in the crew of Lanskoy, the offspring of general Lanskoy [Lanskoy, Peter Petrovich (1799-1879): Russian adjutant Genaral (1849) and General of the cavalry (1866)], of the second husband of Natalia Goncharova, Pushkin’s wife 39. He was an intelligent man with a good stamina, the officer of the old school. He had a good attitude towards me, he was not anti-Semitist. There were immigrants from Kharbin, Mukden, Manchuria, who also treated me right. [Russians who left Russia during the revolutions and the Civil War.] I cannot say that only extremists and monsters were in the camp.

I was closer to the Jews in the camp. Beside the Jews sentenced in accordance with article 58, there were Jews who escaped from Hitler during war and came to USSR. They were from Poland, Romania and Hungary. They tried to escape the Hitler’s camp in the country with the equality, where no anti-Semitism and oppression were observed. Of course, they learnt all those things from Soviet propaganda. They ran away from Hitler and came to Stalin and were hospitably settled in Gulag. They took the hardest hit. The convicts were allowed to receive several parcels annually. I cannot say how many exactly. Parents send me the parcels and shared the products, sent by my parents, with the Jews-fugitives. They had nobody to send them the parcels. I remember a Hungarian Jews, the doctor Grosberg, a very pleasant and smart man. There was a Romanian humpty-dumpty old man. He was disabled, so he worked in the support staff of the zone and had a miserable life. I also fed him. Before alignment and getting off to work we grouped in five. Then we were recounted and taken to camp work behind the gate. Suddenly I saw that the convicts swung the roly-poly and threw him at me crying: Yura, hold your roly-poly Yid!». I caught him and told him not to be afraid of anybody.

In 1951 I was transferred to the camp, to the north from Berlag. It was a huge working zone, where the foundation, walls and constructions of some secretive site were made. It must have been some plant. There was no warm season for the people living in moderate climate of Russia, in Kolyma, but the winters there are even hard on the local people. In the previous camp I was mostly working in the workshop, where it was not so cold, but in frosty winter as of 1951-52 I was to work in the open. I did not work on the construction site for long, as I turned weak. Such guys as I were called hatracks- the candidates to the cadavers. I was transferred to the auxiliary squad consisting of such hatracks as I. The foreman of the crew was Nikolay Bibrikov, the offspring of general Bibikov [Bibikov, Alexander Illich (1729 - 1774): Russian state man and military general, Associate of Catherine the Second]. He was my peer.

He was raised in the family of the immigrated former White Guard 40 in Kharbin. He was most likely sentenced because he belonged to the old noble generation line. He was a proud and well-mannered man. We made friends. Our crew was supposed to clean the territory of the camp, but we could not cope even with that work. Bibrikov could barely move because of being so week. Nobody made him work, he sat with the rest by the fire and remembered the old stories and sang old Russian Romance songs in sotto. Later the crew was dissolved and Bibrikov and I were sent to the barrack of the fortified regime. When it was 50 Celsius degrees below zero, we were sent to chisel the icy bottom of foundation pit. We were supposed to go down 5 meters deep. From the top we were given the tub to load the dug earth. The tub was taken up, emptied and taken down again. We had to watch out not to be hit. We had an almost incessant labor for 10-12 hours per day. We could get warm only in movement. Once, the group of the camp administration came over to the verge of the pit. One of them decided to crack a joke: «Hey you, Bibrikov! How inconvenient it is here! But your relatives were used to luxury». Bibrikov raised his head and glazed at the soles of the people standing on the verge of the pit and said out loud :
«I loathe you!». Such a bravery could end in his death, but the administration slowly withdrew.

There were a lot of criminals in the fortified regime barrack, the food there was better than in any other place in the camp. Sometimes we had even had extra helpings. When we were off that barrack and were allotted to the working crew, we were starving again. Our nutrition was very poor: oat gruel, rotten herring, underbaked bread. All that food was in skimpy portions. Sometimes were given stinky boiled fish instead of the herring. In order to prevent scurvy there was a keg with pine infusion.

In early spring 1952 I was sent to another place along with 300 convicts. We got on platform trucks and took the herringbone position- one person sat and moved legs apart so the other one could sit as close as possible. It was made for the security purposes of the convoy for the prisoners not to escape. The trip in the trucks was emaciating though we did some halts. We had been joggling hitting the road pockets all days long. Then we took the ferry boat across a rapid river Indigirka beyond Ust-Nera. At last we reached the final destination. It was the extreme point of Kolyma –Alyaskitovy. That God-forsaken place was about 900 kilometers away from Magadan, far from the high way. There was ore mill in Alyaskitovy: the upper camp with tungsten ore mine with waste banks and mine, and the lower camp with beneficiation factory, sand banks and hydraulic rocks.

There were 2 zones: there were about 1500 convicts, who serviced the ore mine, and the other zone consisting of 500 convicts worked on the beneficiation factory. Tungsten was a metal used in the defense, so the mill was secretive being positioned in such a far-away place. There was a small settlement of the civilians and even the cemetery for them on the slope of the bald rock. The cemetery for the convicts was 15 kilometers ahead, half way between the factory and the ore mine. It was fenced with barbed wire and empty watchtowers in each corner. Convicts were buried there without a trace- there was just a sign with the number. The notch was surrounded with bold mountain with setts.

First I was sent to the upper camp, to the ore mine, but I was hold up there as I had a myopia. I was transferred to the lower camp to work at the beneficiation factory. 500 convicts worked in the lower camp. The toggery we were given was used by two or three people before with large variegated patches. All of us looked like clowns. The barracks were crammed with bunks from wall to wall. Then our clothes had one color- being covered with dirt. There was a canteen and a culture barrack. There was a tidy road between the barracks, covered with sand. There were big boards with annual and quarterly performance ratios and cheerful slogans calling upon honest and bona- fide labor, assisting in reforming. The new-comers were allotted in the crews. I was sent to the factory crew, servicing assembly lines looking like metallic boxes the vibrating metallic nets inside. The factory was down the slope. There was a horizontal water sink in the last corps. Toxic water was trickling down there, taking away the processed gob- white sand. On the photo it looks like it is a river or lake, but is a large puddle, contaminated by waste waters. The dump is to the right. Ore was crushed in the 1st or 2nd corps. It was delivered by hoist cranes in tubs. The crushed mass was poured in screener and griddled out. Larger fractions were additionally ground in the 3rd corps. Ore was flushed with water, then taken in the funnels and finally to the re-griddling in our assembly lines, whereby the convicts worked with the spades.

The mechanism was turned off every half hour. There was a moment of silence and the rattle was off. Our crew consisting of 10 people, was in a hurry to ‘take off’ the rocks to get to the tungsten concentrate, pouring out the upper layer to wooden tub. Then the master switch was on and machines were on. The crew sat around the tub and assorted wet rocks, putting aside those where tungsten could be seen. The rest was taken to the belt of the transporter, which took the selected rock with the penultimate workshop. The rocks were griddled on the huge vibrating ‘tables’, then it was processed with alkali and acid. There was a worker by each ‘table’, fixing the layer of the output and picking the useful threading. The slag was made only of sand. There were drying chambers on the sides of the last corps. The beneficiation factory was heated in the winter time.

Elderly men and disabled were forced to work. They managed somehow. The work was exhausting. There was a cloud of dust. No respirator helped, the convicts were afflicted with silicosis [chronic lung disease caused by inhaled dust for a long time. It is characterized by the developed pulmonary fibrosis], and died in the camp hospital. My working place was damp. The clothes did not dry out after work. Good thing that during severe frost when metallic parts of tractor levers were cracked, we worked in a warm premise. Those who worked by the ‘tables’ were intoxicated with alkali and acid. Drying chambers were considered to be pandemonium. People were choking with toxic evaporations there. The frosts reached – 60°С. When the water in the flume throat was frozen, we were sent down the mountain to break the obstructions in the exit throat of the flume. We hammered the ice coat and expanded the exit to get rid of the ice so the sand could move through the flume. Wet sand was coming from the top freezing off immediately to the felt boots and the clothes. Those who were performing works under the flume were in the frozen sand almost knee length.

The second shift was breaking the ice with the pinch bars to get them out of the sand. Only in the drying chamber they were released from the heavy ‘cuirass’ when the frozen mass melted and strew off. It was the way people were breaking through with the performance exceeding the standards by 20% -50% percent. There were certain complications. The convicts were made to dig the exploring shafts 4-5 meters deep. Then the convicts were taken down the exploring shaft with the bucket to take the samples from the rock. Of course, no fastening or other safety precautions were observed. Very often the primitive method ended in a tragedy: the worker was covered with the loose sand in the exploring shaft. The most optimistic scenario if he was unburied before he had suffocated. Otherwise if he was suffocated nobody was responsible for him. The person was just crossed out from the list and none would be the wiser.

A Georgian, Nikolay Dzadzaniya was our foreman. He was brave and decisive. His was sentenced to 25 years, and the term was prolonged because he murdered the camp worker. Of course, having such a term he had nothing to fear and nothing to lose. He established an apple-pie order and discipline not only at work, but in the pastime. Of course, he had succeeded in that by manipulating the feeling of fear. However, Dzadzaniya was just and honest and did not hurt anyone for no reason. He never extorted the parcels sent to the others. Our crew was multinational. There were two more Georgians beside Nikolay: an amiable bumpkin Aliko Meladze and an old man Dzhashi. Meladze studied at Tbilisi university. His father was the secretary of the state committee of the party of Georgia. After his father was shot Aliko was sentenced to 25 years in camps. He loved his motherland, Georgia, so much. He recited me the verses of the Georgian poets in his native language. Dzhashi served in the German punitive squad. He had the same term as Meladze. Dzadzaniya was the deputy foreman. He was a calm young Armenian, Stepanyan.

The team of workers consisted of Russians, Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Turkmen, Polish Jews and guys from Baltic countries. The jailbirds used to call it jokingly ‘complete zoo’. I remembered the last names of Polish Jews: Kotlyar and Delfer. I was friends with Kotlyar. He was a brave and physically strong and calm man. He was in the camp, located closer to the South and after was sent to Aliaskitovo after having committed a murder. Former polizei, a fascist was the foreman in Kotlyar’s previous camp. He started teasing Kotlyar having found that he was a Jew. Kotlyar had no other way, but to kill the polizei. His 25-year sentence was doubled. In the course of time the members of our crew became bonded. I made friends with my peer, Western Ukrainians and Lithuanians. Those, whose sentence was short- 2-5 years, were getting ready for the free side. They were reading books in mathematics and physics. Others were doing arty-crafty jobs in leisure time- making beautiful knick-knackories with straw incrustation and sold them to the civilians. At time we watched movies. We also had amateur performances.

The mill fulfilled the plan and exceeded the target quarterly and annual plans yielding high profit. But was it reflected on us? We, the convicts, only were given the credit, when we exceeded the target. We were told that those who regularly exceeded the target, would be paroled. But nobody left the camp on parole. Every day we got up in the wee hours and hastily were brought to the roll call, then to the collection point. I remember the daily precept of the convoy: «Attention, convicts! Do not step from row to row, move without dispersing, no lacking behind and smoking. Step to the left or step to the right would be considered the attempt to escape and the guard will be shooting without a warning. Infuriated dogs were barking behind us and breech mechanisms clattered. Each convict was counting the days and could hardly believe that he would be pardoned. How could we live to be free if we could not see people two steps ahead of us because of the toxic dust.

Primitive respirators bothered us even more, it was difficult to breathe with them. 90% of people ended up in silicosis. Rheumatism and tuberculosis were incurred when working in dampness. But still we thought it was better to fall from physical fatigue than having an easy job to run amuck from desperate thoughts. We had one day off per week, but we spent it by cleaning the territory beyond the zone. Cleaning scavenge heaps in the settlement, working with the pinch bars and picks. We also had to rebury cadavers, hastily buried in winter time during severe frosts. There were little joys as well. Apart from the convicts there some civilians and exiled worked on the beneficiation factory. There were even girls. They got here as per mandatory job assignment [Mandatory job assignment in the USSR] 41 after graduation from the mining college. They worked as foremen supervising production processes. Of course, they were informed that the convicts her were villains and beasts, fascist scum, guilty of death of the best people. Of course, after such information girls were keeping away from us. They inspired us: we could enjoy looking at free girls and it was like God’s send to us.

Approximately in the middle of February 1953 we learnt from the civilian workers at the factory that Stalin was unwell. We knew that there were constant round-ups on the radio regarding his health and we were aware that he was on the brink of death. Of course, each of us was waiting for that hour to come, but our expectations were different. On the 5th of March 1953 we found out about Stalin’s death. Through the fence we could see the mourning flag flaunting over exile area. We were locked in barracks. I cannot say we were rejoicing. All of us were in stupor. Some people were gladdened, but still frightened. All of us had one thought- what would happen with us. Nobody hoped for the better. We were afraid that even a tougher dictator would wield the scepter and exterminate all of us. We also feared that the guard would be lynching. Anything might have happened in such backwoods. But I felt neither great joy nor sorrow. Then we had timid assumptions about amnesty, but nobody could take it serious. We were discussing the candidates and the prospective successors. We had been locked for 2 days. Then the regime on the zone became less rigid, we were even paid some money for the work. A small grocery store was open. Soon Beriya 42 issued a decree on amnesty,but it was not referred to us the political. Only criminals were under amnesty. Our hope became forlorn.

In early 1954 I got ill. First, I had ailment feeling giddy from the languor and hyperhidrosis. Then I was getting a fever in the evening. When I had to go to work in the morning, my temperature was OK. There was no doctor in the camp. The position of the chief camp physician was taken by the wife of the prison principal. She had nothing to do with the medicine. Before work I came to the sanitary unit. She thought that her job was to exposes the malingerers, who wanted to escape work. Therefore, she made me take off my shirt and kept watching while I was taking temperature for me not to do any tricks with the thermometer. Then she sent me to work. When I said that I did not feel well, her response was that my mother alternative was a lock-up, if I was not willing to work. Pulmonary hemorrhage started in the workshop and I was taken to the hospital in the stretches. I had stayed there until next morning and was pushed to work.

Only when the hemorrhage did no stop until the morning, the chief doctor understood that she had overplayed. I was sent to the barrack for disabled crammed with dying people. I got more and more feeble every day. I was a bliss for me. I did not have to go to work. Nobody pushed me to get up, there was no convoy… It was serene and quite. The doctors did not bother to come; there was no medicine. We were hardly fed, but I had no feeling of hunger. I was lying in my bad feeling happy and waiting for the death to knock on my door. The only medical assistance I got were injections of calcium chloride. Strange as it may be –they helped and my hemorrhage stopped. I am not sure what kind of outcome I would have if I were not called by the management and read the order on my pardon in the middle May 1954. It was the time when the campaign on the investigation of the cases of the innocent convicts was being held. The lawyer, mother of the Boris Lyadov, filed appellation in the supreme court, the collegian of the martial court regarding our common case.

When our case was reconsidered, the Supreme Court left the charge in accordance with article 58- anti-Soviet propaganda, but cancelled item 11- the criminal group. Thus instead of 10 years of camp, we were supposed to have only 6, but we were in the going on the 7th year. Thus, we were to be released. We had to obtain the deed on release and process the documents for the exile in Ust-Nera. Several convicts were sent there in the body of the truck. We were accompanied by a lieutenant. The convicts gave me the letter so I could drop them in the mail box so they would not undergo preliminary censorship. In Ust-Nera we stopped in the tea café and I bought stale cookie, which got hard like a stone. It is difficult for me to put my emotions in words. We were sent to undergo a physical. After being X-rayed they told me the terrible diagnosis- silicosis. It was a spread disease among ore mine workers incurred due to permanent dust. That news gloomed my joy of being free. Silicosis is a malady past cure.

The difference was that I was not to die in the barrack section for disabled, but on the free side. I was told to come back to Alyaskitovy. Since the camp administration was to blame for my production malady, they were supposed to take measures at their cost and send me to the home for the disable wherein I was to stay until death. Nobody was going to take me back to Alyaskitovy, I was supposed to think of that myself. The two of us, I and an elderly Chechen guy, also sick, we plodded to bald peaks. We were in the camp toggery and the dwellers of the house on our way were hiding and locking doors, when saw us. We spent the night right on the curb of the road and in the morning we were picked up by the dump truck heading to the upper camp. I met uncle Grisha, the room orderly from our working barrack. He was standing by the administration premise. It turned out that the tacit man was also released. I asked him what he would be doing on the free side. He said that the camp administration offered him to stay and work with the documents, but he did not want to stay in that damn place any minute. Probably surprise was written on my face, and uncle Grisha took the photo from the pocket- a valiant colonel having a lot of awards. It was impossible to recognize Grisha in him.

The principal could not process the documents for us to be settled in the house for disabled. He suggested that we should be fully maintained by the zone as civilians before he could manage to send us there. We were settled very well in the sanitary unit and the convict doctor Levin was to take care of us. Only in August we were sent to the military aerodrome together with the demobilized soldiers- the guards. We took the plane to Magadan and from their to Berlag replacement depot. We were left in the lurch there. Vanino bay was covered with us and navigation was not opened up. There was no way we could move anywhere. Again I was about to face death. I had to act, so I resorted to the camp administration. They said they could not help me. I was suggested that I should refuse taking a trip for the sake of Berlag and write an application that I would be on my own. I could not die on the bunk, besides my disease was progressing. I signed the application and I was taken to the town military enlistment office. Commandant wrote that I was exiled and sent me to the shipyard. I had worked there for a month, then my disease exacerbated and I was hospitalized. The doctors made me happy- I did not have silicosis, but tuberculosis. I treaded on air from happiness and finally decided to write my first letter to the parents saying that I was slightly ill, having tuberculosis and there was nothing to worry about. Of course, loving parents were alarmed. They pleaded toe the military collegium for my exile not to be so far away and I was sent to Karaganda [Kazakhstan, 2400 km from Moscow]. I got the money from my parents by wire, bought a ticket and went to Karaganda.

I was sent to the automobile repair plant in Karaganda commandant’s office. The profession was not new to me. I worked in the vehicle repair workshops during my service in the camp. The plant provided the hostel for the workers and I was given the referral for the hostel. The first person I saw was the warden of the hostel, called aunt Dusya by everybody. She was a huge woman with a crew-cut, tattooed arms, dressed in a striped west and boots of the bog’s color having the cigarette butt in her mouth. She asked in a loud voice where I was from and having heard that I was from Kolyma, she looked at me with respect. I looked like a criminal with my cropped hair, squinted eyes and smirch. I was also told that I looked like a grinning wolf before attack. People preferred not to confront me. I was not even aware that I was ready to attack and fight within those years of my stay in the camp.

The warden of the hostel classified me as a criminal, respected in Kolyma or a political felon. At any rate local people considered those who returned from Kolyma to be revenants. Aunt Dusya suggested that I should be settled in another wing, together with the pardoned thieves for me to feel like a fish in the water. I refused saying that I was ill and would prefer a quieter place. I moved to the room, where 15-year old boy lived. He was the student of the evening department of the vocation school, who was working at the plant. He was an amusing boy. Self-cultivation was his goal. He kept diary, wherein he wrote assignments in the morning regarding training stamina and will and in the evening he assessed his results and gave himself points whether he coped with the task or not. Sometimes I was irritated by him when he put the bicycle on the prop in the middle of the room and rode it producing noise. When I shouted it at him telling to leave, he did that obediently. My job was not complicated. I handed out the tools in the instrumental workshop. I was supposed to know the purpose of the tools, the alloys of steel. I learned all that in the camp.

In couple of month mother came to see me. I met her at the train station. There was no platform and the footboard was too high above the land. She jumped off the train straight in my embrace. I was so agog. I gave her a hug and all of a sudden she pushed back with her eyes streaming in tears. I could not get what happened and she said that I was swearing hard. She could not even imagine that I could say anything like that. I had developed a bad camp habit to the foul language and might have put all my joy and emotions in the obscene language. Mother could not recover for a long time. She was to face another shock when she came in the hostel. She was taking out tasty things from the suitcase, and the hostel warden came. She looked at my mother, crossed her hands on her enormous breasts and started singing old ‘thief’ song in deep bass voice: «The vagrant is approaching Baikal and his loving mother is there to meet him».

Mother was even more stressed with this song than with the swearing at the train station. She was about to feint. When aunt Dusya left, she said that I would not live in that criminal den and started looking for an apartment for me. She rented me a room from a very pleasant Jewish family, the Kouritskiys, the former Kievans. They were exiled to Karaganda before the war was unleashed. They had an only son, who was demented and spent almost all the time in the mental asylum. They gave me the son’s room and took good care of me as if I was their son. Father came to see me in the house of Kouritskiys. I did not mind my language cursing and vituperating the soviet regime and communist party, proving my father that the criminals, who bossed around in the zones and camps and Stalin with his gang all over the country were sharing each other’s experience and were socially close. Father was smiling, trying to mollify things by turning them into joke. I was really angry and did not take any jokes.

I was taken from the first course of the institute. I decided not to waste my time in the exile and enter the institute. There were 3 institutes in Karaganda: medical, polytechnic and teachers’ training. I went to submit my documents to the teachers’ training. It was futile! I was told in the special department that my documents would not be accepted: what things might the exiled teach soviet children?! I went to the polytechnic and then to medical. The result was the same. The only institution I could enter was mining college. So, I went there. I was afflicted with tuberculosis so I could be admitted only to the faculty of the civilian and industrial construction. I could not work in the mines because of my health. It was hard for me to enter the college. I had to get ready for the entrance exams, and I had forgotten almost everything I knew. Hard physical labor made me a dumb primitive guy, and at times I thought I had no grey cells remained. When I started cudgeling my brains, I found it difficult, but I had enough perseverance and willingness to study. I told myself that I was a nobody, even on the free side – I had no specialty. Thus, I was spurring myself. I managed to get ready for the entrance exams and passed them. In studied in the evening, and worked during the daytime. I spent half of my time in the hospital. Tuberculosis is not cured swiftly, but I did well in the college and had an understanding with teachers. I concealed in the college, that I was convicted before exile.

I still lived in Karaganda, when Nikita Khrushchev 43 exposed Stalin’s crimes on ХХ party congress 44. I took Khrushchev’s speech like a sip of spring water making me clean. I read his report, published in the papers, over and over again and almost knew it by heart. Some of the teachers suggested that I should make the report to the students using the materials of the congress, and I willingly undertook the task. No matter how hard they blame Khrushchev for the coming events during his reign, I think that he could be forgiven merely because of the Twentieth Party Congress. It was a great step.

I corresponded with my parents. They came over for a visit. Mother’s elder sister Tatiana used to write me rather often. She worked in the support staff of the members of the government and party activists. Of course, she knew what was going on from her bosses. In her letters she called upon tolerance and asked me to look through the papers and wait for the announcement. In 1956, after the Twentieth Party Congress rehabilitations commenced and I was also exonerated after 2-year exile. I was released and given a passport instead of the certificate on the exile. I was entitled to return to Moscow, get the residence permit 45 and live like a free person. I obtained the certificate on rehabilitation only in 1962, when I was operated on lung caverns in the hospital. I was on the brink of death, and was lucky to survive.

Later life

I was 30 when I came back to Moscow being sick and down in the mouth. There were hard times for me. All my former friends were through with the studies, became the experts. Many of them were married and had children having a fully-fledged life; I was just beginning making up for the things I lost when I was 20. It was hard for me to get it over. I did not want to see anybody and to meet people. I stayed in most of the time, buried in pillows bawling like a wounded animal. The hardest test for me was to meet my former friends. When you meet a person, you have known since childhood, it is natural that you would like to feel affectionate because of the common recollections, but person is different: he has a family, work, his own interests. There is nothing to hang on with the former friend as you have been thrown on the curb of life. Besides, I was afflicted with tuberculosis. I thought that people were afraid to stay close to me not to catch the disease. It took to long to get over that state. My parents were worried about me and did not let me to be in despair. They were very caring, heedful, understanding and tender. Women almost played an important role in my recuperation. When I was in adolescent, I often fell in love. Fore quite a long period of life I was isolated from women and it was another reason for my depression. When I understood that women took an interest in me and paid attention, it made me feel that still there was the reason to live and hope for the better. I came across good women.

I am grateful to them for their help and support. Support from men is important, but it is even more important when a woman is there for you. My soul was reanimated. Then I got new friends. My former friends remained in the background, and their place was taken by the new ones. Some of them were the same former convicts as I, and their example helped me to regain my footing. I have been composing verses since yearly teens, but back in the period of recuperation I felt the most need in them. I found ways to the ex ego and gradually I was settling down. I still did not feel very well. Father did not want to accept that I worked only for the sake of the salary, he thought the first thing to be done was for me to heal up. Of course the level of medicine in Moscow and Magadan were vastly different. The doctors had to work a lot. My lungs were bad after my return to Moscow. First they undertook oxygen enrichment, then I was to resort to operation- the caverns in my lungs were not calcifying.

After operation I found a job in construction design institute Mosproject. I was exonerated already. I had not got a diploma yet, there was still one year left before graduation, but I could not stay in Karaganda any longer. I was hired as a technician and entered evening department of Moscow Engineering and Construction University, Civilian and Industrial Construction. Of course, there was not the way I could work on the construction site after having graduated because of my health, but I could cope with the work at the design institute. I have been studying with recessions, was on a sick leave. In short, it was not easy. It took me 7 years instead of 5. I cannot say that the university studies gave me a lot from the standpoint of professional skills, but I acquired the latter in practice, working at the institute. I was well up in calculations and models. At any rate I obtained a diploma and had worked for the design institute Mosproject 1961, and retired in 1989.

I wanted to marry only a Jew. Yes, I saw the way my parents had lived in mutual love and respect, and there were other examples as well. I also witnessed how people concealed that they were Jews and, being shy to admit that. My close friend told me that he liked one girl who did not like Jews very much and he did not reveal what nationality he was. Even now I know people who conceal that they are Jews, but I see no reason for that. I had been hurt by anti-Semitists for quite a lot, even by my family. I wanted to feel at ease, but it is possible only when there is no issue on nationality segregation. I knew the families where the spouses were of different nationalities, but when having a tiff, the issue on nationality came up all of a sudden.

I met my wife-to be in Mosproject. Victoria Novik worked as an architect in the department of a very good-looking Jew, architect Chechulin. Victoria was a Jew, and it made us closer. She was an only child in the family. Her family was assimilated, and Victoria’s mother tongue was Russian. When Victoria was a little girl, her father, a famous economist Mark Novik was invited in Moscow for work. His family moved in Moscow with him. Having left school, Victoria entered Moscow Engineering and Construction faculty. She got a mandatory job assignment to Mosproject and had worked there until she retired.

We had an ordinary wedding. We got registered in the state marriage registration office and had a wedding party for our close people. We lived with the parents. By that time our neighbor, colonel, in communal apartment, got a lodging and the unoccupied room was given to my parents by Ispolkom 46. It turned out that we had a separate two-room apartment. In 1962 our only son Mikhail was born.

My mother was a well-bred Russian woman, raised in the best tradition. That is why she did not accept the soviet regime. Communistic ideas made her smile ironically. Of course, such an upbringing did not nurture anti-Semitism in any way nothing to mention that mother was head over heels in love with my father. She had been a Jew in her soul since getting married. She adored father, and admired Jews on the whole. She considered those people to be special, higher than the rest. The father was an ideological stickler of the communistic ideals, and here their opinions diverged in spite of the fact that mother had unconditionally followed father. When my son was a baby, mother was concerned why we did not made circumcision to the baby. I was aware that father might have disapproved that and I dodged from answering.

My son has always been aloof and tried not to tell about his child’s concerns. Later on I found out that my son, even when being a child, had to come across anti-Semitism. When my son told me that he was beaten up by a caboodle in the yard, who cried out ‘Yid’, I remembered chivalrous plays from my childhood. Mikhail was attacked by the group, being beat by the sticks and metal objects. Once he was almost murdered. In summer he was sent to the pioneer camp. The boys did not merely dare to beat Yid, they also tied up a plummet to the wire and hit my son in the face. His teeth were crashed, jaw was broken. He was hospitalized. It was a big stress for my son. Only after that he told me that it was not the first time, when he was beaten just for being a Jew, just because he had the last name of Fiedelgolts. When Mikhail was an adult, he told me when he was transferred to another school, the new classmates gave him a cold shoulder just because he was a Jew. He was beaten during the break to be put down. The son did not leak a word about it at home.

Having finished school Mikhail could not enter the institute. He was drafted in the army. He was lucky he was in the tank troops in Germany. He was a telephone operator. To a certain extent it kept him away from anti-Semitism, which might mostly likely have happened if was on the territory of the USSR. Having been demobilized from the army, he entered Moscow Institute of Telephone Communication. It was in Brezhnev’s times 47 in 1982, when anti-Semitism was spread all over the country. At that time demobilized from the army had some benefits and it must have worked. When son graduated, he was employed by the telephone communication company.

Son married his colleague, Olga Krylatskikh. Olga is Russian. My son did not consider such criterion as nationality when he was getting married and I did not interfere. He had the right for his own choice. They have a happy living. I have two granddaughters. The elder one Anna was born in born in 1989, and younger Anastasia was born in 1991.

When my son was adult, I told him about my stay at Gulag. My wife and I decided not to tell him about that during his childhood and adolescence. Neither want I my granddaughters to know the details of my past. What for? They have their own life and I do not want to make it gloomier. There was nothing special to tell. I am not a hero, who founded underground organization. I did not fight soviet regime. There were some people like that in Gulag, but there is nothing I can brag about. I am not ashamed of my past, but I not going to make it ostentatious either.

In the 1970s there was the outbreak of mass immigration of Soviet Jews to Israel. The latter was the country-symbol to me, the state founded by Jews. Of course, I dreamt of it, but at the same time I understood that there was no need for me to leave. In my opiniononly people who might do something for the country and protect it with the weapon in their hands. I was not fit for any of that. I had stayed in the USSR due to my sickness. There were no other reasons than that. I had all grounds to flee from the country, but I did not want to become a burden for the country, because it needed strong people, not disabled.

I had to come across anti-Semitism rather often. The most horrible for me was the fact that anti-Semitism was not only spread among young people, but such ideas were shared by front-line soldiers, mature people, who did not spare their lives to save the world from fascism. I had to undergo treatment in cardiologic sanatoriums. Being exonerated I was sent to the best sanatoriums of the country, where the veterans of war also took the treatment. There were cases when the veterans of war with the awards said to me that they did not want to sit close by because I was a Jew. I also heard their talks between themselves regarding my getting the voucher for their sanatorium because I was a Yid. They said that all Yids were conniving and knew how to settle well.

I have always been intolerant to anti-Semitism, and I would not change. My father has also been like that. He hated both fascism and anti-Semitism. I remember that in my presence he spat in the face of one anti-Semitist and was not ashamed to do that. By the way, that man was big and much stronger than my father. Father spat in his face and sat: «Here you go, fascist! ». But father did not recognize anti-Semitism on the state level, organized by the party. Father has remained ideological communist in spite of the things I and my parents had to go through. I think, international ideas of communism might have affected my father. My father found them the most attractive. He had to live in the times of pogroms, admission quotas for the Jews. Practically the same things, only inveigled had existed during Soviet regime, but father was oblivious to that. He so far away from politics. He believed in his ideals. In spite of everything he took communistic doctrine, which appealed to him to be right. He cannot be blamed for that. Father did not live to see the breakup of USSR [1991]. I think he would take it hard. He died in 1983. Mother passed away earlier, in 1976. She died from extensive myocardial infarction in the hospital. Even in an agonal delirium she was reiterating: «Levоchka, I am going to cook soup …», and the last word she said was her husband’s name. My parents are buried in the city cemetery in Moscow. There are a lot of Jewish tombs, probably every second.

Unfortunately, my health is rather poor now. I had a complicated operation on my lung. I do not have 5 ribs. Recently I was operated in Moscow cardio center, it was an extremely complicated operation: my aorta was replaced with the artificial one because I had aortic aneurysm. I am not scared to die. I had seen a lot of interesting things in my life both good and bad. Each of us has to get over a lot hardship. It is even not bad to have an experience like that. It makes you richer somehow.

I was imbued with optimism when Gorbachev 48 started a new course of the party, perestroika 49. There were a lot of demonstrations in Moscow. Everybody could speak his mind from the tribune without feeling timid! I was crying from happiness that things were getting recovered. Now I feel that all was built on sand and did not meet expectations. It hurts and I am thinking “was my imprisonment and suffering futile? Are those things I am doing and writing now, futile?.

I have been writing since childhood, first verses, then prose, but I did not find it important. I started doing it professionally (if I can say that) after I retired in 1989. There was a literary institution Magistral in Moscow [literary institution Magistral was founded in Moscow in the 1960s and united officially unrecognized poets and writers, whose works were unpublished by state publishers], Poet Grigoriy Levin was at the lead. He was an erudite. I was involved in work for this institution. I met many poets and writers. Then I took to writing more seriously. I write about the past and the present. My works were published in different collection of stories and magazines. I wrote reminiscences of my camp life the collection of stories «Still a Burden», published in 2004 in Moscow with assistance of the compiler. I still keep on writing and I would like to get as much publications as possible. Literature appeals to me. I do not find it interesting just to enjoy my life of the pensioner. I would like to do something. As for the Jewry, I have always identified myself as Jew and will remain a Jew till the end of my days, especially is there are anti-Semitists. When I am invited to hold a speech, I always recite my verses dedicated to the Jewish theme. Jewish people are heroic. Each member of the tribe takes a credit that the peoples have survived under such hard conditions. A person becomes Jew at birth and remains a Jew for good. Jews did not just manage to ascertain, they also became the pride of the nation, which hosted and despised them.

In 1989 another organization was founded Memorial 50. It united the victims of repressions, both Stalin’s and fascists. I have taken an active part in Memoria since its foundation, since its first Memorial conference. I was a coordinator of Memorial of our district. There are some interesting personalities among the former repressed. I meet with them. So I have a wide circle of acquaintances and a wide range of interests.

I still consider unbreak of USSR to be a big mistake because the economy of the country was based on centralization during all regimes, starting with the tsarist one. All was bound in one node: cotton was sent to the plants in Moscow bound from Turkistan and Uzbekistan, tractors were assembled from the parts manufactured in Ukraine and Russia and so on. All those ties have been broken. Each ethnicity has the right for self-determination, but the country could gain independence without violating this economic interaction. Here all political tasks were resolved and economic nodes were exterminated.

Many people exalt Russia: «Great, powerful…». It is great and powerful and constantly stagnant. How can it possible be? There is such a territory, richness, mineral resources- gold, oil, gas, all Mendeleyev table. Any us potentially might become a millionaire, even a billionaire, but we are still indigent, wasting all opportunities. It is difficult for us to make an extra step to become rich. It is something that strikes me. I do not find my words shameful. I am not expressing anti-Russian ideas, just bitterness. I would like Russia to be different. The worst thing is that I do not see any prospects.

I always was actively against anti-Semitism, both in Memorial and during discussion with Russian human rights activist Sergey Kovalev. He is dealing with the violation of human rights in Chechnya [Chechen War] 51. There is no doubt that it is very important, but he does not notice anti-Semitism around him, so close that he can physically feel it. Before taking care of distant Chechnya he should have seen what is going on in this country. A person can be insulted in the street, even hit just because he is a Jew. Not only hooligans are prone to anti-Semitism. The most horrible is that even members of intelligentsia are in the anti-Semitist movement. Of course they do buffet, they merely justify anti-Semitism from philosophic point of view, referring to some sources and theories. Of course, those things have not just started. Many Russian writers sinned in that e.g. Googol 52 so miserably depicts Jews in his novel Tares Bulbar. He gladly describes how Jews were drowned, describing how puny, cowardly, obnoxious and treacherous those Jews, Yids were. And if we take Dostoyevsky 53 it is a total obscurantism! He is Nazi! He is really a magnificent writer, a great one, an extraordinary psychologist. There are so many in the spiritual world in his novels, what great characters he has in his novels! But at the same time when he speaks of Poles and Jews in the derogative tone «Polyachishki», «Evreychiki»,«Zhidki»[Russian derogatory terms, the first one refers to Poles and the last two to Jews.] – it is so miserable! It is everywhere. Even such a refined representative of intelligentsia as Chekhov 54 is mocking the Jewish family and the inn kept by it in his novel ‘Steppe’ …So the roots of Russian anti-Semitists are very deep.…

I often remember pre-war Moscow and its citizens. Now you can rarely meet the true Moscovite with original patois, sociability and hospitality, amicability, certain peculiar features, inherent only to them- kind-heartedness and pride and easefulness. Maybe the reason for is that Moscow is a capital, attracting many bright people as well as riff-raff, who come over and spoil everything. By the way, anti-Semitism was brought to Moscow by the new-comers, who name themselves Moscovites, because those people who cannot study well and get a useful and lucrative job and find their place in life, are inclined to blame ‘aliens’ (Jews in this case) in their unsuccessfulness. In any hamlet or a hick town they might tell you for instance: «We have a librarian Abramovich, a Jew, but a very good person ». Please pay attention to the conjunction ‘but’, which means that the rest of Jews are bad, but that one, was an exception. From many anti-Semitists you might here that many Yids are puds, scums, but he has a friend, Jew, and he would not replace him with 3-4 Russians. It is anti-Semitism. During my lifetime I will keep on fighting it they way I possibly can.

I do not work for Jewish organizations. I think that Jewry is personal, it is mine and I do not want to make out of it the source of welfare. I go to synagogue, not as often as I would like to because of my poor health. I am happy to go there whenever I can. I do not go there only on holidays, even when my soul is looking for it. I like to take part in that sacrament. Each visit to the synagogue is joyful for me.

I have determined main principles during my long life. I think that a human being should have a moral, conscience no matter what filth he had to dip in. He should come out of it with honor. I do not know how well I did, all I know that thanks God I did not do mean things to anybody, did not betray and slander. As for my belief in God, I think that there is one God, there is a supreme benignity, supreme kind, which we cannot cognize ourselves and find out about its intentions. It can cast us hither or thither. I know it very well. Everybody will be rewarded in accordance with his deeds.

Glossary:

1 Partitions of Poland (1772-1795)

Three divisions of the Polish lands, in 1772, 1793 and 1795 by the neighboring powers: Russia, Austria and Prussia. Under the first partition Russia occupied the lands east of the Dzwina, Drua and Dnieper, a total of 92,000 km2 and a population of 1.3 million. Austria took the southern part of the Cracow and Sandomierz provinces, the Oswiecim and Zator principalities, the Ruthenian province (except for the Chelm lands) and part of the Belz province, a total of 83,000 km2and a population of 2.6 million. Prussia annexed Warmia, the Pomerania, Malbork and Chelmno provinces (except for Gdansk and Torun) and the lands along the Notec river and Goplo lake, altogether 36,000 km2 and 580,000 souls. The second partition was carried out by Prussia and Russia. Prussia occupied the Poznan, Kalisz, Gniezno, Sieradz, Leczyca, Inowroclaw, Brzesc Kujawski and Plock provinces, the Dobrzyn lands, parts of the Rawa and Masovia provinces, and Torun and Gdansk, a total of 58,000 km2 and over a million inhabitants. Russia took the Ukrainian and Belarus lands east of the Druja-Pinsk-Zbrucz line, altogether 280,000 km2and 3 million inhabitants. Under the third partition Russia obtained the rest of the Lithuanian, Belarus and Ukrainian lands east of the Bug and the Nemirov-Grodno line, a total area of 120,000 km2 and 1.2 million inhabitants. The Prussians took the remainder of Podlasie and Mazovia, Warsaw, and parts of Samogitia and Malopolska, 55,000 km2 and a population of 1 million. Austria annexed Cracow and the part of Malopolska between the Pilica, Vistula and Bug, and part of Podlasie and Masovia, a total surface area of 47,000 km2 and a population of 1.2 million.

2 Jewish Pale of Settlement

Certain provinces in the Russian Empire were designated for permanent Jewish residence and the Jewish population was only allowed to live in these areas. The Pale was first established by a decree by Catherine II in 1791. The regulation was in force until the Russian Revolution of 1917, although the limits of the Pale were modified several times. The Pale stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, and 94% of the total Jewish population of Russia, almost 5 million people, livedthere. The overwhelming majority of the Jews lived in the towns and shtetls of the Pale. Certain privileged groups of Jews, such as certain merchants, university graduates and craftsmen working in certain branches, were granted to live outside the borders of the Pale of Settlement permanently.

3 Common name

Russified or Russian first names used by Jews in everyday life and adopted in official documents. The Russification of first names was one of the manifestations of the assimilation of Russian Jews at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. In some cases only the spelling and pronunciation of Jewish names was russified (e.g. Isaac instead of Yitskhak; Boris instead of Borukh), while in other cases traditional Jewish names were replaced by similarly sounding Russian names (e.g. Eugenia instead of Ghita; Yury instead of Yuda). When state anti-Semitism intensified in the USSR at the end of the 1940s, most Jewish parents stopped giving their children traditional Jewish names to avoid discrimination.

4 Five percent quota

In tsarist Russia the number of Jews in higher educational institutions could not exceed 5% of the total number of students.

5 Russian Revolution of 1917

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

6 Civil War (1918-1920)

The Civil War between the Reds (the Bolsheviks) and the Whites (the anti-Bolsheviks), which broke out in early 1918, ravaged Russia until 1920. The Whites represented all shades of anti-communist groups – Russian army units from World War I, led by anti-Bolshevik officers, by anti-Bolshevik volunteers and some Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. Several of their leaders favored setting up a military dictatorship, but few were outspoken tsarists. Atrocities were committed throughout the Civil War by both sides. The Civil War ended with Bolshevik military victory, thanks to the lack of cooperation among the various White commanders and to the reorganization of the Red forces after Trotsky became commissar for war. It was won, however, only at the price of immense sacrifice; by 1920 Russia was ruined and devastated. In 1920 industrial production was reduced to 14% and agriculture to 50% as compared to 1913.

7 Great Patriotic War

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

8 Soviet/Russian doctorate degrees

Graduate school in the Soviet Union (aspirantura, or ordinatura for medical students), which usually took about 3 years and resulted in a dissertation. Students who passed were awarded a 'kandidat nauk' (lit. candidate of sciences) degree. If a person wanted to proceed with his or her research, the next step would be to apply for a doctorate degree (doktarontura). To be awarded a doctorate degree, the person had to be involved in the academia, publish consistently, and write an original dissertation. In the end he/she would be awarded a 'doctor nauk' (lit. doctor of sciences) degree.

9 Soviet Army

The armed forces of the Soviet Union, originally called Red Army and renamed Soviet Army in February 1946. After the Bolsheviks came to power, in November 1917, they commenced to organize the squads of worker’s army, called Red Guards, where workers and peasants were recruited on voluntary bases. The commanders were either selected from among the former tsarist officers and soldiers or appointed directly by the Military and Revolutionary Committy of the Communist Party.

In early 1918 the Bolshevik government issued a decree on the establishment of the Workers‘ and Peasants‘ Red Army and mandatory drafting was introduced for men between 18 and 40. In 1918 the total number of draftees was 100 thousand officers and 1.2 million soldiers. Military schools and academies training the officers were restored. In 1925 the law on compulsory military service was adopted and annual drafting was established. The term of service was established as follows: for the Red Guards- 2 years, for junior officers of aviation and fleet- 3 years, for medium and senior officers- 25 years. People of exploiter classes (former noblemen, merchants, officers of the tsarist army, priest, factory owner, etc. and their children) as well as kulaks (rich peasants) and cossacks were not drafted in the army. The law as of 1939 cancelled restriction on drafting of men belonging to certain classes, students werenot drafted but went through military training in their educational institutions.

On the 22nd June 1941 Great Patriotic War wasunleashed and the drafting in the army became exclusively compulsory. First, in June-July 1941 general and complete mobilization of men was carried out as well as partial mobilization of women. Then annual drafting of men, who turned 18, was commenced. When WWII was over, the Red Army amounted to over 11 million people and the demobilization process commenced. By the beginning of 1948 the Soviet Army had been downsized to 2 million 874 thousand people. The youth of drafting age were sent to the restoration works in mines, heavy industrial enterprises, and construction sites. In 1949 a new law on general military duty was adopted, according to which service term in ground troops and aviation was 3 years and in navy- 4 years. Young people with secondary education, both civilian and military, with the age range of 17-23 were admitted in military schools for officers. In 1968 the term of the army service was contracted to 2 years in ground troops and in the navy to 3 years. That system of army recruitment has remained without considerable changes until the breakup of the Soviet Army (1991-93).

10 Bolsheviks

Members of the movement led by Lenin. The name ‘Bolshevik’ was coined in 1903 and denoted the group that emerged in elections to the key bodies in the Social Democratic Party (SDPRR) considering itself in the majority (Rus. bolshynstvo) within the party. It dubbed its opponents the minority (Rus. menshynstvo, the Mensheviks). Until 1906 the two groups formed one party. The Bolsheviks first gained popularity and support in society during the 1905-07 Revolution. During the February Revolution in 1917 the Bolsheviks were initially in the opposition to the Menshevik and SR (‘Sotsialrevolyutsionyery’, Socialist Revolutionaries) delegates who controlled the Soviets (councils). When Lenin returned from emigration (16 April) they proclaimed his program of action (the April theses) and under the slogan ‘All power to the Soviets’ began to Bolshevize the Soviets and prepare for a proletariat revolution. Agitation proceeded on a vast scale, especially in the army. The Bolsheviks set about creating their own armed forces, the Red Guard. Having overthrown the Provisional Government, they created a government with the support of the II Congress of Soviets (the October Revolution), to which they admitted some left-wing SRs in order to gain the support of the peasantry. In 1952 the Bolshevik party was renamed the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

11 World Revolution

Marxist concept and an integral part of Soviet state-ideology. The idea of World Revolution was used to explain Soviet imperialist politics in Eastern Europe as well as world-wide. It was after WWI that the world was closes to the idea: the 1917 October Revolution in Russia was followed by the German (1918-19) and the Hungarian Revolutions (1919), that were eventually both put down as a result of counter-revolutionary efforts and Soviet Russia remained the only communist state. TheCommunist International (Comintern) in the interwar period (1919-1943) acted as a Soviet-sponsored agency responsible for coordinating the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism worldwide. Aiding the local and previously (during the capitalist regimes) persecuted revolutionary forces was also a pretext of the military occupation of the Central and Eastern European countries during World War II (‚Liberation‘) and keeping them within the Soviet Block until 1989. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_revolution)

12 Trotsky, Lev Davidovich (born Bronshtein) (1879-1940)

Russian revolutionary, one of the leaders of the October Revolution of 1917, an outstanding figure of the communist movement and a theorist of Marxism. Trotsky participated in the social-democratic movement from 1894 and supported the idea of the unification of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks from 1906. In 1905 he developed the idea of the ‘permanent revolution’. He was one of the leaders of the October Revolution and a founder of the Red Army. He widely applied repressive measures to support the discipline and ‘bring everything into revolutionary order’ at the front and the home front. The intense struggle with Stalin for the leadership ended with Trotsky's defeat. In 1924 his views were declared petty-bourgeois deviation. In 1927 he was expelled from the Communist Party, and exiled to Kazakhstan, and in 1929 abroad. He lived in Turkey, Norway and then Mexico. He excoriated Stalin's regime as a bureaucratic degeneration of the proletarian power. He was murdered in Mexico by an agent of Soviet special services on Stalin’s order.

13 Keep in touch with relatives abroad

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

14 Campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’

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

15 Enemy of the people

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

16 Kolchak, Aleksandr Vasilyevich (1874-1920)

Russian admiral and White commander in Western Siberia during the Civil War (1918-22). He was the commander of the Black Sea Fleet during WWI, after the October Revolution (1917) he was one of the organizers of the White Guards and became Minister of War in an anti-Bolshevik government, set up in Omsk, Siberia. In November 1918 he carried out a coup and assumed dictatorship. He was successful at fighting the Bolsheviks in Siberia and was recognized by both, the Privisonal Government in Russia as well as the Allies. In early 1919 he managed to capture the Ural and had an army of 400 thousand people. After a retreat to Irkutsk he was betrayed to the Bolsheviks who executed him and took posession of Siberia. (http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/k/kolchak.asp)

17 Provisional Government

Russian government formed after the February Revolution of 1917. The majority of its members were originally liberal deputies of the State Duma. The Provisional Government also had some socialist members, and after a series of political crises the number of socialist ministers increased. The goal of the Provisional Government was to turn Russia into a parliamentary democracy, with broad political liberties, general and equal elections, a multi-party system and equal rights for all citizens. The Provisional Government, however, was unable to solve the country’s key problems, namely the withdrawal from World War I, agricultural and food problems and national issues. It was overthrown by the Bolsheviks in November 1917.

18 Communal apartment

The Soviet power wanted to improve housing conditions by requisitioning ‘excess’ living space of wealthy families after the Revolution of 1917. Apartments were shared by several families with each family occupying one room and sharing the kitchen, toilet and bathroom with other tenants. Because of the chronic shortage of dwelling space in towns communal or shared apartments continued to exist for decades. Despite state programs for the construction of more houses and the liquidation of communal apartments, which began in the 1960s, shared apartments still exist today.

19 All-Union pioneer organization

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

20 Komsomol

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

21 Great Terror (1934-1938)

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

22 Shtern, Lina Solomonovna (1878 – 1968)

Soviet physiologist, the first female academician in the world. She graduated from the medical faculty of Geneva University in 1903 and became the first woman professor there. In 1924 she received an official invitation from the Soviet Union to head the chair of physiology at Moscow Stale University. In 1938 she was elected member of the Academy of Sciences. In 1943 she was awarded the Stalin Prize. In the same year she chriticized the strenghening Antisemisemitism in the Soviet Union as presidium member of the Jewish Antifascist Committee. In 1952 she was tried and consequently expelled to Dzhambul, Kazakhstan. (http://www.jewukr.org/observer/eo2003/page_show_en.php?id=329)

20 Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC)

formed in Kuibyshev in April 1942, the organization was meant to serve the interests of Soviet foreign policy and the Soviet military through media propaganda, as well as through personal contacts with Jews abroad, especially in Britain and the United States. The chairman of the JAC was Solomon Mikhoels, a famous actor and director of the Moscow Yiddish State Theater. A year after its establishment, the JAC was moved to Moscow and became one of the most important centers of Jewish culture and Yiddish literature until the German occupation. The JAC broadcast pro-Soviet propaganda to foreign audiences several times a week, telling them of the absence of anti-Semitism and of the great anti-Nazi efforts being made by the Soviet military. In 1948, Mikhoels was assassinated by Stalin’s secret agents, and, as part of a newly-launched official anti-Semitic campaign, the JAC was disbanded in November and most of its members arrested.

24 Doctors’ Plot

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

25 Rehabilitation in the Soviet Union

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

26 Mayakovsky, Vladimir Vladimirovich (1893-1930)

Russian poet and dramatist. Mayakovsky joined the Social Democratic Party in 1908 and spent much time in prison for his political activities for the next two years. Mayakovsky triumphantly greeted the Revolution of 1917 and later he composed propaganda verse and read it before crowds of workers throughout the country. He became gradually disillusioned with Soviet life after the Revolution and grew more critical of it. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1924) ranks among Mayakovsky’s best-known longer poems. However, his struggle with literary opponents and unhappy romantic experiences resulted in him committing suicide in 1930.

27 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

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

28 Card system

The food card system regulating the distribution of food and industrial products was introduced in the USSR in 1929 due to extreme deficit of consumer goods and food. The system was cancelled in 1931. In 1941, food cards were reintroduced to keep records, distribute and regulate food supplies to the population. The card system covered main food products such as bread, meat, oil, sugar, salt, cereals, etc. The rations varied depending on which social group one belonged to, and what kind of work one did. Workers in the heavy industry and defense enterprises received a daily ration of 800 g (miners - 1 kg) of bread per person; workers in other industries 600 g. Non-manual workers received 400 or 500 g based on the significance of their enterprise, and children 400 g. However, the card system only covered industrial workers and residents of towns while villagers never had any provisions of this kind. The card system was cancelled in 1947.

29 Bukhara Jews

Bukhara Jews are an ethnic group of Jews residing in Central Asia. They are descendants of Mesopotamian Jews and speak Bukharan, which is basically Judeo-Tadzhik. Their religious rite is Sephardic. Most of them have been repatriated to Israel.

30 Item 5

This was the nationality factor, which was included on all job application forms, Jews, who were considered a separate nationality in the Soviet Union, were not favored in this respect from the end of World War WII until the late 1980s.

31 NKVD

People’s Committee of Internal Affairs; it took over from the GPU, the state security agency, in 1934.

32 Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844-1900)

German philosopher and poet. Long misunderstood and even reviled as a result of misuses of his work, most notably by the Nazis, Nietzsche has become one of the most influential philosophers of the late 20th century. Nietzsche is famous, among others, for the theory of the Übermensch, which he developed in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In 1889 he suffered a mental breakdown from which he never recovered.

33 Smersh

Russian abbreviation for ‘Smert Shpionam’ meaning Death to Spies. It was a counterintelligence department in the Soviet Union formed during World War II, to secure the rear of the active Red Army, on the front to arrest ‘traitors, deserters, spies, and criminal elements’. The full name of the entity was USSR People’s Commissariat of Defense Chief Counterintelligence Directorate ‘SMERSH’. This name for the counterintelligence division of the Red Army was introduced on 19th April 1943, and worked as a separate entity until 1946. It was headed by Viktor Abakumov. At the same time a SMERSH directorate within the People’s Commissariat of the Soviet Navy and a SMERSH department of the NKVD were created. The main opponent of SMERSH in its counterintelligence activity was Abwehr, the German military foreign information and counterintelligence department. SMERSH activities also included ‘filtering’ the soldiers recovered from captivity and the population of the gained territories. It was also used to punish within the NKVD itself; allowed to investigate, arrest and torture, force to sign fake confessions, put on a show trial, and either send to the camps or shoot people. SMERSH would also often be sent out to find and kill defectors, double agents, etc.; also used to maintain military discipline in the Red Army by means of barrier forces, that were supposed to shoot down the Soviet troops in the cases of retreat. SMERSH was also used to hunt down ‘enemies of the people’ outside Soviet territory.

34 KGB

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

35 Gulag

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

36 Kolyma

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

37 Berlag

Russian abbriviation for ‚coastal camp‘. Located in Magadan, in the Russian Far-East on the Sea of Okhotsk, the camp existed between 1948 and 1956. As a part of the Gulag between 15 and 31 thousand prisoners were stationed in the Berlag constantly. They worked mainly at mining enterprizes, construction sites and timber works. This was one of the most horrible of the Gulag camps: lethal rate was about 50% annually, unless taken to some other camp few prisoners maneged to stay alive in the Berlag for over three years.

38 Deportations from the Baltics (1940-1953)

After the Soviet Union occupied the three Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) in June 1940 as a part of establishing the Soviet system, mass deportation of the local population began. The victims of these were mainly but not exclusively those unwanted by the regime: the local bourgeoisie and the previously politically active strata. Deportations to remote parts of the Soviet Union continued up until the death of Stalin. The first major wave of deportation took place between 11th and 14th June 1941, when 36,000, mostly politically active people were deported. Deportations were reintroduced after the Soviet Army recaptured the three countries from Nazi Germany in 1944. Partisan fights against the Soviet occupiers were going on all up to 1956, when the last squad was eliminated. Between June 1948 and January 1950, in accordance with a Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the USSR under the pretext of ‘grossly dodged from labor activity in the agricultural field and led anti-social and parasitic mode of life’ from Latvia 52,541, from Lithuania 118,599 and from Estonai 32,450 people were deported. The total number of deportees from the three republics amounted to 203,590. Among them were entire Lithuanian families of different social strata (peasants, workers, intelligentsia), everybody who was able to reject or deemed capable to reject the regime. Most of the exiled died in the foreign land. Besides, about 100,000 people were killed in action and in fusillade for being members of partisan squads and some other 100,000 were sentenced to 25 years in camps.

39 Pushkin, Alexandr (1799-1837)

Russian poet and prose writer, among the foremost figures in Russian literature. Pushkin established the modern poetic language of Russia, using Russian history for the basis of many of his works. His masterpiece is Eugene Onegin, a novel in verse about mutually rejected love. The work also contains witty and perceptive descriptions of Russian society of the period. Pushkin died in a duel.

40 White Guards

A counter-revolutionary gang led by General Denikin, famous for their brigandry and anti-Semitic acts all over Russia; legends were told of their cruelty. Few survived their pogroms.

41 Mandatory job assignment in the USSR

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

42 Beriya, L

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

43 Khrushchev, Nikita (1894-1971)

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

44 Twentieth Party Congress

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

45 Residence permit

The Soviet authorities restricted freedom of travel within the USSR through the residence permit and kept everybody’s whereabouts under control. Every individual in the USSR needed residential registration; this was a stamp in the passport giving the permanent address of the individual. It was impossible to find a job, or even to travel within the country, without such a stamp. In order to register at somebody else’s apartment one had to be a close relative and if each resident of the apartment had at least 8 square meters to themselves.

46 Ispolkom

After the tsar’s abdication (March, 1917), power passed to a Provisional Government appointed by a temporary committee of the Duma, which proposed to share power to some extent with councils of workers and soldiers known as ‘soviets’. Following a brief and chaotic period of fairly democratic procedures, a mixed body of socialist intellectuals known as the Ispolkom secured the right to ‘represent’ the soviets. The democratic credentials of the soviets were highly imperfect to begin with: peasants - the overwhelming majority of the Russian population - had virtually no say, and soldiers were grossly over-represented. The Ispolkom’s assumption of power turned this highly imperfect democracy into an intellectuals’ oligarchy.

47 Brezhnev, Leonid, Ilyich (1906–82) Soviet leader

He joined the Communist Party in 1931 and rose steadily in its hierarchy, becoming a secretary of the party’s central committee in1952. In 1957, as protégé of Khrushchev, he became a member of the presidium (later politburo) of the central committee. He was chairman of the presidium of the Supreme Soviet, or titular head of state. Following Khrushchev’s fall from power in 1964, which Brezhnev helped to engineer, he was named first secretary of the Communist Party. Although sharing power withKosygin, Brezhnev emerged as the chief figure in Soviet politics. In 1968, in support of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, he enunciated the ‘Brezhnev doctrine,’ asserting that the USSR could intervene in the domestic affairs of any Soviet bloc nation if communist rule was threatened. While maintaining a tight rein in Eastern Europe, he favored closer relations with the Western powers, and he helped bring about a détente with the United States. In 1977 he assumed the presidency of the USSR. Under Gorbachev, Brezhnev’s regime was criticized for its corruption and failed economic policies.

48 Gorbachev, Mikhail (1931- )

Soviet political leader. Gorbachev joined the Communist Party in 1952 and gradually moved up in the party hierarchy. In 1970 he was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, where he remained until 1990. In 1980 he joined the politburo, and in 1985 he was appointed general secretary of the party. In 1986 he embarked on a comprehensive program of political, economic, and social liberalization under the slogans of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). The government released political prisoners, allowed increased emigration, attacked corruption, and encouraged the critical reexamination of Soviet history. The Congress of People’s Deputies, founded in 1989, voted to end the Communist Party’s control over the government and elected Gorbachev executive president. Gorbachev dissolved the Communist Party and granted the Baltic states independence. Following the establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States in 1991, he resigned as president. Since 1992, Gorbachev has headed international organizations.

49 Perestroika (Russian for restructuring)

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

50 Memorial

An international historic, educational, human rights, charity organization, founded in Moscow in 1989. It is a movement initially aiming at keeping the record of political repressions in the former USSR. Now it is an umbrella of a dozen of organizations in Russia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Georgia and Ukraine, maintaining research, human rights and educational activity.

51 Chechen War

After the communist Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991 Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia declared their independence. The autonomous territories immediately north of these new nations remained part of the new Russian State, though their populations largely were not Russian. Several of these ethnic groups began agitating for more autonomy from Moscow or for outright independence. The conflict in Russia's South Caucasus region (Chechnya, Dagestan, Ossetia, Ingushetia) began quickly. After the first Chechen War (1994-96) Chechens claimed victory and independence, and the Russian government claimed victory and the retention of Chechnya as a part of Russia. Clashes along the border continued as several Chechen rebel leaders and groups continued to harass the Russians in nearby areas. One such area is Dagestan, another, largely Muslim, region of southern Russia. During the Dagestan Campaign, Russia suffered several terrorist attacks in cities throughout the nation. Using this as an excuse to continue the Dagestan Campaign into Chechnya proved quite popular with Russian voters. After Yeltsin's retirement, Acting President Vladimir Putin won the March 2000 election largely on the strength of his continuing war against the Chechens and Islamic ‘terrorists.’

52 Googol, Nikolai (1809-1852)

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

53 Dostoevsky, Fyodor (1821-1881)

Russian novelist, journalist and short-story writer whose psychological penetration into the human soul had a profound influence on the 20th century novel. His novels anticipated many of the ideas of Nietzsche and Freud. Dostoevsky’s novels contain many autobiographical elements, but ultimately they deal with moral and philosophical issues. He presented interacting characters with contrasting views or ideas about freedom of choice, socialism, atheisms, good and evil, happiness and so forth.

54 Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich (1860-1904)

Russian short-story writer and dramatist. Chekhov's hundreds of stories concern human folly, the tragedy of triviality, and the oppression of banality. His characters are drawn with compassion and humor in a clear, simple style noted for its realistic detail. His focus on internal drama was an innovation that had enormous influence on both Russian and foreign literature. His success as a dramatist was assured when the Moscow Art Theater took his works and staged great productions of his masterpieces, such as Uncle Vanya or The Three Sisters. and also had some religious instruction.

Albert Tsessarskiy

Albert Tsessarskiy
Russia
Moscow
Interviewer: Svetlana Bogdanova
Date of Interview: June 2005

Albert Tsessarskiy is a tall, handsome man.

He is a hospitable, amiable and charming host. Everybody who has ever talked to him cannot help noticing his charms. He agreed to be interviewed in spite of being really busy. He holds a lot of lectures on the recollections about war times.

He is writing a story now. He is an interesting and captivating story-teller. He is modest. He can tell about the feats of his friends for hours, but he would briefly mention his accomplishments.

He lives with his wife in a 3-room apartment of a brick house constructed in the 1970s in one of the central Moscow districts. There are a lot of books in the apartment: modern and classic fiction.

There is a large wall portrait of the host in one of the rooms. It was painted by one of Albert's friends.

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

My family background

My parents were from Vapnyarka. It is a small town in the vicinity of Vinnitsa [about 200 km to the south from Kiev]. I think my maternal grandparents were also born there. As far as I know, my father’s ancestor came from Poland to Vapnyarka and settled there. The deputation of Polish Seym and the ambassador came to Russian tsar.

My ancestor accompanied them. He was a chief cabman. The entire delegation was interned in the bounds of Vinnitsa, and ambassador was taken to Moscow and decapitated in accordance with the tales of my family. I do not know the first name of that ancestor. All I know that his last name was Tsessarskiy.

It was a Polish surname. He started the lineage of my ancestors who came from the town out of Vinnitsa. The whole delegation from Poland lived and died there. I remember another family story. My paternal relatives immigrated to different places. One of the relatives was a gifted musician. He became a conductor by the court of the emperor of Austria.

Once, Persian governmental delegation came there. Persian shakh invited him to become the head of the court. Father took the offer. At that time father lived very moderately in Odessa 1. The family was very poor and all of a sudden father got the invitation from the head of the court to visit his country.

Mother saw father off to the ship. When he passed Istanbul, which was on the way, all agencies were reporting that there was a coup d’etat in Persia and all governmental people were murdered, including the head of the court. Father came back to Odessa from Istanbul.

My parents told me that my paternal grandfather was a teacher in cheder Vapnyarka. His name was Abram Tsessarskiy. He was very religious. He was fond of Talmud treatment. People came to him to ask for advice and judgment during different social and family arguments.

He was a clever, talented and hilarious person with a great sense of humor. All his precepts were funny. He was never morose. Grandfather died before I was born. I do not know when it happened exactly. My maternal grandmother died earlier than grandpa. There is nothing I know about her. I do not even know her name.

My father Benjamin Tsessarskiy was born in Vapnyarka in 1888. He became orphan at a young age. He was raised by his only elder brother, who lived in Odessa at that time. Elder brother painted and plastered walls. I remember him a little bit. His name was Solomon Tsessarskiy.

He was so huge that he could paint ceilings without using a step ladder. After the Revolution 1917 2 he was an organizer of the trade union of painters and plasterers. He had a good actor’s talent. He played the part of Sholom Aleichem 3 in amateur performances.

He was a good-humored man. I do not know when he was born. He died in 1940. I do not know anything about his kin. Father finished cheder in Vapnyarka. Then he finished Realschule 4 in Odessa, but he was not involved in commerce. Like most modest poor people he started repairing watches.

My mother, nee Novokovskaya was also from Vapnyarka. I had never seen my maternal grandparents. All I know is that grandfather’s name was Lev Novokovskiy. I do not even know grandmother’s name. There is a family legend about her. There is a version that her ancestors came from Italy to Ukraine.

One of them was Padva. They immigrated in early 19th century from Italian Padua and the clerk mistakenly put the name of the town they came from instead of the last name. Grandmother’s husband was Novokovskiy. He died at a young age. I do not know what he did for a living, but they were rather rich.

There is another interesting family story. Vapnyarka was mostly populated by Jews. Grandmother decided to build a train station in Vapnyarka. She had enough money and energy for that. The rail roads belonged to the state, so she had to get the permit from the emperor to execute the project.

My mother said that grandmother asked for audience with the emperor Nikolay II, 5 and filed a request. He received her and talked to her for a while. She told him about the design of the train station. He signed the authorization letter. When she got up to leave he asked: «Oh, and what is your nationality?». When he heard that she was a Jew, he was about to change his mind, but it was too late, the authorization had been given and he could not cancel it. The train station was built and it is still there. Of course, there is no plaque saying who gave cost and took effort in building the train station. I remember that there was a grandmother’s portrait in our place in Odessa. She looked stately. She was a very beautiful woman.

Mother’s name was Esfir. She also remained an orphan at a young age. Her father died at a young age and then her mother died. I do not know exactly when. Mother was a young child in the family. She had 2 sisters- Sonya and Raya. It turned out that my parents knew each other in Vapnyarka and fell in love.

When grandmother was dying she asked them to get married. When grandmother died, sisters left for Odessa, where mother met father. At the beginning of the century there were Jewish pogroms 6 and elder sisters left abroad. Sonya left for London and Raya for Brazil. Sonya had a very moderate living in London. She found a job there. She sent an invitation letter to mother and found a job for her at a shoe factory.

Mother left for London and father stayed in Odessa. He and his buddy illegitimately left the city in the hold of the ship heading for England. They even did not have the documents. The captain of the ship noticed them, but it was too late and he took them to England. Father lost his fellow.

He did not know the language, besides he did not tell mother that he was going to London. He thought that he would come to London and see mother right away. That was the way it happened. He was roaming along the city, being hungry and saw mother all of a sudden.

She was in the cab on her way from work. They got married in London in 1907. Father said that there they added another letter ‘s’ in his last name- Tsessarskiy. Usually that surname was written only with one letter ‘s’. Then it turned out that father was of drafting age.

It was declared in Russia that those people who avoided the army would be considered deserters. Thus, parents came back to Odessa. Shortly after that father was mobilized. He had served in tsarist army for three years and he was demobilized by the outbreak of World War One.

Father worked as a repairer of watches. He had a small shop-a booth, where he had been working from dawn till night. I remember that he repaired watches at home. He must have been a good expert as he always had a lot of work to do. The family had lived in a constant feeling of fear.

Mother was a housewife. When NEP 7 was cancelled and expropriation commenced, father was arrested for 3 times as they thought that he had some precious things that should be requisitioned. But he did not have anything, so he was hold at the police station for couple of days and released.

Father took after grandfather and had a literary talent. I remember he made interesting critics when he was reading some literary pieces. He understood and felt the phrase. He composed verses, but they remained unpublished. Father was a religious man. He observed Jewish rites the best way he could.

I remember that on the balconies of the houses, where a lot of Jews used to live, sukkaths were installed. Father tried doing that as well. He took me to the synagogue. He did not go there regularly, just on Sabbaths and holidays. He wore secular clothes. He did not realize his talent. He was capable in many ways.

He was very good at mathematics. He was distinguished by that. E.g. he could calculate in his mind very well. Now, those calculations can be done on computer, but at that time people were astound by the fact that as he could do it very quickly in his mind.

For instance, he did such a trick- we took domino in both hands, showed it and hid it right away. He told us the number of scores in a jiffy. He had a beautiful tenor voice. In general, he could have become great, if not for vicissitudes of fortune.

Mother was not religious. She was secular. First she started working as a janitor with skimpy wages. She was not educated, but she was very active. She went abroad for 3 times. It is not clear where she found money for it. First she went to England.

When my sister was born, mother decided that she should be educated in France. Having taken some things, she and my sister left for Bordeaux. The sister was given to the boarding house at the age of 4. They had stayed there for half a year and came back to Odessa.

The third trip was to Brazil. My sister told me that mother decided to visit her sister Raisa. Mother took my little sister and they went there. Raisa married a minister of finance there. They lived in a luxurious place. My sister recalled that when they came there they felt as if they were unwanted guests.

Raya came to us in a silken lingerie and mother rushed to give her a hug, but aunt pushed her away. «Do you remember!» - cried out the hostess. In a week my mother and sister left the place. Sister does not have pleasant recollections from that trip.

Soon Brazilian minister of finance shot himself because he was involved in embezzlement. We did not keep in touch with our relatives from London and Brazil since 1920s as the Soviet regime disapproved of those who kept in touch with relatives who lived in capitalistic countries 8.

We were supposed to fill in the paragraph regarding connections abroad in every employment, admission and military form. I wrote that I had relatives abroad, but I did not keep in touch with them. I do not know about their fate.

Father did not want to leave anywhere. He mostly stayed in. My parents had three children. The first girl Luba died young, and then my sister Alexandra was born in 1908 and I was born in 1920. My sister was very beautiful.

Growing up

I was called Albert. It was like a joke. My elder sister’s name was Alexandra, but everybody called her Shurochka [tender name for Alexandra]. When I was born mother wanted to have a son and she decided to call me Alexander. «How come, - everybody said – you have a daughter Alexandra!». Аt that time there was a popular cookie in Odessa «Albert and Maria». So, mother named me Albert.

Mother and father got along very well, though they were rather poor. They had such vastly different characters! Of course, our energetic ands brisk mother was the head of the family. They rarely spoke Yiddish, they mostly spoke Russian. We lived in Odessa on the third floor of a 3-storied stone house, located in the place very close to the center.

First, we had couple of rooms. Then things changed and we were left only one room and a half. Our apartment was turned into communal 9. We had a lot of neighbors. Most of them were workers from publishing houses. A large Russian family was our neighbors. I remember that mother marked Orthodox Easter with them for some reason and baked Easter cakes.

We always had matzhah in the house. Mother always cooked casseroles and tsimes from that. Even now I can’t live without matzah. Besides, mother was born in Purim. The date of this holiday is not fixed, so she did not know the exact date of her birthday. She always marked it on Purim. That is why I always associate Purim with my mother’s birthday.

I would like to say couple of more words about my mother’s character. When father was arrested for the third time and was asked to give the gold which we did not have, everybody thought that father would be killed. He was taken out and threatened that he would be shot if he did not give away gold.

I was either 9 or 10 and I remember what happened. Mother stood out. She rushed to the head of NKVD, Zaydenburg. Mother did her best for father to be released. She made friends with that Zaydenburg and moreover, when she came to Moscow, where Zaydenburg lived, she stayed with his family. He liked my mother a lot. She was a charming person.

Father was apolitical. He had never expressed his opinion on politics. For some period of time he was a ‘lishenets’ [editor’s note: After the revolution of 1917 people that had at least minor private property (owned small stores or shops) or small businesses were deprived of their property and were commonly called ‘deprivees’ [derived from Russian ‘lishit’, ‘deprive’].

Between 1917 middle of 1930s this part of population was deprived of civil rights and their children were not allowed to study in higher educational institutions. Communists declared themselves to protect the interests of the oppressed working class and peasants and only representatives of these classes enjoyed all civil rights.]

He was in Odessa deprived of the right to vote and elect as he was a private entrepreneur. I remember that in Odessa there was a big board on Chernomor Boulevard by the monument to Pushkin. There was a full list of deprivees, who lived in Odessa. My father Benjamin Tsessarskiy was included in that list. I did well at school, but I was not admitted to Komsomol 10 because of that.

It is difficult to say who impacted my character more. I think that not only my family had influence on me. We, boys and girls, practically stayed on the street. There was a small saw-mill in the neighboring yard. I remember how we, guys, built a hut from the waste wood of the plant.

We organized commune there. It meant that all of us snitched the products from home, took them to the commune and shared in equal pieces. In general, I was a convinced communist. The formula itself ‘liberty, equality, brotherhood’ was so close to my heart that I thought that there could not be anything higher than that.

In fact, Odessa was a Jewish town. About 80 percent of population were Jews. Odessa even before revolution was out of the Pale of Settlement 11. There was a large stratum of Jewish population. I remember two synagogues in Odessa, but there were a lot of them.

One Brodski synagogue [editor’s note: Brodski family – Russian sugar manufacturers. They started sugar manufacturing business in 1840s. Organized the 1st sugar syndicate in Russia in (1887). Sponsored construction of hospitals and asylums in Kiev and other towns in Russia, including the biggest and most beautiful synagogue in Kiev and Odessa] was at Pushkin street. It was very beautiful.

I remember when father took me to the synagogue for the first time, I was surprised that women were separately upstairs, at the gallery and men were downstairs. There was a beautiful cantor who had a tenor voice. It was not the main choral synagogue.

The main synagogue was far from our house, closer to the maritime boulevard. There was an Orthodox church close to our house, located at Bazarnaya street. I remembered the toll of the church bell. I recall the bell toll and the clatter of the trams coming from Rishelyevskaya street and turning towards our house. Rishelyevskaya was the center of the city.

Then it was renamed Lenin Street. Now it is called Rishelyevskaya again. The street stretches from train station to the opera theater. I remember guys running on the street. Our Bazarnaya Street was paved with pebble. Mother was very irritated by the tar on my clothes. But that tar was all over as carts were lubricated with tar.

There were a lot of carts on the street heading to the market. Tram was the most frequently used transport, but people preferred walking. There were cabs. But we did not use them, as we were poor. Once mother put me to droshky (sulky) and the cabman drove me along Pushkinskaya Street.

When I was a child, there were few cars. I saw only one in Odessa. It was a big event for us, boys, when it was driven along the street and of course we did not find that transport dangerous.

Mother was a housewife, but she could not tend me as she was not patient enough to take care of me. I was on my own, spending most time in the street. As far as I remember at the age of 5 or 6 I was given to the group of children headed by German governess.

Besides, mother said that the first words spoken by me were German, as my nanny was a German. I felt the language and my knowledge in the German group got better. I gradually studied the language at school and at the institute.

My preparation for school was even good for the 2nd grade. Some teachers taught me as well as kin and acquaintances. I went to the 2nd grade in 1930 of Russian 10-year school. Repressions 12 commenced. Something was happening at school.

The school headmaster Vyshnevetskiy was fired as ‘peoples’ enemy’ 13 and was supposed to be exiled. I remember when I was sitting in my classroom; the headmaster came in every classroom, said goodbye and asked to think kindly of him. He came in our class. He was a tall, handsome Jew with a cane.

He said: «I would like you to grow up as true people. Think kindly of me». He vanished. Then I was told that he had been shot. There was a new headmaster in our school. He was a hard-core communist. He was obnoxious. He wore breeches, military double-breasted jacket and pince-nez. The entire school hated him.

Senior students locked him in the classroom by putting a swab on the handle on the opposite side. He had stayed there for 2 days. He was not let out. Then militia came and terrible things were happening! He was freed and he shortly left school. The instigators got away with that. There was no trouble. There were reprimands, parents were called, but nobody was expelled from school.

A lot of people from Odessa used to like Trotsky 14. When Trotsky was exiled abroad (he took a steamboat), there was an incident and a friend of our family told us about it. Our pal was KGB guy. He was sent to the place, wherefrom Trotsky was interned. The whole quay was patrolled.

Trotsky was walking up the ship’s ladder and his hat was carried away with the wind. One of KGB guys took his hat and gave it to Trotsky and another KGB guy took Trotsky’s hat. Both of them were shot- one for keeping something from Trotsky and another one for giving Trotsky a hat.

I had a lot of friends at school. All of them were of different nationalities- Jews, Ukrainians, Russians. There was a large caboodle of friends and nobody ever came up with the nationality issue. My bosom friends were 3 boys – Jews Kisa Averbuch, Dusya Marder and a Russian Oleg Shepelyov.

Kisa and Dusya went to navy school institute having finished school. When the war was unleashed they were sent in the vicinity of Moscow as marines. Oleg Shepelyov was close to them in evacuation. He was starving. Then he told me that Dusik found him and saw how indigent he was.

When Dusik left, Oleg found a wad of money on his table. Dusik left everything he made as an officer. In couple of days he perished. Kisa Aberuch died shortly before him. There were a lot of Jews in my class. We sang and danced to Jewish songs.

There I learnt how to dance Jewish dance Freilichs with all ‘frills’. It was very organic to me. Then my wife’s father, a Russian man, a very good composer, asked me to show how to dance Freilichs. He wanted to feel the Jewish melody. I showed him the dance and sang Jewish melodies.

The headmaster of our school Grigoriy Markovich Radzinskiy was a Jew. When he was at the lead, there was no anti-Semitism. He was a communist and internationalist. I was a pioneer 15. I was not worried for not having been admitted to Komsomol, I took part in social life all the same.

I was given all kinds of tasks and responsible assignments: organize talent contest, issue wall newspaper, organize a tour. The director told me once: «You know Abik, when you finish school and enter the institute, you can join Komsomol as it would not be important there that your father was a deprivee». At school everybody called me Abik, not Albert.

I was a not an excellent, but a good student. I did not ‘see’ books until the 4th grade. I loathed reading! I was next to impossible to make me read a book. There were book ‘peddlers’ (book seller) The peddler brought all kinds of books in the bag, took all of them to the floor so that people could choose what they wanted.

Almost all book peddlers were Jews. One book peddler came to us. He was a lean stooped elderly Jew. He could hardly carry the bag with the books. Father said: «Well, let’s try». He hurled all the books on the floor. First I took no interest. Then all of a sudden I saw I book with an interesting cover- rapid river and ice-floe.

There were men with rifles and jumping dogs on the one side of the river and a woman with a baby in her hands was trying to cross the river. It was the novel written by Harriet Beecher Stowe «Uncle Tom’s Cabin». I started reading it. Since that moment I had become a bookworm.

I even read in the tram hanging on the footboard (there were no automatic door that time) When I was in Odessa I came to liking Sholom Aleichem. I should say he was one of my favorite writers. I read his books in Russian translation. My uncle Solomon always played Sholom Aleichem.

He was the one who plied me with love for that writer. They staged performances in the clubs crowded with people. I understood the humor of Sholom Aleichem owing to my uncle, who felt it really well.

I was in a drama circle at school and read a lot in the team of the fiction reader. When I was very young, I met a very interesting family- the Lazurskiys. Once mother took me to the sea. There was a performance in some sanatorium. It turned out that it was the team of artistic reading of Odessa circle of scholars.

They were reading a play sitting at the table. They did it so wonderfully that no decorations were needed, things were clear. My mother was so active that she came up to them when the performance was over and said: «I would like you to take my son in your team. He is a gifted boy».

I was appointed a meeting at the place of professor Lazurskiy. He was the professor at the chair of Russian Language in Odessa University. He was a Russian man, captivated by Russian classics. He was fired from the University at that time as he was apolitical.

He taught Russian Lev Tolstoy’s 16 children for two years. Thus, Ukrainian, Russian cultures mixed up in me. I went to the 7th grade. I remember when I came over to them they asked me to recite something. I recited a monologue written by Lermontov 17. When a child is reciting anything of the kind, adults burst into laughter. All of them were laughing, but I was admitted. They said I would be given the roles of adolescents, not old people.

It was the year of 1937. I finished school and I wanted to enter theatrical institute. But I was advised not to do that as I ought to acquire a serious profession so that theatre would be just a hobby. I decided to go to Moscow and enter IFLI (Institute of Philosophy and Literature).

I dreamt to become a writer. I passed exams, walked around the institute and was dawned that I it was not something that I needed. I had my documents on me. I thought that I should be closer to people and entered the 2nd Medical Institute, Therapeutic Department. When I was taking exams, there was no anti-Semitism. Professor Topchan, a Jew, was the rector. At that time it was not important that he was a Jew. First, I lived in my sister’s place. Then I moved to the hostel.

Sister lived in Moscow before I came there. Se got married in Odessa. Her husband Jacob Itskovich got a mandatory job assignment to Biysk, where he worked as a chief engineer of cold storage facility. Then he was transferred to Moscow and worked as a chief engineer of the ministry of food industry. He was a talented person. He designed and later was the head of cold-storage facility, which is still there.

I felt the dreadful year of 1937 in my sister’s house. The head of ministry, where my sister’s husband worked, was repressed. The neighbors of my relatives were responsible workers in food industry. When he was arrested all neighbors of the brother-in-law gathered in his apartment and thought how to rescue him.

They decided that they would write a letter to Stalin explaining what a good person and loyal communist he was. It was decided that everybody would come back in the morning and sign the letter. Nobody came in the morning, but my brother-in-law wrote a letter and sent it to Stalin.

After that my sister packed his things and rusks. All of us were aware what was ahead of him. But my brother-in-law was not touched. Later on we found out why. In the 1920s he went to America with the group of engineers to study cold-storage facilities production.

Some White Guard was nagging on them, cursing Soviet Union etc. My brother-in-law was a patriot. He turned to that guy and slapped him. That fact was revealed as there was a stooge in the group. The story was written in the personal record of my brother-in-law and it saved him.

Then they read that case to him. It was a horrible time. There were meeting at our institute where Komsomol members were demanded to reject their repressed parents. It was abominable. I remember I made friends with one student. We went for a stroll and I saw her home.

Once she came up to me and said: «I think, you should not keep friendship with me, as this night my father was arrested». He was arrested and shot and nobody knew the reason for that. I kept on being friends with her, but most of my fellow students turned back on her.

We did not believe that it was the state politics. We thought that local officials were mistaken and the leadership of the country was misinformed. We found all kinds of reasons for that, but we could not picture that it was the politics of the state. Even at that time I was a convinced communist.

Gradually I was getting to understand what kind of party elite it was. It was degeneration. People were far from the ideals, which inspired us. I saw their real value when after the War 18, I came across with them at work.

We had a wonderful team of teachers at the institute. I was very fond of histology, the science of cells. The head of histology chair was Boris Lavrentiev. He was one of the founders of neurohistology.

He was deputy rector of the institute, where all medical branches were combined. He was an original man. He was internationalist. He knew foreign languages and loved foreign culture. On his jubilee we did not give him the books written by Stalin, but by Shakespeare. He was happy.

During the war

Our teachers were great experts, professionals. They were beyond politics. Our Komsomol Committee [editor’s note: Komsomol units existed at all educational and industrial enterprises. They were headed by Komsomol committees involved in organizational activities] consisted of romantic people.

I joined Komsomol at the institute. It was natural. I was not involved in social work. I was fond of theatre. There was so-called peoples’ theatre in the culture house of medical workers. I played some parts in the performances there and I was a success.

On the 19th June 1941 I got an official invitation to the troupe of that theatre. I was in my fourth year. In three days the war was unleashed. Things were predetermined. What kind of theatres was I to think about! I ought to be in the lines.

I had a premonition that our country was imminent with a catastrophe. I was flatly against the non-aggression treaty between USSR and Germany signed by Ribbentrop and Molotov 19. I was really perturbed that a good Poland was invaded for no reason and a better part of it had been annexed 20.

I was so displeased when some famous entertainer was mocking Poland and its political leaders during one of his performances. Poland was breathing with culture, literature, music. It was close to me and I could not comprehend how people could have acted and talked like that towards Poland.

Then there was a Finnish war 21. I was thinking how we could have dared attacking somebody else’s country for the sake of improving our territory, but I was afraid to share such thoughts with anybody. I was rampantly against that war, but there were a lot of people who went to that war as volunteers.

One of my pals perished there and I could not get why on earth did he go there?! But life went on. I was young. I had my friends, hobbies, theatre, girls. I met my wife-to-be at the institute. Her name was Tatiana Triodina.

There were four close school friends. All of them entered one institute and lived in one hostel. First, I met a friend of my future wife, Zhanna. She studied French. I was perplexed that among our students one fluffy girl was reading Three Musketeers by Dumas during the recess. Zhanna’s fate was very interesting.

Her father Joseph Koffman was the organizer of the counter revolutionary uprising in 1918. When the rebels were being arrested, he managed to escape abroad. There he finished the institute, worked. He fell in love with a budding singer in Paris.

He got married. She gave birth to 2 children. He was mendaciously called in Moscow as if offered a job. He was arrested immediately and exiled to the north. His wife dropped everything and left for USSR. He lived in an exile in the construction area of some canal. He was in charge of some concrete laboratory.

Construction manager got an assignment to construct canal Moscow-Volga and invited Zhanna’s father who had been released by that time, to be in charge of the same laboratory in Dmitrov [30 km from Moscow]. He and his wife decided to take daughters there. They lived in France and studied at Catholic convent.

Zhanna was a convinced monarchist. Mother went to Paris to bring her daughters. Our embassy helped to abduct the girls and mother took them to Russia by train. Zhanna’s elder sister talked her into fleeing to Paris on their way. And again Mother asked the embassy to help her out.

The girls were found and taken to Russia. Then Zhanna talked her sister into escaping to Paris via Finland. They skied to Leningrad. They were caught there and taken back to Dmitrov. When Zhanna came to the medical school she gradually turned into a convinced communist. She and her sister were arrested in 1948.

They had spent years in dreadful camps. I wrote all kinds of letters to protect her. I was writing that she was a communist. After Stalin’s death in 1953 she came back and obtained a one-room apartment in Moscow. Now she lives in France. When she comes to Moscow, she takes part in the demonstrations of the communists.

It turned out that Zhanna, whom I met, had a friend Musa. I liked Musa very much. She was a Jew, born in Georgia. I started courting her. Then I noticed her friends and one of them took my heart. It was my future wife Tatiana. Both of us joined scientific circle of histology.

I recall when I was in the 3rd year, we were sitting at one desk in the library and reading books. The librarian came up to us with a carnation in a glass and put it between us. How could she see that we were in love with each other? It must have been noticeable.

On the 9th of May 1941 we got married. I was well accepted in Tanya’s family. It was a wonderful intellectual family. I loved my wife’s parents. There were no talks of my nationality, wife’s father did not understand what anti-Semitism was about.

Wife’s mother Olga Triodina was noble. She was very attached to me and we got along very well. Wife’s father Peter Triodin was chief health officer of construction site out of Moscow – Volga canal. Besides, he composed music. I was moved by it. His opera ‘ Silver Prince’ was on in Bolshoy Theatre 22, then it was recorded and it was broadcast on the radio. They lived in Dmitrov. We often went skiing there or to play tennis. After wedding we got a small room in the hostel on the 6th floor, facing the wall with mice.

I remember the outbreak of war. I was on my way to the hostel from my sister’s place. I saw window wide open and heard people crying: «Notification of the government!» and put their wireless sets on the window sills. I was listening to Molotov’s speech 23 when I was in the street: «War».

I dashed to the hostel, where military enlistment office was located. Many of my fellow students rushed to the military commissar. He was called. He looked like he had not slept the whole night. He asked: «Where are you going?» «Well, we are from the hostel of the medical institute!». «No, we are not drafting doctors for a while. We will call you when needed.».

Next morning I darted to the Komsomol Committee of the Institute. There were couple of more students. They were sitting and writing applications to be sent to the front. They were in pencil, on some scraps of paper. The Secretary of Komsomol Committee Lenochka Yankelevich took all those applications and put them in her kerchief, which was on her head. Shortly after I had written the application, we were called off from our practice and we expedited the full course of our medical school.

On the 2nd of July I was called to the Central Komsomol Committee. There was a sentry by the door, who asked my last name. He had a bed sheet in his hand. He was ransacking it and then he drew a piece of paper. It was mine. The hall was overcrowded with young people- students and sportsmen.

I came to the office I was indicated. There were militaries and civilians. They browsed through the list, found my name and asked whether I had not changed my mind. Then I went next door. There was a pretty lieutenant woman. There was a note book in front of her.

She asked my first name, patronymic and last name and put all that data in her notebook. Then I said: «Well. What is next?» I was waiting for some interview. «Nothing, doctor, you are included in the USSR NKVD squad of special purpose.» I asked what special purpose implied.

She said she had no idea. «You would go where they tell you. Your squad would be formed in couple of days on Dinamo stadium. Come there at certain time». That’s it. People from that squad were included in reconnaissance and diverstion partisan groups and squads.

The camp of our squads was on the shootng range of Dinamo stadium out of Moscow. Soon I was allowed to go and take final exams. I lived with my wife in the hostel for a while. The exams were taken perfunctory. The war was in full swing, and people were worried with other things.

That was the way my military life had started. Wife was not mobilized, though she also filed her request to be drafted in the squad where I was to serve. In 2 days, she was expelled as they thought that husband and wife should not serve together. Tatiana was very upset about it.

Before war mother came to Moscow from Odessa and lived with my sister. Soon she and her sister were evacuated in Kazan and father stayed in Odessa. Right on the eve of occupation his neighbors took him to Middle Asia.

The squad, where I started my army service was called «Separate motorized rifle squad of the special purpose squad». First, our squad did not study. I was assigned as a doctor there. I was conferred the title of doctor of the 3rd rank, i.e. captain. The squad was three quarters intelligent.

The future guerillas, who were pictured like men with beard, but in fact they were 20-year old men. They were in the lines and were just turned into partisans and diversionists. There was a large group of sportsmen in our squad. They were record-holders in Russia and in the world.

They were physically strong and well-trained guys. But there was only one gun for the whole squad. To boot, some of its mechanisms was malfunctioning. Besides, we had carbines, rifle, pistols and grenades, All of us were clad in military uniforms. We had to be trained from rudiments.

Germans were close by, Mozhaisk [about 109 km to the west from Moscow] was captured. It was assumed that Moscow would be attacked from there. Hitler himself came to Mozhaisk. We received an assignment in the vicinity of Mozhaisk, in forest. General Morozov was the commander of the squad consisting of 32 people.

We were supposed to be disguised in the dugs-out. In the event that Germans broke through in Moscow, we had to let them move forward a little bit so that we would go to the nearest rear positions and start attacking.

We started digging the dugs-out. It was very hard for me. The sportsmen helped me settle the medical dug-out. When we were disguising in the earth and it was clear that Germans were about to break through to Moscow, I was given a truck to go to Moscow very quickly to take the medicine at the warehouse.

I was driving along Minsk high way. There was not a single soldier on the whole, it was clear. The closer I was getting to Moscow, the more tanks I saw. It was the 16th of October 1941. I was approaching Kuntsevo, where I was on my training in the hospital. I saw the patients being evacuated and put in the carts.

When I came to Moscow, I did not see a single policeman, not a single traffic light- so people could go in any direction. Streets were in ashes. Moscow was panic-stricken. I went straight to the warehouse. They did not give the medicine saying that I asked too much considering that there should be much less medicine for 32 people of our squad.

I was trying to explain that it was for a long period of time. Besides we would be receiving local people who fled from captivity. They did not agree and told me to come back in the morning to get what I needed. We came to the warehouse early in the morning.

The director of warehouse was missing and the warden said: «Take as much as you want!» We loaded up the whole truck with things that we needed. I came to the hostel to say good-bye to my wife. She was almost the only one who stayed in the house. Almost all people were gone.

We agreed if Moscow was taken, she would leave with the last soldiers of Red Army. I came back Mozhaisk. I saw Siberian divisions entering adjacent villages. Moscow had been saved for those 2 days. German battalion were in the dugs-out on the opposite bank of Moscow river. It was cold- the beginning of sever frosty winter.

Germans installed a gun in the belfry. Local people were trying to cross iced Moscow river and they were shot. What were we to do? Everybody knew that we were digging there, but we were supposed to do that surreptitiously. Morozov made a decision. For Germans not to cross the river we were supposed to picture ourselves as a military unit.

The 32 of us were to make a sentry service. Each of us was to be in one tenth. The ten of us were walking along the bank. We were changing shifts every 2 hours. We could not stand more, as the frosts were severe. Germans were lightly dressed and had thin rubber boots.

We were in ship skins and in felt boots that is why Germans did not step out of the huts, having been taken by them on the opposite bank. When locals were trying to cross the river, Germans were shooting them. It was dreadful. The villagers were taking babies in the toboggans, holding the elderly.

Germans were shooting at them. They also made attempts at night. In the morning we saw the murdered, lying on the ice. We gave food to those who managed to cross the river and evacuated them to the East. We took the murdered and stacked them in the forest.

We could not bury them as we had small spatulas of combat engineers and it was impossible to break iced earth with them. We left a note with the name of the deceased on the corpses hoping that in due time somebody would bury them. It lasted until December.

I remember that on the 5th of December, one of our soldiers rushed in our room with a grey piece of paper and cried out: «Doctor, look!» This is Stalin’s order on counterattack of our troops in the vicinity of Moscow. It was such a great piece of news! We joined the acting army and moved towards the west.

When we crossed Moscow river following escaping German battalion I saw the frozen bodies of Germans. One of them had a brassier on his head and his eyes were frozen.

I was told to come back to Moscow right away as the squad of 32 people was not supposed to have a doctor. Then I found out that in January 1942 the group under commandment of the Hero of the Soviet Union 24 Dmitriy Medvedev came back from the rear of the enemy.

Medvedev was the leader of the partisan movement in Bryansk oblast, Western Ukraine and many other parts of USSR, occupied by Germans. My fellow student Alexander Feinstein was with them. He told me everything and took me with Medvedev, He managed to get me transferred to his squad, which was being formed at that time.

Medvedev was NKVD worker. His career was not easy. His father was a Jew, ‘vykrest’ (convert from Judaism). He left his family and lived close to Bryansk, in the town of Bezhits. He had 3 sons and all of them worked for в NKVD.

Dmitriy Medvedev was a big-hearted man. He was against certain methods, used in NKVD. He was fired from there for three times and was the director of some warehouse before the very outbreak of war. When the war was unleashed he came to Lubyanka and asked to send him to partisan squads in Bryansk forests, which he knew very well.

Authorities had been considering the issue for three days. Finally he was approved. He collected a group of people and went there. He had conducted some successful operations there and founded partisan movement. When the war was over I went to Bryansk Museum of Partisan Movement.

There is a lot of good information about Medvedev in that museum. When he came back to Moscow, he was awarded with Lenin’s Order, 25. He met Marshal Zhukov 26, asked for his advice regarding organization of the guerilla movement. Stalin held speech on the necessity to form guerilla squads.

Squads were formed from volunteers. The commander was announced and all names were listed. There were 80 men. I was given an assignment out of the 80 people to select those who were healthy. No politics, just health criteria. If a volunteer was healthy, he could join and that was it.

There were 400 volunteers and I had to select 80 men. People were anxious to join the squad. Some of them cheated me trying to look healthy. It was hard for me to select the right ones as I was not experienced. When the squad had been formed we started training.

Nobody knew anything about the forest life, how to walk in azimuth Medvedev taught us that. In May 1942 our first group came to the rear of Germans. We jumped with parachutes from the planes. We had the first training jump out of Moscow, then a military jump in the rear of the enemy.

Before war I would not have thought that I would jump with parachute. We were berserk! In the war times there were no fear and no doubts. The first group landed in Ukraine, but by mistake we jumped in open steppe, not in the forest. There local people informed Germans of that immediately.

The entire group was encircled and exterminated. Only one man survived. He went reconnoitering. We did not have information about group until the surviving reconnoiterer came to another partisan squad and told the story. Then the commander ordered to be landed in the Western Ukraine and start reconnaissance and ‘undermining’ activity there.

We had one passenger plane on us. Only 12 men could go on one trip. On the 10th of June 1942 I was unexpectedly called by Medvedev and told: «Doctor, you were to go with me in the last group. You have to take off now. Reconnoiterer and radio operator was in one of our groups to be landed in the Western Ukraine. He landed on the stamp.

He had an open hip fracture. You will assist him». It was my first flight to enemy’s rear. I did not know what our squad was supposed to do. I was to treat people. I remember that Medvedev came to see me off at the aerodrome.

General lieutenant of the command #4 Sudoplatov, who was in charge of the foreign reconnaissance and partisans divisions came there as well. He looked like a mild and intelligent man. He shook my hand and said: «Well, doctor, find your place in the squad». My wife in Moscow did not know anything about me. Shortly before taking off I dropped a post-card in the mail box.

We flew to the military aerodrome. The plane took off at night. The planes were not in the high altitude and anti-aircraft planes could easily reach them. We were heavily shot along the front line. We were ready to jump off, but we did not have to, things settled down. I did not feel well.

I had the problems with equilibrium and was giddy. We were on the small plane. When we got in the air pits, I was about to faint. We managed to cross the front line and we had to jump following the signal fire. I recall, when we were to jump, the accompanying officer opened the door of the cockpit and said: «Hey, guys, see you. For the Motherland, for Stalin!» The words «For Stalin!» were not associated with that man. He was like a symbol.

When I overstepped the threshold of the plane, it was a pitch dark night and I saw no signal fire as they were far away. I remembered that to turn the parachute I was to pull one strap and the parachute would look like a sail. I did that, but then my head was swimming and I dropped everything.

I thought –be as it may. Within the first minutes when the parachute fell – all straps got twisted - because I had a bag with medicine, food and a gun. It took me 10 seconds or so to put things in order. We were told before: «Hide parachute immediately».

Well, I was not thinking of that! Finally, I took off all things from me and saw somebody approaching towards me with a torch. I was inexperienced. The man noticed me, too. I hid behind the tree. He also hid. Then he asked in Ukrainian : «Who are you?»

I was asking him : « And who are you?» He said: «Are you a doctor or not?» I replied: «Doctor». «Well, let’s move faster and go to the wounded! I have been looking for you for 2 hours». He was also asking «How is Moscow?» «Still there». And suddenly I started remembering: «Oh God, I have been told 100 times that I should not talk to anybody without a password». The password was the derivative of the commander’s name. I told him:

- Bear.
- What?
- Bear.
- What kind of Bear? Are you crazy?
- Password is «Bear»!
- Оh! I forget!

So it was the way we wretched reconnoiterers were acting. I was taken to the dug-out, where the wounded was staying. It was the first operation in my life. When I came up to him I saw: dug-out, dark, the wounded was lying and the splinters of bones were showing up from his leg through torn pants.

He was told, «This is a doctor. He came from Moscow» He said: «Why are you lying?» I came up to him and said: «That’s right, I am a doctor». It was hard for me to treat his wound as that dug-out was like a cellar: dark and dank. Earth was strewing from the top, so I was holding waterproof cape from one end and another guy was holding another end.

I had to work only with one hand. The dug-out was lit with pocket flashlights. There was nobody to assist me. I had to operate without narcosis. He was a brave man. When I was about to put a metallic splint which I brought from Moscow, he said: «Are you nuts? My bone is knitting.

I have to go to Kiev to be disguised as a criminal, who escaped from a Soviet prison and what would I say if they found your metallic splint?» I had to bury that splint. I cut 2 branches and made 2 splints out of them and attached them to the leg of the wounded.

I had to spend about 2 weeks on the East of Ukraine, not far from Chernobyl [60 km from Kiev] before our squad got together. It turned out that a local warden informed Germans about us. On the 27th of July we were besieged by punitive squad and we had our first battle.

The total number of people was 100, i.e. 80 men from our squad and the group which met us. The punitive squad consisted of 200 or 300 men. It was dawn. We were encircled. Germans did not expect that our group to be there. We were armed. All of us had guns and grenades.

The melee started! The entire camp was being shot. Germans were using dumdum bullets, therefore the wounded had terrible wounds- comminuted fracture of upper limbs, severest abdominal wounds. I had to operate on spot. There was no way to go.

The tent, where I had to operate was strewn with the fragments of dumdum bullets. We defeated Germans. About 30 men were killed. We lost only one man 7 or so were wounded. We buried one our perished comrade. After war I came to his grave.

The children from Chernobyl told me that they took flowers to our monument. We had to move forward. We had to take wounded and asked to send a plane from Moscow. The transportation was a mere ordeal for the wounded – as there was a lot of joggling on the forest roads and hassocks.

Every time we came across a tussock, I heard the wounded cry. My heart was about to stop at that moment. We were carrying the wounded in hands via cut logs, meanwhile Germans were looking for us as they knew where we headed. We ran out of products taken from Moscow.

We snatched a semi-dead horse in the forest, cut and started eating it raw, as we count not make fire in the forest. It was abhorrent, but we had to do that. Then more trouble started- beriberi, scurvy. I treated everybody with the infusion from birch buds. It was repulsive and guys did not want to have it.

Finally we found a place for a plane to land. The plane was sent, but we chose the wrong site for a plane. The plane landed and stuck in marsh and we could not have found it out beforehand as there was snow on the top of the marshes. We had to burn the plane and the crew stayed with us.

We were moving forward. The pilots were with us and now they were looking for a possible landing ground. Finally in a month, we found a good meadow. At that time there was a terrible genocide of Jews in Western Ukraine. Those dreadful killings of Jews were happening, when our squad was there. We were the witnesses, but we could not leave the bushes not to reveal ourselves.

Once our reconnoiterer saw a 6 or 7-year old Jewish boy on his way from the town. He was shivering and stark. His name was Pinya. His whole family was shot, but he managed to escape. The reconnoiterer took him in hands and brought in our squad. We put Pinya on the plane with the wounded and sent him in Moscow.

I tried to find him after the war. I found out that he was in the orphanage first, then he finished vocational school, then his traces were lost. Later on, we managed to save another kid. It happened in Rovno [about 900 km to the South-West from Moscow]. Jews were taken to the fusillade.

One mother was carrying a 4-month baby. She was the last. She tripped and fell down. Germans shot her. The girl was covered with mother’s blood. When the column left, our underground guys rushed there, took the girl, washed her and gave her a shelter. The local people helped. The girl survived.

After the war we tried to find her. There is a Russian TV program, where people are looking for the reported missing. We informed of the children who were saved. That girl let know of herself. She did not know anything about her fate. She thought that she was Polish, as these were Polish people who helped her survive.

She is married, has 3 children. We are still looking for Pinya. I had to go through one of the sorrowful moments in my life on our way to Rovno. The local population was aware of Soviet partisans (we were clad in Soviet army uniforms). They also knew that that there was a doctor among the partisans and they often asked for help. I went to the villages, accompanied by two gunned soldiers.

Once we had to go through the hamlet, which was half- Jewish. There were 3 of us. I thought that we would be given food in the village. When we were approaching the village, we noticed that it had been besieged by German soldiers. We counted them. There were about 200 men. We were observing from the hill. There was a large shed in the center of the village.

The gates of the shed were locked. Germans were fussing around it and pouring out something by the shed. We understood that the shed with people would be burnt! There were only three of us. What could we have done? We had only one pistol and 2 guns on us.

That feeling of being helpless and no way to do anything was the most terrible thing having happened to us. No sound was coming from the shed. Even when it was set on fire, there was no noise. The whole Ukrainian part of the village was brought together and made watch the execution.

The minutes of stillness of the burning shed full of people were horrible. There were 6 or 7 Jews in our squad. Not only the Jews, but all other partisans were strongly against extermination of Jews by Germans.

Our squad was given two tasks. The first one was to capture the regional center and continue liberation process from there, but then we were given another task- to go to Rovno, where the administration of the occupied Ukraine was located. We were supposed to perform reconnoitering and diversion activity there.

The task was given by a special department of foreign reconnaissance of the ministry of internal affaires. At that time we did not know that our reconnaissance had something to do with the preparation for the Stalingrad battle 27. We were to observe the railroad ways and find out when Germans would start moving new groups from West to East.

Such messages were sent to Moscow. Only after war we found out that it was one of the elements of the preparation of the counterattack of our troops in the vicinity of Stalingrad. There were 10 radio-operators in our group. Every day we had 2-3 sessions with Moscow. There were great many reconnoiterers in different occupied towns of Western Ukraine.

In a month or two we started getting a lot of messages. We could not ask for planes any more, as they were positioned far to the West, and the plane could hardly reach any place within a short night. After that we had a lot of battles and we had to take all our wounded with us. We had a mobile hospital.

There was no place to leave the wounded as we did not have the rear and it was too dangerous to leave them in the village. Within the whole period of time only 3 wounded died as there were in the lethal condition. Many people got better even swifter than in peaceful times.

We lived in the forest, slept on earth, even during winter time. We put feet closer to the flame and head to the trunk of the tree. Sometimes we stopped only for 2-3 hours. Germans were constantly chasing us. We had to change the position of the camp very often.

During the entire period in the forest people did not catch quinsy, influenza or rhoenite. But when we had stayed in the village for 2 weeks, things set off. Many came to me saying: «Doctor, I have a sore throat and a running nose!» What a remarkable situation it must have been in the forest.

Besides, there were no cross infections. Each wounded had its own cart and there was no contract. Sanitary requirements were rigidly observed. Medvedev was stern. We built a bathhouse in the forest. We used branches to build the walls. Simmering water was poured on the stones to produce the steam.

The most terrible thing was that when Germans were retreating, they started to spread typhus barracks. People suffering with typhus came to us. Even the seams of their clothes were teeming with lice. Where was a crackle, when their clothes were being burnt in fire. We took drastic measures. There was only one case of spotted fever in our squad, but the patient recouped.

For the first year and a half I was the only doctor in the squad. There were two more medical assistants. Then Vera Davydova, who studied in our institute, was sent to the squad. Local doctors also came to help. Finally there were 10 doctors. Our squad grew. There were about 3000 men. It was one subdivision.

It was hard as we had to be prompt, mobile and uniform. We started budding off squads. In 1943 Jews were sheltering in the forests near by Rovno to escape fusillade. There were a lot of Jews- old people, kids, women, youth. We could not travel with them. It was a slow-moving category.

Thus, Medvedev made a decision to take the Jews to Byelorussia, where it would be easier for them to hide on dense marshy area. There were a lot of guerrillas. We formed a rather big Jewish group. We sent our partisans to accompany them. Some of the Jews stayed with us.

Those were young people who were apt for the battles and willing to fight. There were a lot of good and brave guys among them. There was such a lad Golub. He was truly distinctive in the battle. He was very loved and appreciated in the squad. He was a great guy.

There was one thing which perturbed me. I brooded on it a lot. When thousand of people were taken to the execution place, there were guarded only by couple of policemen and nobody made an attempt to run. I was asking: «Why it happened? If people scattered, three quarters of them would have remained alive»

They told me: «It was an inner despondence, feeling ourselves liked chased down preys». When doctor Mashitskiy and his family were taken to the squad, I found a bottle with strychnine with him «Why!?» - «If Germans had captured us, the whole family would have taken strychnine».

He did not want to give me that bottle no matter how many times I repeated that he was among ours and we would be protecting him. It took me a lot of efforts to make him give me the bottle. That strychnine was buried 2 meters deep. He was so scared! I remember he had two children – 5 and 7 year old.

They lived in the hut. Children are children. They were crying and frolicking. When I came in the hut I saw him stopping their mouths. I said: «What are you doing?» He was afraid that we would be mad because children were a bother.

Ukrainian nationalists did not fight Germans. For the two years I had been there, I did not know a single case when they were struggling against Germans. They were constantly fighting with us. They shot from behind, laid ambuscades. About 60 percent of our casualties were coming from Ukrainian nationalists, the so-called fighters for the Independent Ukraine.

When I was a guerrilla in the bounds of Moscow, the local population took us as their own. I did not smoke, but like other fellow soldiers I got the ration of the cigarettes, so I gave them to local guys. They were so happy with that. There was one case in the vicinity of Mozhaisk. There was a severest battle and 2 soldiers survived.

Clad in the uniform they were hiding in the haystack. One local woman Vasilisa Sergeyevna, whom I knew very well after war, went to fetch some hay and heard a voice from the stack: «Auntie, there are two of us. Please bring us some clothes so we can change as we cannot leave this place». She brought them her husband’s clothes.

He was in the lines at that time. The soldiers changed their clothes. They were saved by that woman and broke through the German rear via our squad. Things like that happened often. Our troops were besieged. Those who managed to break through came to us. We gave them food and water.

Then they were sent to the collection depots by Moscow. Local people in Western Ukraine behaved in different ways. There was a hunger in the northern part of Western Ukraine. Poor people treated us better than those who lived in the southern part. They considered us to be enemies.

Now they are talking about their merits, but I know for sure that it was not like that. The fragments of the grenade thrown at me by a Ukrainian nationalist are still there. Moreover, they were not merely trying to do away with the representatives of the Soviet regime, but ethnic groups as well. I saw them trying to exterminate the Poles, who lived there. They were using axes, not the rifles. A cart with those gangsters came in some Polish hamlet and they slaughtered people with axes.

Once we were passing by one hamlet on our way from the patients. Suddenly I heard the cries: «Doctor, doctor!!!» We saw a cart with people fleeing from the hamlet. A sobbing woman darted out and cried: «Rescue my son. Husband has been cut, they sonа was about to!»

Those people were Poles. I went there and I saw a boy with his face butchered by the hatchet. I did what I could- sutured the wound. I did not go to that hamlet. Many years have passed and I had a chance to speak to in the group of workers in Moscow. The hall was full of people. I was talking about the war and suddenly a woman from the back of the hall cried out: «Doctor!!!» She rushed to me across the hall. It was the woman from the hamlet. I asked:

- What about your son?
- Survived and became an engineer!

We nabbed those gangsters-nationalist and took them in the camp. I remember one of them. A hulky man with neck like the bull’s. He was caught in Polish hamlet. He was taken to us and shot later on. Ukrainian nationalists, living in the villages, gave away all local Jews.

We acted in Rovno, Lvov [about 1000 km to the south-west from Moscow], Lutsk and Vinnitsa. There was headquarters of Hitler’s troops in Vinnitsa. We disclosed it. I should say that local people with the exception of the rich ones, who mostly lived on the south of the Western Ukraine, were very helpful and compassionate.

Especially indigent people, who lived from hand to mouth, helped us a lot. God Gracious, there were such poor villages! They burned chips to get warm and survived for the sake of kitchen-gardens. Rich thought us to be enemies. Most of our supplies were coming from German trucks.

When Germans were taking grain, meat, product to be sent to Germany, which started starving, we were bombing them. I recall there was a 200-liter barrel with spirit. It was very important for us not just for the sake of drinking, but to get warm in the forest during wintertime; 50-100 per man…ooh!

Nobody let himself drink more. The barrel was enough for the whole year. There was no binge. There was a man, responsible for the barrel of spirit. It was handed out only as per order of the commander.

Even if I needed it for medical purposes, I was given spirit only as per order of Medvedev. Often we were starving. There was time when we had been eating the ‘gruel’ consisting of flour and water, for a month and a half. We picked up berries in the forest. It was hard.

We had been in more than 80 battles for 2 years. We had not lost a single battle, but we had a lot of casualties. Everybody participated in the battles. The cook took a rifle and started shooting. The sanitary unit was also involved in battles, though in accordance with the international convention medicals were not supposed to fight.

There was no other way-out. Once we were trying to undermine German echelon with tanks. We had 2 wounded, whom we took aside, but Germans started approaching suddenly. I had to fire at them other than that they would have taken the wounded. When we had German captives as a result of the battle, I had psychological problems.

They were shot as we could not carry them with us. Once I was to cross examine one German officer (I spoke German a little bit) who was cooped up. I came up to see how he was doing. He understood that he was doomed. He was walking back and forth behind the partition and mumbled one and the same: «Heil, Hitler, Heil Hitler!»

Either he was trying to plea for rescue or he was trying to fall asleep with those ‘incantations’. The most terrible reminiscence was when I was interrogating another captive. He was an artisan guy, but a hard-core stickler of Hitler. What could we do?! He was shot.

I had another function in the camp- make forged papers and documents for our reconnoiterers. I was the one only who knew how to type on the typing machine with the German font, but it was of paramount importance for the leading reconnoiterer Kuznetsov [editor’s note: Nikolay Kuznetsov (1911-1944) is the legend of Soviet reconnaissance.

In the period of Great Patriotic War was involved in the actions of guerilla squad in Western Ukraine under the lead of D. Medvedev. He was a cover agent picturing himself as a German officer. He exterminated and kidnapped a lot of outstanding Germans from Hitler troops. Was killed by Ukrainian nationalists] to get the documents.

He was not involved in processing of the forged documents. I was the one who was doing it. Those documents worked out OK and there was a certainty that things went smooth. I typed on the trophy German typing machine. There were cases, when I had to go to Kuznetsov for a secret meeting to update his traveling documents.

In Moscow he was given the officer’s book for the name of lieutenant Paul Zibert. One year passed. He frequently showed up in the town as if he came back from the front being on the trip regarding supplies. We decided to ‘promote him in the rank’. It was necessary to type in a new title- – captain- in his officer’s book.

I was really worried. I was afraid to make a mistake while typing in a new title. It was of a lethal danger. I had been typing that word on the blank piece of paper. When I put a new Kuznetsov’s officer’s book in the typing machine, he turned back and I typed in the word. A lot was written about Kuznetsov, but there was a lot of slander.

He was depicted as dashing and fortunate… Nothing of the kind. They wrote that he was a womanizer and got a lot of attention from women. He was a common guy from Ural, though he was very gifted, smart and was fluent in the language. He was born in a hamlet in Ural. His father was a peasant.

At school he had a very good teacher of German language. I met her after the war. She said that he was extremely inquisitive and had a great penchant to the languages. He had an excellent command of German language by the 7th grade. At that time a group of German experts came to the plant in the town where he lived.

They needed a man who knew German. Nikolay was recommended. He was given odd jobs at design bureau, where Germans worked. He communicated with them and improved his knowledge.

Then he was hired by NKVD. Of course, he was a man of the talent. I do not know whether he was a good actor, but he had a stern inner discipline and could control his nerves. He took a lot of courageous actions. People mostly knew that he had murdered certain people or kidnapped certain people.

If considering only the acutest military actions he had taken, they seem to have lasted for a month or a month and a half, but he had been in the reconnaissance for a year and a half. Everyday he had a routine job: «what these people are saying, what those people are saying».

He heard a phrase of one of the officers and cogitated on that. All things spoken were summarized, analyzed and reported to Moscow. Nobody mentioned that, but it was the most important thing. He was a very brave man with a very strong will. I had to operate on him. Kuznetsov was wounded with the fragment of a grenade, he flung at a German general.

We had one ampoule with Novocain and we decided to use it only for the commander. Medvedev ordered to give it to Kuznetsov. He knew that there was only one Novocain. Kuznetsov refused from it. I cut him without narcosis. He neither moaned nor gritted with his teeth. He just was sitting and looking aside as if it was not happening to him. Such an ability to go oblivious inwardly is a rare quality of people.

Local people who escaped from the captivity, came to us. Somebody from the headquarters talked to them and put a special entry in the note-book: who, wherefrom, contacts etc. For the entire period 8 stooges were sent to us. Six out of them were divulged and one of them managed to escape and bring the punitive to us. It was a severe battle.

It lasted for 24 hours or so. Two regiments of special trained punitive squads were sent to us. They were experienced in fighting with partisans in France. They were re-positioned here. Germans decided to do away with us. It was a hard battle and we managed to win it in the end. We took 80 carts with ammunition, provision and three cannons.

The spy infiltrated in a very cunning way. He rescued one Jewish lady and dentist from fusillade. Then he made contact with us, sent the lady to us and came on dates with her to the village where we were positioned. She considered him to be her savior. Soon our underground agents said that he systematically called on Gestapo and was spying on us via that lady. We shot him. He even confessed himself. It was a cruel war.

During war I managed to send letters to my wife for 10 times via reconnoiterers, who were crossing the front-line. In one of my letters I wrote that I regretted of not taking my favorite book “Hamlet’ translated by Lozinskiy. Good thing about it was that there were two columns one in English and another – Russian translation.

On the 8th of March 1943 we had true gifts released from the plane- the letters from our loved ones in Moscow. The headquarters in Moscow took good care of us, kept in touch with them and re-sent their letters by plane. My wife Tanya sent me a book by Hamlet. I was reading the book right by the fire and somebody behind my back started reading in English. It was Grisha Shmuylovskiy, a magnificent connoisseur of English literature. I asked him how he knew about Shakespeare and he said that he had studied at the Institute of Literature and Philosophy.

He wrote a paper about Hamlet by Shakespeare. He found a lot of interesting things, being left out of focus by many people. Then Maxim, the actor from Moscow Theatre, Grisha and I decided to make an amateur performance of Hamlet right by the fire. Grisha said that he would have the part of Ofelia as in Shakespearian times men also played ladies’ parts.

I was to play Hamlet and Maxim Polonius. It was very funny as Grisha was not entitled to take off his gun, and Hamlet was talking to Ofelia with a gun: “Go to the convent”. We were persecuting Gauleiter Erich Koch.

Nikolay Kuznetsov and our whole squad were after him. The reconnaissance informed that Koch was on the point of leaving to the aerodrome to fly to Berlin. The road to the aerodrome was through empty fields with rare bushes. Medvedev decided to send a group there to wait for the motorcade of Koch and shoot them.

Grisha was to participate in that operation. They were missing for 3 days. Koch did not go to the aerodrome, but that had been in ambush without even raising their heads and drank water from the tracks of bovine hooves. When they came back, Grisha gave me the essay, he wrote there. Shortly after that Grisha perished. He was to bring in our squad a messenger with a very important message.

They were caught in the ambuscade and Grisha said to the telephone operator: «Go, I will cover you». He was shooting and suddenly a Ukrainian nationalist showed up from the tree and fired at Grisha. His head was injured. His body was taken to our squad. Half of his head was missing. I was taking it real hard as we made friends. He was a very talented man. His grave is in Transcarpathia.

Those struggles to the state independence of Ukraine, even now are desecrating the tombs of our soldiers. Even Kuznetsov’s grave is desecrated though Ukraine has been independent for 14 years. They have a hard living. Even now they consider those who liberated them to be occupants and guilty of all their troubles.

I was severely wounded in late February 1944. We were moving towards the West to meet Kuznetsov by Lvov. He was reconnoitering there. When we were positioned not far from Lvov, in one of the nationalistic villages as it turned out as we were attacked by «banderovtsi» 28 at night.

Our sanitary unit was on the edge of the village. The hut, where the sanitary unit stayed, was the last in the village. The hostess of the hut came in, lit a kerosene lamp and left. Hardly had she left, rushed two armed men in the hut. Then I understood that she gave them a sign.

One of them looked at me. I was in the officer’s uniform so he shot. I got up, took my Mauser. They dashed outside having seen the weapon in my hands. They started firing at the hut. I was the only one from the medicals who was armed. I crashed 3 windows and shot back.

I could hear a large battle in the village. There were wounded by our hut. In wee hours of the morning I saw a large rifled group creeping to the hut with the wounded. I was afraid that they might break in. I do not know what dawned on me, but I cried out from the window in Ukrainian: «Who are you?» He replied: «Ours» «Ours who?» «Andriy».

I told them to creep back to the forest because the Red ones had slaughtered almost everybody. By chain he sent the message to everybody that they should retreat to the forest. They were creeping back and I was shooting at them from the pistol. I was shooting and thinking what a guile thing to do.

Then I found out that I missed. It turned out that the group which attacked us was a SS subdivision, formed by Germans from Ukrainian nationalists, before Germans were retreating. Then we took the documents. While I was running from one window to another, I was too excited and did not notice that my leg was askew.

I had a splintery fracture of ankle joint. About 30 men were killed in that battle. Our comrade- great and brave, the favorite of our squad Dorpeg Abrodoimov perished. I was wounded. Recently, my comrade, who also took part in the battle, was in that village. Local people told him that there was a battle there and partisan doctor, viz. I, had been killed.

Medvedev was seriously wounded. Then he was even carried in the cart, could not get up and had to give orders while lying. During the civil war he had a fissure in the spine. Forest life was hard, massages did not help. I was on the crutches. Medvedev and I were taken in a cart out of the front line.

Then a truck was sent from Moscow and we went there by truck. It was a long trip. We had crossed all semi-devastated Ukraine. It was horrible. Skeletons of houses were everywhere. Old people lived in dugs-out. They went to the curbs of the roads and looked at us.

I did not think that there would be time when we would have all that restored. I was rendered first aid in the hospital. I had to wait for the bones to knit. It was late autumn 1944. I came back to my wife from the hospital. We lived in the hostel. Mother and sister came back to Moscow from evacuation.

It took me a long time to walk on the crutches and I met the victory day on crutches as well. I did not find out about a victory day by radio, as it was out of order in our hostel. There was the embassy of France in front of our hostel. I saw there was a feast there and everybody was crying: «Victory!» People dashed to the Red Square.

They acted on the spur of the moment. There were banners and posters. How could they have found all that? They lifted up the militaries, who were in the square.

After the war

After war I had military awards. I got 2 Great Patriotic War Orders of the first class 23, Medal of the Partisan of the Great Patriotic War of the first class 30, Medal for Defense of Moscow 31. There are also some jubilee orders and medals.

In 1946 father did not go to mother in Moscow from Middle Asia right away. They rented a room. I asked municipal authorities to give a room for my parents, but nothing changed. Veterans of war were treated differently at that time. There were millions of people, nothing was being built and it was next to impossible to get lodging.

In 1947 mother died from cerebral thrombosis in Moscow. It happened like a bolt from the blue. I came to her, brought her soup and cutlets, cooked by my wife. The last words my mother spoke: «Eat well». She fell asleep and never woke up. She was buried in city Vostryakovskoye cemetery, in the Jewish sector.

It was a secular funeral, though one old man came over and said that he would read a prayer. Father said that he wanted him to pray. After mother’s death father lived in sister’s place and died from heart attack in 1953. He was also buried in Vostryakovskoye cemetery next to the mom.

When the war was over my wife and I lived in the hostel. Here in 1947 our daughter Natalia was born. Wife worked in Moscow children’s hospital and I was taking care of daughter while I was unwell. My wife came home at lunch to feed us.

When I got well, I was invited to Moscow theatre named after Ermolova. I worked as a doctor and I was an actor part time. I played roles in couple of performances there by 1947.

The director of the theater suddenly died. When a new one came, the atmosphere in the team changed for worse dramatically. It was the time of all-in-all baiting of Jews, the so-called anti-cosmopolite campaign 32 and I felt biased attitude towards me. I quitted the theatre.

Once I was called in the administration of the institute and told to move out from the hostel within a day. My wife, out little daughter and I left the hostel. We had no place to stay and I went to the secretary of Moscow Council and was turned down rather roughly.

First my wife and I rented a room. It was expensive and we could not afford it. Then my wife’s relative suggested that we should move in her place. We lived in her kitchen. Then I started working in the system of Moscow health care and I was given a small room in the basement.

Then the municipal department o health care gave me two rooms in a large communal apartment. When I was working for another organization, I was given a separate 3-room apartment in the newly constructed house. It is in the yard of the house I am currently living.

When I left the theater I went to work for the system of Moscow health care. I was to make a hard choice regarding a direction. I did not want to work in the office or in the operating room. The country was being swiftly restored and I did not want to be kept aside.

I began to work in the field of the hygiene of the labor and occupational diseases. The industry was being restored and such occupational diseases as radiation sickness and all kinds of toxicosis were very serious. The lethal rate was very high and the labor conditions were terrible.

I took an interested in that. First I worked in the district, then I was invited for a position of the chief industrial sanitary doctor of Moscow, in charge of military medical institutions. There were 3500 plants in Moscow. Many people came to the devastated city from evacuation, There were 2000000 workers among the evacuees.

I had a lot of tasks to do. I traveled throughout the country, visited construction sites in the remote corners of my country. I actively worked with scientific and research institute of occupational diseases by the Academy of Science of USSR, was the member of the academic council, deputy editor-in-chief of the specialized magazine.

I was always focused on the issues, though it was hard as many of them were secret. Sometimes I was in rather unpleasant situations because of that. When the delegations from America or England came over and asked how many of our patients were afflicted with silicosis, I had not right to tell anything.

So, I had to dodge and it was very difficult. Once I was charge with infringement of 23 items of secrecy. The head of Moscow health care department had been laughing for a long time, but he reprimanded me as he was supposed to react somehow.

Health care system was very influential under conditions of Soviet power. E.g. we not a single project was approved without our visa. We were the experts in all industrial construction projects in Moscow and all over the country. I remember foreign delegations were envious of us because it was not like that in their countries.

When I came to the plant, the director knew if he did not fulfill my instructions his work would be considered by the board of the party control and the sanctions might have been very rigid. Our science was leading in the field. Very many standards introduced by us were the most rigid in the world. It was good and there were much less occupational diseases.

Though, I saw the system rotting. Within Moscow I was involved in large organizational issues ands saw the injustice of the system. The party was turned into a red tape apparatus. The rations received by all party bonzes, close distributors, were abominable.

Party leadership assigned dull people to the leading positions either because of the bribes ore nepotism. The system of health care in Moscow was headed by a totally illiterate instructor of the municipal party committee, who was a medical assistant by education, but we had to fulfill his orders. It was a dice system. But it was killing as any dying system. It was dreadful when some untalented people were at the lead of everything, even spiritual.

When I was working in the theatre, I was offered by the local House of Culture to be the head of the drama studio. It was the time when we were living in the basement. We were meeting with the guys from the studio in our place to have a talk and to conduct rehearsals. I and a producer Voinov were in charge of the studio.

He was responsible for staging, I – for literary part. Young people attended the studio and many of them became famous in the art circles. I wrote a derivate play written by Spanish playwright Lope De Vega. The leaders of cultures were indignant about it.

Somebody spread a rumor that we made the guys from the studio to sing with our blood and all kind of other nonsense. In the end the studio was closed down. It had worked for 3 years. Then I wrote a comedy “Intriguer”. She went through 3 contest rounds, was in the final round, but then a dignitary from the ministry of culture showed up, read it out loud and said indignantly that the play was anti-soviet. It was a nightmare.

I was in trouble and they even wanted to expel me from the party. That play of mine is still unpublished. It was a horrible time. Illiterate officials concocted mendacious anti-Soviet motifs in literary pieces and dramas and did not let the authors breathe so to say.

Neither before nor during war did I feel anti-Semitism. For example, people from my squad did not know what nationality their comrades were. There were guys in my squad, who did not mention their nationalities. I wrote stories about them. Then my book was published collected stories “Reminiscences of partisan doctor’.

I found out that the characters of my book were Jews from the reviews to my book. It was also written there that the author paid a lot of attention to the people of his nationality, and therefore he did not recommend that the book would be published. Thus, I found out that people, with whom we fought together, were Jews. That book was published later. It was published by the publishing house Soviet Writer in 1956 in the amount of 10000 copies.

State anti-Semitism was double-died. In 1948 Mikhoels 33 was murdered. Nobody believed in the public version that it was an accident. It was clear that it was assassination if his theatre was closed down and the troupe was dissolved. I was in his theatre.

The King of Lyres was the highest literary piece I had even seen staged in the theatres. What an actor Mikhoels was ! Though I remember that some officials, who were at the performance, asked: «Why a Jew should be the King of Lyres?» Assassination of Mikhoels commenced persecution of Jews- cosmopolites etc.

am grateful that I came across such an experience. I was invited in the ministry of health care and offered a job in the international department. At that time I was lured by the opportunity to go abroad. I was to fill in the form. When I was filling in item 5 34, the employee who was standing behind my back, asked if I was fluent in English. Having heard my negative answer, he said that I did not fit. Then I understood what it was all about. I was so happy that I was not employed there!

During the struggle against cosmopolites I was working in the system of Moscow health care. Our chief doctor Valentina Postnikova was a great person. The instructor of the regional party committee attended our party meeting. He started talking about cosmopolites.

Postnikova said that she had just graduated from the Institute of Marxism and Leninism and she was taught there that main motto of our party was internationalism. But is this preaching of the instructor of the party committee? The guy turned pallid and dashed out from the room.

oon I became the secretary of the party organization. The head of the health care department said that she was called to the regional committee where she was suggested that she should make a list of the Jews, she considered to be exiled to Siberia from Moscow.

On my way to the regional party committee I met the 3rd secretary of the committee who was to tackle that issue. He told me: «Though you are our man, but you have a Synagogue over there!». I said that those people who were working there were loyal soviet people and good professionals.

He told me to ponder things over. “Fun” began! I was the member of the academic council of the scientific and research institute. There were a lot of notifications to the institute where it was written that there were a lot of Jews in the institute. The leadership of the institute managed to leave things as they were. Then the doctors’ plot 35 was commenced.

It was the last chord. I knew a lot of people who were arrested. Many of them taught me. In that period of time many of my friends suffered. For example, my friend professor Kagarlitskiy in GITIS [editor’s note: GITIS was a State Institute of Drama Art, now it is called Russian Academy of Drama Art (abbreviation RATI-GITIS). It is the largest drama institution of higher education in Europe and one of the largest in the world.

GITIS departments encompass almost all specialties, connected with drama art: producers of drama, musical performances, variety shows circus, actors, drama studies specialists,scene designers and directors] He hold a course of English literature there. He was fired without even explaining things.

He had an infarction as a consequence. It was the moment when I understood that our state was degenerated. All those high ideals, which used to inspire the youth, turned out to be a soap bubble. I understood that it could not last long. In 1953 Stalin died. The doctors were set free and state anti-Semitism was not as blatant.

My wife hated Stalin. When all people got up during the general meetings to acclaim Mr. Stalin, my wife did not get up and came into trouble for that at work. She was adamant in that sense. I cannot say that I hated him. It was strange for me that the man who wielded the scepter was not aware of the things going on in his county.

When Stalin died the mourning days were announced and my wife and I wanted to go and see column hall, where there was a coffin with his body. We witnessed a terrible throng of people on the way, who crushed the fence, whereon people fell. Trucks were along the curb. A boy was pressed with his chest against one of those trucks.

The throng could not stop. I jumped on the hood of the truck and screamed «Stop!». The throng stopped for a moment and we took the boy. But there were a lot cases of jam and many people died.

Tatiana taught Histology at our Institute, then she was transferred to the Institute of Blood Transfusion and defended a dissertation there. When the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems of Space was founded, she was offered a job there as a leading scientific expert. The first dogs who were in the space, were under her supervision.

These were the first laboratory data showing that a man could be in the space She had worked there until retirement. Wife took after her father and was as musical as he. She plays the musical instrument and composes music. My wife and I have lived a long, hard, but at the same time very interesting and friendly life.

Our house was always open for relatives and friends, no matter where we lived. My parents, sister’s family often came to see us. I liked sister’s husband, an intelligent and interesting man. My friends- partisans and participants of the theatrical studio very often called on us.

Daughter Natasha was raised like the rest children of that time- nursery, kindergarten, school. She was fond of the languages and entered the Institute of Foreign Languages. She had worked in the Ministry of Automobile Industry for many years. She went abroad very often. She is still working as a translator from/into German language.

Her husband’s name is Vlasenko. He is a Ukrainian, but the most important thing for us was that they loved each other. Natasha has a two children. Elder son Dmitriy Vlasenko is 33 года и daughter Tatiana is 29. Natasha’s husband died from cancer 2 years ago. He was a wonderful man. Dmitriy is studying at the Economy Institute, in the 4th year.

Now he is a general director of the company, working in sports service. The company organizes sports competitions. It is a hectic work. Tatiana, unfortunately, left the faculty of journalist department of Moscow State University 36. She did not like it there. She is currently working in the center of environmental protection. She likes her job.

Son Alexey Tsessarskiy is 12 years younger than my daughter. He graduated from MGU, Biology Department. He worked for the Biology Institute by the Academy of Science of USSR, then defended candidate’s dissertation. Apart from his main job he is also a chief editor of the paper, dedicated to ichthyology. Alyosha has a son. His name is also Alexey Tsessarskiy. He is 23. He is working in cybernetics. My son divorced his first wife and married a woman who was also a biologist, but we still love his first wife. He has another son Pavel. He is in the 8th grade now.

I retired in 1990. It was physically hard for me to combine medicine and literature. I have been the member of the Council of Writers since 1975. I wrote two books about war. I wrote a novel «Reminiscences of partisan doctor » and a play ‘Eve and Irene’ about young workers. It was staged in Leningrad Theater –Lenin Komsomol. I wrote 18 books for youth, children, adolescence. It was something that I was most worried about.

I suddenly found out that there was new cooperative house constructed in the yard of our house. By that time our family had grown. Daughter was married and had a baby. I entered that building society. At that time I got the emoluments for my published book, so I could afford to have my apartment built. My wife, son and I moved to that 3-room apartment, and our daughter remained in previous apartment in our yard.

At that time one of front-line fellow Lev Ermolin. Both of us flew to the rear, jumped from the parachute, lived in one waterproof cape, boiled porridge in one pot- were friends in a word. He talked me into building a dacha [summer house] next to his place in Borodino[about 120 km to the west from Moscow].

At that time he was the director of the plant. They obtained the land plots for dacha in that district. He kept one land plot for me there. It was pretty far away from Moscow, but it was a spectacular place. I was hesitant, but when my second book was released and I got an emolument, my wife and I decided to build wooden house.

Both of us did it with our hands. We are really pleased with that dacha. Almost every summer we spent there and children grew up there as well. Now my elder grandson is having a plush house built next to my dacha and I hope that my great grandchildren will be raised at my dacha.

All my loved ones and I were delighted when we found out that the state of Israel had been founded. When the state anti-Semitism was in full swing, Jews felt themselves as people of 3rd grade in the our country- «You do not have a motherland. Where are you peoples? Where are you roots?» When Israel was founded I was not going to immigrate, but I felt that I was one step higher and I was not worse than anybody else. I was treated very well even in the full swing of anti-Semitism.

I am not religious, I do not observe Jewish traditions and rites. I hardly know the language. I am not assisted by Jewish charitable organizations and I consider it to be humiliating for me. My children were raised international. They identify themselves as Russians. Though, Jewishness is one of the elements of my personality. My parents were Jews. I know the culture, music, mentality as I lived among Jews. I called on my school friend. Now he is indigent, but he had a grandfather who marked all the holidays. When I came over to them on Pesach I saw grandpa playing with his grandchild hiding a piece of matzhah and when the grandson found it grandpa was rapt and burst into laughter. I was admiring them. I am worried for the fate of the Jews and I am happy for their success.

I consider 37 perestroika to be ambiguous. When Gorbachev appeared 38 all of us were very happy. He was young and as compared to Brezhnev 39 he understood what he talking about. Gradually we felt that he was losing control over country and it was scary.

Maybe we felt that the system could not exist anymore. Now I am very frustrated because good things which were in the country are exterminated, but new things have not come in place. I am worried with our current president. I found out that Putin was a hypocrite.

He says publicly that he will not let anybody do harm to the journalists, meets with them, makes promises and then suddenly he does away with the leading TV company, protecting the interests of the right wing. He publicly promises that he will not harm large-scale business, and in couple of days a largest oil company is collapsed and the state is involved in the affaire. One dumby company acquires it and re-sells it to the state. A silly and untalented man –the head of health care -was framed.

He was an accountant by education. How can an accountant be at the head of this branch? No matter what we start, it is collapsing. I think it is because things are no thought over, and I am aware that mercantile interests are behind it. Free entrepreneurship is strangled. The economic politics is flunked.

When I am traveling throughout the country I see that the industry is not working, plants are emptied. For instance, 10000 people were employed at Bryansk engine-building plant and now about 200 men are working in one workshop. The rest is either plundered or rotten. It makes me sad because I love my country, its hard-working and boundlessly tolerant people.

My life worked out to be good. I always did what I like. I have a great family: loving and caring wife, wonderful and close to my heart children and grandchildren, a lot of magnificent friends, who do not forget about me. We live in different towns, but we meet on every Victory Day 40, have drinks and remember the years of your youth.

Glossary

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

2 Russian Revolution of 1917: Revolution in which the tsarist regime was overthrown in the Russian Empire and, under Lenin, was replaced by the Bolshevik rule. The two phases of the Revolution were: February Revolution, which came about due to food and fuel shortages during World War I, and during which the tsar abdicated and a provisional government took over.

The second phase took place in the form of a coup led by Lenin in October/November (October Revolution) and saw the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks.

3 Sholem Aleichem (pen name of Shalom Rabinovich (1859-1916): Yiddish author and humorist, a prolific writer of novels, stories, feuilletons, critical reviews, and poem in Yiddish, Hebrew and Russian. He also contributed regularly to Yiddish dailies and weeklies.

In his writings he described the life of Jews in Russia, creating a gallery of bright characters. His creative work is an alloy of humor and lyricism, accurate psychological and details of everyday life.

He founded a literary Yiddish annual called Di Yidishe Folksbibliotek (The Popular Jewish Library), with which he wanted to raise the despised Yiddish literature from its mean status and at the same time to fight authors of trash literature, who dragged Yiddish literature to the lowest popular level. The first volume was a turning point in the history of modern Yiddish literature. Sholem Aleichem died in New York in 1916.

His popularity increased beyond the Yiddish-speaking public after his death. Some of his writings have been translated into most European languages and his plays and dramatic versions of his stories have been performed in many countries. The dramatic version of Tevye the Dairyman became an international hit as a musical (Fiddler on the Roof) in the 1960s.

4 Realschule: Secondary school for boys. Students studied mathematics, physics, natural history, foreign languages and drawing. After finishing this school they could enter higher industrial and agricultural educational institutions.

5 Nicolas II (1868 -1918): the last Russian emperor from the House of Romanovs (1894 * 1917). After the 1905 Revolution Nicolas II was forced to set up the State Duma (parliament) and carry out land reform in Russia. In March 1917 during the February Revolution Nicolas abdicated the throne. He was shot by the Bolsheviks in Yekaterinburg along with his family in 1918

6 Pogroms in Ukraine: In the 1920s there were many anti-Semitic gangs in Ukraine. They killed Jews and burnt their houses, they robbed their houses, raped women and killed children.

7 NEP: The so-called New Economic Policy of the Soviet authorities was launched by Lenin in 1921. It meant that private business was allowed on a small scale in order to save the country ruined by the Revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War. They allowed priority development of private capital and entrepreneurship. The NEP was gradually abandoned in the 1920s with the introduction of the planned economy.

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

9 Communal apartment: The Soviet power wanted to improve housing conditions by requisitioning ‘excess’ living space of wealthy families after the Revolution of 1917. Apartments were shared by several families with each family occupying one room and sharing the kitchen, toilet and bathroom with other tenants.

Because of the chronic shortage of dwelling space in towns communal or shared apartments continued to exist for decades. Despite state programs for the construction of more houses and the liquidation of communal apartments, which began in the 1960s, shared apartments still exist today.

10 Komsomol: Communist youth political organization created in 1918. The task of the Komsomol was to spread of the ideas of communism and involve the worker and peasant youth in building the Soviet Union. The Komsomol also aimed at giving a communist upbringing by involving the worker youth in the political struggle, supplemented by theoretical education.

The Komsomol was more popular than the Communist Party because with its aim of education people could accept uninitiated young proletarians, whereas party members had to have at least a minimal political qualification.

11 Jewish Pale of Settlement: Certain provinces in the Russian Empire were designated for permanent Jewish residence and the Jewish population was only allowed to live in these areas. The Pale was first established by a decree by Catherine II in 1791.

The regulation was in force until the Russian Revolution of 1917, although the limits of the Pale were modified several times. The Pale stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, and 94% of the total Jewish population of Russia, almost 5 million people, lived there.

The overwhelming majority of the Jews lived in the towns and shtetls of the Pale. Certain privileged groups of Jews, such as certain merchants, university graduates and craftsmen working in certain branches, were granted to live outside the borders of the Pale of Settlement permanently.

12 Great Terror (1934-1938): During the Great Terror, or Great Purges, which included the notorious show trials of Stalin's former Bolshevik opponents in 1936-1938 and reached its peak in 1937 and 1938, millions of innocent Soviet citizens were sent off to labor camps or killed in prison. The major targets of the Great Terror were communists. Over half of the people who were arrested were members of the party at the time of their arrest. The armed forces, the Communist Party, and the government in general were purged of all allegedly dissident persons; the victims were generally sentenced to death or to long terms of hard labor. Much of the purge was carried out in secret, and only a few cases were tried in public ‘show trials’. By the time the terror subsided in 1939, Stalin had managed to bring both the Party and the public to a state of complete submission to his rule. Soviet society was so atomized and the people so fearful of reprisals that mass arrests were no longer necessary. Stalin ruled as absolute dictator of the Soviet Union until his death in March 1953.

13 Enemy of the people: Soviet official term; euphemism used for real or assumed political opposition.

14 Trotsky, Lev Davidovich (born Bronshtein) (1879-1940): Russian revolutionary, one of the leaders of the October Revolution of 1917, an outstanding figure of the communist movement and a theorist of Marxism. Trotsky participated in the social-democratic movement from 1894 and supported the idea of the unification of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks from 1906.

In 1905 he developed the idea of the ‘permanent revolution’. He was one of the leaders of the October Revolution and a founder of the Red Army. He widely applied repressive measures to support the discipline and ‘bring everything into revolutionary order’ at the front and the home front. The intense struggle with Stalin for the leadership ended with Trotsky's defeat.

In 1924 his views were declared petty-bourgeois deviation. In 1927 he was expelled from the Communist Party, and exiled to Kazakhstan, and in 1929 abroad. He lived in Turkey, Norway and then Mexico. He excoriated Stalin's regime as a bureaucratic degeneration of the proletarian power. He was murdered in Mexico by an agent of Soviet special services on Stalin’s order.

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

16 Tolstoy, Lev Nikolayevich (1828-1910): Russian novelist and moral philosopher, who holds an important place in his country’s cultural history as an ethical philosopher and religious reformer. Tolstoy, alongside Dostoyevsky, made the realistic novel a literary genre, ranking in importance with classical Greek tragedy and Elizabethan drama.

He is best known for his novels, including War and Peace, Anna Karenina and The Death of Ivan Ilyich, but also wrote short stories and essays and plays. Tolstoy took part in the Crimean War and his stories based one the defense of Sevastopol, known as Sevastopol Sketches, made him famous and opened St. Petersburg’s literary circles to him.

His main interest lay in working out his religious and philosophical ideas. He condemned capitalism and private property and was a fearless critic, which finally resulted in his excommunication from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1901. His views regarding the evil of private property gradually estranged him from his wife, Yasnaya Polyana, and children, except for his daughter Alexandra, and he finally left them in 1910. He died on his way to a monastery at the railway junction of Astapovo.

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

The novel is considered a classic of Russian psychological realism.

18 Great Patriotic War: On 22nd June 1941 at 5 o’clock in the morning Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union without declaring war. This was the beginning of the so-called Great Patriotic War. The German blitzkrieg, known as Operation Barbarossa, nearly succeeded in breaking the Soviet Union in the months that followed.

Caught unprepared, the Soviet forces lost whole armies and vast quantities of equipment to the German onslaught in the first weeks of the war. By November 1941 the German army had seized the Ukrainian Republic, besieged Leningrad, the Soviet Union's second largest city, and threatened Moscow itself. The war ended for the Soviet Union on 9th May 1945.

19 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact: Non-aggression pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, which became known under the name of Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Engaged in a border war with Japan in the Far East and fearing the German advance in the west, the Soviet government began secret negotiations for a non-aggression pact with Germany in 1939.

In August 1939 it suddenly announced the conclusion of a Soviet-German agreement of friendship and non-aggression. The Pact contained a secret clause providing for the partition of Poland and for Soviet and German spheres of influence in Eastern Europe.

20 Invasion of Poland: The German attack of Poland on 1st September 1939 is widely considered the date in the West for the start of World War II.

After having gained both Austria and the Bohemian and Moravian parts of Czechoslovakia, Hitler was confident that he could acquire Poland without having to fight Britain and France. (To eliminate the possibility of the Soviet Union fighting if Poland were attacked, Hitler made a pact with the Soviet Union, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.) On the morning of 1st September 1939, German troops entered Poland.

The German air attack hit so quickly that most of Poland’s air force was destroyed while still on the ground. To hinder Polish mobilization, the Germans bombed bridges and roads. Groups of marching soldiers were machine-gunned from the air, and they also aimed at civilians. On 1st September, the beginning of the attack, Great Britain and France sent Hitler an ultimatum - withdraw German forces from Poland or Great Britain and France would go to war against Germany. On 3rd September, with Germany’s forces penetrating deeper into Poland, Great Britain and France both declared war on Germany.

21 Soviet-Finnish War (1939-40): The Soviet Union attacked Finland on 30 November 1939 to seize the Karelian Isthmus. The Red Army was halted at the so-called Mannengeim line. The League of Nations expelled the USSR from its ranks. In February-March 1940 the Red Army broke through the Mannengeim line and reached.

22 Bolshoi Theater: World famous national theater in Moscow, built in 1776. The first Russian and foreign opera and ballet performances were staged in this building.

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

24 Hero of the Soviet Union: Honorary title established on 16th April 1934 with the Gold Star medal instituted on 1st August 1939, by Decree of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet. Awarded to both military and civilian personnel for personal or collective deeds of heroism rendered to the USSR or socialist society.

25 Order of Lenin: Established in 1930, the Order of Lenin is the highest Soviet award. It was awarded for outstanding services in the revolutionary movement, labor activity, defense of the Homeland, and strengthening peace between peoples. It has been awarded over 400,000 times.

26 Georgy Zhukov (1896-1974): Soviet Commander, Marshal of the Soviet Union, Hero of the Soviet Union. Georgy Zhukov was the most important Soviet military commander during World War II.

27 Stalingrad Battle (17 July 1942- 2 February1943) The Stalingrad, South-Western and Donskoy Fronts stopped the advance of German armies in the vicinity of Stalingrad. On 19-20 November 1942 the soviet troops undertook an offensive and encircled 22 German divisions (330 thousand people) in the vicinity of Stalingrad. The Soviet troops eliminated this German grouping.

On 31 January 1943 the remains of the 6th German army headed by General Field Marshal Paulus surrendered (91 thousand people). The victory in the Stalingrad battle was of huge political, strategic and international significance.

28 Bandera, Stepan (1919-1959): Politician and ideologue of the Ukrainian nationalist movement, who fought for the Ukrainian cause against both Poland and the Soviet Union.

He attained high positions in the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN): he was chief of propaganda (1931) and, later, head of the national executive in Galicia (1933). He was hoping to establish an independent Ukrainian state with Nazi backing. After Germany attacked the Soviet Union, the OUN announced the establishment of an independent government of Ukraine in Lvov on 30th June 1941.

About one week later the Germans disbanded this government and arrested the members. Bandera was taken to Sachsenhausen prison where he remained until the end of the war. He was assassinated by a Soviet agent in Munich in 1959.

29 Order of the Great Patriotic War: 1st Class: established 20th May 1942, awarded to officers and enlisted men of the armed forces and security troops and to partisans, irrespective of rank, for skillful command of their units in action.

30 Medal ‘To Partisan of the Great Patriotic War’: Established on 2nd February 1943, the first class was awarded to partisans, commanders of partisan detachments, and partisan movement organizers for personal feats of courage and valor. Approximately 57,000 were issued.

2nd Class was awarded to partisans, commanders of partisan detachments, and partisan movement organizers for distinction in carrying out orders and assignments for higher echelons during the Great Patriotic War. Approximately 71,000 were issued. The medal was awarded to over 100 foreigners fighting in Soviet partisan units.

31 Medal "For Defense of Moscow" was established by the decree of the of the Presidium of Supreme Soviet of the USSR as of May 1, 1944. More than a million of people were conferred with that medal.

32 Campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’: The campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’, i.e. Jews, was initiated in articles in the central organs of the Communist Party in 1949. The campaign was directed primarily at the Jewish intelligentsia and it was the first public attack on Soviet Jews as Jews.

‘Cosmopolitans’ writers were accused of hating the Russian people, of supporting Zionism, etc. Many Yiddish writers as well as the leaders of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were arrested in November 1948 on charges that they maintained ties with Zionism and with American ‘imperialism’.

They were executed secretly in 1952. The anti-Semitic Doctors’ Plot was launched in January 1953. A wave of anti-Semitism spread through the USSR. Jews were removed from their positions, and rumors of an imminent mass deportation of Jews to the eastern part of the USSR began to spread.

Stalin’s death in March 1953 put an end to the campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’.

33 Mikhoels, Solomon (1890-1948) (born Vovsi): Great Soviet actor, producer and pedagogue. He worked in the Moscow State Jewish Theater (and was its art director from 1929). He directed philosophical, vivid and monumental works. Mikhoels was murdered by order of the State Security Ministry.

34 Item 5: This was the nationality factor, which was included on all job application forms, Jews, who were considered a separate nationality in the Soviet Union, were not favored in this respect from the end of World War WII until the late 1980s.

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

36 Lomonosov Moscow State University, founded in 1755, the university was for a long time the only learning institution in Russia open to general public. In the Soviet time, it was the biggest and perhaps the most prestigious university in the country. At present there are over 40,000 undergraduates and 7,000 graduate students at MSU.

37 Perestroika (Russian for restructuring): Soviet economic and social policy of the late 1980s, associated with the name of Soviet politician Mikhail Gorbachev. The term designated the attempts to transform the stagnant, inefficient command economy of the Soviet Union into a decentralized, market-oriented economy.

Industrial managers and local government and party officials were granted greater autonomy, and open elections were introduced in an attempt to democratize the Communist Party organization. By 1991, perestroika was declining and was soon eclipsed by the dissolution of the USSR.

38 Gorbachev, Mikhail (1931- ): Soviet political leader. Gorbachev joined the Communist Party in 1952 and gradually moved up in the party hierarchy. In 1970 he was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, where he remained until 1990.

In 1980 he joined the politburo, and in 1985 he was appointed general secretary of the party. In 1986 he embarked on a comprehensive program of political, economic, and social liberalization under the slogans of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring).

The government released political prisoners, allowed increased emigration, attacked corruption, and encouraged the critical reexamination of Soviet history. The Congress of People’s Deputies, founded in 1989, voted to end the Communist Party’s control over the government and elected Gorbachev executive president.

Gorbachev dissolved the Communist Party and granted the Baltic stat independence. Following the establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States in 1991, he resigned as president. Since 1992, Gorbachev has headed international organizations.

39 Brezhnev, Leonid (1906-1982) Soviet leader. He joined the Communist Party in 1931 and rose steadily in its hierarchy, becoming a secretary of the party’s central committee in 1952. In 1957, as protégé of Khrushchev, he became a member of the presidium (later politburo) of the central committee.

He was chairman of the presidium of the Supreme Soviet, or titular head of state. Following Khrushchev’s fall from power in 1964, which Brezhnev helped to engineer, he was named first secretary of the Communist Party. Although sharing power with Kosygin, Brezhnev emerged as the chief figure in Soviet politics.

In 1968, in support of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, he enunciated the ‘Brezhnev doctrine,’ asserting that the USSR could intervene in the domestic affairs of any Soviet bloc nation if communist rule was threatened. While maintaining a tight rein in Eastern Europe, he favored closer relations with the Western powers, and he helped bring about a détente with the United States.

In 1977 he assumed the presidency of the USSR. Under Gorbachev, Brezhnev’s regime was criticized for its corruption and failed economic policies.

Victory Day in Russia (9th May): National holiday to commemorate the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II and honor the Soviets who died in the war.

Dobrina Rivkind

Dobrina Rivkind with her sister Dora Verlinskaya

Dobrina Rivkind worked until the age of 70 (2001). Now she attends various courses and circles, goes to the theater and cinema. She lives with her daughter Raya. Dobrina is a short woman, slim, with short gray hair, she likes to cook and does it very well. She adores her cat. She is a modern woman with a sense of humor and sober view of life. Dobrina loves her children and grandchildren very much.

My family background

Everybody calls me Inna at home and in everyday life. All my relatives, whom I know, come from the so-called Jewish Pale (1) in Belorussia. They were born in boroughs not far from the town of Vitebsk. Vitebsk is a rather large city in Belarus. My mother’s family was very poor. Grandfather Vulf Khodek worked for a container seller. His obligation was to mend the sacks and fix other containers. He earned about three rubles per month, which was very little. I do not remember my maternal grandfather well, he died in 1939, when I was six. He was a very kind man and loved me and my sister, his granddaughters, very much. I remember him and grandmother together: she was short and he was tall and bald. Grandmother’s name was Tsylya Khodek, nee Rukhman. She was not tall, with gray, beautifully set hair. She did not work as many women did in those days, and took care of the family. Tsylya had a small store downstairs in the same house where they lived, which worked around the clock. It was not a store in today's meaning; it was really a very small shop. It was possible to buy bagels and cakes there and various other small things. People could knock on the door at any time and ask for her. She would open up and give them what they asked for. However, the profit was small. It is difficult to tell, what she did in it, as she devoted the largest part of her life to the family, children and household, and the shop was simply an extra earning. There were four children in the family: three girls and one boy. All four were born in Vitebsk. Mother was the eldest, her name was Pesya, she was born in 1899 and died at the age of 95 in 1994. Her sisters’ names were Khana (1907 - 1993), Lilya (1908 - 1954), and brother’s name was Lev (1904 – 1942). There were also other children but they died at a very young age.

Later, about 1897, they moved to Vitebsk. They lived near Vitebsk before in Smolyany shtetl. According to the family, they had a small house there, with a small garden full of flowers, because they had three daughters, who loved flowers very much. Certainly, there were no servants in the household and they had to do everything on their own. Grandmother was very strict and demanding. Everybody had their own tasks. My mother Pesya was the eldest in the family and she had to drag the washing to the river, to wash and take care of the small children. All the rest had various tasks depending on the time of the year: someone was responsible for watering the plant in the garden in summer and washed the floor in the house, when winter came; the other one helped mother to clean the house, and another one helped to mend the clothes. But the house was very clean. However, in spite of poverty, grandparents tried to provide their children with some education. I remember they even had some teacher, who came to the house and taught children minimal literacy: to read, write and count. Later mother with her friends attended some courses, which were called “likbez” in those days [“liquidation of illiteracy”], which provided her with knowledge, equal to 7-year educational course. The brother did not get more education that the sisters, he was taught as much as they were.

Lilya married a military, a career officer and followed him everywhere in his trips. They had two children: daughter Nelya and son Boris. Lilya did not work anywhere. Her husband perished at the frontline at the very beginning of the war. She also died at an early age of a severe neurological disease (she was a little more than 40 years old). Khana finished a musical school and worked as a teacher of chorus singing in various musical schools. She lived in Leningrad for a long time and died here. She had no family of her own. Lev became an accountant and worked according to his profession in “Lenodezhda”, an important combine in those days. He perished during the war at the frontline near Leningrad.

After the Revolution in 1917 [They did not participate in the Revolution, it did not even affect them] they sold the small house where they lived, left Vitebsk and found themselves in Petrograd [today St.Petersburg]. The grandparents were old people by then and did not work. In Petrograd my mother entered a medical Institute. It was very difficult to study there, as she had no preliminary training and besides, she had to earn her living. Mother quit her studies after the 1st year and began to work. Pesya finished the “likbez” courses [equal to 7 years of secondary school] with her friends while in Vitebsk. After moving to Petrograd she passed the exams and entered the Medical Institute with her friends from Vitebsk.

The Khodeks had a lot of friends in Vitebsk and some of these friends, a family, left with them for Petrograd. Their name was Biynshtok. They had two daughters: Anya and Lyuba. Their father was an owner of a sausage store in Vitebsk, so they were richer. Anya and Lyuba studied with mother, but they actually graduated from the medical Institute and worked as doctors later.

Grandparents spoke only Yiddish. They were very religious people. I remember very well grandfather’s praying clothes. Grandfather put something like a white towel or sheet onto his shoulders. On his head he had a leather strap, a band, in the middle of which there was a leather box. When he prayed, the small box rocked and, I suppose, must have had to hit the floor. I remember how he put it on and prayed in it. I saw him praying at home, but he also attended the synagogue. They celebrated all holidays and attended the synagogue. I also remember that they lit the candles for Hanukah. All common dished were put away on Pesach and the house was very thoroughly cleaned and washed: there should not have remained even the spirit of bread. Various delicious food was cooked, matzah, for example, which we ate instead of bread. After the meal we had fun and danced. Besides, we celebrated very merry holidays like Rosh Hashanah and the Torah Day [Simchat Torah], when we simply went to the synagogue and danced and had fun there. Grandmother cooked very well, she knew all Jewish cooking traditions. For example, she cooked very delicious stuffed fish. In general I remember grandmother to be very tidy, she was a very good housewife.

She died when I was an 8th grade pupil. Her health was very much ruined by the fact that her only son Lev was murdered at the frontline during the World War II. He had very bad eyesight, and we don’t know for sure if he was taken prisoner-of-war or perished in the course of military actions. Grandmother lived during the siege in Peter [people’s name for St.Petersburg] and died in 1948. Her second daughter Khana also stayed in Peter during the siege, worked all the time. Khana did not have a family, she was never married. During the siege she worked in a kindergarten as an educator and helped children as much as she could. She died in 1993 when she was 87. Another daughter, the youngest Lilya (Jewish name Liya) married a career officer who perished at the beginning of the war (1941 - 1942). She had two children: daughter Nelya and son Boris. She died when she was 40 something in 1954 of a severe neurological illness, multiple sclerosis.

Grandmother had a sister, whose name was Nekhama. She also had a brother, Simkho, he was deaf mute. I know nothing of Simkho’s life. Nekhama married a Jew, they had three children, they lived in Vitebsk. They were evacuated to Tashkent during the World War II and stayed there after the war was over. Nekhama remained there with her daughters and son until she died. Her son Natan was a colonel, they said he was a very nice person. Her daughters, Raisa and Vera, lived in Tashkent for a long time after. One was a medical worker and the other worked as a teacher.

My father, Khlavno Leibovich (later – Klavdy Ivanovich) was born in Smolyany, a small town not far from Vitebsk, in 1898. There were ten or twelve children in the family. My grandfather, Leiba Rivkind, was a teacher in Jewish primary school. He was married twice. His first wife died and left eight children. Four of them emigrated during the „first wave” to America (1910s) and the rest stayed here. They came from Belorussia, there is no more information about them.

I knew four of my grandfather’s children from his first marriage: father’s two elder sisters and two brothers. Fanya, one of the sisters, had two children, a son Grisha and a daughter Lena. Fanya lived in Leningrad with her husband and two children. Her daughter Lena was an electrical engineer and also lived in Leningrad. Son Grisha served in the army for a long time, them retired and died in Leningrad in the 1990s. Fanya herself died in Moscow region during the war, where she escaped with her daughter Lena. Brother Moisey had daughter Gita. Moisey lived in Kuibyshev with his family [The city is called Samara now, it is a big city 1,200 km to the South-East of St.Petersburg]. He worked in the timber industry. Gita graduated from a Medical Institute and was a doctor.

Father’s second sister, Beilya, perished during the siege together with her husband and son Mikhail. Their daughter Sara managed to evacuate to Kuibyshev and joined Moisey’s family. She graduated from an Institute there and found a job. She did not get married, had no children, though she was very beautiful. My father’s second brother Isaac worked in Gomel [in Belorussia, 250 km to the South of Minsk] as a financial manager at a big chocolate “Spartak” factory. His family lived there. He came to Leningrad (today St Petersburg) after the Revolution and tried to work here: he brewed beer at some factory; but later returned to Belorussia and stayed there. I also knew two children from the second marriage: my father and his sister Lyuba, the youngest child in the family. The second wife also had other children, but I do not know them.

Father’s family was very poor. They lived from hand to mouth on sorrel, herring, milk, etc. However, they were all very talented people. Many received a higher education after the Revolution and found jobs. Since their father, Leiba, was a teacher at Jewish primary school, they all received Jewish primary education. However, it is not known, if they went to school or father taught them at home. When my father found himself in St. Petersburg, urban life shocked him of course, as he lived all his life in a shtetl, in Vitebsk, and St.Petersburg was totally different! It seemed as if he got into a rich family out of a poor one, because he was given both bread and butter to eat. It was certainly a joke. Of course it indicates the poverty, in which he lived before moving here, but not to the extent as to be surprised by bread and butter. It was „top” for him - „pinnacle of dreams” - as he said.

Father graduated from the Mining Institute in Sverdlovsk, got married and moved to Petrograd in 1925. Mother and father had known each other since childhood. As children they had lived in one town, in Vitebsk, and had a big circle of common friends. Father was very witty and mother fell in love him. Since he had to study for a long time, he said to mother, “You may not wait for me.” “No, I love only you and nobody else.” So she waited till he came back and they got married, I think, in Vitebsk, I’m not sure. They certainly had a formal registration in the ZAGS [civil registry office], but it is not known if they had a wedding at the synagogue. Father worked at Scientific Research Institute “Mechanobr” (mechanical ore processing). The Kola Peninsula [ In the Arctic on the Barents Sea] was developed at that time and the richest fields of various minerals were discovered there. A famous biologist in those days, professor Firsman (2), with a group of workers supervised the works. In 1932 father got enlisted for those works and left for the development of the apatite fields [a mineral used to make phosphate fertilizers], to the collective which was called “Apatite”. He was the Head of the scientific-research laboratory there; he set it up himself. He made important inventions during the war and before it. He worked there until 1960, 28 years all in all. Then he retired and returned to St.Petersburg. He died in 1972. Mother lived with him most of the time and we lived with my sister at grandmother’s place here. However, the apartment was kept for father, as he was in a long-term business trip. We saw him several times a year: in summer he spent his vacation with us and in winter we visited him, there were very nice places for skiing and skating. He also visited us on holidays and sent us money. Me and my sister loved father very much, as well as he loved us.

Mother worked little. She worked most of the time in a drugstore. But on the whole she was a housewife. Mother worked about the household alone without any servants. She cooked very well and was a good hostess. Sometimes her friends came to visit her. Every summer she spent with the grandchildren at the summer house. They lived moderately, helped to raise their grandchildren and assisted me and my sister with the studies.

Our „home” was a room in a huge communal apartment, where six rooms were occupied by twenty-two people. First my mother’s family lived in three rooms of this apartment: one room was occupied by mother, father and daughter, small room was occupied by younger sister. There were six rooms all in all. Initially three sisters (Lilya, Khana and Pesya) occupied three rooms. Lilya with her family in one room, Pesya with her family in another and Khana with parents in the third one. with her husband and two children, and the third room was our: my parents with me and my sister. But since father lived in the North for a long time and mother visited him there often, mostly me, my sister and our grandmother lived in that room. Later grandmother died and we were left alone with Dora. We graduated from First Medical Institute named after Academician Pavlov. My sister set up a family and I lived behind a screen in the same room. Later I left for the North to work and I set up a family of my own there. Thus three families were registered in that room: our parents, my sister with her family and child, who lived there; and me with my husband and child, who lived in the North. But everybody had a „home”: the room. In a communal apartment each family has a room of its own. There is one kitchen, one toilet and one bathroom for all. There are two gas stoves in the kitchen and each family has its own table and a place with shelves for dishes. When fridges appeared, every family kept a fridge in its own room. Every family has its own burner on the stove. Toilet, corridor and kitchen are cleaned by families in turn. There are several doorbells at the apartment entrance door, each leading in each family’s room. Sometimes the neighbors agreed on how many rings for each family, for instance, one ring – to the first room, two rings – to the second room and so on. Certainly it was not easy to live in such an apartment, everyone having his/her own temper and personality. However, we were friends with some neighbors; though with some of them we never had any relations except for neighbor ones.

We had a lot of books, mostly not religious, but the ones that were published at that time. Everyone tried to buy books, which were published in those years, in order to collect a home library. Mostly it was Russian classics: Tolstoy, Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky and others. However, father had several books in Yiddish, though I don’t know exactly what kind of books those were. My parents did not always attend the synagogue, as they lived for a long time in a town, where there was no synagogue, the town of Kirovsk [Murmansk region, 800 km to the North of St.Petersburg]. But they attended the synagogue on fall holidays: the New Year, the Torah Holiday –[Simchat Torah]. Besides, they tried to celebrate some holidays. They always celebrated Pesach. Since there was no synagogue in Kirovsk, parents celebrated at home: cooked delicious meals, invited friends and arranged a festive dinner. The day was simply celebrated, as far as I understood, by inviting friends, mother cooked food, everybody had a very good time… Mother cooked very well and observed all cooking traditions. She knew several recipes of national Jewish meals. I also remember that when father fell seriously ill, right before his death, he took a Jewish prayer book and began to read it. He turned to faith before his death. He was born in Vitebsk in a religious family. My father knew Yiddish since his childhood, he rarely used it, but he could read in Yiddish and in Hebrew.

Mother did not meddle with the politics, but father was certainly a concealed dissident. I know this for sure because, though it was prohibited, father listened to the radio receiver. And he was also controlled by an informer; he was “shepherded”. Yes, that is true, nobody told no one, who the informer was. But there was an enrolled KGB informer in every company and people in most of cases understood which person exactly who “squealed on”, though formally no one should have known about it. And that person, so to say, warned my father, told him to stop listen to the radio. He told father, “Rivkind, quit listening to the radio”. However, since father was a rather reserved and quiet person he did not get caught. But it is certain that he did not believe in what happened in this country. I was a witness to how he spoke to mother and how he listened to the receiver. Mother was too domestic a woman to be engaged in politics, but she trusted him. Father did not join any Party. He did not trust the then power, however, in order to avoid problems, kept silent about it, so he was no open dissident. Father was released from military service since he was an asthmatic and he had ulcer besides. He was not enlisted to the army because of his asthma, even during the war.

My parents were kind people. Mother was a strong-willed, self-disciplined and practical woman, she cooked very well and later on helped me to raise my children. Father was a very talented person, he took great interest in his job, liked to play chess and was a witty person. I remember that parents had a very good attitude to each other, they were young and cheerful and loved each other very much.

My parents had mostly Jewish friends. Some of them were from Vitebsk. But of course there were Russian friends too. My parents often spent their vacation in Gomel, at the place of father's brother Isaac. They went to the suburbs of Gomel, rented a summer house there and traveled around Belorussian towns. Later they spent their vacation in Leningrad region. Dora and me were with them during the vacation and traveled in Belorussia with parents.

My sister Dora was born in 1927. I was born in 1932. I did not attend a kindergarten for some reason. I don’t remember. I left my family only once, when I was six and sick with diphtheria, and I had to go to a children's sanatorium after the illness. Mother and grandmother raised me and my sister; my sister did not attend a kindergarten either. I remember how me and Dora played and scattered some sheets; sometimes we fought and she told me, “You are a table!” and I replied, “And you are a chair!”, “You are a sofa!” But on the whole we were great friends. My grandparents lived moderately, helped to raise us, their grandchildren and assisted me and my sister with our studies. We lived from time to time in Petrograd, it was called Leningrad already at that time, periodically in Kirovsk, in the North. But we were both born in Leningrad.

During the war

I began studying at school here and finished the 1st grade before the war. Later we left for the Urals when the war broke out. We were evacuated in August 1941. My father was in the North at that time. Since he did not serve in the army, he was to take out all equipment of the factory he worked at with the ores, and deliver it to the Urals. Thus he delivered everything to the town of Solikamsk. They had similar production plant there and so he moved. We visited him from Leningrad. We left with one but the last train. The last one was destroyed by bombing. No person had left Leningrad since. Father worked and we went to school with my sister. I went to school there up to the fourth grade.

We were provided with a room, when we were evacuated. All our family lived in that room: mother, father, me and sister. Later we also sheltered Lilya, who escaped from the Germans with two small children from Ukraine, where she had lived before the war. Everybody worked in Solikamsk. Father worked as an engineer at a local potassium extraction and processing plant; mother was assigned to work at a sovkhoz and Lilya, who already did not feel well at that time, stayed at home, raised the four children and kept the household. We led a very poor and hungry life during the first year. I remember how we, children, were fed according to time schedule. We were hungry, standing under the clock, watching the clock hands moving, waiting for food. By the second year we started to plant potatoes, cabbages and some other vegetables, thus our life became a little more satisfied. Second and third years in evacuation were much better than the first one.

We returned to Leningrad in 1944 to the same apartment. Everything seemed to remain the same, except for human losses certainly. My grandmother had relatives in Poland, who all perished in Holocaust. An uncle died in Leningrad, and many relatives on father’s side died, who stayed here. His sister Beilya and her son Mikhail, mother’s brother perished. They all stayed in Leningrad. My grandmother did not want to go and they remained here to work during the siege. A lot of neighbors perished too. When we came back, new people lived here. But since my aunt had been here during the blockade, she managed to keep the room, so we had no difficulties when we returned. I remember how cheerful and delighted everybody was when we came back. It was war time, and then the victory, we had big hopes for the future and we believed in Communism.

When we returned I went to a regular girls’ school. We returned in 1944. I liked biology at school and all natural sciences in general. I was most interested in natural science, though I had good marks in all subjects. I loved our English teacher, Maria Mikhailovna. She was a good-looking, very young and very beautiful woman. She came to work right after the war. I remember her very well. We met after I had finished school, graduated from the Institute, and was working for some years; as a doctor, I helped her a lot. We also had a wonderful teacher of history, Pyotr Petrovich Petukhov. He was a marvelous historian and taught in a very interesting way.

Besides standard school, I studied musicI had been studying for a very short time, only for one year in a musical school. There were various public works at school, editorial board etc. I am a very industrious person and took part in it all. We issued wall newspapers for holidays and spent a lot of time on that. Everything was very strict in those days, not like now: we wore uniforms, black aprons and brown dresses. It was a girls’ school, so we communicated with boys but once a year. I remember, we had a party in the 8th grade and we went to the boys’ school. We danced there for the first time in our lives. All my friends were mostly from school. It was a hard and hungry time after the war. Food was distributed according to ration cards, there were lines everywhere and it was difficult to get anything, either food or clothes. There were ration cards, no feasts, we had no TV sets. All in all, we either studied or simply stayed at home and helped about the house. Sometimes I went to the skating-rink with my friends. Aunt Anya (Khana) encouraged me and my sister to go to the philharmonic society, even if there were the only the cheapest seats. We went to the theaters and to the Opera.

When I finished school (in 1951), I entered the First Medical Institute. My sister had entered it before me, and persuaded me to do the same. At first I attended psychiatric lectures as an outside observer, it was interesting to listen. Later I entered the Institute. Student life was very cheerful. We celebrated all holidays together, Soviet holidays presumably, attended demonstrations and student parties. We had a totally different life. Different as compared to the one at school. At school everything was very strict: girls’ gymnasia, uniform, discipline, a lot of homework and studies. Our teachers had been proud that they had not given us too high marks. However, such training really favored us when we entered Institutes after school, as it appeared to be very easy for us. We also studied together and attended the Public Library. It was very happy time, especially the spring holidays, November 7th (3), when we went to demonstrations, had parties afterwards and sang songs during the breaks between lectures at the Institute. We went to the theater in our free time. The tickets were not expensive at that time. We also went to the philharmonic society and sometimes to the skating-rink. After our 1st or 2nd year pigpens or cowsheds were constructed in the Leningrad region and we joined the construction groups. But I did not spend my free time only with my friends. I remember that after the 3rd year we went to the South with aunt Anya (Khana), to the Black Sea and had a wonderful vacation somewhere near Adler. I also visited Belorussia. All in all, I traveled around the Soviet Union during my student holidays. It was not expensive at that time. People traveled a lot to different cities. No special permits were required to travel inside the country, only the ticket.

My sister Dora also started to go to school in Leningrad; she later studied for some time in Kirovsk. As a primary schoolgirl she lived with father in Kirovsk and went to school there for one year. Spent some time in evacuation in Solikamsk and finished her 10th grade in Leningrad. She entered the First Medical Institute. In 1951 she got married and stayed in Leningrad. Her husband Iosif was an engineer, he graduated from the Aircraft Tool-production Institute. In 1952 her daughter Bela was born. Dora worked as a District physician for some time, and later got into a group of physicians who were engaged in the medical genetics field. She defended a thesis and continued to work as a specialist in the field of medical genetics.

After the war

After the war we had good relations with America. Suddenly we received a letter from one of father’s brothers with pictures. We saw how they all lived there, how beautiful they all were. They were all wearing pants and shorts, we were so surprised they were all so beautiful! One of my father’s nieces even planned to go to Hollywood, she was a beautiful girl. And when we saw it all, we were really shocked by the life they led there. Soon after that the „cold war” began and all correspondence with America ceased.

There was a lot of repressions until 1953 when Stalin died. Anti-Semitism was around when I was a schoolgirl. Some teachers were open anti-Semites. But at that time, one could say that state anti-Semitism existed. Stalin did not like Jews, it was evident. Later when I studied at the Institute, a case began, known as the „Cosmopolite” case, all Jews were labeled Cosmopolitans, that is, without a Motherland. This happened right after the State of Israel had been created. Stalin was ready to exterminate all Jews, but it did not touch us us personally at that time. And in 1953 when I was a 3rd year student, he made up this case with physicians – the Doctors’ Case (4). There were mostly all Jews, famous Professors, who also treated him and his company. He suddenly branded them as national enemies. I remember that not only Jews but also Russian physicians got caught up in this case. I do not know, why Russian physicians got caught up in the case too. Maybe they tried to defend the Jewish physicians. I remember only that Professor Zakusov, who later became an Academician, also got caught up in the Doctors’ Case, though he was a Russian. Professor Zakusov from our Institute was arrested. He taught pharmacology. A wonderful Professor, who was suddenly a national enemy. There was also Professor Dembol, who had to hide. We, young students, began to think about what was going on. Before that we believed everything. We were members of Komsomol (5) and knew little about what was going on, all ideas were stuffed into us. And after that we began to reflect on it. It was the very first striking impression. I had a very good friend, when I was a student. He told me, „You know, I would not throw myself under tanks in such a situation.” And suddenly everybody as if regained sight. All of a sudden! Later in 1953 Stalin died, thank God. His secret letter was read out to Khrushchev (6) at the 20th Congress (7) and life became better, we graduated from the Institute and left for different locations.

After the Institute I was assigned to work in the North, in the town of Kirovsk. I asked them to send me there. I worked there as a therapist for the first three years (1956-1960). In 1959 I got married to my half-relative, so to say: he was son of my father’s half-brother. We got acquainted in our childhood and knew each other all our lives. Later we developed some relationship and got married.

My husband, Lev Isaacovich Rivkind, was born in Gomel in 1925. His childhood passed in Gomel, he studied at the Belorussian Construction Institute there. My husband was not religious. He graduated from the Belorussian Railroad Transport Institute in Gomel. After graduation he came to the North, to Kirovsk and we got married. He worked there in a big „Apatite-stroy” trust “Apatite” was a large industrial enterprise at that time. It consisted of mines and factories, where ore was processed into apatites. In 1992 he retired because of his health condition and passed away in 1997.

In 1960 our son Volodya was born. My mother and father helped to raise him and I worked a lot. But we had very good friends in the North so our life was very joyful. The town was small, every night somebody dropped in, we went for a walk and arranged parties. But there was also a lot of work. Later in 1960 I changed my qualification and became ophthalmologist and I wanted to operate. We set up a small department, I bought instruments and got engaged into ophthalmosurgery. I obtained a qualification certificate soon after several attestations, which was not easy at that time. Three years after my daughter Raya was born. Daughter and son lived in Leningrad in turn: one of them lived with my parents and the other one lived with us. The living conditions in the trans-polar region (Kirovsk) are severe: the polar night, the cold and difficulty with food products’ supply. That is why my parents tried to help us and took children in from time to time to Leningrad. I remember when my son lived in Leningrad, I once came to visit him in winter, but he did not recognize me. They started to ask him, „Who is it? Who is standing over there? This is your mother Inna.” And he was shy. Later I took him in and he attended a day nursery and a kindergarten. But he left for Leningrad to study at primary school. Starting from the first grade Volodya studied in Leningrad. My daughter came to live with me at that time. When he was brought for school holidays after the 1st grade, he told me, „I wish I fell ill and stayed with you.” And I kept him with me. Thus I lived without any help, with two children, with enormous amount of work. It was very difficult, especially in the conditions of the North. My son also studied there and he was a good pupil at school up to the 8th grade. When we left at the beginning of 1969, his teacher told me, „I cried so much today, such a good pupil is leaving!” He was a very self-disciplined and responsible person. When he got a task, he sat down and completed it. We moved to Leningrad. We had worked in the North under a contract and when it had expired we returned home to Leningrad.

When we came to Leningrad in 1969 my husband worked in trust # 32 [a construction trust combination of firms or corporations formed by a legal agreement] as a manager. I could not find a job because of wars in Israel, though I was a complete physician with a category and wonderful recommendations. But I was not accepted to any hospital department because of state anti-Semitism. I was told into my face, „Your „fifth clause” helped you, the nationality, with a plus.” The plus was – wars in Israel. [Fifth clause in all documents questionnaires mostly was “Nationality”]. In 1973 [Editor’s note: the year of the Yom Kippur war in Israel] I could not find a job because of the nationality factor either. I mean, I could find a job but it was impossible to get a raise. At first I had been working in a policlinic for four years, later as a consultant at a hospital, where I was finally ”enticed” to work as a neuro-ophthalmologist.. Or, for instance, entering an Institute. We had to CHOSE an Institute for my son. Yes, because not all Institutes accepted Jews. Though Volodya finished the best mathematical school in the city and was a good pupil, we knew that, for example, it was no use to even try entering the University. We would not be allowed within firing range to LIAP [Leningrad Aerospace Equipment Construction Institute] The Polytechnic was a loyal one and it was possible to enter it. It was the only reason why my son entered it, though he was a good pupil, finished a mathematical school and was able to study at the University. But the University did not accept him. I began to work at first at the policlinic and later I was offered a position at the neurosurgery at the hospital where I had worked simultaneously (I combined jobs). They persuaded me and in 1973 I came to work there as a neuro-ophthalmologist.

Raya graduated from the Forestry Engineering Academy and now worked near St.Petersburg in Alexandrovskaya. While they grew up with my son, the environment was totally Russian, a few Jews. Neither of my children felt anti-Semitism, we tried with my husband not to let them feel it, though we knew that it existed. However, it should be mentioned, that Raya was the only Jewess at her faculty. Jews were not accepted, that’s it! But she managed to enter because she was a wonderful pupil and was very well prepared. She was admitted, in spite of the fact that she was a Jewess, simply because she was a perfect student and was very well prepared.

I did not raise my children in any specific manner, nor did I accustom them to any traditions or nationalistic ideas. They already understood and saw, what kind of problems they might face in their lives. Volodya and Raya were raised like all Russian children

Life changed both to the better and to the worse. On the one hand, we received more freedom, especially, more speech freedom. Something one might have been imprisoned for before was easily discussed. People’s psychology changed a lot: people stopped hoping for the state and began to rely on their own capabilities. It became easier for the Jews to find a job, to enter an Institute and to live in general, as there was less oppression. The society became clearly separated in two parts: poor people and very rich people. All in all, the society became pure capitalistic out of a semi-built socialistic one. However, it became more difficult for people to live, for instance, for pensioners.

My husband had a twin-sister, her name was Sima. She lives in America now. We keep in touch with them, write to each other, call and congratulate each other on holidays and. Sometimes they come here. She left in 1992 with her family: her husband, Larion and son Gennady. It was after the Chernobyl [Chernobyl explosion of the nuclear reactor in 1992]. Gomel was in the area exposed to radiation. My husband was in Gomel at the time the explosion happened, he walked along the street. After the explosion everybody left. Most of our friends from Gomel left for Israel. We have never been there with my husband, not even for a visit. I have no more relatives there. Some of my husband’s nieces left for Israel and some remain in St.Petersburg. We find out about those who live in Israel through those, who stayed here. Some relations are kept with relatives on my father’s side, who live in Samara.

My husband died in St.Petersburg in 1997. At the age of 69 I retired after 45 years of work. Now I live on my pension and my daughter’s salary. My son Volodya supports us. We do not starve or live in misery. I have my favorite pet, my huge gray striped cat with a broad nape. I am now occupied with gardening, I attend a gardeners’ circle. Between the end of spring and mid-fall I live at the summer house, I have a house and a plot of land there. Dora also spends her vacation there. I am not depressed and I try to live an active and interesting life.

GLOSSARY:

1. Jewish Pale of Settlement: certain provinces of the Russian Empire were designated areas for permanent Jewish residence and the Jewish population (apart from certain privileged families) was only allowed to live in these areas.

2. Professor Firsman: a famous biologist in those days; he was one of the first to start research of minerals in Khibiny mountains (near Murmansk). During the industrialization period extraction of minerals was commenced on the Kola Peninsula owing to his developments and discoveries.

3. November 7th: 7th of November was celebrated as the Day of the Great Socialist Revolution. There was a big demonstration arranged on that day, music played, people were celebrating with balloons, flowers and flags; everybody went downtown to watch the parade. It is not a formal holiday anymore.

4. Doctors’ Case: The so-called Doctors’ Case was a set of accusations deliberately forged by Stalin’s government and the KGB against Jewish doctors of the Kremlin hospital charging them with the murder of outstanding Bolsheviks. The „Case” was started in 1952, but was never finished because Stalin died in 1953.

5. Komsomol: communist youth organization created by the Communist Party to make sure that the state would be in control of the ideological upbringing and spiritual development of the youth almost until the age of 30.

6. Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971), Soviet communist leader. After Stalin’s death in 1953, he became first secretary of the Central Committee, in effect the head of the Communist Party of the USSR. In 1956, during the 20th Party Congress, Khrushchev took an unprecedented step and denounced Stalin and his methods. He was deposed as premier and party head in October 1964. In 1966 he was dropped from the party's Central Committee.

7. 20th Party Congress: At the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956 Khrushchev publicly debunked the cult of Stalin and lifted the veil of secrecy from what was happening in the USSR during Stalin’s leadership.

Maria Zabozlaeva

Maria Zabozlaeva
Saratov
Russia
Interviewer: Bozhena Zbaraska-Anatol
Date of interview: 30 September 2003

Maria Zabozlaeva is a very nice woman with a kind smile. She is very reserved. She was pleased to get this opportunity to tell the story of her life. She lives alone. Her children and grandchildren live separately. She wears plain clothes. Her apartment is small and she has old furniture that bought many years before. She has a small collection of books in her bookcase: there are books by Russian classics and books on medicine. Maria says that she starts her day talking to her friends and relatives on the phone: she calls it ‘phone visits’. She often talks to her brother Michael and sister Vera. They live in Israel. Her son Fyodor calls every day to ask his mother how she feels. He always brings her all she needs when she cannot leave home. We talk in a warm and cozy room. There are fruit, sweets and tea on the table. Maria enjoys talking about her family.

My family background

Saratov [over 800 km from Moscow] is a beautiful old town on the Volga, the biggest river in Russia. In the second half of 19th century it became a big industrial center of bread and flour grinding industries. There were steam mills and butteries built in the town. There were many stores and shops in the town and barges in the harbor selling cement, grain, water melons, fish and furs. There was book publishing developed in Saratov. There were straight streets lined with trees leading from the Volga uptown. They were called ascends. There were parks and squares with brass orchestras playing in the evenings in the center of the town. There were one and two-storied stone houses built in the town. In late 19th century there was Russian, German, Jewish, Tatar and Polish population in the town. Russians belonged to Old Believers 1 and Christians. There was a Catholic cathedral, a Lutheran church, a synagogue, and many orthodox Christian churches 2 that made the town different from other in Povolzhye.

The first Jews settled down in the town in early 19 century. In late 19 century there were first canonists 3 coming to the town. There was a pogrom in Saratov in 1853 inspired by authorities by the so-called ‘blood shedding slander’. There was a case of ritualistic murders that Jews were blamed of. After the pogrom Jews began to be deported to reside within the Pale of Settlement 4. The Jews that remained in the town formed a Jewish community by the end of 19th century. In 1897 they built a synagogue. They invited a rabbi from Tsaritsyn [Volgograd at present, 300 km from Saratov]. Jews owned stores and shops selling fish, flour, books, watches, gold and silver. Bender was one of the biggest merchants of his time. He had a prêt-a-porter garment store on the ground floor of his house. Another merchant Ochkin owned hotel ‘Centralnaya’ and a garden with a concert hall and restaurant. Many Jews were craftsmen. They resided in the Jewish neighborhood near the synagogue. The majority of Jews were poor. There was another pogrom in Saratov during revolutionary events in 1905. There were no Jewish educational institutions before the revolution of 1917 5 since the laws of the Russian empire didn’t allow any national educational institutions beyond the Pale of Settlement. [Editor’s note: however, Jewish communities were allowed to make contributions to existing small educational groups, but neither archives of the synagogue in Saratov nor state archives of Saratov region have any references in this regard. The state rabbi came from Tsaritsyn before 1915 and in 1915 there was a rabbi appointed in Saratov.] There was a Jewish school opened after the revolution of 1917. In 1934 Soviet authorities closed the Jewish school during the period of struggle against religion 6. Nowadays Jewish school ‘OR Avner’ functions in Saratov.

Мy paternal grandfather Semyon Ogushevich was born in Saratov, sometime in 1870s. Grandfather Semyon was a strict, morose, taciturn and severe man. There is his portrait hanging on the wall in a photograph taken in my mother’s apartment. I remember that he worked a lot, repairing primus stoves 7 and water pipes. He was tall and thin and had a gray beard and long hair. I don’t remember whether he wore a hat or a kippah. Grandfather Semyon was very religious. He celebrated all holidays and observed traditions, went to synagogue and prayed a lot. My grandfather had two or three books with yellow pages that he used when praying. I remember that he prayed at home with his tefillin on his hand and forehead. He also had a tallit on. I don’t think grandfather gave much thought to a change of regime since he was busy repairing primus stoves from morning till night. There were no discussions about the revolution in his home. He died when I was seven. I remember him lying on the floor wrapped in his tallit and there were candles burning around him. Grandfather was buried at the section for men at the Jewish cemetery in Saratov according to Jewish traditions in 1936.

My grandmother Vera Ogushevich, whose maiden name I don’t know, was born in Saratov in 1870s. My grandfather never talked about her and I have very little information. She was religious and went to synagogue. She wore long skirts. I only saw her portrait, a big one where she had a black shawl on her head. She was a housewife and spoke Yiddish. My grandparents didn’t give any Jewish education to their children. Grandmother Vera died in Saratov in 1929. She was buried at the section for women at the Jewish cemetery in Saratov.

My grandmother and grandfather had five children: three sons – my father Esaih Ogushevich and Osip and Michael Avgustevich, and two daughters – Sophia Ogushevich and Raisa Riabskaya, nee Ogushevich. When I grew up my father told me why his brothers had a different last name. When World War I began their father decided to save his sons from the army. My grandfather managed somehow to give his sons different surnames. According to laws of Russian empire one son of old parents did not serve in army. Therefore my father Esaih is Ogushevich and his brother Michael is Avgustevich. To tell the truth my grandfather has with surnames in family a muddle. Someone has incorrectly written down surnames of children of great-grandfather Efima, therefore my grandfather Semyon and his brother Ilya - Ogushevich, and brothers Osip, Moisey, Lev and sister Sima – Avgushevich.

Osip Avgustevich was born in Saratov in 1894. Grandfather taught Osip his profession and he became a plumber. His wife Dvosia – I don’t know her maiden name, was a Jew. She was a housewife. They were moderately religious, but they didn’t raise their children religious. This is all I know about them. They died and were buried at the Jewish cemetery in Saratov. They had three sons: their older son Moisey, I don’t know his date of birth. He perished at the front during the Great Patriotic War 8 in 1942. Their middle son Ilia was born in 1933. In August 1945 he married Bertha Yudovich, a Jewish girl. They had a traditional wedding with a chuppah at the synagogue. I went to the wedding and this was the first traditional Jewish wedding that I attended. There was a big hall on the second floor of their house. There was a tent on four posts and on top of it there was a canopy of а beautiful gold glittering fabric. There were 10-15 guests at the wedding party. They were relatives, there were no other guests. Ilia wore a dark suit. Bertha had a beautiful pinkish dress of average length, bright, with flounces, elbow-long sleeves, covered shoulders. She had her long hair done and adorned. She wore white shoes and white socks. The ride and bridegroom stood under the chuppah. The rabbi spoke Yiddish, but I don’t know what it was about. We were standing around. When he finished his recitation somebody gave the bride and bridegroom glasses with red wine and they sipped it. I remember this. I don’t remember what kind of food there was on the tables since I was overwhelmed with the occasion.
Ilia finished Pedagogical College in Saratov and went to work in Belgorod [approximately 600 km from Moscow] where he lectured at the Pedagogical College. He is candidate of philological sciences and a pensioner. He lives in Belgorod. Ilia’s daughter Elena Elkonina lived with her husband Lev Elkonin, Jew, in Saratov. She died in 1998 and was buried at the Jewish cemetery in Saratov. There were all rules followed, there was a minyan gathering and they recited Kaddish. I was present there and saw ten men wearing kippot reading the Kaddish. There was Rafail Yablonski among them, cousin brother of deceased Elena Elkonina. Since he didn’t have a kippah he wore a kerchief tied in knots.

Younger son Semyon was born in Saratov in 1938. After finishing a secondary school he finished Biological faculty of the State University in Saratov. He is candidate of psychological sciences, lives in Moscow and works in the Joint 9. We often talk on the phone. When Semyon comes to Saratov on business he comes to see me.

His brother Michael Avgustevich was born in Saratov in 1896. He was a plumber like his brothers. He died in 1972. His wife Chasia, nee Sverdlova, a Jew, was born in Saratov in 1900. She was housewife. She died in 1997. They were both buried at the Jewish cemetery in Saratov. Their daughter Elia Yablonskaya was born in Saratov in 1925. She finished an obstetrician school in Saratov and worked as an obstetrician medical assistant in maternity hospital #2. Her husband Shmul Yablonski was a Jew. All I know about him is that he died and was buried at the Jewish cemetery in Saratov. Elia died in 2003 and was buried at the Jewish cemetery according to the Jewish tradition. There was a minyan gathering and a Kaddish recited. Elia and Shmul had a son, born in Saratov in 1952. His name was Rafail Yablonski. He finished the Faculty of Electronics at Saratov Polytechnic College. After finishing the college he worked at the Tantal, a company belonging to an electronic industry. Now he is director of Grade-Star Ltd. Company dealing in rewinding of electric engines. We keep in touch.

One of my grandparent’s daughter Sophia Ogushevich was born in Saratov some time in 1900s. I don’t know what kind of education she got. All I know is that she was good at accounting. At the age of 20 or so she moved to Moscow. She was single and lived with her sister Raisa in Moscow. Sophia had a hard life. She worked as a janitor in various companies. She died in Moscow. Regretfully, this is all I know about Sophia.

Her sister Raisa Riabskaya, nee Ogushevich was born in 1890s. After getting married she moved to Moscow and became a housewife. Her husband Chaim Raibski was a Jew. He was a food supplier. Their daughter Chasia was born in early 1920s. She lives in Moscow. She worked as an economist. Now she is a pensioner. Raisa’s second daughter Minna was born in the middle of 1920s. She lived in Moscow and worked in a design office. She died in Moscow in 1991. Raisa’s son Emil was born in Moscow in late 1920s. During the Great Patriotic War he was at the front. He was shell-shocked and had to wear and hearing device for the rest of his life. Emil’s wife Tamara Kluchareva is 80 years old. Their daughter’s name is Marina Riabskaya. We keep in touch with them and my sister Vera Belova lived in their home all five years of her studies.

Both sisters, Sophia and Raisa were moderately religious while Minna’s daughter Yana Khmelnitskaya is deeply religious. She celebrates all holidays, prays a lot, often goes to a synagogue in Moscow and follows kashrut. She is a real Jew. I don’t know how she came to be so religious. Yana’s son Ivan Khmelnitski studies in the 11th form in a Jewish school in Moscow and is also deeply religious.

My father Esaih Ogushevich was born in Saratov in 1904. After the revolution of 1917 he finished a Russian lower secondary school, Construction College and worked as a plumber. My father worked long hours. He took after grandfather Semyon: taciturn, strict and hardworking. He wore a tunic, but no hat. He only put on a kippah and tallit at the synagogue and tefillin on his hand and forehead when praying. He went to the synagogue with his father and his brother Michael. We lived in neighboring houses with them. And at Friday and at Saturday evening we waited at the gate of our home when they returned from synagogue.

My maternal grandfather Abram Buch was born in Saratov in 1870s. My grandfather was strict and vicious. I would even call him despotic. He seemed to be unapproachable, but he really did love us. He was a tailor: he made women’s clothes. Grandfather Abram was a big handsome man with gray streaks in his hair. He always dressed like a dandy and wore a tolstovka 10 where he had a watch in a small pocket with a thick golden chain hanging on his chest. He lived with grandmother Sophia and their children in a two-storied house in Cheluskintsy Street on the corner of Volskaya Street. At that time it was far from the center of the town. There was a house where actors of the drama theater resided. This house is still there. There were communal apartments 11 in this house. My grandparents lived in one room where they had a bed, a wardrobe, an armchair and big table. There was a big sewing machine that was used to sew leather and thick woolen fabrics and a mannequin. In the kitchen they had a table, a kerosene stove and shelves for crockery. They had neighbors residing on the first floor – a Russian Christian family of the Victorovs and a Jewish family on the second floor. The name of the head of the family was Iosif Rys. He happened to be my future mother-in-law’s brother. My grandparents got along with their neighbors very well.

I visited my grandmother at Chanukkah with a little bag on my chest where I put Chanukkah gelt that they gave me. Even now I give Chanukkah gelt to my grandchildren, even though I do not celebrate these holidays. I give them money in the memory of my grandmother and grandfather. I don’t think grandfather Abram was not enthusiastic about the revolution of 1917 since the new regime expropriated his property 12. He was a tailor and owned a shop, as I imagine. His daughters also specialized in tailoring: Rosa made hats and my mother made dresses and suits. The family was moderately religious. I know little about them since we lived separately, but I remember that they fasted at Yom Kippur. They drank coffee with challah bread the night before and didn’t have any food until the men returned from the synagogue when the first star appeared in the sky on the following day. Grandfather Abram died in 1942 and was buried at the men’s section of the Jewish cemetery in Saratov. I don’t know whether he was buried in accordance with the Jewish tradition.

My maternal grandmother Sophia Buch whose maiden name I don’t remember was born in Saratov in 1870s. She was a housewife that was customary with Jewish women. My grandmother was short, thin, nice and quiet. I would call her timid. She always obeyed and listened to grandfather. She didn’t wear a wig and only wore a kerchief occasionally. She wore her hair in a knot on the back. My mother never told me whether she got any religious education. My grandparents’ daughters Vera, Anna and Rosa were not religious while my mother and her sister Anelia were moderately religious. Grandmother Sophia died in April 1941, one month before my sister Vera was born.

My grandparents had seven children. They were born in Saratov. I don’t know their dates of birth.
The older daughter Anelia finished a grammar school in Saratov, got married and moved to Kuibyshev [present Samara, over 800 km from Moscow]. Her husband was Russian, his name was Alexei Latyshov. He was director of a military plant in Kuibyshev. I don’t know what Anelia was doing. Their son Evgeni Latyshov, born in 1936, finished the Polytechnic College in Samara. He worked as an engineer. Aunt Anelia died in Saratov.

The next daughter was Rosa. Her husband Alexei Kanailov was Russian too. He was a Party official and worked as secretary of the regional Party committee. They lived in Leningrad [over 400 km from Moscow] before the war. In 1942 they evacuated to Saratov and lived with us. After the war they moved to Kaliningrad [900 km from Moscow]. They had four children. Their old daughter Ninel had a philological education. She worked as a librarian. She lives in Kaliningrad. Sophia, born in 1941, before the war I believe, lives in Tartu [today Estonia]. She worked as a teacher of mathematic at school. Now she is a pensioner. Sergei, born in 1936, lives in St. Petersburg. He finished the Polytechnic College in Kaliningrad and worked as chief construction engineer in Siberia for many years. Now he is consultant for the Union of entrepreneurs. There was another son named Valeri. He died in a car accident.

Their next daughter Katia lived in a village near Leningrad. She was a pharmacist and worked in a pharmacy. She was single. In 1943 Germans executed Katia as a Jew.

Vera was born in 1902. I don’t know where she studied, but at the age of 13 she began to do errands for Bolshevik Antonov-Ovseyenko and then she terminated any contacts with her family since they didn’t share her revolutionary ideas. Her relatives called her Verka the machine gunner. During the Civil War 13 Vera served in the Chapaev 14 division. She married commissar of this division, a Jewish man. His name was Abram Ertman. He perished in 1919. Vera moved to Odessa and finished the College of Public Economy. She returned to Saratov and worked as an economist in the regional planning department. She met her second man Moisey Brodski in Saratov in 1924. He finished a rabfak 15 and worked as an accountant in a bank office. They didn’t get married, but lived together. Their children have their father’s last name of Brodski and Vera kept her nee name of Ertman. Vera died in 1980. She was buried at the Jewish cemetery in Saratov. Moisey Brodski was buried at the Russian Voskresenskoye cemetery in Saratov. They had three daughters. Their older daughter Dina was born in 1925. She finished the Medical College in Saratov. She became a candidate of medical sciences and worked as an assistant at the department of hygiene. Her husband Alexandr Kosmodemianski was a mathematician and correspondent member of the Academy of Sciences. They lived in Donetsk [over 900 km from Moscow] in Ukraine. Dina died in 2003. Dina’s daughter Irina was born in 1947. She and her Russian husband Vladimir Bolgrabski finished the Faculty of Mathematic of the Saratov State University. Irina is a doctor of mathematic, professor and correspondent member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Vladimir works in a computer center. Their son Igor Bolgrabski finished the Technological College in Leningrad. He works in a company and lives in Donetsk with his parents.

Nelia, their middle daughter, was born in 1932. She finished the Faculty of Geography of the Saratov State University and worked as a teacher. She is a pensioner and lives in Saratov.

Ludmila, the younger daughter, was born in 1935. Her husband Valeri Trushkov, Russian, finished the Law College in Saratov and worked in law enforcement institutions in Saratov. Ludmila finished the College of Economics in Saratov. She got the profession of economist. In 1977 her husband got a job offer from Turkmenia. They moved and lived in Ashkhabad [almost 2500 km from Moscow]. About five years ago they returned to Saratov with their younger daughter Larisa and her family. Their older daughter Irina, born in 1967, finished the Law College in Saratov in 1989. Her husband Sergei Khlebnikov, born in 1962, Russian, finished the Polygraphist College in Moscow in 1984. They met in Ashkhabad where Sergei’s parents lived. They got married and settled down in Saratov. Thy lived with Irina’s aunt Nelia Brodskaya. Irina stayed with her when studying in college. They are in business now. Irina and Sergei have two daughters: Zhenia, born in 1988, and Dasha, born in 1989. They study in the Jewish school ‘Or Avner’ in Saratov. Their younger daughter Larisa, born in 1975, finished the Faculty of Therapeutic Physical Training at the Ashkhabad College of Physical Training in 1996. Her husband Akhmed Kranov, born in 1969, Kazakh, finished Medical College in Ashkhabad in 1992. Larisa is a housewife. Their son Timur was born in 2003. Her husband Akhmed is an anesthesiologist in maternity hospital #2 in Saratov. They all keep in touch.

My mother’s brother Boris was born in 1902. During the Civil War he was in the Chapaev division. I don’t know what kind of education he had. Boris worked as an accountant in the regional department of pharmacies in Saratov. His wife Tatiana whose maiden name I don’t remember came from a religious Jewish family. They observed all traditions. We visited them on Friday and they visited us each Saturday. My aunt always cooked something delicious for us. We played cards and dominoes or lotto. Now I understood that this was Sabbath. We continued visiting them even when I grew up. When I had my own plans on this day I took my mother to my aunt and uncle and then returned to pick her up and had dinner with them. They didn’t have children. Tatiana was a housewife. She had heart problems and was sickly after a surgery, but my mother and I kept visiting her on Friday. My aunt also visited us. This was a tradition with us. Boris died in 1966 and was buried at the Jewish cemetery. Tatiana died in 1972 and was buried at the Jewish cemetery.

Anna was born in 1910. She finished the Faculty of Humanitarian Sciences Pedagogical College in Serdobsk, Penza region, [about 800 km from Moscow]. She was a teacher at the Pedagogical School and then became a human resources manager at the vocational education department. After moving to Saratov she became a member of a Party control commission of October district committee of the Communist Party. Her husband Vasili Fokin, Russian, came from Serdobsk. They didn’t have children. Anna died in 2000 and was buried at the Jewish cemetery. My mother had another brother whom we have never seen and have no information about him.

My mother Taiba Ogushevich, nee Buch was born in Saratov in 1905. She finished a secular grammar school in Saratov. She could speak some French and occasionally read us poems in French. She was very kind and handy: she could sew, embroider and knit. My mother made her clothes herself. She didn’t wear any shawls or hats. She also made clothes for her acquaintances. Her clients were mostly Jewish women. All her friends and acquaintances called her affectionately Tusia. When in grammar school my mother went to dancing-party at the House of Officers where she met my father. They were seeing each other secretly from their parents since they met against the Jewish tradition of matchmaking. They got married for love in 1927. They never spoke about their wedding and I never came to asking about it.

My mother and father lived in a house with my grandfather in Niznyaya Street in the Jewish neighborhood. There was a synagogue and a mosque in this street. Our neighbors were Tatars for the most part. There were few lilac bushes, a cherry tree and an apple tree near the house. There was also a summer tent house and vines around it that my father planted. There was a wood shed in the backyard until some time in 1940 we had gas heating and a hollandka stove [a Dutch design built in stove] installed. We didn’t keep any livestock. There was a big kitchen and a Russian stove 16 in it. There were few small rooms in the house. Our parents had a bedroom and we, children, also had our quarters in the house. There was plain furniture: chairs and a bed with knobbles, a wardrobe and a dressing table. There were two houses actually standing together: one where our family with grandfather Semyon resided and another house where my father’s brother Michael Avgustevich, his wife Chasia and daughter Elia lived. Grandfather bought these houses when he returned to Saratov from Pugachov and then when his granddaughters Maria and Elia were born he gave a house into to our ownership. Therefore, I became an owner of the house where our family lived.
My mother was a housewife and did everything in the house. There was no specific religiosity in the family, but while grandfather Semyon was alive they used to go to rabbi Gorelik who performed the duties of shochet to have their chickens slaughtered, and they followed kashrut.

My mother was a terrific cook. She made delicious Jewish food. At Rosh Hashanah we had Gefilte fish and at Pesach we always had matzah. Our mother made chicken broth with kneydlakh. Our mother set the table and we waited until grandfather and uncle Michael came home from the synagogue to start a meal. Our uncle always came to our house, sat at the table to drink a glass of wine and then went to his home.

My mother and father had three children: I was the oldest and was born in 1929, and my brother Michael was born in 1936. We were born in Saratov. I didn’t go to a kindergarten since my grandmother Sophia was looking after me. I liked playing in the yard and spending time with my grandfather Semyon. When Michael was born I began helping my mother to look after him. He was a quiet boy and didn’t cause any problems. Shortly before the war in 1941 my younger sister Vera was born. I also helped to look after her. In summer 1935 my mother, her sisters Ania and Katia and I went to Kislovodsk on vacation. [Town in Stavropol region, Balneal resort. Located at the foothills of the Caucasus at the height of 720-1060 meters, over 1300 km from Moscow] I have dim memories of this trip, but I remember the feeling of happiness and quiet.

I went to the synagogue with my father and my maternal grandmother Sophia on holidays. There were always many people there. I have the brightest memory of the merry holiday of receiving the gift of the Torah [Simchat Torah]. My grandmother and I were on the upper floor and men were on the ground floor and I can still remember those shining scrolls being taken out. There was singing and we were watching from where we were. We didn’t celebrate Jewish holidays after grandfather died. Grandfather enjoyed making a tent at Sukkot. We had meals in it. Grandfather used to drink a glass of wine in such festive manner! There was homemade challah bread on the table, greeneries and fruit. Mother brought grapes and apples from the market.

At Pesach we took out special crockery that was kept in a wicker basket with two handles in the attic. We had different crockery for meat and dairy products. Mother cooked Gefilte fish, tsimes [stew with carrots, parsnips, or prunes with potatoes] and kneydl with broth, all our neighbors knew when she was cooking – the food smelled in the street. My mother and I picked matzah from the synagogue. When I was 5 or 6 the old synagogue was closed. It was closed because of the Soviet power that persecuted all religions, but I still remember it well from the time it was open. It was a two-storied stone building in Gogol Street between Volskaya and Chapaev Streets. My mother and I stayed on the upper floor from where we could see it all. I remember rabbi Gorelik in his kippah, lapserdak [traditional outer clothing of men, including rabbi] and tallit. The present-day synagogue in Posadski Street is different from the old one. It’s just a one-storied stone building. We visited grandmother and grandfather on Sabbath and every other Saturday we spent with my mother’s brother Boris and Boris came to see us another time. My mother and I also made preparations to receive guests appropriately.

My mother and my mother brother’s wife Chasia switched to Yiddish when they didn’t want us to understand the subject of their discussion. When I began to study German at school I began to grasp the point of a subject of the discussion. My older cousin sister Elia Avgustevich, uncle Michael’s daughter, had a good conduct of Yiddish. My parents didn’t discuss any political subjects in the presence of their children, but I cannot tell what they talked about when they switched to Yiddish. They were not members of the Party. I understand that my parents had a loyal attitude toward the Soviet rule. They didn’t have a fear of the regime. However, I know that there was a house in the corner of Volskaya and Zarubin Streets that other people avoided. It was called the ‘Stromin house’. Mr. Stromin was a prosecutor officer or something like that in Saratov. My mother and father also bypassed it since all those arrested at night were taken to this house. We were not allowed to talk about this house. When the war began this building housed an NKVD 17 kindergarten. Our family didn’t suffer during the period of arrests. At least, I know nothing about it. I guess, adults in our family discussed the situation in the USSR and Europe, but I was too young to take any notice of what adults were talking about.

Growing up

I studied in school # 13 18 for girls (present-day lyceum of physics and mathematics) in 1937 – 1947. The Jewish school in Saratov was closed in 1934. My school was on the corner of Moskovskaya and Rachov Streets. There were many trees and flowers in the yard. The school was in an old stone three-storied building with wide stairs and hallways. There were high ceilings in the building. I studied well and was fond of literature classes. When Vera was one year old she and mother fell ill with typhoid. My mother had to go to hospital due to her severe condition and Vera was at home. She also had whooping cough and I had a release from school for few months to look after my sister. Probably I chose the doctor’s profession after I nursed Vera back to health. Of course, my father and his brother were helping me since we had to do everything by ourselves. I washed clothes in a tub that I put on a stool. I disinfected all clothes and bed sheets, cooked and visited my mother in hospital. When Vera recovered I understood how much I wanted to become a doctor.

We hardly had any books at home. There were only few religious books that my grandfather left. They were very old books with yellow pages and we didn’t understand what was written in them. We borrowed books that we wanted from a library.

We heard about the war on the radio when Molotov 19 spoke. My father was called to his office. He was released from service in the army. He was a plumber and equipment repairman at the NKVD boiler house in Dzerzhynski Street. The NKVD office was called a ‘gray house’ (this building is still called so) and its boiler house was across the street from the office. My father worked there through the war. His brother Osip Avgustevich also worked there. They worked there 24 hours in a row, if necessary. I know that my father was respected at work.

We started school on 1 September 1941, as usual. There were talks about a war at school since many pupils’ brothers or fathers had been recruited to the army. Everybody kept track about news from the front. We were very concerned when German troops came close to Moscow. Many thought it was the end, but then the situation began to change and we were hearing about the advance of the Soviet army. I believe, some time in the end of 1943 we began to mark the advance of Soviet troops on our map at the history class at school.

Life was hard during the war. I can’t remember whether Jews supported each other, but there was some moral support, indeed, since each family had somebody at the front. There was nobody in our family at the front, so our situation was different. Saratov was quite at a distance from the front and plants from occupied territories evacuated to our town. Those plants repaired tanks and manufactured shells for Katyusha units. Saratov worked for the front and provided food to the front. When Germans approached Stalingrad [Volgograd, over 900 km from Moscow, 300 km from Saratov], anti-aircraft units came to Saratov where girls served for the most part. Anti-aircraft units were installed in Zavodskoy district of Saratov where military plants were located. Schoolchildren from our school were taken to Yelshanka in 40 km from Saratov to dig trenches. My father’s brother Michael worked as a plumber in the hospital where Chasia was working and they helped us with food whenever they could. My father also worked from morning till night and my mother sewed for the front.

My mother had a childhood friend whose name was Rieva Kostyunina and kept in touch with the family of Avrutovs living nearby. Jewish women usually bought food products at the Verkhniy Bazaar located in our neighborhood. Jewish housewives went to this market because it was the nearest market to their homes.

During the war

We didn’t celebrate Jewish holidays during the war. We only baked matzah at Pesach. It was hard to observe traditions when we could hardly get what we vitally needed. We actually didn’t socialize with other people. Only my mother’s clients came to our house. For celebrations we got together with the family and there were usually about 12 people sitting at the table. I also remember that when there were 13 people sitting at the table my mother didn’t sit down. We had a close family. We still keep in touch with our relatives and their children scattered all over the world.

I had one Jewish classmate Fania Chait. There were Jewish girls at school. We never faced any different attitudes. I have my Jewish identity stated in all my documents. This is the so-called Item 5 20. I became a pioneer and joined the Komsomol 21. I took an active part in pioneer activities. We supported and helped older people at home. I never faced any negative attitudes. Perhaps, I never gave it a thought, really. It’s hard to say now. I participated in amateur concerts reciting excerpts from books and poems: Gertzen [Gertzen, Alexander I. (1812-1870): Russian revolutionary, writer and philosopher] ‘The Bygone and Thoughts’. When a senior pupil I attended a history club in the House of Officers. Boys from a school for boys attended it, too. When I was in the 8th form I met my future husband Yuri (Georgi) Zabozlaev. He was born in Saratov in 1929.

After the war

I finished school in 1947 and entered the Pediatric Faculty at the Medical College. I passed my entrance exams and got all excellent marks. My Jewish identity didn’t play any role 22 I finished this college in 1953. I heard about the ‘doctors’ plot’ 23, but I don’t remember anything about it. I was overwhelmed with medicine and believed that it was slander against doctors. Later newspapers began to publish disclaimers and my concerns disappeared.

Mother my future husband Evgenia Davydovna, his sister Olga and he had evacuated from Leningrad during the Great Patriotic War. There was a secondary school where they also studied aviation in Bakhmetievskaya Street. Georgi – although everybody called him Yuri, studied in this school in the 8th, 9th and 10th form. They were very poor. Their father perished during the siege in Leningrad 24. There was one teacher of history that worked in our school for girls and in school for boys. She conducted joint classes at the history club and was not favored by the local educational authorities for this. We studied history in this club. Since then Yuri and I were together until Yuri died. My husband’s mother Evgenia Zabozlaeva, nee Rys, was a Jew. Her parents David and Olga Rys, Jews, were fabric merchants. My parents knew them. My mother and Evgenia Davydovna studied at the grammar school for girls in Saratov together.

However, Evgenia Davydovna kept the fact of her Jewish identity to herself. She had the Russian last name of Zabozlaeva and everybody believed they were Russian. For her it was a matter of convenience so that her children were not disturbed when studying at school. Yuri and Olga knew that their mother was a Jew. They joined Komsomol and later they joined the Party and of course, there was nothing Jewish in their family. After finishing the 10th form Yuri was sent to a pilot school in Balashov [over 800 km from Moscow] in Saratov region. We got married after I finished my third year in college. This happened in summer 1950, though he had proposed to me few years before. We had a very cheerful wedding. There were relatives on both sides and my co-students. We had a wedding party and tables set in Michael’s house that was bigger than ours. My relatives helped with cooking. We had teyglakh, Gefilte fish and forshmak made. There were also lots of pastries.

We had a civil ceremony in a registry office. We didn’t go to synagogue and didn’t have a chuppah.
It was out of the questions! Actually, my mother-in-law and her relatives were not quite happy about me as Yuri’s wife, I don’t know why. My husband was really nice and kind, there are no such husbands now. He told me that what they wanted was their business and we should do what we thought was right. My parents liked Yuri. One couldn’t help liking him!

It happened so that we took a decision to get married on the sour of the moment. Yuri was a 3rd-year student and I wasn’t quite prepared to get married. Since his mother and her sisters didn’t want this marriage to take place my father forwarded a condition that we would only get married if his relatives reached a compromise about me. Now I understand why his mother didn’t want us to get married. They were so poor and she hoped that he would support her and sisters after he finished his school. Or, perhaps, she thought we were too young to marry. I had a neighbor Luba Galper, a Jewish girl that was renting an apartment in a nearby house. She came from a wealthy family. Her father was director of a clock factory in Penza. She said to me ‘Why worry? You can borrow any dress from my wardrobe!’ I chose a white dress that I wore to the registry office. On the following day I had to give this dress back and my mother-in-law asked me 'Where is the dress?', but Yuri replied ‘It got wine stained’. He didn’t allow anyone to have second thoughts about me. Later I had to make it up with his mother for his sake. I called her ‘mother’.

We enjoyed the wedding party. Yuri gave me brown amber necklace. Our guests had fun and danced a lot. They also danced ‘seven forty’. My father and uncle Michael also danced. So I stepped into my marital life with a scandal and wearing somebody else’s dress.

My brother Michael was 6 when my mother sent him to an NKVD kindergarten where our father worked. There was a small garden and a playground near the kindergarten. In 1944 Michael went to secondary school # 30 and music school to learn to play the violin. He became a young Octobrist, then a pioneer, joined Komsomol. After finishing the 7th form Michael entered the mechanical Faculty at the Aviation College in 1951. He studied well and played in the college orchestra. Students staged the musical comedy ‘A Wedding in Malinovka’ in college. He finished college in 1955 and entered an Automobile Faculty at the Polytechnic College of Saratov. In this college Michael also played in the orchestra. In 1960 he finished college and joined the Party.

Michael worked as an engineer in various companies of the automobile industry in Saratov. In 1969 he was appointed as director of the design office of Privolzhskstroytrans trust. In 1971 this design office was transformed into Saratov affiliate of the OMTS (Organization, Mechanization and Engineering Support of Construction) design institute and Michael became its director. He worked as director until 1992. He was fond of technical developments and was awarded a number of diplomas and patents for his innovations.

When he was a student Michael married his co-student in 1957. His wife Ludmila Zotova, born in 1937, was Russian. They had much in common. Ludmila finished a music school and took part in amateur performances. She finished the Faculty of Economics in various design institutes. Our mother liked Ludmila and had no objections to their marriage. Michael and Ludmila had two children. The older one – Irina, was born in 1958. She finished a music school. In 1980 she finished the Saratov Polytechnic College, the Faculty of Economics and worked as an economist in a design institute. Her husband Boris Chervotkin, born in 1954, Russian, finished the faculty of Mechanics and Mathematic of the Saratov State University. He also finished a post-graduate course. He is candidate of mathematic science. They have two children: son Konstantin, born in 1982, and daughter Anna, born in 1984. They finished school in Israel and serve in the army in Israel.

Michael’s younger daughter Tatiana, born in 1968, finished a higher secondary school, a music school and the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematic in Saratov State University. She worked as a programmer in a design institute. In May 1992 she fell ill with acute leucosis. Doctors examined her in Saratov and Moscow and said that she could probably be helped in Israel. In August 1992 Michael, Ludmila and Tatiana moved to Israel at the invitation of a clinic in Israel. Irina and her family joined them two months later. Irina was supposed to be a marrow donor for her sister, but her blood turned out to be incompatible with Tatiana’s. They found a different donor. Tatiana lived four years. Michael wasn’t religious, but the tragedy that happened to his daughter changed him. Michael and his family adopted religion. Michael had brit milah at an early age. Irina’s husband Boris had a Jewish name of Boruch. Grandson Konstantin also had bar mitzvah. His Jewish name is David and Anna has a Jewish name of Anyuta. Tatiana began to be called Talia. She died in 1996. Michael and Ludmila live in Jerusalem. Michael is an invalid of 1 grade. He has a Parkinson disease. Irina and her family live in Netanya. My brother Mihael’s wife Ludmila is Russian and she is Christian. However, when the family moved to Israel and their daughter Tatiana adopted Jewishness Ludmila began to follow the Jewish way of life. They celebrate Sabbath, light candles on Friday, get together with the family, follow kashrut and celebrate all holidays when their health condition permits. Ludmila goes to a Christian church as well in Israel, but she supports a Jewish way of life at home. According to the Jewish tradition she puts little stones on Tatiana’s grave, rather than flowers what is the Christian custom.

My younger sister Vera was a weak and sickly child. Vera was 9 when father died in an accident. She stayed with relatives during the funeral and later Vera said she was grateful to her relatives that took her to their house. Father was always alive in her memory. Our cousin sister Elia Avgustevich took Vera to the synagogue for the first time. This was at Pesach. Vera was 6 years old. Vera wasn’t religious, but she liked Jewish holidays. She went school #13 for girls in 1948. When she was in the 6th form the schools for boys and girls merged. Some children were assigned to other schools nearer to their homes. Vera was transferred to a former school for boys. It took her some time to get adjusted to the new school. I know that in school 13 Vera had some Jewish classmates, but I cannot say they were close friends. There were no Jews in her new school or in the drama club in the houses of officers that Vera attended. Vera didn’t have Jewish friends. Her classmates sometimes abused her for her Jewish identity calling her ‘Jew’ in an abusive manner.

Our father’s uncle Osip Avgustevich helped Vera to get a job at a plant in 1956 since Vera failed at the competition to the Aviation College. She studied at the evening department of Saratov Aviation College and worked. She worked as production engineer and retired in 1994. Her husband had died and she needed to support her daughter Katia. She had to do something to earn more money.

Vera worked at the ‘mail box’ 25 over 30 years. I think that her career failed due to her Jewish identity. Her boss always included her on his lists of employees to be submitted for promotions or a raise, and then he always said ‘I can’t understand why they crossed your name out of the list’.., but Vera knew. Vera married Alexandr Belov, Russian, in 1971 when she was 30. He finished the Faculty of Energy in Saratov Polytechnic College. He worked as an assistant and the faculty of Energy at the Polytechnic College. In 1972 defended his candidate's dissertation in Leningrad. After they got married they lived with our mother. In 1972 their daughter Katia was born. She finished the faculty of Biology in Saratov State University in у 1994. She is a psychologist. She defended her dissertation in 1997. She is candidate of sciences.

About 8-10 years ago Vera began to identify herself as a Jew. She said this happened when she began to work in a Jewish project of the Open Jewish University in Israel. Our cousin brother Semyon Avgustevich that was manager of Association of Public Universities employed her as project secretary in Moscow in 1996. Vera worked in this program for five years: she gained knowledge of the Jewish history and traditions. Vera studied the Jewish history. Employees of this project even studied ‘Introduction to Torah’. This project lasted four years. Later Semyon started a new program ‘Warm houses of Moscow’ and made Vera coordinator of this program. They celebrated Sabbath, Pesach and other holidays in ‘warm houses’ (‘warm houses’: charity cultural program for those who cannot attend Hesed. It includes celebration of Sabbath, birthdays, attending lectures on various subjects, small concerts and celebration of all Jewish holidays) and Vera became a hostess of one of such houses and at that time her Jewish identity showed up. She took part in celebration of Chanukkah at the ‘Russia’ cinema theater in Moscow. At the previous Pesach that Vera conducted in her ‘warm house’ there were 100 guests. Young people from the community of young Jews conducted seder and hid afikoman. Working in this program Vera visited Israel several times. Her first visit took place in 1996. Vera was greatly impressed. She traveled for the 2nd time in 1998. During her 3rd visit Vera, her daughter Katia and Michael celebrated the new Year in Jerusalem. Vera met a nice Jewish man in Moscow. They got married and she moved to him in Israel in 2000. She is very happy. They live in Karmiel.

Our father died in 1950 a month and a half after my wedding. He died in an accident at the factory of amplifiers was under construction. Father was buried at the Jewish cemetery. Our mother ordered a memorial prayer [Kaddish] at the synagogue. Our mother was a reserved and taciturn person. She never complained or discussed her feelings. By the way, our mother never once went to our father’s grave. It was a mystery for us, but we never dared to ask her.

In 1953 I was a last-year student in college. When Stalin died we all had a feeling that it was the end of the world and of the life. All people were crying. Students attended a memorial meeting at the Revolution Square that is now called Teatralnaya. There were crowds of people at meetings. I cannot explain now why we were crying, but that was how we were feeling. We didn’t know the real state of things and in our family we never came into any details about politics, so I believed that everything wrong was done without Stalin’s involvement.

My husband and I lived separately for many years. I was finishing my studies in Saratov and he studied in Balashov. He finished his military school with honors and worked there as pilot-instructor for few years. Upon graduation from Medical College I worked as a doctor in a children’s hospital, nursery school and was a district doctor. We rented an apartment in the outskirts of Balashov. We only had Russian neighbors and Yuri had grown up in the Russian surrounding. So it happened that Jewish traditions were absent from my life for many years. My husband liked Jewish food and when my mother visited us she cooked only Jewish food. In 1952 our daughter Sophia was born. There is a romantic story about this name. My husband and I decided to name our daughter Sophia long before she was born. My husband traveled to many towns in the Soviet Union. Once he traveled to Uman in Ukraine and made a tour of its famous park that count Pototski made for his beloved Sophia. There are ponds in this park arranged in such manner that when flying over the park one can read the name Sophia formed by the ponds. My husband said that if we were going to have a daughter we would name her Sophia.

Yuri and I kept moving from one place to another where Yuri’s military service required. From Balashov we moved to Cheliabinsk [about 1600 km from Moscow]. My husband finished his service in Feodorovka village Kustanai region [over 1700 km from Moscow] in Kazakhstan where our son was born in 1957. I named him Fyodor after father my husband.

Our children went to school and became young Octobrists, pioneers and Komsomol members. There was overall devotion to the idea of communism and superiority of Russians and even if I wanted I wouldn’t have been able to keep any Jewish way of life. I’ve never tried to conceal the fact of my Jewish identity, but I didn’t feel anything specific about it. I’ve never faced any unjust attitudes. Our children didn’t know they were Jews. I told them about when they grew up. My husband always identified himself as a Jew.

We returned to Saratov in 1961. We lived with my mother in our house in Nizhnyaya Street the first six months. Yuri went to work at the aviation equipment plant named after Ordjonikidze. He was a technician. He received a two-room apartment in Leninski district. In 1973 me and my husband received another apartment. This is where I live now. In 1961 I went to work in the apartment of postnatal pathology in children’s infectious hospital #2. In 1962 - 1964 I finished a residency course and became a neonatologist. I worked there from 1961 till 1995. Our chief doctor was a Jew and so were many of my colleagues and I didn’t face any negative attitudes at work. I had a happy life with my husband. We liked going to the cinema, theaters and concerts in the Philharmonic. We had a car and went to Mineralnyie Vody in the Caucasus on vacation. In 1968 we traveled to the Baltic Republics and Leningrad. In 1977 we made a tour of Western Ukraine and Moldova. We visited Kishinev, Yassy, Morshansk and Lvov. We had few friends and celebrated Soviet and family holidays with them. We had parties and sang Soviet songs and Russian folk songs. We didn’t sing any Jewish songs.

My husband died in 1973. He was buried at the Russian Voskresenskoye cemetery. My mother died in 1988. We buried her at the Jewish cemetery, but there were no Jewish traditions followed. We even arranged a memorial dinner since we lived in the Russian environment and this was a Russian tradition.

Like my mother, I tried to have no political subjects discussed in the family. Of course, we heard or read in newspapers about the ‘spring in Prague’ 26, dissidents 27 and departure of many Jews to Israel in early 1970s and that many Soviet citizens were deprived of their Soviet residency, but I didn’t share my opinions about it. I believe that people always do what they think is right. I’ve never considered moving to another country. I cannot imagine living without my family, friends or acquaintances. I had many Jewish colleagues and we always supported each other. We enjoyed working together and never had any problems due to our Jewish identity.

I have mixed feelings about perestroika 28 and the downfall of the Soviet Union. I like it that we got an opportunity to know more about the history and read books. I was greatly impressed by Solzhenitsyn 29, Mandelshtam 30, Akhmatova 31 and Tsvetayeva.32 When I heard their life stories I thought that we knew so little about life. We only knew what we were allowed to know. The reality was different and hard. It’s hard to imagine all those hardships and deaths. On the other hand, after the downfall of the USSR it became difficult to communicate with friends and relatives and many contacts have been lost. My children have a Russian nationality indicated in their documents. Sophia finished music and secondary schools and entered the College of Cinema Engineers that she finished in 1974. Her husband Nikolay Bolshakov, Russian, was born in 1951. When he was proposing to Sophia my husband Yuri said to him ‘You think it over. Sophia’s mother is a Jew’. He said it didn’t matter to him. His parents were of the same opinion. Nikolay finished Saratov Military School of Chemical Defense in 1972. Sophia followed him to where he was to serve: Magdeburg, Piarnu, the Baikal-Amur Railroad. They’ve lived in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk in Sakhalin for 16 years. Nikolay retired and Sophia is a businesswoman. They have two children: Yulia, born in 1974, and Georgi, born in 1978. Yulia finished a music school and in 1995 she finished the Primary School Faculty at Sakhalinsk Pedagogical College. She lives in Saratov and works in the Cultural center for schoolchildren. Georgi from 2000 lives near Tel-Aviv in Israel.

My son Fyodor finished a music school and Saratov Medical College in 1980. He finished a post-graduate course in 1983 and was awarded the title of candidate of medical sciences. He works at the department of morbid anatomy at the Medical College and is head of the department of morbid anatomy of town hospital #8. He is also chief morbid anatomy doctor of Saratov region. He was married twice. His first wife’s name was Olga Bashkatova and she is Russian. They have a daughter, Elena, born in 1986. She lives in Sevastopol. Saratov Medical School and works as a nurse. Their son Daniel was born in 1990.

When giving the gelt to my grandchildren at Chanukkah I once felt like telling them about the Jewish history and holidays. I felt like telling them that we were Jews. In my daughter’s family they have friendly attitudes toward the Jewish identity. My granddaughter Yulia, my daughter Sophia and her husband Nikolay have been to Israel this year. They liked it there. Yulia attends the Jewish center for young people. They like Jewish holidays and Jewish food. . They are planning to move to Israel. The situation in Fyodor’s family is different. His first and second wives are Russian and they have a Russian way of life. However, my grandson Daniel understands very well who his grandmother is and who he is. Fyodor’s wife Elena and my grandson Daniel treat me very nicely, but they discuss no Jewish subjects in their family. I do not take part in public activities in the Jewish community. I make contributions to the synagogue on holidays. They have a special charity box: tzdaki. The same with Hesed. I have always had their support and assistance when after surgery I needed help and Hesed sent me an attendant to look after me. They always send me gifts and greetings. I understand that I didn’t do anything big for them, but they still help me just because I am a Jew.

I didn’t feel my Jewish identity at work or at home. Our Jewish way of life in the family ended when grandfather Semyon died. However, our mother always tried to have celebrations on holidays, but we never spoke Yiddish at home. I didn’t face any oppression. Probably because I had a Russian husband. However, I am glad to have this feeling of my Jewish identity, I’am now proud as a Jew.

In 1995 I went to Israel at the invitation of my brother Michael. I traveled all over the country: Eilat, Beer Sheva and Haifa. I was greatly impressed, though I was very unhappy about Tatiana’s condition. I accompanied her to hospitals and clinics and gave moral support to her. I stayed three months in Israel when I realized that I was eager to go home. I knew then that I would never come to live in Israel, regardless of how willing was Michael to convince me to move to Israel. I have grown roots into my homeland. Our relatives, grandmothers and grandfathers, mother and father, uncles and aunts wee buried at the Jewish cemetery. We often visit the cemetery to keep things in order there and bow to them.

Glossary:

1 Old Believers

they acknowledged old rituals and belief and rejected the new procedures introduced by patriarch Nikon in the middle of 17th century.

2 Christian churches

Catholics and orthodox Christians belong to different Christian faith. They have different interpretation of the religious doctrine and different rituals. Their temples are also different. Christian orthodox temple is called a church and Catholic temple is called a cathedral.

3 Cantonist

The cantonists were Jewish children who were conscripted to military institutions in tsarist Russia with the intention that the conditions in which they were placed would force them to adopt Christianity. Enlistment for the cantonist institutions was most rigorously enforced in the first half of the 19th century. It was abolished in 1856 under Alexander II. Compulsory military service for Jews was introduced in 1827. Jews between the age of 12 and 25 could be drafted and those under 18 were placed in the cantonist units. The Jewish communal authorities were obliged to furnish a certain quota of army recruits. The high quota that was demanded, the severe service conditions, and the knowledge that the conscript would not observe Jewish religious laws and would be cut off from his family, made those liable for conscription try to evade it.. Thus, the communal leaders filled the quota from children of the poorest homes.

4 Jewish Pale of Settlement

Certain provinces in the Russian Empire were designated for permanent Jewish residence and the Jewish population was only allowed to live in these areas. The Pale was first established by a decree by Catherine II in 1791. The regulation was in force until the Russian Revolution of 1917, although the limits of the Pale were modified several times. The Pale stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, and 94% of the total Jewish population of Russia, almost 5 million people, lived there. The overwhelming majority of the Jews lived in the towns and shtetls of the Pale. Certain privileged groups of Jews, such as certain merchants, university graduates and craftsmen working in certain branches, were granted to live outside the borders of the Pale of Settlement permanently.

5 Russian Revolution of 1917

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

6 Struggle against religion

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

7 Primus stove -a small portable stove with a container for about 1 liter of kerosene that was pumped into burners

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

9 Agro-Joint (American Jewish Joint Agricultural Corporation)

The Agro-Joint, established in 1924, with the full support of the Soviet government aimed at helping the resettlement of Jews on collective farms in the South of Ukraine and the Crimea. The Agro-Joint purchased land, livestock and agricultural machinery and funded housing construction. It also established many trade schools to train Jews in agriculture and in metal, woodworking, printing and other skills. The work of Agro-Joint was made increasingly difficult by the Soviet authorities, and it finally dissolved in 1938. In all, some 14,000 Jewish families were settled on the land, and thus saved from privation and the loss of civil rights, which was the lot of all except for workers and peasants. By 1938, however, large numbers left the colonies, attracted by the cities, and most of those who stayed were murdered by the Germans.

10 Tolstovka

Long shirt of thick fabric. L.N. Tolstoy, writer, used to wear a shirt like this. The name for it derived from his surname.

11 Communal apartment

The Soviet power wanted to improve housing conditions by requisitioning ‘excess’ living space of wealthy families after the Revolution of 1917. Apartments were shared by several families with each family occupying one room and sharing the kitchen, toilet and bathroom with other tenants. Because of the chronic shortage of dwelling space in towns shared apartments continued to exist for decades. Despite state programs for the construction of more houses and the liquidation of shared apartments, which began in the 1960s, shared apartments still exist today.

12 Kulaks: In the Soviet Union the majority of wealthy peasants that refused to join collective farms and give their grain and property to Soviet power were called kulaks, declared enemies of the people and exterminated in the 1930s.

13 Civil War (1918-1920): The Civil War between the Reds (the Bolsheviks) and the Whites (the anti-Bolsheviks), which broke out in early 1918, ravaged Russia until 1920. The Whites represented all shades of anti-communist groups – Russian army units from World War I, led by anti-Bolshevik officers, by anti-Bolshevik volunteers and some Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. Several of their leaders favored setting up a military dictatorship, but few were outspoken tsarists. Atrocities were committed throughout the Civil War by both sides. The Civil War ended with Bolshevik military victory, thanks to the lack of cooperation among the various White commanders and to the reorganization of the Red forces after Trotsky became commissar for war. It was won, however, only at the price of immense sacrifice; by 1920 Russia was ruined and devastated. In 1920 industrial production was reduced to 14% and agriculture to 50% as compared to 1913.

14 Chapaev division: military unit under the command of V.I. Chapaev, hero of the Civil war.

15 Rabfak: Educational institutions for young people without secondary education, specifically established by the Soviet power.

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

17 NKVD: People’s Committee of Internal Affairs; it took over from the GPU, the state security agency, in 1934.

18 School # 13: In the USSR schools had numbers and not names. It was part of the policy of the state. They were all state schools and were all supposed to be identical.

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

20 Item 5

21 Komsomol

22 Five percent quota

]In tsarist Russia the number of Jews in higher educational institutions could not exceed 5% of the total number of students.

23 Doctors’ Plot

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

24 Blockade of Leningrad

On September 8, 1941 the Germans fully encircled Leningrad and its siege began. It lasted until January 27, 1944. The blockade meant incredible hardships and privations for the population of the town. Hundreds of thousands died from hunger, cold and diseases during the almost 900 days of the blockade.

25 The ‘mail box’

Military enterprise in the former USSR. There was no mail address indicated, but a ‘mail-box’ code.

26 The ‘spring in Prague’

Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. On 21, 1968, the Soviet army invaded Czechoslovakia along with troops from four other Warsaw Pact countries. The occupation was the beginning of the end for the Czechoslovak reform movement known as the Prague Spring.

27 Dissidents

The Soviet Union became a closed totalitarian society in 1929 when Joseph Stalin emerged as its sole dictator. He effectively exterminated all opposition, instilling fear and submissiveness into almost 200 million citizens. After his death in 1953 came the "thaw"; people slowly began to voice their opinions and concerns. The subsequent rulers then tried to maintain conformity through harassments and reprisals, yet a fraction of the population--the intelligentsia--had already broken away. These individuals, the "counter-thinkers," later formed the Dissident Movement and fought for freedom in Soviet society.

28 ] Perestroika

Soviet economic and social policy of the late 1980s. Perestroika [restructuring] was the term attached to the attempts (1985–91) by Mikhail Gorbachev to transform the stagnant, inefficient command economy of the Soviet Union into a decentralized market-oriented economy. Industrial managers and local government and party officials were granted greater autonomy, and open elections were introduced in an attempt to democratise the Communist party organization. By 1991, perestroika was on the wane, and after the failed August Coup of 1991 was eclipsed by the dramatic changes in the constitution of the union.

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

30 Mandelshtam, Osip Emilyevich (1891-1938): Russian Jewish poet and translator. He converted to Lutheranism to be able to enter the University of St. Petersburg. He started publishing poetry from 1910 and in 1911 he joined the Guild of Poets and was a leader of the Acmeist school. He wrote impersonal, fatalistic, meticulously constructed poems. He opposed the Bolsheviks but he did not leave Russia after the Revolution of 1917. However, he stopped writing poetry in 1923 and turned to prose. He had to make a living as a translator of contemporary German, French and English authors. In 1934 he was arrested for writing an unflattering epigram about Stalin and sentenced to three years' exile in the Ural. In Voronezh, Mandelshtam wrote one of his most important poetic works, The Voronezh Notebooks. He returned to Moscow in 1937 but was arrested again in 1938 and sentenced without trial to five years’ of hard labor. According to unverifiable reports he died of inanition either in 1938 in a transit camp near Vladivostok in the Far East, or in 1940 in a labor camp on the Kolymar River, Siberia.

31 Anna Andreyevna Akhmatova (1889-1966)

Soviet poetess. Studied at the higher School for girls in Kiev and law Faculty of Kiev University. Her biggest work is ‘Poem with no hero’ (1940-1962). Akhmatova did translation of works by oriental, European, Jewish and Latvian poets.

32 Tsvetaeva, Marina Ivanovna (1892-1941)

Russian poet, playwright and prose writer. She began to write poetry at the age of 6 and started publishing books of poetry from the age of 16. Her first collection of poems, Evening Album (1910), shows a certain childlike frankness. Tsvetayeva was influenced by the Symbolists but did not join any literary group or movement.. She did not accept the Revolution of 1917 and went abroad in 1922 to join her husband. They lived in Berlin and Prague and finally settled in Paris in 1925. After years of financial difficulties she returned to the USSR in 1939. Her husband, daughter and sister were arrested, and Tsvetaeva could not withstand the isolation during evacuation in the war and hanged herself.

Laszlo Ringel

Laszlo Ringel
Uzhgorod
Ukraine
Date of interview: October 2003
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya

Laszlo Ringel is a short thin man. He wins my favor from first sight. He is friendly and sociable. He is an interesting conversationalist. Laszlo reads a lot and takes vivid interest in everything happening in the world. Though he cannot see with one eye, he draws a lot. There are his oil paintings on the walls and graphics of old buildings in Uzhgorod. I admired the figures he makes from intricately curved tree branches and roots. Laszlo lives in a two-storied house that the family built in the 1970-80s on the site where the Ringel family had their old house before WWII. It’s a comfortable and cozy house with bright spacious rooms. Laszlo lives with his son Mihaly and his wife and Mihaly’s daughter Yelena with her husband and two children. They love and care for Laszlo and he shares their feelings to him.

I didn’t know my father’s parents. They lived in Transylvania. It belongs to Romania now, but before WWI Transylvania was a part of Austro-Hungary [Trianon Peace Treaty] [1]. My paternal grandfather Manó Ringel was born in the 1860s, but I don’t know where. All I know about my grandmother is that she died young, and that her name was Eszter, nee Feuerwerker. I don’t know where exactly in Transylvania my parents’ family lived or where he was born. My father Mór Ringel was born in 1881. There were few children in the family, but the only one I know was my father’s sister Maria, who lived with our family for quite a while. Maria was few years younger than my father.

It’s hard to say how religious my father’s family was. My father and his sister were neologs [2]. They spoke Hungarian. My father must have finished a school well since he managed to enter the Trade Academy in Transylvania. There was no anti-Semitism and there were liberal attitudes toward Jews, but still there were some restrictions for Jews in educational institutions. [editor’s note: There were no such restrictions in the Austro-Hungarian double monarchy. The interviewee probably refers to the numerus clausus law introduced in the Kingdom of Hungary in 1920 to limit the enrollment of Jews to higher educational institutions.] My father and grandfather served in the Austro-Hungarian army [KuK army] [3] during WWI. At that time men with secondary and higher education were promoted to officers’ ranks in the army after having some short-term training, but this did not refer to Jews. The highest rank they could expect was a corporal. [editor’s note: There were no such limitations in the KuK army and Jews were equal with non Jews in theory. However, for various other reasons, the military never became a typical Jewish career path.] The only exception was granted to doctors. They were not subject to this kind of restrictions. My grandfather Manó and my father were corporals at the front. I have two letter: one of those letters my mother wrote to my father in 1915, when he served in the Hungarian army at the front during WWI, and other one my father sent to my mother from the front in 1917. My grandfather also sent us letters from the front which she used to sign as Emanuel. [Mano is short for Emanuel in Hungarian.] My grandfather Manó died in the 1930s. I don’t know where he was buried. After my father got married his younger sister Maria followed him to Subcarpathia [4] where she lived with us. Maria was a dressmaker. She didn’t marry for a long time. In the late 1920s Jonas, whose family name I do not remember, a Jewish man from Uzhgorod, proposed to Maria. They had a traditional Jewish wedding. Maria moved to Uzhgorod to live with her husband. Their only daughter Magda was born in 1930. In 1944 Maria and her husband were taken to the ghetto and from there to Auschwitz. Maria and her husband perished in the camp, but their daughter Magda survived. After WWII Magda, a young girl then, moved to Palestine with other young people. On the way there the ship they sailed on was captured by a British military ship, and all passengers were sent to a camp in Cyprus, a Greek island where Maria met her future husband, who was also kept in this camp. In 1948 they managed to move to Palestine. Magda got married in Israel. Her family name is Friedman. She lives with her family in Qiryat Yam and we correspond.

I knew well my grandfather on my mother’s side Menyhert Bergida, who used to be called Menyus in the family. [Short for Menyhert] His Jewish name was Menahem. He was born in the 1850s. My grandmother died before I was born. She was called Betti Moskovits. I don’t know where my grandparents were born. The Bergida family lived in the Uzh Valley in Subcarpathia. There as at least one name of Bergida in every village and they were somehow related. They were craftsmen: shoemakers and tailors, but the majority were tradesmen. My grandfather Menyhert owned a pot-house, an inn providing hot meals, drinks, accommodation and a shed for cattle in a village near Uzhgorod, called Onokovtse. During the Czech rule it was called Domanince Hroni, but during Austro-Hungary it’s name was Felsodomonya. Onokovtse is a part of Uzhgorod now where people have cottages and dachas [summer house]. There were pot houses, taverns and restaurants in Subcarpathia. The difference between pot houses and taverns was that taverns served cold snacks and drinks while pot houses offered lunches and dinners. Besides, my grandfather also cured cattle in Onokovtse and surrounding villages. I don’t know whether he studied to be a vet or he had a gift, but villagers always turned to him when they needed a vet.

Felsodomonya was an old village. The Roman Catholic church in the village was built in XIV century. It was a small village: 80% of its residents were Slovaks and the rest were Ruthenians. There were also few Russian Orthodox Christians, who had been captives during WWI and got married and stayed in the village. The Slovaks were Roman Catholics and Ruthenians were Greek Catholics. There were only 3 Jewish families and there were not even enough men for a minyan. On holidays, at the permission of the Mukachevo rabbi Spira [Chaim Elazar Spira, Rabbi of Munkacs from 1913 until his death in 1937.] went to pray in the prayer house in Nizhneye Domanintse. This village became a part of Uzhgorod in due time. The prayer house was a big one. There was a Jewish family living there. There were two rooms assigned for prayers in the house: one for men and one for women.

There was no anti-Semitism in Onokovtse during the Austro-Hungarian or Czech rule. Jews were respected in the village. Roman and Greek Catholics didn’t get along and sometimes there were fights between them to prove whose belief had more truth, but it had nothing to do with Jews.

I wouldn’t say there was no anti-Semitism in Austro-Hungary. However, it was far from anti-Semitism that developed when in 1938 Subcarpathia was annexed to Hungary. [Hungarian troops occupied Subcarpathia in March 1939. The western part where Ungvar/Uzhorod/Uzhgorod is was attached to Hungary as early as the 2nd November 1938, together with Southern Slovakia as a result of the First Vienna Decesion.] We had a book at home published in Budapest in 1900. Its author Egon, regretfully, I don’t remember his last name and the title of the book, was an official in Subcarpathia for some time. He returned to Budapest and wrote a book of his impressions about life in Subcarpathia. In his book he called Jews petty tradesmen and wrote how they exploited the Ruthenians. I remember one example he gave: how a Jew leased a cow to a Ruthenian and when it had a calf he took the calf away. However, he forgot that at the beginning of his book he wrote that Ruthenians had no education and worked hard to make their living before Jews settled down in Subcarpathia, but then Egon writes that Jews came to live there and began to exploit the Ruthenians and this was not the only book of this kind.

Grandfather Menyhert was a neolog. My mother’s family always celebrated Sabbath, lit candles, and the family got together at the table. However, my grandfather worked on Saturday like the majority of neologs. They celebrated Jewish holidays in accordance with traditions. They spoke Hungarian.

There were three daughters in the family. My mother Anna, Hanna in Jewish, was the youngest. She was born in 1885. The oldest was Karolina. I don’t remember her Jewish name. Te middle sister was Rozsa, Reizl in Jewish. I don’t know what education my mother and her sisters got, but I think it was a secondary school or grammar school. At least my mother helped me to do my homework when I studied in a grammar school. My mother’s sisters were married. Karolina Braun, who used to be called Linka at home lived in Uzhgorod. I don’t remember her husband. He owned a furniture shop and they were quite wealthy. Karolina had two sons, much older than me, Miklos and Sandor. Miklos worked in Budapest as a dentist. When he studied in Prague beforehand he changed his family name from Bran to Cerny. My mother’s sister Rozsa Weiss and her family lived in [what is today] Slovakia, in the town of Kralovsky Chlmec. She also had two children: son Tibor, older than me, and daughter Edit, about the same age with me, who was called Editke in the family [diminutive of Edit]. Her husband owned a trade business. My aunts were housewives. Except for Tibor they were all killed in the Shoah.

My parents met and fell in love with one another before WWI. When my father studied in the Trade Academy, he came to Onokovtse for training in my grandfather Menyhert’s pot house where my parents met. In 1914 my father went to the army and they corresponded till 1918. After the war my father went to Onokovtse and asked my grandfather’s consent for marrying his daughter. My grandfather knew that they were corresponded and loved each other and he gave his consent. My father stayed in Onokovtse till the wedding. My grandfather arranged a traditional Jewish wedding for them. There was a chuppah in front of the pot house, and the rabbi from the Uzhgorod synagogue conducted the wedding ceremony. There was a big wedding party in the pot house. After the wedding my parents moved to Uzhgorod. My father worked as an accountant in 3 stores owned by Jews. My mother was a housewife.

My father had beautiful thick auburn hair. He didn’t cover his head. He wore a hat in cold weather, but it had nothing to do with Jewish traditions. He wore suits in fashion of the time. In spring and summer he was fair-color clothes. My mother only wore a shawl to go to the prayer house. She had thick dark hair that she wore in a knot. My mother wore fashionable clothes and high-heeled shoes. My parents were neologs. They observed the main Jewish traditions and went to the synagogue on holidays. We spoke Hungarian at home. My parents rented an apartment in a 3-storied house. I was born in Uzhgorod in 1920. I am called Laszlo, even today everybody calls me as such. When the Czechs came to Subcarpathia they made me Vladislav, when the Russians came they made me Vasiliy. I have three birth certificates in three different languages. [i.e. Hungarian, Czech and Russian] I was called Laci, Lacika, at home. [affectionate of Laszlo] My Jewish name is Leizer. I had a brit milah at the synagogue in Uzhgorod in accordance with the tradition. There was an entry made in the roster of the synagogue about this event.

In 1918 Subcarpathia was annexed to Czechoslovakia [First Czechoslovak Republic] [5]. [Subcarpathia was annexed to the newly created Czechoslovak state as late as June 4th 1920 by the Trianon Treaty.] Hungary was an agricultural country while Czechoslovakia, particularly the Czech lands [Bohemia and Moravia], were highly industrial. In about 20 km from Uzhgorod the Czechs built a chemical plant and a furniture factory. This factory manufactured furniture for export: for example, they manufactured chairs with folding seats for cinema theaters in America. They built a tobacco factory in Mukachevo [40 km from Uzhgorod, 660 km from Kiev]. They grew some tobacco in Mukachevo and imported the rest. Czechs also organized big wineries to export wine. There were also salt mines in Rakhov district in Subcarpathia where Czechs organized a resort. There are still salt baths there that are a wonderful cure for radiculitis. There is a health resort in the abandoned mines where the air is saturated with salt vapors and this is a great cure for respiratory organs. They also built a big brewery in Mukachevo. Resorts on mineral streams is also an accomplishment of the Czechs. Svaliava district of Subcarpathia was known for its mineral streams. This water was used to cure gastro enteric diseases. Czechs also exported bottled water to other countries, even to the USA. In the village of Vyshkovo in Khust district near the Romanian border Czechs built a health center by a mineral water stream for the cure of kidneys and liver, named ‘Shayan’, They also discovered a stream and built a health center near Mukachevo. This created jobs for many residents of Subcarpathia. Czechs built many comfortable houses. These houses are valued high even now. There was no anti-Semitism during the Czech rule. Vice versa, they supported and appreciated Jews promoting them to official posts. Jews were allowed to serve in the army and there were no restrictions as to the ranks. Many Jews studied in higher educational institutions. Local residents of Subcarpathia had always been loyal to Jews.

In 1922 my parents decided to move to Onokovtse. Grandfather Menyhert asked my mother to help him in the pot house. Onokovtse was in 5 km from Uzhgorod and my father could keep his job in Uzhgorod. My father bought an open carriage and horses to ride to work.

The building housing the pot house was 250 years old. It was a brick building with 1m thick walls. We also lived in the rooms of this house. There was an annex to the house where there was a food store. There was a big dinner room, a living room for parents and children where it was not allowed to smoke or drink, there was a room where one could play chess or cards and another room, something like a bar. The big room was often rented for weddings or birthday parties. There was a big kitchen in the building. Before my sister was born we lived in two rooms in the pot house: grandfather Menyhert in one and my parents and I in another. There was another building adjusting to the house. It was made from air bricks, a mixture of clay and straw. Air bricks are strong and warm. After WWI this house was a distillery where slivovitsa, a local plum brandy was produced. There were 2 m high, 1.5 m in diameter barrels in the cells: red plums purchased in surrounding villages were kept in them for fermentation. There was special equipment to process the fermented plums into slivovitsa. We, children, used to sip this fermented juice through a straw. It was delicious, but heady. In the late 1920s Czechs introduced state monopoly for production of alcohol, and the equipment from this distillery was shipped to a distillery in Uzhgorod. The building was reconstructed. There were two one-room apartments made in it with all comforts and separate entrance ways. One was leased to a clerk from the village hall and another – to a teacher of the local Slovak school.

There was a big yard in front of the pot house. As soon as it got warm before Pesach the local authorities installed merry-go-rounds there and paid my parents for using the land. Children and their parents could have a meal, ice cream, coffee or cold drinks in the pot house. There were lotteries in the foyer. Lottery tickets cost 1 crown. I remember that the main prize in lottery was a live piglet. There was also a prize hook where prizes could be fished out. A bowling club owner also rented a spot in the yard and pad their rental fees. Spectators made bets and the stake was a barrel of beer that they also bought in the pot house. This was a beneficial business.

There was a big orchard in the backyard and on the other side there were sheds for cows, horses and pigs. Ay for the livestock was stored in the attic or in haystacks in the yard. People in this area dealt in wood cutting for the most part. They shipped their wood to Uzhgorod on horse or bull-ridden wagons. On their way they stayed in our inn. There was a spot for them to leave horses for a night. There was a trough for the horses. Visitors had dinner in the pot house and slept in the hayloft and in the morning they went to the market in town. Local people followed them to earn some money by cutting the wood they were selling and townsfolk paid them for this work. In the 1930s Czechs introduced the land reform, dividing the area around Onokovtse into plots of land to give them to farmers who stubbed up the trees to plough the land and row grains and vegetables.

We kept livestock: two cows and my father had two horses, pigs and piglets to have fresh meat for the pot house. There were Hungarian pigs grown in the village. There was little meat but fat on them. In two years they were fed to grow 10cm thick fat. My grandfather bought pigs of English breed. They had thin hair and were very delicate. They didn’t bear the sun or the heat while the local breed was very strong. My grandfather interbred English pigs with local pigs to make them stronger. A local Ruthenian man fed the pigs and the cows.

When it was time to slaughter pigs my grandfather invited a Czech butcher from Uzhgorod. Usually in the village people didn’t skin the pigs, just burned down the bristle, but this butcher skinned the pigs and the skins were delivered to a supply office. The butcher made homemade sausage with meat and rice and liver filling. [called hurka in Hungarian] He marinated pig fat and meat for about a month and then smoked them in the smoking shed in the attic arranged in the spot where all chimneys came together, it was 3 х 3 m, 2 m high. This food was to be sold in the pot house. We didn’t eat pork fat or ham, but my father did. He said that the rabbi of Mukachevo allowed him to eat ham, just a little, as much as fit in an egg shell. I don’t know whether this was true. My father joked that Spira didn’t mention to him whether it had to be a chicken, goose or ostrich egg shell. The only Jewish dish served in the pot house was chicken soup with homemade noodles.

There were 2 Slovak women working in the kitchen. One was a cook and another one was her assistant. The cook did the cooking. My mother tasted the food and added spices. There was a waiter working in each room of the pot house. My mother worked in the food store selling cereals, sugar, salt and all other day-to-day goods. Later she also sold bread baked in the pot house. There was a 2m wide oven in the stove. After the wood burned down the coals were moved to the front of the oven and bread on trays was placed inside: 10 2kg loaves. It was baked several times a day. On Friday my mother also baked challah loaves for Sabbath. She also made them for 3 other Jewish families living in the village. After the last portion of bread was ready in the evening, my mother placed a pot of cholnt into the oven for our family for the next day. On Friday my mother cooked gefilte fish for Sabbath, chicken broth and potato and corn flour puddings.

Besides working as an accountant in the stores, my father began to work in the town court in Uzhgorod as a wine expert. There were may wine yards in Uzhgorod and in districts. When there were complaints to the quality of wine submitted to the court, my father was to make a statement whether it was low quality of wine or it was the result of poor storage. Once his statement saved a bishop from a big penalty and in his gratitude he gave my father a trip to a very good health center in the Tatras in Slovakia. This health center was built by the Greek Catholic Church for monks. Probably, throughout the history of this health center my father was the only Jew who had ever stayed there.

On Friday evening none of our family worked in the kitchen. The cook, her assistant and waiters managed there. The family got together at home for dinner. My mother lit candles and prayed over them according to the rules. On Saturday, however, all worked. Neologs worked Saturdays in Uzhgorod. The stores where my father worked were open on Saturday, though their owners were Jews. On Saturday morning we went to the prayer house in Nizhneye Domanintse. Then we went home and my father went to work. In the evening, after he came home from work, my father conducted the Havdalah, separation of Saturday from weekdays. We got together and my father lit a candle, smaller than the one to be lit on Sabbath. There was wine served and men had vodka in front of them. My father recited a prayer, then poured a little wine from somebody else’s glass or vodka into the saucer to put down the candle in it. Once vodka poured over onto the table and inflamed. There was a burnt spot on the table that over lived my father a long time. My father smoked and he also smoked on Sabbath. My grandfather grumbled about it, but my father joked back that there was nothing said about smoking in the Torah. It wasn’t allowed to work on Sabbath, but smoking was for pleasure. However, when we went to the prayer house, my father hid in the bushes to smoke so that other Jews didn’t see him smoking. Most Jews in Nizhneye Domanintse were Orthodox and didn’t appreciate any deviations from traditions.

While my grandfather lived we celebrated 5 main holidays beginning from Rosh Hashanah. My mother made traditional Jewish food: chicken broth with homemade noodles, gefilte fish, potato pancakes and strudels. On holidays we went to the prayer house. When we returned home, my mother put a dish with apple pieces and honey on the table. We dipped apples into honey and ate them and we also dipped challah that is usually dipped in salt into honey. After Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur started. Before the holiday we conducted the Kapores ritual. My grandfather taught me to ask forgiveness from those whom I hurt intentionally or unintentionally before Yom Kippur. We had a sufficient dinner before the first star appeared in the sky, when 24-hour fast began. Children started to fast half a day at the age of 6 and at the age of 13 they were to fast like adults. Next day we went to the prayer house to pray there until the first star appeared in the sky. My mother gave my father some cookies to give me in the prayer house, but my father and grandfather observed the fast strictly. In the evening we came home for dinner.

The next holiday was Sukkoth. We made a sukkah in the garden in the backyard. According to Jewish customs installation of a sukkah was to start right after Yom Kippur. There was a special site for the sukkah in the yard. We had a folding sukkah that we could use one year after another. There were green branches placed on the roof so that the sky could be seen through them. The sukkah was decorated with ribbons and paper flowers. There was a table and chairs brought into the sukkah. We had meals in the sukkah through all days of the holiday and after the holiday we folded the sukkah back to store it in the storeroom till next year.

There was Chanukkah in winter. My mother lit two candles in a big bronze chanukkiyah: one central candle – shammash, and the candle of the 1st day. Then every day she lit another candle. Children were given Chanukkah gelt. My grandfather was the first to give me some money. My father’s sister Maria and sister Karolina, who came to visit us on holiday with her family, also gave me Chanukkah gelt.

Then came Pesach, the last in the calendar, but not the least in significance. My father brought matzah from Uzhgorod and bought in the synagogue special wine, red and very sweet. The house was washed and cleaned. There was not to be a single breadcrumb in the kitchen before the holiday. Everyday rockery and utensils were taken away. There was special crockery for Pesach kept in the attic. My mother cooked traditional food: chicken broth with matzah, boiled chicken, gefilte fish, potato pancakes, puddings and cookies from the matzah flour. In the evening the family got together. There was a prayer recited. Besides other traditional food there was particular food to be eaten on Pesach: a piece of meat with a bone, hard-boiled eggs, ground apples with honey and cinnamon, greenery, horseradish and a saucer with salty water. My grandfather usually conducted the seder. I learned the 4 traditional questions to be posed at seder long before I went to the cheder. I knew them by heart without knowing what they were about. In the center of the table there was a nice wine glass for Elijah the Prophet. Some neolog families just had a prayer on Pesach without conducting the seder. Dinner started with greeneries dipped in salty water and eaten with a piece of matzah. Through all days of Pesach there was no bread in the house. We only ate matzah or potato and corn flour puddings. My father didn’t go to work on the first and the last two days of Pesach. My mother and grandfather didn’t work either. The store was closed, and in the pot house employees worked.

I went to cheder in the neighboring village at the age of 4. My father took me to the cheder when going to work, and then I returned home with other Jewish boys after classes at 3-4 pm. We took lunches from home with us. Local boys had lunch at home. The rebe spoke Yiddish to us, and I only spoke Hungarian, but by the middle of the first academic year I picked up sufficient Yiddish. Perhaps, the method of stick teaching in the cheder helped. I had never been beaten at home. My parents didn’t allow me to go play in the street for punishment. The rebe had a bamboo stick to punish the boys. In the first year we studied the Hebrew alphabet. In the 2nd year of studies we began to read prayers in Hebrew and translate them into Yiddish. In the 3rd form we began to study the Torah. We read chapters from the Torah, translated them into Yiddish and then discussed what we had read. When I turned 7, my parents sent me to the Slovak school in our village and I had to stop my studies in the cheder. It was a Roman Catholic school. The pupils greeted their teacher saying ‘Glory to Jesus Christ!’ in Latin, a traditional Roman Catholic greeting. [Laudeter Jesus Christus] Jewish children didn’t have to attend the religious classes. I finished my 1st form in this school, and went to the 2nd form of a Slovak school in Uzhgorod. I rode a bicycle to school and later to a grammar school. We also had classes on Saturday. There were no Orthodox Jews in Onokovtse, so nobody cared that I rode a bicycle on Saturday. However, I had to ride across Nizhneye Domanintse to get to Uzhgorod, and there were Orthodox Jews in this village that were angry that a Jewish boy rode a bicycle on Saturday. So, I came home on Friday evening, had dinner with the family and rode back to Uzhgorod to my aunt Karolina where I stayed overnight to go to school on Saturday and returned home on Saturday evening. On Friday evening Karolina’s husband went to the synagogue of neologs near the market in Uzhgorod and sometimes took me with him. Now it is an apartment house, but there still can be seen a big relief mogendovid [magen David] under the roof on it.

My parents knew that I needed to know the state language well to continue my education in a grammar school. So I went to the 4th form to a Czech school in Uzhgorod. After finishing my 4th year I went to the Czech 8-year school in Uzhgorod.

I didn’t have close friends in the village, though I got along with all children. I had friends in Uzhgorod. Not all of them were Jews, but my parents didn’t mind it. They taught me that it wasn’t nationality that mattered about a person, but his human virtues.

I was quite young when my grandfather began to teach me veterinary discipline. He was with him at his work and he commented me on what he was doing, but then something happened that I gave up the thought of becoming a vet. An apple stuck in a cow’s throat. The cow was suffocating. Its owner was trying to push the apple inside with a stick, but it even got worse. The owner called my grandfather, and my grandfather took me with him. My grandfather put a ring from a wagon’s wheel into the cow’s mouth to keep it open, and then probed for the apple in its throw. Then he told me to try take it out, but I failed. What were we to do? My grandfather told me to bring a tea spoon from home – we were the only family in the village who had tea spoons. My grandfather tied the spoon to my hand and told me to try and make a hole in the apple with this spoon. I did manage to make a hole, my grandfather hit the cow on her head so that the apple fell out of there, and the cow’s stomach content poured all over me. It took me half day to wash it off me, and this was the end of my veterinary career.

My sister was born in 1927. She was named Agnes, and at home we called her Agi, Agica in the Hungarian manner [diminutives for Agnes]. After she was born, in 1927 grandfather Menyhert died after an unsuccessful surgery in the hospital in Uzhgorod. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Uzhgorod and the rabbi of the neolog synagogue in Uzhgorod conducted the funeral. My father recited the Kiddush over my grandfather’s grave. Nobody sat shivah after my grandfather – this is not a custom with neologs.

After my sister was born we moved into a small house from the pot house inn. My parents made a two-room apartment from two 1-bedroom apartments. The 2 rooms in the inn were modified to serve as guestrooms. My father left the pot house to my mother. After his death the sign ‘Menyhert Bergida’ was replaced with ‘Anna Ringel’.

I had many friends at school and later in grammar school. Not all of them were Jews. There were good teachers and professors at school. We studied biology, mineralogy, astronomy, botany, natural history, history, geography, mathematic and physics. We studied languages. Our Latin teacher was an aging man. He called 3-4 pupils to the blackboard and we asked each other questions. We had a good conduct of French and German, and a good knowledge of Latin helped us to understand other languages: Spanish, Italian and Romanian. I remember our teacher of the world history. We always looked forward to his classes. Besides history he taught us to think and consider possible consequences of insignificant a6t first sight steps. He told us about ancient people and gave an example of the Jewish people as the nation that preserved its traditions. He said that if Jews managed to survive as a nation, this meant they were strong, but he also said that a big enemy of Jews was assimilation. There were also religious classes in the grammar school. At first a teacher of other subjects conducted religious classes for Jews, and his classes were dull. He explained the Torah, told about Jewish holidays and religion, but it was boring. Later a doctor of theology, a rabbi who had finished a higher religious school in Jerusalem, became our teacher. We enjoyed his classes very much. He also taught Hebrew. He was not the only Jewish teacher in the grammar school. I also remember Blan, Doctor of Philosophy, Czech teacher, who was a Jew. He was a neolog.

There was a Jewish grammar school near our school where they studied in Hebrew. This building houses a Hungarian general school now. In front of this building there were few colums and there was a big mogenduvid [magen David] on the fronton of the building. I don’t know whether it is still there. My future wife studied in this school.

During my studies in elementary school I began to attend the Makkabi [6] club in Uzhgorod. It rented a gym near the school. I went in for track-and-field events. There were only boys in this club. We ran and jumped, played volleyball and basketball. We had two instructors, one was Czech, champion of Czechoslovakia in gymnastics and worked in a bank in Uzhgorod. Another one, training us to run and jump, was a Jew, a tailor. They both only spoke Hebrew to us.

I also was a boy scout. Our neighbor in Onokovtse organized a Czech boy scout group. On summer vacations we went hiking to the woods or mountains and lived in tents. Older boy scouts cooked for us. We learned to march singing songs, swim and mountaineering. We wore dark shorts and white shirts. Scouts wore dark-blue triangle neckties. When I studied in the grammar school in Uzhgorod ,y friends talked me into joining the boy scout organization in Uzhgorod.

When I turned 13, I had a bar mitzvah at the neolog synagogue in Uzhgorod. A rebe from the cheder that I went to before school trained me for the bar mitzvah. On Saturday following my birthday the family went to the synagogue. After the prayer the rabbi called me to the Torah. There is a special chapter that a boy should read at his bar mitzvah. I remember it by heart, so many times we read it with the rabbi. I had a tallit on for the first time in my life. Then my father treated all those who were at the synagogue with shlivovitz and honey cake. In the evening we had a dinner party at home. My parents invited the Jewish families living in our village, and my mother’s sister Karolina and my father’s sister Maria and their families came to the party. Everybody greeted me and brought me presents.

In 1938 Hungarians came to power in Subcarpathia. At first the majority of population was happy about it, but then this welcome began to fade away. Food products and other goods became more expensive. Unemployment developed. Many people were saying that it was good during the Czech rules and wished the Czechs came back. A part of Czechoslovakia, a part of Romania [Hungarian Era] [7] and Northern Yugoslavia [Hungarian Occupation of Yugoslavia] [8] were also annexed to Hungary. Hungary restored its borders it had before WWI. [not completely but partly]

In 1938 I was supposed to finish my grammar school, but when Hungarians came to power they closed Czech schools and grammar schools. I went to a Ruthenian school in the town of Perechin in 20 km from Uzhgorod. I commuted there by train every day. Later this school was also closed and there were only Hungarian schools left. I wanted to go to a Hungarian school in Uzhgorod, but they started preparations for graduation exams and I didn’t want to repeat going to the 7th form. Later they opened one class in one of the schools for those who had studied in Czech schools. In September we passed our graduate exams and obtained secondary school certificates.

In 1938 anti-Jewish laws [7] began to be introduced in Subcarpathia. The authorities took away stores, factories, shops from Jewish owners. The Jewish owners had two options: one was to give a store to a non-Jewish owner. They were Christians and for the most part they were nominal owners since former owners still managed their businesses, only they received salary for it. However, if a Jewish owner failed to find a new master of his business within specified terms, the state confiscated his property without any compensation. Jews were forbidden to study in higher educational institutions. Instead of military service they were to serve in work battalions. My father lost his job in Uzhgorod since his Jewish masters lost their businesses. We also had to give away our pot house and store. My father was at WWI and had many awards. He submitted a request for keeping his property considering his services during the war. They kept him in the unknown for a long time before he received a response that his request was gratified. We remained the owners of the store and pot house.

Many Jews in Subcarpathia didn’t have a Hungarian citizenship. They had moved to Subcarpathia from Poland during the Czech rule and in their majority didn’t have a Czech citizenship either. It was not needed during the Czech rule and they remained Polish citizens. When Hungarians came to power only those who had been Czech citizens could obtain the Hungarian citizenship. In 1942 Hungarians took those who didn’t have their citizenship to Ukraine in the USSR. From 1941 Ukraine was occupied by fascist armies [8]. They were moved to Ivano-Frankovsk region where they were exterminated. There were few survivors. There was one family of Jews from Poland in our village. They had a very nice daughter and we were friends. They were all taken away. This girl sent us a letter with a Hungarian soldier. She wrote that some people had been killed and they were waiting for their turn. We never heard from them again.

After finishing school I couldn’t continue my studies. Jews were not admitted to higher educational institutions. I went to Budapest where I became an apprentice in the joiner shop. From there I was recruited to the army in 1938. The military commission sent me to a field engineering battalion where I served half a year. We were trained to build pontoon bridges, studied blasting, search and removal of mines on an island on the Danube near Budapest. After the law on work battalions was issued all Jews from 4 field engineering battalions were gathered in one battalion that they called a forced labor battalion. A Hungarian officer became its commander. We wore soldiers’ uniforms, but had yellow armbands on our sleeves. Once a week we were given a lease to go to the town. It was necessary to have 20 Fillers [100 Fillers was one Pengo, the currency in interwar Hungary] and one condom to obtain a pass. When we returned from the town we were given injections against venereal diseases. Residents of Budapest often asked us about the yellow bands and we replied that this was a sign of the chemical battalion. Later many of them knew what it meant and sympathized with us. Once I wanted to go to a casino in Budapest. The porter stopped me pointed at the armband and quietly told me to take it off. I put it in my pocket and went in. In Budapest I met a Jewish family who began to invite me on weekends and Jewish holidays. Later I lost contact with them. We were taken to another camp down the Danube where we built dams on the river. In 1942 we were moved to Ukraine to dig trenches near the front line and removed mines. We kept moving from one place to another. Many people perished there and there were many who lost their arms or legs. Every day before going to bed I begged God to allow me an easy death rather than make me a cripple. In 1943 Soviet troops began an attack and we were taken to Romania to build fortifications on the border and shelters in the mountains. [He probably refers to Northern Transylvania, that is a part of Romania now but was a part of Hungary during those times.] Later we moved to work on a railroad construction. We installed 40 km of the rail track in Northern Transylvania. From there we moved back to Subcarpathia, to the village of Volovets [70 km from Uzhgorod, 600 km from Kiev], in the Carpathian Mountains where we built bunkers and fortifications in the mountains. I was fortunate to have leaned the blacksmith’s work in the shop in Budapest. I was sent to work in the repair shop where we fixed spades, picks and other tools.

There was happening in Volovets. Once a month Jewish battalions got a 2-day eave. Before another leave Jewish residents came to the commanding officer asking him for help. There was a mikveh in their village, and the water heating boiler got rusty and the water from the pool leaked inside it and put down the fire. The Jews asked the officer to assign workers to help them repair the boiler. The officer sent me and another mechanic to go take a look at the boiler. Only the two of us were from Subcarpathia, the rest were from Budapest in the battalion. The boiler was covered with rust, and we couldn’t do anything about it. We told the locals that the body of the boiler needed to be replaced. We told them to ask the officer for a truck to transport the boiler to Uzhgorod for repair. The officer gave us a truck and we went to Uzhgorod. He ordered us to stay in Uzhgorod while the boiler was in repairs. We left the boiler in the shop where they told us that the repairs would take two days. We told the driver to come back a week later, when the boiler was ready, and went home. My companion lived in Mukachevo and I went to Onokovtse. My family was at home. I spent a week with them and then went to Uzhgorod. We took the boiler to Volovets and installed it in the mikveh. While we were in Volovets the two of us got invitations to Jewish families every week and were given a hearty welcome.

In spring 1944 commanding officer of our battalion received a telegram from his commanders that our battalion was to be transferred to Hungary, Szerencs town. We went there by train. There we were given civilian clothes, but we still had the yellow armbands. When we arrived, it turned out tha6 nobody was aware that we were coming and they didn’t what to do with us. It turned out that parents of few Jews in the battalion from Budapest talked somebody in the headquarters in Budapest to write Szerencs instead of Szentes. In Szentes, in the south of Hungary, battalions were formed for the front or some mines in Yugoslavia. There were rumors that there was very hard work in those mines and that Jews were treated very badly and sent to the most dangerous sites, but while this all was cleared out, we stayed in Szerencs about 2 months. Since there was nothing else for us to do, we worked at the sugar factory. Then we moved to Szentes when this confusion was cleared. However, the battalion formation there was over and there was no place they could send us. We stayed in Szentes. At that time they began to send Jews to ghettos. They also captured those who tried to hide away. There was a term: ‘inspection of pants’. If gendarmes captured a man who said he was not a Jew, but they suspected otherwise they ordered him to take down his pants to check whether he was circumcised. Our battalion was sent to sort out things in the Jewish houses whose owners were taken to the ghetto. We worked in groups of 5-6 men and 2 Hungarian gendarmes watched the workers. We sorted out the things and hauled them to the synagogue where the town authorities made storages. People were allowed to take some food and few clothes to the ghettos. There were clothes, furniture, household goods, pictures and valuables left. Gendarmes allowed us to take food products and the rest of things we sorted out, packed and loaded on trucks. Other groups unloaded the trucks at the synagogue. Jews were taken to ghettos and then to concentration camps all over Hungary, but in Budapest. In Budapest they were accommodated in so-called Jewish yellow star houses [9]. There were fences around these houses and the inmates were watched by gendarmes. I corresponded with my family. From the last card I received from my father I knew that Jews of Uzhgorod had also been taken to the ghetto. I went to Uzhgorod. The train went as far as Chop [25 km from Uzhgorod, 690 km from Kiev], and I walked about 20 km. In Uzhgorod I was told that the ghetto was in the former brick factory. At quite a distance from the ghetto I heard the buzz of human voices like bees in a beehive. The Hungarian guards didn’t allow me to go in there, but they called my mother, my father and sister to the fence. The fence was made from bricks in chess order with openings trough which we talked. My father tried to give me a letter through the opening, but the gendarme watching us took it away. This was the last time I saw them. When I returned to Szentes I received a card from my father where he wrote that the following day all Jews were to be taken away from the ghetto. He asked me not to worry. I never heard from them again. After WWII my acquaintances returning home from concentration camps told me that right upon arrival to Auschwitz my father was taken to a gas chamber. My mother looked young for her age. She and my sister were taken to a work camp in Stutthof on the Oder on the Polish-German border. [Stutthof is on the Vistula, near Gdansk.] People who returned from there said there were shootings and bombings and they didn’t know for sure how my mother and sister perished. They worked in the woods, on wood processing sites, in this camp. Since winter 1945 Soviet Air Forces were continuously bombing this camp. Many inmates perished then.

From Szentes we were sent over the [former] Yugoslav-Hungarian border, to the Hungarian occupied a part of Yugoslavia. We built fortifications on the right bank of the Tisa river, and lived in the Ada on the bank of the Tisa. I worked in repair shops where we fixed tools. It was October 1944. There was firing heard in the town and locals said that those were partisans shooting in the town. All of a sudden one day Hungarian and German troops began their retreat. Our major told us we were not retreating, but going to build fortifications on the bank of the Tisa to defend our Hungarian motherland. We laughed, but what were we to do – an order was an order and we all went there, even those who had worked in the shops before. Junior officers – corporals and sergeants were already on the bank. We found a German cannon that they dropped since there was something wrong with a wheel and we also found few shells. Germans had removed optical sights from the cannon and it was no good for shooting. The Tisa was wide at that spot and there was a small village, 3-4 houses, on the opposite bank. We were told there were Soviet troops there and we had to shoot at them. There were no artillery men in the battalion. Our officer recalled that his deputy had red shoulder straps, so he was an artillery man. The officer ordered him to take the command! The man tried to explain that he was not an artillery man and that he just had this uniform. What were we to do? Then they recalled that our work battalion had been formed from army troops. There was an old man from who was a spieler in a park of attractions in Budapest. He had boasted that he was an artillery man during WWI. The officer called for him. He said we had everything but the sights for shooting. The sergeant climbed a high weeping willow over the Tisa to correct the shooting. A cannon is even more plain than a rifle. The old man took a 105 mm shell, put it in the cannon, closed the lid, targeted it conventionally onto the village and pulled something there. He also told us to plug our ears and open the mouth to save the hearing. This was the way with artillery men, he said. Bang! The sergeant shouted from the weeping willow: about one kilometer shot over the target! The old man turned something, lowered the barrel, took another shell, shot it - the shell flew to the left. Another shell – undershoot again. When all of a sudden mines from the opposite bank began to fall on us! It turned out the Soviet troops had their mine cannons installed and began to shoot at us and at the town. The sergeant fell from the weeping willow into the river – it was his luck. We fell onto the ground. Nobody was wounded, only two were shell shocked. The officer ordered us to retreat. We packed and loaded the kitchen facility onto a wagon. We walked about 80 km to the Danube where we stopped to cross the river. Soviet planes were dropping bombs on the bridge and blasted it finally. Then there were pontoon bridges installed. We were waiting for our turn to cross the river, when I decided to escape and hide in the town. A military patrol seized me in about one kilometer from the crossing spot. They sent me back. I was lucky since they might have killed me. We crossed the river and walked on to the Austrian-Hungarian border, over 300 km. Soviet troops were in Uzhgorod already. They were advancing. We were sent to dig trenches, obstacles and tank ditches. We were moving away from the border and worked on the territory of Austria. Tank ditches were 2 m deep V-shape pits narrowing at the bottom. There were work battalions, and 15-40 year-old women from Jewish houses in Budapest doing this job. There were over 2 thousand women digging ditches. There were also people from other work battalions retreating with Hungarians units from Yugoslavia. They were very miserable. It was frosty outside, and they hardly had any clothes, many of them were frost-bitten and all of them had a cold. Our guards were SS soldiers.

Chief of our camp was a German from Budapest, a volksdeutsch [10]. Parents of some of my fellow comrades from Budapest knew him and he was rather loyal to us: we got better food and were sent to easier jobs. Once I injured my arm at work and this injury developed periostitis. I couldn’t do any work and there were no medications available. All I could do was keeping my hand in the water that I heated on the fire. Once, when I was keeping my hand in water a boy from Hitler Jugend stopped before me shouting in German: ‘You, dirty Jew, you must work!’. I remained sitting and he threatened to kill me. He took his rifle from his shoulder, pulled the breech mechanism as if he wanted to load it, when all of a sudden a bullet fell out of the rifle. This means it was loaded and if he pointed it at me even incidentally and pulled the trigger, this would mean the end of me. He got so confused seeing this bullet that he forgot about everything and left.

In winter 1945 Soviet planes started firing at our positions and we evacuated from there urgently. Women evacuated separately. Only recently I read in a newspaper of the Hungarian Jewish community what happened to them. They were moving to the north in the direction of the Slovak border. Of 2000 women about 800 survived. The rest of them were either killed or died from hunger and exhaustion on their way. 300 women came to Budapest and the rest of them wandered to different locations.

We walked few dozen kilometers in columns of 5 in a row. There was one SS guard for 10 rows. The weaker ones walked in the rear of the column, in the dust raised by those walking ahead. Their clothes and faces were covered with dust. If somebody couldn’t walk and came out of the column Germans killed him. There was another advantage for those walking ahead. We found food leftovers dropped by the soldiers walking ahead of us. We were given little food. In one village we stopped to rest. The SS soldiers decided to have some entertainment. They stood in two lines and we were made to run the gauntlet. They hit us with rifle butts. I took off my coat and wrapped it around my head. I tried to walk by the fence to be at least protected from one side and managed to get through it. There was an older man running ahead of me. I knew him: he was chief doctor and owner of a private polyclinic in Budapest. He had a big rucksack on his back. The rope on its top broke and the rucksack was hanging loose banging on his knees. He couldn’t run and a German hit him on the bridge of his nose and broke it. He fell, I ran to him and dragged him with me. He happened to have books on medicine in his rucksack – they were so heavy. Other guys helped me to drag this man ad his rucksack. I don’t know what happened to him. He must have perished. All weak and sick inmates were exterminated in Mauthausen. Then we boarded a train to Mauthausen.

We didn’t know we were going to the concentration camp. We thought we were moving to another work site. The train stopped on the way. It ran out of coal. We were ordered to gather wood in the field. The train moved on, but again ran out of fuel and we walked about 2 km to Mauthausen. The weaker and sick ones were ordered to step aside. They were ordered to board trucks and taken to the camp. They were exterminated in a gas chamber upon arrival to the camp – there was no sorting out. We came to a big gate where there was a sign in German: ‘Work gives freedom’. The guards told us that the main camp was overcrowded and we were sent to a subcamp of Mauthausen. There was a long barrack. Other inmates of the camp told us to stay away from this barrack. There were prisoners from Ukraine kept in this barrack and the barrack was full of typhus lice. We lay on the ground. In about 200 m from this barrack there was another similar barrack where they kept 8-15 year old children from concentration camps in Poland. We stayed outside for 2 or 3 days before Germans cleaned and disinfected the barrack and we could go inside. Germans delivered food in big thermal containers and gave it to us in front of the barrack. In the morning we got some dark liquid that they called coffee for some reason. For lunch we got a pot of soup with rotten vegetables. Occasionally there were beans in the soup. There was one loaf of bread for 10 inmates per day given to us, 100 grams per person. Of course, we couldn’t cut identical slices: some of us had bigger slices and others got smaller ones. The children had the system, but they were having problems. When Germans brought them food, the children pounced on those thermos bottles. They often turned them upside down and Germans laughed looking at the fighting children, hit them with their sticks or even shoot at them. Children didn’t have any pots. We had the pots from the time we were in the work battalions and children had nothing to eat from. They begged for empty tins in the kitchen. When cooks opened tins with meat they made holes in the bottom to make it easier for them to push out the meat. The children kept their fingers on these holes when soup was poured into their tins. Those who took their fingers away lost their soup. They had another idea: they took off their wooden clogs that they wore in the camp and had their soup poured into them. Older children managed to get 2-3 portions of soup and some extra bread and there was nothing left for younger children. Many children were starving to death. We decided to get things in better order there. Only my companion from Mukachevo and I knew Czech. We decided that since we understood when they spoke Polish, they were to understand Czech. We went to the children’s barrack. But they began to throw stones on us shouting ‘Magyar, Magyar!’ They probably had bad memories about Hungarians.

There was a barrack where Czech inmates lived. They were in a privileged position comparing to others. The Czechs worked at a plant in the town and were given food at the plant canteen. When they had extra food they shared it with us. We left some of this food on a stump in front of the children’s barrack. Some children took the food and the others didn’t probably fearing something bad. Once we left some bread, margarine and jam on the stump and hid away. The children came close and we surrounded them. They began to scream ‘don’t touch us, we are Polish’. We told them they were not Polish, but Jewish, and that we were not Hungarians, but Jews, but they kept screaming trying to escape. We finally managed to convince them that we would do no harm to them. They agreed to let us speak to their leader, 15-year old Juzek. In the evening he came into our barrack with two other boys. We explained them what our intentions were emphasizing that there was a blaze of artillery cannonades visible in the evening, which meant that the Russian troops were coming and that if they continued to behave the way they did they would either die from hunger or Germans would kill them and they would not live till we were liberated. We told them we would help them to bring things to order. In the morning, before Germans came with thermos bottles we came to their barrack. Juzek explained who we were. We told the children to line up. When Germans came with food, the children were standing in line very quietly. Germans even asked what happened. The children understood this was better for them.

In April 1945 military troops were approaching Mauthausen and we evacuated to Gunskirchen town in about 20 km from Mauthausen. There were also barracks there and prisoners from surrounding camps were taken to this area. Germans were raging and we understood that the war was coming to an end. We were given miserable food: 2 potatoes in their skin per day. Many people died every day and there were corpses piling in the yard. Every other day corpses were loaded on trucks and hauled to the crematorium. It was horrific that there were meat parts cut out on some corpses. Inmates from the Polish barrack were selling meat saying it was horse meat… Germans began to watch them and discovered that they were cutting meat from the corpses. They killed 10 inmates doing this. The guards were Germans from regular army. [Wehrmacht] The SS soldiers disappeared, and these guards were rather loyal to us. The area of the camp was rather big and Germans didn’t mind that we walked around. We were not allowed to come into the barrack of Germans. We could find carrots and potatoes in abandoned storage facilities. When there were no air raids we were allowed to make food on fire. We began to receive parcels with biscuits, jam, cigarettes and matches from the English Red Cross. It was called the St. George Cross. I didn’t smoke and exchanged cigarettes for bread and biscuits. When we received the food it was better to eat it all at once since it was stolen at nights, even if we put boxes with food under a pillow.

On 5 May 1945 we woke up from the roar of shooting in the morning. I stepped out of the barrack. The Germans guard warned me to not approach the fence since he had an order to shoot. The shooting was somewhere near. I lay on the ground to not be shot by stray bullet. All of a sudden the gate of the camp open and camouflage color trucks drove in. I could’t see from afar whose troops these were, but then I saw Negroes in the trucks. American soldiers. All inmates ran out of their barracks hugging and kissing the Americans. It’s horrible to think of how we smelled – we hadn’t washed for a long time before… The Americans gave us meat cans and bread. It didn’t occur to many prisoners that after a long period of hunger they had better not eaten fat food and bread, but they pounced on the food. Few hours later many of them felt ill and even died. But we were free! We were issued certificates of prisoners of a concentration camp indicating that the US army liberated us. I said I was a citizen Czechoslovakia. I thought Hungarians were occupants. In my certificate my name was written as Ladislav in the Czech manner. I had to obtain another certificate confirming that Laszlo Ringel and Ladislav Ringel was one and the same person. The Americans hauled those who were ill to a hospital. The rest of us could do whatever we wanted. Few of us went to Linz. On our way we saw an abandoned vehicle. We got inside – there was no gasoline left. We saw a broken vehicle nearby and a canister of gasoline inside. We took the canister and drove to the town in this vehicle. We told the first patrol on our way that we were liberated from the concentration camp. They took us to former German barracks with other former inmates of concentration camps. This barrack was dirty and overcrowded and we decided to stay in the town. We lodged on the attic in a house where there was only an old woman staying. She was glad to have us. We kept wandering in the town not knowing what to do. I recalled how many people were taken to hospital by Americans and felt like helping these people somehow. I decided to find the hospital and see whether they could employ me there. I visited several hospitals before I got a job in one of them deployed in the former German Air Force School. There were 3-storied barracks where they arranged wards for patients. There were French and Slavic patients in the camp for the most part. They had been taken there from concentration camps. I knew French, Ruthenian, Czech and Slovak. At first I helped the hospital attendants to carry the patients to the reception room and then take them to their wards. I interpreted for the doctor, captain of medical services in the American army. He spoke French and I translated what patients were telling him. He put down their names and home addresses. There were many French, Belgian, Serbs, and Croatians in the hospital from all over Europe. I could understand them all. I made lists of patients for the Red Cross. There were many women. Once, when making another list, I noticed that there were 4 women with the same surname and home address in the hospital. All four had enteric typhus, high fever, all were in poor condition. One was about 50 years old, the others were much younger. We decided they were relatives. Few days later one young woman died and the rest were on their way to recovery. They happened to be the mother and 3 daughters, all came from different camps and didn’t know about each other. I worked there for about 8 months. I aw man7 people with different lives. There was a Polish woman taken to the hospital from a concentration amp. I don’t know how she survived: she was skin and bones. She was in her 9th month of pregnancy and weighed 40 kg, but the baby was born with standard weight, a good strong girl. She was born on 9 May 1945, and chief of the hospital, American, named the girl Victoria in honor of the victory. There was another story: one of the Americans working in the hospital met a girl from a concentration camp and they fell in love with one another. When she recovered they got married. The girl got pregnant. He wrote his parents that he got married and they were going to have a baby. There was a war with Japan going on, and all of a sudden he was sent to Japan. A short time later his wife received a notification on his death. This guy’s parents too her with them to the USA.

There also was German medical personnel in the hospital at the beginning. Americans captured a Germans medical battalion and doctors, nurses and attendants were assisting in the hospital, but in some cases they were trying to do harm. There was a patient in a ward. Her injury didn’t heal, and each time after a doctor’s visit the injury got worse. Her companion said that each time the doctor applied some powder on the injury. When they checked the injury after the doctor’s visit, it turned out to be salt that he applied. He was shot. There were 2 or 3 children’s wards in the hospital. Once the children attacked a German attendant hitting him with what they had at hand. The Americans tried to keep the children away from him, but it was hard. They beat this attendant within an inch of his life. As it turned out, he was an SS guard in their camp, and the children recognized him. The workers of the hospital found an SS tattoo on his hand. There was another incident. The food for employees and patients was made from tinned meat mainly. There were few German workers in the kitchen. The patients began to complain that there was too much salt in their food. An American officer hid in the kitchen to watch what was going on there. He saw a German worker adding packs of salt to the pots with food. He was also shot. There were also other German doctors and nurses dedicated to their work. They even rescued hopeless patients from dying.

There were funny stories as well. Besides, this American hospital, there was a Soviet hospital for the former Soviet prisoners-of-war on the air field. Some patients were allowed to go to town,. There was a village near the town. American soldiers guarded the air field. Every one hundred meters there were patrol jeep vehicles with guards who had radios. Soviet patients often stole sheep and calves from the village to cook them. They also took away food products from villagers. When they stole a calf they had to plot how to take it past the guards. They talked two Polish boys to help them. They found a goat, put a rope around its neck and began to pull it by the rope through the gate. The goat stood up to the boys bleating: they made a lot of noise. The guard saw this picture and burst into laughter. He called other guards to come and watch this show. 3 jeep vehicles from other posts arrived. They began to take photos of the boys pulling the goat and at this time former prisoners-of-war brought their calf or whatever else they had through the posts that the American military left unguarded. They also robbed people in the streets, broke into their houses to take away their jewelry or money.

In early 1946 the hospital was closed and we left it. Slovak border was the nearest to us and we headed to Bratislava with other companions from Subcarpathia. There were about 12 of us. We sailed on a boat along thee Danube and then walked the rest of the way. The bridges were blasted, their fragments blocked the waterway and the boats couldn’t sail. I found a cart and loaded my belongings on it and in order nobody took me for a fascist I drew a red pentagonal star on it. German and Hungarian soldiers convoyed by Slovaks were moving from Bratislava. The soldiers searched us and took from us what they liked. We were taken to the Slovakian bank, to the point where we were subject to disinfection, registration and where we were given some money for the road. From there we got to Bratislava and walked to Subcarpathia via Budapest. In Bratislava we were asked to take care of a group of Subcarpathian children, who were taken to Bratislava from concentration camps, there were 15 of them. The children were from Beregovo, Khust and Mukachevo. I wished I could get off the train and spend few days in Budapest, but I couldn’t leave the children. When we arrived at Uzhgorod, we separated. I went home to Onokovtse.

In Bratislava we were told that Subcarpathia had been given to the USSR. All I knew about the USSR was that the Soviet army bore the main burden of the war. I was hoping that after WWII Subcarpathia would become Czechoslovakian again, but these hopes failed./ I was hopping again that at least life would not be much worse in the USSR. I understood that about any regime there were people who appreciated changes and there were those who were not happy with any. So I decided to make no hasty conclusions, but wait and see.

Our both houses in Onokovtse were occupied. The pot house became a storage house and in the house where we lived with my parents after my sister was born was inhabited by some newcomers. The door of the pot house was closed, but I knew the way to get inside. There was a manhole in the attic that was never locked. I got inside through this manhole. I took few photographs and some clothes. I stayed a little among the things that were dear to me when I was a child: a chess table with the chess board made from ivory and black stone, the table with a burnt spot when my father spilled some vodka during Havdalah. On the door of the wardrobe from the inside my mother inscribed the names of cows and calving dates. There was the memory of my family living in this house. I stayed overnight with our neighbors who were happy that I was back. On the next day I went to Uzhgorod. I was hoping to find my aunt Karolina, my mother’s sister, who might know about my family. I only found Miklos, my cousin, there. He was in a work battalion from where he was taken to a concentration camp, and Americans liberated him. Miklos was working in his father’s furniture shop. He offered me to stay with him and work in the shop. Miklos told me what happened to my mother’s sisters. Aunt Karolina and her husband perished in a concentration camp and so did my mother’s sister Rozsa and her husband living in Slovakia. Rozsa’s daughter Edit was in a labor camp where she perished. Rozsa’s son Tibor survived, but I didn’t have any information about him. Miklos’ brother Sandor escaped to England in 1938 after Hungarians came to power. During WWII he served in the Czechoslovakian Legion in the British army. After the war Sandor returned to Britain and married an English woman. They lived in London. We didn’t correspond and this is all I know about him. He might have passed away. He was older than me.

I went to work in the furniture shop. I learned to work on the wood treatment lathe. I lived in a room in the shop. I had meals in the town. There was a Red Cross ‘Social care’ organization in Russkaya Street where they had a canteen to provide meals to those who returned from concentration camps. I met girls and courted many of them there. It was there that I met my future wife Lea Helman, a young girl with big back eyes. We began to meet. Lea came from Bogdan village [175 km from Uzhgorod, 560 km from Kiev] Rakhov district in Subcarpathia. She was born in 1927. Her Jewish name was Laya. My wife was born Lea, later the Ukrainians made Helena of her. Although in the town some called her Helen at home she was always called Lea. The entire family called her Lea all the time. Her father Moishe Helman was a farmer and her mother Beila Helman was a housewife. There were 11 children in the family, but before WWII 9 of them were in Subcarpathia. One died in his teens from a disease. One of Lea’s older brothers escaped to England after the Hungarians came to power, during the war he served in the Czechoslovakian Legion in the British army and returned to England after the war. When he got to know that his brothers and sisters returned from the concentration camp he decided to visit them. Soviet authorities arrested him accusing him of espionage and sent him to the GULAG [12] where he perished. The rest of the children were taken to the ghetto in April 1944 and from there they were taken to Auschwitz. Lea’s mother and father were exterminated in Auschwitz immediately, and Lea and her brothers and sisters were sent to different concentration camps. They were young and managed to survive and returned to Subcarpathia. Lea was taken to a labor camp in Schlanitzsee town in Germany. She met an Austrian Jewish girl and they became friends. When in January 1945 evacuation of the camp began, Lea and her friend managed to escape. They both spoke fluent German. Some kind people helped them to get Aryan documents and certificates of baptistery and they lived till May 1945 with these documents. Lea worked as a servant for a German family. By the way, later she got to know that her older sister Rivka also escaped in the same way. She managed to escape from the camp, get some Christian documents, and she lived in a German town and even worked as a conductor in a tram. It was easier for girls, there was no ‘inspection of pants’ for them. When American troops came to the town where Lea lived, she went back to Subcarpathia. Once my wife and I went to Bogdan village to visit the graves of her relatives. I saw the house their family lived in before the war. It was abandoned. A little decayed house. Lea came to Uzhgorod where she entered a medical school for medical nurses. In Uzhgorod she met with her brothers and sisters who returned from concentration camps. I don’t remember all of them, though I used to know them. The oldest was Laib. Then two sisters, Sarra and Liebe were born, and then three others, whose names I don’t remember. Then came Rivka, Mehl and my wife Lea. They were all very close. I don’t know how religious my wife’s parents were. Of course, the young generation was not so religious, but they celebrated Jewish holidays.

Shortly after establishment of the Soviet power in Subcarpathia, before Soviet passports were issued and before registration of the population, my wife’s brothers and sisters moved to Israel. As a rule, a big group of those who wanted to emigrate, went to Romania where they rented a boat to sail to Israel. They settled down in towns and kibbutzim. One of them, Leib Helman, a lawyer, was even a mayor of Beer Sheva. Under his guidance a block of houses was built. It’s called Helman. There was his bust installed in front of a supermarket in Beer Sheva. There is only one sister living now – Sarra. The rest of them have passed away. Their children and their families live in Israel. Lea didn’t go with them. She wanted to obtain a diploma of the medical nurse and then follow them to Israel. I also thought it was right to move to Israel having a profession. It never occurred to us that we would live behind the ‘iron curtain’ [13] for so many decades. My cousin Miklos didn’t stay in Subcarpathia either. The Soviet power expropriated his furniture shop. Miklos was afraid of being arrested and crossed the border with Hungary where he lived his life. He married a Jewish girl from Budapest and they had children. They lived in Budapest. Miklos died in the 1980s and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Budapest.

I married Lea in 1946. There were no relatives of ours left in Subcarpathia by that time. My wife’s cousin, a tailor, who lived in Uzhgorod in a cottage, made a real Jewish wedding for us. There was a chuppah in the yard of his house, and a rabbi from the only synagogue in Uzhgorod conducted the wedding ceremony. There was a funny incident during the registration of our marriage in the registry office. They required our birth certificates. Lea didn’t have one and we went to the registry office in Rakhov, to obtain a copy from the archives. It turned out that her brothers and sisters were registered there, but not Lea. Later we figured out that there was a grandmother or grandfather registering the children, or the mother or father, and they missed Lea. Lea had to go for a medical examination to the polyclinic. They put down the year of birth that she indicated and the day and moth when we came to the polyclinic. After the wedding we settled down with my wife’s cousin. She studied at school and I worked in the furniture shop that belonged to the state already. We obtained Soviet passports. My wife was written down as Helena. Was told in the passport office that the Russian equivalent of Laszlo was Vasiliy and issued my passport with the name of Vasiliy Ringel. I tried to protest telling them that if Laszlo was not all right for them, then let them right down the Czech name of Ladislav, but chief of this passport office stood his grounds. At that time they introduced the Russian language and Russian names in use. My wife convinced me that it didn’t make sense to put one’s freedom at risk for the sake of a name. We already saw what was happening during the Soviet rule. After Lea’s brother was arrested and exiled I understood that this regime was capable of anything. They were closing the synagogues and Christian [Eastern Orthodox] and Catholic churches in Subcarpathia turning them into some storage facilities. They were ruining, of course. Religion was announced outlawed and believers were persecuted. There was a Bergida man in Uzhgorod, perhaps, even some distant relative on my mother’s side, I don’t know. He was chief of logistics of a big synagogue in Uzhgorod. He was charged with something political and sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment in camps in the GULAG. It was clear that it was only related to his religious activities.10 years later he returned. He was very ill and died a short time later. It was dangerous to have relatives abroad during the soviet regime. They might fire from work or put to prison on charges of espionage [Keep in touch with relatives abroad] [15] for correspondence with them. We couldn’t keep in touch with my cousins or my wife’s relatives. The Russian language was mandatory: we had to study it and speak it. Adults also had to learn the language: they couldn’t get a job without knowing it.

My wife and I were not strongly religious, but we always remembered that we were Jews and tried to observe Jewish traditions as much as we could considering the Soviet restrictions. We celebrated major Jewish holidays at home. On Friday evening Lea lit candles and prayed. She hadn’t finished the Jewish grammar school due to the war, but she knew Hebrew better than I did. We always had matzah on Pesach. Lea and her cousin’s wife baked it at home. Later we could buy matzah shipped from Budapest. We celebrated Soviet holidays at work, but not at home. It was just another day off for us. The only Soviet holidays that my wife and I recognized was Victory Day, 9 May [16].

In 1947 our daughter Vera, Dveira in Jewish was born. In 1950 our son Mihaly, Moishe in Jewish, after his grandfathers, Lea’s father and mine, and Mikhail in his Soviet passport was born. During the Soviet period we couldn’t have our son circumcised at the synagogue, but my wife and I believed that we had to do it. We went to the children’s hospital and made arrangements with the children’s surgeon to make circumcision. Circumcision is prescribed in case of phimosis. The surgeon put down this diagnosis in the medical records of my son and operated on him for medical reasons. Of course, it wasn’t quite like the ritual of brit milah. It was a surgery in a surgery room. No relatives or a rabbi were present. This doctor must have sympathized with Jews and was not positive about the Soviet power. My son was not the only baby that he operated on. He didn’t charge any money from us.

After our son was born, there was too little space for all of us to continue to live with my wife’s cousin. We decided to move to Onokovtse. I managed to get back our little house. To my surprise, it took little time. I repaired the house as much as I could and we moved in there. I was surprised and moved, when local farmers began to bring the things that they had taken from our abandoned house. They returned pictures, portraits of my father and grandfather and some pieces of furniture.

Lea finished her school and went to work as a medical nurse in the children’s tuberculosis health center in Onokovtse. I worked in the furniture shop for some time, but then I was sent to work in a village not far from Uzhgorod, where they were restoring a saw mill. I don’t remember the name of the village, all I remember is that it was on the bank of a river and there was a high hill by the river. On the opposite bank there was a training field of Soviet tanks and mobile units. During their training they used to shoot at this hill across the river. Once we were sitting on a log during a lunch break, when there was an explosion in the river. At first we thought somebody deafening the fish, but then shells began to fall near where we sat. I shouted for everybody to lie on the ground. One guy kept standing and a shell cut him apart. When it became quiet I ran away. When the blasts repeated I lay on the ground again. Then it became quiet. Besides the guy killed by a shell, there was a wagoner killed near the gate to the mill. When explosions began, the horses got scared and dashed off to the closed gate. The horses and the wagoner perished. There was one wounded in his arm. Officers from the training field came to see what happened. One of them, a major, asked me why I ran. I told him I was running away from shells. He turned away and I heard him saying to his comrades: ‘Cowardly zhyd!’. I asked him, when there were bombings during the war, did he lie down or jump up to be seen better? I didn’t wait for his answer. I submitted a letter of resignation and returned to Onokovtse. This was the first time that I heard the word ‘zhyd’ [kike] addressed to me after I returned to Subcarpathia. This word was not new to me: there are similar words in the Czech, Hungarian or Ruthenian languages, but without such abusive connotations. I remember our teacher of history at school saying to us: a word is like the scissors – you can use them to make manicure and also, to kill a person. Everything depends on the meaning you put in it. Later I heard the word ‘zhyd’ many times and always in the abusive meaning. Soviet people who cane to Subcarpathia from the USSR brought anti-Semitism with them. At first it was of everyday meaning, but in 1948 when struggle against cosmopolites [17] began, it reached the state level. It became difficult for Jews to find jobs and enter colleges. I went to work as an accountant in the kolkhoz [18], organized in Onokovtse. Some time later elections of chairman of the kolkhoz took place. The local villages who knew me since I was a child nominated me for this position. I wasn’t a member of the party, but this did not become a decisive factor. Secretary of the Party organization who had come from the USSR announced before voting that he wasn’t putting me on the voting list since the kolkhoz didn’t need a Jewish chairman. This was said openly at the meeting. Anti-Semites didn’t have to conceal themselves any longer.

My wife and I tried to stay away from those who had moved to Subcarpathia from the USSR or anything occurring in the USSR. We had little in common with them. We didn’t care of what was going on in the USSR or from what concerned them in this regard. We had many Jewish and non-Jewish friends in Subcarpathia. When in January 1953 the ‘doctors’ plot’ [19] began, none of residents of original Subcarpathia believed what newspapers were publishing. Our best doctors were Jews and nobody lost trust in them because of the lies published in newspapers, while when those who had moved from the USSR, when they came to a polyclinic, demanded to have a non-Jewish doctor. There were meetings condemning the doctors poisoners. We understood that this was the first step, preparation for further persecutions. I think that only Stalin’s death saved us from exile like deportation of other nations in the USSR. I and many of my friends and acquaintances took Stalin’s death with relief. We knew that under Stalin’s orders many peoples were deported: Crimean Tatars, Chechen and Germans of the Volga region. We were hoping that things would be better after his death. We couldn’t understand why those comers from the USSR were crying and lamenting as if their closest person had died. After the speech of Nikita Khrushchev [21] on the 20th Party Congress [22] we believed that there was no way back for the past and that a new life was beginning in the USSR. At first it seemed that our hopes might come true. Innocent people began to return from camps. Anti-Semitism was reducing, but it didn’t last long. Of course, it wasn’t like it used to be during Stalin’s regime, there were no public trials or mass shootings. The term ‘enemy of the people’ [23] that Soviet people were used to was gone. But this was all about it. Anti-Semitism was there and also this terrible poverty that we lived in from the time Subcarpathia was annexed to the USSR didn’t disappear. The leading role of the Communist Party stayed in place. It wasn’t an agronomist assigning the sowing dates, but secretary of the district Party committee. It was ridiculous for us. We grew up during the Czech rule and knew what a good decent life was and what love to one’s own country was about. How could one love the USSR? Perhaps, if one was born, grew up there and didn’t know anything different. That they cut off any opportunity for communicating with foreigners and learning about life in other countries from somewhere else, but Soviet newspapers had its reasons. People had nothing to compare their life with, but we lived our own life, apart from the life in the Soviet Union. I didn’t want to know anything about what was going on there. The only event touching me was invasion of Hungary [1956] [24] and Czechoslovakia [Prague Spring] [25]. When in 1956 the USSR troops invaded Hungary and in 1968 – Czechoslovakia, I was indignant to the bottom of my heart. It was rather similar to Hitler invasion of Europe. Could anybody believe that Hungary and Czechoslovakia could not resolve their problems and requested the USSR for bringing in their troops? I understood that the USSR has suppressed and would suppress any efforts of any country to get out of the ‘socialist camp’ and build the life of their people on their own will and that everything that happened was natural, but I understood this in my mind and in my heart there was indignation.

My children were growing up like all other Soviet children. They studied in a general school and were pioneers and Komsomol [26] members which was usual. They had Jewish and non-Jewish friends. For my wife and me nationality didn’t matter. What mattered was the person. However, we raised our children Jewish. My wife taught them Hebrew and told them about the Jewish history, traditions and religion. At about the age of 4 my son knew 4 traditional questions in Hebrew by heart. When I conducted seder at home on Pesach he posed four traditional questions to me according to the rules. Of course, my wife and I told them that they shouldn’t talk about it in the kindergarten or school since we might face problems if they did. It’s strange, but the children understood this. We organized a bar mitzvah, when my son turned 13. Our friends, Subarpathian Jews, attended it, and the ritual was conducted according to the rules. My wife and I spoke Hungarian and Yiddish at home, and spoke Yiddish, Hungarian, and sometimes Russian to the children. I didn’t know Yiddish as well as my wife: it was her mother tongue while I only studied it in the cheder, but I picked it promptly from my wife. My wife believed that our children had to know Yiddish.

After finishing school my daughter went to work as telegrapher at the post office and studied at the Electric Engineering College in Zaporozhiye by correspondence. When she received her diploma she was promoted to the position of electrical engineer. She worked at the post office till she moved to Israel. When she was a student, Vera got married. Her husband Viacheslav Dolburd, a Jew, was born in Uzhgorod in 1945, his parents had moved to Subcarpathia from the USSR before. Viacheslav was an engineer, he worked at the Uzhgorod instrument making plant. They had two sons: Iosif, born in 1981, and Yefim, born in 1983. Both grandsons had circumcision according to the rule. We had to make the same trick that we used when having our son circumcised. The same surgeon circumcised my grandsons in the polyclinic.

My son was recruited to the army after finishing school. He served as a mechanic in an Air Force unit. He finished a course of driving there. After returning to Uzhgorod Mihaly worked as a driver in the health center where my wife worked and later – in a fire brigade. Mihaly married Sofia Yakovleva, a Russian girl. She and her parents had moved to Subcarpathia somewhere from Russia. Sofia’s father was a military, and the family moved from one place to another. They settled down in Uzhgorod, and Sofia’s father served there till he retired and the family stayed to live here. Sofia and Mihaly have daughter Yelena, born in 1978 and son Leo, born in 1985. Sofia works in the restaurant built where the pot house used to be. When Hesed was organized in Uzhgorod, Mihaly came to work as a driver in the Hesed.

When in the 1970s Jews began to move to Israel in great numbers, we decided to move there as well. The USSR never became a Motherland to us and we did not get used to it. We were hoping to have a decent life in Israel and that our grandsons would grow up in the country that will become their Motherland. There were relatives and friends in Israel and we would not suffer from solitude. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen as we thought. When our son returned from the army, we submitted out documents for departure to Israel. My wife’s relatives sent us an invitation letter. Some time later I was called to the office where we submitted the documents and they told me that my wife and II could o, but my son could depart from the USSR only ten years later due to his service in the army, because in their opinion he was aware of state secrets. This was ridiculous, he was a soldier, but it was impossible to prove anything. We didn’t want to leave out son and we stayed.

Few years before retirement I quit my job and went to work at the souvenir shop of the Uzhgorod factory in the small village of Seredneye near Uzhgorod. I worked with wood and later began to make wooden souvenirs and design samples for further manufacturing. I learned drawing in the grammar school. This proved to be handy in my work on souvenirs. For the Olympic Games in Moscow in 1980 I made a souvenir: 2 wooden football players 10-12 cm high, on the round stand from birch wood. There was an inscription on the stand: Moscow 80, and 5 rings, the symbol of this Olympic Games. Moscow approved this sample for manufacture. For this souvenir I was awarded a bronze medal at the Exhibition of Achievements of the Public Economy in Moscow. This was work by orders and I could earn up to 500 rubles per month [The average salary in the USSR was 130 rubles at the time]. Of course, my family was assisting me. I took work home and my wife and daughter helped me to glue the figures together, but this didn’t last long – they introduced restrictions on salaries limiting them to 250 rubles. I employed my son – he was a driver in the fire brigade at that time. He worked one day every four days.

We still lived in the small house that was not sufficient for three families. My wife and I were saving money for a new house. We started construction in 1975 on the site of our old house. We wanted our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren to live in this house. We made a 2-storied building: 3 rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom on each floor. We also planted a big orchard and vineyard around the house. My wife and I and our son with his family lived on the first floor and on the 2nd floor – our daughter with her husband and sons. There are children’s voices in the house. My granddaughter Yelena and her husband Ivan Nestor, Ukrainian, live with us. They have two children, my great grandchildren: Mihail, born in 1997, and Yelena, born in 2000 after my wife died, named after my wife Lea.

At leisure time I often went to the mountains to draw. I liked making landscapes and draw old houses of Uzhgorod. When I began to work at the souvenir shop, I got another hobby. I gathered branches and roots in the woods to make figures or candle stands from them – the shape of snags gave me ideas of what was to be made from them. I only keep few of them – I gave away most of them for presents.

My daughter and her family moved to Israel in1992. They settled down in a kibbutz not far from Qiryat Yam. In this kibbutz they raise poultry, keep a dairy farm and grow flowers and citrus plants. There is also a plant of plastic goods there. My daughter works as a cashier in a food store in the kibbutz. Her husband works at the factory of plastic goods. Their both sons serve in the army. After their term is over they plan to enter a university. They are happy with their new life and love their new Motherland. Last year after finishing a secondary school my grandson, Mikhail’s son Lev, moved to Israel. He wants to continue his studies in Israel and is going to stay there. Lev has finished his service in the army. Recently he came to Uzhgorod to visit us. He lives in Ashdod.

When in the late 1980s perestroika [27] began in the USSR, I had a doubtful attitude to it like everything else happening in the USSR. Some time later I saw that I was wrong this time. Freedom came to our life. Newspapers published such things, for which people were imprisoned in the GULAG recently. It became possible to correspond with people abroad and even travel to other countries and invite people from other countries. The ban on religion was gone. People were allowed to go to churches and synagogues and celebrate religious holidays. The only problem was that the people didn’t have a need in religion any more during the years of the Soviet regime. In Uzhgorod there were not enough men even for a minyan, but gradually religion began to revive. During perestroika in Uzhgorod the Jewish community was organized. Of course, it couldn’t do as much for people as Hesed is doing now, but we were happy about it. The community began to attract people to the synagogue, teach them prayers and traditions. The community arranged for matzah to be delivered from Budapest and provide prayer books to people, tallits, tefillins and everything they needed. When my wife fell ill, the community helped me with food and medications. Lea died in 1996 and the community made arrangements for the funeral. My wife was buried in the Jewish sector of the town cemetery in Uzhgorod according to Jewish traditions. The old Jewish cemetery was closed long ago. The cemetery is not far from our house and I often visit the grave. On the anniversary of Lea’s death I recite Kiddush at the synagogue and treat everybody with honey cake. The rabbi demands that the treatment is kosher. Of course, it’s hard to do so. I take vodka with me and my daughter-in-law makes honey cakes and strudels.

I’ve traveled to Israel twice recently, I visited my daughter, grandchildren, saw my relatives and friends. Israel made an unforgettable impression on me. It’s an amazing country and there are amazing people living in it. I was very happy and touched that they love their country and believe it to be an honor to serve in the army defending their country. I was very sorry that I was not destined to live in Israel. Now it’s too late for me to think about it, but I’m very happy that my daughter and grandchildren are citizens of Israel.

I go to the synagogue three times a week: on Monday, Thursday and Saturday. People also get together at the synagogue on Friday evening, but it’s difficult for me. I cannot see with one eye and it’s hard for me to get home in the dark. I am used to walking keeping my head high, but now I have to look down when walking. I am often called to the Torah – they show respect to my age. We celebrate all Jewish holidays. I confess I haven’t fasted on Yom Kippur for a long time since Lea died. My family convinced me that I cannot do it due to my health condition, but this time I fasted and I managed all right. Nothing bad happened.

In 1999 Hesed was established in Uzhgorod. They take a lot of efforts to revive the Jewish life in Subcarpathia. In Hesed there are Hebrew clubs and clubs where they teach Jewish history and traditions. People of different ages – young and old people attend them. There are studios of Jewish dancing and singing, literature studio, a club for elderly people and many interesting events in Hesed. Hesed takes care of the most unprotected: old people and children. They receive food packages and those who are in poor condition have packages delivered home. Visiting nurses take care of them. There is a canteen in the Hesed where old people can have a meal, read and discuss newspapers and just talk. There is a summer camp for Jewish children where they take a rest and also learn to be Jews and study foreign languages. Life is very interesting in the camp and children always look forward to summer vacations. Hesed rents two wards in the hospital of the Ministry of Home Affairs, the best in the town. Everybody who needs a medical examination or treatment, can stay in this hospital. I also stayed there once, but I don’t like hospitals. I think, it’s much better for health to have a good laugh, say a joke, have a glass of homemade wine than swallow pills. Of course, I am happier than many others. Three generations of my family live with me: my son, granddaughter and great granddaughter. They fill the house with life and I get younger with them.

I still like going to the woods looking for branches and snags. Sometimes I draw still life. I do exercises and go for walks. My great grandchildren often accompany me. I try to do what I can for the community and Hesed. I made a big Jewish calendar in the past in Hebrew. There are also Russian names of months on it so that a person who doesn’t know Hebrew could still find the date of the holidays. There are sights of Israel on each page. It is also indicated which part of the Torah is supposed to be read. 7 people are called to the Torah on holidays, fewer on Sabbath and on weekdays, and every time there is another section from the Torah to be read. Now I need to make another calendar before Rosh Hashanah for next year. It’s hard work for me considering that I can only see with one eye, but people need it to be done and I enjoy working on it.

Of course, I wouldn’t say that since Ukraine became independent anti-Semitism disappeared, but now Ukrainian laws allow to struggle against it. Also everyday anti-Semitism occurs, though not so often as it used to. Of course, it’s hard to believe that anti-Semitism in Ukraine will disappear one day, but one cannot help hoping for it.

Glossary:
[1] Trianon Peace Treaty: Trianon is a palace in Versailles where, as part of the Paris Peace Conference, the peace treaty was signed with Hungary on 4th June 1920. It was the official end of World War I for the countries concerned. The Trianon Peace Treaty validated the annexation of huge parts of pre-war Hungary by the states of Austria (the province of Burgenland) and Romania (Transylvania, and parts of Eastern Hungary). The northern part of pre-war Hungary was attached to the newly created Czechoslovak state (Slovakia and Subcarpathia) while Croatia-Slavonia as well as parts of Southern Hungary (Voivodina, Baranja, Medjumurje and Prekmurje) were to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians (later Yugoslavia). Hungary lost 67.3% of its pre-war territory, including huge areas populated mostly or mainly by Hungarians, and 58.4% of its population. As a result approximately one third of the Hungarians became an - often oppressed - ethnic minority in some of the predominantly hostile neighboring countries. Trianon became the major point of reference of interwar nationalistic and anti-Semitic Hungarian Reginames.
[2] Neolog Jewry: Following a Congress in 1868/69 in Budapest, where the Jewish community was supposed to discuss several issues on which the opinion of the traditionalists and the modernizers differed and which aimed at uniting Hungarian Jews, Hungarian Jewry was officially split into to (later three) communities, which all built up their own national community network. The Neologs were the modernizers, who opposed the Orthodox on various questions.
[3] Kuk (Kaiserlich und Koeniglich) army: The name ‘Imperial and Royal’ was used for the army of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, as well as for other state institutions of the Monarchy originated from the dual political system. Following the Compromise of 1867, which established the Dual Monarchy, Austrian emperor and Hungarian King Franz Joseph was the head of the state and also commander-in-chief of the army. Hence the name ‘Imperial and Royal’.
[4] Subcarpathia (also known as Ruthenia, Russian and Ukrainian name Zakarpatie): Region situated on the border of the Carpathian Mountains with the Middle Danube lowland. The regional capitals are Uzhhorod, Berehovo, Mukachevo, Khust. It belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy until World War I; and the Saint-Germain convention declared its annexation to Czechoslovakia in 1919. It is impossible to give exact historical statistics of the language and ethnic groups living in this geographical unit: the largest groups in the interwar period were Hungarians, Rusyns, Russians, Ukrainians, Czech and Slovaks. In addition there was also a considerable Jewish and Gypsy population. In accordance with the first Vienna Decision of 1938, the area of Subcarpathia mainly inhabited by Hungarians was ceded to Hungary. The rest of the region, was proclaimed a new state called Carpathian Ukraine in 1939, with Khust as its capital, but it only existed for four and a half months, and was occupied by Hungary in March 1939. Subcarpathia was taken over by Soviet troops and local guerrillas in 1944. In 1945, Czechoslovakia ceded the area to the USSR and it gained the name Carpatho-Ukraine. The region became part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1945. When Ukraine became independent in 1991, the region became an administrative region under the name of Transcarpathia.
[5] First Czechoslovak Republic (1918-1938): The First Czechoslovak Republic was created after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy following World War I. The union of the Czech lands and Slovakia was officially proclaimed in Prague in 1918, and formally recognized by the Treaty of St. Germain in 1919. Ruthenia was added by the Treaty of Trianon in 1920. Czechoslovakia inherited the greater part of the industries of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the new government carried out an extensive land reform, as a result of which the living conditions of the peasantry increasingly improved. However, the constitution of 1920 set up a highly centralized state and failed to take into account the issue of national minorities, and thus internal political life was dominated by the struggle of national minorities (especially the Hungarians and the Germans) against Czech rule. In foreign policy Czechoslovakia kept close contacts with France and initiated the foundation of the Little Entente in 1921.

[6] Maccabi World Union: International Jewish sports organization whose origins go back to the end of the 19th century. A growing number of young Eastern European Jews involved in Zionism felt that one essential prerequisite of the establishment of a national home in Palestine was the improvement of the physical condition and training of ghetto youth. In order to achieve this, gymnastics clubs were founded in many Eastern and Central European countries, which later came to be called Maccabi. The movement soon spread to more countries in Europe and to Palestine. The World Maccabi Union was formed in 1921. In less than two decades its membership was estimated at 200,000 with branches located in most countries of Europe and in Palestine, Australia, South America, South Africa, etc.

[7] Hungarian era (1940-1944): The expression Hungarian era refers to the period between 30 August 1940 - 15 October 1944 in Transylvania. As a result of the Trianon peace treaties in 1920 the eastern part of Hungary (Maramures, Partium, Banat, Transylvania) was annexed to Romania. Two million inhabitants of Hungarian nationality came under Romanian rule. In the summer of 1940, under pressure from Berlin and Rome, the Romanian government agreed to return Northern Transylvania, where the majority of the Hungarians lived, to Hungary. The anti-Jewish laws introduced in 1938 and 1939 in Hungary were also applied in Northern Transylvania. Following the German occupation of Hungary on 19th March 1944, Jews from Northern Transylvania were deported to and killed in concentration camps along with Jews from all over Hungary except for Budapest. Northern Transylvania belonged to Hungary until the fall of 1944, when the Soviet troops entered and introduced a regime of military administration that sustained local autonomy. The military administration ended on 9th March 1945 when the Romanian administration was reintroduced in all the Western territories lost in 1940 - as a reward for the fact that Romania formed the first communist-led government in the region.

[8] Hungarian occupation of Yugoslavia: In April 1941 Yugoslavia was occupied by German, Hungarian, Italian, and Bulgarian troops. Hungary reoccupied some of the areas it had ceded to the newly formed Yugoslavia after World War I, namely Backa (Bacska), Baranja (Baranya), Medjumurje (Murakoz) and Prekmurje (Muravidek). The Hungarian armed forces massacred some 2,000 people, mostly Jews but also Serbs, in Novi Sad in January 1942. The Hungarians ordered the formation of forced labor battalions into which all Jewish and Serbian males aged 21-48 were drafted. Many of them were sent to the Ukranian front, others to Hungary and German-occupied Serbia (the infamous Bor copper mines). After the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944 the Jews of the area were deported to Auschwitz.

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

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

[9] Yellow star houses - Yellow star houses: The system of exclusively Jewish houses which acted as a form of hostage taking was introduced by the Hungarian authorities in June 1944 in Budapest. The authorities believed that if they concentrated all the Jews of Budapest in the ghetto, the Allies would not attack it, but if they placed such houses all over Budapest, especially near important public buildings it was a kind of guarantee. Jews were only allowed to leave such houses for two hours a day to buy supplies and such.

[10] Volksdeutscher (ethnic German): Early 18th century German colonists from southern German states (Baden-Wurthenberg, Bavaria) who settled, on the encouragement of the Habsburg emperor, in the sparsely populated parts of the Habsburg Empire – especially in southern Hungary. Thanks to their advanced agricultural technologies and and hard work they became some of the wealthiest peasants in Hungary. Most of them lived (and partly still live) in Tolna and Baranya counties in present-day Hungary, Baranja in Croatia, Voivodina in present-day Serbia and the Banat in Romania. After the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, following World War I, many of them came under Yugoslav and Romanian rule on the territories disannexed from Hungary on the basis of the Trianon Peace Treaty.

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

[13] Iron Curtain: A term popularized by Sir Winston Churchill in a speech in 1946. He used it to designate the Soviet Union’s consolidation of its grip over Eastern Europe. The phrase denoted the separation of East and West during the Cold War, which placed the totalitarian states of the Soviet bloc behind an ‘Iron Curtain’. The fall of the Iron Curtain corresponds to the period of perestroika in the former Soviet Union, the reunification of Germany, and the democratization of Eastern Europe beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

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

[16] Victory Day in Russia (9th May): National holiday to commemorate the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II and honor the Soviets who died in the war.

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

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

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

[21] Khrushchev, Nikita (1894-1971): Soviet communist leader. After Stalin’s death in 1953, he became first secretary of the Central Committee, in effect the head of the Communist Party of the USSR. In 1956, during the 20th Party Congress, Khrushchev took an unprecedented step and denounced Stalin and his methods. He was deposed as premier and party head in October 1964. In 1966 he was dropped from the Party's Central Committee.

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

[23] Enemy of the people: Soviet official term; euphemism used for real or assumed political opposition.

[24] 1956: It designates the Revolution, which started on 23rd October 1956 against Soviet rule and the communists in Hungary. It was started by student and worker demonstrations in Budapest started in which Stalin’s gigantic statue was destroyed. Moderate communist leader Imre Nagy was appointed as prime minister and he promised reform and democratization. The Soviet Union withdrew its troops which had been stationing in Hungary since the end of World War II, but they returned after Nagy’s announcement that Hungary would pull out of the Warsaw Pact to pursue a policy of neutrality. The Soviet army put an end to the rising on 4th November and mass repression and arrests started. About 200,000 Hungarians fled from the country. Nagy, and a number of his supporters were executed. Until 1989, the fall of the communist regime, the Revolution of 1956 was officially considered a counter-revolution.

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

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

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

Evadiy Rubalskiy

Evadiy Rubalskiy
Kiev
Ukraine
Date of interview: October 2004
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya

Evadiy Rubalskiy is a short man with a hobbling gait – the result of his wartime injuries. He has gray hair around the bald patch on his head, kind eyes and a low voice. Evadiy lives in a one bedroom apartment in a 1980s apartment building in Obolon, a new district in Kiev. Evadiy’s younger daughter, who lived in this apartment previously moved to Israel, and Evadiy is alone now. He divorced his wife a long time ago. Evadiy does his own cooking, cleaning and washing quite well. He has many books: they are mainly wartime memoirs, scientific works on the history of World War II and fiction books on the same subject. Evadiy never gets tired of discussing the subject of the war. He spends a lot of his time with Yakov Voloshyn, also a veteran of the war, who lives in the next-door apartment. They met at the Kiev Jewish Veterans Organization in the Jewish Cultural Center.

My father’s parents came from Pavoloch town [120 km from Kiev], Kiev province during the czarist time, which became Zhitomir region after the revolution of 1917 [Russian Revolution of 1917] [1]. Pavoloch was a Jewish town, one of many around Zhitomir. Jews were allowed residence within the Jewish Pale of Settlement [2] in czarist Russia, of which Zhitomir region was a part. The Jewish population in Zhitomir region reached 50% of the total population. Pavoloch was founded in 1603. The village was divided into two parts: Jews resided in its central part called the Pavoloch town. The total population was 10 thousand and Jews constituted about 5 thousand of the total number. [Editor’s note: Jews numbered 2,113 in 1847, and in 1897 the number rose to 3,391 (42% of the total population) in Pavoloch. During the Civil War the townlet declined and most of its inhabitants left. Jewish residents numbered 1,837 in this time.] There was also Ukrainian and Polish population in the town residing in the suburbs – this part of the town was called Kutok (‘corner’ in Ukrainian). The village stood on the small Rostianitsa River with a water mill on the curve of river making a kind of a quiet corner area. After the revolution there was a kolkhoz [3] and a Jewish kolkhoz [Jewish collective farms] [4] established in the town. The Jewish kolkhoz was called ‘Forois” (‘forward’ in Yiddish).

All residents got along well, made friends and visited each other. There were no national conflicts in Pavoloch in the late 19th - early 20th century. There was an old wooden Orthodox Christian church in the town. It was over 400 years old. There was also a Catholic church in the village and two synagogues in the Jewish town. The bigger synagogue was called the Pavolochskaya synagogue (‘Synagogue of Pavoloch’). After the revolution in 1920s the Soviet power started ruthless struggle against religion [5], but the synagogues in Pavoloch operated till the Great Patriotic War [6]. The smaller synagogue was ruined. The Pavolochskaya Synagogue houses a lore history museum nowadays. There was a Jewish general education school in Pavoloch before and after the revolution near the market in the center. There was also a cheder that had no official status after the revolution, when Jewish children had classes with a melamed at his home.

Jews were engaged in crafts in the town: there were tailors, barbers, shoemakers, tanners, blacksmiths, tinsmiths, etc. There was a fair in the central square of the town once a week where farmers from the Kutok brought their food products for sale. Also, there was a market where local villagers sold whatever their Jewish customers wanted to buy: they only sold living poultry that Jewish housewives took to the shochet working at the market. On Friday they sold fish for Sabbath. Milkmaids delivered dairy products to Jewish homes. The market was particularly colorful in summer: red apples, yellow pears, plums and berries. The families living in the central part of the town could only afford little gardens with 2-3 fruit trees and some flowers growing in them. There were mainly wooden plastered and whitewashed houses in the town. They were warm in winter and cool in summer. There were tin sheets or thatched roofs depending on the well-being of owners.

My paternal grandfather’s name was Iosif Rubalskiy, and my grandmother’s name was Feige Rubalskaya, nee Bloovestein. Non-Jews called her Fania. I think my grandparents were born some time in the late 1850s – early 1860s. Of their all relatives I only knew my grandfather’s sister Hana, whose family name was Leschiner, and her husband Samuel. They lived in Zlatoustovskaya Street in Kiev. Iosif was a tall handsome man with a big beard and right black eyes. My grandfather wore a hat to go out and a kippah at home. My grandmother was short, slender and had fine features. She must have been beautiful, when she was young. She had gray hair that she always covered with a dark kerchief. My grandmother wore long dark skirts and long-sleeved blouses like all other Jewish women in the town.

I am not sure about what my grandfather did for the living. I would think he owned a small store or a shop before the revolution. The Soviet regime must have expropriated his property. At least, I know that my grandfather spoke rather disapprovingly about the Soviet power. My grandmother was a housewife like all married Jewish women. My grandparents had seven children. Jewish families usually had as many children as God gave them. However, the infancy mortality rates were high. My father Moishe, born in 1888, was the oldest. As for his brothers and sister, I will just tell their sequential names. Three daughters were born one after another following my father: Sophia -- Sosl in Jewish, the oldest one, then came Shiva and Yeva – Hava in Jewish. Son Solomon was born in 1902, Anatoliy – Nafthole in Jewish, was born in 1904. Rachil, the youngest daughter, was born in 1909. They were all addressed by their names in the family while their non-Jewish neighbors used their Russified names. [Common name] [7]

Jews in Pavoloch were religious and observed Jewish traditions. On Sabbath and Jewish holidays they dressed up to go to the synagogue. Women wore their best outfits and silk shawls. My father’s parents celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays at home and raised their children to be Jews. Grandfather Iosif was a rather secular man. He read religious and fiction books, was interested in politics and subscribed to newspapers. He was well-respected in the town. Before the construction of railroad to Skvira [140 km from Kiev] my grandfather went to Kiev to convince the authorities to construct the railroad via Pavoloch and managed to make them accept his point of view. My grandfather was a very decent and fair man, the man of his word and duty.

I know very little about my father’s childhood. I know that he and the other children got some education. At least, my father could read in Hebrew and Yiddish and read and write in Russian. He was smart and talented. My grandfather sent him to learn the tanner’s vocation and my father managed it well.

My maternal grandfather Isroel Pogrebinskiy came from the district town of Skvira, while my grandmother Itta was born in Pavoloch. I don’t know their dates of birth or my grandmother’s maiden name. My grandfather Isroel was a shoemaker, and my grandmother was a housewife. I don’t think my mother’s parents were as wealthy as my father’s parents.

My maternal grandfather Isroel was more religious than my grandfather Iosif. He spent all his free time praying or reading religious books. He strictly followed all Jewish religious rules. The family observed Jewish traditions, followed kashrut, celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays. My grandfather attended the synagogue twice a day in the morning and in the evening.

There were five children in the Pogrebinskiy family. I’ve never seen my mother’s older brother or sister. Mama’s brother Moisey Pogrebinskiy moved to the USA in 1905 and settled down in Chicago. He was a tailor. Mama’s older sister also moved to the USA. Her family name was Reuzman, but I don’t remember her first name. Mama’s sister Riva lived in Pavoloch. My mother Tsylia Pogrebinskaya was born in 1890. The next child in the family was mama’s brother Ovsey. All children received Jewish education They could read and write in Yiddish. The boys attended cheder and the girls studied with visiting teachers [melamed] at home, or their parents and brothers educated them. They corresponded with their brother and sister in the USA in Yiddish.

I don’t know how my parents met. Usually young people married either those whom they knew in Pavoloch or the ones from the neighboring villages and towns. Mama told me that my grandfather Iosif was very unhappy about his son’s choice. He was better off than my grandfather Isroel and was against my parents’ misalliance. My grandfather went to visit his sister Hana in Kiev to allow his son some time to decide against this marriage, though grandmother Feige was on her son’s side. She said: if they love each other, let them get married, as long as this will make them happy. I think my grandfather finally gave his consent to his son’s marriage. When he got to know more of my mother, he came to loving her dearly. My parents got married in 1916. They had a traditional Jewish wedding: it couldn’t have been otherwise at the time. The marriage was registered at the synagogue book and the rabbi conducted the ceremony under the chuppah.

After the wedding my parents moved to the house my father had bought. It was a spacious wooden house with 3 rooms and a kitchen with a big Russian stove [8]. One room served as my parents’ bedroom, another room was mine and the 3rd room was a living room. Mama was a housewife. My father earned well.

During the revolution and the Civil War [9] there were Jewish pogroms [10] in Pavoloch. There were flocks [Gangs] [11] robbing Jewish houses and capturing and beating their Jewish victims, even killing some of them. Mama told me how she used to take shelter in a Ukrainian house holding me tight. Fortunately, none of our family suffered from pogroms.

After the revolution in 1917, when the Pale of Settlement was eliminated, my grandfather Iosif, my grandmother and their children moved to Kiev in 1918. My grandfather bought an apartment in a nice brick house in the center of the city, in 47, Artyoma Street. By the way, this street led to the Babi Yar [12], but I’ll talk about it later. My father’s brothers and sister got married in Kiev. They stayed to live in their parents’ apartment with their families installing partials to divide the rooms. My father’s sisters were housewives. Sophia and her husband Mikhail Gohvat had one son. Shiva, whose family name was Shkolnik, and her husband had two sons: the older son was born in the early 1920s, and Boris, the younger one, was born in 1925. Yeva’s husband was Iosif Solovey, a doctor. Their daughter’s name was Maria. Rachil, the youngest daughter, was married to David Lembert. Their daughter’s name was Emma. My father’s brothers Solomon and Anatoliy also had families, but I don’t remember their wives or children’s names.

My parents stayed in Pavoloch. My father worked and was well respected in the town. My father provided well for the family.

I was born in 1918 and was named Evadiy – it’s an old Jewish name. [Editor’s note: ‘Evadiy’ is used in Slav languages, not only in Jewish families, but it is not a very common given name in our days. Probably in Evadiy Rubalskiy’s homeland he knows only Jewish families using this name.] One of my deceased relatives must have had this name, and I was named after him according to Jewish customs, but I don’t know. All I know is that this relative was a scientist: my mother always told me to try to be like that man, whom I was named after. My sister Shiva was born in 1921.

I didn’t study Hebrew. My parents spoke Yiddish to one another at home and spoke Russian to me and my sister. I could speak and understand Yiddish. My sister only knew Russian and Ukrainian.

The family celebrated all Jewish holidays, but I think they did it as a tribute to traditions. They went to the synagogue on holidays and then celebrated at home according to the rules. When a holiday was over, they continued to live their routinely Soviet life.

We celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays at home. I was too young and cannot remember any details. On holidays my parents dressed up to go to the synagogue. Mama wore a kerchief at home and a fancy shawl to go to the synagogue. Jewish women of Pavoloch did not wear wigs, but they did cover their heads with kerchiefs. My sister and I stayed at home, when our parents went to the synagogue. When they returned home we started the celebration. I remember the festive atmosphere of the holiday at home. I enjoyed it and didn’t know that our life was to change dramatically in a short while.

April 1923 was dramatic for our family. In Pavoloch some gangsters brutally killed chairman of the executive committee called Ispolkom [13] – Varich, his wife, son and brother. The Soviet authorities sent an GPU [14] punitive unit to Pavoloch. The unit surrounded the town, gathered all people in the square and captured three hostages, who were wealthy and respected people in the town: Chernukha, an Ukrainian man, Leskowski, a Polish man, and my father. At first they captured another Jewish man, but then decided to replace him with my father. They said they were going to kill the wealthy bourgeois before anybody else. The hostages were accused of taking no action to prevent the murder of the Varich family. It didn’t even occur to them that the village was big and the hostages lived on the other end of it and did not know about the attack on the Varich family. There was no investigation or trial. The hostages were sentenced to death and executed. I remember that my father asked permission to say farewell to my mother and me. I remember how the crowd handed me from one another above their heads to where my father was. I understood there was something terrible going on, but I did not know what it was about. Then the hostages were executed. Few hours later an order to keep the hostages alive was received from Kharkov [before 1934 Kharkov was the capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, in 1934 the Government of the USSR decided to move the capital to Kiev. All governmental structures moved to Kiev as well], but it was too late. In 1990 all three hostages were rehabilitated. Their relatives were notified that they had been shot illegally. I don’t remember how my father looked or how he dressed. I don’t even remember his face. Mama had my father’s photo before the Great Patriotic War, but I did not find any after I returned from the front. All I remember about my father is the feeling of reliability and strength that I had, when my father was with us.

When my father was executed, I was 4 and my sister was 2 years old. My father was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Pavoloch. Mama decided to move to Kiev where my father’s parents lived. Mama bought an annex built over a shed in the yard in Franko Street in Kiev. Our family lived there before the war. There was a toilet and a pump in the yard and no other comforts. It got so cold inside in winter that the water in the bucket froze during the night.

It was hard to find a job at that time. There was a labor registry office for waiters and cooks near our house and numbers of people lining up before its front door. The office only provided jobs on a temporary basis: employers preferred hiring people for a week or a day rather than have them on a permanent basis.

Mama had no profession, but she had to provide for the two children. Grandfather Iosif gave her some food or money, but this was not enough. Mama got lucky: our neighbor’s son was director of a labor registry office and the woman must have asked him to help the widow with two children. He helped mama to get a job at the shoe factory. I remember that mama prayed at home every evening begging the Lord to help her keep her job. Mama was a reliable and industrious employee, but nevertheless she lived in constant fear of losing her job.

Mama didn’t go to the synagogue, when we lived in Kiev, but we celebrated Jewish holidays. Grandfather Iosif and grandmother invited us to celebrate holidays with them since we could not afford to celebrate at home. My grandparents loved me dearly since I was their first grandson. They also felt sorry for my sister and me since we’d lost our father. My grandfather loved my father and was proud of him, and his death became a tragedy for my grandfather.

On Jewish holidays my grandfather, his children, their husbands and wives and their children went to the synagogue. They returned home to have a festive lunch. My grandmother was a very good housewife and cooked delicious Jewish dishes. There was a dining room in their house where the family sat at a big table. I remember Pesach. There was a glass for Elijah ha-nevi in the center of the table, and all members of the family were to drink 4 glasses of wine during the seder. My grandfather conducted the seder according to the rules. Then the family recited a prayer and sang merry songs. On Chanukkah my grandfather gave my sister and me some delicacies. This is all I remember about holidays – my memory fails me – but we celebrated other holidays as well.

In 1928 I went to the first form of a Russian general education school. There were other Jewish children in my class. Our teachers or schoolmates had no prejudiced attitudes toward us. We had friends and nobody cared about the nationality. I don’t think there was any anti-Semitism before the war [the World War II], at least, I didn’t face any. I had Russian and Ukrainian friends and my mother never told me that I should have had only Jewish friends. I studied well. I became a young Octobrist [15], and a pioneer [16] at school. Then our class was transferred to the Ukrainian school near our house. I don’t know what this transfer was caused by, I was young and could not be possibly bothered about such things. The only difference between such schools was the language of teaching. I had no problems with the Ukrainian language. In the 7th form I joined Komsomol [17]. After finishing the 7th form in 1934 I had to go to work to help mama. I knew how hard it was for her to support the whole family.

In 1932 horrible famine [18] began in Ukraine. It also continued the following year of 1933. This was a terrible period of time. People were starved, many villages lost all residents to the famine. The situation was not so hopeless in Kiev. Crowds of desperate hunger-swollen people rushed to Kiev. They were happy to get any job to earn for food. I remember a street artist selling his pictures in the street not far from our house. He painted on asphalt and passers-by dropped coins to him. I also remember a beggar who sang nicely. There were numbers of homeless children, dirty and shabby – they must have also come from villages. They spread typhus in the town. There was a big house in Bolshaya Zhitomirskaya Street in Kiev – its tenants were doctors and the house was called the ‘doctors’ house’. There was central heating in this house and homeless children stayed in the basement of this house. They had lice and entertained themselves pushing lice inside apartments through keyholes. This house became the source of typhus which promptly spread all over the town.

My grandfather went to work in the store where bread was distributed by cards. He supported us well. Sometimes I came to his work. My grandfather pretended he was tearing off my bread coupon [Card system] [19] giving me some bread in return. I rushed home to share it with mama and my sister. There was also a Torgsin store [20] where food products or clothes were sold for foreign currency. I remember mama taking our silver cutlery to the store. She and I brought home a bag of millet that she received in exchange for the silver. We boiled the cereal and it lasted for quite a while. I don’t remember for sure, but maybe my mother’s brother and sister sent mama some money from the USA. At least, however negative the Soviet authorities were about people having relatives abroad or corresponding with them [Keep in touch with relatives abroad] [21], mama never terminated correspondence. Of course, she was taking a risk, but even during the terrible prewar period of arrests [Great Terror] [22] she managed all right.

Our neighbor was a plumber and a superintendent and he taught me what he knew about the job. My first job was at a construction site. I learned fast and soon I could work independently. I was even appointed a crew leader soon.

During the period of Stalin’s persecutions in 1936 and afterward I was old enough to remember the details. There was a big brick apartment building to which the shed we lived in belonged. There were many arrests going on. Deputy director of the Opera Theater Linetskiy, who lived in this house was arrested. However, he was released a short time afterward. They must have failed to find evidence against him. Baranov, another neighbor, who worked as assistant to the minister, was also arrested and I never heard about him again. Baranov was a very decent man. Despite his high position he never wanted an office car to pick him up at home. He went to work by trolley-bus. I knew him since I was a child and could never believe that he was an enemy of the people [23]. Many tenants of this house were arrested. Almost every morning we heard that another of our neighbors was arrested. There were many high military and governmental officials living in our street and there seemed to be no end to arrests. Some people committed suicide to avoid arrest. Many members of parliament were executed. They were honest people devoted to the Soviet power. They were rehabilitated later, after the Twentieth Party Congress [24], but for the majority of them this happened posthumously. However, one didn’t necessarily have to be a high military or governmental official to be sent to the GULAG [25]. Some people wrote reports on their neighbors or acquaintances [many common people in the USSR sincerely tried to support the authorities involved in this unprecedented campaign related to struggle against the domestic ‘enemies’, they wanted to contribute into it by identifying and detaining such ‘enemies of the people’, and unconditionally believed in honesty, justice and infallibility of this regime]. A routinely row might have resulted in an arrest. Anybody could be called ‘enemy of the people’ and arrested on false charges. My papa sister Shiva Shkolnik’s husband was arrested. His family could hardly make ends meet, but he was arrested and his arresters demanded that he gave them his money and gold. Of course, he never had any, but they took him to interrogations where they beat him mercilessly. He was released some time later, but not all of those who were arrested were as lucky as him. There were on-going meetings and people demanded to execute all enemies of people calling them traitors. Perhaps many people believed this was true: we were raised to have blind faith in the party and Stalin.

In 1935 my father’s mother Feige died. She was buried in the Kiev town cemetery. That same year my grandfather Isroel fell severely ill. He was taken to a hospital in Kiev. I remember that he had an incurable disease. My grandfather died in 1936 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Kiev. My grandmother lived in Pavoloch with her unmarried daughter Riva. My mother convinced my grandmother and sister Riva to move to Kiev after my grandfather died. I don’t know how my mother managed, but she bought them an apartment on the ground floor in a house not far from where we lived. My mother’s younger brother Ovsey also moved to Kiev.

There was no state anti-Semitism before the war. Demonstrations of everyday anti-Semitism were punishable. There was an article in the Criminal Code under which abuse of the national dignity was subject to prosecution.

On 13th November 1939 I was recruited to the army and sent to study in Kalinin, Donetsk region [about 500 km from Kiev], in reserve artillery regiment 19. We took a military oath and then batteries of our regiment were sent to join the armed forces in the Finnish front [Soviet-Finnish War] [26]. In late February 1940 I was sent to Vladimir (Ukraine) with a small group of other military. In Vladimir the commandment was forming a light artillery regiment to be sent to the Finnish front. In March 1940 we moved to the front. On our way we heard about execution of a peaceful agreement between the Soviet Union and Finland [12 March 1940]. We arrived at the Karelian Isthmus near Leningrad where our regiment joined the 24th rifle division. We were reequipped and became howitzer-artillery regiment 246. This division, one of the oldest in the Soviet army, was formed from partisan units in summer 1918. It was awarded the Order of the Combat Red Banner [27] and named ‘Iron’ for the seizure of Simbirsk during the Civil War.

We were sent to Leningrad. In April 1940 the division was preparing for the 1st May parade in Leningrad. We rehearsed at nights and during the day we could walk and tour the city. It was an interesting time. Leningrad is history itself.

We knew that fascism was booming in Germany and that Hitler’s armies attacked Poland in 1939, but it never occurred to us that Hitler or anybody else could attack the USSR. We had been told that we were the strongest in the world and that our victorious army could only defeat enemies on their own terrains. We never had a bit of doubt about it. After the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact [28] was executed nobody even thought that there was such a possibility of an attack on the USSR.

After the parade our division moved to the border with Estonia near Pskov where we had advanced training. We were told that despite a peaceful agreement between the USSR and Estonia was breaching it. One day at dawn we crossed the border to Estonia [Occupation of the Baltic Republics] [29]. We were marching across historically Estonian lands, but there were no conflicts with the locals. Vice versa, they helped us as much as they could. Estonia was very different from the USSR: there were nice roads, well-maintained villages and towns, plenty of food products and goods in stores. We stayed there 2 months before we moved to Western Belarus. There was evident tension on the border with Belarus. Our border guards captured German diversionary/survey groups, German planes broke trough the border every day. Since I was a construction man, I was ordered to the construction of the Grodno fortifications. [near the present Poland – Belarus border, 370 km from Kiev] There was a group of 90 men who had construction qualifications formed. We arrived at a town, the name of which I don’t remember, located in 30 km south-west of Grodno. There were few armies working on the site. Two artillery/automatic gun battalions (9 & 10) made a permanent garrison of fortification site 68. Border unit 89 served to provide guard of the border. The fortifications were to be particularly strong and long-lasting, but there was a long time before they could be finished. There were 275 fortifications to be constructed, but only 85 of them were partially completed. If we had finished the construction it might have not allowed Germans to come to the territory of Belarus so easily.

At night of 20 - 21 June 1941 the situation around us raised much concern. At night on 22 June few additional guards, including me, were appointed. My duty was off at 2 o’clock in the morning and having transferred the post to another guard I went to bed. At 4 o’clock in the morning we were awaken by powerful artillery bombardment. Shells were flying into the rear over our heads. We were close to the near-border stripe line: one and a half hours later German units broke through the border guard covering forces and came close to where we were. One of commanding officers ordered us to retreat while he stayed keeping firing at Germans to help us leave. He must have perished. We were armed with rifles and didn’t have bullet stocks. We could not retreat running back: there was mass barrage of fire. I didn’t even notice that I was wounded in my arm at once. Fortunately, I had good ‘rush-run’ and crawl techniques. I got to a forest where nurses gave me first aid. Germans were very close and we could hear their shouting. Slightly wounded military were told to walk to a hospital in Grodno. When we got to Grodno, a bombing began. We continued on our way in the evening, but this time we headed to Lida, but we could not stay there either since Germans were moving fast and we had to move on to Orsha. Finally I got some medical care in a hospital in Dubrovka village near Orsha. When I was released from hospital a month later, I was allowed one-month leave and was told to go home. I went to Kiev. My dear ones were still there and were happy to see me. They knew I served at the Belarussian border and didn’t even hope to see me alive. I stayed at home until 5 August. My arm still hurt, but I went to the medical commission from where they sent me to a gathering point. From there I was sent to 722 rifle regiment of 205 rifle division. Germans were approaching Kiev and our division was fighting on the avenue of approach to Kiev. I was appointed a communications operator in a company. On 7 August 1941 our division and landing troops passed to the offensive and recaptured Zhulyany, a suburb of Kiev [today it’s a district in Kiev], the Zhulyany airport. This was our first success since we had only retreated before. We often had hand-to-hand fights and there were dead bodies all around. We fought for each street and each house. There were selected German divisions opposing us and they received additional forces of aviation, artillery and flame throwers. We held out till 18 September, when we were ordered to retreat. [Kiev was occupied 19 September 1941.] We marched along the streets and there were patrols on the sides. We must have marched along a passage in the mine minefield. Civilians were also leaving the town. Our division was the last one to take leave covering the retreat of other units. We crossed the bridge over the Dnieper and field engineers blasted it behind us. We reached Borispol, the first town east of Kiev, when we found out we were encircled by Germans. We had to fight trough the encirclement. We managed to break trough the encirclement in Borispol all right, but it was to become harder for us.

The battle near Ivankovo lasted all day through. Sailors of the Dnieper fleet and Kiev militia were fighting with us. We fought furiously knowing that we had to get out of the encirclement. In the evening we managed to get through the encirclement. We had few wagons and trucks. Severely wounded patients rode on them and those who had slight wounds had to walk. I was slightly wounded in my neck. On our way we beat down German covering forces. Our crossing a swamp was extremely hard. Any of my fellow comrades perished in bogs. There was roar of battles around us. A tank commissar took the responsibility for our crossing. We used anything we had at hand to keep us on the water: barrels, truck sides, logs, etc. to make a makeshift bridge across the swamp. We crossed the swamp and a river and reached the town of Berezan [about 40 km from Kiev]. There were no more divisions or regiments and we gathered into units. Berezan was on fire. The Germans thought they had captured Berezan and moved on leaving just a garrison to guard the town. We had an impetuous battle and liberated the Soviet prisoners-of-war. Near the railway station we managed to seize a German mortar and mines and we started shooting moving to the east. There was no unbroken front line at the time. To break through the encirclement we had to split into smaller groups. A pilot major took command over our group of 60 people. We had one objective and that was to join our major forces. On our way we crushed the defense lines of the enemy and destroyed their communications lines. At one time we acted jointly with partisans. Locals supported us greatly informing us on where the German troops were staying, giving us food and lodging. A local guide helped us to cross the front line on 14 October 1941 west of Trostyanets, Sumska region. We came to the area occupied by the 1st rifle guard division of the 21st army. We covered about 500 km in the rear of the enemy. This was just a beginning. There were many battles ahead of us. I told you so many details about these initial battles since these were our first lessons of war. However, they had a significant historic and strategic meaning for the further course of the war. The Hitler’s commandment was convinced that the German army would defeat the Soviet army with the first strike, seizes crossings over the Dnieper and would have no obstacles on the way to the mainland of the country. However, the defense of Kiev lasted 73 days. The German commandment of the ‘South’ group incurred great losses near Kiev. Their losses constituted about 100 thousand people. The myth of the ‘blitzkrieg’ [German for ‘lightning war’, was the original strategy of the German army during World War II], an instantaneous war, was dissipated. The Germans were to delay their attack on Moscow for over a month and this was a big advantage for preparations to the defense of Moscow. The fascist commandment had to remove their best forces (2 armies and 25 divisions) from the Moscow strategic direction. In Kiev the Territorial army [People’s volunteer corps during World War II; its soldiers patrolled towns, dug trenches and kept an eye on buildings during night bombing raids. Students often volunteered for these fighting battalions] was formed. The defense of Kiev made a big contribution into the future victory over the enemy. The defenders of Kiev fulfilled their duty. There is nothing to blame them for. 62 thousand people were awarded medals ‘For defense of Kiev’.

After crossing the front line a bigger part of our group, including me, was sent to reserve regiment 21 in Zolochev, Kharkov region. About a month later we were sent to the 1st Guard rifle division. When we arrived to the point of destination the 1st Guard rifle division left the area to the Kaluga rifle division. I was assigned to the 323rd rifle regiment. I was given a communications squad into my command. We were to ensure communications in the 76-mm regiment batteries. On the severe winter of 1941-42 we had hard battles in Kursk and Kharkov regions. Our main task was to cut the Kursk-Kharkov highway. In late February 1942 our 81st rifle division was assigned to the 38th army where a mass of maneuver was formed to break through the line of the enemy’s defense near Kharkov. The 81st rifle division had battles for 2.5 months without intervals. Our soldiers and officers fought to the end and went into attacks. The division was successful, but there were significant casualties. By summer 1942 the casualties in our division constituted 60% for privates and over 70% for officers. In May 1942 the Kharkov advance began. It ended unsuccessfully for our armies. [28 May 1942] During the wearisome battles the 81st was assigned to the 9th army. The enemy accumulated significant forces in the area of the 9th army and blew a strike from the sky. Germans intended to advance to the far rear of the South-Western Front and the 57th army of the Southern Front. We marched to the vicinity of Balakleya. This was an exhausting march and we wore ourselves out. The army trucks delivered us to the battlefield. We were to make passages for the encircled Soviet forces in the vicinity of Balakleya. Then we were ordered to retreat in the direction of Northern Caucasus across Voroshylovgrad, Rostov, Stalingrad regions.

We were ordered to avoid battles. We were to cross a highway or a railroad track (I cannot remember which one) near Morozovskaya village. When we approached Morozovskaya, there were Germans already. We had to walk along the front line to another settlement, 25 km from Morozovskaya – 25 km of walking in the heat, when our road was barred by a powerful tank wedge of the army of General Kleist. It divided the division into two parts. We only had rifles. The two parts of the division had to act on their own. The situation was very hard. Our division Commissar Kuzmin (he perished in Stalingrad) ordered us to change the direction and retreat with the 57th army. We were moving to Stalingrad in separate groups or alone. Those were anguished days. In Millerovo town we notified the military commandant that we were heading to Stalingrad. In Stalingrad we headed to the gathering point at the elevator. We slept the night on the ground. In the morning we told our story and were ordered to move to Frolovo station to join the 38th army. Of course, we had to follow the order, but we also wanted to find the gathering point of the 81st rifle division, which we got very used to. We had friends there and friends at the front are like family. We found out that the gathering point of the 81st rifle division at Sadovaya station in pioneer camps not far from Stalingrad. There were just 47 survivors in our 323rd rifle division, but only three of us reached Stalingrad: Poretskiy, battery commander, senior lieutenant (he died in 1975, lived in Saratov), first sergeant of the battery from Donbass (I’ve forgotten his name), and I. General Tolbukhin [30], the 57th army commander, ordered the remaining part of the 81st rifle division to merge with the 244th rifle division, and we were assigned to it. Our 102nd communications battalion was given the number 666th as a separate communications battalion of the 244th rifle division. The 666th special battalion that I was so attached to fought till the end of the war within the structure of this division, and the battalion finished the war in Bulgaria. Unfortunately, I was not with them there. I was wounded and then assigned to a different army in 1942.
We fought in the south of Stalingrad, in Krasnoarmeysk, Volgograd region. This area had a strategic significance for the operative area of Stalingrad. The area was elevated and made an excellent observation point. Our battery was defending the town. Soon Stalingrad became a battlefield. [31] Our division was assigned to the 62nd army and we fought in the town with this army. I was a gun layer for a 76-mm front mortar in the first rows of rifle units and fired by direct laying. Our division was one of the first units to arrange transportation of the wounded to the opposite bank of the Volga on the rafts made by field engineers. We also hauled food and ammunition there. In the middle of September we were cut off the rear supplies of our regiment. My commanding officer ordered me to find a passage, when it got dark, to move our 3 mortars and the wounded from out of the barrage of the enemy. 2 other fellow comrades were to assist me. We fulfilled the task and came to the army 62 commandment point near the harbor. The battle was going on. Our cannons were camouflaged by the wall of a high ruined building. Few people were at the cannon and the others stayed in the nearby one-storied building. All of a sudden German planes attacked us. We had to go back to our unit and deliver a sealed letter containing an order and some food to the regiment commander. However, there was no way for us to fulfill this task. Germans cut off our passage, and there were already units of the 10th NKVD [32] divisions in defense on this site. They did not allow us to go through the passage to where our units were since our units might confuse us for the ones who wished to surrender and shoot us. Division 244 finished its combat actions in Stalingrad on 20 September 1942. Of over 4 thousand people at the beginning of combat operations it had 288 people left at the end, including maintenance and logistics people. The division came to the eastern bank of the Volga to re-staff. Other divisions were crossing the Volga to replace the ones that had left. Field engineers prepared rafts for the crossing. Fascists were trying to beak through to the crossing area. The bank was in ruins after bombardments. There were broken railroad carriages all around. When I was getting on a raft, I was wounded in my legs and my right shoulder by a grenade. I crawled back to the nearby brick storage facility of the railroad station. There were other wounded inside waiting for evacuation. There was no medical aid available. We lay on the floor for the rest of the night and the following day: the Germans were firing on the bank continuously. In the evening a ferry arrived to pick the wounded. I realized that I would have to wait long till it was my turn to be taken to the ferry, if ever, and I decided to crawl closer to the ferry, when I bumped into our political officer Viziakin and the first sergeant from Donbass, the ones that we came to as far as Stalingrad together. They helped me to get to the ferry, we crossed the Volga and from there I was taken to the medical unit of the 13th Guard division where I got the first medical aid. From there I was taken to the hospital in Leninskiy settlement. This hospital was evacuated to the hospital near the Elton Lake. This hospital was deployed in some wooden barracks and medical tents near the station buildings. This location was not a good idea for a hospital: railroad stations were priority targets for the German Air Forces. German planes bombed the hospital and there were new casualties. I was taken to the hospital in Engels town near Saratov. I took a passenger train to Saratov. The railroad station units sent me to hospital #3631 in the school building near the ‘Combine’ plant. I had to walk to the hospital from the railway station suffering from terrible pain in my wounded legs. I was kept in this hospital till 31 October 1942. When I was released, I was assigned to the battalion for recovering military in Saratov. From there I went to a military camp in 40 km from Saratov where marching companies were formed to be sent to the front. I was assigned to Guard artillery battalion 122 of the 51st Guard rifle division (former artillery regiment 817 of the 76th mountainous rifle division of the 21st army that was later renamed to the 6th guard army). This division was one of the oldest national formations of the Red army formed at the initiative of Lenin [33] in December 1920. During the Great Patriotic War 32 military of the division were awarded the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union [34] 13 people were awarded the full set of the Order of Victory [35] . A street in Stalingrad was named after this division. After the Stalingrad battle our division relocated to the vicinity of Yelets town in early March 1943.

We were preparing for the attack on Oryol town. By this time the situation in the central part of the Soviet-German front line was unfavorable for our forces. The enemy reinvaded Kharkov on 16 March 1943 and was advancing to Belgorod and Kursk. This advance resulted in a 30-35 km breach at the junction between the Voronezh and South-Western fronts where German armies flew in intending to join the Oryol grouping in Kursk. Due to this severe situation our army was ordered to relocate from the Central front to strengthen the Voronezh front. We had to keep the important Belgorod direction and get prepared to strike powerful counterblows, shield Kursk and support deployment of the 1st tank army. We moved in the direction of Kursk. We were to cover 150 km. The weather was nasty: there were frost and snowstorms. We had to march at night and take a rest during the daytime. Besides, we had to move in minor groups hiding from the German air and land intelligence. It was a rare luck for us to find an earth hut or a house to take a day’s rest.

Our battery occupied the firing positions shielding the Moscow-Simferopol [Crimea] highway. Few days later two batteries of our regiment, including the 9th battery that I was assigned to, were transferred into the operative command of the 52nd Guard division to reinforce its defense. We were engaged in the construction and improvement of fortifications until 5 July 1943 [German counter-offensive called Operation Zitadelle started 5 July 1943 in the region of Kursk], and also, surveyed the defense facilities of the enemy. It was important to establish interface between our units, particularly, to set up the anti-tank defense. The units received additional forces, weapons, equipment and training. I was a communications operator and was to support reliable communications between the firing positions and the command post at the distance of over 3 km between them. About half of this area was a field and the rest was a forest. We ploughed a trench in the field and installed the cable in it. In the forest we hung a barbed wire that is stronger than the cable on the trees. We never had sufficient cable and saved it to provide communications during attack operations. When we were in defense and had more time at our disposal, we replaced cable with barbed wire. We established an interim telephone unit on the border of the forest in order to reduce time for fixing the communication lines in case of damage. We had to support reliable communication during the action. The fascist commandment accumulated strong forces to break through our defense line. They particularly focused on tank and air force units. On 5 July 1943 the Kursk battle [36] started. The German fascist units went in attacks and fire and death flooded our trenches. About 700 tanks headed to the combat positions of our army: they were heavy ‘Tiger’ tanks and ‘Ferdinand’ mobile units. Hundreds of enemy’s planes stroke their deadly blows on our land forces. The artillery roared non-stop. The forces of the 6th Guard army conducted continuous blood shedding battles trying to restrain the tank onslaught of the enemy. The Hitler’s commandment was convinced about a prompt breakage of the defense of the Soviet forces, but the enemy was out of counting. Our artillery stroke accurate and powerful blows and the enemy incurred heavy losses of tanks and staff. Between 5 and 25 August our 122nd Guard artillery regiment eliminated 111 tanks, including a significant number of Tigers and Ferdinand units, other plant and forces of the enemy, in the Kursk-Oryol battle.

I joined the Communist Party before the battle. I had become a candidate to the party in Stalingrad. I was eager to become a member of the party and sincerely believed in its ideas. I was unaware of many things then…

We were advancing in the direction of Poltava, outflanking Kharkov from the west. We liberated strategically important settlements in Belgorod region and a number of settlements of Sumsky region. We were advancing in the direction of Poltava (stopped in about 16-20 km from the town). Our survey units discovered a minor German garrison in Poltava and reported this to General Vatutin [37] , Commander of the Voronezh front. He ordered to prepare an operation to liberate Poltava on 23-24 September. When everything was ready, General Vatutin ordered to transfer our area to the 5th Guard army and retreat to restaff after severe battles people needed a rest and we had to replace the equipment and start preparations for the liberation of Kiev. This was the middle of August. We appreciated the opportunity to take a rest: we had been at the front line all this time and were exhausted, but this was not to happen. Our army was assigned to the reserve of the Staff Headquarters and a month later we relocated to the vicinity of Toropets, Velikiye Luki of Kalinin region [Russia]. We had to knock the German troops out of Severnyy Val, a strongly reinforced line of defense 250 km wide with reinforced field fortifications, a number of pillboxes, wire entanglements and mine fields. We were assigned to the 2nd Baltic Front. There are many forests and lakes and swamps in the vicinity of Severnyy Val, and tanks could not go through this area. His was a job of rifle and artillery units. The woods and lack of roads made it hard for the artillery to maneuver, and nasty weather delayed the air forces from supporting the advance. We had to conduct combat operations in the conditions of total absence of roads in the vicinity of Nevel -Velikiye Luki. Trucks could not move through this area and soldiers had to deliver shells to combat positions located at quite a distance on the shoulders. German troops deployed in this area had an extensive experience of conducting combat operations in wood-lake-swamp locations. Dozens of lakes between hills and swamps in the woods made the main obstacle for us. On the night of 1 January 1944, when the lakes were covered with strong ice, we undertook a sudden attack on German troops. Almost all winter of 1944 we were advancing to the north despite the lack of roads, surmounting half-frozen swamps, forest blockages, smashing the enemy’s support posts. We belonged to the 2nd Baltic Front. The German troops were taking every effort to stop our advance. Before spring we liberated the Nevel railroad junction, the highway to Velikiye Luki, and approached Novosokolniki. For participation in severe battles and provision of continuous communications, replacement of damaged wires under severe artillery and machine gun fire in the north-west area near Nevel town, in the 15-20 km wide corridor, called the ‘Nevel’ bottle’, ‘Throat’, continuously fired at by the enemy, I was given an award. At this time the Order of Victory was established. I was the first one in the 51st guard rifle division (and probably the first one in other units) to be awarded this Order. Besides, I was to be granted a 10-day leave. The 21 November 1943 issue of our division newspaper published an article about me entitled ‘Rubalskiy, the Hero communications operator’. However, Kaladze, Commanding officer of the 51st guard rifle division, declared that I could not be awarded the Order of Victory since the division did not have an overall success in breaking through the defense line of the enemy, and besides, he had not even seen this Order yet. I was awarded the Order of the Great Patriotic War [38] of Grade I.

In spring the situation grew quieter. By the end of May 1944, having left our location to another army, we completed a 50km march to the forest areas north-east of Vitebsk, and were assigned to the 1st Baltic Front. We were preparing for attacking the enemy in Belarus. It was important since Belarus allowed access to the Baltic Republics, Eastern Prussia and Poland. Belarus was invaded by German troops of the famous ‘Center’ army, consisting of about 65 divisions, 95 thousand cannons and mortars, 900 tanks. [Rear Section of the “Center” Army Group included the Vitebsk and Mogilev regions, the major part of the Gomel Region, the eastern districts of the Minsk Region and some districts of the Polesye Region. As it was the central zone of the Soviet-German front, it was essential to act efficiently for the Soviet troops.] German troops were engaged in the construction of this defense line for 3 years and we were to destroy it in the shortest possible time. By summer 1944 everything was ready for the attack. We were to cross the Zapadnaya Dvina [Also called Daugava, the main river in Latvia, starts in Belarus and reaches the Baltic Sea near Riga.], smash German troops in the vicinity of Vitebsk and advance to Polotsk. Our 51st Guard rifle division was to break through the defense line in the area of the Sirotin resistance joint. One regiment of our division outflanked the Sirotin joint across a swamp and stroke a blow from the enemy rear. The German garrison was smashed: they could not imagine one would be so daring as to cross the impassable swamps. This was a successful maneuver and it made the way to the success of other units of the 6th Guard army. Following the German troops we approached the Zapadnaya Dvina. We started cutting wood to make rafts. Some time later our pontoon units caught up with us and started working on installation of pontoon crossings. So we crossed the Zapadnaya Dvina by joint efforts. After breaking the defense line and crossing the Zapadnaya Dvina advanced to Polotsk that was a gate to the Baltic area. We liberated Polotsk and pursued the retreating fascists across Lithuania and Latvia. The enemy was retreating, but it resisted. In August-early September 1944 the forces of our front approached the Riga Bay intending to cut the Baltic grouping of the ‘Nord’ army off the Eastern Prussia. [Editor’s note: the 1st Baltic Front got to Riga Bay 31 July and Soviet troops already reached the Eastern Prussia border 17 August 1944.] There was a fatal threat hanging over the selected fascist units. Realizing this, the German commandment threw 7 tank divisions to the defense line. They stroke a severe blow in the direction of Yltava supported by infantry divisions. This blow was stricken on the 51st army, and there was a strong threat of breakage of the defense line on the most vulnerable site of the front line. Our army made a 149 km march within the shortest possible time to close the gap on the approach to Yltava. We managed to stop the advance of German troops. The Germans installed many mines in this area and we incurred significant losses. In October 1944 the offensive in the Memel direction started. We were to come to the Baltic Sea and cut the fascists off the astern Prussia. We covered 100 km in two days and came as far as north-west of Siauliai [Lithuania]. There was a combat survey to be conducted. We were to capture retain support posts of the enemy and bring in a prisoner for interrogation. I was to install reliable wire communication. Our army managed to advance 6 km breaking the first defense line of the enemy. The breakage was competently done by young recruits, our guys, of the 1926 year of birth.

We hardly had any time to consolidate our grip, when at dawn Germans threw their 5th tank division on us. This was my last battle. I was severely wounded, a bullet hit me in my elbow joint and went through. I was taken to the evacuation hospital and from there I was sent to a hospital far away in the rear in Kirov region. My military units sent a request for me, but my doctor said that the war was over for me. He released me from the hospital with the prescription ‘fit for non-effective service’. In the middle March 1945 I was at the front again and participated in the liberation of Konigsberg [39]. These were the last battles, but they were severe. Germans had built reinforced fortifications in the woods; it was a whole underground town. Later we all went to take a look at these masterly fortifications and admired them. At that time we had learned our lessons and captured the Konigsberg fortress on 16 April 1945. We were advancing across the territory of Germany. On 9 May 1945 we heard about the complete and unconditional capitulation of Germany. This was the end of the war. I spent all these years at the front line, in continuous battle operations. I only took rest, if I can call it so, in hospitals. My combat awards are my proof that I had made my contribution into our victory over the enemy: an Order of the Great Patriotic War of Grade I, an Order of Victory, two Orders of the Red Star [40], order For Courage, medal for Valor, medals for defense of Kiev, for defense of Stalingrad, for seizure of Konigsberg, for seizure and defense of a number of towns. My awards are the best proof that there was no anti-Semitism during the war. We did not segregate between nationalities. All that mattered was what kind of person was beside you. It often happened at the front line that your life depended on how your comrade acted.

There were SMERSH officers of NKVD units in all regiments during the war [SMERSH is the abbreviation of ‘Smert Shpionam’ ("Death to Spies" in Russian), special secret military unit for elimination of spies. SMERSH is actually the Ninth Division of the KGB, originally created into five separate sections. The first section works inside the Red Army]. Their function was to capture spies, as one can see from the name, but they actually monitored the army and each individual. It was the same at peaceful times, when NKVD kept the life of each individual under control. I witnessed four executions in our regiment: a first sergeant, a lieutenant and two privates. They remained behind the regiment during a march and were convicted of desertion, though I’m sure that there was no such intention. They must have been just worn out, but they were shot after the SMERSH officer issued his verdict. Later the commandment set an order to grant them life, but the SMERSH officer replied that they had been executed: and that was that. When we set feet in other countries, the SMERSH officers got engaged in dealing with our prisoners-of-war. We never blamed those who had been captured be the enemy: we knew how it could happen. Often people were captured when they were lying wounded in the fields: and who was to blame that our nurses had failed to take them to hospitals? Anything could happen. However, those prisoners, who had had their portion of hardships in fascist camps were convicted of having surrendered and were sent to the GULAG in Siberia.

We had ambiguous attitude toward Germans. We did not kill those who surrender, but did not blame those who would. As for the peaceful population, we were sorry for them: they had suffered a lot. We even provided them food at special points.

We stayed in Prussia. [Eastern Prussia had been a Part of Germany up to the end of World War II, when it was divided between the USSR and Poland.] The Soviet government ordered to disassemble equipment at plants and send it to the USSR. This area was to be annexed to Poland. The polish commandant protested against removal of the equipment claiming that it was to be left in Poland, but our Soviet commandant replied very politely that he had no such order. Germans had been removing everything from the USSR and now it was our turn to take away everything they had. And that was it. He also put pressure on us to expedite the removal. He wanted us to have all equipment removed as soon as possible. Since I had a construction specialty I had to stay and work on equipment disassembly. There were two leather tanning factories, a tank repair plant and another plant that had produced tin boxes before the war and had been converted to manufacture shell cases during the war. They had good equipment and high technologies. I was glad to see an electric wench manufactured in Kharkov at one plant. It meant we could manufacture good equipment as well. Germans had removed it to Germany and now we were taking it back. German equipment units were very good. We disassembled them and loaded them into trains. We did not take any trophies. We were forbidden to take anything from German houses. Specialists from the USSR arrived to work on the production structure, develop drafts of production lines to assemble equipment in place. Here were 5 of them and they were awarded the ranks of majors for Germans to think they were our military. Those specialists were to supervise the disassembly and equipment loading. Actually, only 1 or 2 of them did this job, and the others made the rounds of abandoned German houses looking for trophies. We found it wild: we never took any trophies. I did not bring anything home. The only thing we took – and that was for the regiment – was German vehicles. When retreating, the German troops drowned in the sea or left on the seashore about 300 vehicles: Opel and Mercedes cars, manufactured in 1945, they were brand new vehicles and they served us well.

I worked on disassembly of plants for one year. Our officers told me to stay in the army, but I was tired of this army life and was eager to go home, but nobody waited for me there: my family had perished. Since August 1941 I had no information about my family. I was trying to find out their whereabouts through the evacuation quest agency in Buguruslan. Despite the general mess, this organization worked accurately recording those who were in evacuation, but they replied they had none of my family on their records. This happened, when people evacuated on their own and left no information with official offices. I was hoping they had survived. When Kiev was liberated [6 November 1943] I wrote to our address until I finally received a reply from our neighbors. They informed me that my mama, sister and grandmother decided against evacuation. My grandfather remembered Germans from the time of World War I and believed they might persecute communists, but not Jews. They stayed and followed the commandant’s order to walk to Babi Yar on 29 September 1941. Besides my grandfather, mama and my sister Shiva, who finished the 1st course of the Food Industry College in June 1941, my maternal grandmother Itta Pogrebinskaya, mama’s sister Riva Pogrebinskaya, grandfather Iosif’s sister Hana Leschiner and her husband perished in Babi Yar. In Pavoloch fascists executed all Jews in the number of 2500 people. There is a common grave where those people whose only guilt was that they had been born Jews were buried. There were only 3 survivor girls, the rest of them were shot. There were no Jews left in Pavoloch except the Ruzhinskiye husband and wife. They’ve passed away. There is only a Jewish cemetery and the mass shooting site in the village. There are no living Jews left there.

I returned home in 1946. My relatives’ families were also affected by the war. My father’s brother Solomon Rubalskiy perished at the front in 1942. My father sister Sophia Gohvat’s son disappeared at the front in 1944 and her husband Moisey Gohvat died in evacuation in Siberia in 1943. Mama’s younger brother Ovsey Pogrebinskiy participated in battles during the defense of Kiev. In September 1941 his unit was encircled. Ovsey was going across the woods looking for partisans. In a village he was captured by policemen. They gave him a spade and ordered to dig a grave. They killed him then. My paternal relatives uncle Anatoliy and aunt Rachil living in Kiev told me his story. My father’s sisters Shiva and Yeva and their families moved to Kharkov after the war. Shiva’s younger son Boris Shkolnik entered the Kharkov Medical College in evacuation in Siberia. After the war the College moved back to Kharkov and so did Boris to continue his studies. The family followed him and later Yeva’s family joined them.

Our annex where we resided before the war was not ruined, however strange it may sound. I moved in there and went to work as a construction plumber in a construction trust. Here was a lot of work to do: Kiev was severely ruined. At first we were to restore the utility lines and the buildings and later we started new construction. I made a big contribution into installation of gas supply lines in Kiev. There was my portrait on the board of honor of our trust. I was the best specialist. In order to fill the gaps in my theoretical knowledge, I entered the course of foremen at the Construction College and finished it successfully. I had all excellent marks in all subjects in my graduation certificate. This course gave me more than any college itself: there is a lot of theory in colleges, and this training course was for the people having practical skills and its objective was to improve actual skills and abilities of practical work.

My aunt introduced me to my future wife Feiga Dudina. Feiga was born in Belaya Tserkov [150 km from Kiev] in 1921. It was a small town with the prevailing Jewish population before the war. The family moved to Kiev. Feiga had a younger sister named Raisa, born in 1925. Their father’s name was Isaac Dudin, but I don’t remember their mother’s name. After finishing a Russian general education school Feiga entered the extramural Union Law College [the college was in Moscow, its students studied by correspondence and had exams twice a year]. After finishing the College she became a lawyer. Her younger sister studied at the Architect Faculty of the Kiev Engineering Construction College. She married engineer Mikhail Bot, a Jew. In 1954 her daughter Marina was born. Raisa died in Kiev in 2000. I don’t know whether their parents were religious, but my wife and her sister were atheists.

We got married in 1947. We had a very ordinary wedding considering the hardships of this period of time. We registered our marriage in the registry office and in the evening we had a modest dinner with our closest relatives. At first we stayed in the annex and later I received an apartment from the construction trust where I was working. Later this shed and the annex were removed. In 1948 our daughter Ludmila was born. Our second daughter Inna was born in 1953. My wife and I spoke Russian at home. I had forgotten my Yiddish, and my wife had never known it. We didn’t celebrate Jewish holidays at home. We were both atheists and besides, I was a member of the party. We always celebrated Soviet holidays: 1 May, 7 November [41], the Soviet army Day [42], Victory Day [43], New Year and our family members’ birthdays. Sometimes we visited my father’s sisters Sophia or Rachil or my father’s brother Anatoliy on Pesach. I wouldn’t say they were religious, but they celebrated the major Jewish holidays as a tribute to traditions.

Our daughters grew up as all other Soviet children. They studied in a Russian general education school, were young Octobrists, pioneers and Komsomol members like all other children. They were not raised religious. My wife and I believed religion and traditions to be vestige of the past, something that modern people did not need whatsoever.

In 1948 trials against cosmopolitans [Campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’] [44] started. There were articles published in newspapers every day about another ‘rootless cosmopolitan’, activists of science or art, and of course, they were all Jews. At that time the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee [45], organized during the war and providing a big support to the country was routed. All members of the committee, and some rather outstanding people among them, were sentenced to death or long-term imprisonment in the GULAG camps. Solomon Mikhoels [46], a popular actor and chairman of the committee was not put in trial. In Minsk, where he went on business, he was hit by a truck ‘accidentally’. I don’t know about the others, but I understood there was actually no accident and that this was all plotted. Of course, these processes inspired negative feelings about Jews in the people, who did not do any evaluation or comparison and preferred to blindly believe everything the newspapers published. Anti-Semitism was growing. It gradually emerged on the state level. I think it reached the peak during the period of the ‘doctors’ plot [47] in January 1953. The central newspapers published the letter of Doctor Lidia Timoschuk entitled ‘Murderers in white robes’. It stated that the Kremlin doctors whose patient was Stalin were trying to poison him. Stalin was an idol of the Soviet people. Nobody doubted the Timoschuk’s statements. I didn’t believe that what this newspaper published was true. During the war I was in hospitals and I saw how devotedly the doctors worked and how they took every effort to bring their patients to recovery, but the majority of people were convinced that newspapers were publishing the truth. This caused aggravation of anti-Semitism. To abuse a Jew was almost a patriotic deed. Of course, this was particularly hard for Jewish doctors. People refused to visit them or have them in hospitals and demanded other doctors. Jews could not find a job or enter colleges. It’s hard to say what this would have brought the society to, if Stalin had not died on 5 March 1953. Now I understand that his death was probably our rescue, but at that time Stalin’s death was a common grief. People did not hide tears and I cried, too. The speech made by Khrushchev [48] at the 20th Congress of the party in 1956 revealed the truth for me about Stalin and his accomplices’ crimes. The collectivization [49], when the most skillful and experienced farmers were called kulaks [50] and exiled to Siberia, prewar arrests and postwar trials over cosmopolitans, the doctors… It’s hard to name all of them. Some people still believe that we had won the war thanks to Stalin and that our forces went in offensives with his name. It is true, we went in attacks with the words: ‘Hurrah, for Stalin!’, but it was not Stalin who defeated fascism, but the people despite Stalin. How many mistakes had been made and perhaps they were intentional actions rather than mistakes. We might have won with significantly fewer casualties if it had not been for these misdeeds of Stalin. Since 1936 he was gradually executing the best commanders, the elite of the army. New commanders had no experience. At times general were appointed as commanders of regiments and when they arrived in place, their acting predecessor in the rank of captain transferred the office to him. Then it turned out that all high ranks in this regiment had been executed by Stalin’s order. There were many such cases. Many army units were in camps at the beginning of the war and there was no communication with them. The Hitler’s army was significantly more numerous that our army. German soldiers were armed with machine guns and we had antediluvian rifles of the World War I type. Stalin failed to figure out the direction of the major blow of Hitler. Hitler’s tactic was to seize the capital and then the country was to be his, but Stalin believed that Hitler’s priority was Ukraine, and he made another mistake. His next mistake was fortification areas. It was not beneficial for us to build weapon emplacements along the new borders of the USSR – Belarus and Western Ukraine. These areas were annexed to the USSR in 1939. [Annexation od Eastern Poland] [51] They formerly belonged to Poland where the railroad track was 7 cm narrower than in the USSR. [In Europe, the standard gauge is 143.51 cm. In the USSR, among other reasons in order to prevent a fast railroad offensive from abroad, the standard gauge was 152 cm. In many of the ex-Soviet countries this system is still in use.] So, we had to replace the railroad track and build bridges and reconstruct the roads. This was to take a long time. Then came our army food stocks and weapon stocks. The government decided on their location. They had some located farther than the river Volga and others for the western direction. The government’s rationale was that our army was not to retreat, but advance and then we would just march from one stock to another while we retreated and Germans captured our stocks. At best our units managed to eliminate them to leave nothing to the enemy. The next mistake was the tank corps formed in 1932. They did not justify themselves. After the war in Spain [Spanish Civil War] [52] they were disbanded and the combat power of the army reduced. Stalin did not trust the intelligence. Our intelligence agent in German Richard Zorge [53] informed Stalin that Germans were planning to attack the USSR on 22 June 1941, but Stalin called this information a misinformation of the British intelligence and believed Zorge to be a double agent. We are still unaware of many things, but even this information is sufficient.

I cannot say that our life improved during the Khrushchev rule, and there was no more anti-Semitism in our life, but it became easier from the moral point. There were no more demonstration trials, executions and there was a feeling of having more freedom. Anti-Semitism began to decline, but then it became visible again. It was hard for a Jew to get a job. Even if there was a vacancy, when a Jew came for an appointment, they demanded his passport. There was a ‘nationality’ line item in passports, the so-called ‘5th line item’ [Item 5] [54]. When they looked at this item, they declared the vacancy was already gone. However, I never faced this problem. Construction people were valued well and besides, many people knew me, but once I faced this problem all right. I was to be officially transferred from one trust to another. One morning I went there to submit my documents, when they told me there was someone else employed and there was no vacancy for me. “When did it happen – at night, if yesterday night there was still a vacancy?’ Anyway, this was not a problem for me: I got employed by another trust on that same day, but it was more difficult for others, particularly if they were office workers. Of course, employers never spoke out that they were not employing Jews, but it was all clear anyway.

After finishing school my older daughter Ludmila finished a course of training and worked as a registry clerk in the airport. She got married young. I don’t feel like talking about her husband. I was against their marriage, but my wife wanted her daughter to get married. We had lots of arguments about it till we divorced after living together 21 years. Since then I’ve lived alone. My daughters and I keep in touch and Ludmila remained Rubalskaya after getting married. Her son Mikhail, born in 1968, also has the last name of Rubalskiy. Inna, my younger daughter, entered the Plumbing Faculty at the Kiev Construction High School after finishing school. After finishing it she was to continue her studies in the Kiev Engineering Construction College, but she failed to enter it and went to Lvov where she entered the Faculty of Land Engineering at the Forestry College. In this college Inna met her future husband Lev Sytnikov, a Jew. He was from Kiev and they were the same age. They got married after finishing the college and returned to Kiev. In 1978 their son Yevgeniy was born. Inna went to work as a plumbing engineer.

In the 1970s mass emigration of Jews to Israel began. Before this time only few individuals were allowed to move to another country. I had a negative attitude toward it and was not going to leave my country. I had grown up here and my friends were here, my dear ones were buried here and I defended this land on battlefields. However, I also believed it was wrong to treat those who wanted to move to Israel escaping from anti-Semitism as if they were enemies and traitors. Every person has to live his own life and has the right to decide how and where to live it. At that time these people needed a letter of reference from work to obtain a permit to leave the country. This was a mandatory document that they had to enclose in the set of documents to be submitted to the OVIR [Office of Visas and Registrations]. This letter of reference was to be issued by a general staff meeting. These meetings turned into general trials where people were abused and called traitors. It was particularly hard for members of the party since they also had to attend party meetings besides a staff meeting. People at my work had loyal attitudes. I remember a party meeting where a letter of reference was to be issued to an employee of the trust, an invalid, who had one kidney. There were angry speeches where employees were covering his name with mud. But then chief of the personnel department took the floor. He said that the situation for this man was hopeless. His family was leaving and he could not be left behind, being so severely ill. Then the attendants voted unanimously for the issuance of a letter of reference to him. This was how it went.

In 1978 I reached my pension age. Men in the USSR retired at the age of 60. I worked on engineer positions, was a foreman and then a site superintendent. I was valued at work and I stayed until 1986, when I finally retired.

In the late 1980s General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Mikhail Gorbachev [55] initiated perestroika [56], the new policy of the USSR. I was still a member of the party. There was a meeting where the staff voted unanimously for the policy. I believed this was another promise of a better life. Yes, the situation has improved, there is a Jewish life and people are no longer persecuted for their convictions or religion. However, the break up of the USSR [1991] that the perestroika ended up with, reduced it’s achievements to zero. There was a strong and powerful state, and there are only small, separated and poor countries left in its place, even though they are called independent. Could any of these small states have won in World War II? No way. Strength is in unity. Everything bad that there was in the USSR should have been eliminated, but we should have stayed together. It is my point of view. The government is responsible for it all: it could cancel bad laws and put good ones in their place. Besides, I think it was wrong for Ukraine to refuse from weapons [in 1991 an agreement was signed under which Ukraine undertook obligations to eliminate its nuclear weapons]. It shouldn’t have destroyed it. Each country must have weapons to defend itself. After the breakup of the USSR I left the party and I did not join the Communist Party of Ukraine.

My daughters moved to Israel. Ludmila and her family reside in Holon and Inna lives in Sderot. Ludmila’s son Mikhail served in the army. He deals in car business in Israel. Ludmila works in a tourist company. Inna works at a plant. She is deputy director for the product quality. Its’ a good position and she is well-paid for it. My son-in-law also earns well. Inna’s son Yevgeniy served in the Israel army 3 years and retired in the rank of captain. Now he is a 3rd-year student of the Polytechnic College in Beer-Sheva. He studies to be a mechanic engineer in the future. My daughters call and visit me. We keep in touch. I visited Israel in 1996. I had been ill before I traveled to Israel. I had a UVS check up, which discovered a tumor in my gall bladder. The doctors suggested an urgent surgery. Our doctors here are very good. They do masterly surgeries, but there are hardly any post surgery conditions. The patient goes to a ward and then it becomes a matter of survival. If one fails to survive – well, that’s too bad… So I requested a delay and went to visit my daughters in Israel. I had a medical examination there and the doctors said there was no tumor, but just a stone in the gall bladder. They decided against removing it, and it still does not disturb me.

I also toured the country. Israel is a beautiful country and their standard of living are much higher than here, but it’s still not for me. You cannot talk to anyone. In the morning everybody goes to work. In the evening they come home, we have dinner, talk for about an hour and then it’s again time for them to go to bed since they have to go to work in the morning. Everybody works or studies and they have no time. Besides, the climate in Israel is not good for me.

When Ukrainian declared its independence, many Jewish organizations were established here. Hesed [57] is very important for us. It provides food products and medications to us. I live alone and have meals in the Hesed canteen, though I can also cook for myself. They do not provide food packages to me. I receive a sufficient pension, they say, but if you distract allowances for my awards, there will be about $50 of pension like everybody else’s and it’s impossible to live on this pension.

I chaired the council of veterans of the 6th Guard in Kiev during 27 years. For few years I’ve been a member of the council of veterans in the Jewish cultural society of Ukraine. I attend their meetings and meet with friends. These meetings of Jewish veterans are always interesting. Occasionally I make reports and tell them about what I had lived through. I read many military memoirs, analyze and think about things. I receive Jewish newspapers and magazines and read them with interest. I’ve remained far from religion, but I attend events in the Hesed, when they invite me.

Glossary:

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

[2] Jewish Pale of Settlement: Certain provinces in the Russian Empire were designated for permanent Jewish residence and the Jewish population was only allowed to live in these areas. The Pale was first established by a decree by Catherine II in 1791. The regulation was in force until the Russian Revolution of 1917, although the limits of the Pale were modified several times. The Pale stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, and 94% of the total Jewish population of Russia, almost 5 million people, lived there. The overwhelming majority of the Jews lived in the towns and shtetls of the Pale. Certain privileged groups of Jews, such as certain merchants, university graduates and craftsmen working in certain branches, were granted to live outside the borders of the Pale of Settlement permanently.

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

[4] Jewish collective farms: Such farms were established in the Ukraine in the 1930s during the period of collectivization.

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

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

[7] Common name: Russified or Russian first names used by Jews in everyday life and adopted in official documents. The Russification of first names was one of the manifestations of the assimilation of Russian Jews at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. In some cases only the spelling and pronunciation of Jewish names was russified (e.g. Isaac instead of Yitskhak; Boris instead of Borukh), while in other cases traditional Jewish names were replaced by similarly sounding Russian names (e.g. Eugenia instead of Ghita; Yury instead of Yuda). When state anti-Semitism intensified in the USSR at the end of the 1940s, most Jewish parents stopped giving their children traditional Jewish names to avoid discrimination.

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

[9] Civil War (1918-1920): The Civil War between the Reds (the Bolsheviks) and the Whites (the anti-Bolsheviks), which broke out in early 1918, ravaged Russia until 1920. The Whites represented all shades of anti-communist groups – Russian army units from World War I, led by anti-Bolshevik officers, by anti-Bolshevik volunteers and some Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. Several of their leaders favored setting up a military dictatorship, but few were outspoken tsarists. Atrocities were committed throughout the Civil War by both sides. The Civil War ended with Bolshevik military victory, thanks to the lack of cooperation among the various White commanders and to the reorganization of the Red forces after Trotsky became commissar for war. It was won, however, only at the price of immense sacrifice; by 1920 Russia was ruined and devastated. In 1920 industrial production was reduced to 14% and agriculture to 50% as compared to 1913.

[10] Pogroms in Ukraine: In the 1920s there were many anti-Semitic gangs in Ukraine. They killed Jews and burnt their houses, they robbed their houses, raped women and killed children.

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

[12] Babi Yar: Babi Yar is the site of the first mass shooting of Jews that was carried out openly by fascists. On 29th and 30th September 1941 33,771 Jews were shot there by a special SS unit and Ukrainian militia men. During the Nazi occupation of Kiev between 1941 and 1943 over a 100,000 people were killed in Babi Yar, most of whom were Jewish. The Germans tried in vain to efface the traces of the mass grave in August 1943 and the Soviet public learnt about mass murder after World War II.

[13] Ispolkom: After the tsar’s abdication (March, 1917), power passed to a Provisional Government appointed by a temporary committee of the Duma, which proposed to share power to some extent with councils of workers and soldiers known as ‘soviets’. Following a brief and chaotic period of fairly democratic procedures, a mixed body of socialist intellectuals known as the Ispolkom secured the right to ‘represent’ the soviets. The democratic credentials of the soviets were highly imperfect to begin with: peasants - the overwhelming majority of the Russian population - had virtually no say, and soldiers were grossly over-represented. The Ispolkom’s assumption of power turned this highly imperfect democracy into an intellectuals’ oligarchy.

[14] GPU: State Political Department, the state security agency of the USSR, that is, its punitive body.

[15] Young Octobrist: In Russian Oktyabrenok, or ‘pre-pioneer’, designates Soviet children of seven years or over preparing for entry into the pioneer organization.

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

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

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

[19] Card system: The food card system regulating the distribution of food and industrial products was introduced in the USSR in 1929 due to extreme deficit of consumer goods and food. The system was cancelled in 1931. In 1941, food cards were reintroduced to keep records, distribute and regulate food supplies to the population. The card system covered main food products such as bread, meat, oil, sugar, salt, cereals, etc. The rations varied depending on which social group one belonged to, and what kind of work one did. Workers in the heavy industry and defense enterprises received a daily ration of 800 g (miners - 1 kg) of bread per person; workers in other industries 600 g. Non-manual workers received 400 or 500 g based on the significance of their enterprise, and children 400 g. However, the card system only covered industrial workers and residents of towns while villagers never had any provisions of this kind. The card system was cancelled in 1947.

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

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

[22] Great Terror (1934-1938): During the Great Terror, or Great Purges, which included the notorious show trials of Stalin's former Bolshevik opponents in 1936-1938 and reached its peak in 1937 and 1938, millions of innocent Soviet citizens were sent off to labor camps or killed in prison. The major targets of the Great Terror were communists. Over half of the people who were arrested were members of the party at the time of their arrest. The armed forces, the Communist Party, and the government in general were purged of all allegedly dissident persons; the victims were generally sentenced to death or to long terms of hard labor. Much of the purge was carried out in secret, and only a few cases were tried in public ‘show trials’. By the time the terror subsided in 1939, Stalin had managed to bring both the Party and the public to a state of complete submission to his rule. Soviet society was so atomized and the people so fearful of reprisals that mass arrests were no longer necessary. Stalin ruled as absolute dictator of the Soviet Union until his death in March 1953.

[23] Enemy of the people: Soviet official term; euphemism used for real or assumed political opposition.

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

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

[26] Soviet-Finnish War (1939-40): The Soviet Union attacked Finland on 30 November 1939 to seize the Karelian Isthmus. The Red Army was halted at the so-called Mannengeim line. The League of Nations expelled the USSR from its ranks. In February-March 1940 the Red Army broke through the Mannengeim line and reached Vyborg. In March 1940 a peace treaty was signed in Moscow, by which the Karelian Isthmus, and some other areas, became part of the Soviet Union.

[27] Order of the Combat Red Banner: Established in 1924, it was awarded for bravery and courage in the defense of the Homeland.

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

[29] Occupation of the Baltic Republics (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania): Although the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact regarded only Latvia and Estonia as parts of the Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, according to a supplementary protocol (signed in 28th September 1939) most of Lithuania was also transferred under the Soviets. The three states were forced to sign the ‘Pact of Defense and Mutual Assistance’ with the USSR allowing it to station troops in their territories. In June 1940 Moscow issued an ultimatum demanding the change of governments and the occupation of the Baltic Republics. The three states were incorporated into the Soviet Union as the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republics.

[30] Tolbukhin, Fyodor (1894-1949), Soviet Commander, Marshal of the Soviet Union, Hero of the Soviet Union. During the Great Patriotic War he was chief of headquarters of a number of fronts, army commander, Commander of the Southern, 4th Ukrainian and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts. In 1945-47 – Commander-in-Chief of the Southern Group of Forces, since 1947 – Commander of the Transcaucasian Military Regiment.

[31] Stalingrad Battle (17 July 1942- 2 February1943) The Stalingrad, South-Western and Donskoy Fronts stopped the advance of German armies in the vicinity of Stalingrad. On 19-20 November 1942 the soviet troops undertook an offensive and encircled 22 German divisions (330 thousand people) in the vicinity of Stalingrad. The Soviet troops eliminated this German grouping. On 31 January 1943 the remains of the 6th German army headed by General Field Marshal Paulus surrendered (91 thousand people). The victory in the Stalingrad battle was of huge political, strategic and international significance.

[32] NKVD: People’s Committee of Internal Affairs; it took over from the GPU, the state security agency, in 1934.

[33] Lenin (1870-1924): Pseudonym of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, the Russian Communist leader. A profound student of Marxism, and a revolutionary in the 1890s. He became the leader of the Bolshevik faction of the Social Democratic Party, whom he led to power in the coup d’état of 25th October 1917. Lenin became head of the Soviet state and retained this post until his death.

[34] Hero of the Soviet Union: Honorary title established on 16th April 1934 with the Gold Star medal instituted on 1st August 1939, by Decree of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet. Awarded to both military and civilian personnel for personal or collective deeds of heroism rendered to the USSR or socialist society.

[35] Order of Victory: highest Soviet military decoration, established on 8th November 1943. It was awarded to members of the armed forces high command for successfully conducted combat operations, involving one or more army groups, and resulting in a radical change of the situation in favor of the Soviet Armed Forces.

[36] Kursk battle: The greatest tank battle in the history of World War II, which began on 5th July 1943 and ended eight days later. The biggest tank fight, involving almost 1,200 tanks and mobile cannon units on both sides, took place in Prokhorovka on 12th July and ended with the defeat of the German tank unit.

[37] Vatutin, Nikolay Fyodorovich (1901-44), Soviet military commander, Army General, Hero of the Soviet Union. During the Great Patriotic War he was Chief of Staff of the North-Western Front, since 1942 Commander of the armies of Voronezh, South-Western and the 1st Ukrainian Fronts. Died from wounds.

[38] Order of the Great Patriotic War: 1st Class: established 20th May 1942, awarded to officers and enlisted men of the armed forces and security troops and to partisans, irrespective of rank, for skillful command of their units in action. 2nd Class: established 20th May 1942, awarded to officers and enlisted men of the armed forces and security troops and to partisans, irrespective of rank, for lesser personal valor in action.

[39] Konigsberg (since 1946 Kaliningrad): 6 April 1945: the start of the Konigsberg offensive, involving the 2nd and the 3rd Belorussian and some forces of the 1st Baltic front. It was conducted in part of the decisive Eastern Prussian operation (the purpose of this operation was the crushing defeat of the largest grouping of German fascist forces in Eastern Prussia and the northern part of Poland). The battles were crucial and desperate. On 9 April 1945 the forces of the 3rd Belorussian front stormed and seized the town and the fortress of Konigsberg. The battle for Eastern Prussia was the most blood shedding campaign in 1945. The losses of the Soviet army exceeded 580 thousand people (127 thousand of them were casualties). The Germans lost about 500 thousand people (about 300 of them were casualties). After WWII, based on the decision of the Potsdam Conference (1945) the northern part of Prussia including Konigsberg was annexed to the USSR (the southern part was annexed with Poland)

[40] Order of the Red Star: Established in 1930, it was awarded for achievements in the defense of the motherland, the promotion of military science and the development of military equipments, and for courage in battle. The Order of the Red Star has been awarded over 4,000,000 times.

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

[42] Soviet Army Day: The Russian imperial army and navy disintegrated after the outbreak of the Revolution of 1917, so the Council of the People's Commissars created the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army on a voluntary basis. The first units distinguished themselves against the Germans on February 23, 1918. This day became the ‘Day of the Soviet Army’ and is nowadays celebrated as ‘Army Day’.

[43] Victory Day in Russia (9th May): National holiday to commemorate the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II and honor the Soviets who died in the war.

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

[45] Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC): formed in Kuibyshev in April 1942, the organization was meant to serve the interests of Soviet foreign policy and the Soviet military through media propaganda, as well as through personal contacts with Jews abroad, especially in Britain and the United States. The chairman of the JAC was Solomon Mikhoels, a famous actor and director of the Moscow Yiddish State Theater. A year after its establishment, the JAC was moved to Moscow and became one of the most important centers of Jewish culture and Yiddish literature until the German occupation. The JAC broadcast pro-Soviet propaganda to foreign audiences several times a week, telling them of the absence of anti-Semitism and of the great anti-Nazi efforts being made by the Soviet military. In 1948, Mikhoels was assassinated by Stalin’s secret agents, and, as part of a newly-launched official anti-Semitic campaign, the JAC was disbanded in November and most of its members arrested.

[46] Mikhoels, Solomon (1890-1948) (born Vovsi): Great Soviet actor, producer and pedagogue. He worked in the Moscow State Jewish Theater (and was its art director from 1929). He directed philosophical, vivid and monumental works. Mikhoels was murdered by order of the State Security Ministry

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

[48] Khrushchev, Nikita (1894-1971): Soviet communist leader. After Stalin’s death in 1953, he became first secretary of the Central Committee, in effect the head of the Communist Party of the USSR. In 1956, during the 20th Party Congress, Khrushchev took an unprecedented step and denounced Stalin and his methods. He was deposed as premier and party head in October 1964. In 1966 he was dropped from the Party's Central Committee.

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

[50] Kulaks: In the Soviet Union the majority of wealthy peasants that refused to join collective farms and give their grain and property to Soviet power were called kulaks, declared enemies of the people and exterminated in the 1930s.

[51] Annexation of Eastern Poland: According to a secret clause in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact defining Soviet and German territorial spheres of influence in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union occupied Eastern Poland in September 1939. In early November the newly annexed lands were divided up between the Ukranian and the Belarusian Soviet Republics.

[52] Spanish Civil War (1936-39): A civil war in Spain, which lasted from July 1936 to April 1939, between rebels known as Nacionales and the Spanish Republican government and its supporters. The leftist government of the Spanish Republic was besieged by nationalist forces headed by General Franco, who was backed by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. Though it had Spanish nationalist ideals as the central cause, the war was closely watched around the world mainly as the first major military contest between left-wing forces and the increasingly powerful and heavily armed fascists. The number of people killed in the war has been long disputed ranging between 500,000 and a million.

[53] Zorge, Richard (1895-1944): a Baku-born German, spied for the Soviets during World War II, warning them that the Germans intended to attack on 21st June, 1941. Zorge was later assigned to Japan where he was executed when they discovered that he was a spy. A monument to Richard Zorge has been erected in Samad Vurgun Street in Baku, Azerbaijan.

[54] Item 5: This was the nationality factor, which was included on all job application forms, Jews, who were considered a separate nationality in the Soviet Union, were not favored in this respect from the end of World War WII until the late 1980s.

[55] Gorbachev, Mikhail (1931- ): Soviet political leader. Gorbachev joined the Communist Party in 1952 and gradually moved up in the party hierarchy. In 1970 he was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, where he remained until 1990. In 1980 he joined the politburo, and in 1985 he was appointed general secretary of the party. In 1986 he embarked on a comprehensive program of political, economic, and social liberalization under the slogans of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). The government released political prisoners, allowed increased emigration, attacked corruption, and encouraged the critical reexamination of Soviet history. The Congress of People’s Deputies, founded in 1989, voted to end the Communist Party’s control over the government and elected Gorbachev executive president. Gorbachev dissolved the Communist Party and granted the Baltic states independence. Following the establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States in 1991, he resigned as president. Since 1992, Gorbachev has headed international organizations.

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

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

Tsylia Shapiro

Tsylia Shapiro
Lvov
Ukraine
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of the interview: December 2002

Tsylia Shapiro and her husband live in a nicely furnished two-room apartment. They have been a wealthy family. Tsylia is a beautiful woman, nice and hospitable. She is very sad – she says she’s lost the joy of her life with the loss of her daughter. And she promptly changes the subject to her granddaughter Alyona.

My grandmother and grandfather on my father’s side, Iosele and Zlata Potievskiye, were born in the town of Malin, Zhytomir region, 200 kilometers from Kiev, in the 1850s. The population of Malin accounted to 20 thousand people at that time. Jews constituted the majority of the population. They were craftsmen such as shoemakers, tailors, watchmakers, glass cutters, carpenters and bricklayers, and vendors for the most part.

Grandfather Iosif was a bricklayer. They were religious and strictly observed all Jewish traditions. He went to the synagogue in Malin. I know that he went there and prayed, but that is all I know since my grandfather died long before I was born.

My grandparents had many children and Grandfather decided to build a big house where all their children could live with their families. He began the construction, but he didn’t have enough money to complete it.

In the early 1920s he went to America with his older son whose name I don’t know. In the USA, my grandfather and my father’s older brother happened to pass by a demonstration of workers where police used weapons. Many people were killed including my grandfather Iosele and his son. My grandmother Zlata got very ill when she heard this sad news. She died in 1903 – just a few years after this terrible loss of her husband and son.

I didn’t know all of my grandparents’ brothers and sisters. I only remember my grandfather’s younger brother Moshe. He lived in the very center of the town Malin and had a small store just next door to his apartment. In the 1920s he was declared a NEP-man [1] and the authorities expropriated his store and apartment. He died shortly afterward.

His wife died before the revolution [2] and his children moved to other towns. I knew his older daughter Riva. Riva had a very nice and caring husband, Haim, and three sons. Once her cousin brother from Leningrad came to visit her. He fell in love with Riva and convinced her to go with him. It was a scandal all over the town. I remember Haim, always so reserved, crying and threatening Riva and her cousin and his parents trying to calm him down.

Later Riva divorced Haim and took her children to Leningrad. They all got higher education. I saw Riva only once when she came to Uncle Gershl’s golden wedding anniversary. Later we didn’t keep in touch with her.

Besides my father’s brother that perished in America my father had three other brothers and two sisters. The boys finished cheder and studied at the Jewish primary school. The girls also got primary education.

Gedali, the oldest, born in 1888, was a high-skilled cabinetmaker. He earned well and always had enough money. Gedali enjoyed throwing money in restaurants and for women. He married a very pretty Jewish girl, Reizl, from another town: she was a fair-haired, blue-eyed girl and had ‘a character of an angel,’ as they say. She was an orphan and her uncle that raised her didn’t quite want to let her marry Gedali who had a spoiled reputation. However, Gedali managed to have Reizl marry him.

Shortly after the wedding Gedali returned to his former way of life – he went out and drank a lot and was not faithful to Reizl. Reizl kept silent and cried at night. Her relatives talked to Gedali and insisted on divorce and compensation enough for Reizl to buy an apartment. They divorced.

Sometime afterward Gedali married a strong-willed woman – Ida. She tamed her husband’s violent temper and he lived a quiet life with her under her dictation. Gedali didn’t have any children. During the war Gedali was in evacuation somewhere in the taiga in the North. He died in Malin three years after the war.

Rachel, coming next after Gedali, was born in 1890. She became a very good dressmaker. During the Soviet power in the 1930s she had high official clients in Kiev. She went to Kiev where she made fashionable clothing for them and stayed there for several months in a row. Rachel married Efim Glozman before the Great Patriotic War [3]. Rachel and Efim didn’t have any children. Rachel died in evacuation in 1940s.

The next sister, Raitsa, born in 1892, was ill with tuberculosis. She died in 1927.

Motl, born after my father in 1895, graduated from the Agricultural Institute in Odessa and became an agronomist. He got married. During the Great Patriotic War Motl was recruited to the army. He didn’t return from the war. I have no information about his wife or children – we were out of touch with them.

The youngest of the children – Grisha, or Gershl, was born in 1898. In the early 1920s Grisha entered the machine-building college in Zaporozhiye. He fell in love with his landlady’s daughter, a Jewish girl, Annette. She was a schoolgirl and Grisha promised her that he would wait until she finished school to marry her. They got married after she finished school.

At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War Grisha went to the army. Annette and their two children – son Emila and daughter Yana, who was born few months before the war – went into evacuation. Grisha couldn’t find them for a few years. After the war they met; his wife and children were in Omsk and Grisha joined them after demobilization.

Emil became a good doctor and Yana graduated from the Pedagogical Institute. Uncle Gershl died in the middle of the 1970s and his children Emil and Yana live in the USA with their families.

My father Emil Potievskiy was born in 1893. He only studied in cheder. When his father and older brother were killed in America my father took responsibility for the family: Rachel was married and had to take care of her own family and Gedali didn’t care about the family.

My father went to work at the age of 14 – he became an apprentice of a cabinetmaker.

My father served in the tsarist army and participated in World War I, he was a private, struggled against Bolsheviks [4] somewhere in Russia. In 1917 he was slightly wounded and demobilized. He returned home in 1917. After the revolution of 1917 my father went to work at the furniture factory in Malin.

My father was a tall and handsome fair-haired man. When he was in his teens he fell in love with his cousin on his mother’s side – my future mother. It was customary in the Jewish community for cousins to form a family and my parents got married in 1921. My parents had a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah in the synagogue. They had only a small wedding party – this was a hard period of revolution and civil war [5].

My mother’s parents, Khaya and Avrum Feldman, lived in the village of Guta near Zhytomir. It was a Ukrainian village and there were only three or four Jewish families there.

My grandparents were very religious. There was no synagogue in the village and my grandfather prayed at home twice a day, in the morning and in the evening, with his tallit and tefillin on. I remember taking them out to show them to my friends without asking my grandfather. This was the only time when my grandfather lost his temper and yelled at me, stamping his feet.

Every Friday my grandmother cleaned the house claying the ground floors – they were shining like an egg yolk. She made food for Saturday and kept it in the Russian stove [6] to keep it warm. On Friday evening we sat down for dinner after washing ourselves and dressing up. My grandmother lit candles saying words of prayer and we started our meal: freshly made challah, chicken and clear soup with dumplings, stewed meat with potato pancakes and stewed carrots. Sometimes my grandfather managed to get some fish from fishermen and we had gefilte fish then.

My grandmother Khaya was the sister of Zlata, my father’s mother’s sister. My mother told me that they owned an inn before the revolution. There were three rooms and a kitchen in the house. Two rooms served as hotel rooms for guests – there were beds in them. My grandmother didn’t have housemaids. She did all work by herself. It was a small village and there were not many visitors coming to stay overnight.

My grandmother cooked common food for visitors and when Jews arrived – she tried to make food following the kosher rules: she had special utensils for dairy and meat products. But of course, there was no kosher meat in the village, since there was no shochet.

My mother, her brother and sister helped their parents about the house, with work in the garden and to take care of their livestock. My grandparents had no education and could not afford to pay for their children’s education, but Grandfather Avrum wanted to give his children at least primary Jewish education. They hired a melamed that taught the children Yiddish and basics of religion. The family spoke Yiddish at home, but they also knew Ukrainian, which they spoke with Ukrainians.

Shulka, the oldest in the family, was born in 1890. Shulka was a beauty: a tall and stately fair-haired girl, and her fiancé, Itzyk Pekker, was also a handsome man. Itzyk came from the town of Chepovitsy near Korosten. He met Shulka at a Jewish wedding. Itzyk was a wealthy man – he was a tradesman.

However, they had to wait for seven years before they could get married. Itzyk’s mother’s name was Shulka, too, and Jewish law didn’t allow a daughter-in-law and mother-in-law to have the same name. Itzyk and Shulka got married in 1916, after Itzyk’s mother died, and my mother’s sister moved to his house in Chepovitsy.

They had two sons – Ionele, born in 1917, and Aron, born in 1918. My mother, who was single at that time, moved to her sister to help her take care of the children and the house.

There were pogroms [7] during the civil war. In one of them Petliura [8] or the gang of the Greens [9] attacked the town. My mother and Shulka with the children ran to the woods, but Itzyk was brutally beaten, tied to a horse’s tail and pulled across the village.

When the sisters came back to the town Itzyl was in a coma. My mother was holding him when he died. My mother told me how they all grieved for him and Shulka cried and was out of her mind grieving. Little Ionele looked at the moon when he was in the yard with his mother asking, ‘Moon, show my father the way home!’ Ionele fell ill and died shortly after the pogrom.

Aron went to the army during the Great Patriotic War. He was severely wounded and when he was in hospital a medical nurse fell in love with him. She was trying every medication to bring him to recovery. But neither medications nor her care helped Aron. He died in 1943. After the war this medical nurse found us in Malin and told us the story of the last days of his life.

Shulka married a butcher named Shymchik whose wife died. At that time a Jewish widow who had children could only marry a widower and take care of his children. Shychik had four children and Shulka cared about them as she did about her own children.

Shymchik owned a butcher store, but in the late 1920s when the NEP was over the Soviet authorities expropriated his shop and threw his family – Shulka and the five children – out of their apartment. They lived with us for some time. After Gedali, my father’s brother, divorced and went to live with his second wife, they moved into his former apartment.

Shulka had two more children: Tsylia and Itzyk. Shymchik died before the war. Shulka and Tsylia were in evacuation with us. Itzyk perished at the front and Shulka and Tsylia returned to Malin. Shulka died in the early 1950s and Tsylia lives in Israel now. I don’t remember Shulka going to the synagogue, but she always tried to observe Jewish traditions and celebrate holidays. Even in evacuation she fasted at Yom Kippur.

My mother’s younger brother Gershl was born in 1895. Gershl and his wife Rukhl lived in Korosten. They didn’t have any children, and when Shulka and her family lost their home my mother and father suggested that Uncle Gershl and Rukhl take Aron, Shulka and Itzyk’s son, to raise him. He was their nephew.

They were wealthy – Gershl worked at a store and although the only education he got was at cheder Gershl was very good at making money. Gershl and Rukhl refused to adopt Aron and my mother couldn’t forgive Gershl for this, even though she continued to keep in touch with them.

During World War II, Gershl and his wife were in evacuation. Gershl died in Malin in the early 1960s. Gershl observed Jewish traditions and celebrated holidays, although I wouldn’t say he was a deeply religious person.

My mother was short, had dark eyes and hair, she was quick doing any work and could sing well. She had a teacher when she was a child and she could read and write in Yiddish.

My parents lived in my father’s house after they got married. My father’s brothers and sisters, Gersh, Rachel and Raitsa, lived in the same house – they were single at the time when my parents got married.

Life was miserable. When my older brother Leonid was born in 1922 my mother didn’t even have milk to breastfeed him because she was starving. She dipped some bread in water, wrapped it in a piece of cloth and gave it to the baby to suck. The boy was very sickly: scrofulous and his body was covered with abscesses and boils.

When I was born on 11th July 1924 life was different. My father worked at the factory and my mother was a housewife. My father worked hard to make some money, but what we had was sufficient. We got new furniture in the house: a wooden wardrobe, cupboard and a sofa.

My mother said I had a babysitter: Maria – she was a German woman that came from a German colony [10] in the South.

In 1928 another girl was born to the family. She was named Lisa. Once my brother and I rocked her cradle hanging between our parents’ beds so violently that she fell out of it. Lisa got inflammation of her brain and died. I remember my father’s brother yelling at me and my brother Moshe, ‘You killed her – such a nice beautiful baby that she was!’, but our father and mother never said a word of reproach to us. My mother had no more children after Lisa.

My brother and I spent summers with my grandmother Khaya and grandfather Avrum in the village. My grandmother was constantly busy – working in the garden or feeding her livestock. They didn’t keep an inn any longer, of course, but when somebody came to the village they came to grandfather Avrum and grandmother Khaika. My grandmother was a kind woman and people liked her.

I often went for walks with other girls in the village. They invited me to their homes where we had dumplings stuffed with potatoes or buckwheat and fried pork fat. My grandmother told me off for eating forbidden pork and pork fat, but I liked this food so much that I continued to keep my visits a secret from my grandmother.

On Saturday our parents arrived to bring me and my brother candy and cookies. Our parents didn’t work on Saturday and came to have a festive dinner with our grandparents on Saturday.

In 1930 my grandmother fell ill and my mother took her and my grandfather Avrum to live with us in the town. At that time Gersh and his wife went to Birobidzhan [11] – many Jewish families went there to establish the Jewish autonomous region.

A gypsy fortuneteller told my grandmother that she would die soon. My grandmother asked Gershl to come home to see her before she died. She met him and on the next day after his arrival she got worse. She died shortly afterward. I don’t remember her funeral, because I was taken to our distant relatives.

Grandfather lived with us in Malin. He began every day from a prayer and went to the synagogue on Saturday. My mother also observed traditions. She knew prayers and could read in Hebrew. I remember carrying my grandfather’s and my mother’s prayer books to the synagogue on Saturday, since they were not allowed to carry things on Saturday.

There was a big and beautiful synagogue in Malin. In the middle of the 1930s it was closed and religious Jews were persecuted [12]. They closed Jewish bakeries where they baked matzah and didn’t allow a minyan – gatherings of religious Jewish men. But still, we always had matzah at Pesach.

I remember my mother taking a big turkey to the shochet and he did something wrong and this turkey was not kosher. My mother cried bitterly – we led a modest life and my mother was sorry for such a loss, while my father hugged her and said, ‘Just take it easy – we’ll just pretend it is kosher meat.’

My father was a real atheist even though he wasn’t a party member. He found Jewish traditions and holidays funny, but he loved his wife and took part in our celebrations. My mother fasted at Yom Kippur and I began to fast when I turned twelve. My favorite holiday was Chanukkah when adults gave children sweets and money.

In 1931 I went to a Jewish school. There were four schools in the town: three Ukrainian and one Jewish one. There were many children in the Jewish school while the Ukrainian schools were not so full. We studied mathematic, Ukrainian language, history, geography. The only difference from Ukrainian schools was that we studied in Yiddish. There were nice children in our school: children of Jewish workers and craftsmen, as well as of Jewish secretaries of the district and town party committees.

In 1932 the period of famine began [13]. My father went to get flour in Kiev and my mother baked bread to sell at the market. We went to the market together and I remember her weighing rations of bread on her scales. There were raids on trains – the authorities captured people if they found food products and declared them ‘speculators’ [people that made money reselling things for higher prices].

My father was on the train once when a raid began, but he managed to escape jumping off the train. He came home without bread or flour, but with his ribs broken. I remember my mother crying. He didn’t go to Kiev again.

Once my mother gave me a piece of pie that she got somewhere. I bit on it greedily, but when I raised my eyes I saw my mother’s hungry eyes. I offered her a piece, but she refused – she said she wasn’t hungry. I was just a child and it didn’t occur to me that my mother pretended she wasn’t hungry to save more for me.

In 1936 my father died. The management of the factory where my father worked sent him to take a training course for managers in Kiev. In Kiev my father got sick from some food that he ate at a canteen. An ambulance took him to a hospital where he was left in the corridor and got no medical treatment. He died there.

My mother and uncle came to Kiev to take his body and they were told that my father was calling my mother’s name before he died. There were hundreds of people at his funeral – my father’s colleagues, neighbors and relatives. At home the rabbi said a prayer for my father and then the funeral was civil – his friends and colleagues made speeches. My father was buried in the Jewish cemetery.

After my father died my mother began to work even more than before. She bought piglets even though it was against religious laws to raise them for meat: she made sausage, ham etc. and sold her products at the market. However, she didn’t eat pork. She prayed and celebrated Jewish holidays. I didn’t pray, but I began to fast at Yom Kippur after my father died. I have never missed this fast ever since.

My mother’s brother Gershl helped us. He brought products from Korosten and supported my mother with money. I often visited him in Korosten and Uncle Gershl and Rukhl always did their best to please me. They gave me money to go to the cinema or buy ice cream and tried to make me feel very much at home.

My brother Leonid studied in the same school where I went. He was very smart and he always tried to help our mother. At that time he preferred the company of other boys of his age and I had my own friends.

I found life beautiful, even though we were so poor. I was popular with my schoolmates: I was sociable and vivid. I was much liked for my singing. I sang Jewish and Ukrainian songs, Russian romances and even sang a popular Georgian song, ‘Suliko.’ I sang at amateur concerts on Soviet holidays. I was well known in town.

Once, at a performance dedicated to Taras Shevchenko [14], a great Ukrainian poet, after I sang a few Ukrainian songs, the audience asked me to sing ‘Suliko.’ The master of ceremony tried to explain that only Ukrainian songs were supposed to be sung at this performance, but the audience insisted.

After ‘Suliko’ I sang a few Jewish songs. The audience enjoyed my singing – many people in our town knew these songs. There was no anti-Semitism at that time and singing Jewish songs were as natural as singing Ukrainian songs. I enjoyed going to the parades on 1st May and 7th November [15]. After parades there was usually a big concert in the Center of culture where I usually took part.

In 1937 repression and arrests began [16]. I had a friend whose father was the director of the paper mill in Malin – he was arrested. Grinfeld, a party official and our neighbor, and many others were arrested. Our teacher of Ukrainian language, a nice and quiet man, was arrested, too. We stayed near the cell of imprisonment before the trial for hours to see him. We saw him at dawn, after a few days, when he was taken to a different place with some other prisoners. He looked exhausted and beaten up. Nobody ever saw him again.

Regardless of anything we were inspired by the ideas of socialism and communism. We believed everything that was published in newspapers and said on the radio, but what happened to our teacher shook our faith in the Soviet authorities – we knew him and couldn’t believe that this man was an enemy. When I asked my mother whether what was published in newspapers was true, she kept silent and didn’t answer my questions.

My brother finished school in 1939 and decided to become a cabinetmaker like uncle Gedali. My brother was not subject to recruitment to the army since he was the only breadwinner in the family.

The Great Patriotic War came as a surprise to all of us. I had finished the 9th grade and was going to visit my uncle Gershl in Korosten. On 22nd June 1941 the war was declared and on the next day my brother Leonid was recruited to the army.

In a week’s time Korosten was bombed. Uncle Gersh, his wife Ruhl, her sister Riva and their nephews and nieces came to Malin in a horse-drawn carriage – they hoped that the war would soon be over and they would just stay with us for a few days.

On the next day after their arrival fascist bombers destroyed the railway station and all trains in Malin. A train with evacuated people from Western Ukraine was also bombed. Uncle Gersh came home in tears. He told us hundreds of people were killed and there were parts of human bodies scattered all around.

There were children from this train wandering about the town knocking on the doors of houses asking people to let them in. They lost their parents. Later director of our school gathered those kids together and they were evacuated.

The town was in panic. We ran to the river to hide under its steep banks and stayed there a whole night. We had a terrible feeling that Germans were already in town. Early in the morning Uncle Gersh harnessed the horses and left with his family.

After the railway station was bombed people began to escape from the town. Shymanovskiye, our neighbors, wanted us to join them to go away, but my mother firmly refused to leave. She was under the influence of older Jews that were saying that Germans would not harm anybody.

I did understand that we had to leave, however young I was, but my mother only smiled at me saying that everything would be all right. She didn’t want to leave her home – she had a hard life and everything that she had was the result of hard work. I packed my small suitcase where I put some underwear and clothes and my ring and chain. She unpacked it saying, ‘Look, I put your things back into the wardrobe.’

In a few days, when I was lifting a bucket of water from a well, Germans began a landing operation at the paper mill and started bombing the town. I ran to my aunt Shulka who lived nearby. She was making dumplings in her kitchen and her daughter Tsylia was helping her. I shouted, ‘What are you doing – the Germans are already at the paper mill and you are making dumplings here?!’ I helped my aunt to find her documents and the three of us went to my home to get my mother and grandfather.

My friend Ida, who was standing on the porch of her house, asked me, ‘Tsylia, are you running away?’ I told her that I was leaving that very moment because everything was going to explode and I told her to go with us. Ida refused and wet into her house.

I grabbed my mother and grandfather by their hands and we ran down the street barefoot as we were. My grandfather could hardly walk and I kept pulling him begging him to try and go with us. Very soon Grandfather got tired, sat on the ground and begged us to leave him alone.

Some old people around began to shame us for putting an old man into such pain. They told us to leave him alone: ‘Nobody would do him any harm – we would look after him.’ We begged my grandfather to go with us, but he didn’t move. My mother and I embraced him – we realized that we were not going to see him again.

We left the town and kept walking until night without stopping. Aunt Shulka and Tsylia were with us. When it got dark we knocked on the door of a house in the village asking the owners to let us stay overnight. In the morning some people from Malin told us that a bomb had destroyed our house and it burned down.

In the morning we got on our way and kept walking to the East. We walked holding on to the horse-drawn carts on which other Jews from Malin were riding. They never offered us to sit on a cart, and when we stopped exhausted they kept going to get rid of us since we were delaying them.

Ukrainian villagers came onto the road offering us bread and milk and offering us to get to their houses to rest. We ate what we were offered including pork and pork fat – nobody thought about kosher rules. We stayed for a night in a forest near the village of Ivankovo in Kiev region since the Germans were close and we were afraid to come to the village.

We came to the village holding to a cart with some people from Malin, but when we woke up they were not there. At that moment a Ukrainian woman and a boy from the village came to tell us that there were Germans in the village. She told us that the boy would take us to a place to go across the town.

There were retreating troops from the Soviet Union and horse-drawn carts with refugees. The crossing was bombed and it was next to impossible to get across the river. The army troops took the priority for crossing.

Many people that didn’t want to leave their belongings were going back to their homes. Our neighbors Shymanovskiye also went back home and were brutally killed by Germans. My mother and Aunt Shulka went to the military and begged them to rescue us. The soldiers pulled all of us into the truck and we crossed the Dnieper with them.

We reached Kiev, having covered over 200 km in three weeks, at the end of July and we found an abandoned house on the outskirts of the city. We went in there to take a rest. We washed ourselves and took a rest. There were many such houses in Kiev.

There were clothes and shoes in the house, but we couldn’t touch somebody else’s belongings – we were afraid that the owners of the house came back and it would be too bad if they found their belongings missing. I picked worn out sandals from the floor and found a pair of old slippers for my mother and a couple of kerchiefs – this was all we took.

We went to the railway station. It was like the end of the world there. Crowds of people pulling their bags and packs were trying to get on trains. We were holding hands with one another fearing to lose one another. It was a miracle that we got on the train. There was a big Jewish family with a lot of luggage: boxes, bales and suitcases. They occupied a whole railcar, closed the door and didn’t let anyone else in.

We were starved and exhausted sitting in a corner of the railcar. We had some bread and sugar with us that we got from people on the way. Our fellow travelers were eating all the time – they had smoked chicken, meat, fish and bread, but they didn’t offer us anything. Once I heard them talking about us saying, ‘Where are those ‘shlimazl’ [crazy people] going – they may die on the way.’

However, when we reached the Ural they helped us to get on a train to Middle Asia. We reached Tashkent, which was some 3000 kilometers from our home. Our trip lasted for almost a month. The only food we had was dried bread and sometimes we got soup or cereal at stations.

My mother’s cousin Milia Fridman lived in Tashkent. He visited us in Malin shortly before the war and left his address, but we didn’t have it with us. We stayed at the evacuation department at the railway station where people were looking for their relatives.

At that time my father’s brother Gershl was in hospital in Tashkent and was also looking for his family. He found us at the evacuation department. Gershl knew Milia’s address. My mother and Tsylia went there, but he was at work and his wife Tsylia was not quite happy to see them. She even didn’t offer them anything to eat, although my mother and Tsylia could hardly stand on their feet so starved they were.

Milia’s wife offered them to lie down on some mattresses on the floor to wait until Milia was back from work. When he came home and saw my mother he began to cry and the three of them were sitting there crying. Milia told his wife off and gave my mother pillows, blankets, kitchen utensils, and soap and took my mother and Tsylia to the evacuation department. He didn’t dare to offer my mother and Tsylia to stay in his house.

He promised them to help with getting some accommodation in Tashkent. But in a day he was recruited to the army and went to the front. Milia was wounded in his abdomen in his first battle and died in hospital. My uncle Gershl took us to the town of Yangiyul near Tashkent. We had to leave Tashkent since we needed a residence permit [17] to stay there.

We slept on the street straight near an aryk [artificial channel] in Yangiyul. In the morning Tsylia and I went to look for a job and my mother and Shulka stayed behind waiting for us.

Once an Uzbek man approached them asking their consent to marry me. I was a pretty girl and he said that I was going to be his first wife in his harem and he would give a big ‘kalym’ [redemption given to bride’s parents]: carpets and sheep. My mother only laughed in response, she refused him, of course, since we found those outdated Middle Asian customs unacceptable.

There were numerous people in evacuation in Yangiyul. We met our acquaintances from Malin and they gave us shelter and helped me to find work. I worked at a rope factory. I had to work ten hours per day under the scorching sun. I got a bread coupon for 400 grams of bread per day.

Every morning I went to work crossing the river on a hanging bridge. One I was stopped by robbers. Their chief looked into my face and told his fellows to let me go. He said, ‘She has no money.’

A room in the house where our friends lived got vacant. We moved in there. It was so small that only two of us could lie down there, but even this cage cost money. We put bricks on the floor, put dried grass over it and it served as a bed for my mother and me. Aunt Shulka and Tsylia stayed somewhere else. Tsylia was an accountant at the collective farm office [18].

Our neighbors from Malin took me to the office of a buttery asking them to employ me as an assistant accountant. At that moment Asia Moiseevna Aronova, a Jewish woman from Bukhara, supervisor of a dairy shop named ‘The third Stalin’s five year period’ [19] was at the office. She looked at me and said that it was a shame that such a beauty had to starve or work with ropes and took my mother and me to her home. At first she said that we would live with her and help her about the house.

Asia Moiseyevna tried to convince my mother to let her adopt me from the first day of our stay with her. She probably intended to sell me to a rich Uzbek man to get a big ‘kalym’ for me. Her husband was at the front and every night she arranged parties for her friends. They partied until morning. She told me to sing and dance for them. Sometimes I almost fell from exhaustion and weakness and they threw me a piece of meat from ‘plov’ [rice with meat and spices – oriental dish] as if I were a pup.

She still wanted to convince my mother to give me away. To make us stay with her Asia took our passports and bread coupons. She only gave us a little bread for food. She locked the door to her house going to work. We looked after her baby the whole day and in the evenings I had to sing and dance for her guests.

There were many Jewish guests that knew Yiddish. Once I sang a Jewish song about a girl complaining about being hungry saying she was sorry for leaving her home. The Jews were moved and began to ask Asia to let us go. Bagir, her Uzbek lover, threatened her that he would leave her if she didn’t let us free. Asia gave in to their petitions and put us out into the street giving us back our passports and bread coupons.

I returned to the rope factory where I was made a winder in a shop. This work was easier than what I did previously. We lived in the same small room for some time until we moved to Aunt Shulka and Tsylia in their brick house. Tsylia worked as an accountant in the office and a cleaning woman in a canteen. She got up at 4 o’clock in the morning to fetch water from a well. I got up with her to help her.

In 1943 I was mobilized to take a course of snipers. After finishing it we were taken to the range ground in the vicinity of the town. At that time my mother, who worked at the fruit drying facility, got ill. She ate fruit that she didn’t wash and got an infection that resulted in peritonitis. A doctor that came to the hospital to provide consulting services saved my mother. After she had a surgery my mother was very weak. I was released from the school of snipers to take care of my mother.

Kiev was liberated in November 1944 and I began to work on obtaining permits for us to go back home. We were so happy to hear any news about liberation of the territory of our country. The war was crucial for people and for the country. The Germans brought so much suffering into our life.

We returned to Malin in spring 1945. There was a huge pit at the place where our house used to be. We were told that old Jews went to meet occupants with cakes and pies that their wives made. On the same day all Jews in Malin were taken out of town and killed. Germans killed our grandfather Avrum in the street. Ida, my friend and neighbor, also perished.

Our neighbors, the Shymanskiye family, who returned to Malin after they failed to cross the Dnipro river, also perished. Their daughter Polia, who was also my friend, was brutally raped and then fascists placed a bottle with a broken neck into her vagina and she bled to death. Her parents were killed along with other Jews.

We settled down with Aunt Shulka. We didn’t hear from my brother Leonid. We didn’t know whether he was alive or had perished. We wrote to Malin from Yangiyul and got a response saying that there was no information about him.

A few weeks after we returned Tsylia and I received a subpoena to come to the Party town committee. The secretary of the town committee declared to us that since we had no job the town committee decided to send us to restoration of the mines in Donbass. My mother and aunt Shulka were horrified; we were exhausted after evacuation and they couldn’t imagine how we would leave home again.

In a few days we found work: Tsylia was an accountant at the public education office and I was employed as an assistant accountant at the post office. Once I was at work on one of my first days when all of a sudden a little bird flew into the window. An accountant, an older woman, said, ‘Tsylia, you’ll hear good news.’ In about half an hour our distant relative came to tell me that Leonid was back. I ran all the way home to see my brother.

There was a bunch of people at home – our neighbors came to see him, too. Our friends and acquaintances came to greet us on Leonid’s return. He was wounded and then shell-shocked at the front. In April 1945 he was demobilized and came to Malin.

Victory Day on 9th May 1945 [20] was a great day for us. We were more than happy to get home and be together. People came into the streets of the town singing, dancing, crying in joy of victory and sorrow of their losses. We looked into the future with hope.

In fall 1946 I was visiting my relatives in Korosten and my two friends and I went to a photo shop to have our picture taken. On the next day a young man came to the house where I was staying. He introduced himself: Natan Shapiro, director of an industrial association, and the photo shop was within the structure of this association. Natan and I began to see each other.

Natan came from a small village in Zhytomir region. He was born in 1918. His father died when Natan was a small boy. After finishing school Natan studied at the accounting school and became an accountant and then an auditor. After the war he became director of the industrial association within the system of military trade department.

He was an atheist and a Komsomol member [21]. He was going to become a member of the Communist Party. I didn’t actually want to marry him. – He was handicapped – he was lame – and I didn’t find him handsome. He was far from the man of my dreams – a tall handsome Mr. Right. But Natan didn’t give up. When I left for Malin he began to write me nice and warm letters full of words of love.

At the end of December he came to Malin. He met my brother and mother and asked their consent to our marriage. My mother liked him a lot and she talked me into marrying a wealthy stable man like Natan.

On 31st December 1946 our relatives came to our wedding party. And on 1st January 1947 Natan and I went to Korosten. We had a civil ceremony. We didn’t have a religious wedding. On that evening Natan’s friends and relatives came to his home to celebrate our wedding.

My mother stayed in Malin and didn’t want to leave the town even after Natan received a nice and comfortable apartment. My mother’s argumentation was that she was a religious Jewish woman observing all Jewish traditions and celebrating holidays while we didn’t observe any traditions at that time. We didn’t even buy matzah, since Natan was already a party member and my mother reprimanded me for that.

My mother died in Korosten in 1969. She was buried in the Jewish corner of the town cemetery in Korosten.

My brother finished the College of Forestry in Malin after the war. It took him some time to get a job – it was the period of state anti-Semitism [22] and Jews were having problems with employment. My brother went to Minsk where he finished Construction College.

Leonid got married in Minsk and they had two children: Maya and Misha. Leonid and his family live in Los Angeles, America, now. My brother gave up Jewish traditions in the army. His family doesn’t observe any Jewish traditions and mine doesn’t either.

My mother was wrong to think that I was marrying a rich man. We lived a modest life in an old house with my husband’s mother. We slept on plain nickel-plated beds. Natan was a very decent man and never allowed himself or others any misuse of authority or property.

He was the breadwinner in the family – I worked only every now and then due to my liver which I had problems with. My husband didn’t want me to work much. So I rarely went to work and stayed at home most of the time taking care of my family.

I was far from any politics. When Stalin died I didn’t cry or grieve like others – my family was more important than anything to me.

I wasn’t really in love with my husband in the first years of my marriage while later I learned to value his kindness and noble character. He became a close friend of mine and I never regretted marrying him. Natan became particularly dear to me after our children were born. In 1947 our daughter Raissa was born and named after my father’s sister Raitsa. In 1956 our son Igor was born.

We were a friendly family. My husband’s colleagues often visited us. We celebrated Soviet holidays: 1st May, 7th November and 5th December – Constitution Day. From 1965 we began to celebrate 9th May – Victory Day.

We didn’t celebrate Jewish holidays at that period of time. Only Natan’s mother bought matzah at Pesach and cooked traditional Jewish food. This was the only holiday that we celebrated.

Our children studied well at school. After finishing school Raissa tried to enter the medical institute, but she didn’t pass the exams successfully enough to get a sufficient number for admittance. It wasn’t a surprise for us – the medical institute was a very popular educational establishment and for a Jew it was next to impossible to enter it. Raissa finished a medical school and became a very good medical nurse.

In the early 1970s Raissa married Igor Motylyov, a Jewish man from Lvov. She moved to her husband in Lvov. They were not happy in their marriage. Igor was a jealous man. Raissa was a beautiful woman and he made scenes and even beat her. They had two children: Pasha, born in 1972, and Sasha, born in 1977.

My husband and I wanted to move to Israel and wanted to take Raissa with us, but her husband didn’t sign her a permit to go and didn’t want to go himself. In 1980 my husband and I moved to Lvov. We exchanged our apartment for that location to be closer to Raissa and help and support her. My husband was still at work and I was a pensioner and began to help my daughter.

In a year’s time Raissa came back from a resort in the Crimea and discovered enlarged lymph nodes in her breasts. She was diagnosed with lymphogranulomatosis and unfortunately, it turned out to be true. She was ill for six years and died in 1986.

Her older son Pavel is a programmer, and he and his wife live in Los Angeles, USA. Her younger son Pasha lives in Israel, in Haifa, he is manager and works for a company. They like their new life. Pasha has a son, Rayan, named after his mother, and Pasha has a daughter, Sopha. Our grandchildren write us and call on our birthdays. They invite me to visit them, but I can’t afford the trip. However, we hope to see them one day.

My son Igor graduated from the Forestry Academy in Leningrad. He lived and worked in Korosten and then he moved to Lvov with us. He married Ira, a nice girl, in Lvov and they are very happy together. They have two children: son Sergey, 18 years old, and daughter Alyona, seven years old.

Although Ira is a Russian girl she observes Jewish traditions and is a volunteer at Hesed [23]. My granddaughter Alyona dances and sings in a Jewish children’s concert group. Their group went on tour to Israel and Lena and Ira went there, too.

Perestroika [24] came as fresh wind for my husband and me. My husband wasn’t a devoted communist and by that time he wasn’t a party member any longer. Actually, he joined the Party to have no obstacles in his career. After he became a pensioner he lost his party membership certificate and never recalled it.

We are very enthusiastic about the possibilities for people to travel and chose a place of living. There is freedom of speech. It is good that people got to know about the tragedy of the Jewish people during the Great Patriotic War. There were books published that were not allowed before. The Jewish life has revived. Synagogues were opened and Jewish communities were established. We can state proudly now that we are Jews.

My husband and I often attend Hesed – a car picks us up to take us to the Daytime Center. Hesed provides a lot of support and assistance to us. I stopped singing Jewish songs after my daughter died, but now I find myself smiling at concerts in Hesed.

We have friends in Hesed and we’ve come back to our historical sources: we celebrate all Jewish holidays, buy matzah and read Jewish newspapers. We even submitted our documents to go to Israel, but then we changed our mind because of the terrorism and unstable situation there. I wish we could move to Israel with our son’s family.

Glossary:

[1] NEP: The so-called New Economic Policy of the Soviet authorities was launched by Lenin in 1921. It meant that private business was allowed on a small scale in order to save the country ruined by the Revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War. They allowed priority development of private capital and entrepreneurship. The NEP was gradually abandoned in the 1920s with the introduction of the planned economy.
[2] Russian Revolution of 1917: Revolution in which the tsarist regime was overthrown in the Russian Empire and, under Lenin, was replaced by the Bolshevik rule. The two phases of the Revolution were: February Revolution, which came about due to food and fuel shortages during World War I, and during which the tsar abdicated and a provisional government took over. The second phase took place in the form of a coup led by Lenin in October/November (October Revolution) and saw the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks.

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

[4] Bolsheviks: Members of the movement led by Lenin. The name 'Bolshevik' was coined in 1903 and denoted the group that emerged in elections to the key bodies in the Social Democratic Party (SDPRR) considering itself in the majority (Rus. bolshynstvo) within the party. It dubbed its opponents the minority (Rus. menshynstvo, the Mensheviks). Until 1906 the two groups formed one party. The Bolsheviks first gained popularity and support in society during the 1905-07 Revolution. During the February Revolution in 1917 the Bolsheviks were initially in the opposition to the Menshevik and SR ('Sotsialrevolyutsionyery', Socialist Revolutionaries) delegates who controlled the Soviets (councils). When Lenin returned from emigration (16th April) they proclaimed his program of action (the April theses) and under the slogan 'All power to the Soviets' began to Bolshevize the Soviets and prepare for a proletariat revolution. Agitation proceeded on a vast scale, especially in the army. The Bolsheviks set about creating their own armed forces, the Red Guard. Having overthrown the Provisional Government, they created a government with the support of the II Congress of Soviets (the October Revolution), to which they admitted some left-wing SRs in order to gain the support of the peasantry. In 1952 the Bolshevik party was renamed the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

[5] Civil War (1918-1920): The Civil War between the Reds (the Bolsheviks) and the Whites (the anti-Bolsheviks), which broke out in early 1918, ravaged Russia until 1920. The Whites represented all shades of anti-communist groups - Russian army units from World War I, led by anti-Bolshevik officers, by anti-Bolshevik volunteers and some Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. Several of their leaders favored setting up a military dictatorship, but few were outspoken tsarists. Atrocities were committed throughout the Civil War by both sides. The Civil War ended with Bolshevik military victory, thanks to the lack of cooperation among the various White commanders and to the reorganization of the Red forces after Trotsky became commissar for war. It was won, however, only at the price of immense sacrifice; by 1920 Russia was ruined and devastated. In 1920 industrial production was reduced to 14% and agriculture to 50% as compared to 1913.

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

[7] Pogroms in Ukraine: In the 1920s there were many anti-Semitic gangs in Ukraine. They killed Jews and burnt their houses, they robbed their houses, raped women and killed children.

[8] Petliura, Simon (1879-1926): Ukrainian politician, member of the Ukrainian Social Democratic Working Party, one of the leaders of Centralnaya Rada (Central Council), the national government of Ukraine (1917-1918). Military units under his command killed Jews during the Civil War in Ukraine. In the Soviet-Polish war he was on the side of Poland; in 1920 he emigrated. He was killed in Paris by the Jewish nationalist Schwarzbard in revenge for the pogroms against Jews in Ukraine.

[9] Greens: Members of the gang headed by Ataman Zeleniy (his nickname means 'green' in Russian).

[10] German colonists/colony: Ancestors of German peasants, who were invited by Empress Catherine II in the 18th century to settle in Russia.

[11] Birobidzhan: Formed in 1928 to give Soviet Jews a home territory and to increase settlement along the vulnerable borders of the Soviet Far East, the area was raised to the status of an autonomous region in 1934. Influenced by an effective propaganda campaign, and starvation in the east, 41,000 Soviet Jews relocated to the area between the late 1920s and early 1930s. But, by 1938 28,000 of them had fled the regions harsh conditions, There were Jewish schools and synagogues up until the 1940s, when there was a resurgence of religious repression after World War II. The Soviet government wanted the forced deportation of all Jews to Birobidzhan to be completed by the middle of the 1950s. But in 1953 Stalin died and the deportation was cancelled. Despite some remaining Yiddish influences - including a Yiddish newspaper - Jewish cultural activity in the region has declined enormously since Stalin's anti-cosmopolitanism campaigns and since the liberalization of Jewish emigration in the 1970s. Jews now make up less than 2% of the region's population.

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

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

[14] Shevchenko T. G. (1814-1861): Ukrainian national poet and painter. His poems are an expression of love of the Ukraine, and sympathy with its people and their hard life. In his poetry Shevchenko stood up against the social and national oppression of his country. His painting initiated realism in Ukrainian art.

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

[16] Great Terror (1934-1938): During the Great Terror, or Great Purges, which included the notorious show trials of Stalin's former Bolshevik opponents in 1936-1938 and reached its peak in 1937 and 1938, millions of innocent Soviet citizens were sent off to labor camps or killed in prison. The major targets of the Great Terror were communists. Over half of the people who were arrested were members of the party at the time of their arrest. The armed forces, the Communist Party, and the government in general were purged of all allegedly dissident persons; the victims were generally sentenced to death or to long terms of hard labor. Much of the purge was carried out in secret, and only a few cases were tried in public 'show trials'. By the time the terror subsided in 1939, Stalin had managed to bring both the Party and the public to a state of complete submission to his rule. Soviet society was so atomized and the people so fearful of reprisals that mass arrests were no longer necessary. Stalin ruled as absolute dictator of the Soviet Union until his death in March 1953.

[17] Residence permit: The Soviet authorities restricted freedom of travel within the USSR through the residence permit and kept everybody's whereabouts under control. Every individual in the USSR needed residential registration; this was a stamp in the passport giving the permanent address of the individual. It was impossible to find a job, or even to travel within the country, without such a stamp. In order to register at somebody else's apartment one had to be a close relative and if each resident of the apartment had at least 8 square meters to themselves.

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

[19] Five-year plan: Five-year plans of social and industrial development in the USSR an element of directive centralized planning, introduced into economy in 1928. There were twelve five-year periods between 1929-90.

[20] Victory Day in Russia (9th May): National holiday to commemorate the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II and honor the Soviets who died in the war.

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

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

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

[24] Perestroika (Russian for restructuring): Soviet economic and social policy of the late 1980s, associated with the name of Soviet politician Mikhail Gorbachev. The term designated the attempts to transform the stagnant, inefficient command economy of the Soviet Union into a decentralized, market-oriented economy. Industrial managers and local government and party officials were granted greater autonomy, and open elections were introduced in an attempt to democratize the Communist Party organization. By 1991, perestroika was declining and was soon eclipsed by the dissolution of the USSR.
1.

Natan Shapiro

Natan Shapiro
Lvov
Ukraine
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of the interview: December 2002

Natan Shapiro and his wife Tsylia live in a two-room apartment that still shows of wealth in the past. They have nice furniture bought during the Soviet regime, carpets and nice dishes. Natan is a short gray-haired man with smiling eyes. He is lame – in his early childhood he was injured and has been an invalid since then. Natan makes the impression of a very reasonable and reserved man. One can tell that he is a man that knew how to reach his goals. He stayed calm talking about his life. Only when telling about his brother Jacob that perished during the war and his daughter Raissa that died he tried to hide tears in his eyes.

My family comes from Zhytomir region. My mother’s parents, Faidysh and Hanna Gutman, lived in the village of Ekaterinovka near Narodichi, 200 kilometers from Kiev. They were born and lived in this village like all other farmers – they worked hard to make their living, keeping a cow and working in the farm field and kitchen garden.

They were poor and had many children that began to work in their early childhood. Giving education to their children was out of the question – the family lived from hand to mouth.

Faidysh and Hanna were very religious: they observed all Jewish traditions, followed the kashrut and celebrated Sabbath and other Jewish holidays. There were three or four Jewish families in the village. There was no synagogue or cheder. Jews prayed at home as a rule and went to the village of Narodichi where there was a synagogue only on major Jewish holidays because this was far, about 15 kilometers from Ekaterinovka. They raised their children to be religious and respectful to traditions.

My mother’s older sister Rachel was born in 1875. She died of tuberculosis before the revolution [1]. Her son, Isaac Kofman, graduated from the Pedagogical Institute and University in Kiev and his son, Roman Kofman, became a famous musician. He is the conductor of the Ukrainian Symphonic Orchestra of chamber music now.

My mother’s second sister, whose name I don’t know, moved to America at the beginning of the 20th century. My mother had no information about her.

I knew well my mother’s sister Surah, or Sonia, as she was called in the family. She was born about 1880. Her husband, Joseph Feldman, was a blacksmith. They lived in Korosten and had three daughters and a son – Munia.

Surah’s husband Joseph died shortly before the Great Patriotic War [2] and Munia was recruited to the army. He was at the front and got married after the war. Now Munia and his wife live in Moscow. Aunt Sonia and her younger daughter Manya went into evacuation in Uzbekistan in 1941. Sonya died while in evacuation and Manya returned to Korosten after the war. She died in 2001.

My mother’s younger sister Mikhlia, her husband and children lived in the village of Lipkovichi near Korosten. Her husband, Shmulik Feldman, Joseph’s brother, was an agent at a salvageable materials office. He traveled to neighboring villages to exchange various haberdashery goods for waste paper and rags.

Mikhlia and Shmulik had three children: sons Boris and Faidysh and daughter Riva. Mikhlia’s sons were klezmer musicians– they played at Jewish weddings.

In the middle of the 1930s Mikhlia became a widow. Her older son Boris met a girl from Samarkand, married her and moved to her home town of Samarkand. Her younger son Faidysh went to the front at the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War.

Mikhlia failed to evacuate. When the fascists were close to the village Mikhlia and her 17-year-old daughter left their village. They walked a few dozen kilometers before they understood that the Germans were all around. Mikhlia and Riva returned to their village. They stayed quietly in their house until their neighbor discovered that they were home.

This Ukrainian neighbor and Mikhlia’s family got along very well before the war – they greeted each other on holidays and on Pesach Mikhlia brought them matzah and they brought their Jewish neighbors Easter bread at Easter. When the fascists occupied the village this neighbor went became a policeman. He took Mikhlia and Riva out of the house, gave them spades and ordered them to dig a deep pit in their own yard. After that he buried them alive.

Other neighbors told Faidysh about what happened when he returned home from the war. The policeman that killed his mother and sister so brutally left with the German army. Faidysh lost his leg during the war and was an invalid. He lived in Korosten and died in the mid-1990s.

My mother’s sister Rachel, Sonia and Mikhlia and their families observed Jewish traditions and celebrated all Jewish holidays. My mother’s older sister Rachel was the most religious one of them. They always lit candles at Sabbath, fasted at Yom Kippur and had matzah at Pesach. I don’t know where they got it from. I don’t think they could follow the kashrut during the Soviet period – there were no kosher products at that time, but they didn’t mix meat and dairy products for sure.

In 1893 my mother’s mother died at childbirth. Boris, who was born then, was raised by his older sisters. Grandfather Faidysh died shortly after his wife passed away. My mother told me how hard life was treating them – her sisters took any daytime jobs and my ten-year-old mother stayed at home looking after the baby. My mother dipped bread in sweet water and gave it to the baby instead of milk.

Boris was my mother’s favorite. I don’t know what he was doing before the revolution of 1917, but after the revolution he worked in the system of consumer services. During the Great Patriotic War Boris and his wife were in evacuation. Their daughter Bronia Gutman, a medical nurse, was recruited to the army and was a nurse on a sanitary train throughout the war. Boris died in Korosten in 1975, Bronia died in 2001.

My mother, Gutl Gutman, was born in Ekaterinovka in 1883. She didn’t get any education – she became an orphan at ten. At 13 my mother went to other people’s homes to do laundry, cleaning or babysitting.

My mother married Moisey Kipnis, a poor Jewish man who lived in the same village, when she was very young – she had just turned 17. They had a traditional Jewish wedding in Narodichi where the bride and bridegroom stood under a chuppah in the synagogue. After the religious ceremony they went to Ekaterinovka with their few guests.

My mother moved to live in her husband Moisey’s house. Moisey had horses and a cart and made his living by providing transportation services. Moisey and my mother had two children: Bronia, born in 1910, and Jacob, born in 1913. Shortly after Jacob was born Moisey caught a cold and died.

My mother lived unmarried for few years and then she married a widower 20 years older than herself. She met him through matchmakers, which was customary for Jews. Her husband, Isaac Shapiro, was my father. At her second wedding my mother also stood under the chuppah in Narodichi. My mother’s relatives welcomed Isaac into the family and then the newlyweds left for the village of Didkovichi where my father came from.

My father was born in a town in Zhytomir region [about 170 km from Kiev] in 1865. There were quite a few smaller towns with a Jewish population and I don’t know more details about where exactly he was born. I don’t have any information about his family.

He had two children with his first wife: I never met his son. As for his daughter, Haya-Surah, I met her by chance after the war. She lived in the Crimea with her family and came to her daughter’s wedding in Korosten. That was where I met my stepsister and kept in touch with her until she died in 1980.

I was born on 15th April 1918.

My father was a melamed, a Jewish teacher. He went from one Jewish family to another teaching their children. In winter 1920 he caught a cold. When he reached home he had a fever. He stayed in bed a few days and then he died.

I was a little older than one year at the time. Therefore, I don’t remember my father and there were no photographs for me to know what he looked like. My mother said that he observed Jewish traditions strictly: he prayed every day with his tefillin and tallit on and read old books in Hebrew. He was a very wise man and often other Jews came to ask his advice.

My mother became a widow again with three children. It was a hard period of the civil war [3], famine [4] and devastation. There were no pogroms [5] in the village – there were only a few Jewish families – but bandits robbed villagers of whatever little they had.

Once, my mother told me that her brother Boris was taking his cow to a bull in a neighboring village. All of a sudden a bandit came out of the forest, took the rope and began to pull the cow. My uncle was a strong and big man – he took the white guard [6] gangster by his hand and squeezed it so hard that he let go of the cow. Then he snatched the bayonet of the bandit and stabbed him to death and continued on his way. There was nobody around and my uncle was beyond any suspicion. Besides, he didn’t tell anyone about what happened until many years later.

We were very poor. My mother took care of us and went to do daily work – cleaning and washing – for other people. I stayed at home alone since Jacob and Bronia went to school. Once she left me on the stove bench. I got bored of lying there. I decided to get off the bench, but I fell and injured my leg badly. There was no doctor or assistant doctor in the village. Someone advised my mother to make a bath of salt water for my leg, but it got swollen and I felt even worse. I was only three and a half years old, but because of the pain I remember this.

My second cousin studied at the Medical University in Kiev and he arranged for me to have treatment at the orthopedic institute. I had a surgery at the hospital that was unsuccessful – my leg huddled up. I had to stay in hospital for three years.

There were five other boys from Kiev in my ward. Their parents visited them every day bringing them books. They read those children’s books to all of us. My mother visited me in hospital about once in two or three months. She couldn’t afford to visit me more often. She sat on the bed beside me and cried. When I was released from hospital in three years’ time I was an invalid.

I returned to our village in 1924. Life improved a bit. My mother and sister earned their living by sewing. The biggest value in the family was our ‘Singer’ sewing machine. My mother and sister made women’s and men’s clothes and all the villagers were their clients. They paid with food products: eggs, chicken or even a loaf of bread – my mother and sister were content with any pay they could get.

My mother came from a very religious family and we observed all Jewish traditions at home. And celebrating Sabbath was a must in our family! On Friday before Sabbath the house was cleaned thoroughly: my mother freshened up the floors with light clay, dusted our furniture, however few pieces we had, and changed the bed sheets.

On Friday morning my mother and sister cooked a festive dinner. It wasn’t much, but my mother always tried to make it different from everyday dinner – she made delicious challah and pastries.

We washed in the sauna and put on clean clothes. When the first star appeared in the sky my mother said a kiddush and lit a candle in a beautiful silver candle stand. This candle stand and other religious accessories – tallit, teffilin and old thick books in Hebrew that were in a box – were left from my father. On Saturday we took a rest. Sometimes our Jewish neighbors came to see us: adults had tea and talked and children played in the yard.

We also had kosher dishes for Pesach that my mother took down from the attic before Pesach. My mother always saved to make festive food at Pesach. We brought matzah from Korosten and my mother made chicken broth and chicken. My mother conducted seder and told us about the history of the Jewish people.

At Chanukkah my mother always gave us some money. She fasted at Yom Kippur and celebrated all other holidays. My mother prayed at home, since there was no synagogue in the village. Once we went to visit my aunt Sonia in Korosten at Pesach. My mother went to the synagogue and we stayed with my aunt’s children at home.

Later, when I went to school and became a pioneer [7] I gave up celebrating Jewish holidays. I was afraid that my schoolmates wouldn’t quite understand my religiosity. On the other hand, I loved my mother and hated to be disobedient, so I celebrated Sabbath with her and tried to follow the kashrut. However, we, children, didn’t fast – our mother said it wasn’t mandatory for us, especially since we didn’t usually have enough food in ordinary life.

In 1925 I went to the Ukrainian school in the village. There were no Jews in my class. My classmates treated me all right, but I still felt myself distant from them. I felt especially lonely after my brother Jacob, or Yasha as I called him, left to Korosten after finishing school in 1927. He finished lower secondary school in our village [7 years] and he could only get professional education in Korosten. There was no educational establishment in the village to continue education – and Korosten was a bigger town with more opportunities. Yasha went to Korosten and became an apprentice to a locksmith that had a private business. He became this locksmith’s apprentice and lived in his house.

I loved my brother and missed him a lot. I dreamed of finishing school and going to a big city like Kiev. I studied well and enjoyed being at school. My Ukrainian teachers treated me very well. I often got ill and they visited me at home.

There was no anti-Semitism in the village. All villagers liked my mother and always tried to help her, especially after she became a widow. However, we were still strangers. For example, when Ukrainian guys got drunk celebrating their recruitment to the army they went to break windows in Jewish houses. We installed strong oak shutters on the windows and shut them every time there were celebrations in the village.

I became a pioneer at school. My sister Bronia conducted the ceremony – she was secretary of the Komsomol unit [8] of the village and an active Komsomol member. Sometime later Henry Fridland, an educated Jewish guy, came to the village to hold the position of secretary of the village council. There were few educated people at that time and they were valued highly. The position of chairman of the village council was electoral, but the secretary was appointed by higher authorities. Henry met my sister. They worked together and had common interests.

In 1929 Bronia married Henry Fridland. They had a Komsomol type of wedding. Young people from the village came to the party and the chairman of the village council and secretary of the party organization made speeches. There was a samovar and pastries on the table. My mother insisted on a traditional Jewish wedding, but Henry and Bronia didn’t even wish to discuss this subject.

In early 1930 my mother’s sister Sonia and he husband Joseph insisted that we moved to Korosten for the reason that life was more difficult in the village and besides, there was no place for us, children to continue our education. We couldn’t make up our mind for some time – it was difficult to leave the house for Korosten where we had no place to live.

Joseph built a foundation of a house for us near his house and insisted that we moved. In fall 1930 our family moved to Korosten. At the beginning we lived in the house of Sonia and Joseph. By the summer of 1931 Joseph, my brother Jacob and Henry, my sister’s husband completed the construction of our house.

There was a room for Bronia and her family in this house: she and her husband had children already. My brother and I had a room, there was also my mother’s bedroom and a small dining-room. I went to a Russian secondary school in Korosten. There was a Jewish school in Korosten, but it would have been difficult for me to study there. We spoke Yiddish at home, but still I began my studies at a Ukrainian school.

Korosten was quite a big town – about fifty thousand people. The majority of the population was Jewish: Jews were shoemakers, carpenters, tailors, watchmakers, locksmiths, cabinetmakers, barbers. There were also Jewish teachers, doctors and musicians that played in the Jewish orchestra in the Cultural Center.

There was a big synagogue in Korosten and on Saturday my mother, Sonia and Joseph went there. On Jewish holidays our big family got together in Sonia’s big house. My uncle Joseph conducted seder.

As soon as we settled down in our big house my mother and sister took to sewing and my brother Jacob became an apprentice for a locksmith at the ‘October forgery’ plant. Our life was just beginning to improve when the period of famine began in 1932. We starved and suffered a lot. Henry took Bronia and the children to his parents in Malin – they kept livestock and could make ends meet.

My mother and Aunt Sonia often went to Kiev by train to buy bread and sell it in Korosten. They stood in lines a whole night. Once when they left and I was alone at home I went to bed, but heard somebody scratching on the window. I saw a dark silhouette of a man that was trying to get into the house through the window. He must have known that there were no adults in the house and that I was alone.

There were many robbers at that time that even murdered people for a piece of bread and there were cases of cannibalism. I got very scared and began to shout in a low voice, ‘Who’s there?’ The man left. When Yasha returned from his night shift I was sitting at the table holding an ax. Yasha brought some food – they received food at the plant and he tried to bring some food for me. Sometimes public activists from the plant brought pies stuffed with peas or cabbage to school. They were sweeter than cakes.

I finished the 8th grade in 1935 and wrote a letter to Postyshev [9], 2nd secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine. People said that Postyshev was a kind and sympathetic man and they often requested him to help resolve their problems. I sent him a long letter with the description of my story: my invalidity and illness. I also wrote that I wanted to continue my studies.

Some time afterward a letter from Postyshev arrived addressed to the town department of public education. There was also an assignment for me to go to the orthopedic institute in Kiev. My mother and I and the manager of the town department of public education went to Kiev.

I saw the city of my dreams again. I saw military marching along Kreschatik [the main street in Kiev] – there was no holiday but they were marching before going to another course of training. We walked through the city for several hours before we went to see a doctor.

I had to stay in hospital for a long time. I had a few surgeries to straighten my leg, but it was still shorter than my other leg. I also had an orthopedic shoe made in Kiev that made walking easier for me.

I missed a whole year at school and decided to go to work and study in the evening school like my brother did. My mother worked at a pharmacy. Although she had no education she learned to make distilled water at a special unit and weigh powders for making medications.

My mother wanted me to work with her, but I was not interested. Our relative, my father’s cousin Zalman, organized an accounting course in Korosten and admitted me there free of charge. Upon finishing the course I practiced at the post office where Henry was chief accountant. In 1937 I became an accountant in the military trade department where I worked until the beginning of the Great Patriotic War in June 1941.

In 1937, at the height of the period of Stalin’s repression [10], the director of the military trade department and chief accountant were arrested. It was hard to work – people reported on each other and colleagues began to be afraid of one another. At this period my mother’s younger brother Boris Gutman, who was the director of the industrial trade office, was arrested. He was released after a few months, but he wasn’t restored in his party membership or in his previous position.

My brother Jacob also had problems at that time. He became a member of the Communist Party in 1935 when he worked at the plant. The regional party committee appointed him as chairman of the ‘selpo’ – village trade association [network grocery of shops]. He was also secretary of the party unit of the village and took part in dispossession of farmers [11]. Someone even shot his gun at him one night, but only injured his arm.

In 1935 my brother was fired and expelled from the Party. Someone reported on him – he was falsely accused of dishonesty and bribing. An anonymous letter was enough at that time to accuse a person and fire him from work. There was no way to prove that you were innocent.

Shortly afterward he was recruited to the army and sent to serve in the Far East. My brother didn’t agree with his being expelled from the Party and wrote requests to the central committee of the Communist Party in Moscow. He was restored in the Party.

My mother begged him to return and I joined her in this urge. He demobilized and returned home at the end of 1940. He became a human resources inspector at the human resources department in Korosten. In March 1941 the military registry office sent him to take a training course in coding in Lutsk.

That was where he was when the war began. All cadets were given the rank of lieutenant and sent to the front. He was appointed to the railroad troops and retreated with them to Korosten. When he reached Korosten he ran home, but the house was locked – we had left it. He took a small pillow for the memory – it was called ‘dumka’ [thought] – that our mother had embroidered and left.

Shortly afterward the Germans occupied Malin and Korosten. My brother and 15 soldiers and officers of his military unit were captured by the Germans. They were locked in a wooden shed and there was a German guard near the shed. The shed had no foundation.

The officers tore off their straps so that the Germans couldn’t recognize their rank in case the Germans took them to interrogation in the morning and all captives began to dig a sap throwing the soil inside the shed to keep their plan secret from the Germans. When the sap was ready a few of them got outside and stabbed the guard with that same knife that they had used to make a sap.

All of them escaped, but only five of them managed to get to the Soviet troops. They went through the woods and all their food was what they could get in the forest: mainly these were berries. Jacob and our other militaries covered a distance of over 400 kilometers. They reached Chernigov where there was a sanitary train where my cousin Bronia was a medical nurse. She saw my brother in town by chance. She told us this story after the war.

This was the last information about my brother. He didn’t return from the war. Around 1947 we received a notification that he was missing. On the basis of this certificate my mother got an addition of a few rubles to her pension.

We evacuated: my mother and I, Bronia, Henry, who was released from the army and their three children – Lyonia, the oldest, born in 1929, Rachel and Misha, the youngest, born in 1939. We hired a horse-drawn cart to get to the station and on 3rd July we got on a train heading to the East.

The train was bombed while people were getting on it. Many people were killed. Little Misha shook his finger at the plane saying, ‘Don’t bomb us. Don’t kill my mother.’ We were lucky to survive. We got stuck in Malin for several hours until the railroad track was repaired.

Uncle Boria was waiting for us in Malin. He had evacuated his family before and he himself evacuated much later. We said good-bye to him. He gave us a bowl of sour cream – a buttery in Malin was destroyed and people took as much as they could take with them. I shared this sour cream with other people in our railcar.

We got to the station of Vorozhba near Kiev. The train stopped giving way to the trains that headed to the front. We didn’t know how long we had to wait. My mother went to wash children’s underwear taking advantage of this occasion and I went to fetch some water. All of a sudden an air raid began and a few trains at the station left. My mother and I tried to run to catch our train, but I could move only very slowly without my artificial limb and when we got to the track where our train was supposed to be we only saw its tail. Our belongings, however few, documents and my orthopedic shoe were in this train.

After some time we managed to get on an open platform of a military train. It was getting cold at night. A woman gave me her cotton jacket to keep warm. Then during one of the stops the train made it to a place where there was a train with evacuated people that headed to the East and we were allowed to board it.

The only thing we had was the kettle that I had with me when I went to fetch some water. My mother didn’t let me get off the train when it stopped. Our fellow travelers fetched us water, soup or tea – whatever was available – in this kettle.

It was a long trip. The train stooped near Penza in Russia, 1500 kilometers from home. We were ordered to get off the train since it was supposed to take the wounded soldiers from the front. The locals took us to their villages on their carts. My mother and I and another family stayed overnight in a ‘kibitka’ [a hut] without windows or doors. We were given half a loaf of bread. It was cold at night and we were scared of the wolves howling.

We stayed there two or three days before I went to look for a job or a place to stay. I found a place to live in the village of Olenevka, Kondylskiy district, Penza region. There was a big Soviet farm some five kilometers from the village where I was hired as an accountant. My mother worked helping with the weeding of beetroots in the village. She was used to hard manual worked and she was doing all right.

I met Joseph Koenigsman, a Jew from Estonia, a veterinary, in the village. Doctors had advised his wife to change the climate and they moved to the southern steppes around 1939, after the Baltic Republics joined the USSR [12]. I worked and stayed overnight in the office. Joseph visited me every evening. We read newspapers and discussed news from the front.

Once he came to the office and told me to take my pillow and blanket and move to his house. His family was kind to me and when they heard that my mother was in the village they told me to bring her to their apartment. They kept livestock: chicken, geese and ducks and we had plenty of food.

Every evening after work I brought some bread to the station hoping to meet someone that could give me some information about my sister. I didn’t meet anyone, but just gave this bread to other people that were going into evacuation.

In October 1941 the fascists came close to Moscow. We decided to move farther to the east – to Middle Asia. Our landlords, Joseph and Linda, were in Penza – Linda was injured when she fell from the cart on the way and was taken to hospital. Joseph was with her to take care of her.

My employers felt reluctant to let me leave work, but I explained that I had to find my cousin and her children. I wrote a warm thankful letter to our landlords. We locked the house and left.

We reached Djambul, Kazakh SSR, Middle Asia, 2500 kilometers from Kiev. It was overcrowded and we spent a few nights under benches in a park. I went to the employment agency where they told me that there was vacancy of an accountant at the tax commission in the district center of Mikhailovka. A senior inspector came from there to take my mother and me to the town. We were welcomed warmly – we got a delicious lunch and were taken to the apartment where we were to stay.

I was doing well at work and my management valued me high. I was responsible for collection of taxes. Since I was a Komsomol member I was sent to distant villages. I rode on a horse regardless of my invalidity. I went to a distant village – a German colony [13]. German families were deported there from various corners of the Soviet Union in the early 1930s [14]. Of course they didn’t want to pay military taxes to contribute to our victory over Germany.

Chairman of the collective farm [15] gave me a horse-drawn cart and a cabman and I made the rounds of all German houses telling them to come to the meeting. I took the floor at the meeting telling people how important it was to pay the tax to contribute to the victory. One German said, ‘I have no money. I’d rather go to an aryk [artificial channel] and get drowned.’ I replied that since it was hot there was no water in the aryk and he should better find money to pay the tax.

In the morning all families brought money to my office. I packed this money, about 40 thousand rubles, into my military bag that I got from my brother and I took this money to Djambul. The deputy director of the regional inspection office from Kishinev valued me highly and wanted to take me with him after the war.

My mother and I were trying to find my sister. I kept writing letters to all towns where she might have been. I also wrote to Buguruslan where the central evacuation agency was located. It kept information about all people in evacuation. We were lucky – at the end of 1943 we received a letter from Buguruslan. It said that my sister and her family stayed at Kinel railway station near Kuibyshev.

I took a leave from work and set out on my way to find her. I took a 10 kilo bag of dried bread with me. I obtained a letter from the district executive committee requesting all Soviet state and party authorities to provide assistance to me with food and in my search.

When I saw my sister I didn’t recognize her – so starved they were. Misha, the youngest had starved to death a month before I came. He begged his mother for a piece of bread when he was dying. I stayed with my sister for a month. Then my brother-in-law quit his job and we set out on our way to where my mother and I were staying. Henry became an auditor in Mikhailovka and our life wasn’t too bad.

We tried to observe all Jewish traditions in the evacuation: my mother didn’t do anything on Saturday, made the Saturday meal on Friday and fasted on Yom Kippur.

We were homesick. We had no information about Yasha, but we were hoping that he was alive and would search for us. Kiev was liberated in November 1943 and I submitted a request to obtain a permit to go back home.

At that time my management set a package of my documents to Moscow to be processed to issue me a bonus for my excellent work. I didn’t wait until I got this bonus: on 20th April 1944 we left for Korosten. The deputy director was trying to convince me to go to Kishinev with him, but we were eager to go home.

Our trip back was comfortable – we went by passenger train and had enough food with us. We arrived in Korosten at the beginning of May 1944. Our house was gone – a Ukrainian man had removed it with the foundation to the outskirts of the town where he lived. My neighbor, who was in conflict with this man, told me about it. I sued this man in court, but my neighbor didn’t want to witness against his friend. He told me that he made up with his friend and changed his mind about witnessing in court. The court didn’t satisfy my request.

My mother and I and my sister’s family settled down in an abandoned house on the outskirts of Korosten. When we repaired it I caught a cold that resulted in pneumonia. We managed to get sulfidin that was hard to get at that time and I recovered.

When the military trade office was established I went to work there as inspector at the human resources department. This was my brother’s position and I had an illusion that if I worked there he would return from the front. In 1945 Bronia Gutman demobilized. She told us about my brother.

In the military trade office I was made responsible for the organization of the manufactured goods association. It was very difficult – there was no equipment necessary for this association or anything else that was necessary. I went around the neighboring towns to look for what I could get. My mother’s sewing machine – my mother took it with her into evacuation – gave a start to the sewing production shop. Gradually I organized the operation of the association that had few shops and was appointed as director of this association.

We had a great team at work. On 1st May and October Revolution Day [16] we went to parades with our families and then our photographer took a photo of all of us in the yard of our association.

In 1948 director of our trade association told me that it was time for me to join the Party. Key personnel were supposed to be in the Party. I became a candidate to the Party and then a member of the Communist Party. My mother accepted this with understanding regardless of her religiosity.

In 1949 I was sent to Moscow to take an advanced course of management. It lasted four and a half months and I finished the course with excellent results. I returned home to Korosten and took the position of director of the manufactured goods association. I was the director of this association for over 30 years.

In the early 1950s quite a few audits were arranged by higher authorities. They were commissions from higher state and party authorities. There were also representatives of the audit department to inspect our work, receipt of raw materials from storage facilities and shipment of ready products. They also audited our financial documents.

This was the period of anti-Semitism on the state level [17] and they were looking to find mistakes or drawbacks in my work to have a reason to fire me. However, they couldn’t find anything – I did my job well and our association always took leading places in the socialist competition.

Stalin’s death in 1953 was a real tragedy for all of us. It felt like the state wasn’t going to survive without him and like life had stopped. The Twentieth Party Congress [18], denunciation of the cult of Stalin was a big surprise for us. We were all crying when a letter of the Central Committee of the USSR was read at the party meeting in our department, about the denunciation of the cult of Stalin, but at the beginning it was only disclosed to the party members – that was why it was called ‘closed letter’ meaning ‘sensitive.’ We were stunned to hear that Stalin was to blame for the death of dozens of thousands of repressed and executed people.

My personal life was good. I met a friend – Fania – in the evacuation. Fania came from Korosten. Our parents were hoping that we would get married when all of a sudden I met another woman. In fall 1946 I saw three pretty girls at my work. They all looked nice, but one of them was like my destiny walking to meet me. The girls went to have their photo taken at a photo shop of our association. When they left I asked our photographer to make an extra picture of the girls.

Korosten was a small town and soon I found out that the girl’s name was Tsylia Potievskaya and that she lived in Malin. She came to Korosten on a visit. On that very night I went to meet Tsylia. I had never met a prettier girl in my life. She left home and we corresponded for about two months. Then I went to Malin to meet her mother and propose to Tsylia.

We had a small party and left by freight train to Korosten on 1st January 1947. We had a civil wedding ceremony at the registry office in Korosten. When Tsylia and I arrived Fania was at the station to look at Tsylia. In due time Fania married her cousin brother and became friends with my wife.

Tsylia was born in Malin, Zhytomir region, in 1924. Her father worked at a furniture factory. He died in 1936. During the war Tsylia and her mother were in evacuation in Yangiyul, near Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Tsylia’s brother was at the front.

Tsylia’s father wasn’t religious while her mother observed all Jewish traditions and raised Tsylia religious. Although Tsylia was a Komsomol member it didn’t interfere with her strive to observe Jewish traditions and celebrate holidays. She fasted at Yom Kippur. Tsylia didn’t complete her secondary education due to the war. After the war she worked as accountant assistant and then as an accountant at the post office.

In Korosten we had a wedding party where we invited my friends. My mother wished we had a traditional Jewish wedding, but since I was a manager and religiosity was persecuted by the Soviet authorities we couldn’t have it. If my management found out that we had a religious wedding I would have had problems at work and with my party authorities. I could have been expelled or reprimanded. Actually I was an atheist.

My mother tried to observe Jewish traditions and celebrate holidays after we returned to Korosten after the war. We had matzah at Pesach. In the first years after the war my mother was involved in charity – she collected money and clothes to help Jewish children that had lost their parents to the war.

My mother, Tsylia and I and my sister Bronia and her family lived together. We lived in the house on the outskirts of Korosten where we settled down after evacuation. We repaired it and added some space. We ended up with having four rooms and a kitchen with a stove stoked with wood. It served for heating and cooking food.

Gradually we bought furniture, my mother sewed curtains and we made our home a cozy place. Here were fruit trees planted around the house and my mother and sister grew greeneries in a small kitchen garden in the backyard of the house.

In 1947 our daughter Raissa was born and in 1956 our son Igor. Tsylia worked at the trade office for some time and then became an accountant at school. We submitted our documents to receive a new apartment, since we all lived in that old house that we found after the war.

In 1962 our trade department gave us three apartments in a new house: one apartment for my family, one for my sister’s and a one-bedroom apartment for my mother. My mother died a year after we received our apartment. My sister Bronia died in 1984.

Of course, we couldn’t raise our children religious in those years – we didn’t observe Jewish traditions. Only my mother and Tsylia’s mother told their grandchildren about Jewish traditions and gave them money at Chanukkah.

Our children studied well at school. Our daughter Raissa tried to enter the Medical Institute after finishing school, but it was impossible for a Jewish girl to enter a higher educational institution at that time. There was anti-Semitism on a state level and there was a secret direction of the government to admit no Jews to the most popular higher educational institutions and maximum 5 percent – to less popular ones [19].

My daughter failed to enter the institute and went to study at a medical school. She became a medical nurse. She married Igor Motylyov, a Jewish man from Lvov, and moved to live with her husband. After she had two sons my wife insisted that we moved to Lvov to be closer to our daughter. We exchanged our apartment for an apartment in Lvov in 1980 and stayed to live here.

My wife was a pensioner and I worked part time at the manufacture association in Lvov – I made boards for orders and medals. My daughter was diagnosed with lymphoganulomatosis. She didn’t have a happy life with her husband. She lived the last years of her life with us. It is hard for me to talk about it I shall never forget how tragically she was dying. She died in 1986.

Raissa had two children: Pavel, born in 1972 and Alexandr, born in 1977. Pavel lives in Los Angeles, USA, and Alexandr lives in Israel. Pavel has a son – Rayan, my great grandson, and Alexandr has a daughter – Sopha. Our grandchildren write us and call on our birthdays. They invite me to visit them, but I can’t afford the trip. However, we hope to see them one day.

Our son Igor entered the Forestry Academy in Leningrad. Anti-Semitism was not so strong in Leningrad during the Soviet power. Upon graduation he worked in Korosten and then moved to Lvov with us. Igor is married: his wife is called Irina, and they have two children, a son called Sergey and a daughter called Alyona.

Irina, our daughter-in-law, is Russian, but she studied Hebrew, knows and observes Jewish traditions and is a volunteer at the local department of Hesed. Alyona studies at the Jewish school. She sings and dances at the children’s Jewish ensemble. She was on tour in Israel. Irina went there with her.

Regretfully, my wife and I have never been to Israel. In 1995 we submitted our documents to move to Israel, but we decided to stay due to terrorism and wars that shake the country. I hope to go there with our son’s family, but taking this decision may take time. It’s hard to change one’s life at our age.

Perestroika [20] came as fresh wind for my wife and me. By that time I realized that we had lived our life in a cruel and merciless regime. We didn’t have freedom of word or traveling or read books of our favorite writers. I wasn’t a devoted communist and by that time I wasn’t a party member any longer. After I became a pensioner I lost my party membership certificate and never recalled it.

I agree with my wife: we are very enthusiastic about the possibilities for people to travel and chose a place of living. There is freedom of speech. It is good that people got to know about the tragedy of Jewish people during the Great Patriotic War. There were books published that were not allowed before. The Jewish life has revived. Synagogues were opened and Jewish communities established. We can state proudly now that we are Jews.

Hesed [21] and the Jewish society Sholem Aleichem [22] provide medications for us. We attend clubs there to communicate with other Jews of our age. We also read Jewish newspapers. It is easier for us to be near people that support us in spirit, in particular, after our terrible loss – the death of our daughter. We celebrated Jewish holidays: Pesach, Purim, Yom Kippur and Chanukah. Igor and his family come to see us on holidays and we sit at the table all together. I also like to celebrate holidays in Hesed.

Glossary

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

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

[3] Civil War (1918-1920): The Civil War between the Reds (the Bolsheviks) and the Whites (the anti-Bolsheviks), which broke out in early 1918, ravaged Russia until 1920. The Whites represented all shades of anti-communist groups - Russian army units from World War I, led by anti-Bolshevik officers, by anti-Bolshevik volunteers and some Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. Several of their leaders favored setting up a military dictatorship, but few were outspoken tsarists. Atrocities were committed throughout the Civil War by both sides. The Civil War ended with Bolshevik military victory, thanks to the lack of cooperation among the various White commanders and to the reorganization of the Red forces after Trotsky became commissar for war. It was won, however, only at the price of immense sacrifice; by 1920 Russia was ruined and devastated. In 1920 industrial production was reduced to 14% and agriculture to 50% as compared to 1913.

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

[5] Pogroms in Ukraine: In the 1920s there were many anti-Semitic gangs in Ukraine. They killed Jews and burnt their houses, they robbed their houses, raped women and killed children.

[6] White Guards: A counter-revolutionary gang led by General Denikin, famous for their brigandry and anti-Semitic acts all over Russia; legends were told of their cruelty. Few survived their pogroms.

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

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

[9] Postyshev, Pavel (1887-1939): political activist. In 1926 he became secretary of the Central committee of the Communist Party (of Bolsheviks) of Ukraine. In 1930-1933 secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (of Bolsheviks), 1933 2nd secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (of Bolsheviks) of Ukraine. In 1937-38 secretary of the Regional and Town Committee of the Communist party (of Bolsheviks) in Kuibyshev, candidate to members of the political bureau of the Central Committee. Repressed in 1934-38. Rehabilitated posthumously.

[10] Great Terror (1934-1938): During the Great Terror, or Great Purges, which included the notorious show trials of Stalin's former Bolshevik opponents in 1936-1938 and reached its peak in 1937 and 1938, millions of innocent Soviet citizens were sent off to labor camps or killed in prison. The major targets of the Great Terror were communists. Over half of the people who were arrested were members of the party at the time of their arrest. The armed forces, the Communist Party, and the government in general were purged of all allegedly dissident persons; the victims were generally sentenced to death or to long terms of hard labor. Much of the purge was carried out in secret, and only a few cases were tried in public 'show trials'. By the time the terror subsided in 1939, Stalin had managed to bring both the Party and the public to a state of complete submission to his rule. Soviet society was so atomized and the people so fearful of reprisals that mass arrests were no longer necessary. Stalin ruled as absolute dictator of the Soviet Union until his death in March 1953.

[11] Kulaks: In the Soviet Union the majority of wealthy peasants that refused to join collective farms and give their grain and property to Soviet power were called kulaks, declared enemies of the people and exterminated in the 1930s.

[12] Occupation of the Baltic Republics (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania): Although the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact regarded only Latvia and Estonia as parts of the Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, according to a supplementary protocol (signed in 28th September 1939) most of Lithuania was also transferred under the Soviets. The three states were forced to sign the 'Pact of Defense and Mutual Assistance' with the USSR allowing it to station troops in their territories. In June 1940 Moscow issued an ultimatum demanding the change of governments and the occupation of the Baltic Republics. The three states were incorporated into the Soviet Union as the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republics.

[13] German colonists/colony: Ancestors of German peasants, who were invited by Empress Catherine II in the 18th century to settle in Russia.

[14] Forced deportation to Siberia: Stalin introduced the deportation of certain people, like the Crimean Tatars and the Chechens, to Siberia. Without warning, people were thrown out of their houses and into vehicles at night. The majority of them died on the way of starvation, cold and illnesses.

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

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

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

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

[19] Five percent quota: In tsarist Russia the number of Jews in higher educational institutions could not exceed 5% of the total number of students.

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

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

[22] Sholem Aleichem Society in Ukraine: The first Jewish associations were established in many towns of the country in the early 1990s. Many of them were called Sholem Aleichem Society. They had educational and cultural goals. Their purpose was to make assimilated Soviet Jews interested in the history and culture of their people, opening Jewish schools, kindergartens, libraries, literature and historical clubs.

Semyon Tilipman

Semyon Tilipman and his wife Tatiana Tilipman

Semyon Tilipman
Odessa
Ukraine
Interviewer: Natalia Fomina
Date of interview: October, 2003

Semyon Moiseevich Tilipman, his wife Tatiana and their younger son Evgeni live in a four-room apartment in a new district of Odessa. Semyon Moiseevich has kept his military bearing. He is tall and slender man with thinning gray hair on his forehead. Semyon Moiseevich can hardly speak considering his age of 87. Semyon’s wife Tatiana Israilevna is little, nice and lively women of 83. Semyon Moiseevich often made interval while speaking, but Tatiana Israilevna helped her husband every now and then mentioning details of the family history that she remembered well. In one room there is a small sofa covered with a plaid and a nice Chinese carpet on the wall. The living room is big and bright. It’s beautifully furnished with the furniture pieces that they bought in the 1970s. There is a dinner set of Meisen china in the cupboard, old bronze candle stands on the TV set and few portraits of Tatiana Israilevna and Semyon Moiseevich on the walls.

My paternal grandfather Shymon Tilipman was living in Dzygovka town, Vinnitsa region. [Dzygovka is a town in Yampol district, Podolsk province, in 1897 its population was 7,194 residents and 2,187 of them were Jews.] I have very little information about him. I don’t know where he was born or what he did for a living. I was named Shymon after my grandfather. I was born in 1916 and since Jews traditionally name their children after their deceased relatives I guess my grandfather must have passed away before. I was the third son in the family. My older brother Boris was born in 1911, I believe my grandfather died some time at this period. I don’t know anything about my grandmother. My wife Tatiana grew up in Dzygovka where people knew each other, and she thinks my grandfather Shymon Tilipman was a melamed. I am sure my grandfather and grandmother were religious. My father was raised religious. I know about my grandparents’ four children. They were born in Dzygovka.

My father’s older brother Leib was born in the late 1880s. My wife says he was a Yiddish teacher in the Jewish school in the village. She knew him. I only saw him once in the early 1930s when uncle Leib came to Odessa to exchange some foreign money to rubles. He didn’t mention to my father the purpose of his visit. He probably didn’t want my father to know that he was receiving money from abroad. I think my father had one more brother who moved abroad and uncle Leib received money from him. Private currency exchange agents in Odessa cheated him. They took his currency and gave him a ‘doll’ [a pile of paper sheets with banknotes on the top and at the bottom of a pile]. Since this operation was illegal there was nobody he could complain to and uncle Leib went back home with nothing for his pain. Uncle Leib died Dzygovka in the early 1930s. He had three children: two sons and a daughter. His daughter Basia visited Odessa in 1936 and my future wife took her around the town. After the Great Patriotic War 1 my wife and I received an invitation to Basia daughter’s wedding, but we failed to go there because our children were too little then. We didn’t keep any contacts with them and have no information about them.

My father’s brother Meir Tilipman lived in Odessa. I think he was born in the late 1890s. Meir was ill with tuberculosis since his childhood. He didn’t have a profession. Meir’s wife was some distant relative and belonged to the Tilipman kinship. She died long before the Great Patriotic War. They had two sons: Shymon and Yania. Shymon, the older one, was born in Odessa in 1923. My parents kept in touch and supported them. Meir and his son stayed in Odessa during occupation. They perished. Shymon was at the front. He demobilized in 1947 and returned to Odessa. He got married. His wife Tsylia was a Jew. I attended his son Edik circumcision ritual. Edik was born in 1948. The ritual took place in their home and they invited the only mohel in Odessa Mr Biebergal. Somebody from the community assisted him. Few years after the army Shymon was a sailor and worked for a whaling association called Antarctic. Shymon told me that when his boat harbored in the ports abroad he spoke Yiddish to local Jews that Soviet sailors were forbidden to do. They were allowed to land in groups of three so that one of them kept an eye on the others and reported to his management. So someone reported on Shymon and he was fired. After dismissal Shymon was a tailor and then worked at the machine building plant in Odessa. Shymon’s son Edik tried to enter a college in Odessa several times. He failed at exams for something ridiculous like a wrong description of a subject in his composition. He finished a college in Irkutsk, [in Russia] in the end. Shymon was a talented and hardworking man. He studied English on his own. In the 1970s Shymon and Tsylia moved to USA. They live in New Jersey. We correspond with them. Edik lives in Israel.

My father Moisey Tilipman was born in Dzygovka town some time in the 1890s. My father was raised religious. I think he studied in cheder. Father spoke Yiddish and prayed in Hebrew. He met my mother in the town when he was in his teens.

My mother’s parents came from Soroki town [a district town in Bessarabia province, today in Moldavia; according to census of 1897 there were 15,351 residents and 8,783 of them were Jews. In 1910 there was a synagogue and 16 prayer houses in Soroki] in Bessarabia 2. All I know about my maternal grandfather is that his name was Naum Davidovich. Before 1940 Soroki belonged to Romania and we didn’t have any contact with my mother’s relatives. In the 1950s I visited Soroki in search of my mother’s family, but I didn’t find anyone. I don’t even know the name of my maternal grandmother.

I remember my mother’s brother Moisha Davidovich residing in Odessa. His wife’s name was Riva. They had two children: son Naum and daughter Rosa. They were born in Odessa. I guess, Moisha moved to Odessa before the October Revolution 3. I know that he delivered bread to customers of a bakery in Odessa. During the famine [in Ukraine] 4 in 1932-1933 he supported our family. He perished along with my parents. He and both of them were convinced that there was nothing to fear about Germans. They even convinced other Jews to stay in their homes. Riva and her children were in evacuation and survived. Aunt Riva died in the 1950s. Rosa moved to the USA in the 1970s and we lost contact with her. Naum finished the Jewish college called Euromol on the corner of Kanatnaya and Kirov Streets. He was a sociable young man and was fond of photography. After finishing his College he worked at the plant named after Lenin. He managed to arrange for evacuation of his mother and sister with other employees of his plant to Sverdlovsk. From there he went to the army and was demobilized after he was wounded at the front. He returned to Sverdlovsk and worked as chief engineer of the machine building plant. Naum spent his vacation in Odessa every year. He died six years ago, in 1998.

My mother Hana Davidovich was born in Soroki in late 1890s. At the age of 14 she came to Dzygovka located on the opposite bank of the Dnestr River to study sewing. She met my father there. My father’s parents were against their marriage. They were probably a wealthier family than my mother's. My parents moved to Odessa secretly in the late 1900s. They had a traditional Jewish wedding in Odessa. My grandfather didn’t forgive my father. He didn’t have any contacts with father. My parents never visited Dzygovka from what I remember. Our father loved our mother dearly and respected her. He believed and so do I that a woman is the head of a family. She needs to be cared for and get everything best. My mother was a Greek type: she had swarthy skin, big black eyes and thick hair. She was nice and kind like all mothers are.

In 1911 my parents had their older son born. It seems they named him Boris. In 1913 another boy was born whose name I can’t remember. I was born in 1916. I was born on the last day of Pesach, but since it is observed on different dates of the European calendar I wrote it in my documents as 22 April – Lenin’s birthday 5. I was named Shymon after my paternal grandfather. Later I changed the name Shymon to Semyon for my sons’ sake. [Editor’s note: Semyon wanted his sons to have a patronymic that sounded more familiar to Russians.] When I was born we were living in a basement apartment in Malorossiyskaya Street, Lazarev Street at present. As far as I remember there were 8 steps downstairs to our apartment. I still have a scar on my finger on the right hand I had squeezed with the door to the basement when I was about 5 years old. There were two rooms in the apartment, I believe. There was no kitchen, but we had a kerosene stove and a table in the corner of the room. In 1921 during the famine in Odessa my older brothers starved to death. They were buried on the same day at Jewish cemetery. At that time an apartment on the first floor was vacated and we moved there. It was bigger than our previous apartment. I remember that the front door opened into some kind of a kitchen. I remember my mother cutting bread into small pieces and my older brother always watching her. He never had enough food and was always hungry. I don’t remember any furniture. I remember that a window faced the yard and there was sufficient light in the apartment. My father’s brother Meir moved into our former apartment in the basement.

My mother didn’t work. My father was a vendor at the Alexeevski market. He had a small booth shop at the market selling something. According to gradations of Soviet authorities he was a ‘non-working element’ [a term that determined businessmen in the former USSR at that period]. I went to school at the age of six in 1922. There were specific schools where I could be admitted as a son of a ‘non-working element’. There was a big higher secondary school in Komsomolskaya Street where they didn’t admit me. I went to lower secondary school #64 in Vneshniaya Street. I remember director of my school Vasili Ivanovich. He was our teacher of mathematics. I was good at mathematics. My favorite subjects were arithmetic, geometry and algebra. I also remember our art teacher. Her patronymic was Petrovna and we blandly teased her calling her 'Petrushka'. I don’t even remember whether I ever became a pioneer at school. At that period we lived in a new apartment in Maloarnautskaya Street where there was a pioneer fore post that was sort of a pioneer club. I remember that Stoliarskiy students often performed there. [Editor’s note: Pyotr Solomonovich Stolarskiy, 1871–1944, was a Soviet violinist and pedagog. One of the founders of the Soviet violin school. He developed a new method of teaching to play the violin. In 1933 he organized the first 10-year music school that was given his name.] Many of his pupils became famous musicians. There were other educational activities in this pioneer club. I also remember the cinema theater named after Trotskiy 6 behind the corner in Preobrazhenskogo Street. There was an inn nearby where farmers who brought their food products to sell at Privoz [the biggest market in Odessa] stayed. There was a big yard where about two dozens wagons could park where they had a big screen to show movies. We sneaked in there across the roof of a neighboring house.

In 1923 my brother Fima was born. In 1924 my sister Ghenia was born. They were both born in the apartment on the second floor of a two-storied wing in the yard in 84, Arnautskaya Street. There was running water in this apartment, but the toilet was in the yard. There was a hallway, a small kitchen and a big room in this apartment. In the early 1930s we had a kerosene lamp hanging in the center of the ceiling. This room was my parents and my sister’s bedroom. I slept in the hallway. As for Fima, I guess he slept in the kitchen. Our neighbors were Jews, the family of Kapels. I remember when Ghenia was born. There is a Jewish traditional celebration of birth with lekakh mit bronfn [honey cake with vodka in Yiddish]. My mother made delicious lekakh. Our neighbors – the Kapel family – uncle Moisha and aunt Riva and Meir came to celebrate. Ghenia was a long waited girl in the family. I also remember something else. Once our parents went to the theater and we, kids, were at home. We put Ghenia to bed – and she slept with our mother. Ghenia was about five years old. The wing of the house where we lived was old. A mouse or even a rat got into the bed and bit Ghenia on her temple. Fima and I chased after it but gave up when it got between our wardrobe and the wall. A day later it was discovered in a small drawer in the samovar table where we kept spoons and forks. Ghenia had injections against rabies made, but everything turned out to be all right and she didn’t even have a scar afterward.

My parents were religious. On holidays they went to the synagogue on the corner of Staroportofrankovskaya and Novorybnaya Streets. This synagogue was ruined during the Great Patriotic War. There were few other synagogues in Odessa. I attended the synagogue with my parents when I was 10-12 years old, but I don’t remember any details. I remember that my father liked listening to a good cantor. My parents spoke Yiddish and I could understand Yiddish well. They observed Sabbath. I remember my mother lighting candles. I don’t know whether my father worked on Saturday. I just don’t remember. I didn’t care. My mother made Gefilte fish and matzah dishes at Pesach: pudding and pancakes. My father and I liked goose fat cracklings. My mother put a bowl of cracklings on the table for us to ‘satisfy our eyes’ hunger’. I remember what she said: ‘When you want to give someone food to eat to his heart’s content give him a lot of food and his appetite would be half less’. I also remember Chanukkah and dreidel and we got Chanukkah gelt. My mother went to buy food at the Privoz: fish, poultry, vegetables and fruit. I also remember that mother bought live chickens and took them to a shochet. There was a shochet at Privoz for a long time after the Great Patriotic War.

My father had to fight to make his living. He was a vendor, but he didn’t quite like it and in the 1920s he went to work as a binder at the ‘Chermorskaya Communa’ publishing office. Since his salary was not enough to support the family, he additionally made elastic bands, leather wristlets and shoelaces. Actually such small craftsmen preferred to unite into teams to be able to purchase necessary equipment and materials. My father treated leather in the attic. I helped my father as much as I could with operating his weaving equipment or, wristlet and elastic band making units. Or I fixed shoelace tips with a special device. I don’t remember how these goods were sold, I guess there was someone whom I didn’t know.

I remember the Lerner family. I believe the head of the family was my father’s companion. They lived in #28, Komsomolskaya Street. I remember that they visited us and we visited them. I remember that my parents’ closest friends were the Pavlovskiye, a Jewish family. Their son Izia was about the same age with me. Izia had twins born in 1947: Leonid and Alexandr. They finished VGIK [All-Union State College of Cinematography in Moscow]. Alexandr became a popular cinema producer. Izia Pavlovski’s father was a tailor. (When we returned to Odessa after the Great Patriotic War he made clothes for our children. I remember that he altered my uniform overcoat to make a coat for my older son Michael in the 1950s. I can’t remember when he died. )

I finished the 7 years school in 1930. To continue my education I needed to get some work experience. It was difficult to find a job. There was an employment agency in a lane in Grecheskaya square. There were long lines of people near this agency and I remember how my friends and I stayed overnight near the sculptures of two lions in Deribassovskaya Street waiting for our turn to get inside the agency. I obtained a recommendation to a vocational school at Odessa cinema factory: this was how Odessa cinema studio was called at the time. I studied at school three years and worked as an electrician at the studio. Every day I commuted to the studio by tram #25. It was always overcrowded and people were hanging from its rear and sides. When a trapezium-shaped wagon rode in a street it hitched up a tram occasionally. I remember snowdrifts in Odessa on the first winter of my work at the studio. My mother was very worried about me since I was only 14 years old. To make sure I got to work all right she managed to find a phone from where she called the studio. This was the first time my mother and I talked on the phone. Our voices sounded different on the phone and to make sue that I was I, my mother asked me what I had for breakfast. She believed that she was talking to me when I said that I had semolina for breakfast. My wife and I still laugh remembering this.

I joined Komsomol 7 at vocational school, but I never took an active part in it. All I can remember is that I attended Komsomol meetings. At that time communists and party leaders used to report to people on their activities and Komsomol members were to attend Party meetings where they reviewed Party activities in detail.

I met Yuzef Chizhyk at work and we became lifetime friends. We subscribed to big volumes of German catalogues from abroad. We were very fond of reading these catalogues thinking about profession of electricians and further education. We had poor German and could hardly understand what was written there, but we liked interesting photographs of electric and other equipment. We read a lot in Russian. Before World War II, I was fond of Conan Doyle [Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859–1930, was an English author, created the character of amateur detective Sherlock Holmes.]

In the 1930s Torgsin stores 8 were open in Odessa selling food products for gold and foreign currency. At the same time people were not allowed to deal with foreign currency in private. They were arrested and persecuted for foreign currency operations. My father was doing better at his work and decided to buy few dollars to keep them as savings. He bound then in carton. Our kitchen door led to the attic of an adjoining house. There was carton in place of glass in this door and my father kept his dollars in this carton. The person who sold these dollars to my father reported on him. He stayed in prison 24 hours. He never told us what they did to him there. NKVD 9 employees convoyed him home and he showed them his hiding place. They took away my father’s dollars. This was called in Odessa the ‘gold fever’ and took place in 1932–1933s. Many people were arrested on false charges.

Yuzef Chizhyk and I entered short-term communication course in the Odessa Communications College. I finished the course in 1933 and entered the Faculty of Telephone and Telegraph Communications. I was a student during the period of famine in 1932-1933 and had meals at our students’ diner. We had all food made of soybeans: soup, cookies and a drink. I don’t remember mass arrests in 1937 [during the Great Terror] 10, but I remember us marching at our military training classes singing: ‘We shall sing a song about Yakir, our army commander!’ and later this Yakir 11 was arrested and executed. A group of military commanding officers was executed at this period of time. In 1941, when the Great Patriotic War began it became clear how unprepared we were – the army was beheaded. I didn’t believe this commandment was guilty. I didn’t have any fear for my family or me: we didn’t belong to those circles that had to be concerned about their position. In 1938, after finishing my fourth year I was awarded the rank of junior commanding officer of a platoon.

There was a group of five friends in College: Akiva Averbuch, Yuzef Chizhyk, Zhora Shcwartz, Fyodor Tomchakovski and myself. Akiva and Yuzef were Jews, Zhora was German and Tomchakovski was Polish. Chizhyk left the college after his first year of studies and the rest of us finished it. Tomchakovski lived in his own house in Slobodka [Neighborhood on the outskirts of Odessa]. We got together there to prepare for our exams. We went to the seashore in Lanjeron, Otrada, Arkadia [town beaches in Odessa]. But with my parents we went there seldom. My father couldn’t stay in the sun since he had very white skin that easily got burned. Generally in those times people didn’t go to the seashore like nowadays. Maybe my parents considered it improper to take off clothes in their age.

My brother Fima studied at the factory vocational school in the Marty shipyard. Ghenia studied at school – it seems, it was school # 68. She studied well and was a nice girl. She read a lot. She studied to play the piano, but when she began to have cramps in her fingers she gave up her studies. Our parents bought her a piano, but there were termites in it and they sold it before the war. Ghenia had many friends, but I don’t remember them. I only remember one friend that had something wrong with her eye and combed her hair to cover it. Ghenia finished school in 1941.

In 1936 I met my future wife Tatiana Krupnik who visited her older brother Moisey Krupnik living in our house. Our neighbor Rosa Kolesnik, a very sickly woman, used to sit under the mulberry tree in our yard and Tatiana used to stop for a chat with her. I watched her from the window. I liked her much. I kept looking at her. She fit a Jewish saying of being ‘a kleine, a Schwartz, a springendik’ [little, black and fidgety in Yiddish]. They usually say so about a flea, but Tatiana was little, well-fed, black-haired, vivid and very pretty. I was shy and had no experience with girls. Since I was an electrician I was helping with electrical maintenance of our house. My friends and I made a plot and I made a short circuit to get into Tatiana brother’s apartment to meet her, but it didn’t work. Finally I gathered my courage and approached her in the yard where she was with her one-year-old nephew. I didn’t find anything better than: ‘Have I seen you somewhere?’ She studied at the vocational school at the Medical college. I’ve been to the morbid anatomy room there and lied that I had seen her there. Anyway, we made our acquaintance.

Tatiana was born in the Jewish town of Dzygovka, Vinnitsa region in 1920. She was the fifth daughter in her family. The last and favorite one. Her parents Srul and Hana Krupnik were also born in Dzygovka. They were deeply religious. Tatiana was raised Jewish. The eldest sister Ida Mostovaya was born in 1907. She lived in Odessa with her Jewish husband Petya and two children. During the Great Patriotic War her husband was on the front and Ida with daughter Raisa and son Marcus were in Uzbekistan. After the war they lived in Tashkent. Ida died in 1983. Raisa and Marcus live in Israel. Tatiana’s brother Moisey Krupnik was born in 1909. He lived in Odessa. His wife Ania was Jewish. They had a son Bencion, in the summer 1941 their daughter Tamara was born. Ania and children were evacuated to Tashkent. Moisey perished in 1942 in Sevastopol. Ania and Tamara live in Odessa. Bencion lives now in Haifa. Tatiana’s second brother Iosif was born in 1912. He was in the army but not on the front during the war. After the war he lived in Moscow. He married a Jewish girl Sopha. Iosif died in 2002. His daughter Ludmila lives in the USA, and the son Boris lives in Moscow with the mother Sopha. Tatiana’s sister Rosa Poliak was born in 1917 and perished in ghetto in 1941 in Vinnitsa with her two years old son Milia.

When Tatiana turned 15 in 1935, she went to Odessa to enter the Stomatological College. She failed and went to study at the vocational school. After finishing this school she entered the Medical College. We decided to get married in 1939. I was in my last year at the Communications College and Tatiana had finished her 2nd year. We got married on 25 March 1939. We had a wedding party for the family: my parents and Tatiana’s parents Srul and Hana. We had a traditional Jewish wedding ceremony at home, but there was no chuppah. Our parents’ acquaintance, an old religious Jew conducted the ceremony. I recited a prayer that I had written for me in Russian letters. After the ceremony we had a wedding party. A day later we had a civil ceremony in the registry office near the Opera Theater. After the wedding Tatiana and I lived with my parents. Tatiana got along with my mother very well. Tatiana likes to recall the way they met. My mother took her hands, pressed them to her chest and said ‘I’m glad to be able to call you Tilipman’. I wish my parents had lived longer. Tatiana corresponded with my parents when we left Odessa. She became friend with Ghenia. In June 1941 Ghenia wrote Tatiana to greet her with the birth of her niece Tamara, her brother Moisey’s daughter. Tamara was born on 17 June 1941, five days before the Great Patriotic War.

In summer 1939 I finished my College with honors and we moved to Smolensk where I got a mandatory job assignment. 12. Tatiana could continue her studies in the Medical College in Smolensk. I became a civil communications engineer in communication department of Byelorussian military regiment. Before 1940 its headquarters was in Smolensk. After the annexation of Western Belorus [and Western Ukraine] 13 the headquarters moved to Minsk. I moved with the headquarters and Tatiana stayed in Smolensk to finish her 3rd year in College. In summer 1940 she joined me in Minsk. She went to study her fourth year in the Minsk Medical College. We got an apartment in an officers’ house in the military housing district of Antonovo Аin 2-3 kilometers from Minsk. Our neighbors were a young Russian couple. The husband Alexei Pudovkin was a builder and also worked in the Byelorussian regiment. We became friends and visited each other.

After finishing her fourth year Tatiana was supposed to have practical training in a hospital in Pinsk or Brest. I recommended her father to obtain an invitation letter for her to work in the hospital in Chernovtsy village, Yampol district, Vinnitsa region. Tatiana went to stay with her parents and I stayed in Minsk. In summer 1941 the Moscow Art Theater came on tour to Minsk. I got a ticket for 22 June and was to go to the theater with a colleague of mine. I got up and had a snack on 22 June. Since I was alone I didn’t even turn on the radio. I packed my gray suit and brown shoes to change to the theater in the evening and went to work by tram. It was Sunday, but I had some urgent work to do. The first thing I heard when I got into a tram was Molotov’s speech 14. The War! I was a reserve officer and I believed it was my duty to go to the headquarters. I never came back home. In the afternoon German planes were already flying over Minsk. There was a German car caught near the headquarters. It was camouflaged to look like a Soviet ZIS car, but there were German uniforms loaded in it. Although I had documents with me I was thoroughly inspected before I was allowed to enter the headquarters office. They were concerned about penetration of the enemy’s intelligence. I was engaged in packing secret documents. We stayed in the office overnight and slept on desks.

We continued our work next morning and in the evening and then the following evening we were taken to dig trenches in the Urochishche area, near Minsk. There were planes flying over Minsk and flares with which saboteurs signaled to German planes. Minsk was bombed continuously. All civil employees were given military ranks. My rank that I was awarded in communications school was first lieutenant. I received my uniform: a khaki shirt, galife breeches and boots with leg wrappings. Those leg wrappings were amazingly uncomfortable slipping down all the time. I also received a dark blue flask with a wooden cork. I also had a German trophy aluminum flask with a screw top and plywood encasing for thermal effect. What I would say everything that we got was a kind of junk: they were not too generous about providing young officers with good quality things. In the morning the storehouse got burned we heard, and officers’ uniforms and everything else was gone.

Germans were advancing fast. Three days later our military units were leaving Minsk. We were evacuating on trucks with benches. There was a many-kilometer log march of people escaping to the east carrying their luggage. There must have been saboteurs in this march as well. They were trying to stir up panic in the crowd screaming ‘brothers, don’t leave us’, etc. There were German planes attacking us many times and scattered around to hide in the surrounding. We arrived at Mogilev where we saw superior commanding officers including Voroshilov 15 in his leather jacket. He arrived there to arrest other commanders charged in allowing retreat. Commanding officer of Byelorussian Special Military regiment General-Colonel Pavlov and Communications Chief general Grigoriev were arrested. [Dmitri Grigorievich Pavlov, 1897–1941, was a Soviet military commander. He was arrested under false charges and later rehabilitated posthumously.]

The army was retreating. People kept asking ‘Why are you leaving?’ and we were promising to come back, but we didn’t know when. When we were in the vicinity of Vyazma, we heard the roar of German planes flying to Moscow every night. The radio announced how many bombers attacked Moscow every day. The Soviet troops were retreating and we didn’t know when we would manage to return, but there was no despair among soldiers.

In August 1941 I was sent to army 29 at the Kalinin front. I received my uniform that finally included high boots. I chose my size of boots that was a mistake since I had to wear thicker flannel foot wraps in winter and my boots turned out to be too tight and I was in pain for few days before I managed to get a bigger size of boots. I also received an overcoat and then when I was at the Ukrainian Front during the cold winter of 1943 we received sheepskin vests. I’ve kept mine until today. We also received warm gloves and those that were at the battlefield received white robes. We wore our overcoats and slept on it using it as a wrapper.

We had warm clothes and sufficient food. I don’t think people ate better food in the rear. We received packaged food and hot meals: cereals and canned meat. We received fresh and dried bread. There were horses in the army and when they got wounded their meat was used to cook food. Once our first sergeant brought us horse meat and said ‘This is nice meat. Would you like some?’ I wish I had at least tried it then.

I was commanding officer of Communications Company in army 29. We were responsible for telephone communications between the army and divisions. In the first days of the war it became clear how unprepared we were to many situations. There were special two-wire phones: we had to install many kilometers of wiring to support communication between the headquarters and divisions. We had not sufficient quantities of wires and installed one wire instead of two: the ground was the 2nd wire. To support the low-point telephone circuit we grounded one wire with a metal rod. The same was done on the other end: one wire was connected to a phone and another – into the ground with a rod. If the ground was conducting: wet or black soil, it was bearable and made it possible to hear at some distance, but hearing was impossible when it was freezing or when the ground was dry. Besides, if the ground serves as conductor it is all right for one line of communication, but when this line supports communications between 5-7 divisions supported by one wire, all conversations could be overheard since they all had one common conductor – the soil. There were antediluvian phones. A telephone operator had to shout into the receiver having it tied to his head turning the handle of a switchboard. German phones were more up to date: they only had to push a button to turn them on. Also there were inappropriate call words at the beginning and one could hear a telephone operator sitting in the headquarters yelling ‘Fire! Fire! –I am the farm!’ and then an officer on duty running toward him ‘Where is fire? On a farm?’ – when those were just call words. We had miserable equipment. The radios to support communications between the headquarters and divisions were transported on horse-driven wagons at the beginning before we got special transportation trucks. There were also shoulder radios: dozens of kilos to be carried on our backs.

Success of military operations depended on the quality of communications to a big extent. When we were retreating the only communications equipment available were radios that had limitations in supporting communications and our troops often got into encirclements for the lack of communications. There was an order ‘Not a step backward!’ that meant that a unit could only retreat when they got such order and the order could not reach those that were in encirclement. Germans were more maneuverable. Their infantry had transportation means while our troops only walked. At the Kalinin front a group of communication operators was sent to military units in Rzhev. While they were on the way there the German troops broke though the front line and they got into encirclement. It was next to impossible to escape from encirclement in open area or in towns. I remember I was on the phone when Communication Chief of the Front came and took the receiver from me. He talked to our operator on the other end of the wire ‘I order you to retreat!’ when the line was cut off. We had no information about our operators: whether they were captured or perished. They were listed as ‘missing’ and there were many such cases.

There were many cases when Germans captured our messengers and then they bombed the location indicated in the message. Once before my eyes a subdivision of our unit perished. They were on a farm when German planes dropped three bombs hitting directly their dislocation. Our communication unit was in about half of kilometer from this place.

In late 1941 we were at the Kalinin front. It was Christmas. German commandment provided Christmas parcels to their units: schnapps, tinned meat and chocolate. Germans were advancing to Moscow and there was Deshovka village (the word ‘deshovka’ means ‘cheap junk’ in Russian) on their way. This Deshovka turned out to be very costly for us. Several times it passed from our troops to German troops and back again. When our troops beat German troops out of their blindages they would find German schnapps and get drunk and then German troops would beat them out of there. Our communication point was in some village church and there was Commander of army 29 standing beside me. He heard that this village had passed several times between German and out troops… He demanded that I connected him with commanding officer of the division. I remember his order word by word: ‘You, son of a bitch, colonel Kupriyanov! Just get all cooks and communication operators and lead them in attack! I want you to take control of this Deshovka!’ This meant that he was sending the young and inexperienced onto the battlefield. Such orders caused many deaths. This happened often. All battle operations were conducted under the motto ‘For Motherland! For Stalin!’ and people died for this. One had to follow orders in the army. They followed orders. It wasn’t too bad when there was artillery support of infantry troops.

Commander of army 29 was noted for his despotic nature. He used to walk with a stick at the Kalinin front. He could easily hit an officer, even of senior rank. Once our truck was moving on a road and commanding officer of our communication regiment didn’t pull over seeing the vehicle of our army commander that got stuck there. For this commander didn’t submit lists of officers subject to awards for six months.

I didn’t have any information about my family from the beginning of the war. I received the latest card from my father from Odessa in August 1941. I knew about German atrocities against Jews from newspapers and kept writing my father to leave Odessa. After Odessa was occupied I received a letter from my friend Akiva Averbuch’s father in October 1941. He stayed with my parents for some time before he evacuated and also tried to convince my parents to evacuate. My younger brother Fima was in the army near Odessa and my parents couldn’t leave the town without knowing what had happened to him. Shortly after Odessa was liberated in 1944 – I was at the front in Poland – I received a letter from my cousin brother Naum Davidovich. He returned to Odessa from evacuation. He wrote that my parents and sister perished in Domanevka 16 camp for Jews in 1942 and Fima perished during defense of Odessa in 1941. When I returned to our house after the war or neighbors gave me a card that Ghenia’s friend wrote her from the front. I didn’t even know that she had a young man who was writing her from the front.

My friend Yuzef evacuated to Siberia. He was released from service in the army due to epilepsy. My fellow students and I kept in touch through him. Akiva Averbuch was at the front. Zhora Schwartz wasn’t taken to the army due to his German nationality. He lived in Novosibirsk, I guess. Yuzef wrote me in late 1941 that he had seen my wife Tatiana in a train on Alexikovo station near Stalingrad. I wrote letters to this Alexikovo and employees of the post office were very sympathetic, but they could do nothing to help me. Tatiana was not in Alexikovo any longer. She bumped into Alexei Pudovkin, our friend in Minsk and he suggested that she wrote to the Communication Department of the Soviet army. She did and they sent her my field mail address. I received a letter from Tatiana in June 1942. She evacuated with her parents and older brother Iosif. Her brother managed to evacuate his family and parents on a wagon driven by two horses. They crossed the Dnepr River in the vicinity of Kryukovo station. They went to Stalingrad by train and from there they headed to Turkestan station in Kazakhstan [3,000 km from Odessa]. Tatiana was a physician in Urtak kolkhoz. She lived with her parents. The kolkhoz accommodated them in a house with a garden.

I would like to say that during the war people treated letters with special care. Field mail communications were very reliable. At least letters found us wherever we moved. There were never long delays with delivery of letters to and from the front. A postman at the front was a very special person. Letters from the front could have been different; they might bring sad news, but letters from the rear usually brought good news from families. I do think that a postman is a very kind and hearty profession, military postmen in particular. My wife and I even established our own communication at the front. I wrote her ‘You will look at the Moon and so will I and it will be our date’ – like satellite communications nowadays. I’ve kept few hundreds of her letters through the war. I carried them in my backpack. My letters to her were lost in evacuation.

We had different lodgings at the front: during retreat, interval or advance. When we were retreating toward Moscow or advancing with the Kalinin front we lodged in dugouts with wooden logs and soil on top. There were two or three layers on top to protect a dugout from bombings and each layer was placed crosswise on a previous. Like they sing in a song ‘…Our dugout in three layers…’ It also protected from shells. Once commanding officer was killed with a shell at the entrance to his dugout, but he would have survived had he stayed inside. During an interval we planked the walls with wood or thick branches. We made two-tier plank beds. We had oil-lamps for lighting. We made them from tank shell cartridges, 5-6 cm in diameter with one end squeezed with a cloth wick squeezed in it. We dipped this wick in kerosene or benzene. It produced a lot of black soot and it made it difficult to breathe in a dugout, but it kept it warm, on the other hand. There were 8-12 tenants in a dugout. In our advance march we lodged in blindages left by Germans. Near Moscow we lodged in a dugout made by Germans. Germans liked birch trees. There was a small table and a stool made of birch wood at the entrance to the dugout. The walls inside were also decorated with birch wood. There was a small stove made from a bomb box.

I was chief of the telephone facility of a regiment at the Kalinin front. The chief of telegraph facility was Kostia Shendera. We happened to have finished the same faculty in the same college, only we studied in different periods. He was a 5th-year student when I entered the college in 1933. We often recalled our college and common acquaintances. Once I recalled how we, 1st-year students went to work in the fields in Novaya Odessa in Nikolaev region in 1933. We got together in the evenings and sang and talked. I remembered a Ukrainian song that someone I didn’t know sang: ‘It snowed in the month of June when an old man fell in love with an old woman, cause he liked her…’. Kostia said ‘I sang it’.

I remember my 26th birthday on 24 April in the Kalinin front. We had just got an interval after a battle. There was some kind of a buffet in the army headquarters during such intervals or remanning of units. They had kwass [a soft drink] smelling of burned bread a little. My fellow comrades got to know that it was my birthday and decided to celebrate. We were young. Kostia Shendera sent his telegraph operators to get some self-made vodka in a nearby village. We mixed kwass and vodka and got a nice drink. I put on my suit and shoes that I had with me when I left my home in Minsk on 22 June 1941: whatever was left there. I dressed up and we partied. Kostia sang popular songs and romances. He sang the ‘Metelitsa’ [a Russian folksong]. He had a very good voice. Since then it became a tradition to celebrate all birthdays. I still have the list of my fellow comrades: there are 28 names on the list. I greet them with their birthdays every year. Now there are fewer on the list…

Kostia was Russian and so was commanding officer of my battalion: Vitali Vasilievich Legeida. There was no anti-Semitism in our circles in the army. There were tatars in my unit and there was Brodski, a Jew. However, there were demonstrations of anti-Semitism among high-level officers that were responsible for awards. I faced it when I was to be awarded a medal ‘For combat merits’. Awards were usually handed during intervals when the army units were remanning. The ones that were on the lists for awards were notified in advance. I got a notification and even prepared a speech, but it never got to it. My subordinate received an award and I don’t know for what reason. We were not supposed to ask questions. When I was to be awarded for the second time I was told that it was going to be a ‘Red Star’ order, but instead I was awarded a ‘For combat merits’ medal. I received my ‘Red Star’ when we were near Kiev. My nationality played its negative role in my promotion in the army and after the war.

In February 1943 a new tank army was formed near Moscow on the basis of our army 29. Its commander became Michael Efimovich Katukov [Michael Efimovich Katukov, 1900–1976, was a Soviet commander, Marshall of tank armed forces in 1959, Hero of the Soviet Union in 1944 and 1945. During the Great Patriotic War he was commanding officer of a tank division, brigade, corps, guard tank army since 1943.] By that time the rear manufactured sufficient quantities of weapons. The tanks that we had at the beginning of the war in 1941 were not fir for this kind of the war. We got a new division of T-34 tanks. We got fresh forces of female telephone operators in our communications regiment. The majority of them were from Moscow. Male operators mainly were involved in installation of telephone lines and other hard work. Many of my fellow comrades are still living. I still communicate with Ania Krotova, nee Dyomina, a telephone operator from my regiment. She married a tank man Michael Krotov at the front, Hero of the Soviet Union. My wife and I meet with them when we visit our son in Moscow.

In winter 1943 the battle of Stalingrad was coming to an end. Our tank army was transported to the vicinity of Stalingrad by railroad. By the time we arrived in this area the battle of Stalingrad was over. This was Stepnoy front that was later renamed to Voronezhski. After our successful completion of the Stalingrad battle Germans intended to gain revenge at the Kursk salient. In summer 1943 near Prokhorovka 17 two heavily armed tank units collided. There was the third tank army near Prokhorovka and our first tank unit was deployed further to the south in the direction of Kharkov. Our army cut the roadway Kharkov-Poltava. We were holding back German units that were striving to cross the Kursk salient. Katukov, commander of the tank army, was at the vanguard tank unit on the firing line and we were responsible for supporting his communication with the army headquarters. He and commander of the brigade were watching the battle and gave verbal commands to the army headquarters that was developing the tactics of the battle: where to send forces, what additional units to allocate, involve artillery or even air forces. During the battle commander was in a trench with a tank over it; it made a reliable hiding spot. Commanding officers of tank units also usually stayed in such trenches. Communications operators that were responsible for supporting communication with the army headquarters were also in the trench with commander.

The tank army was moving ahead fast covering dozens kilometers during a battle. They advanced so fast that they lost communications since communication units were left far behind. To avoid this situation a small group of communication operators went ahead to the location to make the headquarters. This group was called a mobile control unit. Prior to a battle the army headquarters established communications with frontline and corps. They identified the movement direction and appointed a group of operators: radio and homing communication to support communication for commander when he arrived there. I remember how after defensive battles near Kursk our army advanced ahead very quickly. We, communication operators, had to move to the next command post to establish communications. We had two vehicles with soldiers and equipment. Commanding officer of our battalion Legeida was on one truck and I was on another with communication operators. It was summer and the heat was oppressive. The tanks turned soil into dust. We were moving in this cloud of dust. There was a lot of tension. Legeida was a soft and intelligent man open his cabin and yelled at me ‘If you are going to be late, you…’ and he continued in a whole set of curse language. We came in time. We corresponded after the war and often recalled such moments.

During one of those battles one of my operators – Brodski, a Jew, perished. I don’t remember his first name. We addressed each other saying the rank and the last name: lieutenant Tilipman, private Brodski… I don’t remember where he came from, but I remember that before the war he was chief of Centrospirt trust [alcohol sale]. However, he wasn’t one of these dealers and wheelers. He was well liked and respected. When our first sergeant brought food for distribution he was always appointed to distribute sugar, tobacco and other products. During an offensive he was sent to establish communications with our operations department when German bombers began dropping bombs. Brodski got between three bombs that literally tore him to pieces. There was nothing left to bury. There were special burial troops. They were also responsible for keeping records of the dead and all relevant information: the place and date of death. Commanding officers had to notify their families and give them information about the burial location.

At the beginning of the war I was first Lieutenant and then I became lieutenant-technician, commander of a platoon. In 1943 an order was issued to confer the rank of captain to officers with higher education. After the Kursk battle I was given the rank of captain.

After the offensive and liberation of Chernovtsy our army was moved to the rear. We were to be remanned and meanwhile deployed near a settlement in a forest from where we went to Chernovtsy for spoils of the war: food and other. I went to get some trophies when we were advancing to Kazatin in Vinnitsa region. There we got a German diesel fuel vehicle with a telephone facility. Communications people also took communication cables and everything else they might be in need of in future operations. There were special trophy units that gathered trophy weapons. I had a trophy German carbine. I don’t even remember how I got it. We also took trophy fuel that was always in demand. I shall not hide the truth that we also got alcohol as trophy.

Besides communications regiment there were communication companies in our regiment. Commanding officers of two of them were my friends: captain Zhuk and captain Yunyshev. Captain Zhuk was sent to the penal battalion due to trophy fuel. Captain Zhuk got some fuel stocks as trophy, but instead of reporting to the fuel department he used it for the needs of his company. At that time commanding officers reviewed the recent operations to award the distinguished ones. When they were reviewing performance of officers and soldiers of captain Zhuk’s company they recalled this fuel. There was one ‘osobist’ – they called so officers of special department [NKVD units in the Soviet army]. This ‘osobist’ participated in a dinner party where he got to know about the fuel during the conversation and then wrote a report about captain Zhuk misusing the fuel. Zhuk was reduced to the rank of a private and sent to a penal battalion. He was a still a communications operator. It was next to impossible to survive in those battalions. They could only hope for good luck. They were always ahead of any offensive. I received a letter from him and even tried to find him later. Zhuk was wounded, but I don’t know what happened to him further on. I don’t know whether he survived. Captain Yunyshev’s story is different. After the war he was in Meissen, in Germany, with his unit and I was in Dresden. Some time in 1947 he visited communications department in Dresden. We met and he told me that he was having an affair with a German woman. He said ‘You know their attitude to German women in our country and I am in love with her. What do you think about it?’ ‘You know that you can be expelled from the Party and reduced in ranks, etc.’ Later I heard that he was transferred to a unit in Western Ukraine fighting ‘banderovtsy’ 18. He was shell-shocked and demobilized. Then he got married with a Ukrainian woman and lived in Kharkov with his wife. My younger son Evgeni and I went to Tbilisi via Kharkov by train in the 1970s. We met with Yunyshev. He was a teacher. I corresponded with him all the time. In the late 1980s I went to Moscow where chairman of our regiment veteran organization, who was my subordinate during the war, told me that Yunyshev died.

In winter 1944 we were in Poland. Polish residents had a friendly attitude toward us. In Niedzwiada village boys used to sing: ‘Polska hasn’t died yet and it will not…’ Then there were words that they would make Germans to wash their boots. We were accommodated in a house. There was a Polish family of a husband, wife and a young daughter living in the house. This family invited us to a celebration of liberation of Poland. Our telephone operator, private Vladimir Miakushko, that was also our logistic supervisor, brought some food products and we set the table. We proposed a toast to victory, of course. There was an interesting custom with the Poles: they had their classes filled to the brim and when touching glasses they tried to let their wine overflow into somebody else’s glass. We had lots of fun. Later our tank brigade took part in liberation of Warsaw. In 1944 I became a candidate to the Communist party and I joined the Party in Odessa in 1948.

Tank units need lots of fuel to support operations, repairs and replacement of tanks. Therefore, army rear services need to be very reliable. There was no rear communications department included in the army staff while there was a great need in one. So, the department was formed and its chief was Lopukhov. He came from Moscow where he was involved in metro construction before the war. In 1944, when we were advancing successfully Moscow began to call back specialists required in public economy. Lopukhov demobilized and went back to Moscow and I was appointed as part-time chief of the rear communications services. However, I kept positions of chief of a company or equipment yard or a reserve unit. My wife Tatiana received allowances by my military certificate. When I had a full-time position in my regiment there were no problems with this certificate, but then when I began to change positions there were delays with payments or reevaluation of the amounts.

When we entered the territory of Germany we stayed in abandoned houses or apartments. Some time before the end of the war we found a top hat, tuxedo and cigars in one apartment. We dressed up our telephone operator Alexei Ilinski, photographed him and sent this photo to his home. There was also censoring of letters in the army. We had to face this department. At night they woke me up and ordered to come to chief of rear services of the army colonel Kon’kov. He showed me the photo: ‘Yours’. I said ‘Yes, mine’. He reprimanded me ‘What are they doing here? Is it during field action or recreation?’ There was another time that I faced this censorship when I sent my wife a picture from a medical book. It was a picture of a human being and when unfolded it revealed a picture of the human body. So, I added a short note for a censor ‘Dear censor, if you find it impossible to send this to the addressee, please, send it back to me’. My wife received it.

The Katukov’s army ended up in Berlin. The army headquarters were in 25, Druchenstrasse in Berlin. I went there on business on 8 May 1945. I had a map of Berlin withal streets indicated on it. Although Berlin was ruined in the center it still made it possible to find any location. I remember meeting Kostia Shendera in the army headquarters. He and I listened to an English radio channel in Russian. It announced that capitulation was going to be signed at 11 pm. I decided to go back to my unit. Shendera showed me a shortcut through channels. He didn’t know they were blasted and access to them ruined. To make a long story short, I got lost. I managed to find my way by the lights of moving traffic. I got to the central street and from there I made my way to my unit. We waited for the announcement about capitulation: the clock struck 10, 11 pm, midnight. We were waiting. We were listening to the radio when, I believe, 5 minutes past one it said that there was going to be an important announcement. And indeed, at ten minutes past one our renowned announcer Levitan announced fascist Germany signed unconditional surrender. [Levitan Yury, 1914–1983, was the announcer of All-Union State Radio. He delivered all most important official information, also during the Great Patriotic War.] Our joy was enormous! Those that couldn’t keep it to themselves started shooting in the air. From joy, of course. So I met the Victory Day in Berlin.

I finished the war in the rank of captain. I had several combat awards: two medal’s ‘For combat merits’, order of ‘Red Star’, medals ‘For liberation of Warsaw’, ‘For capture Berlin’. I stayed to continue my military service in Radeboil near Dresden in the communications department in the army headquarters. In September there was a war with Japan 19. In autumn I got a two-week leave. I went to visit Tatiana and her parents in Turkestan. On my way back I took her back to Minsk to finish her studies at the Medical College. After finishing it she joined me in Radebeul in 1946. Tatiana was involved in public activities in the women’s council of the army. We still laugh that I was on battlefields while she shook hands with commander of the army Katukov. The highest rank I had to deal with during my service was a general, chief of communications while she had interface with the army commander. Many officers’ wives came there. Kostia Shendera’s wife was a shop assistant at the military department store. The wife of Valeri Legeida was a telephone operator in our regiment. We were all friends. After demobilization Kostia lived near Vinnitsa. I saw him at his 70th birthday in 1971 for the last time. He was a heavy man and suffered from hypertension. Tatiana and I were planning to come to his 75th birthday, but he died before. Valeri Legeida is living. He wrote us that his wife died.

In 1947 our son was born in the army hospital in Dresden. We named him Michael. My wife’s parents had moved to their eldest daughter Ida near Tashkent. In 1948 I sent my wife and son to them. Tatiana and our son went to Moscow biplane and from there took a train to Tashkent. When Tatiana left I began to submit requests for demobilization. I wrote a letter of request to the Communications department of the Soviet army asking. I expected some problems in this regard: the army did not appreciate jumping over one’s head. I was lucky. There was a vacancy of chief of a communications department in Odessa. My predecessor was sent to serve in the army abroad. I went to work there in 1949. I remember returning to Odessa. The train arrived early in the morning. The streets were deserted and there were porters with carts in front of the railway station. I walked to Deribassovskaya Street and stayed in the Passage hotel. Then I searched for my cousin brother Shymon Tilipman. What surprised me in Odessa was that there were vendors on each corner. I had legal grounds to move back into my parents’ apartment, but there was another tenant in it already: an invalid of the war. Besides, I would have been terrified to reside there when my family perished. Local authorities gave me a kitchen in a communal apartment 20 in Seminarski Lane near the headquarters of Odessa military regiment. I went to Moscow and then to Tashkent to take my wife and son home. The trip from Moscow took me four days and I had to sleep on the third birth intended for luggage. The train was slow.

We returned to Odessa. I got in touch with Yuzef Chizhyk who returned with his wife and children from evacuation in Siberia. We had another friend: my fellow comrade Semyon Goldshtein and his wife Inna. She was a doctor. My cousin brother Shymon Tilipman, his wife and son lived in Odessa. We were young and valued the joys of peaceful life. We celebrated all birthdays and Soviet holidays: the Soviet Army Day 21, October Revolution 22 Day. We always got together at Yozef Chizhyk’s home to celebrate New Year. We lived in a big room in 19, Pirogovskaya Street in the early 1950s. There were 18-20 people at our parties in our room.

In 1951 our second son Evgeni was born. We named him after my sister Ghenia. When Stalin died in 1953 I was serving in the communications unit in Odessa. We all feared a coup or some dramatic changes. There was to be a replacement of Stalin. We were ordered to stay in the unit. However, nothing happened. Our people were taught to have no different opinions. The military that were at the front during the war respected Stalin a lot. We believed that he lead us to the victory along with Zhukov 23.

In 1954 our older son Michael went to school # 59 near our home. Tatiana was eager to go back to work. She couldn’t find a job in Odessa for 12 years. She applied to the regional health department with requests for employment many times, but they replied that she didn’t have to go to work being a military’s wife. In 1958 she went to the Ministry of Health in Kiev. The Minister happened to be a kind person. He issued a letter addressed to the regional health department ordering them to help Tatiana find a job to keep up her qualifications. She started work in Illichevsk 24. There was no regular transportation to Illichevsk and Tatiana often had to get a ride on trucks. Commuting took a lot of time. She also had to take care of the household and take care of our sons. Michael was in the 4th form and Evgeni went to school. Four months later Tatiana found a job in a local polyclinic in Deribassovskaya where she worked as a neuropathologist until she retired.

I was earning well and so did Tatiana and we were quite well off. In the early 1950s we bought our first TV set. We spent our summer vacations with Tatiana’s parents in Chirchik near Tashkent. We spent time with friends and went to the theater. Before the war Tatiana and I went to the Jewish theater. I couldn’t understand Yiddish that well and Tatiana translated for me. After the war we went to the Ukrainian and Russian theaters – in one of them performed in Ukrainian and in the other one in Russian. In summer theaters from Moscow came on tours and we attended their performances. The thing is, our children didn’t need us any more. I remember performance ‘And then there was silence’ [after the modern American writer Vina Delmar’s play] staged by the Mossoviet Theater with Ranevskaya and Pliatt [famous Soviet actors]. We preferred the same play staged by our Odessa theater. We thought that Pliatt was overdoing his acting. We also went to the Opera Theater, but not that often. We subscribed to Roman-gazeta [publication of fiction issued twice a month in Moscow], Rabotnitsa [Women-worker, a monthly social and political magazine issued in Moscow], Zdorovie [Health, a monthly scientific popular magazine issued by the Ministry of Health in Moscow]. We still keep articles from this magazine with health recommendations. We also subscribed to newspapers: Krasnaya Zviezda [Red star, daily military and political newspaper of the Ministry of defense, issued in Moscow], Pravda [Truth, the main paper of the Communist Party of the USSR]. We always read articles in newspapers, but we did understand that what they wrote was different from what things were in reality.

In 1966, after an earthquake in Tashkent, we took Tatiana’s parents to Odessa. I demobilized from the army that same year and received a pension after 25 years of military service. I was 50 years old and wanted to go to work. It was difficult for a Jew to find a job. There was a vacancy at a plant, but when they heard that I was a Jew they refused me. It happened several times until I met my former fellow student Michael Tesler, a Jew. He helped me to get an employment at the Standardization Center in Odessa where I was employed as an engineer. In 1968 I received a new 4-room apartment in a 5-storied house in Cheryomushki, a new district of Odessa, built with the involvement of Standardization Center. This is where we live now.

In 1964, 25 years after we graduated, I organized a reunification of graduates of our college. Our graduates were working all over the Soviet Union. Many of them, including my old friends, came to this meeting. Akiva Averbuch came from Kherson, Zhora Schwartz came from Kazan. He came with another graduate of our college Kaminski. We met him at the airport and drove the car around Odessa. He was very happy to see us and talked to us fondly about Kazan, how much he liked it and how wonderful the town was, when all of a sudden he said when we were driving along Pushkinskaya Street ‘Pull over, I shall kiss the stones of the pavement!’ Odessites shall always be like this: they know no better town than Odessa. Zhora Schwartz visited us about five years ago, in 1998. He is in good shape: we went to the seashore with him. I often met with Akiva Averbuch – he lived in Kherson. He suffered from hypertension and when he visited us Tatiana checked his blood pressure before offering him a strong drink. Akiva died in Kherson in the late 1990s. I was away and didn’t go to his funeral. Yuzef Chizhyk and his wife went to the funeral. Yuzef Chizhyk died in 1996. One of his sons lives in Berlin, Germany. Fydor Tomchakovski lives in Slobodka. My wife and I always go to see him when going to the Jewish cemetery to the graves of our dear ones.

I remember my young years at the front. The friendship that started at the front is the strongest friendship ever. My wife and I have kept in touch with my friends. We corresponded and met with them and mailed greetings on their birthdays. Few times my wife and I went to celebrate 23 February, the Soviet Army Day that we also celebrate as the Day of the first guard tank army with my fellow comrades in Moscow. In summer 1976 we came to Moscow to come to the grave of Marshall M.E. Katukov, our commander. He had died six years before we got together to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the army in Moscow on 23 February 1983.

In 1962 my older son Michael went to school 116, with advanced studies of physics and mathematic. Michael passed an interview successfully and was admitted to the 8th form. He had all excellent marks in this school. There was no anti-Semitism. He had many Jewish classmates. In 1964 he finished this school with a gold medal. 15 other children were awarded god medals along with him. After finishing school he went to take entrance exams to the Faculty of Mathematics in Moscow State University. We were eager for him to be a success and he did enter the university. There was a group of other students from Odessa. They grouped into an association to support each other. There were so many Jewish students at the faculty of Mathematics in Moscow University that it was jokingly called by his friends a ‘cheder with advanced studies of mathematics’.

Evgeni studied in school #90 with the Ukrainian and German languages of teaching. He studied well and was particularly good at history and geography. I brought an ‘officer’s Atlas’ issued in Russian in Dresden after the war: a thick volume including the history of all wars and a detailed description of the Great Patriotic War. We still have this atlas. It is quite worn and shabby after Michael and then Evgeni had it. We always liked books in our family and our sons inherited this from us. In 1969 grandfather Srul gave Evgeni five rubles and our son subscribed to Big Soviet Encyclopedia. We received all five volumes. After finishing school in 1968 finished a preparatory course to the College of Public Economy. He also started work at the factory of manuals to be able to enter an evening department of the Financial Faculty. He was concerned to go to the daytime department being a Jew and considering the existing situation. There was state-level anti-Semitism in Odessa. Now he works as a programmer in Odessa center of Standardization, Metrology and Certification. He is single.

In the 1970s my cousin brother Shymon Tilipman was moving to the USA. My wife and I went to say ‘good bye’ to him and his wife Tsylia on the evening before their departure. They were not at home and we threw what we had with us inside their apartment through a windowpane. At that time contacts with emigrants were not favored in the USSR and we didn’t go to see them at the railway station. Shymon felt hurt and couldn’t forgive us for a long time.

In 1972 my wife’s mother Hana Krupnik died at the age of 89. She was very ill in the last two years of her life. She didn’t remember anything and didn’t recognize our old son Michael who lived in Moscow. We buried her at the Jewish cemetery in Slobodka. Tatiana asked some older Jews to recite a memorial prayer at the cemetery. Tatiana’s father died one year and ten months later in 1973 at the age of 90. He had a sound mind until the end although he was bed-ridden in the last days of his life. On his last night he recited a prayer and blessed us in Yiddish. We buried him near his wife’s grave.

I heard about the establishment of Israel when I was in service in Germany. I’ve always identified myself as a Jew and my family perished due to their Jewish origin. ‘I’ve always sympathized with Israel, but I had to keep silent about my attitudes. I remember Tatiana’s nephew Bencion Krupnik leaving for Israel in the 1970s. He was manager of a shop at a plant and workers of the plant condemned him at the meeting, although his colleagues had always respected and valued him for his qualifications. Thank God the attitudes have changed. In 1986 Tatiana visited her niece Raisa in Lod, Israel. I wished I could go with her, but our family circumstances didn’t allow me to travel there. Tatiana was very impressed with what she saw in Israel. She told us how beautiful the country is. Our relatives live in Israel and we always watch everything they show about Israel on TV. We sympathize with this country. There is no war, but people die at peaceful times because of the terrorism.

Upon graduation from University my older son Michael stayed to work in Moscow. He got a job offer from a scientific research institute. He defended his candidate’s dissertation. 25 Michael married his fellow student Galina Grinberg. She came from Moscow. Her mother is Russian and her father is a Jew. In 1974 Galina and Michael’s older son Anton was born and in 1978 their son Sergei was born. They came to spend their summer vacations with us and we rented a dacha at the seashore, in Arkadia or at station 16 in Bolshoy Fontan. Anton graduated from the Faculty of Mathematics in Moscow State University. He works as a programmer. He was married and has a son – our great grandson Dennis. Our younger grandson Sergei finished four years in Moscow State University and has a job. Galina lectures on mathematics at a Pedagogical College. Michael works at a scientific research institute. He also works as a programmer for a private Canadian company.

I retired in 1988, but continued working part-time for some time. Tatiana retired in 1990. We believed that perestroika 26 initiated by Gorbachev 27 was a big step forward comparing to the period before. We got more freedom. We were allowed to socialize with our relatives abroad. But most important is that the attitude toward Jews has changed. There is no state-level anti-Semitism. As for our material situation it became worse, but not as bad as it became with civilians since retired military receive higher pensions.

In the 1990s the rebirth of the Jewish life began in Odessa. My wife and I are members of the Front Line Fraternity – the association of Jewish veterans of the Great Patriotic War at the charity organization of Gmilus Hesed. We get together every other week and celebrate birthdays. On 9 may we celebrate Victory Day. Besides, we attend Sunday parties at the Moadon club in Hesed where they invite musicians from the Philharmonic or amateur performers. Recently the Jewish theater from Chernovtsy came on tour. My wife organizes celebration of Sabbath at home and tries to do no work on Saturday. Sometimes we go to synagogue on holidays. Tatiana lights memorial candles in commemoration of our deceased relatives.

Glossary

1 Great Patriotic War

2 Bessarabia

Historical area between the Prut and Dnestr rivers, in the southern part of Odessa region. Bessarabia was part of Russia until the Revolution of 1917. In 1918 it declared itself an independent republic, and later it united with Romania. The Treaty of Paris (1920) recognized the union but the Soviet Union never accepted this. In 1940 Romania was forced to cede Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the USSR. The two provinces had almost 4 million inhabitants, mostly Romanians. Although Romania reoccupied part of the territory during World War II the Romanian peace treaty of 1947 confirmed their belonging to the Soviet Union. Today it is part of Moldavia.

3 Russian Revolution of 1917

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

4 Famine in Ukraine

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

5 Lenin (1870-1924)

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

6 Trotsky, Lev Davidovich (born Bronshtein) (1879-1940)

7 Komsomol

8 Torgsin stores

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

9 NKVD

People’s Committee of Internal Affairs; it took over from the GPU, the state security agency, in 1934.

10 Great Terror (1934-1938)

11 Yakir

One of the founders of the Communist Party in Ukraine. In 1938 he was arrested and executed.

12 Mandatory job assignment in the USSR

13 The annexation of Byelorussia and Western Ukraine - on the 17 September 1939 Soviet Army entered the regions of Poland with the Ukrainian and Byelorussian population

In the beginning of November the same year those territories became the parts of the Soviet Republics – Ukraine and Byelorussia.

14 Molotov, V

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

15 Voroshylov, Kliment Yefremovich (1881-1969)

Soviet military leader and public official. He was an active revolutionary before the Revolution of 1917 and an outstanding Red Army commander in the Russian Civil War. As commissar for military and naval affairs, later defense, Voroshilov helped reorganize the Red Army. He was a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party from 1926 and a member of the Supreme Soviet from 1937. He was dropped from the Central Committee in 1961 but reelected to it in 1966.

16 Domanevka

District town in Odessa region. Hundreds of thousands Jews were exterminated in the camp located in this town during the war.

17 The Kursk battle

The greatest tank battle in history of WWII occurred at Kursk. It began on July 5th, 1943 and it ended ignominiously eight days later. The Soviet army in its counteroffensive crushed 30 German divisions and liberated Oryol, Belgorod and Kharkov. During the Kursk battle, the biggest tank fight – involving up to 1200 tanks and mobile cannon units on both sides – took place in Prokhorovka on 12 July 1943, and it ended with defeat of the German tank unit.

18 Stefan Bandera (1909–1959) was a leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, (OUN)

When he announced in Lvov in 1941 an independent Ukrainian government, he was arrested by the Germans and sent to Sachsenhausen camp. Later was set free. During and after WWII he was the organizer of the armed resistance in Ukraine against Soviet powers and then moved to Germany (Munich). Bandera was killed in 1959 by a KGB agent.

19 War with Japan

In 1945 the war in Europe was over, but in the Far East Japan was still fighting against the anti-fascist coalition countries and China. The USSR declared war on Japan on 8 August 1945 and Japan signed the act of capitulation in September 1945.

20 Communal apartment

The Soviet power wanted to improve housing conditions by requisitioning ‘excess’ living space of wealthy families after the Revolution of 1917. Apartments were shared by several families with each family occupying one room and sharing the kitchen, toilet and bathroom with other tenants. Because of the chronic shortage of dwelling space in towns shared apartments continued to exist for decades. Despite state programs for the construction of more houses and the liquidation of shared apartments, which began in the 1960s, shared apartments still exist today.

21 Soviet Army Day

The Russian imperial army and navy disintegrated after the outbreak of the Revolution of 1917, so the Council of the People's Commissars created the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army on a voluntary basis. The first units distinguished themselves against the Germans on February 23, 1918. This day became the ‘Day of the Soviet Army’ and is nowadays celebrated as ‘Army Day’.

22 October Revolution Day

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

23 Georgi Konstantinovich Zhukov, 1896–1974, was Soviet marshal

He fought in the October Revolution in 1917 and in the Civil War in 1918-20, which brought the Bolsheviks to power, and saw action against the Japanese on the Manchurian border (1938-39) and in the Finnish-Russian War. Promoted to full general in 1940, he was briefly (1941) chief of the general staff. In Oct., 1941, he replaced Semyon Timoshenko as commander of the central front and conducted the defense of Moscow. Made commander (1942) on the southwestern front, Zhukov defeated the Germans at Stalingrad (1943) and, with Marshal Voroshilov, lifted the siege of Leningrad (St. Petersburg). He led the offensive of 1944 and the final assault on Germany in 1945, capturing Berlin (April) and became commander of the Soviet occupation zone in Germany. In 1946 Zhukov received command of the Soviet ground forces, but in 1947 he was demoted to command the Odessa military district. After Stalin 's death, Zhukov became deputy defense minister (1953) and defense minister (1955).

24 Illichevsk

Port on the Black Sea, 25 km from Odessa; became a town in 1973.

25 Soviet/Russian doctorate degrees

Graduate school in the Soviet Union (aspirantura, or internatura for medical students), which usually took about 3 years and resulted in a dissertation. Students who passed were awarded a 'kandidat nauk' (lit. candidate of sciences) degree. If a person wanted to proceed with his or her research, the next step would be to apply for a doctorate degree (doktarontura). To be awarded a doctorate degree, the person had to be involved in the academia, publish consistently, and write an original dissertation. In the end he/she would be awarded a 'doctor nauk' (lit. doctor of sciences) degree.