Travel

Aron Pizman
Mogilyov-Podolskiy
Ukraine
Date of interview: May 2004
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya

Aron Pizman is a stout man of average height with black moustache with gray streaks in his thick black hair. Despite his severe heart disease that made it hard for him to go through the strain of this interview he willingly agreed to talk about his life. Aron’s wife Riva listened to his story and added details to it at times. The Pizmans live in a two-bedroom apartment in one of the 1970s built houses on the bank of the Dnestr River within the area of the former ghetto where Aron and his future wife’s family lived during WWII. Their apartment is modestly furnished, but clean and cozy. Aron has his own work area with a desk and shelves with tools. He is very handy and likes crafting at his leisure time. Aron and his wife care for one another Their younger son Mikhail, of whom his parents are very proud, lives separately with his family, but he comes to see his parents every evening after work. Mikhail’s book of poems was published recently and Aron recites his poems with pleasure. He reads a lot: technical publications, fiction and scientific popular books. Aron is interested in politics and the situation in the world.

My father’s family lived in Chernivtsi town Vinnitsa region 30 km north from Mogilyov-Podolskiy. My grandfather Leib-Shikes Pizman was born in Chernivtsi in the late 1860s. I don’t know my grandmother’s name. She must have been the same age as my grandfather. I can hardly remember my father’s parents. I don’t know what my grandfather was doing for the living. My grandmother was a housewife, which was quite common for married Jewish women.

Chernivtsi was a small Jewish town. There were many such in Ukraine before WWII. Jews constituted about 70% of its population, I guess. Jews lived in the central part of the town. The houses adjusted closely to one another and there was space enough for a little garden where they grew greenery and 1-2 fruit trees. Ukrainians lived in the outskirts of the town having vegetable gardens and fruit orchards. There was a synagogue in the center of the town and a cheder nearby, which was closed after the revolution of 1917 [1] and the building was given to a 4-year Jewish primary school. There was a shochet and a market on Tuesday and Friday in the town. There were few stores owned by Jews selling day-to-day goods: salt, matches, kerosene and cereals. Jews spoke Yiddish to one another and Ukrainian with their Ukrainian neighbors.

My father Isak, Itzyk in Jewish, was born in 1909 and was the youngest in the family. He had two older brothers and 5 sisters. I didn’t know my father’s brothers. One of them, whose name I don’t know, perished during the Civil War [2]. His brother Moishe Pizman moved to USA before the revolution and the family had no contacts with him. The oldest of the children was my father’s sister Haya. Then came Mariam and the next were Ester, Pinia and Leya and then the sons were born. My grandfather and grandmother were religious like all other Jews in the town. The sons studied in the cheder and had bar mitzvah after turning 13. The family celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays and followed kashrut. I don’t know ay details since all I know is what my father told me. The family was very poor and my father became an apprentice of a shoemaker at 8 and began to work at 10 years of age. Under the influence of his older brothers my father got fond of revolutionary ideas. His older brothers were the first to join the Komsomol [3] in the town, and my father followed into their steps, when he turned 14. Of course, my father and his brothers became atheists. I don’t know whether my father’s brothers had any education, but my father only finished cheder. He could not read or write in Russian or Ukrainian. My father moved to Mogilyov-Podolskiy at the age of 18, in 1927. He went to work as a shoemaker in a shop. At the beginning he worked in a crew of shoemakers and then got his own booth shop near the fire brigade in the town. My father did well at work. He was hardworking and had fair thinking, but he had no education.

My father’s sisters, except Leya, married Jewish men and lived in Chernivtsi. They were housewives. Haya’s husband, whose surname was Tepp, was a blacksmith. They had four children. My father sister Mariam’s husband Preger worked in Haya husband’s forge, but I don’t remember what exactly job he did. They had three children. Samuel, the younger son, was born in 1925. I don’t remember the names of two daughters. My father’s sister Ester Bakaleinik divorced her husband and never remarried. She didn’t have any children. Pinia, Zozulia in her marriage, had two sons: Abram, who was 5 years older than me, and Aron, the same age with me. Her husband was a butcher. My father’s younger sister Leya married a Jewish man from Yaryshev, a Jewish town. I didn’t know her first husband. He died young leaving Leya with three children. She married Brener, a tailor from Yaryshev and had four children with him. My father’s sisters also became atheists under the influence of my father’s brothers.

My grandmother died in the early 1930s and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Chernivtsi. My grandfather died few years later, in 1939, and was buried in my grandmother’s grave. I was 8 years old and my parents took me to my grandfather’s funeral. He was buried in accordance with Jewish traditions. My father recited the Kaddish over my grandfather. Nobody sat shivah after my grandfather. Their gravestone is still there in the cemetery in Chernivtsi.

My mother’s family lived in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. This was a nice green town. The Jewish population constituted about 70%. There were few synagogues in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Two of them operated until the start of the Great Patriotic War [4], and the others were closed during the period of struggle against religion [5]. There was a Jewish cemetery, few cheders and Jewish schools. The cheder was closed before the revolution, and one Jewish school worked as long as the start of the Great Patriotic War. The Jewish school was more primitive than general education schools. I remember pupils of this Jewish school. They carried their textbooks and notebooks in wooden boxes on a leather thong that they carried over their shoulders. There was a hexagonal star on their boxes painted in ink. They looked like white crow among other schoolchildren. Since children needed to know Ukrainian and Russian to be able to continue their education, gradually Jewish children switched to Ukrainian schools in the town.

Mogilyov-Podolskiy is surrounded with the mountains. The Dnestr River divided the town. There was Moldavia on the left bank. Before 1917 Moldavia or [by its historic name] Bessarabia [6] belonged to the Russian Empire. In 1918 it was annexed to Romania and Mogilyov-Podolskiy became a border town. There were special permits required to enter Mogilyov-Podolskiy. In 1940 Bessarabia was annexed to the USSR.

Jews resided in the central part of the town. There were few market places in the town. The biggest market place in the center of the town worked 3 times a week. There was a shochet working nearby and housewives took the chickens they had bought to him to have them slaughtered. On Thursday and Friday villagers sold living chickens and fish at the market. They knew that Jewish housewives made chicken broth and gefilte fish for Sabbath and took their chance to earn more. Housewives often ordered dairy products from farmers and they delivered them to their homes. Jews in Mogilyov-Podolskiy were craftsmen like my father and owned small stores. There were also Jewish lawyers, teachers, doctors. My grandmother told me there was a big Jewish community in Mogilyov-Podolskiy before the revolution. The community supported the needy. The community made arrangements for funerals, supported the Jewish hospital and the children’s home for Jewish children. They also provided dowries to Jewish girls from poor families and covered expenses for weddings. They collected contributions before Sabbath and Jewish holidays for poor Jews to have decent celebrations. The community stopped its existence after the revolution.

During the revolution and Civil war there were pogroms [7] in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. My mother’s mother Surah told me about one. There was a boy and a girl in the town – they had loved each other since they were children. They came from poor families and had no money for their wedding. The Jewish community and sponsors collected money for the wedding, bought a house with everything necessary for living for the young people and arranged a grand wedding party, when suddenly a Petliura [8] unit came into the town. They broke into the synagogue and killed the bride and bridegroom, the rabbi and all guests with their sables. There were no survivors. This was a gang [9] from somewhere else – there were no local pogrom makers. Jews and other people had good neighborly relations with each other.

My maternal grandfather Leib Abramson, whom I didn’t know, was born in Mogilyov-Podolskiy in 1870. Grandmother Surah was born in 1872 in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Grandfather Leib was a cook and confectioner and cooked for weddings, birthday and other parties. He usually had a crew of assistants. My grandmother was a housewife. I cannot tell how much religious my mother’s parents were. Before the war we had their only photo where my grandfather was wearing a yarmulke, a black suit and had a big beard. They observed Jewish traditions. My mother didn’t tell me much about her childhood. She had a poor, hungry and hard childhood and these memories must have been hard for her. At the time that I remember my mother, her brother and sister and grandmother were not religious. They spoke Yiddish in the family and knew Ukrainian.

There were six children in the family. My mother was the youngest. My mother’s oldest brother, whose name I don’t know, moved to USA. The family had no contacts with him. Her two brothers were in the Red army and perished during the Civil War. I was named after one of them, whose name was Aron. I don’t know the name of another brother. My mother fourth brother’s name was Duvid. My mother’s sister Rosa called Rosia in the family was born after Duvid. I don’t know whether my mother’s brothers had any education, but my mother and her sister had no education whatsoever. My mother Nehama was born in 1909. When she was six, her father Leib died in an accident in 1915. He was 45. When he was cooking for a wedding, the floor and the Russian stove [11] collapsed. My grandfather fell into the basement and pieces of the stove fell on him. He had many injuries. He was bedridden for some time before he died. The family spent all their savings on his treatment. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Mogilyov-Podolskiy according to the Jewish traditions. His grave and gravestone with an inscription in Hebrew are still there.

My grandmother began to work in the same crew where my grandfather worked before he died. The sons went to work, but then they joined the revolution. The younger daughters had to work around the house.

My mother’s older brother Duvid got married and moved to a village in Vinnitsa region. He worked fixing and altering old clothes. Duvid’s family had a good house, a vegetable garden and an orchard. Duvid had four daughters. During the Great Patriotic War the family was in the ghetto in their village. After the war Duvid’s wife died and he remarried. His older daughter Rosa and her family live Luzhany village of Chernovtsy region and his three younger daughters moved to Israel. Duvid died in the 1980s visiting his daughter in Luzhany.

My mother’s sister Rosa worked as a seamstress at the factory before the war. She had a prearranged wedding few years before my mother got married. I don’t remember her family name. Her husband Shmil sang in the choir at the synagogue, when he was young. He was not religious, but had a nice tenor voice and knew music. When the synagogue was closed, Shmil went to work as a tax inspector. They had no children. Mama and Rosa were very close.

I don’t know how my father and mother met, but this happened after he moved to Mogilyov-Podolskiy, of course. They fell in love with one another and decided to get married. My father’s sisters were hoping that their brother would marry a wealthy girl and would support them, but he married a girl from a poor family who had no dowry. They could never forgive my father or mother for their lost hopes. Even when my father’s sisters lived with us during the occupation since our house was within the ghetto, they were still very cold toward my mother.
My parents got married in 1929. They had a civil ceremony in a registry office and then had a small wedding dinner with their closest ones. My father’s sisters and their husbands came to the wedding from Chernovtsy.

After the wedding my parents lived in the room that my father received from his work. They lived in the private house that became public property after the revolution. The former owner of the house also had an apartment in this house. She was a very beautiful and kind woman earning her living by handicrafts. Her surname was Kipnis. She and my mother became friends. I was born in 1930. My mother’s older sister Rosa lived with her husband and grandmother Surah nearby. She was ill and could not have children. She offered my mother to move into their house to have more space and that they would move into our room. Rosa lived in a small house near the Dnestr. My father decided to build an annex to the house to make it bigger. We moved into the house in 1935. My father bought construction materials for the house, but the problem was that the area near the house was flooded every spring and my father decided it didn’t make sense to start the construction, if the territory was flooded. In 1938 he sold this house and bought a part of the house in the center of the town near the market place in Stavisskaya Street. My mother wanted grandmother Surah to live with us. My father gave his consent and grandmother Surah moved in with us. There were three rooms and a kitchen with a Russian stove in the house. There was my parents’ room, my grandmother and I lived in another room, and the third room was a living room. My younger brother David was born in 1939.

My father was an atheist and so was my mother. My brother and I were raised like all Soviet children. We celebrated Soviet holidays at home: 1 May, 7 November [12], the Soviet army Day [13]. My parents wore ordinary clothes and didn’t have their head covered. We didn’t observe Jewish traditions or celebrate holidays at home. When my grandmother moved in with us, we began to celebrate Jewish holidays, but this was a tribute to tradition rather than religiosity. That is to say, I think we celebrated Jewish holidays then, though I don’t remember them. On Sabbath my grandmother lit candles and prayed over them. She also cooked a special dinner and the family got together at the table. There were traditional Jewish dishes on the table: gefilte fish, chicken broth, chicken neck stuffed with flour and onions, it was particularly delicious, some potato puddings, but I can hardly remember. However, my mother did work about the house on Saturday like she did on any other day, and my father always worked on Saturday. He had a day off on Sunday. I remember that we had matzah at home on Pesach. It’s hard to say whether we had traditional Jewish food at home. I had a poor appetite and any food looked repulsive to me. I felt obliged to mother and grandmother to eat and I did for their sake.

My parents had no education and in 1934 a visiting teacher began to teach my father under the likbez [14] curriculum. My mother and I were also present at these classes, and we also learned to read, write and count – everything that my father studied. I could read and write at the age of 5. In 1937 I went to a Ukrainian general education school. There was a 7-year school in our district, but my father wanted me to go to the 10-year school, but to be enrolled there I had to officially live in aunt Rosa’s home since this school belonged to her district. So I was admitted to this school that was considered to be the best in the town. I liked going to school. Our young teacher Rosa Goldsmidt noted that I had been taught before school and made me her assistant. I was very proud of it and behaved decently in class. Only during the war, in the ghetto, I got to know that Rosa was a Jew. Before the war we didn’t think about nationalities. I didn’t identify myself as a Jew. We were taught that all citizens of the USSR had one nationality – Soviet. Now, when I recall school, I understand that there were many Jewish teachers and school children.

We were taught from the first form that there was no God, but this was nothing new to me since I heard it before from my father. We were also taught to explain that they were wrong believing in the non-existent God. I became a pioneer in the 3rd form. I was one of the first to become a pioneer – only pupils with good marks were admitted. Some children didn’t care about their studies and some, like Yakov Epelbaum, whom I shared my desk with, just had no talent to study.

We were fond of reading and there were always lines in town libraries. I was fond of astronomy and learned by heart many astronomic constants. We didn’t study physics and when I wondered why it was so that when women were washing sheets on the opposite side of the Dnestr and I saw them slapping their sheets on the water, but heard the sound of it later, I asked our school teacher of physics and he explained about the velocity of light and sound to me. Our teachers always answered our questions, even when they had to stay after classes to do it. We, kids, shared our interests with friends. We tried to read and know more. There were many hobby groups in the house of pioneers in Mogilyov-Podolskiy: the group of Voroshylov [15] rifle mark guys, airplane design group and music studios. To get enrolled in the group children had to show their pupils’ mark books with good marks. We spent a lot of our free time in the house of pioneers. We learned a lot there, more than we did at home. I remember how happy I was, when I made my first flying model. My father helped me to make it. I think, he could have done more, if he had got education. Once I discovered that the projection of sketches painted on glass in ink sort of moved, when lighted by the flame of a candle. I showed it to my father and he made me a plywood box with inserted glass and a candle inside. My father and I made sketches and projected them onto the wall. My father did everything very efficiently. He was a pace-make worker at work and had awards of honor and also was given incentives like free trips to recreation houses. However, my father never joined the party. He believed sincerely that only the best could be communists while he, a common uneducated worker, did not deserve such honor.

Our family did not suffer from the arrests that started in 1936. [Great Terror] [16] Perhaps, some of my parents’ acquaintances were arrested, but I was too young and did not think about it. Every now and then our teachers told us to over paint a portrait of a political activist or military commander in our textbooks, because he happened to be an enemy of the people [17]. We, kids, believed this was the right thing to do and everything was right in our country. Our teachers, radio and newspapers stated that our army was invincible and those who dared attack us would be in trouble. We would defeat the enemy on his territory and win a victory. Children and adults believed in it. We, junior pupils, were trained to march to march songs and handle gas masks. Senior schoolchildren studied military disciplines, assembly and disassembly of weapons, types of weapons, training grenades and first aid to the wounded.

In May 1941 I finished the 3rd form. On 18 May I went to the children’s recreation center near Odessa. I was to come back home in the middle of July. On Sunday, 22 June 1941, around noon we noticed strange nervousness of adults: tutors and teachers. They were whispering and had the looks of concern. In the evening we had a gathering where they announced the start of the war and said that Hitler attacked the USSR without declaring war. The management of this recreation center did not have any directions for evacuation and they didn’t quite know what they were supposed to do. Then they began to make groups of children to take them to their homes. I was the only one from Mogilyov-Podolskiy. They took me to the railway station and then the group moved on and I stayed waiting for a train to Mogilyov-Podolskiy. There I found out that there were no passenger trains moving in my direction. I waited four days at the railway station until a captain, who came to the railway station to meet his family took me to his home and few days later he put me on a military train to Mogilyov-Podolskiy. My mother met me. My father was recruited to the army on the first days of the war. He was still waiting at the gathering point in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. The recruits were trained in military disciplines. On our way home my mother and I saw the oil terminal on fire. There were air raids and firing. In the evening my father came home. His commanders allowed him to go and see me. My father never smoked before the war, but this time I saw him making a makeshift cigarette to smoke. He had to go back and before leaving my father said to mama: ‘Take care of the children and try to take them as far as you can from the town’. We stayed at home few more days. One morning another air raid began and when it was over the radio announced that there was a train at the railway station for those, who wished to evacuate. My mother packed some clothes in rush. My grandmother refused to go with us. She told mama she would manage alone while my mother had to take care of her sons. At that time we already knew that Germans were killing Jews. There were no official announcements in this regard, but there were convincing rumors. Those, who remembered WWI, believed Germans to be a civilized nation and would do no harm to innocent people just because they were Jews. The three of us ran to the station, but there was no train there. Only after the war I got to know that the radio announced the evacuation after the last train had left Mogilyov-Podolskiy. At that time the radio was convincing people that escapists were creating panic working in favor of Germans while the party officials from the town council and town party committee were leaving with their families, but nobody knew it.

We went back home, but on our way we bumped into my grandmother. She said: ‘Go away, go, run from Germans’. We went to Chernovtsy where my father’s sisters Haya and Mariam lived. My grandmother stayed home. My brother was 2 years old and my mother carried him. He was a very handsome child. When we reached Karpovka village another bombing began. There was a column of retreating units walking along the road and one soldier took my brother from mama and carried him as far as the highway. We stayed a couple of days with aunt Haya. Few days later our retreating troops came into the village. My father was with them. He stayed that night with us and we all stayed awake talking with him. My father left with his unit shortly before dawn. This was the last time we saw him. In 1944, after liberation of Mogilyov-Podolskiy, we received a notification from the military registry office. It said that my father perished on 6 August 1942 near Semyonovskaya village Rzhev district Kalinin region and that his grave was in Bakhmutovo village: the local residents buried the deceased after the battle.

My mother went to Mogilyov-Podolskiy and picked my grandmother to come to Chernivtsi. Few days later German troops came into the village. The first few days were quiet, but then another troop came to baptize, the Jews of the town turning them into Catholic belief. The local residents were aware of some action to be. A Catholic priest came into the town, which meant there was something brewing up. Perhaps to conduct the ceremony – at least this raised people’s concerns and doubts. [Editors’ note: This must have been a popular fear that the Germans wanted to convert the Jews by force before they actually appeared in the town.] People took hiding in basements. The catholic priest wanted 10 people. The Germans started looking for Jews. Aunts Haya’s neighbor, I think his surname was Mariasin, and his wife were captured. They were at home: his wife was baking bread and he stayed at home as well. So they opened the door, when Germans knocked on it and were seized. So there were 10 people seized in this way. They were taken to a dam, about 20 m high. At first they wanted them to lie along the dam so that the priest rode over them in his cab, but then they decided that horses could get scared and decided to throw them from the dam. They also fired at them. 10 people were killed so. [Editor’s note: It is unlikely that a priest took such a role in the massacre.] This was middle of July 1941. We decided we had to go back to Mogilyov-Podolskiy. A group of about 60 people started on our way before dawn. There was an elderly woman with us. It was difficult for her to walk. My mother was carrying my 2-year old brother. I was carrying two sacks with our belongings. We were to go across Karpovka, 4 km from Mogilyov-Podolskiy, where there was a transit camp of Jews from Bukovina and Bessarabia. They were the first to arrive in Vinnitsa region, Transnistria [18]. We were told back in Chernivtsi to share something with those poor people since they were starving. So I had potatoes for them in my pockets. In the village three teenage boys, shepherds, attacked me whipping me and trying to take away the sacks. I knew that we would starve to death, if we lost what we had and tried as much as I could to resist. They were older than me and I was desperate, when my mother and grandmother began screaming. Then our fellow travelers caught up with us. Men began yelling and the boys ran away.

In Karpovka we walked along the fence of the camp and I saw the inmates. They were living skeletons. I threw the raw potatoes that I had for them. They pounced on them and ate them instantly. When we passed the camp we saw a car with a Romanian officer, who started to say something in a loud angry voice. My grandmother and mother began to cry. He began to take out his gun pointing all the time in the direction of the ghetto. We were dirty and shabby and he thought we escaped from the ghetto. We were sure he would kill us. Then another vehicle drove by. We knew this was a German military in it. Romanians had green uniforms and Germans had gray ones. My mother told him in Yiddish that we were going home. I don’t know whether he understood or not, but he turned to the Romanian officer and slapped him on his face and left. We thought the Romanian would kill us for this slap, but he turned his car and left, too. We got home.

There was nothing left in it. There was a layer of feathers from pillows on the floor. We found my awards for 3 years of study, some textbooks and few books. The only food we had was the bread that we had from Chernivtsi. There was a rumor that the town department was going to release some herb, I don’t remember the name, they feed horses on it. There was a cavalry unit in Mogilyov-Podolskiy and thee were lots of stocks left. I ran to Ivanov, the town head, a Greek man, a former teacher of the 1st school. There were no people there yet. Perhaps, they didn’t believe this rumor. Ivanov asked me questions about my family. I told him that my father was at the front and he directed to give me 10 kg of this grass for 5 of us, including my father. To cook it we had to keep it soaking in water a whole night and boil for a long while in the morning, but this was good food. We could not buy food at the market. Neither Soviet nor German money worked. We had no money whatsoever, but even if we did have it, there was nothing to buy for money since only goods or food products mattered. People exchanged food products for things. The only thing we had plenty of was salt. Salt was a big deficit then. When we returned from Chernivtsi, we saw bombed stores in the market square and in one I saw a heap of salt. I made few trips bringing it home in my short. We stored it in the attic. We had enough salt to last through the occupation. Our neighbors also could take it for free – my mother was no good at selling things. Even before the ghetto we were forbidden to go to the market place, so we could not exchange salt for food. Once I went to the market to buy something, when a Ukrainian policeman grabbed me and asked: ‘Are you a zhyd?’ I kept silent and he pushed me hard. I fell on the pavement and got injured. I came home bleeding and since then my mother was afraid of sending me to the market.

There was a flood in August 1941. The Dnestr flooded the nearby area and we went to stay with aunt Rosa for three days of the flood. Some houses were destroyed. Only stone houses survived. The walls and the floor in our houses were covered with a thick layer of silt and the walls were partially ruined. We went to stay with the Altmans, our neighbors. They let us have one room. My mother, my brother and I were sleeping on a bed and my grandmother slept on a narrow wooden trestle bed.

In July 1941 Jews from Bessarabia began to be going to Transnistria across our town. There were concentration camps and Jewish ghettos covering the whole area between the Dnestr and Bug. Many Jews were dying on the way, some of them stayed in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Those, who died in the town were buried in the new Jewish cemetery. According to the officials data there are 20000 burials in this cemetery. There were few Jewish families staying in the house where we lived. Everybody asking for help found shelter in the house.

We had to somehow earn our living. Those Bessarabians staying in the Altmans’ house had acquaintances in Ataki, a Moldavian town on the opposite bank of the Dnestr, bringing them contraband cigarettes and tobacco leaves. I learned to cut them finely. At first my hands were sore, but then I got used to this work and did better. I could earn 1-2 mugs of corn flour per night’s work. My mother boiled it and this made our basic food. There was a Jew from Bukovina living with our neighbors. They were the family of Shames. He was a roofer, but since there was no roofing work he became a tinsmith making buckets and painting them to make them fit for keeping potable water in them. I watched him working and learned to make tin items. I could even earn 2 marks per day. A mug of corn flour cost 0.5 marks.

That winter when we lived with the Altman family, Germans killed all Jews in Bar town near Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Altman wife Mania’s brother Aron and his family lived in Bar. Mania cried and cried knowing that there were hardly any survivors. A week later Aron came. He wasn’t even wounded. He fainted and fell into the pit. His family perished. There were dead bodies falling on him and he almost suffocated. He was covered with somebody else’s blood that dried out on him. He could only walk at night, and it took him a week to get to our place. He looked like crazy: he didn’t talk to anybody a whole month and had a wild look in his eyes. It was hard to look at this young handsome man. When Mogilyov-Podolskiy was liberated he volunteered to the front. He perished in 1944.

There were continuous shootings in surrounding villages. I don’t know by what miracle Mogilyov-Podolskiy avoided it. There were about 500 Jews in Yarysev town in 18 km from us. On 21 August 1942 they were shot on the outskirts of the town. There were no survivors. Our 18 relatives and my father sister Leya Berner’s family perished there. The shooting was done by Ukrainian policemen and volunteers. Germans only issued the order. The Ukrainians moved into the houses and kept everything in them in their possession. We must not forget this.

Shortly after the flood a ghetto was made in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. There was an order for all citizens living beyond the boundaries of the ghetto to move to the ghetto. We were not allowed to leave the ghetto and Ukrainians were not allowed to come into it. In spring 1942 a high wooden fencing with barbed wire on top of it was installed and the ghetto was guarded. People said the barbed wire was powered. There was one wide gate and two smaller ones with armed policemen guarding them. There was a children’s home on the other side of the fence. There was a tap in the yard where we could take potable water. The children were dying every day. Standing in line to get water we often saw a horse-driven wagon loaded with dead bodies They tied them with ropes to fix in the wagon and buried them in common graves in the cemetery far away from the town.

During spring and summer 1942 my mother and I were putting the house in order. We cleaned the silt and dug some clay mixing it with horse manure – this was the only construction material available. I picked manure in the streets beyond the ghetto. I walked with a spade and a sack picking manure. Once I bumped into Shpakovskaya, the worst pupil in our class. Another boy saw me and began to yell: ‘Let’s feed this manure to this zhyd!’ and Shpakovskaya said: ‘Leave him alone. This is zhydovsky [Jewish] jam. Let him take it home’. Then I found some stables where there was a lot of manure. I could take home half a sack. Once I was captured by a Romanian officer. He began to whip me. At that time another Romanian man came in and said something. This Romanian that was whipping me, left and the other one poured some water on me to make me regain my senses. He let me go. I got to a yard and lay down. I couldn’t walk. I don’t know how long I was there, but then I brought this sack home. This was the last time I went to the stables. My mother and I restored the house, the walls and windows and moved in it in autumn.

My father’s sister Ester and Pinia and their sons Aron and Abram also were taken to the ghetto from Chernivtsi. They stayed in our house. Our family of four of us lived in the smallest room in our house – about 6 square meters. Some time later my mother’s sister Rosa and her husband Shmil came to live with us. Their house was beyond the boundaries of the ghetto and they had to move to the ghetto. They lived in a big room. Rosa’s neighbor Riva Snitman, her son Haim and daughter Hana lived in the kitchen. There were few families in the bedroom: Riva Snitman husband’s sister with two children, the Dorf couple with their daughter and Dorf wife’s sister, and my aunt Ester. Pepi and Malvina, a brother and sister from Bessarabia, were also there. There was a family from a village living with my aunt Rosa, I don’t remember their surname. There were 5 of them: the father of the family, his wife called Rosa, the Tall one, to distinguish between her and my aunt Rosa, the short one, and their three children. There was also David, a young man from Bukovina, living with them. He had a big bag full of religious books in Hebrew and no other belongings. David slept coiling up on a low table in our room. Aunt Haya and her children and aunt Mariam lived with the Altmans.

We were trying to exchange food products. My mother’s sewing machine saved us from starving to death. It was buried in saw dust and got a little rusty during the flood, but I polished it for my mother to work on it. My father had some underpants and my mother colored them and made some simple blouses and pants. She also altered old clothes. My mother sister Rosa’s husband Shmil exchanged my mother’s pieces of work for food at the market. I also made rings with little hearts and Shmil sold them. We were all swollen and had swollen feet since we drank lots of hot water to mitigate the hunger.

My mother became religious in the ghetto and remained religious till the end of her life. There was my grandmother’s prayer book in the house, and my mother began to pray every day. She always prayed during air raids or firing. We could not celebrate Jewish holidays in the ghetto, but my mother tried to follow the rules. We all, even my little brother, fasted on Yom Kippur. However hard life we had, my mother always tried to make matzah for Pesach.

A Jewish religious school, talmud torah, began to work in the ghetto in 1942. There were all levels of education: from primary to the higher level enabling to work as a rabbi at the synagogue. We were attracted to it since they gave two slices of brad and jam to its pupils and the best students had four slices. This school was funded by the head of the Romanian Jewish community. I don’t remember his name. My brother and I attended it through the whole time of its operation.

In autumn 1943 there was an epidemic of enteric fever in the ghetto. My mother and I, my grandmother, my little brother and David, who lived with us in the room, fell ill. Many of our neighbors were also ill. Many people died from it. We survived thanks to our dairy woman, who used to bring us milk before the war. She found us in the ghetto and brought us milk. She came few times. My grandmother died a week later. My mother had high fever and could not even come to the cemetery. Uncle Shmil buried my grandmother in the cemetery. Later we installed a gravestone on her grave. David also died. Every day 150-200 people died in the ghetto. We were on or way to recovery.

Soon after we recovered we got in a big trouble. One night we saw that one wall in the shed in the yard was gone. Somebody must have taken it for the wood to stoke a stove. We decided also to use it for wood, but then a policeman came by. He said that all facilities were the property of German Empire and we had no right to pull down the shed. He put down our name and said that my mother would be taken to jail in Tiraspol. My mother asked our neighbors whether they knew this policeman. Our neighbor Haim Gorin happened to know him well. He went to talk with the policeman and asked him to not send my mother to jail since she had two small children. The policeman said he would stop the proceedings, if we paid him 150 marks. This was a lot of money and we had to ask our neighbors to lend us the money. We gave him the money and later we had to return the debts in money or doing work for people for a whole year. But my mother stayed at home.

I remember a terrible happening in winter 1943. There were severe frosts and the Dnestr froze. There was an ice-hole from where we fetched ice for cooling cells where we kept food products. There were always people lining to get water and ice. A young woman from Bukovina filled one bucket with water and bent to fill another, when she slipped and fell into the hole. She drowned. No one took water from this hole on that day. On the next day people made another hole farther from the previous one.

There was a rumor in the ghetto about the Vlasov troops [19] coming. They were worse than fascists living bloody tracks behind. We made a shelter in the house between the kitchen and the adjusting room. It closed with shelves kitchen utensils on them on the side of the kitchen. To enter it we removed utensils from the lower shelf to remove the wall. That opened the entrance to the shelter. My mother and I made this shelter and also made one for the Altmans.

There was a judenrat [20] and Jewish police in the ghetto. They were the most brutal ones. To Romanians we were all alike while the community and the police were local and knew each of us. The community was responsible for making lists for deportation to the Pechora death camp [This concentration camp is known as the ‘Dead Loop’. In total about 9000 people from various towns in Vinnitsa region were kept in the camp. Inmates hardly got any food and the building had no heating. About 2 500 Jews were taken away by Germans for forced labor. None of them returned. In March 1944 Soviet troops liberated the camp. There were 1550 survivors left.] receiving this order from Romanians. There were Bessarabian inmates to be sent to Pechora, but the community sent inmates from Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Bessarabian Jews had money and valuables to pay ransom. The Romanians called such bribes ‘gifts’. Bessarabian Jews also spoke Romanian and had no communication problems. We heard that we were to be deported to Pechora. My mother knew this meant death to us. The locals supported each other as much as they could. Soviet people learned to help each other charging no money for it. When we heard about the deportation, my mother felt like committing suicide, but my aunts told her that she had children to think about. We decided to ignore the order. Early in the morning on the day of deportation we walked to Ozarintsy 10 km north-east of Mogilyov-Podolskiy. My mother dressed up as a Ukrainian farmer woman. Our distant relative Aron Shisman lived there. He accepted us all: aunt Ester, aunt Pinia and her children and us. My mother began to sew for Aron and clients. She was paid with food products and so we earned our food. My mother and I also made a shelter for them.

Two months later we returned to Mogilyov-Podolskiy. The deportation was over and we were hoping that Romanians would not send us to Pechora. Hey killed those who ignored their orders, but if some time passed, they forgot about such faults. There was also a risk that one of the community would report on us. There were such incidents, and then such inmates were sent to Pechora anyway, but nobody reported on us, and we kept living in our room. Then my mother fell ill. She had a big furuncle in her armpit. It hurt and she had fever. A Jewish doctor from Bukovina visited my mother, but since there were no medications available, he told my mother to stay in bed and left. After he left we found 3 marks under my mother’s pillow that he left. This was the cost of 6 mugs of corn flour – quite a fortune. Few days later this doctor returned. He said my mother could go to the town hospital department for Jews. I took my mother to the hospital. Aunt Rosa took care of my brother and me in my mama’s absence. She began to sew and provide food for us. My mother had meals in the hospital. I went to visit my mother every day. On my way to the hospital I picked apricots for her, though they were not ripe. Mama left her bread to give it to me, when I came. Two weeks later mama returned home and began to sew.

On 18 March 1944 there was news that the Soviet army was advancing and that the ghetto was to be eliminated before they reached this area. There was an order issued to eliminate the camp. Germans and Romanians were retreating crossing the Dnestr over the bridge. All inmates of the ghetto hid in their shelters standing close to one another. There was no air to breathe and if somebody felt like sneezing he had to leave the shelter to save the others. My brother and I were on the attic ready to escape to the shelter every instant. We watched the bridge. Germans and Romanians were arguing who was the first to walk on the bridge. They started shooting. Later that night the bridge was blasted with all Germans, Romanians, horses, wagons, tanks and cannons on it. About an hour later the railway bridge was blasted and everything got quiet. My brother and I stayed in the attic. At dawn there were few shots heard in the vicinity of the cemetery and then everything got quiet again. Soon 3 Soviet tanks entered the town. This happened on 19 March 1944. One tank stopped near our house. My brother and I went down and climbed on it. The tank men gave my brother and me their earphones and turned on the radio ‘Moscow speaking’. We hadn’t heard it for 3.5 years. “Moscow speaking’ – and this was a miracle.

There were heaps of weapons and ammunition in the streets that German left. People were picking them. Then there were ‘heroes’ searching for the Romanians that hid away. My mother and we were standing near our house, when 3 Romanians went by convoyed by a local Jewish man with a gun. When they were passing by, he shot one Romanian on the back of his head and he fell in front of mama. She screamed and the Jew pointed his gun at her. One could tell this man was out of his mind. He shot another Romanian, when they were passing the next house.

Soviet troops came to Mogilyov-Podolskiy and people came out into the streets. They were happy. A crowd of people came to the bank of the Dnestr to greet their liberators. Then snipers began to shoot from the opposite bank of the Dnestr. Germans left many snipers. They shot with explosive bullets that were deadly. They wounded many people. There were no doctors or medications. The doctors, who were on the bank, could only apply iodine on the wounds. The snipers were shooting for few days before few young soldiers swam across the Dnestr and killed them.

After liberations the town was bombed several times. One night the bomber planes dropped termite balls that were burning hanging in the air brightly lighting the whole town. There were few buildings ruined near our house. We discovered deep pits in the morning. Fortunately, our house was all right.

About a month after liberation bread cards were issued. We received about 1 kg bread for the three of us. Besides, we received about 100 or 200 g fat per month, and occasionally we got jam and herring and also, 20-30 matches. So, we were safer and did not fear starving to death any longer.

In April 1944 schools opened and I went to the 3rd form. The children had forgotten a lot and even made mistakes in counting. There were no notebooks. I found a pile of Romanian orders printed on cigarette paper in an abandoned archive and wrote on the backside. Then there were thin 4-page notebooks sold in stores. We wrote in small letters to save the paper. We also made ink buying methylviolet at the market and making a solution with water. A year later my brother went to the 1st form of my school.

Aunt Rosa and her husband stayed with us. My mother and aunt sewed and Shmil sold their products at the market. After receiving the notification on my father’s death my mother began to receive a pension of 340 rubles. This was good money for this time. We bought potatoes and corn flour at the market. The most important thing was that we were confident of our future and had no fear any longer. We had all rights and understood that we had them. Young people can hardly imagine the life, when one fears being killed day after day.

After Vinnitsa region was liberated my sisters returned home to Chernivtsi. Aunt Haya became very religious after the war. She celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays and followed the kashrut strictly. Her husband was not religious, but he was loyal to her religiosity. The rest of my father’s sisters remained atheists. Aunt Rosa died in 1962. She was buried in accordance with Jewish traditions in the Jewish cemetery in Mogilyov-Podolskiy, near my grandmother’s grave. Her husband remarried after the mourning and moved to live with his wife. We didn’t keep in touch with him.

After finishing the 3rd form I passed exams for the 4th form that same summer and went to the 5th form in autumn. On 22 February 1946 I quit school before finishing the 6th form. My mother managed to find me an employment as a clock repair man apprentice. My friend’s father was a clock repair man in this shop. My mother sold my father’s coat that he got before the war and paid the man to employ me. I received a worker’s food card at work. The shop I worked in worked for NKVD [21] employees. I bought 6 loaves of bread receiving my first salary and there was no money left. We ate them in one day.

There was famine in 1946. The draught ruined the crops. Each organization was given a plot of land and seed grains to grow their own crops. Employees went to fields to seed potatoes and corns. I picked river oysters on the Dnestr that we cooked. They didn’t taste well, but at least they satisfied our need in proteins. We somehow survived through this year, and in 1947 the card system was cancelled and there were many food products including an assortment of bread in stores. Besides working in the shop, my friends and I worked on the Dnestr. The bridge across the river was ruined. There was a ferry, but it commuted rarely. My friends and I took people across the river in boats. Many people from Mogilyov-Podolskiy had jobs in Ataki or vice versa. The border existed no longer. We came to the Dnestr after worked and took 8-10 people in one trip across the river. 8-Life was hard. We didn’t have any clothes or shoes, but many people lived like this at that time and we didn’t feel disturbed about it.

In 1948 we heard that Israel was established officially and acknowledged by all countries in the world. We were happy to know that we had our own country. I had a dream to go Israel and take part in the construction, but this was no more than dreaming since I was the only breadwinner in the family and could not leave my mother and brother behind.

In 1949 I was appointed a crew leader. I passed the qualification commission and received a crew of four people. I was awarded the highest category of qualification and got a raise. I found it interested to restore old clocks, even those that older masters refused to restore.

I had many friends: my former classmates and my colleagues. We went to a gym together and in summer spent time on the Dnestr. I also met my future wife Riva Gershberg in this company of young people. Riva was the same age with me and came from Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Her mother Golda Gershberg, nee Weinstein, was also born in Mogilyov-Podolskiy in 1891. I didn’t know Riva’s father, whose name was Shloime Gershberg. He was born in 1891. Riva’s mother owned a small food store before the revolution. After the revolution the state took away her store and she learned to saw. This is what she did for a living. There were four children in the family. Riva was the youngest. She had two older brothers Gersh and Moisey, born in 1920 and1921, and sister Anna, born in 1926. Riva’s father fell severely ill, when she was small. He was paralyzed. Riva’s mother had to raise four children and look after her paralyzed husband. Before the war Riva’s brothers were recruited to the army, and Riva and her sister and mother stayed in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. They were kept in the ghetto until 1942, when Riva’s parents and Riva were taken to the Pechora concentration camp, and Riva’s older sister Anna was taken to a German labor camp in Vinnitsa region. Riva’s father died in Pechora in 1942. Riva and her mother managed to escape from Pechora and return home. They stayed in the ghetto in Mogilyov-Podolskiy till the end of the war. Riva’s sister also managed to escape from the concentration camp. The prisoners of this camp worked at the construction of a road in Vinnitsa region. They died from hunger and diseases and were replaced with others. Anna was a pretty girl, and Ukrainian policemen helped her to escape. After the war Anna married a Jewish man from Vinnitsa and moved to her husband. Her family name was Nudrina. Riva’s brothers perished at the front: Gersh – in 1944, Moisey – in January 1945, shortly before the war.

Upon liberation of the town Riva went to work as a lab assistant at the buttery. She also studied in an evening school. The school was far from her house. I met Riva near her school after classes and accompanied her home. I met Riva’s family and they liked me. In 1949 we got married. Riva’s mother was an atheist while my mother became religious during the war. My mother insisted that Riva and I had a traditional Jewish wedding. The synagogue did not operate after the war, but there was secret prayer house. The rabbi lived across the street from our house. He often came by asking me to fix household things for him. He was a very nice and intelligent man and we often had interesting discussions. Riva and I had a civil ceremony in the district registry office, but lived at our homes for a whole month before the Jewish wedding.. I made my wife a wedding ring from a silver spoon. We had a chuppah installed in the yard. My mother invited the rabbi to conduct the wedding ceremony. After the wedding Riva moved in with us.

I remember only one occurrence related to the struggle against cosmopolitism [23] that started in the USSR in 1948. I liked Ilia Erenburg [24], a writer. He wrote a book “War” after the war. Since he lived in France for a long time he described what was happening in Paris. He was accused of cosmopolitism and declared guilty for describing events in Paris rather than what was happening in the USSR. There was a meeting of the Union of writers where many of his colleagues made accusing speeches about the book and the author. Erenburg asked the floor at the end of the meeting. He was allowed to take the floor and said he wanted to read a reference to his books written by one of his readers. They said they didn’t want to hear any references since Soviet writers had to educate their readers, but not vice versa. However, Erenburg read the letter: “I read your book, when I was on vacation. This is a very good book and I will read it again if I have time”. And signature: “Iosif Stalin”. And the meeting ended at that. There may have been innocent people among those who suffered at this period, but I don’t agree that all of them were innocent. One can say whatever nowadays, but I do not believe that all “cosmopolites” were innocent.

In 1951 I was recruited to the army. I passed the military commission in the military registry office and was sent to an Air Force unit as a gunman. I went to a military school in Poltava [250 km from Kiev]. However, they had already completed the department of gunmen and I was not admitted. I was sent to the school for motor mechanics in Poltava, but later the school moved to Mirgorod [about 300 km from Kiev]. I joined Komsomol at school. I finished the school with honors in 1952. I learned the mechanic part of planes promptly and was authorized to prepare a group of 10 backward cadets to the exams in aerodynamics and operation of planes. I spent a lot of time with these cadets and they passed their exams well. I was promoted to a sergeant and had the right to choose the location of my further military service. I requested Poltava. For excellent finishing school and support of my fellow students I was allowed a leave. I spent it with my wife at home, of course. She was pregnant and the baby was due soon. On 11 January 1952 I got news from home that I had a son and on 13 January I took my military oath. We named our son Igor. My wife quit her evening school. I insisted that she did. 9 forms at school are sufficient for a housewife, and I didn’t want my wife to ever go to work. I believed I was capable of providing for the family, and a wife is to be a good housewife, mother and a family guardian.

There were not sufficient air planes in Poltava, and I worked as a part-time motor mechanic for some time. Later they received new planes and I was made responsible for technical maintenance of one plane. I have the very best memories of my 4-year service in the army.

I was the only Jew in the squadron. I only faced anti-Semitism twice. The first time was in the train on the way from Poltava to Mirgorod after finishing the motor mechanic school. We were traveling in freight train roofless railcars. The orderly replaced each other every two hours. When it was my turn, I saw that my predecessor had not cleaned the railcar. I told him that I would only start my shift after he cleaned the railcar and he replied: ‘You, zhydovskaya morda! [mug rude], can sweep the floor yourself’. I went crazy, grabbed him and dragged him to the door. I felt like throwing him off the train, when my fellow comrades interfered and pulled me away from him. When the train stopped, our company commanding officer asked what it was all about and I told him. My fellow comrades confirmed that I was telling the truth. This guy was taken away from us. When we arrived at Poltava, he was put in a guardhouse and later taken to another military unit.

Another incident happened during my service in Poltava. I was assigned to an airplane to support its maintenance. There is also a board engineer, and the one, who worked with me, happened to be an anti-Semite. He kept picking on me without reason, and it upset me, until finally something happened that was the last drop. When we were to step onto the wing of the plane, we had to put on valenki [warm battered sheep wool felt boots] boots to prevent the surface from scratching. This was late summer, and it was frosty. The plane was covered with a tarpaulin tent that froze to the plane at night. The board engineer ordered me to get on the plane and hit the tent with a rubber hose to break the ice. We broke the ice, but there were pieces of it left and I said I would not remove the tent since the crystals of ice might turn the surface of the wing into a grater. He commented: “You, zhydy, don’t want to do anything, and you are great in finding reasons for doing nothing’. This drove me mad. I grabbed the hose and ran after him. He ran away. The guys from our crew captured me: ‘What are you doing!” I was screaming that I would kill this beast. They took me to the barrack, and the rumor about this spread in the whole squadron. The board engineer reported to the commandment that I threatened him with physical violence, and he was an officer. This was a direct violation of the statute. In the evening Colonel Kobkin, commander of the squadron, a tall and handsome man, 1 class pilot called me to his office. I told him about what happened and about the previous fault-findings. I asked him to not send me to work with this engineer threatening to kill him. I said, even in fear of prison or death sentence I would kill him. He must not live and he had no right to live after what we had to endure during the war. I was kept in the ghetto 3.5 years and heard the word ‘zhyd’ from fascists, but I did not want to hear this from a Soviet anti-Semite officer! Kobkin listened to me and ordered me to stay in the barrack. Few days later I was notified that as a punishment I was transferred to another air field in Melitopol [about 350 km east of Kiev]. My offender was ordered to resign, though I was just a sergeant and he was a lieutenant. So one had to fight against anti-Semitism to find justice rather than keeping silent and hanging one’s head to it.

In January 1953 the ‘doctors’ plot’ [25] began. I was serving in Melitopol. We had political classes each week where they read us articles about ‘murderers in white robes’ and readers’ letters. I believed this was true and so did many others, I guess. We used to believe newspapers, particularly, such serious things. After Stalin’s death and Beria’s [26] denunciation we were told that everything that had been said about these doctors was wrong. They were rehabilitated [27], though some of them - posthumously. After Stalin’s death and Beria’s arrest the party organizer of one squadron said at a meeting that he was indignant at how mean Beria was starting this ‘doctors’ case’ since we all thought then: ‘here what Jews can do!’ I stood up and said: ‘You thought so and we didn’t. Even if these Jewish doctors were murderers, what does it have to do with all Jews? General Vlasov gave up 2 armies to Germans, but this is no ground for us to think that all Russians are traitors. Maybe these Jewish people are criminals, but because few people are criminals you cannot believe the whole nation to be such’. The party organizer reported this case to the commandment. There was a Komsomol meeting where they discussed what I said. I repeated what I said and the political officer of the regiment supported me. The party organizer was transferred to another military unit.

When Stalin died, there was no indifferent person in the whole regiment. This was a common grief and everybody cried. We loved Stalin dearly and believed him to be the greatest of men and I still believe the same. The arrests that happened were justified. I don’t know – perhaps, there were innocent people among them< I wouldn’t say there weren’t, but on the whole, these arrests were justified and necessary. We could hardly imagine our life without Stalin. All leaders of our country after Stalin looked miserable. After the 20th Party Congress [28], when Nikita Khrushchev [29] denounced the cult of Stalin, many people changed their attitude to Stalin, but not me.

I got another leave in 1954. My son was 2 years old. I spent a month with my wife and son and was happy. The last year of my service was in Germany, at an Air Force aerodrome in a little town near the Eastern Berlin. I was an electric mechanic there. A year later I demobilized and returned home on 12 November 1955. On 7 December I went to work at the food industry equipment plant in Mogilyov-Podolskiy and worked there 46 years. I started as a laborer, then I worked as a tinsmith and a mechanic. I joined the party in 1958. I also passed exams for the 6th form of school and went to the 7th form. I always liked to study and had all excellent marks at school, though I was always pressed for time. After finishing school I wanted to go on studying. In 1960 the plant sent me to study in Moscow extramural all-Union machine tool College. My wife was pregnant. My younger son Mikhail was born in 1961. My wife and I were atheists and did not observe any Jewish traditions, including circumcision.

My wife and sons moved into my wife mother’s house near the railway station. My younger brother lived with my mother while my mother-in-law suffered from loneliness. There were hardly any comforts, but we were young and healthy and took it easy.

I passed my entrance exams to the College and entered the machine tool manufacture faculty. I also worked as a tool mechanic at the plant and studied by correspondence doing written tests during a year and then I had exams in June. I stayed 40 days in Moscow, doing practical work and taking exams and credits. The plant covered a part of my expenses. My younger brother David also entered this college with me after finishing 10 forms of school. On 13 April 1964 my brother and I obtained diplomas of production technicians of instrument manufacture. I was promoted to the shop production engineer and soon afterward I became a shop foreman. In 1969 I was appointed tool shop superintendent. I was always interested in design. Few years later I went to work as a design engineer in the design office of the plant.

My brother went to work as a dispatcher at this same plant. He was doing well at work. In 1965 my brother married Anna Narolskaya, a Ukrainian girl from Mogilyov-Podolskiy. They had a secular wedding. My brother went to work at the wine factory in Bronnitsa village near the town. In 1969 our mother died. At her request we buried her according to Jewish traditions in the Jewish cemetery in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. My mother’s grave is near grandmother Surah and my mother sister Rosa’s graves – 3 graves within one fence. My brother recited the Kaddish over our mother’s grave. He learned the words by heart since he didn’t know Hebrew. That same year my brother’s first baby was born. He was named Nathan, after our mother – the first letters of their names are the same. My brother’s daughter Zhanna was born in 1972. During perestroika [30], when an anti-alcoholic campaign began, many vines were destroyed and wineries closed. My brother’s factory was closed. My brother went to work as a production engineer in the assembly shop at the plant. In the late 1980s my brother and his family emigrated to Israel. They live in Ashdod. David and his wife Anna are pensioners. David’s son Nathan perished in the Israel army in 1992. Zhanna is married. She and her husband work. Zhanna has two children. My brother became religious after our mother died. He learned Ivrit, read the Torah, celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays and followed the kashrut and continued this in Israel. We correspond, but my rather hardly writes anything about their life and his family. We rather have a theoretical correspondence: I stand to my atheist views and my brother defends his religious views.

My sons were raised like all Soviet children. They became young Octobrists [31], pioneers and then joined Komsomol at school. We didn’t celebrate Jewish holidays, but we celebrated Soviet holidays at home and at work. We had guests at home. On 1 May and 7 November my wife and sons and I went to parades with other employees of the plant. On Victory Day [32], 9 May, we went to the meeting with veterans of the war on bank of the Dnestr, near the tank that was the first to enter Mogilyov-Podolskiy on 19 March 1944. We also celebrated New Year and family birthdays.

We usually spent family vacations at the seashore in the south. We sometimes bought tours or just rented rooms there. Sometimes my wife and I and later our sons joined us to go to Bakhmutovo village where my father was buried. We installed a gravestone on his grave. The villagers take care of the graves – they are good people. They keep the area in order and plant flowers.

My sons studied in a Russian general education school. After finishing school my older son Igor was recruited to the army. He served in the communication forces in Subcarpathia. We visited him on the day, when he took his military oath. Occasionally I stayed few days with him. After demobilization Igor returned to Mogilyov-Podolskiy. He went to work at the plant as a turner apprentice and later became a turner. My younger son wanted to continue his studies. We knew that he would have problems with entering a college in Ukraine. There was still strong anti-Semitism and it was hard for Jews to enter higher educational institutions. The situation was better in Russia. I went on business to a plant in Voronezh back in 1970. I liked the town and the people, and when it was time for Mikhail to take a decision, I said we would go to Voronezh. Mikhail passed exams to the Voronezh Polytechnic university and was admitted to the Engineering Mechanic Faculty. There were no vacant beds in the hostel and we rented a room for my son. My wife and I visited him in Voronezh and so did his older brother. My wife and I also spent vacations in Voronezh. My older son met his future wife in Voronezh. Yevgenia, nee Minkin, was born in Voronezh in 1948. She was a little older than my son. She worked as an accountant in a construction department. They got married and my son moved to Voronezh. In 1982 their son Pavel was born, and in 1985 – daughter Svetlana. My son worked at the Voronezh mechanic plant. Now they live in Haifa in Israel. They had to move to Israel. Their son Pavel didn’t have appropriate attention from his parents. They were busy at work and did not watch how he was doing at school. I believe that parental control is necessary. After finishing school my grandson was going to enter a college to avoid the mandatory military service. At that time Russia was in the state of war with Chechnia. There are many colleges in Voronezh and Pavel would have managed had he proper knowledge, but Pavel failed at the entrance exams. This meant that he was to go to Chechnia, and there was little chance that he would survive, particularly that he was a Jew. Chechen people are Muslims. Then Pavel heard that in Moscow they were generating lists of Jewish young people, who wanted to study in Israel after finishing school. He passed the interview successfully and went to Israel. My son and his family decided to go with him. I didn’t approve of their departure, but this was their decision. They live in Haifa. My son works at a factory, but his wife cannot find a job. Pavel served in the army. He is going to enter the university of Tel Aviv. Svetlana is finishing school and will go to the army. She will have time to decide what she wants to do in life.

My younger son returned to Mogilyov-Podolskiy after finishing his studies. He went to work at the design office of our plant. My son is a very talented engineer. In 1986 Mikhail married Lilia Weinstock, a local Jewish girl. They had a secular wedding. My son and his wife decided to live separately from us. In 1988 their older daughter Tatiana was born and in 1992 – their younger daughter Nathalia. Lilia is a housewife. Mikhail works at the plant. Mikhail has been fond of poetry since childhood and composed poems. He recently had a book of his poems published and the book had positive references from critics. We often visit Mikhail and his family, and our granddaughters often come by. They play the violin. Tatiana finished a music school and took part in contests of violinists. This year she is finishing school, and will go to a music vocational school. Our younger daughter studies in a music and general education schools. She goes on tours with our town ensemble of violinists.

When Jews began to move to Israel in the 1970s, I didn’t approve of this. I don’t approve of it now either. Some time ago I lectured on the international situation at the plant. I was a member of the town party committee and this was my chore. I also prepared a lecture about Israel. The party organizer gave me literature that was not available in common libraries to prepare this lecture. From there I learned about Israel: this country is unable to take care of employment of its population, provide free education and medical care. When people have to pay for everything – such country cannot ad must not exist, it cannot develop. This is my personal point of view and it may be wrong, but my wife and I never even discussed emigration.

When Mikhail Gorbachev [33] initiated perestroika in the USSR, I was on his side at first. I liked it, when he said it was time to start telling people the truth. It’s true, there have been too many lies, and the lower party staff was the source of these lies. I often spoke against lies. However, later, when I saw what direction this perestroika took, I understood that all these promises were just soap bubbles and that Gorbachev was an carpet bagger. However, I still kept hopping of some good to come, but later I gave up hopes. They say, perestroika gave us freedom of speech and press. This is not true. We had freedom of speech in the USSR before perestroika. Everything is based on interpretations. My grandson failed to enter a college in Voronezh, because of his Jewish identity. Th8is is what his father thinks, but I think that he didn’t have sufficient knowledge. And I am right. And I believe that the final step of perestroika – the breakup of the USSR was a crime, and this is what I think it to be. The USSR was a big and powerful country and today we have a number of smaller states that nobody in the world believes to be states. Only their presidents, who want to rule them need them, but nobody else. Nobody benefited from the breakup of the Union and nobody will. A state must be big, strong and rich and we had such state, but not any more. I believe this throws us decades back. In the USSR I, a son of a shoemaker, had the right for education and managed to implement it. And my children got a higher education, while now many talented children have no such opportunity since their parents cannot afford to pay for their children’s education. This is not true that life was bad in the USSR. This whole propaganda yelling about the totalitarianism, fears of this time and arrests – I think it’s a lie. They were minor and they were historically justified, but when the USSR collapsed, we lost it all.

They say the Jewish life has revived in the independent Ukraine. This is not true. Yes, a religious life has revived, but I don’t know about the Jewish life. Yes, there are performances in Yiddish in theaters and there are newspapers in Yiddish, but who needs them? There are hardly any people, who can read in Yiddish, but cannot in Russian. The former USSR also published works by Jewish classics. Of course, there is a Jewish community now and I must admit people need it. The community provides assistance to old and ill people: they deliver food products and meals and fuel. Community members visit lonely and ill people asking them what they need and providing assistance. This is a very good and necessary cause.

As for religion, I believe religion must be strictly restricted in the country. Religion works for the good of people to some extent, but then religious officials, clergymen of all religions want to gain power at any cost makes religion unacceptable for me. Though I am an atheist, I cannot state that there is no God. It’s not that I can prove that there is no God. I recently read about a flower. Its pistils and stamens are so deep inside that only one insect with a long proboscis can pollinate it. They cannot exist without one another. This could not have developed in the course of evolution. This flower and insect must have appeared at the same time. One can feel the doing of some force, intellect. This speaks in favor of the God, but I would never believe that the God demanded glorifying Him all around. Such significant being needs not this petty glorification. The religion itself teaches good things and I am loyal to religion as long as they don’t use it as means for reaching a goal. However, I have a hostile attitude to any clergymen of any religion, with no exceptions. I respect deeply religious people, who try to live as God tells them – they are honest people, but I do not accept professional clergymen. One must not earn his butter on ideas. Ideas must rule a man and they must propagate them, but not for money, but for their convictions.

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] 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.

[3] 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.

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

[5] 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] 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.

[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] 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.

[11] 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.

[12] 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.

[13] 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’.

[14] Likbez: ‘Likbez’ is derived from the Russian term for ‘eradication of illiteracy’. The program, in the framework of which courses were organized for illiterate adults to learn how to read and write, was launched in the 1920s. The students had classes in the evening several times a week for a year.

[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] 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] Enemy of the people: Soviet official term; euphemism used for real or assumed political opposition.

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

[19] Vlasov military: Members of the voluntary military formations of Russian former prisoners of war that fought on the German side during World War II. They were led by the former Soviet general, A. Vlasov, hence their name.

[20] Judenrat: Jewish councils appointed by German occupying authorities to carry out Nazi orders in the Jewish communities of occupied Europe. After the establishment of the ghettos they were responsible for everything that happened within them. They controlled all institutions operating in the ghettos, the police, the employment agency, food supplies, housing, health, social work, education, religion, etc. Germans also made them responsible for selecting people for the work camps, and, in the end, choosing those to be sent to camps that were in reality death camps. It is hard to judge their actions due to the abnormal circumstances. Some believe they betrayed Jews by obeying orders, and others think they were trying to gain time and save as many people as possible.

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

[23] 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’.

[24] Erenburg, Ilya Grigorievich (1891-1967): Famous Russian Jewish novelist, poet and journalist who spent his early years in France. His first important novel, The Extraordinary Adventures of Julio Jurento (1922) is a satire on modern European civilization. His other novels include The Thaw (1955), a forthright piece about Stalin’s régime which gave its name to the period of relaxation of censorship after Stalin’s death.

[25] 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.

[26] 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.

[27] 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.

[28] 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.

[29] 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.

[30] 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.

[31] Young Octobrist: In Russian Oktyabrenok, or ‘pre-pioneer’, designates Soviet children of seven years or over preparing for entry into the pioneer organization.

[32] 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.

[33] 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.

Alexander Ugolev
St. Petersburg
Russia
Interviewer: Nadezhda Lipovskaya
Date of interview: September 2004

Alexander Efimovich Ugolev is a grayish-haired person, not tall and heavily-built. He dresses with negligent grace and elegance: a dapper shirt and carefully ironed trousers. He walks slowly, using a walking stick. He lives in a small two-room apartment with his wife and adult son (a student). His room is very tidy; everything is put in its place with love – to please the owner. The window of Alexander’s room looks to the south. The room is warm and light. The furniture is very simple and comfortable: a large writing-table, a spacious bookcase,  full of books up to the top, a soft sofa  situated opposite the bookcase. Alexander Efimovich is a deliberate and interesting story-teller. His narration is thick-sown with geographical information and historical digressions. Sometimes he is rigid and hot-tempered in judgments and comments. Being carried along by his memories, he gives  way to his feelings and immerses his interlocutor  in an atmosphere of a past age.

My kin of the Ugolevs–Tsypkins came from Belarus. Probably all my ancestors are from there. Before the [Russian] Revolution [of 1917] 1 Jews were permitted to live only within the Jewish pale [of settlement] 2: on well-marked territory. There were settlements in Belarus, Ukraine, and somewhere else. But I guess that all my ancestors came from Belarus. 
The Tsypkins, the parents of my mum, lived in Krichev [a city on the Sozh River in the east part of Belarus]. I don’t remember the name of my maternal grandmother. She wasn’t tall, even small. The Tsypkins had a farm, even a cow. My maternal grandfather’s name was Haim Ayzikovich Tsypkin. As a child I spent every summer in Krichev at my grandmother and grandfather’s [the Tsypkins]. Abram Berkovich Ugolev and Haya-Ghita Israilevna, my paternal grandfather and grandmother, lived near them, in the village of Komarovka. When Abram Berkovich died in 1941, my grandmother moved from one daughter to another as a prize. She loved me. Both my grandmothers were very nice. 
Both grandfathers of mine were Jews in the full sense of the word: they went to the synagogue, prayed at home, put on tefilin, and wrapped small leather strap [tefillin] around their hands. My grandmothers and grandfathers were religious. In order to prepare a chicken, my grandfather Haim Tsypkin took it to a shochet. Grandfather Haim took my hand, we went across Krichev and carried a hen to the shochet. The shochet did his part, and then stroked my head. In Komarovka the Ugolevs – my grandfather and grandmother – observed the kashrut strictly, and in Krichev, where the Tsypkins lived in the 1920s it was difficult, because in the town there were a lot of Soviet officials who kept a vigilant watch on every citizen. 

Both grandfathers were patriarchal and hard-working. Haim Tsypkin was a small shop-keeper, and Abram Ugolev was a smith. At home my grandfathers and grandmothers spoke Yiddish. Both grandfathers were bearded, but wore regular clothes.They prayed regularly, at set hours. My grandmothers didn’t wear wigs, they didn’t cover their gray hair. They were dressed in long skirts with elastic webbings and jackets with long sleeves. Grandfather Abram had a large house in Komarovka. In Krichev Grandfather Haim also had a house: two rooms and a kitchen. Both houses in Komarovka and in Krichev were heated by furnaces. In Krichev the furniture was old-fashioned. I remember a large bed. Both in Krichev and in Komarovka my grandfathers had vegetable gardens. Grandfathers worked in vegetable gardens rarely: for the most part women did it. We, the children, were not forced to work in the vegetable garden. In Krichev there was a cow and hens. In Komarovka they kept cattle, too. My grandfathers and grandmothers had no farm hands: they were poor Jews. 

Probably, my grandfathers had their own opinions on the political situation in Soviet Russia, but they made no comments. They lived like other people, worked, and affiliated with no parties and societies. 

I don’t remember the neighbors of my grandfathers and grandmothers. It seems to me that both in Krichev and in Komarovka people lived in their own separate houses. I think they had good relations.

Usually, after staying in Krichev for several months I easily started to speak and even think in Yiddish. Almost all neighbors were Jews. They dressed the same way as my grandfathers and grandmothers, and men wore beards. I think their lifestyle was Jewish, traditional. 

I keep a few bright memories about that time. I remember myself in Krichev pilfering hay from a passing cart just for kicks. The driver noticed it. Well, I caught it from him! All children liked to do it with hay. Well, how can you keep from getting a tag of hay for your cow! Everyone pilfered, and so did I, following their example. I had friends among the boys in Krichev, we went together to the Sozh river for swimming. 

I know nothing about the brothers and sisters of my grandfathers and grandmothers. But, probably, my grandfathers sometimes visited their relatives.

My grandfathers and grandmothers didn’t tell me anything about their childhood and I was silly enough not to ask them about it. At that time I wasn’t interested in it, though my grandparents didn’t keep it from me: they would have probably told me about their childhood and their parents, if I had asked. I remember, when I wanted to learn to count, I managed to count up to 39 and didn’t know the next figure. My grandfather Haim from Krichev prompted me, and then taught me to count up to hundred and further. 

I also heard nothing about the army background of my grandfathers. Possibly in tsarist days my grandfathers could have borne arms, I don’t know exactly. At that time they didn’t draft Jews into the army willingly. 

Abram and Haya-Ghita Ugolev had ten children. Their eldest son was lost during the World War I. I don’t know his name. Their eldest daughter, Vera, born in 1896, Milkina after her marriage, has already died. She had two sons. Unfortunately I don’t remember their names. The second son of my Ugolev grandparents was Lev, born in 1901, and he also died a long time ago. He had two sons: Mikhail, born in 1926, and Grigoriy, born in 1925. All members of their family lived in Kazan. Mikhail died five years ago [1999]. Another brother of my father, Pavel, was lost during the Civil War 3. Someone else was lost together with him, his brother or sister; today there is nobody to ask about it. My father Haim, born in 1903, was the fourth child in the family. He perished at the front during World War II, in 1944. Before the Great Patriotic War 4 he worked at a military prosecutor’s office of the Leningrad military district; during the war he was appointed a commissioner, he excited soldiers to go into the assault. He was lost near the city of Novgorod in action, near the village of Koptsy.

Another son, Ghirsha [affectionate for Grigoriy], born in 1908, also went through the Great Patriotic War and died in peace time. He had a son, Mikhail, who was born after the war, but he has also died by now. My father’s sister Dorah was born in 1906; after her marriage she was called Khutoretskaya. Before the war her husband, Yosif Khutoretsky, was a director of a sovkhoz 5 in Luga district near Leningrad. Before the war he held the position of administrative deputy director at the Veterinary College. Dorah and Yosif had two children: Semen, born in 1927, and Maya, born in 1932. One of my father’s sisters died at a very young age in 1910. Her name was Sofia. 

The younger sister, Eugenia, Bryskina after her marriage, was born in 1913. When she divorced her husband Nikolay Bryskin, she decided to get her maiden name back, but the registration service employee muddled up things and wrote her family as Ugaleva. At present she lives in America in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Last year she reached the age of ninety. She left for the USA in 1992 together with her son Leonid, his wife Lyudmila and their sons Daniil and Eugeny. Sometimes they call me and my relatives. All of them are fine. The youngest sister of my father, Esther-Slava, Epstein after her marriage, was born in 1919. She died in 1999. She had a son Lev, three grandsons – Irina, Mikhail and Ilya – and one great-grandson, Mark, who is Mikhail’s son. 

My grandmother and grandfather Tsypkin had four children. Their eldest son, Yakov, born in 1901, was an economic engineer. He died during the siege of Leningrad in 1942. He was about two meters tall. He had two children: the elder daughter Galina, who was born before the Great Patriotic War and the son Alexander, born in June 1941. My grandparents’ next son, Meir-Yosif was called by his family members Misha,sometimes Yosha. He graduated from the Polytechnic College in Leningrad as an engineer and research worker, technologist. He supervised the LAMITOMASH educational courses [courses for engineers of the Leningrad Society of Mechanical Engineering]. He was found guilty of some administrative infringement and was put in prison for half a year for it. By now he has already died. He had two daughters: Lyudmila and Margarita. Both of them live in Germany now. 

My mum had one more sister, Sofia, Naimark after her marriage. All her life she worked as a bookkeeper. Before the war she married Oscar Naimark. He served at the front. After the end of the war he came back, and their daughter Lyudmila was born in 1948. Lyudmila has already died also. 

I have only a distant memory of my stay in Komarovka at my Ugolev grandparents’. I remember that there was a large earth-road, very clean. The houses stood separately from each other. Right around our house there were large public apple orchards [they had no owner, the authorities used to appoint responsible persons in turns]. We went there to eat apples.

It seems that Komarovka was a large village. They moved about it using horse-drawn vehicles. My grandfather went to Krichev by horse. Sometimes I was put next to the driver and enjoyed the ride. I came to Krichev from Leningrad each summer. I remember that in 1939 we had a long stay in Komarovka. By that time my grandfather and grandmother Tsypkin had already died.

I remember Krichev a little bit better. Houses in Krichev were not high, but well-set. A cement factory was located there. In Krichev there lived probably tens of thousands of people. There was a road paved with concrete, homesteads; each house had an enclosed ground. The cows were taken to fields for grazing. There was no electricity supply yet. Both in Krichev and in Komarovka houses were illuminated by petroleum-lamps. At that time they hadn’t even heard about a water pipe. Each house had a well.

Probably in Krichev there were both synagogues and special prayer houses. And most probably in Komarovka there were not. It seems that my Krichev grandfather took me to the synagogue with him. At that time I was about six or seven years old. I have only a distant memory of that time. In Krichev there were Jewish schools. Someone of my friends-boys studied at a Jewish school in Krichev. I played games with them and got to know about Jewish school.

A lot of Jews lived in Krichev. They were employed in different businesses. Most often Jews were engaged in retail trade. My grandfather Haim also was in the small grocery business. 

My father Haim Ugolev was born in 1903 in Komarovka. Up to the 4th class he studied at the rural school, and then he finished a seven-year school in Krichev. I guess that he never studied at a Jewish school, because there was no Jewish school in Komarovka. He was a good-tempered person, very honest. It was possible to ask him any question you liked and receive a detailed answer. He was well-informed about historical events; he had many books on history of the 19th century. He had books in English and in Persian languages – he could read English and Persian – but no Jewish ones. My father was a man of average height, he was heavy-browed, had not very thick hair. He was a pleasant man.

My mum [Pessya Ugoleva, bee Tsypkina] was born in Krichev in 1903 and lived in this city until her marriage. She was a tall, dark-haired woman with high cheekbones. She had authority with her colleagues. She was a hard-working, devoted mother and wife.

My parents were introduced to each other by their parents. My grandfather and grandmother from Komarovka and those from Krichev were acquainted with each other long before the wedding of my parents. When my father arrived in Krichev to continue his studies at the seven-year school, he stayed with an old friend of his father. This old friend was Haim Tsypkin, a tradesman. In the house of the Tsypkins my father met their daughter Pessya. Haim and Pessya fell in love with each other.

When my mum finished the seven-year school, she decided to leave for Leningrad to continue her studies together with my father. Mother decided to study at special courses, where she skilled in the profession of chemist/laboratory assistant, an analyst. My parents got married already in Leningrad. They simply went to a civilian registry office and registered their marriage. 

My father was a member of the Communist Party [the All-Russia Communist Party of Bolsheviks]. He joined the Party when he arrived in Leningrad. He graduated from a faculty for students-workers and the Oriental College named after Enukidze, Persian department, in 1932. As he was a Jew, they didn’t send him to Persia for work [authorities did not trust Jews to work abroad]. But he was a highly educated person and they had to place him in a job somewhere. So after he graduated from the College, they sent him to expand the collectivization process. He was an editor of the Machine and Tractor Station newspaper, then of a regional newspaper, and later  an editor of municipal newspaper in the city of Krasny-Sulin. This city is rather large; there is a large Metallurgical Industrial Complex. It was not renamed [after the breakup of the USSR in 1991]. My father made a long business trip: from 1932 till 1936 he worked in Azov and Black Sea territory. We visited him in Ghelendjzhik. 

When my father came back to Leningrad from his business trip in 1936, he was appointed an editor of a newspaper at the printing house named after Volodarsky. My mum worked as a chemist/laboratory assistant at a factory in Kirov. 

My parents were atheists. They didn’t observe Jewish traditions. Possibly we ate matzah – I don’t remember exactly, but most probably we did. We lived close to the synagogue, but never visited it. We had no Sabbath celebrations: at that time we had no Saturdays off – we had six-day weeks.

When my grandfather and grandmother Tsypkin came to Leningrad to visit us, they lived at our place. It was difficult for them to observe Jewish traditions and keep kosher in ‘the city of three revolutions’ [Leningrad was called this way by the Communists because it was this city where the Revolution of 1905 and the February and October Revolutions of 1917 took place] in the 1930s. It was dangerous: it could attract attention of active atheists and entail the arrest of all family members. I don’t remember them celebrating Jewish holidays, neither in Leningrad, nor by themselves in Komarovka.

My parents told me nothing about my grandfathers and grandmothers. At that time I – and my parents too – had different interests and troubles: I attended a kindergarten, later a school, and daddy and mum worked. 

Daddy and mum spoke Russian. Sometimes, when they wanted to keep a secret from me, they spoke Yiddish. They didn’t teach me Yiddish though. I studied it during my visits to Krichev, talking to local boys. When I came back to Leningrad I used to forget Yiddish words.

I loved my mum very much. Every day she bought me cakes: real creamy cakes. Other children from our yard could have such cakes only once a year. The boys didn’t believe that my mum bought cakes for me in the nearest confectioner’s shop [cakes were very expensive at that time]. One day, when my mum was going home through our yard, I asked her to give me a cake. And she gave it to me immediately. Then I took it and gobbled it up. She asked me why I ate the cake right in the street. I answered that I wanted it very much. The next day I approached her again and asked her to give me the cake. Mum asked why I was going to eat the cake right on the spot. I answered, ‘Give it to me, I will show it to the guys.’ She gave me the cake and I showed the cake to the guys. They were amazed: ‘Terrific! Each day he has a cake!’

My father was a member of the Russian Communist Party, the Bolshevik party, and my mum was only a member of a trade union. They didn’t talk about politics at home. They taught me to look for human values. For example, at that time [in the 1930s] near Kirovsk [up-stream the Neva river] there was a Jewish collective farm. My parents held up Izya Feiggin, a boy as an example for me. He was a kind of relative, who industriously worked at this collective farm all summer long and earned money to buy boots for himself. 

Our neighbors appreciated my parents very much. My mum was held in high respect. She had female friends at work, most of them were Russian. Most probably my daddy also had Russian friends.

My parents often met with their relatives. Uncle Yakov, the brother of my mum lived next to us. Most often we associated with the family of my father’s sister – the Khutoretskys: Dorah, her husband and children Maya and Semen. They lived next door. We also visited two of my father’s other sisters: Esther-Slava and Eugenia.

I was born on 16th April 1928. Now it is written in my passport that my name is Ugolev Alexander Efimovich. I changed my name after my son’s birth: I wanted to make his life easier.

I was born in Leningrad, attended all children’s educational establishments: a day nursery, a kindergarten, a zero class [a special class for children’s preparation to school]. 

I never went through the ceremony of bar mitzvah. But they arranged the brit for me. I guess my grandfathers initiated it. You see, my parents were atheists. It seems that among my family members only grandfathers Abram Ugolev and Haim Tsypkin observed Jewish traditions and practiced Judaism. Nobody else did. On the contrary, a lot of my relatives became Communist Party members and atheists. Probably, in the terrible time of revolutionary changes and Stalin’s mass repressions my uncles and aunts followed the law of self-preservation. 

Since my childhood everybody called me Alexander, and Sasha or Sanya as a term of endearment. I found out that my Jewish name was Isaac only when I went to school. At first I didn’tlike its sound and became upset. But my father was a clever man. He showed me a portrait of Isaac Newton and told me how talented this scientist was, and I calmed down. I even took pride in my Jewish name.

All my life I’ve lived in the same house on Kurlyandskaya Street. As a child, I lived with my parents in the apartment no. 9, and now I live in the apartment no. 4, which is smaller. As a child, I lived in a two-room apartment. One room was 19 square meters large, and the other one – 12. Both rooms got all the sun. Two small gardens were located in front of our house. All windows of the apartment faced south. The kitchen was small. For its time that apartment was very good. There was no bathroom though. In the courtyard there was a cesspool and a laundry. The house was heated by stoves; a woodshed was situated near our door. In the house there was a sewerage system and cold water supply; we cooked meals by means of kerosene stoves. The house had an electric power supply. Gas appeared in houses only after the war. The furniture was good, both modern and old. The cupboard was mahogany with statuettes of horses – an antique one. 

There were a lot of books in our apartment: books written by Lenin and Stalin, books devoted to the history of the 19th century, two books of Pushkin’s 6 works and a lot of others. When my father started working in the Office of the Public Prosecutor, there appeared a lot of juridical literature. We subscribed to the ‘Leningradskaya Pravda’ and ‘Smena’ newspapers [official Soviet newspapers]. I was a registered reader of a library. When a pupil of the 5th grade, I was given a souvenir book from the library as the best reader. I was fond of reading popular-science literature, adventures. My mum read almost nothing: she had no time to read; she had to run the house. My grandfathers probably had religious books.

I remember my first voyage by car. My father worked as an editor of the newspaper at the printing house named after Volodarsky. They celebrated the 40th anniversary of service of a type-setter. He started his work as a type-setter at the end of the 19th century. My father gave a report. Then there was a banquet. Children and grandsons of the type-setter sat at a table. I was the youngest among them. They made me sit down near the type-setter. He asked me, what I prefer to eat. At that time I liked fish and meat in aspic. And cakes too. They brought a tray full of cakes. I ate three or four of them. Then I was nauseous and got pain in my stomach. Those cakes were real: made using not margarine but butter. I was taken home by a car, which belonged to the printing house. When I came to my senses, I suffered terribly that the children from our yard and our neighbors had not seen me arriving by car.

At home I remained with our housekeepers. My mum worked all day long. When my mum was alive, Olga Pavlovna from Rostov, our housekeeper, worked for us. She was 75 years old. She was very tall, like a grenadier. I liked Olga Pavlovna very much; I kissed her and called ‘my pretty face’. She was Russian, a wife of a teacher of literature. Later she left and sent me a letter: ‘Good-bye, Sanya! Kissing you, your ‘pretty face’’. 

I went to school at the age of eight, when our family returned from Krasny-Sulin. My father made a long business trip to Krasny-Sulin: he spent about a year there, and his family joined him there. When the lessons were over, our housekeeper gave me meals and I started to do my homework. I tried to do it quickly before five o’clock, because five o’clock in the afternoon was the time to listen to the radio broadcast for schoolchildren. There were no TV sets at that time. To listen to such broadcasts as ‘Theater at the Microphone’ or an opera performance over the radio, people changed their working hours with their coworkers. My favorite broadcasts for schoolchildren were presented by Valery Petrov, Yury Adamov and others. Most often they told us about outstanding revolutionaries. Most of all I liked Alexander Sergeev; his underground nickname was Artem. I liked him so much that I decided to name my future son Artem. And when my son was born, my relatives wanted him to be my father’s name-child. Understanding their determination, I decided to call my next son by the name of my father Efim, but to call my first son Artem. 

If they sent me for a walk to the yard, I didn’t object. In general, I was a very disciplined child. In the first class I received good and excellent marks, and in the second grade - only excellent ones and was awarded an honorary diploma for my achievements in studies. My mum wasn’t afraid to let me go for a walk: she could watch me from the window. Sometimes I obtained her permission to go somewhere with the boys: we played different outdoor games. 

During state holidays I went to look at demonstrations in Leningrad together with my father and mum. Before the war I went to demonstrations with my schoolmates. I liked patriotic songs by the composer Isaac Dunaevsky – they were melodious – and texts by the poet Lebedev-Kumach. 

Before my sister Polina was born, my father left for an out-of-town military camp; he was not in the army before the war with fascist Germany. I have his photo, where he is shown in the uniform of a second lieutenant. 

On 11th April 1938 my mum gave birth to my sister Polina, and died three weeks after delivery because of complications.

When my mum died, Masha Belenkova helped us about the house. We brought her from Belarus. At first she worked as a housekeeper at my father’s sister Esther-Slava. Then we took her away with us to Leningrad, because my sister Polina saw the light of day, and it was difficult for us to look after the baby and keep the house in order without my mum. Masha was Belarusian. Though she finished only seven grades, she knew everything that was necessary. I asked my father a lot of questions regarding my school studies, but my German lessons I checked only with Masha, because she was older than me and an excellent pupil. 

In some months after my mother’s death another woman appeared in our house. She had to take the place of our mother. My stepmother, Galina Baranova, appeared in the following way: We were acquainted with Boris Abramov. He had an unmarried sister of 28 years of age. At that time Boris was a manager at the municipal training center, and my father was his subordinate at the Lenin branch on Ogorodnikova Avenue. So Baranov ‘pushed’ his sister to become my father’s secretary – he told her that my father was a widower. She was an old maid – lived in a room together with her brother – and my father had a self-contained apartment and he was young – 38 years old. 

I tried to have nothing to do with my stepmother. She didn’t want me to call her Galya. And I wouldn’t have the heart to call her Aunt Galya or Galina Petrovna. She appeared in October 1938. And my sister was brought from the maternity hospital only in June 1939; she was a premature baby and physicians took care of her during a long period of time, especially knowing the fact of her mother’s death. Galina Petrovna was Russian. She had finished seven grades. She went in for sports: put the shot and was awarded a diploma for her results in a hurdle race. When she came to us, she left her job. At last she got everything she needed. 

After my sister was brought from the hospital, I was lost in thoughts: how to call my stepmother? I was eleven at that time. Certainly I could call her Aunt Galya or Galina Petrovna. But by that time they brought home my younger sister, a baby who didn’t know yet that her mum had gone and that her daddy had a new wife. I spent a sleepless night and decided that is was necessary ‘to bring myself to perform a deed.’ There appeared a child, who didn’t know who is who; but she had a father and a brother, so she had to have a mother. That’s why from then on I started calling my stepmother ‘Mum.’ I asked no advice and decided it on my own. It means that my parents brought me up well.

Before the beginning of the war I attended School no.10 7, and after the end of the war – School no.277. Now this school is situated on Kurlyandskaya Street, 29. These schools were usual comprehensive ones, not Jewish. During the war it housed a hospital, after the war, for a short period of time, the hostel of the Kirov factory. Later, in this building there was the Technical college no. 9, which belonged to the ‘Metallist’ factory. At present, they are repairing this building and will house a boarding school for disabled children in it. 

Before the war the school was mixed: boys and girls studied together, more than 30 pupils in a class. In elementary school – classes one to four – all subjects were taught by the same teacher. Nina Lorinova was our class teacher – a mathematician and a fine woman. Before the war we all together visited Andrey Kisselev, the author of the textbook on arithmetic and algebra. We visited him for no particular reason: just to get acquainted and have a talk. I liked many school subjects; in general I was an ‘omnivorous’ schoolboy. The teacher was strict, but her lectures were very interesting. I liked the lessons of Russian language, geography – when we left our classroom for the school courtyard with a compass and drew a plan of the district. I even enjoyed the PT lessons. In the first grade our teacher was often sick, and her lessons were replaced by singing lessons. At our school there was a choir and a percussion band. I wanted so much to play the castanets, but they didn’t have enough castanets for all of us – that’s why I played the bells At present I am still very sorry about it: sometimes I’d like to be able to play the castanets.

I never experienced any manifestations of anti-Semitism from our teachers. Our school staff was multinational. The head of the education department, Frida Moiseevna, was Jewish. She taught in senior classes. The director of the school, Petr Sokolov, was Russian. German language was taught by two sisters, russified Germans – their family name was Miller. My classmates never teased me or discussed Jewish topics with me.

After lessons I was engaged in additional physical training sessions at school for all comers. I liked to swarm up a rope and sway to and fro. In the gym hall there were bars and a horizontal bar for high jumps. Right at that time an idea came into my head: to try high jumping turning my back on the bar – some sort of the modern Fosbury-flop. At that time nobody tried it. As a child, I had many ideas, which later were embodied by clever people, and they took prizes for it. 

At school I had neither friends, nor enemies; I treated everybody alike. In my house there lived one Russian friend, Yura Nikiforov, and one Jewish friend, Shura Imatovich. Together with Yura Nikiforov I attended kindergarten and elementary school, but I wasn’t that fond of him: he was very ambitious and arrogant. Most often I visited Vitya Yassinovich and our excellent pupil Igor Uspensky. He was a Jew, he was a more successful pupil than me and his character was closer to me. 

At school I was a [Young] Octobrist 8, then a pioneer [see All-Union pioneer organization] 9. I was a son of a convinced supporter of the Communist Party. Though, to tell the truth, it wasn’t absolutely clear for me, why there were so many poor people and why our life was so hard. But in 1937 we didn’t even think about it: it was dangerous [see Great Terror] 10.

I have a few clear memories about political events in the country before 1941. I asked my parents no questions. I sussed things out for myself, and my opinion was formed from broadcasts and newspapers. I made conclusions myself. Some things seemed strange to me. For example, in 1935 in the USSR there were five marshals. Later only two marshals remained: a metalworker, Klim Voroshylov  11 and a Cossack junior leader, Semen Budenniy [Budenniy, Semen (1883-1973): USSR marshal (1935), Hero of the USSR (3 times: in 1958, 1963, 1968), commander of the 1st Cavalry (1919-1921), Deputy People’s Commissar of Defense department (1939-1941), commander of group of armies (1941-1945), delegate of the USSR Supreme Soviet (1937-1973)]. What happened to the rest of them? But the main public prosecutor Vyshinsky’s speeches for prosecution against ‘spies and traitors’ were so convincing … [Vyshinsky, Andrey (1883-1954): Soviet diplomat and lawyer, Professor of Law and Chief Prosecutor in Stalin’s purge trials (1934-1938), Foreign Minister (1949-1953), Deputy Foreign Minister and permanent delegate to the UN]

Each summer we left for Krichev to see my grandmother and grandfather, or for Komarovka. I remember my first journey by train: we went with my mother to Krichev, to Grandmother and Grandfather. At that time I was four years old. It wasn’t a shock for me. We went in a carriage with numbered reserved seats. We traveled for more than a day. We were eating all the time: chicken, boiled eggs, etc. 

In Krichev I went for a swim in the Sozh River. In Ghelendzhik, where my daddy worked, I swam in the Black Sea. Sometimes I took a bath with sea-water. After a while they pulled out a cork and I watched ‘the sea’ flowing away from a small bath. I fell into raptures over it. 

On birthdays all my relatives gathered, brought gifts, ate tasty meals, talked. We celebrated only state holidays: 1st May, Soviet Army Day 12, etc. We didn’t celebrate Jewish holidays, because my family members and our relatives were atheists.

On 18th October 1938 the Moscow cinema was opened – the first cinema in Leningrad with three halls. In all three halls they showed the film ‘Chapaev’ [a classic from the year 1934, directed by Georgi and Sergei Vasilyev, based on the life of the Soviet military leader Vassiliy Chapaev 13. Up to that time we used to visit ‘Udarnik’ cinema – now it’s called ‘Record’. Zina Yaruk, a friend of mine, a Belarusian, got tickets for us at a low price of 50 kopecks.

I remember an episode from my school life. In our court yard there was a lath fence. Before the war I liked to play ball games in the court yard. I wore trousers, which my stepmother remodeled using trousers of my father. Its texture was very close. People called it ‘devil’s skin.’ My ball rolled under the lath fence. Looking around, to avoid reproof of adults, I started climbing over the lath fence to take the ball. Accidentally my trouser-leg was caught on the lath fence. The result was unexpected: the trouser-leg remained safe, and the lath fence was broken off. 

In 1944 I returned to Leningrad from evacuation. People, who lived in the city during the blockade 14, warmed their houses using material at hand. They used everything: books, furniture, etc. But that lath fence in our court yard remained safe as it was before the war. Only one part of it was broken – by me. Nobody touched it, though it was made of wood and could have been used for heating. 

My sister Polina didn’t attend a kindergarten, because she had ill health from her birth. She attended a seven-year school on Kurlyandskaya Street. Later she finished a secondary school [10 grades]. After that she studied at a commercial college in Krasnodar. At school she studied so-so. She had no special abilities, no schoolmates. Soon after leaving school she got married. Her husband was a senior lieutenant, Ushkov Victor. She gave birth to a daughter, Olga. After the putsch of 1956 15 they lived in Hungary, where her husband served, later in Krasnodar and other places. Polina worked as a sales assistant in different shops. She returned to Leningrad after she divorced her first husband and soon married a man, who was older than she, a captain in retirement named Alexander Alexandrov. Later they also got divorced. Then she married Valery – I don’t remember his surname – and lived at his apartment. She got acquainted with Valery during her figure skating training sessions: he was a brother of her coach. Polina worked as a sales assistant in a shop near the Baltic railway station. She had numerous customers. At that time in the context of serious deficiencies, it was her luck to work in a shop – she was able to get whatever she liked. Later she retired on a pension and didn’t work any more. Polina got ill with an oncological disease. She sank all her savings into a financial pyramid and lost almost all money. The rest she spent for treatment of cancer. Polina underwent chemotherapy, but without success. The treatment was very expensive – all our family helped her to find money. The malignant growth was inoperable, and it developed into a sarcoma. Polina died at home [in 1999] in the presence of her daughter Olga.

News about the beginning of the war reached me in Novgorod, at the relatives of my stepmother Galina. At that time I was 13 years old. In two weeks I went back to Leningrad by train and arrived there in July 1941. At that time my stepmother was recruited for digging entrenchments in the city suburbs. On 8th September 1941 the blockade of Leningrad was started.  

At the beginning of the war my father worked in the Leningrad military district headquarters [(in the prosecutor’s office, which was located in the Peter-and-Paul Fortress]). Later, at the beginning of August he was recalled to the military unit. I saw him off. When my stepmother came back from digging entrenchments, he had already left. My father left for the front in the rank of senior lieutenant. Later he was made captain. When we wrote him letters, we addressed envelopes to division headquarters [prosecutor’s office]. 

A sister of my stepmother, Valya, arrived from Novgorod. She was a student of the Leningrad Chemical and Pharmaceutical College. 

On 1st September our school was closed, several pupils and I studied in an air-raid shelter in the house next door. Someone said that the blockade had already begun. At first we didn’t believe it, but when the authorities reduced the daily rate of foodstuff, we felt it. Ration cards appeared in June. At first the daily rate of bread per capita for children and dependents was 400 grams, later 300 grams, later 250 grams, 200 grams and, at last, 125 grams. It was a small, but heavy piece. It contained a small amount of flour, but mainly cellulose and sawdust. Strangely enough it seemed to me that ration cards existed not too long. 

In February 1942 I lived at Sofia Naimark’s, my mother’s sister’s, on Chaikovskogo Street. One day I came to her and she told me that my stepmother Galina had visited and informed her, that our family would be sent into evacuation. We were evacuated in the middle of February 1942. We moved by divisional lorry, heavily loaded with something, to the front headquarters. The lorry had to return back to Leningrad. At first I decided not to leave for evacuation. By that time they had already increased the daily rate of bread up to 300 grams. It was almost wholesome bread. My stepmother raised objections against my stay in the besieged city. She said that she was responsible for me to my father. We all – me, my stepmother, her sister Valya and my sister Polina – went safely. 

My father sent me a tank man’s helmet. This helmet stood me in good stead: once on a rough road our lorry bobbed us up and I hit my head against a sheet of plywood above my head. A nail projected from it. I wore this helmet. The nail stuck in my helmet, and I wasn’t hurt. We were brought to a village near Kobona on the opposite bank of Ladoga Lake [Road of Life] 16, to back areas of division. In back areas of division there was everything necessary for normal life: hairdressing salons, shoe workshops, photo studio and so forth. We were sent to shoemakers. There we had a rest and were replete with food for several days. My stepmother’s sister Valya cooked boiled rice. Then we packed our things: we had ten packages. My stepmother left my father’s coat in the charge of her brother Boris. Boris was just going to use it to warm himself, but my stepmother Galina didn’t allow him to. She said, ‘This coat belongs to Efim. I leave it to your care. When Efim returns home from the front, he will wear it.’ 

We continued our way to Tatarstan [a Soviet autonomous republic] by train. On the way a lot of passengers died from weakness or ileus [intestinal obstruction] because they pounced on the food. We reached the town of Tutayev in Yaroslavl region. Before the revolution it was called Romanov. There we lived two weeks in a school building, grew fat, visited bath-house, cleaned our clothes and linen in a steam chamber [delousing station]. I was cold and decided not to clean my clothes – went on with lice. One day I caught a louse in creases of my clothes, and investigated it in all its bearings: its organization, the way it bites and moves – all in all, notwithstanding the war and starvation, I kept my thirst for knowledge. At last we reached Agryz – 37 kilometers to the north from Izhevsk, the capital of Udmurtia, in Tatarstan. We were placed into two rooms, in the house of a young woman. There we spent winter and spring. In Agryz there gathered all members of the Baranov family – relatives of my stepmother: Grandfather Petr Mikhailovich and Grandmother Evdokia Vassilyevna, the elder brother of my stepmother, Boris, with his family. 

I carried on a spirited dialogue with my father by correspondence. I finished the fifth grade before the war in Leningrad, I started studying in the sixth grade in the village of Muslimovka in Tatarstan, and later we (the whole Baranov family) moved to Menzelinsk, where I finished the sixth and the seventh  grade. 

Aunt Kapitolina worked in Agryz in a soup-kitchen catering for the party workers, and her husband, Vassiliy Shabokhov, got acquainted with the director of the ‘Sheepman’ state farm in Muslimovka district. They agreed, that he would work in this state farm as a forest warden, and then as a forestry chief. We lived in Muslimovka during 1942 and 1943. Later Shabokhov had a squabble with the state farm director and we had to move to Menzelinsk. We lived there on Konny Square. There I finished the seventh grade. It was a real city: there was a cinema and a cultural center, where evacuated people gathered for rest and for amateur art activities. 

We received news about our relatives. A central information bureau on evacuees was organized in Buguruslan. Several times we wrote to them and received information on many of our relatives.

Grandfather Abram Ugolev and Grandmother Haya-Ghita Ugoleva together with their daughter Esther-Slava were caught by the war at home in Komarovka, in Belarus. They moved their family out of the war zone to Russia, because the Germans could make away with them as Jews. They reached Penza. Grandfather Abram died there in 1941. 

Their daughter Eugenia was an army person; she worked in rear services during the war and was awarded medals. She was married to Nikolay Bryskin, a Navy man. One day after the end of the war we were speaking with him, and I mentioned Yury Gherman, a well-known Soviet writer. Nikolay Bryskin told me, that Yury Gherman had given him a photo as a keepsake. At first I didn’t believe him. Then Nikolay took the photo down from the shelf: Yury Gherman in the uniform of a seaman, wearing a sailor’s cap). It was signed: ‘To my friend Nikolay Bryskin from Yury Gherman – remember me.’ During the war Eugenia was in the army, in a housekeeping unit, I don’t exactly know where. It seems to me, all the war time she worked in a naval housekeeping unit in besieged Leningrad. At that time she already had a son, Leonid. They survived, thanks to the fact that she received an army ration. 

I don’t know where my father’s elder sister Vera was during the war. She also survived. After the war she returned to Leningrad, where she lived and worked in a hostel of the Leningrad College of Railway Transport. Later she left for Karelia, where she died. 

I know nothing about Lev, my father’s elder brother. 

During the war the younger brother of my father, Ghirsha, was in the front-line forces – he was a private, survived and married Mira, a Jewess. She gave birth to their son Mikhail [in 1949]. After the war they moved to Leningrad and settled in our house, in the apartment no.88. They were Communist Party members Ghirsha died in a hospital in Leningrad some time in the 1970s. His son Mikhail also was very unhealthy; he often underwent medical treatment in different sanatoriums. He loved his mother Mira very much. He was married twice. He died young in 1990. Mira outlived both her husband and her son. She kept in touch with me and with one of her daughters-in-law. She wanted to live in an old people’s home and asked me to assist her in this matter, but I refused, because I thought she wouldn’t be fine there. She died at the beginning of the 1990s.

The brother of my late mother, Meir-Yosif, was in the army during the war. Before the war he graduated from the Polytechnic College. In my opinion he was a captain of the engineering and technical department. In wartime he already had one daughter, Lyudmila – same age as my sister Polina –, and after the war his second daughter, Margarita, was born. At present both his daughters live in Germany, as for Meir-Yosif, he  died a long time ago. 

My mum’s other brother, Yakov, died during the siege of Leningrad in 1942. He was an engineer and economist. He had two children. His elder daughter, Galina, was born several years before the war, I don’t remember the date. His son Alexander was born in June 1941, in the first days of the war. Before the war they lived not far from me in Derpt Lane. Their mother was the second wife of my uncle Yakov. Her name was Alexandra Ogneva, after marriage Tsypkina,a Russian. 

My mum’s sister, Sofia Naimark, lived in Leningrad throughout the siege period. Before the war she worked as a bookkeeper. Before the beginning of the war she got married. Her husband was a soldier at the front, in a tank unit. I saw him off to the front. He survived and returned home. He was a long-liver. His sister moved to America a long time ago. After the war she sent parcels to Leningrad, and even visited us and bought a two-room apartment in Leningrad, on Nauka Avenue. It happened at the time when the Soviet authorities permitted to organize building societies [at the end of 1980s] to give people a chance to buy apartments. His sister immigrated to America before the war. Now America is crammed full of Jews.

My cousin Semen was a little older than me when the war broke out. He was born on 28th August 1927. His sister Maya was born in 1932. Their father Yosif [the interviewee’s father’s brother] also was at the front and returned home. Before the war he served at the railway guard forces,Fontanka embankment, 117. During the war he served in railway troops. During the war Dorah, a sister of my father, together with Semen and Maya, stayed presumably in Yoshkar-Ola [capital of Mari Republic]. 

During the war we lost my father. He was killed at the front. It happened near Novgorod, in the village of Koptsy, on 14th January 1944. As always, they also wrote us that he had died ‘a hero’s death.’ Later his company commander wrote us that my father had been the first to go over the top to launch an attack and was shot. 

The brothers of Aunt Dorah’s husband, Ilya and Alexander Khutoretsky, also perished at the front. Ilya was a private, and Alexander probably served as an officer; before the war he finished a college. I know that none of my relatives were taken to forced labor in Germany. 

As soon as the blockade of Leningrad was lifted, we decided to return to Leningrad. It was in 1944. My aunt Sofia Naimark got to know by chance, where we stayed during evacuation and sent us letters. She wrote that she had moved to Izmailovsky Prospekt. She had a room in a large communal apartment 17. A chief mechanic of the Kirov plant also lived in that apartment. He sent us an invitation and we returned to Leningrad, to Izmailovsky Prospekt. It wasn’t difficult to return to Leningrad. 

We had a long way by Kama River, and then by Volga River on board a motor ship. The authorities of the city had no objection to our return, because we were a family of a front-line soldier [Editor’s note: After the end of the war authorities decided to check the status of citizens and did not permit everyone to get back to Leningrad: to return one had to receive an invitation card from someone who lived in the city]. After our return my stepmother went to the housing department of the house where we had lived before the war, and got the keys to our apartment. During the war it was occupied by our house-manager, so our apartment appeared to be well-kept and available. All things were safe, except for the 5th volume of French history and two textbooks of English language. 

One day, as I was walking around the city I saw an advertisement of the Leningrad Military Mechanical Technical School. They offered two very attractive items: occupational deferment and a worker’s food-card [see Card system] 18. I didn’t worry about deferment at that time – I was only 16 years old – and the worker’s food-card, which gave possibility to receive high food norm, could be of great use for me. I quickly submitted my documents to this technical school. My school certificate was full of excellent marks, so I entered it without problems. However, all new students were forced to work on the reconstruction of the city. I was a disciplined and law-abiding person – I didn’t object. Later I got to know that a worker’s food-card was offered not only by this technical school, but practically by each educational institution. So I had a choice, but at that time, when I was 16, I didn’t think about it. When I became a student, I refused to study the German language, and chose English. 

After the war Leningrad seemed to me not that much destroyed. To tell the truth, instead of some houses there were bomb-holes, and the dome of the Troitsky Cathedral [a well-known Orthodox Cathedral] was damaged a little. 

After the war, in 1946 the Khutoretskys – Dorah, her husband Yosif, their children Semen and Maya, who still went to school – moved to our house on Kurlyandskaya Street. They lived next door. I often spent a lot of time there. They gave me food. I went back home only to sleep. I slept on a box in our kitchen, because one room was occupied by my stepmother and sister Polina, and the other one my stepmother hired out. I didn’t consider the situation to be infringing: I understood that it was necessary to have a source of income. During my studies in the technical school I lived at the Khutoretskys’, and then with Sofia Naimark, my mother’s sister. After the war with Germany the national economy collapsed, food was distributed according to special cards. There was shortage of tasty meals and good things. I remember that soon after the war someone came to my aunt Sofia and brought melted butter with honey in a braided lime bark basket. It was very tasty. 

On 18th April 1959 I moved from the apartment no.9 to the apartment no.4, as my stepmother and my sister had changed our apartment for two smaller ones. They moved to Gas Prospekt #52, and I moved to the same house and the same entrance, where I lived earlier, but in the apartment one storey lower. There was a bath-room and not many neighbors; it was good. My neighbors were elderly Russians, a married couple.

Our neighbors – not Jews – considered our return to be natural. My father was one of the first persons, who had settled in this house before the war. Our neighbors thought that our return was a sign that life in our house was all in the day’s work.

When we returned, my stepmother Galina got a job connected with the passport system. Her salary was 250 rubles per month – it was very little for that time. My worker’s food-card helped us. One day the technical school director issued an order docking me of my scholarship. All students of the technical school gathered to look at this order and at me. And the point was that I could receive either pension for my father, lost at the front, or a scholarship. My scholarship was only 25 rubles, and the pension – 170. I chose the pension. But in spite of all my efforts, we had a hard time. One day I went to the black market together with my aunt Esther-Slava Epstein, my father’s sister, to buy a coat for myself. We paid 150 rubles for it and the sum was rather large for us: my mother-in-law had to put money aside for this purpose.

Right after the end of the war I knew nothing about the emigration of Jews to Israel. I heard about it only in the time of Khrushchev’s 19 ‘thaw’ [see Twentieth Party Congress] 20. At that time I got to know that Golda Meir 21 was the Israeli ambassador to the USSR. I could not bring myself to immigrate to Israel: I never could imagine myself in another country.

I already had some experience of living in different cultural surroundings: I lived in Tatarstan from February 1942 till August 1944. Their language, literature, life, culture – everything was different. For me it was unusual and difficult. In the post-war period I thought about politics rarely. However, attacks on Jews went on. For example, I didn’t manage to watch any performance of the Jewish theater, though I wanted to so much. When Mikhoels 22 was killed they closed his theater. 

The Doctor’s Plot 23, which started after Stalin’s death, suggested to me that having killed Mikhoels, the authorities began to repress his family and other Jews. I didn’t believe that the doctors were guilty of the death of the Leader. 

I remember that when I got to know about the illness and death of Stalin I didn’t believe it at first, and later I was surprised that the medical certificate about his death was signed not by the Minister of Public Health Services, but by a doctor in charge of the case, a candidate of medical sciences [see Soviet/Russian doctorate degrees] 24. I wanted to go to Moscow to attend Stalin’s funeral, but they didn’t let me go. And it was good: if I had gone there, I could have been hurt in the crush. 

I took neither the Hungarian [1956 Revolution], nor the Czech events of 1968 [Prague Spring] 25 very much to heart. During the Czech events a jazz band from the Czech Republic performed on tour here and I thought that if the Czech orchestra came here to play, it meant that in Czechoslovakia everything was fine. 

I took a grave view of the rupture of diplomatic relations between the USSR and Israel. Neither the Torah, nor the Bible tells about the Arabs, but Jews and their State are mentioned there. I didn’t like that our country supported Egypt and Palestine in their struggle against Jews. When Nikita Khrushchev went to Egypt in order to decorate Gamal Abdel Nasser and his minister with Soviet government awards, I was shocked. When Israel managed to gain victories, I obtained satisfaction. 

After the end of the International Youth Festival in Moscow in 1957 [biennial International Youth Festivals took place in different countries and included a great number of cultural, social and political events] I took a great interest in professional dancing. Up to then I played volleyball – since 1949. At that time I worked at the central design office no. 34, in the new office building on Borovaya Street. When our office was moved to ‘Arsenal’ enterprise, I played volleyball for ‘Arsenal’ championship; I was a skilled volleyball player. 

One day I was going home from a training session and saw a large board with the following advertisement: ‘Ball-room dancing parties.’ There they studied to dance foxtrot and tango, and during the campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’ 26, before 1957, these dances were forbidden as immoral and alien to the Soviet people. Young people had an opportunity to meet only at dancing classical dances. In the Palace of culture named after Gorky dancing parties went the following way: a Viennese waltz, a figured waltz, waltz galop, polonaise and mazurka, and in the end – final waltz. There were five or six polka dances. We didn’t study Jewish dances. In the Vyborg palace of culture, Vladimir Shuvalin, a soloist of Alexandrov’s ensemble performed a tailor’s dance, which included elements of Jewish dances. 

After finishing the technical school, I worked in the central design office no. 34 for Navy armament named after Ilya Ivanov, as a designer. Later I worked in the central design office no. 7 at ‘Arsenal’ enterprise, and later yet, as a designer at the factory named after Kalinin. And after that at the ‘Metallist’ factory. From there I moved to the Engineering Castle to Ghipro-Energo-Prom – a State Institute for design of electro-technical enterprises. 

There were no obvious conflicts at my work or during my study because of my Jewish origins. But sometimes strange things happened, for example: I failed to enter the Military Mechanical College. They told me that I got a poor mark in the literature exam. It happened in 1952, when I worked at ‘Metallist.’ Later I passed the examinations and entered the Northwest Forestry College. I finished the first course, but didn’t continue my studies there. 

I had friends. It was of no importance for me whether they were Jews or not, but I was interested if they were Jewish or not. My first wife was Jewish. We were introduced to each other by Mira Israilevna, a friend of my aunt Dorah, elder sister of my father. Her name was Inna Moisseevna Graevskaya. She still lives in Leningrad. She is one month and 13 days older than me. I got acquainted with her in 1950. But our marriage failed. She wanted to have a child very much, me too. But she lived with her mother, who was very sick. I also lived in bad conditions: in the same room with my sister and stepmother. At that time young mothers were permitted to take maternity leave two months before and two months after childbirth. And then it was necessary to start working. What to do with a two-month-old child? Certainly, it was possible to stay at home and look after the child, but lose the job. Inna even could work at home, giving private lessons, but for this purpose it was necessary to have a separate apartment, and her apartment on Ghatchinskaya Street was not. I visited her only twice during a period of several years; I even do not remember her apartment. When she visited me, we could stay in my room together for a short period of time. So finally we decided to give up the idea of marriage. 

At present she lives at another address, behind the Polytechnical College. At that time when a man appeared near her, Mira Israilevna reported it to me. And I went to see Inna again: so, I behaved as a dog in the manger: if I can’t have her, nobody will. Until now I can find no excuse for my behavior. Now she has neither a husband, nor children. We get in touch as friends, but not often: we congratulate each other on the occasion of birthdays, call each other, and borrow money from each other during hard times. I visited her at the Conservatoire. She worked as a concertmaster in an opera studio at the Conservatoire. 

In 1981, at the beginning of April, the ‘Metallist’ administration gave me two tickets for a paid trip to a rest home in Komarovo [suburb of Leningrad]. There I got acquainted with my present wife, Elena Petrovna Shikalova. She was born in the city of Glazov on 25th May 1954. She is Russian. Her father’s name is Peter Shikalov, born in 1924. Her mother Inna, born in 1926, is a teacher. At present they are pensioners. Peter worked at Chepetsk Mechanical factory, where 80 percent of Soviet uranium was smelted. His health is poor now. He lives in the family of his younger son [in his apartment]. 

Elena has three brothers, all of them are older than her, and all of them live in Glazov. The oldest brother Mikhail graduated from art school. He has a son, Denis. At present he lives in Germany with his family. The second brother Sergey graduated from Perm Medical College. There he got acquainted with his wife. They have two children: Maria and a younger son. 

I got acquainted with Elena during my annual leave. For the first time in my life I managed to arrive in the sanatorium in time. Usually I came to have a rest in the afternoon and had second shift dinner. And that day I arrived early. I asked employees of the sanatorium, ‘Girls, what can you offer to a young handsome man of average fatness in the prime of life? I do not drink alcohol, I do not smoke, do not romance…’ I tried to publicize myself. They asked me, ‘Do you mind if we place you on the second floor, where mainly women live?  I answered, ‘Sure, I do not mind! I promise to behave properly! If I depart from my word, you can kick me out immediately!’

I lodged in a large room. To tell the truth, the room was slightly damp. Later I went downstairs and saw a man who was about 35 years old. We got acquainted, I told him about myself, and he told me about himself: he came from Petrozavodsk, visited Leningrad and arrived here to have a rest in the sanatorium. We made friends, went for a walk, talked a lot. Unintentionally I mentioned that soon I had my birthday. On that day – 16th of April – my friend arranged an unforgettable festival for me: he gave me a bottle of my favorite wine as a gift, ordered fried fish, smoked fish, etc. and treated me to it. 

Next morning I went out of my room to take a shower. I soaped myself and heard a woman’s voice: ‘Why are you washing yourself in the women’s shower-room?’ I asked, ‘And why do you think that it is the women’s?’ She answered, ‘Because only women live on this floor!’ I said, ‘Not only women, I also live here!’ She replied, ‘You are lodging on the women’s floor illegally!’ I was surprised: ‘Where did this legalist come from?’ She answered, ‘From Glazov, do you know it?’ I said, ‘I know everything: it is situated on the way to Perm and Sverdlovsk through Cherepovets, one day journey from Leningrad.’ She said, ‘You know everything indeed; I already noticed that.’ You know, several days before I had won two quiz-games in that sanatorium. 

Later I got to know that her name was Elena. We found plenty to talk about. After dinner I invited her to play badminton. It was Sunday and the rental store of sports equipment was closed. Elena got upset, but I had brought two rackets with me from Leningrad and she was delighted. Elena is 25 years younger than me. I showed her magazines with photos of well known dancing couples: elegant men and beautiful women in evening dresses with décolleté and a cutout back. Elena considered these photos to be nearly pornographic. She stayed in the sanatorium for a long time, and I came there to see her on my days off. We had a stormy romance. I used to spend nights in her room. She told me about herself: in Glazov she worked as a teacher at a kindergarten. She graduated from a Pedagogical School in Glazov and Perm Pedagogical College by correspondence. Elena is an extra-class teacher. At present she teaches one very sick child. She took a fancy to him and doesn’t want to change this work for a better-paid one. 

That summer I took her to Leningrad to my room – 12 square meters. I told her about my work, my wages. At that time her salary was higher than mine. And that was the moment when I made a stupid action. We’d better have handed in an application to a civil registry office and they would have given us two months to think everything over. During that period of time I would have got acquainted with her parents, they would have felt at peace with themselves, they would have accepted me in their house. But we were in love with each other. Elena didn’t want to wait; she told her parents that she was going to leave for Leningrad to live with me. She left her job, her apartment in Glazov and arrived in Leningrad. It turned out, that we did everything to complicate our life. They didn’t want to register Elena for a long time, therefore she couldn’t find work: she did temp work, unofficially. For a very small salary she went to nurse a child out of the city – she had to spend four hours to get there – her working day lasted ten hours. 

On 19th February  1983 we got married. It was a historic day not only for us, but also for the country: the day of abolition of serfdom[it happened on the 19th of February 1861] in Russia. But in contrast to peasants who celebrated their freedom, we celebrated our interdependence.

In 1984 our son Artem was born. By now he has already finished school and entered the St. Petersburg University, the Geographical Faculty: he is a second-year student. He is very sociable and curious. He has no family of his own yet. I tried to tell Artem about Jewry. But he and my wife don’t like to listen to my stories. I told my son that he is half Jewish very early, but he hasn’t become interested in it yet. 

After the end of the war I didn’t celebrate Jewish holidays. It seems to me that the synagogue was closed for a long period of time. Now I visit the synagogue on Jewish holidays from time to time. For some time I even had meals in a Jewish soup-kitchen. My wife doesn’t want to accompany me for Jewish holidays, meetings, concerts, but I go sometimes. My wife and my son celebrate New Year’s Day as a state holiday and Russian Easter, because my wife is Russian. 

From Jewish tradition and culture our family chose only the book ‘120 Recipes of Jewish Cuisine’. Jewish cuisine was highly respected by Inga Fedotovna, my mother-in-law, now deceased. She cooked mezenos [sweet pastry], tsimes, forshmak. 

I have few friends now, some of them are Jews. The proportion of Jews among my friends approximately equals the proportion of Jews in the population of St. Petersburg. 

When Mikhail Ugolev, a son of uncle Ghirsha was alive, he visited us. After Mikhail left for the army, his wife often came to see us. She missed her husband very much and I tried to distract her someway. Her relatives complained about her spending time with me, and after the end of the war, when her husband returned home, they divorced. 

At present Semen and Nina Khutoretsky – his wife – live in the same house with us. Sometimes we visit each other on business or for no particular reason; we help each other if we can. 

I’ve never been to Israel. I have no relatives there, except Irina Epstein, the elder daughter of Lev Epstein, my cousin. He is a son of Esther-Slava Ugoleva, Epstein after marriage, my father’s sister. He has two children born in his first marriage: Irina and Mikhail, and a son born in his second marriage, Ilya. I remember Irina as a little girl, but now we are not in touch. Lev, her father, informs me about the way she lives. I didn’t find any special opportunity to visit Israel until 1989, and I didn’t search for it because of my laziness. Though I guess it could have been an interesting trip. 

The state authorities didn’t really disturb me because of my Jewish origins. It can be explained by the fact that I didn’t make a show of my Jewish origin. I knew that the authorities didn’t like Jews, therefore I tried to hide myself: I even changed my name and my patronymic in my birth-certificate and in the passport. Earlier I was registered as Ugolev Isaac Haimovich, and now I am Ugolev Alexander Efimovich. I did it for the sake of my son. I wanted him to have the patronymic Alexandrovich, not Isaacovich. This will make his life easier. 

Before Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev 27 came to power I couldn’t keep in touch with my relatives abroad 28. It was dangerous: authorities supervised all contacts of the citizens with foreigners and didn’t approve it. At present Eugenia Ugoleva, after marriage Bryskina, my aunt and my father’s sister, her son Leonid Bryskin, his wife Lyudmila and their children Daniil and Eugeny live in the USA. They left in 1992. They live in the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Sometimes we call each other, I wrote to Aunt Eugenia twice. It would be better to communicate more often, you see, she is already 90 years old, and Leonid is not young either. 

Before Perestroika 29, Lyudmila – (daughter of Sofia and Oscar Naimark – left for the USA. But we are not in touch. I know that in the period of Perestroika she visited St. Petersburg. 

After 1989 life in Russia changed a lot. Capitalism came to our country. It isn’t easy for people of my age to accept such global changes in our social order. I considered Gorbachev’s Perestroika to be great nonsense. If Shatalin, G.A. Yavlinsky and other scientists-economists offered the ‘500 Days’ program [this program was created to improve the economic situation in Russia in 500 days], it is necessary to use it and carry out reforms. What is the purpose to philosophize and search for historical basis for changes in the USSR, if there is a specific program of gradual, step-by-step economic and political transformations? Why not supervise the process of reforms day by day according to this program? You see, if you sit on your place and reflect, manna would not fall down from heaven, and it was necessary to pay debts to the world community. During Perestroika there was no planning and no order, even some sort of communists’ order. 

When I got to know about the fall of the Berlin wall, I couldn’t conceive of this fact. I used to think that Western Berlin is our opponent and Eastern Berlin is our ally. I thought, that life in the Eastern part of Berlin was better, than in the Western part, but it turned out to be absolutely on the contrary. 

After Perestroika nothing much changed in my life. My personal economic stability is expressed in the fact that I live as poorly as before. To tell the truth, our cultural life became richer. It became possible to speak about politics, to express your own views, but within reasonable limits. I had a sensation of the decline in anti-Semitic policy. 

Now I go to the synagogue sometimes, I am a client of Hesed 30. I didn’t receive any assistance from foreign Jewish organizations. Sure I’d like to receive it: it isn’t easy to make ends meet. But I’m not depressed.

I feel community life to be very active. I’m pleased that we have a lot of Jewish organizations. If I were a wealthy man, I would like to join the Jewish donor’s circle. At the Synagogue and Hesed Center I receive souvenirs and food packages for each Jewish holiday, I attend concerts, I’m a registered reader of the Hesed library. 

I’m very grateful to Jewish organizations, which help me live, send food packages for holidays, arrange concerts. I thank JDC [Joint] 31, Hesed Center and Mirilashvili [a Georgian Jew – a businessman and a sponsor] personally for their charitable activities. 

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.

Stela Astrukova
Sofia 
Bulgaria
Interviewer: Svetlana Avdala
Date of interview: March 2006

I do not know this woman, I see her now for the first time.

At first glance – very well-preserved, with delicate and even childlike features. We sit down and we start. In the beginning everything she says seems innocent, especially the parts about her childhood. A discreet smile appears on her lips when she goes back to her memories.

We have been working for three hours already – no signs of tiredness on her part. We start the Holocaust topic. Her face goes pale, her lips purse slightly, but her speech is as rhythmical as before. The facts follow each other like chopped wood.

Her thoughts are clear and focused, without decoration or lyrical deviation. After two more hours she is as unemotional as in the beginning. My respect for that woman is growing every single minute. I get quieter and quieter. I am thinking, 'Do her difficulties ever come to an end?'

As if I am watching some kind of a movie. I remember such movies from my childhood about heroic events from our newest history. Another type of films appeared after that – the so-called action movies.

There is shooting again, chases, torture, but everything seems like a game, they lack heroism, lack ideals, which...'...which...,' I add in the end of the conversation, 'overshadow the rational mind.''But without those ideals, we would not have sacrificed our lives,' she insists.'But do we have to sacrifice our lives? Isn't it more important for a man to be alive in order to keep on the path of life he has chosen?',

I ask.This is a dialogue between the generations or probably a clash of characters, I do not know, but all the people from that generation seem different from us. They were exposed to some other inner light and another type of meaning. Some people would say that they look 'old-fashioned' now, but I think that nowadays 'old-fashioned' is a nice word.

They speak slowly, with some kind of dignity, as if standing on a podium and talking to the masses. Ready to serve in the name of...Our generation doubts heroic actions, as well as everything else. We believe only in the things we can touch, achieve or use, but what kind of people are we? Lonely, headphones on our ears, staring into the screens, playing virtual action games.

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

My family background

We came with the big group Sephardi Jews from Spain in the end of the 15th - 16th century 1 2. My paternal and maternal ancestors settled directly into Sofia. I do not know anything about their material state. But I remember my grandparents.

My paternal grandfather's name was Yako Azarya Levi. He lived with us. That was the custom those days, the parents of the eldest son lived with his family. My father had a brother, whose name was Azarya Levi, but he died during World War I on the Dobrudzha Front 3.

I remember my grandfather very well. I can clearly picture him in my mind even now. I was around 12-13 years old when he died. He had a beard and mustache like the old Jews.

He dressed very neatly. Every Saturday he went to the synagogue with the tallit and the book. When he returned, my grandmother would be waiting for him with the mastika 4 and some eggs. During the week he went to work. He had primary education.

He had graduated a Jewish school and had a small shop for paints and ironware, in which he worked. He went to work in the morning and came back for lunch because all shops had a compulsory lunch break from one to three. So, he would come home, have lunch and have an hour's nap. Then he got up, my grandmother made him some coffee and he went back to work. When my grandfather died in 1936, my father took care of the shop.

My paternal grandmother and my mother got on very well. Everything at home was in order and they both were kind women. The men went to work, my grandmother cooked and helped with the housework and my mother washed the clothes and looked after the children. Later, when we built the new house, in which we all moved, my mother also worked as a seamstress from home in order to help repay the loan which we took to build the house.

I did not speak much with my grandfather because he was more aloof. I spoke mostly with my grandmother Niema. I remember her long hair reaching down to her feet, which never went gray. My grandmother was not educated. She taught me to knit, to sew, to clean the big pots.

Before she married my grandfather, she had been a housemaid. When our family gathered for dinner, my grandmother would cook and clean the dishes. There were no washing detergents at that time. The dishes were made of copper and tin-plated inside. She washed them with soap and sand until they shone.

We had a tap in the yard and behind the tap - a cherry tree. My grandmother would kneel in the yard, washing and my mother would scold her that she would injure her back in this way. My grandmother also taught me the religious canons, because my parents were atheists.

My grandmother's hair was really gorgeous. She would untie the braids and comb her hair with ivory combs. She often called me to comb her and I loved that. She put gas and water in a small dish [effective remedy to protect against lice]. When she got up in the mornings, she untied the braids and combed her hair.

Sometimes she had only one braid, but most often – two. On holidays, she wrapped them around her head. She also combed her hair when we went to have a bath. Every Friday my grandmother, my mother and I would go to the City Bath situated at the river on Slivnitsa Blvd and Pirotska Str. When it was cold, we bathed in a wooden tub in the kitchen at home. Then she would call for me to wash her back.

Probably my grandmother was a very beautiful woman for my grandfather to marry her without a dowry. [The typical Jewish dowry – ashugar, included the smallest details from the everyday life of a Jewish family.] I do not know much, but I know that my grandmother remained an orphan very young and married without a dowry, which was very rare at the time.

I also remember my maternal grandmother. Her name was Yafa Sabat Beni (1880-1953) I remember her very well, because I often visited her. She lived on 35 Sredna Gora Str. in a house built by my grandfather Mois Sabat Beni (1878 – 1908), which was later extended by my uncles when they got rich. I remember that it was a solid three-story house – every brother had his story.

My grandmother was not very tall, and a bit overweight, but very energetic. I remember her with gray hair done in a bun. She was always dressed in black because she was left a widow at 28 years of age. She kept the mourning clothes until her death. She loved reading. She would read fairy tales in French and translate them to me.

My grandmother was a housewife all her life and looked after her children but she was a very educated woman for her times. I do not know the origin or the material well-being of her parents, but most probably they were well-off, educated and progressive [i.e. intelligent] people, because they sent my grandmother to study at a French school, which was quite a progressive decision at the time.

But when she got 13-14 years old, they decided to marry her. My grandmother told me that while she was playing ball on the street one day, her parents called her in to introduce her to her parents-in-law and her future husband – Mois Sabat Beni (1878 – 1908), who was a little bit older than her, probably 2 years.

So, he was around 15-16 years old. She left school. She was in the sixth or seventh grade. They did not have children the first years of their marriage, because they themselves were still children. Then she started giving birth to one child every year – five in all. At 28 years of age she remained a widow, because my grandfather died of hernia in hospital.

Their eldest son is Leon (1897 – 1953). In 1898 my mother Matilda (1898 - 1964) was born, next was Meshulam (1899 – 1970), Zhak (1900 – 1980) and last was Vizurka (1902 – 1975).

After my grandfather died, my mother remained an orphan at ten years of age. She graduated the third primary grade and my grandmother to make ends meet sent the two eldest children to work. My mother started work in a carpet factory for Persian carpets on Pirotska Str. owned by a Bulgarian, whose name I do not know.

Leon became a shop assistant somewhere. My mother was a small child and had very tiny fingers. She was given the task to tie the knots of the carpets. In order to reach the upper part of the carpet, she had to use a chair mounted on a desk. One day Maria Luiza 5, the mother of King Boris III 6 went there to see how carpets were woven.

When she saw my mother, she started asking questions about her. When she was told that my mother had lost her father and has four more siblings, she decided to help the family by making a charity. She asked my mother about her name, but when she realized that my mother was a Jew, she turned her back on her and refused to do help her in any way.

My mother worked there for some time and then she went to some Bulgarian tailoring atelier and learned the craft there. Then she started sewing in the houses of the rich people in the town. My mother was very beautiful and had a lean figure. The son of the owner of one of the houses, in which she sewed, fell in love with her and they engaged.

He was a Jew from a very rich family and she was very poor, but he was sick of tuberculosis and his parents could not protest his choice. The engagement lasted nine months. He gave her as a gift a very beautiful small polished chest, made like a jewel, with small drawers and doors and incrustations. He left the engagement ring in one of the drawers.

Later my father did not want to see that chest, but my mother preserved it. The fiance died of tuberculosis when my mother was 18 years old. I do not know his name. He was rarely spoken of at home, because my father was jealous of him. My mother told me the story of their love when I found the chest she was keeping.

When he died, my mother could not overcome her grief for a long time. In the course of time she managed to earn enough money to live better, because the rich people paid her well. Her brother Leon was also successful and earned enough money to enroll in a trade high school.

During his studies my mother also helped him financially together with their other brother Meshulam, who also started working. When Leon graduated, he became an accountant and he and my mother started supporting Meshulam who also wanted to graduate the same school.

Only the youngest son Zhak did not want to study. He became a goldsmith and was sent to France to learn the craft. When my mother became 24 years old, she met my father through her brother Leon. My father had returned from Paris and his first decision was to call my mother's brother Leon to see him. My father and my mother liked each other very much. My father was also handsome. They fell in love and married without any dowry on my mother's part.

My father Morduhay Yako Levi (1896 – 1972) graduated high school and was mobilized as an infantryman at the front. A year after that he was captured during an attack. He said that it was the most horrible massacre that had taken place during World War I 7.

The soldiers ran with the bayonets forward and butchered each other. The battle happened somewhere in France, but I do not know where. My father was lightly injured and sent to a camp in Marseilles where he stayed until the end of the war from 1915 until 1918.

He learned there to do electrical engineering work and the French language, which he had studied in high school. When he left the camp, he remained to work in France, at first in Marseilles, then in Paris. He worked as an electrical engineer. He also made some big improvement on the mechanism of the electrical bulbs.

And since he knew no laws and he was not a very practical man – he was very honest and guileless – he took the originals to some electrical company to adopt them. They took his unpatented designs and they started using them without paying him anything. He was very disappointed with them. When he came back to Bulgaria, he brought his designs, but the bulbs had already been introduced. He decided to return to Bulgaria and marry a Bulgarian Jew.

After the marriage my parents left for Paris, because my father liked life there. They spent there 2-3 years, tried to make a living. They lived in an attic flat. My mother worked as a seamstress and my father as an electrical engineer, but they did not have regular incomes. When I was about to be born, they decided to return to Bulgaria.

A month after my birth, I was born on 24th March, on the 25th April the bombing of the St Nedelya Church took place 8. Arrests started, people became anxious. My father's parents who had lost their elder son in the war on the Dobrudzha Front insisted that the young family leave Bulgaria.

They also saw that my father had broader views not typical for the Bulgarian style of life. He was raised with the ideas of the French revolution, he saw no differences between the people – black or white, Jewish or Germans. He did not denounce the marriages between Bulgarians and Jews. He accepted people's mistakes lightly, not with the fanaticism present at the times.

My parents left for Palestine. They traveled by steamboat. I was one month old. Leon, my mother's elder brother, welcomed them there. He had been living there with his wife Simha for two years. She worked as a midwife and I do not remember what he did. My cousin Yafa was born in Palestine.

My uncle and aunt remained a little longer in Palestine but eventually returned, I do not know why, probably because of the harsh climate. My parents, however, did not manage to settle. My mother did not work, because she looked after me and my father could not find work as an engineer, because there was no construction at the time.

They lived in a wooden shed and slept on the floor. My mother said that one night she heard me moaning and got up to check on me. She saw that a snake – a boa – had wrapped itself around me and was suffocating me. She panicked and woke up my father.

A short while after that I got a very severe eye infection, probably because of the dirt and the miserable conditions. They returned to Bulgaria and lived in a small brick house together with my grandparents on Morava Str., present-day 75 Zheko Dimitrov Str.

• Growing up

I spent my early childhood there, until 1932-33 when my parents built the new house. Until then we had a garden and a yard around the small house. I remember that the house had no foundations and its floor was directly over the ground, covered with boards. We had electricity.

We had running water and toilet inside. But my parents did not like that because the sink was right next to the toilet. So, he made a toilet outside the house right next to it and we did not use the one inside. In 1932 – 33 we built the new house in the garden of the old one, facing the street. The old house remained in the yard.

We lived in the big house until our internment 9. After my parents died, I sold it. We had everything in the new house – a toilet and a bathroom. It had three storeys and a big kitchen, a large basement, an attic, a toilet and a bathroom. It was not lavishly furnished – we had beds with iron boards, which I thought were very old-fashioned, a three-door wardrobe, a cupboard in the kitchen, a radio.

In the kitchen we had a stove using coals. After 1936 we bought a new Pernik stove. My father had brought the French culture with him. The whole basement was full of his books from France and he turned the attic into a workshop.

We lived in Iuchbunar 10 where there were a lot of Jews, but our neighbors were mostly Bulgarians. The Jews lived on the land between Klementina Str., Pozitano Str., Tri Ushi Str., and we were on the side, on Morava Str. We got one very well with our neighbors.

When we moved to the new house with my grandmother Niema and my grandfather Yakov in 1933 – 34, we let out the old one so that we could pay our loan. My parents insisted that our tenants were Jews. Our tenants also let out one of the rooms. I remember that we got along very well with them.

The people in those days helped each other very much, probably because they were not so overburdened by possessions as nowadays. My mother sewed at home. The woman in the tenants' family worked in a chocolate factory. I remember that my mother lit stoves with charcoal in order to cook because electricity was expensive.

She took the food for the little girls, warmed it, laid the table for them and the sent them home. If one of the three housewives was sick, the others made soups for all the children. They were very united. My mother taught them housework, what to buy, how to sew, how to keep the house clean etc. After all, she was educated, she knew French and had lived in France.

My mother washed the clothes twice a week. On Friday after we took our baths, she washed the underwear. On Monday we changed our clothes and she washed the bed linen. The next Monday she would wash the bed linen of my grandmother. She changed them every 15 days. All bed sheets were starched and ironed.

They were starched with flour. Even nowadays I starch my sheets. Starching keeps bed linen clean for longer. You put to boil some water and when it is ready you pour in it flour, which had been mixed with cold water before that and salt. You stir until the mixture gets thick like cream. Then you filter it and place the sheets in.

The housewives competed whose house would be the cleanest and the tidiest. In the wardrobe my father's shirts were ironed and tied with a blue ribbon. My mother's underwear was tied with a pink ribbon. My mother did not allow us to put or take things out of the wardrobe, only she did that.

My mother knitted and sewed. She sewed curtains, bed covers and a table cover for the new house. I remember that our bedroom in the house was facing the street. Right in front of the street there was an electric lamp post. While we were sleeping, my mother was sewing using the light of the lamp post in order to save on electricity.

We did not have enough money and lived sparely because we paid back the loan we took for the house until we were interned. My mother would take the old clothes of our relatives, wash them, turn them back to front and saw them again. I was always neatly and cleanly dressed.

As I child one day I went out on the street and one of my friends showed me a gorgeous doll and asked me where my doll was. I did not know what to say because I had never had a doll or another toy and now it turned out that every child on our street had some. I came back home crying.

My mother said, 'Don't cry, I will make you a doll.' She was sewing a black satin apron and she cut from the cloth a doll, sewed it, embroidered eyes, a nose and hair with the sewing machine and gave it to me. The next day I showed my doll to the others. But they all said to me, 'What kind of doll is that?

There are no black dolls. People are white.' And they showed me their dolls. I returned home crying once again because my doll was black. But my mother always had an answer for me. 'Go out and tell that that you are the only one in the neighborhood who has a Negro doll. No one else has such a doll. They will surely envy you.' So did I and later black dolls appeared throughout the whole neighborhood.

My mother read a lot in Bulgarian and French. I remember her reading 'Robinson Crusoe', 'Homeless' by Hector Malot, ‘Huckleberry Finn' [by Marc Twain]. I learned to read and write in Bulgarian and French at an early age before I started school. Later I read books to my sister.

My mother got a very serious kidney infection in 1928-29 before she gave birth to my sister in 1930. She had to have an operation. That made our life very difficult, but I think her brothers helped us. They paid her her share of their father's house and we used that money to pay for the operation.

The people who were poor at that time had special documents and could go to free examinations at Alexandrovska Hospital. But my mother was in University Hospital. My father was a proud man and paid the whole treatment there. Professor Stanishev, the best surgeon in Bulgaria at that time took out one of her kidneys.

So, she lived a healthy life until she was 68 years old when she died of liver cancer. I remember her going to change her bandages. My father also took me to see her in the hospital. I was three years old. My mother was lying in a narrow long room with four beds. I had a big bunch of flowers.

The professor came to check on her and told me, 'Hey, girl, where are you going with that bunch of flowers?' 'To see mommy,' I said. 'And who is your mommy?' 'The woman in the corner'. My mother started crying when she saw me. Then she got better.

My sister Dora was born in 1930. In 1934 my paternal grandmother Niema died. In 1936 my sister caught diphtheria. My grandfather Yako was also sick and my mother was looking after him. (He died the same year – 1936.) I took care of my sister. I remember that her throat was aching the whole time, she was diagnosed late. Everyone thought it was a throat infection and they prescribed her some creams to be able to swallow more easily.

I fed her. I would try to feed her two or three spoons, but she did not want any. And since I loved sweets, I would eat the rest. My mother and uncle Zhak got also infected from my sister, but my father did not. Immunity. My sister died in the infections ward of Alexandrovska Hospital.

My mother was admitted to the hospital at Stochna Station – the District Hospital, in the infections ward. But she made it through the illness and so did my uncle. Later, I went to work in the same ward where my mother was.

When my grandparents died, we started to let out their room too. A woman named Sterka took it. She was the mother of Dragomir Asenov [the nickname of Zhak Nissim Melamed, a Bulgarian writer of Jewish origin born on 15th May 1926 in Mihaylovgrad. Playwright and author of novels, novelettes and short stories.

Died in 1981.]. She was a Serbian Jew, a widow with no relatives in Sofia. She had three children. Dragomir Asenov was in the Jewish orphanage in the beginning. He came back every Saturday and we were friends.

Her elder daughter, his sister, lived with her grandparents in the town of Ferdinand [present day Montana, named Mihaylovgrad during Socialist rule]. Later she also came to Sofia to live with her mother.

When my grandparents were alive, we spoke Ladino 11 at home. My grandmother could not speak a perfect Bulgarian. We observed all traditions. We had a patriarchal way of life. We all had lunch and dinner. On Friday we cooked for Saturday – Fritas di praz – leaks balls, potato balls, a hen with rice.

On Friday we all had a bath, changed our clothes and cleaned the house thoroughly. We did not cook on Saturday. A gypsy woman came to light our fire to warm the food.

My grandparents did not touch fire and did not allow my mother to light it too. [A common ritual during Sabbath. Jews were not allowed to light fire and a person who was not a Jew had to come and do that for them.]

We arranged the table for Friday night and had a formal dinner. That was observed until my grandparents were alive. We had special dishes for Pesach.

After the holiday they were washed and were not used until the next holiday. Before the holiday they were boiled in water with soda so that they would shine

Once a year, in the three weeks before Pesach my mother started the great cleaning. On the holiday the whole family gathered at Mazarovi family – the elder sister of my father. She had a big house with four or five rooms. She arranged a big table for all the relatives. I remember that I would always fall asleep while they were reading the Haggadah.

They put a handkerchief full of matzah and boyos on the back of each child. The handkerchiefs were embroidered with gold threads on the ends. In this way we symbolized the aliyah.

The prayer ended with the words: 'This year we are here, but may we celebrate the next in Jerusalem.' On Pesach we ate paschal foods. We ate boyos instead of bread for eight days.

On Yom Kippur we all did taanit. [A fasting obligatory for the healthy and not – for the sick, the children, the pregnant women and those breastfeeding.] We sniffed a quince with clove and went to the synagogue... Before [Yom] Kippur the whole family gathered in the evening and had a celebration. When the fasting ended, we always ate soup.

Then we read a prayer and the real dinner started, most often a hen with rice. On Chanukkah the first and the last night my father's kin gathered at home because of my grandparents who lived with us. My grandfather lit the first shammash.

[Editor's note: The interviewee makes a mistake – shammash is the ninth candle of the Chanukkah candlestick, with it one lights all the other eight candles.] All the children were eager to light their own candles. And we competed whose candle would burn out last. That depended on the amount of oil.

We also gathered on Frutas 12. The children received purses with fruit. On Purim we put on masks and went around the houses of the relatives. Every one gave us some stotinkas. After that we counted our money and bought something. We loved that holiday because it was fun.

When my grandparents died, we arranged for them a funeral in accordance with the Jewish ritual. We were in mourning. The relatives, parents, brothers, sisters, the wife and children of the diseased, sat on a black blanket on the ground. The synagogue gave small black round tables, who were comfortable for the people sitting to eat.

The more distant relatives brought food to the mourning people for seven days. It was also typical when arriving from the cemetery, to be served coffee by one of the neighbors. Then the women stayed at home, did not go to the cemetery and prepared the welcome of the men and the rabbi from the cemetery.

They put yellow cheese, white cheese, baked eggs and boiled pasta with black pepper, a little oil, lemon and crackers on the table. The rabbi came to the house to make wings – he cut the shirt and the underwear of the wife as a sign of mourning. The mourning people wore black clothes and observed the mourning for a year.

During the internment and after 9th September [1944] 13, since we lived together with other families, we could not observe that ritual. And although we, the children, observed Jewish rituals different from the Bulgarian ones, we did not feel different from the other children and had Bulgarian friends.

My mother had a natural healing talent. She would visit Bulgarians and Jews who did not feel well, put on cupping glasses on their backs and advised them what to do to get better. She also sewed for Bulgarian families. Very often they invited her at their houses on different occasions.

My Bulgarian classmates also visited me at home to help them with the lessons, because I had excellent marks at school. On the street we also played with the Bulgarian and Jewish children. I remember that a Bulgarian family lived near our house and the girl Violeta was my friend. They had a big mulberry tree and we all gathered, Bulgarians and Jews, to pick the fruit.

The first time I felt I was different from the others, was when King Simeon 14 was born. Then as a sign of royal charity, all students got their marks increased by one point and the best students in the classes received awards. I was a student at junior high school at that time. I had excellent marks in all subjects throughout all my school years.

We were invited to the school gym for the presentation of the awards. The headmaster opened the ceremony and I went to the first row ready to go and take my award. I went to the stage, waiting for the headmaster to say my name. There was some confusion among the teachers and students on the stage, I saw that the headmaster was also embarrassed and then he announced the name of a student whose father was an officer.

He had had two 'fours' [In the Bulgarian system 'two' is the lowest mark and 'six' is the highest.] the previous terms. I was shocked at first but that was only for a moment. I was below the stage, I held my head high and went out the side door. I did not cry. I went home. We lived very close to the school.

When my mother saw me, she hugged me and said, 'What is the matter, why are you crying?' I told her everything. 'But, girl, we are Jews. The award is for the Bulgarian heir to the throne. A Bulgarian child should receive it.' Then I realized I was different from the others.

We kept in touch with the Jewish community. Before I started going to the Bulgarian school, I went to a Jewish nursery for two or three months, but not for long because my parents were afraid that I would have to cross the street alone. That is why the enrolled me in a Bulgarian primary school and not in a Jewish one. In order to get to the Jewish school, I had to cross Klementina Str. on which tram No24 was traveling.

The Bulgarian primary school is where the Jewish school is now. There were only three Jewish girls in my class. My cousin Fani, daughter of uncle Leon came to study with me in the third primary grade in the Bulgarian school. Her mother died, she fell into a severe depression and my mother took her home. We studied together from then on. Our friends were mostly Bulgarians.

From the primary school I remember the 24th May parades 15. Fani and I played in the school orchestra. I played the bass tuba. We also had shows in the end of each school year. We organized exhibitions too. We had classes in embroidering for the girls and making things out of wood for the boys. For example, they made shelves for books or clocks. And we, the girls, sewed aprons, skirts, embroidered nightgowns. There were both girls and boys in the classes in the primary school

On the high holidays we were taken to the St Nikola Church in the park. I did not go to church, but I stayed during the classes in religion because it was interesting for me, although we, the Jews, were exempt from that class. They taught us the Bible. My father never restricted me.

He very seldom said no to me and my mother listened to my father. During the classes they read the prayer, but the making of the sign of the cross was not obligatory and I did not do it. They were like classes in history for me and I learned some things about the New Testament from them.

I have wonderful memories from my teachers. They loved their profession. When we were in the third primary grade one of the teachers took us on an excursion to Pernik  [a city in Southwestern Bulgaria, 25 km from Sofia] by train. We went to the mines to see how coal is dug.

He must have had very progressive [here the word is used in the meaning of ‘leftist’] views because he made us learn the poem by [Hristo] Smirnenski 'Quarry Boy' 16. That was the first time I left Sofia. In my junior high school we also went on an excursion to Veliko Tarnovo [a city in North-Central Bulgaria, 195 km from Sofia]. .

I graduated the classic high school where we studied Latin and Greek, because I wanted to become a doctor. I was influenced by the movie on Robert Koch, a German physician who discovered the tuberculosis virus. The name of the movie was also 'Robert Koch'. I remember that his style of work, devotion and detailed investigation of the origin of the illness impressed me deeply.

From high school I remember our literature teacher Sakarova, sister of the great politician, the social-democrat [Nikola] Sakarov 17. She was a lean and tall, neatly-dressed woman. She loved her job and instilled that love in us. We all loved her very much.

She also taught us Greek mythology and Greek language. Had gone to Rome and showed us photos. I was much impressed by Laocoon. [Laocoön warned his fellow Trojans against the wooden horse presented to the city by the Greeks. He told them that it was a military trick by Odysseus.

Soon two large sea serpents came out from the sea where Laocoon and his sons were presenting a sacrifice to Poseidon. They strangled him and his sons. The famous statue was made by the Rhodian sculptors Hegesandros, Athenedoros and Polydoros around 175-150 BC.

Now it is in the Vatican museums]. I was much disturbed by this image, probably because of my mother’s story about the boa. I remember that at the time of the internment my cousin Fani Aronova and I took one of the most beautiful flowerpots and gave it to our teacher as a memory from us. She said nothing. She had progressive [i.e. leftist] ideas.

But one day when I was in the fifth high school grade (I was in the UYW 18 leadership of the high school), we disseminated leaflet throughout the school. She was deputy headmaster and she got very angry and started looking for the people who did it. I did not know if she found out that we did it or not, but she did not catch us.

On Sundays my parents and I went out on a walk to some of the parks and on our way home we went to a confectionery. My father bought us cakes, boza 19, ice cream. When we had no money, my mother would joke with my father in Spanish [Ladino], 'You bought me nothing on the way to the park and back.

Why should we bother going out at all?' My parents loved going to the theater and to the opera. My father told us a lot about the theater performances of Sarah Bernardt [1844-1923, a famous French actress] and a play by Victor Hugo he had seen. I remember that the famous singer Hristina Morfova 20 was singing in the 'Magic Flute' [by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart] and we went to see her.

I was around 8 or 9 years old. It was very interesting but I could not understand the plot. I started asking my father. He told me, 'You will see the 'Magic Flute' many times in your life, but only once will you have the chance to listen to Hristina Morfova. Remember that.' She played the part of the Night Queen and I still remember how she was lowered on the dark stage, all illuminated. She was very impressive, a tall, big woman with a scepter in hand...

We went to the cinema regularly – once a week. We went to the movies starring Shirley Temple and I loved her. She is the prodigy child. Although my parents were not rich and highly educated, they had a broad culture. My mother sang very well. Very often she would hum whole arias while cleaning and sewing.

She had a great memory for music and sang long before we had a radio at home. Her elder brother Leon also had such a memory, and so did Zhak who sang in the Tsadikov’s choir 21 in Bulgaria and in a choir in Israel. Leon played the guitar and mandolin. They were musical but did not have the opportunity to develop their talent.

My parents kept in touch with the Jewish community – they paid araha [a kind of a membership fee paid by the members of the community in the synagogue] and were members of the community, although they were atheists and did not go to the synagogue.

My mother was not able to take part in the women's organizations of the Jewish community, because she had much work to do and had no time. My father was not a member of any organizations or parties. He was against party membership because he thought that the aligning with one party or point of view led to sectarianism.

He had an open mind. He read a lot of different newspapers and compared information. Most often he bought 'Utro' [Morning] 22, 'Mir' [Peace] [newspaper published by the People's Party from 1894 until 1944. Became a daily in 1906. In 1920 became a newspaper of the People's Progressive Party. In 1923 it was published by ‘Mir’ joint-stock company], etc.

There were operettas in the town performed on the stage of Odeon Theater at the place of the Musical Theater. We did not go there very often and neither did we go much to the theater. Once we went on an excursion by cart. We were like the gypsies – the whole cart was full of children, relatives, baskets of food.

I think we were heading for Vladaya but I am not sure. I was an obedient child, but at that afternoon, when the horses were released to rest, I decided to mount one of them, he was startled and hurled me to the ground. I was hurt very badly. I remember that everyone panicked and my parents brought me back to town.

But there were no serious consequences from the fall. We went on excursions and picnics very rarely. During the holidays we stayed in Sofia. My mother made me help her with the housework. She had more clothes to sew during the Easter and the Christmas holidays and I had to help her.

I often had to sew the hems and I hated that. But my mother would say, 'You are a girl, you should know how to sew a blouse or a skirt.' And I would tell her, 'I will not become like you, sewing all day on the machine.' I never wanted to learn how to sew. When I finished junior high school with excellent marks, I wanted very much to continue studying although my mother thought it was unnecessary for a girl.

My father intervened. 'She will go to high school and that's it!' So, they enrolled me in the Second Girls' High School, which was private. It was in a number of buildings on Dunav Str. and Iskar Str. The fourth and fifth grade studied on Dunav Str.

A short distance along the street was another house where the sixth graders studied and on Iskar Str in a yellow building studied the higher grades. There were four Jewish girls in our class – Fani Avramova, Linka Natan, Beti Ashkenazi and I.

There were three tramlines in Sofia. Tram No4 passed along Klementina Str. and tram No3 passeed along Pirotska Str. Tram No5 went to Knyazhevo. The other means of transport were carts and carriages. The people living in a house next to ours had a carriage. One of the brothers who lived there was a cabman.

He would go to the station to wait for passengers. When he came back home from work we, the children, would wait for him on Opalchenska Str. and he would take us all home on the carriage. It was a lot of fun.

Another memory of the way Sofia looked then is from a later period when I was already a member of the UYW. I remember that the winter of 1941 was very cold. The temperatures in Sofia fell as low as -25, -26 degrees C. My friends from the UYW group and I decided that we should by all means buy tickets for 'Carmen' starring Ilka Popova 23.

At four o'clock in the morning and -25 degrees I queued in front of the National Theater in order to buy tickets when the booking office opened at eight o'clock. I was so cold that had no strength to get back home. My aunt Reyna, my father's sister, lived somewhere close and I visited her to get warm. My aunt put my feet in hot water and made me tea. I remember going back along Pirotska Str. and seeing stoves with charcoal placed outside so that people would warm themselves.

I became a UYW when I was 16 years old and it happened through the Jewish chitalishte 24. When I learned how to read, my father took me to the chitalishte because he was not able to buy me books. He showed me how to select my books. The first chitalishte was 'Hristo Botev', next to my school so I did not have to cross the street.

When I was second or third primary grade I became a member of another chitalishte – 'Emil Shekerdzhiiski' 25. It was on Klementina Str. between Sredna Gora Str. and Opalchenska Str. It had a number of names before 9th September – 'Aura', 'Shalom Aleyhem' 26, 'Bialik' 27 It also had a central office on Lege Str.

The librarian there was the famous Jewish writer Haim Benatov [writer, lived in Iuchbunar, author of the novel 'This long road...'] The librarian in the office on Klementina Str. was Elena Kehayova, a communist. She used her job in the chitalishte to introduce us to the UYW movement and its ideology.

The first UYW group was at the Jewish chitalishte. At first there were groups of sympathizers at the chitalishte. They were UYW groups. We became members of some of the groups as sympathizers. The first years there were educational groups.

We had meetings before which everyone had to read a book. That is why, I say that UYW educated us not only politically but also culturally. We read Erenburg, Gladkov, Pushkin, Lermontov 28, Tolstoy 29. We discussed their books at our meetings. We had literary debates in the form of trials.

For example, we debated whether it was right for Martin Eden to commit suicide [a character of the novel 'Martin Eden' by Jack London]. We also had discussions about love. Some of the members defended the position of Elena Kolontay [the first woman diplomat of Soviet Russia] on free love, the others were against. Most of us, the girls, were against.

• During the war

The anti-Semitic attitudes started around the 1940s. I remember the Legionaries [Bulgarian Legions] 30 and Branniks 31 on Klementina and Pirotska Str. and how they attacked the Jewish shops there [The Night of Broken Glass] 32

[Editor's Note: the interviewee is mistaken – no Branniks took part in that incident because their organization was founded in December 1940]. Then they wanted to attack the houses but the UYW organization consisting of both Bulgarians and Jews put up a resistance. We even had help from the Bulgarians from other quarters of the town.

While I was studying in the high school, I felt the negative attitude of the Legionaries and Brannik girls among us. They spoke loud enough for us to hear them and disseminated rumors that the Jews were the reasons for the troubles because they were rich and ruled the nation and their riches were accumulated in dishonest ways.

Their anti-Semitism was especially strong at Easter. Then they directly attacked us with the words that the Jews drank blood and if a child went missing, we were the first to be blamed to have killed him or her to drink the blood. We, the UYW members, gathered and decided to resist the Branniks by explaining the truth to the Bulgarians who were not against us yet. We used every opportunity to talk to them.

Then all Jewish property was confiscated 33. They started with the manufacturing plants. Then they closed the shops, the factories, the ateliers. My father also had a shop. At first, they forced him to take a Bulgarian partner, then they made him transfer everything to the Bulgarian.

They wanted to leave the Jews without any means of earning money. We were only allowed to practice some craft from our homes, like sewing or mending shoes. The Bulgarians were banned to employ Jews and the Jews were banned to take Bulgarian girls as maids. Those were difficult and hungry years for our family because we were still paying our loan.

My mother kept on sewing. Only the three of us were at home and my father continued to work as an electrical engineer going to the homes of his clients. He repaired stoves, but he did not have much work because there were not many electrical appliances then. He could not make the electrical wirings of new houses – that was not allowed.

Then we had to declare all our property. [In 1941 the Law for Protection of the Nation 34 was adopted and included a variety of documents on the real estate and movable property owned by Jews, including bank savings. Jews had to declare all their possessions within a month of the adoption of the law.]

No one was allowed to hide anything. Using these declarations, they came and confiscated what they wanted. We were left our new house, but they took the rent we received from the old one. They took our radio sets and gave all Jews pink ID cards. We were renamed during the Holocaust. My name Stela was changed to Ester.

My mother's name Matilda was changed to Mazal, but my father's name Morduhay was not changed 35. Then followed the curfew and the badges [yellow stars] 36. The Jews were allowed to live in the Jewish quarter only – between Hristo Botev Str., Klementina Str. and the river. A kind of a ghetto was forming there.

When the orders for internment arrived, we were given only 3 or 4 days before the day of leaving. Pirotska Str. turned into a kind of an open market. The people took out their belongings and sold them on the street. They needed money and they were not allowed to take more than 30 kg with them.

Villagers on carts arrived from the nearby villages and bought a lot of things at extremely low price. I remember that my mother took out the woolen mattresses for sale. I sold one of them for 5 levs – the price of one loaf of bread. My mother was sorry at first that I had sold it for so little but then dismissed it with the words, 'We lost everything, so a mattress is not such a big deal'.

Rumors were circulating that we would be sent to Germany to work there. My mother supposed that since I was young, I would be sent to work somewhere without them. I remember that we had some gold family jewels. She divided them into three parts – for her, for my father and for me and sewed them into the hems of our clothes.

In my winter coat she sewed a gold bracelet, a pair of earrings and a ring and told me, 'Sell these things only if you have nothing to eat.' Those jewels were not found during the arrests and searches later on and I had completely forgotten about them. But when I got home on 9th September, all my clothes had to be boiled in a big cauldron. My mother remembered the jewels and took them out.

We also had silver coins with the image of Boris I from 1942. My father also had a number of them. He took out the threshold board between the kitchen and the room, dug a hole in the ground and buried them in a metal box. After 9th September we found them there and by selling them we survived the first days after the Holocaust.

My parents did not know about my illegal UYW activity. We had a special way of distributing the leaflets so that the police would not find us. Usually we went out in couples – a boy and a girl. The girl would put her back against the wall and glue the poster on the wall behind her. Meanwhile the boy would lean above her as if they are kissing.

One evening my father followed me and saw me with a boy, while gluing a poster. The boy was leaning over me but we were not kissing. My father did not realize what we were doing so we must have been really good. When I went home, he beat me hard and shouted at me, 'Are you going to be a prostitute?' I did not explain to him the truth because that was our secret. My father gradually accepted the new ideas, saw what was happening to the Jews and to us. One event played a major part in his change of beliefs.

It was 1943 on the eve of 24th May [1943] 37. We had already received orders for the internment and a rumor spread among all Jews that Rabbi Daniel 38 would speak in the synagogue the next day. All Jews went to the synagogue to hear his words. According to police reports there were around 10 000 people in the synagogue.

The book 'We, the saved ones' by Haim Oliver [1918 – 1985, a writer, participant in the anti-fascist resistance] includes all police reports on that day. There was also an order to all UYW members to go and participate in the 24th May march. I went with my father who wanted to hear the words of Rabbi Daniel and to protect me.

Not because he supported our ideas. The whole Osogovo Street was full of people. So was the Jewish school because the school and the synagogue had the same yard. [Editor's Note: the interviewee is talking about the small synagogue, not the central one].

Rabbi Daniel sent a prayer to God to help us and then went out of the synagogue. We, the people in the synagogue, heard nothing, but then we were told that we should go on a protest march towards the castle because it was 24th May and everyone was supposed to be in the streets.

The students' march organized by the Bulgarian government started from the [St Kliment Ohridski] University 39. Usually the king watched the parade either in front of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral 40 or on the balcony of the Military Club 41. We were told that we would protest in front of the king against the internment of the Jews.

During all big national holidays the houses were decorated with national flags. The writer Dragomir Asenov and another boy took a flag, which was hanging from the fence of a house and led us marching. Initially we were a lot of people. On the corners of Osogovo and Klementina Streets the elder people would stop us with the words, 'What are you doing? You are getting us killed!'

But we marched forward and the rabbi also came with us. But when we started the protest demonstration not all the people came. Mostly the UYW members joined us – we were probably around 500 – 1000 people. Somewhere before Hristo Botev Blvd the police had found out about the protest and stopped us with mounted police.

The whole neighborhood was blocked for an hour. The police started beating everyone on their way. At that time I had two long braids. I wanted to fight the police with my bare hands. I was that stupid. Then I remember my father taking hold of me by the braids and taking me home.

With the whole neighborhood blocked, everyone out in the street was arrested and taken to the yard of the Fotinov school. The police started going from house to house and arresting every Jew they saw. The arrested women were released but the arrested men spent three days in the schoolyard. We went around the yard trying to give them something to eat but we were not allowed.

The police probably checked everyone in the records and all Jews whose relatives were political prisoners were sent to the Somovit camp 42 and the Kailuka camp 43.

The rest were released with the order to keep the deadlines in the internment orders. That was how the 24th May ended. The protest was very brave. Such a protest in the heart of the fascist power! Of course it cannot be compared to the Warsaw ghetto, but it was a great example of the Jewish resistance.

At the end of May and the beginning of June 1943 we were interned to the Jewish neighborhood in Gorna Dzhumaya [present-day Blagoevgrad, in South-West Bulgaria, 76 km from Sofia]. There were Turks, Macedonians and Bulgarians living in that town and they were all very tolerant and treated us well. I do not remember any anti-Semitic attitudes.

We even lived better than we did in Sofia where the Legionnaires raided the Jewish streets. We were not allowed to enter the Bulgarian part of Gorna Dzhumaya. We were forbidden to rent Bulgarian houses. In fact, we lived in some kind of a ghetto.

Our life during the internment was very difficult. We shared a house with Angel Vagenstein 44 who had been mobilized before the internment and worked in the construction of the railway Blagoevgrad – Simitli. At that time he had graduated a technical secondary school.

His family was also interned to Gorna Dzhumaya and lived in his room – his parents and his brother. The other room was occupied by another family. We did not have a room and lived in the corridor. There was a curtain above the beds made by the torn rucksacks so that we would have some privacy from the people passing through the corridor.

We were starving. There were some shops from which we could shop at certain times. We had rations but the Jewish rations were not the same as the Bulgarian ones. We mostly used the black market. The villagers from nearby sold us their produce. The first two months in Gorna Dzhumaya were calmer. But in June and August when the partisan movement gathered strength, the district police came and the situation got worse.

We were not allowed to work, but my father, who was an electrical technician, was hired by a communist who had an electrical workshop. His name was Tutev. He paid him the same salary he gave to the other employees and that helped us live a little bit better. That also helped my parents pay the lawyers and the expenses of my trial when I was arrested. We also used our savings and sold the jewelery and clothes. There was a curfew.

I was in the 12th grade and I was allowed to graduate high school in Gorna Dzhumaya. My father asked the authorities for permission and the regime was more liberal in its first months. Probably I was the only Jew who managed to graduate.

I enrolled in September. By the end of September I had to go underground. By the end of December all high schools were closed. After 9th September 1944 the school in Gorna Dzhumaya issued me a document that I had graduated their high school.

Despite the bad conditions we got our lives a bit organized. I immediately became a member of the UYW movement in Gorna Dzhumaya. Jacky [Angel] was in charge of the Jewish group and when he became a partisan and left in August 1943 I replaced him. We did a variety of activities there.

Every evening before the curfew, which started at 6 pm we gathered the young people at the synagogue and held lectures on popular topics. We, the communists used these lectures to familiarize them with our ideas. Each Jew, who had knowledge on a topic, could present a lecture. We finished 15 minutes before eight o'clock and since the neighborhood was small we had enough time to go back home before the curfew.

In the summer we organized the children – we divided them into three groups, each of which had a teacher, one of whom was I. We learned songs, folk dances and games. We took them out of the town near the large Bistritsa river which passed near the town.

When I went underground at the end of September I was replaced by Dr Reni Ashkenazi. Then they formed a Jewish school. The children were divided into classes according to their age and the Jews who had graduated high school taught them.

There was no entertainment in the town but the young people started gathering. We sang, danced like all young people. The elderly women gathered on kitas. I do not know what this word means, but what they did was the following. Four or five women gathered in a yard and knitted, sewed, talked and read newspapers.

We, the UYW members, also had a combat group. Our task was to disrupt the telephone lines of the German troops there. We prepared for attacks but we did not do them. We were taught how to fire a weapon or set off a bomb. We provided food to the partisans.

We collected food and clothes. One of the engineers who lived in the house made a radio set and we gave it to the partisans. We helped them in every way we could. The villagers also helped us a lot.

Our demise was caused by two factors. At the end of November 1943 in accordance with a decision of the Gorna Dzhumaya partisan team, Jacky, Mois Kalev and Liko Seliktar came to Sofia with fake IDs in order to rob a rich Armenian family and buy weapons for the team with the money.

The decision was taken by the team but when it reached the district committee of the party, they rejected it as unfair. But Jacky and the others had already left. A member of the leadership of the team met me and asked me to tell Jacky that the burglary was off and they had to come back immediately.

The meeting was on Sunday evening. I talked with Jacky's parents and we started looking for ways to reach him but could not think of anything because Jews were forbidden to travel. While we were wondering what to do, they did the burglary. Until recently there was a memory plate of Mois Kalev the Mouse there. He died during the action.

The other participants were Niko Seliktar, Ana Valnarova – guarding in front of the building, Jacky and Mois Kalev who went upstairs and broke into the flat. They demanded the money from the family. The daughter who was pregnant faked a fainting and Mois Kalev went to bring water from the kitchen.

Jacky remained with the family but suddenly the daughter jumped and started shouting from the window for help. At the same time a sergeant and a policeman were passing in front of the house. They ran towards it. Jacky and Mouse started running down. All partisans ran in different directions.

Jacky managed to escape but Mouse was surrounded and killed himself in order to escape arrest. Jacky went underground and stopped traveling. Yet, he was found and arrested at the end of 1943 because there were not many people in Sofia after the bombings and internments. That was one of the reasons for our demise.

At the same time there was another failure in our team. During some action in which Kiril Gramenov, Pesho Petrov and Nikola Parapunov, secretary of the district committee of the party [Bulgarian Communist Party up to 1990] 45, took part, there was a shooting, in which Nikola Parapunov was killed, Kiril Gramenov was wounded but managed to escape and Pesho was arrested. He gave the names of the leadership of the city committee of UYW in Gorna Dzhumaya and I was a member of that.

After those two events the secretary of the city committee of UYW was arrested along with a lot of people with whom I worked. The committee decided that I should go underground so that I would not be arrested. I started hiding in the houses. All people from the Jewish neighborhood sheltered me.

My illegal name was Dunya, because I had nice and long braids then. That was the name of the character in the movie 'Station Supervisor’ based on Pushkin’s novelette. They said I looked like the actress who played that part. Angel Vagenstein made up that nickname. And since no one looked for me for a long time, the committee decided that I was not betrayed and ordered me to come back and start school.

I was arrested on my first day at school. The interrogations were in the district police station in Gorna Dzhumaya. Fortunately, a lot of facts were already known before I was arrested. A policeman, whose name was Nedyalkov, always came to take us to the interrogation rooms and told us what was already discovered so that we would say it again and avoid torture. After 9th September he was arrested, but we stood up for him and he was not only released, but he was taken back to work.

After the torture, we were taken to the military barracks. The conditions there were very bad. I spent three months in detention in Gorna Dzhumaya and at the barracks. We were three girls – Slavka Kordova, Dobra Andonova and I. Besides the tortures, we were also subjected to humiliation.

There were only young men at the barracks. We had guards of course, who did not admit the boys to go near us, but they were also men. When they let us to go to the toilet in the mornings and in the evenings, we passed by the prisoners. All of them teased us and said terrible things. The walls of the men's toilets were low and the prisoners and the guards tried to peek it.

Tutev, my father's boss, was sent to our barracks to do some work and he told my father to come and see me. So, my father took out the yellow star, came to the prison and found us. He passed along our windows. I saw him and started crying. I felt so relieved. He did not dare stand in front of the windows but passed beside them as often as he could. I cried, he cried...

At the end of January and the beginning of February [1944] we were sent to 5th precinct in Sofia. It was hell. They searched us in the most humiliating way. We had to strip naked and they started searching our clothes. We stood there, naked and dirty because we had not had a shower in a very long time.

My last shower was on the 13th December and my next – on 9th September. We were put in a dark cell where the only light came from the cracks in the door. There were such big cockroaches that I have been afraid of them ever since. They were scuttling on the floor day and night... Hell! My parents did not know where I was.

They found out that we were no longer in Gorna Dzhumaya. While we were at the barracks, they regularly brought us food. My mother washed my clothes and sent them back. But when we came to Sofia no one knew where we were. There was one week when they gave us nothing to eat.

Suddenly the door was opened and a policeman came out. 'Hey, chifut 46, come and clean the stairs. Are you going to sleep all day?' He brought me to the kitchen. He made me fill a bucket with water and wash the stairs.

When I came back, he stood guard around me and when some policeman passed nearby, he started swearing at me. He brought me back to the kitchen to return the bucket. Meanwhile, the women in the kitchen had prepared some bread and yellow cheese for me. 'Eat, girl, eat!' But there was such a friendship and solidarity between me and the other girls that I said that the other girls were starving too.

So, the two women cut the bread in two and filled it with cheese, yellow cheese and butter. That was in the winter and I was wearing the winter coat in which my mother had sewn the gold rings, which no one managed to find. I hid the bread beneath it and the policeman took me back to the cell. After 9th September I did not manage to find these people. That bread, which we divided among ourselves in the cell saved us from death from starvation.

From the 5th Precinct we were sent to the Sofia prison. That happened on 22nd March. I remember that date because it was my birthday – the first day of spring. It was not so scary in the prison because there were no more tortures.

There was a female supervisor Konyarova, a die-hard fascist, who hated the Jews and sent me to the lock up room for the smallest things.

We were led out on a walk for an hour in the morning and one or two hours in the afternoon. We had no hot water and we used the beans soup to wash our hair. After all, it was mostly water with two or three beans.

The UYW organization was also present in the prison. One of our tasks was to bring to our side the criminal prisoners so that they would help us in contacting the outside world.

They were on a more lax regime – they were allowed to write letters and receive food from the outside. On afternoon I was sitting and singing a Katyusha song 'Apples and pears are blossoming', a famous Russian song. [The song is a symbol of the Russian army during WWII, because it is related to the Katyusha weapon and the turnover of the war after it started to be used.]

Then, a girl, about 19 or 20 years old, came to me. Her name was Katya. She had a one-year sentence because when she was a maid, she stole the satin corset of her mistress. She came to me and asked me, 'What are you singing about me?' She learned the song and started singing it from morning until night.

The prison was echoing from her strong voice and we all nicknamed her 'the cock-a-doodle-doo'. I also taught Katya a poem by my favorite poet Nikola Vaptsarov – 'A song of man' 47. She would go around by herself and recite the famous verse, 'But there in the prison he met honest people, became a real man!’ She was very fond of me.

We decided to organize a musical and literature performance on the occasion of 1st May [Labor Day] with songs and dances. We tried to keep our spirits up in prison. After the walk, we went back to our cells and without being noticed by the supervisor we gathered in one of the cells...

I had to play a dance accompanied by the rhythm of two clacking spoons. Konyarova found us, started shouting and did not allow anyone to go out of their cells for one week. And since she found me dancing, Sheli, another Jewish girl, singing and another girl clacking the spoons, she sent us to the lock up room.

It was dark and empty there with a bucket for a toilet. Three days passed on without any food or water. Konyarova lived in the prison and used Katya, 'the cock-a-doodle-doo', as a maid – to clean her room and wash her clothes.

While cleaning, she managed to steal the keys for the lock up room. She grabbed some food sent for the prisoners by their relatives and some clothes. She came downstairs, opened the door and threw everything in. But at that moment the alarm went off. Nobody knew that the lock up room was connected to it.

Konyarova came downstairs and saw Katya locking the door. She beat her in front of our eyes and locked her in the next lock up room. She opened our door and took everything back. In the fuss one of my friends managed to open the bucket and put the bread inside. After Konyarova left, she took it out and said, 'See, this piece on the top has not touched the bucket.' And since we had not eaten for four days, we ate it all. In fact, that saved our lives.

Around 5th May the great bombings took place in Sofia. The fences of the men's prison were taken down and we all we sent to the Pleven prison.

The trial was at the end of August. It took place in Gorna Dzhumaya. When we were taken to the courthouse, we passed along the streets – the men were wearing chains and the women – handcuffs. The people in the streets greeted us and threw flowers at us. The end of the war was near.

My lawyer was Cheshmedzhiev. I remember that he said, 'There is no point in sentencing them. In 20 days you will be forced to sit in their place.' When I came back to the prison, I brought a lot of illegal materials – newspapers, magazines.

Since I was underage, I was sentenced to ten years imprisonment for anti-fascist activities. There were two more Jewish girls in the Pleven prison – Sheli and Zizi, a schoolgirl from Pleven.

We, eleven or twelve women were locked in a single-person cell – two meters wide and 3.5 meters long. There were plank-beds in the women's prison and nothing at all in the men's one. In the evening we laid down, sideways, packed like sardines because there was not enough room to lie on our backs.

First, we lay on our left side, and then we all would turn on the right. There I caught tuberculosis because there was a sick woman in our cell. On the eve of the 7th September a Jewish boy who had been sentenced to death was taken out by the guards.

They said they would just interrogate him in order to avoid protests, but they never brought him back. Meanwhile, the people outside heard that something was happening in the prison. The Legionaries and the Branniks surrounded the prison to prevent the Russian army to storm it before the execution.

Our comrades in Pleven heard about that and made a blockade to protect us. They were on watch day and night. On 7th September [Konstantin] Muraviev 48 issued an order for the release of all political prisoners. But the director of our prison refused to let us go.

Then all of our comrades started to force the doors open. It looked like the storming of the Bastille. They brought some railway tracks and started smashing the doors. They opened them, came in and released us. Meanwhile the director notified the police and the doors had been forced open.

We were all coming out of the prison. At first the male prisoners forgot about the women and then came back to unlock us. Meanwhile, we caught Konyarova and took her keys. We rushed outside. Zizi, who had been released two months before, because she was acquitted at the trial, had mounted a door and when she saw me, she rushed to hug me.

We were chased by mounted police and we were being shot at. Some of us ran towards the grapevines. I went to my aunt's place with the three girls and four or five people from the prison. We went to the house of Meshulam Beni, a brother of my mother who lived with his wife Lora, his daughter Fani and my grandmother Yafa.

My cousin Fani Avramova was outside with the protesters. She took us there. Meshulam had been interned to Pleven and brought us food in the prison. Yet, the police managed to take a lot of people back to prison. On 7th September one of our saviors was killed in the shooting.

The next day Muraviev's order for the release of the political prisoners came and they had to obey. In the evening we took a train to Gorna Dzhumaya. On 9th September I heard the proclamation of the Fatherland Front 49 at 6 am at the station in Sofia. We traveled all night together with the political prisoners in a horse wagon on the eve of 9th September. We sang all the songs we knew – 'We will give hundreds of victims, but we will beat fascism!'

I arrived in Gorna Dzhumaya in the afternoon on 9th September. We were welcomed with a ceremony at the station. There was a field, two kilometers and a half between the station and the center. Someone had told my mother that we were back and she met me in the middle of the field. It was such a meeting, such hugs... My mother was crying with happiness that I was alive, I was hugging her and telling her, 'Walk mother, now is not the time for sentimentality!'

After 10-15 days we returned to Sofia. Fortunately, our house was not destroyed by the bombings but had been completely emptied. My mother found some sacks, filled them with hay and we used them as beds. Months after that we received aid from the Joint Foundation 50.

The authorities from Gorna Dzhumaya gave me a document certifying that I had graduated high school there. 2nd Girls' High School also gave me such a document. I enrolled to study medicine because that was my dream. I also started work in the Commissariat on supplies. I issued ration books and clothes.

• After the war

In April 1945, just before the end of the war, together with a UYW group I traveled to the front to bring presents to our soldiers. I was in Hungary when Berlin fell. Let me tell you about the fate of the 'cock-a-doodle-doo', who became our friend in prison.

All criminal prisoners were also released with us, but she had already served her sentence. She decided to go to the front line as a volunteer – a medical orderly. In Pecs on my way to the front lines, I was hugged from behind and it turned out that she was there working in the hospital. We were very happy to see each other.

We had half an hour and then I had to leave with the group. I promised to see her again on my way back. I returned a couple of days after that. I did not find her there. The commander of the base told me that she had been sent to accompany a group of wounded soldiers.

On their way one of the wounded wanted water and they stopped in a forest near a stream. She went down to fetch some water but stepped on a mine and died instantly. When the commander heard that I was her friend, he gave me a packet of her belongings. Among them I found the poem by Vaptsarov which I had given her in the prison.

I stayed in Pecs to help in the hospital until the end of the war. I remember that I had very big braids then and one of the soldiers said to one of the Hungarian girls, 'See, what beautiful hair our Bulgarian girls have!'

After 9th September I worked and studied. It was possible the first two years because the teachers did not check if everyone was present at the lectures. We were 2 000 people, gathering in the Moderen Teatar [Modern Theater] 51 in the hall of the Student's Home – its stage. Then I started work in the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. I was head of the human resources department until 1951. When my studies at the university got harder, I had to stop working.

My father's shop had been confiscated. During the Law for Protection of the Nation we had to hand it to a Bulgarian. Some of the Bulgarians were very honest people and gave the shops back to their owners. But my father received nothing back and he continued to work as an electrical technician.

Our life was very hard. Our way of life during the internment was very miserable, but it did not get better after 9th September because the whole town was destroyed. The houses which survived the bombings were occupied by two or three families.

Our house was not big. One part was let out even before 9th September but there was no forced accommodation in it. All members of our family came back to Sofia. Everyone was alive. The house of my other grandmother was also preserved. It can be seen even nowadays.

The goldsmith, my uncle Zhak, started working again, but he had no gold, so he repaired jewelery. Soon after that the youngest brother of my mother left with his family for Israel. Meshulam and the two elder brothers remained here. Vizurka also left. So did my aunt. [Mass Aliyah] 52

I never considered leaving for Israel because I was convinced that now was the time to realize my ideals. My husband was even more convinced that we should remain here. He was against the aliyahs. He believed that Bulgaria was our home and we should stay here and realize our dreams and live freely. But a lot of the Jews, especially the richer ones and those, whose shops, factories and workshops were once again being nationalized in 1947, left for Israel. The others, their relatives and friends followed and it was like a chain reaction.

My husband Yosif Hananel Astrukov (1912 – 1996) and I were in the same prison – the Pleven one but we had not met there. He had spent two years underground. He had been district secretary of the UYW in Sofia. He had become a member of UYW in 1936 and he had been much higher in the organization hierarchy than me. His illegal name was Herz, made up by his friends. Herz means heart in German, because he was the soul of every company.

He was an orphan. His father had died when he was a child and he lived with his mother until he was 7 years old when she decided to marry a widower from Vidin and left him with her parents for a year until she got used to her new family and the two children of her new husband. She gave birth to one more child. (Later she left for Israel.)

But the parents and the sister of my father-in-law filed a lawsuit against the relatives of my mother-in-law in a Jewish court because they wanted their grandson back. According to a Jewish law they had to have their grandson. There was a Jewish court, which solved such problems in accordance with the Jewish laws, which were valid until the law. If the mother was to marry a second time, the child was given to the parents of the first husband.

So, my husband was raised by his father's family – three aunts and three uncles. [Probably this is the Spiritual Court at the Jewish municipality. Jewish marriages have to observe the Jewish marital law.

The books by Yosif Karo 'Shulhan Aruh' and 'Even Aezer' focus ont he following major moments – engagement, education, marriage, cancellation of the marriage, divorce, halitza (cancellation of the marriage due to lack of children). A woman's second marriage and its privileges are also subject to Jewish marital law. There was no civil marital institution in Bulgaria before WWII.].

They lived in a house on Strandzha Str. Now the National Statistical Institute is in its place. My husband finished high school, started studying law but he was expelled from the university for his participation in an attack against Tsankov. [Prof. Alexander Tsalov Tsankov, Prime Minister of Bulgaria from 1923 to 1925, terror activities were typical for his governance.]

His relatives collected money and sent him to study in Belgrade. When the Germans came there, he left for Prague. He finished his first and second year of studying there and when the Germans came, he went back to Belgrade. We stayed there five or six months but when the persecutions started again, he returned to Sofia.

He immediately joined the resistance, but in 1941 he went underground. He was underground from 22nd June until 26 November. In 1942 he was caught because he was betrayed. He was sentenced to death. But the jury was bribed – for 250 000 levs his sentence was changed to life imprisonment. In prison he shared a cell with Traicho Kostov 53, whom he much respected. Although Traicho Kostov fell into disgrace later on, he always spoke in his favor.

Until he was imprisoned, my husband had finished three years of medical studies. After 9th September when I started studying I had no textbooks and remembered him. I had seen him on UYW conferences. I remember that he was a delegate at one of them and I was not. In one of the breaks he saw me and told me, 'You see, we have badges and you don't.'

So, he took off his badge and gave it to me. I decided to visit him and ask him if he could help me find textbooks. It turned out that he had none, but he asked me out. So, we started going out, but we did not spend much time together because we were very busy. Those were tumultuous times. He was assistant commander of the armored brigade.

On 22-23rd September he took me to a formal meeting on the occasion of the September rebellion 54. He was suddenly called away because of a fire. It was impossible for me to go home – there was a curfew and he could go around the town because he was an officer. He left me at the place of a friend of his from prison.

They put out fires all the night and I fell asleep. In the morning he brought me back home. My mother was at the window, pale and very worried because the first days after 9th September were dangerous – a lot of fascist shot at us from hideouts.

They knew that only communist and partisans working for the Ministry of Interior could move around the town during the curfew. We did not see my mother and while we were saying goodbye and lifted my head and saw her. My parents did not know that I was in a relationship with him.

My husband came in and told my mother that his intentions towards me were serious and apologized for the late arrival. 'I have nothing against your relationship,' my mother said, 'but, please, don't do the same thing again, I was going mad from worry.'

So, that week he told me, 'We can't go on like this, let's get married!' He came to ask for my hand and next Saturday we got engaged. His relatives – uncles and aunts – came to meet my parents and we married on 13th October 1944. We were among the first in Bulgaria who married only before the registrar.

Before us there were only religious weddings. We did not have a ritual in the synagogue. We went to live with his family on Strandzha Str. As a bachelor he had lived in one of the rooms with one of his aunts.

Another aunt lived in the next room with her husband and the mother-in-law of the married aunt lived in the third room. When we got married, the aunt who slept in his room went to live with her sister and we occupied his little room with a balcony. We lived there for two years.

On 6th July 1946 I gave birth to the twins Evgeni and Emil.

In any case Evgeni and Emil learned some Ladino from the aunt who raised them. She knew Bulgarian but spoke mostly Ladino at home. My husband and I were very busy. We were both studying. His uncle and aunt opened a small shop on Dondukov Str. and started selling things they had collected even before 9th September.

Since they had no children, they helped us financially so that my husband would finish his education. His other aunt, tanti Ora, also helped us raise our kids. She had remained a widow at 28 years of age. My parents also started work – my mother as a seamstress and my father as an electrical technician. We lived in great misery and poverty.

There was nothing to buy in the shops and we had no money to shop from the black market. I caught tuberculosis in the prison and after I gave birth and breastfed my two kids, I was very exhausted. When they became one year old, the illness struck me down. I went to the sanatorium in Svoge and I had to stop breastfeeding them.

As a result of that, they had a terrible diarrhea... I spent three months in Svoge, I recovered and came back. After that we were given a flat on Dondukov Str. We lived there a year and a half and we changed that flat with one on Ekzarh Yosif Str, which was owned by the famous dermatologist Dr Shailov [Jewish Hospital in Sofia] 55.

He made a private medical office on Dondukov Blvd because it was in the center. Dr Shailov invited my husband to work in the Jewish hospital when he graduated. I was still studying.

The party obliged him to become assistant commander in the army for the second time. The first time he occupied that post was immediately after 9th September during the war but the Defense Minister Damyan Velchev banished all Jews from the army and my husband continued his studies.

The second time he served in the army, he worked with the son of Vassil Kolarov 56. At some meeting my husband ordered to place portraits of Georgi Dimitrov first, Traicho Kostov, second and Vassil Kolarov, third on the walls. Petar Kolarov 57 was furious and found out that my husband had shared a cell with Traicho Kostov.

So, he accused him of being a 'kostovist'. He was expelled and was left unemployed. We were starving again. My husband had pure communist ideals. He never used his position to his advantage. When he was banished from the army for the second time, he received six salaries and as compensation we bought this flat on Lyuben Karavelov Str. In 1951 I graduated medicine with the second highest marks.

I was a mother of two children at that time. That was why I was not sent to work in the countryside and had the right to choose my workplace. I started work in the infections department of the district hospital in Sofia. My first specialty is in gastroenterology and my second, which I finished in 1956 – in infectious diseases. I retired there as chief of the department.

When Traicho Kostov was rehabilitated, so was my husband. He was elected a deputy. He became a chairman of the Jewish cultural and educational organization in 1961. For about 30 years we lived for the first time a calm and financially stable life. My children knew that they were Jews and I have never denied being a Jew.

Even before the internment when some of the Jews changed religion in order to be saved from fascists because the Holy Synod had secured that the Jews who changed their faith would be spared from the Law for Protection of the Nation. I remember that my father put the issue on discussion at home, but we firmly rejected it although I had never been religious.

Later I did not have problems at work for being a Jew. After 9th September we did not observe any special rituals. On Chanukkah or Pesach I told my children, 'Today is Chanukkah, or today is Pesach' but we never went to the synagogue. We did not fast on Yom Kippur. I cleaned the whole house for Pesach.

My parents celebrated the holidays but did not go to the synagogue. My parents kept in touch with our relatives in Israel but we were forbidden to do that when my husband was an officer. My father only wrote letters to our relatives in Israel saying that we were okay. Sometimes I also wrote a line or two in his letter but we did not dare keep regular correspondence.

I buried my parents in accordance with the Jewish ritual. Before one of my husband's aunts died, she came home and said to me, 'Daughter, I want to tell you something. We are not religious, but when we die we want you to make us a Jewish funeral.' I remember that when we buried her, I was a party secretary in the hospital.

The day after the funeral, which was also visited by people from the hospital, some angry party members came to ask for an explanation. I, who was an atheist, told them that when I die, I would have a communist funeral, but when I was burying my parents, I would bury them the way they lived and the way they wanted. No punishment followed.

My children graduated the English language high school. I remember that the students in that high school were the poorest and every year some of them were sent on a free camp. They both have medical degrees. They applied for positions in the ISUL Hospital [acronym for 'Institute for Specialization and Development of Medics'] and became assistants in the surgery.

When ISUL was closed, one of them went to work in chest surgery and the other in 2nd surgery. We are a family of medics. There are 27 – 28 medics in the family tree of my family. Both of my sons are married to Jewish women. I think they met their wives in a Jewish choir in which they sang for some time. Evgeni's wife is Neli Samuilova.

They have two children – Linda and Yosif. Yosif is married to a Bulgarian – Mariana and they have a daughter Sara – my great-granddaughter. Emil is married to Medi Levi, they have two children – Ines and Yosif.

My husband was somewhat insistent that our sons should marry Jewish women. He believed that Jewish girls had different moral qualities than the others, they were more conservative towards life and values and had a better upbringing.

Life was very hard during the first years after 9th September. We did not go on any vacations. Afterwards in the 1970s we often went to the seaside in the summer staying in the resting homes of the war veterans together with our children. We often went to the Hisar mineral baths. We gathered with our Bulgarian and Jewish friends.

For example, Avram and Ester Kalo, Solomon and Rashka Bali, Beti Danon, Apostol Pashev, Gen. Marko Markov, prof. Gancho Savov, Ivan Sugarev etc. Those evenings were very nice because we talked, had fun, sang songs. My husband had a very nice voice and we carried with himself his own songbook. It was known as the Herz' notebook. On Sundays we often went on excursions. We educated our children to be honest, brave and loyal.

I thought that I would always believe in the left idea. My husband also shared my ideas. But that does not mean that we did not see the shortcomings of the times. Yet, we explained them with the mistakes of individual people on positions, which did not suit them.

It was only after the myth of Stalin was brought down that we experienced... I do not know how to say it... When Hrushchov told the congress the truth about Stalin and his attitude towards Jews, it was such a tragedy for us. None of us knew about that. For us the USSR was the Promised Land.

We worshiped everything coming from there. We were hit very hard. I remember that my husband came... We were such fanatics that for our sons' second birthday, we gave them as gifts some of Stalin's books. That was how strong we believed in that ideal then. After we learned the truth about Stalin, my husband came, took out all Lenin's books, tore them all and threw them away.

We had a positive attitude towards the state of Israel even during the cold war with the country. We obeyed the official position, but we believed that our government was not right. My husband was the first who established contacts after the end of the cold war and invited Mrs Shamir to visit Bulgaria.

The Foreign Minister at that time was Ivan Bashev 58 who was very open-minded. He had met her at a congress in Washington and she had told him that he was a Jew from Bulgaria. When he came back, he asked to see my husband who was chairman of the Jewish organization from 1961.

They both decided to invite Shamir but it could not be an official visit because of the Arabs, with whom we kept warm relations. So, she came as our personal guest. I remember that she came with Ruth Shaul from the president's administration.

During the official welcoming Ruth greeted my husband on behalf of her mother and father. She was also a Bulgarian Jew. It turned out that her parents had helped my husband when he was underground. They had had a workshop for wool textile on Pirotska and Hristo Botev Str.

During the most dangerous period of his illegal activity the locked him with food in the workshop. That was the only place, which was warm because of the wool there. We took them on a walk along Vitosha Str. Shamir was very happy to come here.

She gave me a very beautiful mezuzah as a gift and later sent me a letter of thanks. Later a round table was organized on the topic of the salvation of the Bulgarian Jews and she came with an official invitation. Later she came with Shamir himself. I remember that we got very close.

After 10th November [1989] 59 a wave of rejection destroyed everything created up to that moment in the Jewish organization. In January 1990 a cultural meeting was held in the Cultural Home in the Jerusalem Hall during which my husband was accused of favoring the communist and his reputation was destroyed.

He was accused of all sins in the world, except of moral decay and embezzlement. He was accused of helping the Jewish assimilation. Our closest friends attacked him and no one defended him except Edi Shwarts, who said that my husband did his best in the situation at those times.

One day I will write about that period if I still have the time and strength. He did so much for that Jewish organization. He preserved it thanks to his reputation in the communist movement. He had a lot of connections and could influence a lot of people.

He preserved it as an organization while all the others except the Armenian one were destroyed in accordance with the policy of assimilation. The Armenian organization was preserved but its situation was different. Soviet Armenia was a federative republic in the USSR, so the Soviet State backed the organization in Bulgaria.

Besides, my husband organized an exhibition for the salvation of the Bulgarian Jews, founded the Yearly Book [a scholarly edition issued in Bulgarian and English. [Its full name is 'A yearly book. Social cultural and educational organization of the Jewish in the People's Republic of Bulgaria] containing materials on the Jewish everyday life.

The articles in it were recognized as academic publications. Its editor in chief was Baruh Benvenisti, a very honest man of principle who did a lot for the magazine.

The assistant of Todor Zhivkov 60 at the time, Niko Yahiel also contributed to the start of the magazine. He was in charge of cultural affairs. One day the three of us, my husband, Niko Yahiel and I were walking. He and my husband were talking about the creationg of the Yearly Book.

Yahiel supported his idea and introduced it to the Central Committee of the [Communist] Party. That magazine played a very big part. It was translated into English by Prof. Zhana Molhova and was distributed worldwide. My husband contributed to the creation of movies about the salvation of Bulgarian Jews. He did a lot of other things for the organization because he was a Jew and was proud of his Jewish origin.

After that meeting, he fell into depression. He could not forget the humiliation. He was such an honest and pure man and he was accused of so many untrue things. He died devastated... I cannot find the exact word... It took me a lot to try to bring him out of that depression.

I fought for months but to no avail. Soon after that in 1995 he had a stroke. He was paralyzed for a year and a half and he died in 1996. Shortly before he died I met a friend from the Jewish organization, who firmly believed that my husband was unfairly accused.

He told me, 'Stela, I met Nina Aladzhem, who was chairperson of WIZO 61, they are preparing a big celebration for Herz!' I thought that if the Jewish organization was preparing for a celebration, they should tell me and at least ask for some materials.

I believed him, went home and said to my paralyzed husband, 'Herz, everything is alright now, you are reabilitated, you will be celebrated on 23rd February!' He looked at me and a small tear trickled down his face. Nobody contacted me for a week, the celebration was drawing near.

I called Nina Aladzhem. She said, 'You are mistaken, we are celebrating Yosif Herbst 62, not Yosif Herz.' I realized that I was mistaken. My husband was paralyzed, could not talk or write, the right half of his body was affected. But I did not tell him about the mistake so that he would die in peace.

He died on the 25th April, convinced that he had been celebrated. Even while my husband was alive the medical services in the Jewish organization were very bad, there was much chaos in medicine after 9th September. I had a medical office for a number of years and examined for free everyone who came.

We had some kind of a clinic. I examined the patients were gastroenterologic, infectious and internal diseases and since my sons were working in the Academy, they did the laboratory tests. They did that for free.

Now I am a member of the Golden Age club. I received an aid of 1 000 levs recently and before that some German compensation. I visit the Jewish organization but not very often. I am never bored. Although I am a pensioner, I am always short of time. I examine everyone in our neighborhood for free.

That is how I feel useful. I gather with friends who always increasingly need medical help. I read a lot. I wrote a book 'Memories from my physician's practice' which is not published because I have no money for that. I am very happy when my great-granddaughter Sara is with me.

• Glossary

1 Expulsion of the Jews from Spain: The Sephardi population of the Balkans originates from the Jews who were expelled from the Iberian peninsula, as a result of the ‘Reconquista’ in the late 15th century (Spain 1492, and Portugal 1495).

The majority of the Sephardim subsequently settled in the territory of the Ottoman Empire, mainly in maritime cities (Salonika, Istanbul, Smyrna, etc.) and also in the ones situated on significant overland trading routes to Central Europe (Bitola, Skopje, and Sarajevo) and to the Danube (Adrianople, Philipopolis, Sofia, and Vidin).

2 Sephardi Jewry: Jews of Spanish and Portuguese origin. Their ancestors settled down in North Africa, the Ottoman Empire, South America, Italy and the Netherlands after they had been driven out from the Iberian peninsula at the end of the 15th century. About 250,000 Jews left Spain and Portugal on this occasion.

A distant group among Sephardi refugees were the Crypto-Jews (Marranos), who converted to Christianity under the pressure of the Inquisition but at the first occasion reassumed their Jewish identity. Sephardi preserved their community identity; they speak Ladino language in their communities up until today.

The Jewish nation is formed by two main groups: the Ashkenazi and the Sephardi group which differ in habits, liturgy their relation toward Kabala, pronunciation as well in their philosophy.

3 The Dobrudzha Front: Existed during the Second Balkan War in 1913 and during WWI in 1916. The battles on that front were with Romania for the return of Dobrudzha which had been taken from Bulgaria at the Berlin Congress in 1878. The Neullies Treaty also gave Dobrudzha to Romania, which ruled it until 5th September 1940.

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

5 Luiza, Maria (17.01.1870 – 19.01.1899): Daughter of the Parma Duke Robert and Princess Maria Pia Bourbon. First wife of King Ferdinand I. Married the king in 1893 and gave birth to four children – Boris, Kniaz Tarnovski; Kiril Preslavski, Evdokia and Nadezhda. She was not involved in political activities.

She did not accept the change of religion of her first-born son and heir to the throne Boris from Catholic to Orthodox Christianity which took place on 2nd February 1896. She died three years later. Buried in the Catholic Church in Plovdiv.

6 King Boris III: The Third Bulgarian Kingdom was a constitutional monarchy with democratic constitution. Although pro-German, Bulgaria did not take part in World War II with its armed forces.

King Boris III (who reigned from 1918-1943) joined the Axis to prevent an imminent German invasion in Bulgaria, but he refused to send Bulgarian troops to German aid on the Eastern front.

He died suddenly after a meeting with Hitler and there have been speculations that he was actually poisoned by the Nazi dictator who wanted a more obedient Bulgaria. Many Bulgarian Jews saved from the Holocaust (over 50,000 people) regard King Boris III as their savior.

7 Bulgaria in World War I: Bulgaria entered the war in October 1915 on the side of the Central Powers. Its main aim was the revision of the Treaty of Bucharest: the acquisition of Macedonia. Bulgaria quickly overran most of Serbian Macedonia as well as parts of Serbia; in 1916 with German backing it entered Greece (Western Thrace and the hinterlands of Salonika).

After Romania surrendered to the Central Powers Bulgaria also recovered Southern Dobrudzha, which had been lost to Romania after the First Balkan War. The Bulgarian advance to Greece was halted after British, French and Serbian troops landed in Salonika, while in the north Romania joined the Allies in 1916.

Conditions at the front deteriorated rapidly and political support for the war eroded. The agrarians and socialist workers intensified their antiwar campaigns, and soldier committees were formed in the army. A battle at Dobro Pole brought total retreat, and in ten days the Allies entered Bulgaria.

On 29th September 1918 Bulgaria signed an armistice and withdrew from the war. The Treaty of Neuilly (November 1919) imposed by the Allies on Bulgaria, deprived the country of its World War I gains as well as its outlet to the Aegean Sea (Eastern Thrace).

8 Bombing of Sveta Nedelia Church: In 1925 the military wing of the Bulgarian Communist Party launched a terrorist attack by blowing up the dome of the church. It was carried out during the funeral ceremony of one of the generals of King Boris III. There were dozens of dead and wounded, however, the King himself was late for the ceremony and was not hurt.

9 Internment of Jews in Bulgaria: Although Jews living in Bulgaria where not deported to concentration camps abroad or to death camps, many were interned to different locations within Bulgaria. In accordance with the Law for the Protection of the Nation, the comprehensive anti-Jewish legislation initiated after the outbreak of WWII, males were sent to forced labor battalions in different locations of the country, and had to engage in hard work.

There were plans to deport Bulgarian Jews to Nazi Death Camps, but these plans were not realized. Preparations had been made at certain points along the Danube, such as at Somovit and Lom. In fact, in 1943 the port at Lom was used to deport Jews from Aegean Thrace and from Macedonia, but in the end, the Jews from Bulgaria proper were spared.

10 Iuchbunar: The poorest residential district in Sofia; the word is of Turkish origin and means ‘the three wells’.

11 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 Solitro. 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.

12 Frutas: The popular name of the Tu bi-Shevat festival among the Bulgarian Jews.

13 9th September 1944: The day of the communist takeover in Bulgaria. In September 1944 the Soviet Union declared war on Bulgaria. On 9th September 1944 the Fatherland Front, a broad left-wing coalition, deposed the government. Although the communists were in the minority in the Fatherland Front, they were the driving force in forming the coalition, and their position was strengthened by the presence of the Red Army in Bulgaria.

14 Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Simeon (b.1937): son and heir of Boris III and grandson of Ferdinand, the first King of Bulgaria. The birth of Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in 1937 was celebrated as a national holiday. All students at school had their grades increased by one mark.

After the Communist Party's rise to power on 9th September 1944 Bulgaria became a republic and the family of Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was forced to leave the country. They settled in Spain with their relatives. Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha returned from exile after the fall of communism and was elected prime minister of Bulgaria in 2001 as Simeon Sakskoburgotski.

15 24th May: The day of Slavic script and culture, a national holiday on which Bulgarian culture and writing is celebrated, paying special tribute to Cyril and Methodius, the creators of the first Slavic alphabet, the forerunner of the Cyrillic script.

16 Smirnenski, Hristo Dimitrov Izmirliev (17.09.1898-18.06.1923): a classical Bulgarian poet and writer. Lived and worked in the Jewish neighbourhood Iuchbunar. He made his literary debut in 1915 during his second year at college in the satirical newspaper ‘K'vo da e’ (‘Anything Goes’). Hristo first called himself ‘Smirnenski’ in the magazine ‘Smyah I sulzi’ (‘Laughter and Tears’).

His hard tireless work and deprivations undermined the 25 year-old poet's health and he died on 18 June 1923 from tuberculosis, ‘the yellow visitor’, as he called the disease in one of his poems. In the eight brief years of his prolific career Hristo Smirnenski penned thousands of pieces of poetry and prose in various genres using more than 70 pseudonyms.

17 Sakarov, Nikola (1881 – 1943): He joined the Bulgarian Workers' Social Democratic Party  (BWSDP) in 1904. Graduated the philosophy faculty of the Berlin University with a degree in political economics, finance and statistics. At the same time he was secretary of the students' social democratic group in Berlin.

On returning to Bulgaria he worked in the Finance Ministry.  From 1913 until 1920 he was an MP. In 1921 he left the BWSDP and joined the Bulgarian Communist Party. He retired from active political activities in 1925. Sakarov is one of the founders of the Scholarly Sociology Association.

Member of Parliament from 1938 until 1943. During WWII he defended the anti-fascist position. He was one of the few MPs who openly protested against the Law for Protection of the Nation.

18 UYW: The Union of Young Workers (also called Revolutionary Youth Union). A communist youth organization, which was legally established in 1928 as a sub-organization of the Bulgarian Communist Youth Union (BCYU).

After the coup d’etat in 1934, when parties in Bulgaria were banned, it went underground and became the strongest wing of the BCYU. Some 70% of the partisans in Bulgaria were members of it.

In 1947 it was renamed Dimitrov’s Communist Youth Union, after Georgi Dimitrov, the leader of the Bulgarian Communist Party at the time.

19 Boza: A sweet wheat-based mildly alcoholic drink popular in Bulgaria, Turkey and other places in the Balkans.

20 Morfova, Hristina Vasileva (24.04.1889 – 1.06.1936): A Bulgarian opera artist and concert singer, lyrical soprano. Born in Stara Zagora, graduated her musical education in Prague. She was an opera artist in Prague, Barno and Sofia. Besides her opera roles, she is also famous for her pedagogical skills.

21 Tsadikov, Moshe (1885 - 1947): Born in a poor family, he started showing love towards music at an early age and drew the attention of the professional musicians. He started taking lessons from Dobri Khristov. On the occasion of the sanctification of the synagogue, the board decided to organize a special choir.

Tsadikov had been awarded a grant from the board and in 1908 he began studying at Wurzberg Academy in Germany. He graduated with flying colors and returned to Bulgaria.

He started work with the Synagogue choir and re-organized their repertoire and changed their manner of singing. At his first concert works by Mendelssohn, Schubert, Brahms were performed. He attracted some extremely talented singers to the choir among which were the eminent Mimi Balkanska and Gencho Markov. He presented on stage his own operetta for children entitled ‘Prolet’ [Spring] and he took part in the first symphony concerts of Maestro Georgi Atanasov.

After World War I the repertoire was enriched with classical plays by Brahms, Schubert, Handel, Haydn. In 1934 he prepared the performance of the oratorio ‘The Creation’ by Haydn and the concert was celebrated as a real musical sensation by all the connoisseurs of music throughout Bulgaria.

Eminent Bulgarian composers like Dobri Khristov and Petko Staynov devoted some of their musical works to Tsadikov’s choir. At the 25th anniversary of the choir Tsar Boris III decorated Tsadikov with a medal for public service. In 1938 Tsadikov emigrated to the USA where he died on 4th November 1947. The Jewish choir was reinstituted by Bulgarian Jews in Israel where it is known nowadays as ‘Tsadikov’s Choir'.

22 Utro: Meaning Morning, it was a Bulgarian bourgeois daily, issued between 1911 and 1914. It was founded by St. Damyanov and the first editor-in-chief was St. Tanev. Utro published sensational both local and international news, supporting the policy of the Government, especially during the World War II, as well as Bulgaria’s pro-German orientation. Its circulation amounted to 160,000 copies.

23 Popova, Ilka (1905 – 1975): Opera singer, mezzo-soprano, actress since 1951. Student of Ivan Vulpe in Bulgaria and F. Tanaro in Milan. Her debut in the Sofia Opera was in 1929. Immediately after that she went to Paris where she had acting lessons. Worked in the opera house in Bordeaux.

Later became a soloist of the Paris Grand Opera, Milan La Scala and the opera in Cologne in Buenos Aires. Sang on all European opera stages. Returned to Bulgaria in 1940 and became first singer of the Sofia Opera.

24 Chitalishte: literally ‘a place to read’; a community and an institution for public enlightenment carrying a supply of books, holding discussions and lectures, performances etc.

The first such organizations were set up during the period of the Bulgarian National Revival (18th-19th centuries) and were gradually transformed into cultural centers in Bulgaria. Unlike in the 1930s, when the chitalishte network could maintain its activities for the most part through its own income, today, as during the communist regime, they are mainly supported by the state. There are over 3,000 chitalishtes in Bulgaria today, although they have become less popular.

25 Shekerdzhiiski, Emil Mois (1912 – 1944): A journalist, writer, literature critic, member of the communist movement in Bulgaria, joined the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1932. Studied law in the Sofia University and architecture in Belgrade. Member of the community-house and the temperance movement. During WWII he was a partisan in the Kyustendil partisan squad 'Dragovishtitsa'. He died in battle with the gendarmerie in the Chernevets area near Kyustendil.

26 Aleichem, Sholom (1859-1916): born in Russia as Solomon Rabinovitz, he is a Yiddish literature's clasical writer. He is best known for his unique humorous style, ’laughter through tears’. His works include five novels, many plays, and some 300 short stories. Among them are: ‘Adventures of Mottel, The Cantor's Son’, ‘The Adventures of Menahem-Mendl’, ‘Tevye the Dairyman’, etc.

27 Bialik, Chaim Nachman: (1873-1934): One of the greatest Hebrew poets. He was also an essayist, writer, translator and editor.

Born in Rady, Volhynia, Ukraine, he received a traditional education in cheder and yeshivah. His first collection of poetry appeared in 1901 in Warsaw.

He established a Hebrew publishing house in Odessa, where he lived but after the Revolution of 1917 Bialik’s activity for Hebrew culture was viewed by the communist authorities with suspicion and the publishing house was closed.

In 1921 Bialik emigrated to Germany and in 1924 to Palestine where he became a celebrated literary figure. Bialik’s poems occupy an important place in modern Israeli culture and education.

28 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.

29 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 he also wrote short stories and essays and plays.

Tolstoy took part in the Crimean War and his stories based on the defense of Sevastopol, known as the 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.

30 Bulgarian Legions: Union of the Bulgarian National Legions. Bulgarian fascist movement, established in 1930. Following the Italian model it aimed at building a corporate totalitarian state on the basis of military centralism. It was dismissed in 1944 after the communist take-over.

31 Brannik: Pro-fascist youth organization. It started functioning after the Law for the Protection of the Nation was passed in 1941 and the Bulgarian government forged its pro-German policy. The Branniks regularly maltreated Jews.

32 The night of broken glass: In March 1938 the fascist organizations Ratniks and Bulgarian Legions attacked the Military Club where Metodi Popov had to present a lecture against racism. The next incident is on 12th March 1939 when the same fascist elements attacked Bulgaria Concert Hall where Bensusan was conductor.

At the same time they broke all windows of the Jewish shops in the central part of Sofia and everything that happened resembled the 'Crystal Night' of 10th November 1939 in Germany.

33 Confiscation of Jewish property: The Jewish property was confiscated in May 1943 when the Sofia Jews were interned to different parts of the countryside. In the days of the internment the Commissariat on Jewish Issues went to all Jewish houses, listed their movable property and sealed their houses.

The process was in accordance with the Law for Protection of the Nation and all decrees of the Minsitry Council from 1941 to 1944 which limited the right of ownership of Jews. The confiscated properties were sold at special auctions.

34 Law for the Protection of the Nation: A comprehensive anti-Jewish legislation in Bulgaria was introduced after the outbreak of World War II. The ‘Law for the Protection of the Nation’ was officially promulgated in January 1941. According to this law, Jews did not have the right to own shops and factories.

Jews had to wear the distinctive yellow star; Jewish houses had to display a special sign identifying it as being Jewish; Jews were dismissed from all posts in schools and universities. The internment of Jews in certain designated towns was legalized and all Jews were expelled from Sofia in 1943. Jews were only allowed to go out into the streets for one or two hours a day.

They were prohibited from using the main streets, from entering certain business establishments, and from attending places of entertainment. Their radios, automobiles, bicycles and other valuables were confiscated. From 1941 on Jewish males were sent to forced labor battalions and ordered to do extremely hard work in mountains, forests and road construction.

In the Bulgarian-occupied Yugoslav (Macedonia) and Greek (Aegean Thrace) territories the Bulgarian army and administration introduced extreme measures.

The Jews from these areas were deported to concentration camps, while the plans for the deportation of Jews from Bulgaria proper were halted by a protest movement launched by the vice-chairman of the Bulgarian Parliament.

Legionaries: (see: Bulgarian Legions)

35 Forced name change during Holocaust: in accordance with а clause of the Law for the Protection of the Nation voted on 24th December 1940, as well as Decree 192/29th August 1942, all Jewish names ending with -ov, -ev and -ich were changed. According to the requirements first names mostly of Ashkenazi Jews were also changed.

36 Yellow star in Bulgaria: According to a governmental decree all Bulgarian Jews were forced to wear distinctive yellow stars after 24th September 1942. Contrary to the German-occupied countries the stars in Bulgaria were made of yellow plastic or textile and were also smaller.

Volunteers in previous wars, the war-disabled, orphans and widows of victims of wars, and those awarded the military cross were given the privilege to wear the star in the form of a button. Jews who converted to Christianity and their families were totally exempt. The discriminatory measures and persecutions ended with the cancellation of the Law for the Protection of the Nation on 17th August 1944.

37 24th May 1943: Protest by a group of members of parliament led by the deputy chairman of the National Assembly, Dimitar Peshev, as well as a large section of Bulgarian society. They protested against the deportation of the Jews, which culminated in a great demonstration on 24th May 1943.

Thousands of people led by members of parliament, the Eastern Orthodox Church and political parties stood up against the deportation of Bulgarian Jews. Although there was no official law preventing deportation, Bulgarian Jews were saved, unlike those from Bulgarian occupied Aegean Thrace and Macedonia.

Bela Menahem Ishakh
Ruse
Bulgaria
Interviewer: Patricia Nikolova 
Date of interview: November 2004 

Bela Ishakh is a pleasant person with interesting viewpoints on life. Her wisdom that was gained through experience over the years is expressed in many valuable pieces of advice, sayings and observations that Bela is pleased to share with others. Her hospitable home, situated near the Danube, invokes the feeling of orderliness in life and in the family of Bela Ishakh. The sensation that she is the mistress of the house may easily evolve into the sensation that she is the mistress of the situation and also the family ruler. In this respect, it will not be incorrect to say that the position Bela Ishakh has in her family determines the atmosphere of matriarchate.

I am a descendant of a Sephardi 1 family, but unfortunately, I don’t know many specific facts, or any emblematic family stories connected with my ancestors. What I know for sure is that they lived in Silistra, a town near the Danube River, where I was born, too. 

My grandparents’ paternal and maternal parents are not known to me. I know only that the whole family was burned in the death camps in 1943 after the deportation of Macedonian Jews 2. I don’t know when the parents of my parents were born, and I can’t say anything about their life before their coming to live in Bulgaria. I have no idea of what their home might have looked like. I only know they were not rich.

My parents were called Menahem and Roza Alfandari. They were born in Istanbul and Silistra, respectively. My father was born in 1889 and died in 1969, and my mother was born in 1903 and died in 1968. They were buried in the Jewish cemetery in one and the same grave. Dad was in the trade with grain crops, wheat, rice, and Mom had always been a housewife. They had elementary education.

My parents were religious people and this was what my children inherited, too, since my father and mother actively helped me with the bringing-up of my own children. We attended services at the synagogue quite regularly, especially on the high Jewish holidays such as Yom Kippur, Pesach, Chanukkah, Lag ba-Omer, Purim, and Rosh Hashanah. My favorite holiday was Pesach. I liked the history of this holiday, especially the lesson of this holiday, which was for me that the Jewish people have been united because of their faith and the strength of this faith.
   
We spoke Ladino 3 at home, but of course we could communicate in Bulgarian when the situation required it. We used to read non-religious books mainly, secular novels by Mayne Reid [(1818-1883): Irish-American novelist] and others, and after that Marxist literature, dialectical materialism. We, the children read these books.

We lived a simple life in a tidy, humble house in the Jewish neighborhood of Ruse. The house had two rooms and a kitchen. We used wood for heating. There was no electricity then. We had oil lamps. Despite the poverty of my childhood, I cannot complain because I felt good.  

I was born in 1925 in the beautiful town of Silistra, near the Danube River. I am a hairdresser by profession. I have two sisters whom I love very much. The first one is Victoria Markus [nee Alfandari] and the second is Ester Alfandari. Both of them are now in Israel. I was the youngest of all the three, but I was the first to marry.

During the totalitarian period my sister Ester lived in Sofia and immigrated to Israel in 1999. Now she lives in Rishon Le Zion. She is married to David Alfandari, who worked as a textile designer when he lived in Bulgaria. They are not religious. Their son, Simon Alfandari, is a doctor. At present, Ester and David are pensioners.

Victoria lived in Ruse together with her husband Leon Markus and after his death in 2002 she moved to Israel – to stay with her son Avram Markus. They live in Kiryat Yam. They are not religious, either.

As a child, I attended the Jewish nursery and the Jewish school in Ruse. The Jewish school then started when the kids were first-graders and ended when they completed their seventh school year. After that, I graduated from the Jewish school in Ruse. Adon [‘Sir’ in Ivrit] Yosif Safra was our teacher in Ivrit. He was a favorite with us because he was very intelligent and nice. I didn’t hate any of the subjects at school, I didn’t need private lessons in any of them, and I didn’t play any musical instrument. 

We moved to live in Ruse when I was still very young. I remember that Ruse always had nice markets. Villagers from the nearby settlements came to sell their goods and the citizens crowded to buy things. We had a big and a small market there. We preferred the small one. Tuesdays and Fridays were the market days. All tradesmen there were favorites with us.

In the Jewish quarter on David, Vidin, Klementina, Gurko, Dondukov and Korsakov Streets, where the Jewish population lived, there were only small houses to see. The relationships between the poor and rich Jews were regulated by the Jewish community that collected funds from the rich Jews to give them to the poor.

I’d like to tell you in brief the history of Jews in the town of Ruse, known in the past as Ruscuk [in Turkish]. It was founded in 968 by Russians who one year before that crossed the Danube River fighting against the Bulgarian Kingdom 4. The name Ruscuk in Turkish means ‘many Russians.’ Turks captured the town in 1398. In 1519 the inhabitants were mowed down by plague. At the end of the 17th century, Ruse was a small town without significant commercial importance. Its population most probably was between 6,000 and 7,000 people, 600 families were Bulgarian.

No evidence of Jewish presence in the town was recorded until 1788, when the first Jewish tradesmen arrived. They did not settle there permanently, though. The first Jew who settled in Ruse was Mayer Ben Aron, called Bohor Karpus. He was the forefather of a family with the same name that lived in the town until 1948, when they immigrated to Israel.

At the end of the 18th century the town was governed by Mustafa Pasha. His wife was once ill and a Jewish nurse looked after her. But the Jewish holidays Rosh Hashanah and [Yom] Kippur were nearing and the Jewish woman said she had to go to Giurgiu [opposite side of the Danube, in Walachia, today Romania], because there lived her family and there was the nearest synagogue. Ruse had no synagogue back then. All Jews from Ruse traveled to the nearest towns where there were synagogues.

Mustafa Pasha was convinced that a synagogue would keep them within the town, so he donated one of his houses near the riverbank and it became the first prayer house for the Jews in Ruse. This happened in 1797. The first chazzan of the Ruse synagogue in 1800 was Avram Gratsiani. In 1824 a funeral commission [Chevra Kaddisha] started operating.

By the middle of the 19th century, Ruse had become one of the largest towns on Bulgarian territory. It was a settlement with boosting economy and was developing into a big center of enlightenment and culture, as well as an important river port. Crucial importance for the town development was the construction of the Ruse-Varna railway line in 1866.

In Ruse there were three synagogues: two were of the Sephardim, and one belonged to the Ashkenazim. In both of the Sephardi synagogues, ‘the small’ and ‘the big’ one, as they used to call them, there were religious rituals taking place. On weekdays, the rituals were performed in the small synagogue.

Usually, my family attended services at the big synagogue. The reading of the Torah on Erev Sabbath and for other Jewish holidays was taking place at the big synagogue. Every family that had paid a voluntary fee had special places reserved there. During the prayerful days at Pesach, Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah even women were gathering in the synagogue whose seats were separate from those of men; women’s places were on the balcony.

Yosif Alhalel was the chazzan of the Sephardi synagogues, and he was also a secretary of the Jewish community. Albert Yulzari was the shammash as well as the archivist. Naftali Rut was rabbi at the Ashkenazi synagogue, while Lupo Geldstein was the shammash. Chevra Kaddisha responsibilities were entrusted by the community to Simon Segal and Morits Kronberg. Both the Ashkenazi and Sephardi synagogues were religious centers where young and old Jews gathered for Erev Sabbath and the Jewish holidays. There the Jewish traditions were kept alive and passed from father to son. The religious activity of the synagogues was part of the activity of the whole community. 

There were no major differences between the large Sephardi and the significantly smaller Askenazi communities – neither from a religious nor a lifestyle point of view. Our Bet Am was a community. Periodically, concerts and social evenings were organized there, which attracted the Jewish youth. Events organized by the Askenazi or by the Sephardi community were intended for all the Jews. The only difference was that we had separate municipalities.

Later, when the time of the Law for the Protection of the Nation began 5, the Ashkenazi municipality was ruined, and so was their synagogue. Of course, Ashkenazim in Ruse spoke Yiddish to each other; they spoke usually in Bulgarian with us. Frankly speaking, I don’t recall any marriages between the Sephardim and the Ashkenazim. If something of the kind had happened, I would have remembered it, that’s for sure.

The [Sephardi] Jewish community had its own building that contained three office rooms, a big hall and a library. Not every Jewish organization these days could boast about such preciseness of governing the community as ours could. Our community, for example, kept registers of its members’ marital status. We had registers of the families in Ruse, registers of the marriages, a book for the newborns and another one for the funerals. Today one can still see them because they are well preserved, although nobody keeps such records here anymore.

We also had a kind of internal healthcare, within the community. The Bikur Cholim 6 committee provided nurses or ‘rohesas’ [Ladino for ‘doctors’] to those people who were old and lived alone. Chevra Kaddisha was the funeral committee and its heads were Mois Aron Hakim and Yosif Shlomo Kapon. They took care of the cemetery, so that it looked decent, and also made sure the funerals were carried out in line with the Jewish traditions. There was a small hut within the graveyard where a custodian lived permanently. These customs now may sound like a fiction.

I remember Ez-Chaim, the committee for poor and sick women in childbirth. Auntie Mari, Auntie Ernestina, Adon Aron and Auntie Sofie were in charge of this. Their full names were Mari Avram Asher, Ernestina Aron Djaldeti and Sofie David Maer, but I can’t remember any biographical facts about them. However, I remember them as selfless and dedicated people. Usually they visited in shifts the sick people and provided them with medicines and funds. Isak Eshkenazi and Baruh Magriso were in charge of the committee for voluntary donations. Their mission was particularly respected within the community, because it was they who secured funds for the community’s budget, but I learned about this later.

We also had an old people’s home. For example, nowadays, the only old people’s home operating in Sofia it is known under the metaphorical name ‘Parents’ home.’ Half a century before that there was an old people’s home in Ruse, owned by the municipality, as it is today the situation with the house in Sofia. Yako Kapon was the director of the one in Ruse. A total of 20 poor and lonely people were accommodated there and all their expenses were covered by the municipality. As a matter of fact, none of my relatives has ever been accommodated there.

In those days there were a lot of charity activities taking place within our community. The funds in the Jewish municipality’s budget were used for financing the implementation of special programs. These programs were socially intended and they helped poor people achieve a better living standard. The whole Jewish community co-operated for the implementation of these programs.

Jewish traditions were preserved to a great extent thanks to the Jewish school. We studied there from first to seventh grade. During our Hebrew classes we read the Tannakh and learned what the origin of the tradition was. The school’s headmaster Adon Josif Safra read the Tannakh for us and taught the kids to speak Hebrew. The school, which had 15 classrooms, a canteen and a gym, provided the opportunity for education of children from pre-school age up to the stage when they completed their elementary education. We didn’t have a yeshivah, but the school had a canteen, where dozens of children from poor families could have meals, including me and my brothers. On Pesach these children were given new shoes and clothes. 

As far as the school holidays of 1929 and 1930 are concerned, I was sent to Ruse’s Jewish school on the Varna campus. Several poor kids were selected and sent to holiday resorts with the financial support of the Jewish community. That was the first time I got on a train. Several rooms with beds were prepared for us in Varna. There was a chef, too, and we called her Auntie Hursi.

After school we usually went to the Maccabi 7 yard to play. The chairman of Maccabi was Baruh Ovadia, a prominent public figure of Ruse’s Jewish community. Wonderful celebrations of the high holidays Chanukkah, Purim and Pesach were organized under his auspices. On Lag ba-Omer for example we had an impressive manifestation with music in the streets of Ruse, we always had a drummer in the avant-garde. In the afternoon the whole Jewish community would gather at the Habermann site near Ruse, on a meadow, where we, the Maccabi members, would present complex physical exercises and gymnastic pyramids. It was a nice time.

Back then Maccabi was openly a Zionist organization whose aim was to prepare healthy and strong young men and women who would then immigrate to Palestine in order to build anew the Jewish State. We were prepared for that and most of my friends emigrated there during the great immigration process in 1948 [cf. Mass Aliyah] 8 and some of them even before that.

It is known that a group of 200 Jews set off on a boat from Varna in 1940, but they suffered shipwreck in the Marmara Sea and most of them died. These were mainly young Jews from Sofia and Plovdiv. At the same time, a recruitment campaign for young people who want to immigrate to Israel was taking place in Ruse. However, there was no mass emigration from our town after this campaign, but I am not informed about the reasons.

When I was young, I was an active member of the Union of Young Workers, or short UYW 9. That was in fact the reason why I met my future husband, Aron Gavriel Ishakh, who was also a member of the UYW. We met in our illegal club in 1945. [Editor’s note: It must have already been legal, as this happened after 9th September 1944 when the communists came to power in Bulgaria.] We had to prepare a wall-newspaper then, but I can’t remember any details except for that we gathered in the UYW club on Gurko Street. He saw me home and we became friends.

We married on 19th September 1945. We are proud that our wedding was one of the first civil marriages that took place in Ruse.

As a matter of fact, my husband Aron started working at the age of 14. As a boy he walked round the streets of Ruse together with his two brothers, Solomon and Samuel. The three of them used to sell balloons to earn their living, as they were very poor. Moreover, they were half-orphans because their mother had already died of cancer. So their sister Rebecca looked after them for a long time. She was already 13 years old when their mother Sofi Aron Ishakh died. This tragic event, which changed the life of my future husband, happened during the Law for the Protection of the Nation. We didn’t know each other back then, though.

What I know about my husband’s family is that unlike me he is a native Ruse citizen. His maternal grandfather, Aron Eshkenazi, was the son of the Silistra rabbi. When our compatriots moved to Israel and we remained here without a chazzan, it was he who read the prayers in the synagogue. His father on his mother’s side had been a well-known tailor in Ruse.

My husband’s mother was a dressmaker. They were very poor, especially after her death. Since his father, Gavriel Ishakh, had to earn the living for four children and himself, he was forced to sell what he produced for next to nothing.

During the Law for the Protection of the Nation my future husband was sent as a worker to a forced labor camp 10 for Jews. Barely 18 years old he was sent to the camp in the village of Mikre, Lovech region, and after that he was moved to ‘Sveti Vrach’ camp and then to another one in the village of Veselinovo, Shumen region. In fact, Jewish men were then used as working force at no cost. They used them to build the road between Shumen and Burgas.

I remained in the Jewish ghetto of Ruse, where I made social contacts with the young Jewish boys and girls who were interned from Sofia. All of us were then supporters of the Union of Young Workers. My friends’ names from this period were Violeta, Sami, Moni, Stela and others, but I can’t remember their family names any more.

There was also Galiko, who was interned from Sofia. He was handicapped. That was how he was born – with tangled legs and strangely twisted arms. Our Jewish community looked after him and regularly walked him in the town in a perambulator.

Our gatherings of the Union of Young Workers often took place at his house. We often discussed the idea of the foundation of [the state of] Israel, which meant we were Zionists to a certain extent. I remember that the house he was renting was right opposite to Maccabi. In spite of the terror, I think this period was romantic. 

I remember very well the period of the Law for the Protection of the Nation and the effect it had in Ruse. Here, especially, the Jewish community has always had good relationships with the Bulgarians. But I should underline that before the Law for the Protection of the Nation and at the beginning of World War II several particularly aggressive fascist organizations were set up in our town. They were called Brannik 11, Ratnik 12, Legionnaires [Bulgarian Legions] 13 and Otets Paisii 14. They were youth organizations after the model of the German ‘Hitlerjugend’ [Hitler Youth] 15, that is – the first youth organizations with anti-Semitic character here.

I remember that the members of Brannik, Ratnik, Legionnaires and Otets Paisii often used to march in the streets of Ruse as if in a threatening demonstration. They promised death to Jews, their slogans were: ‘Death to Jews’ or ‘Jews out of Bulgaria.’ They would also beat young Jewish people and write anti-Semitic slogans on the houses’ walls, such as ‘Long Live Hitler,’ ‘Death to All Jews’, and they would circulate provocative leaflets and so on and so on. Their goal was to raise anti-Semitic feelings in Bulgarian society. That proved eventually that anti-Semitism in Bulgaria was imported, it had no true origins in this society, since it was imitative.

Reactions of the Bulgarian society then were quite normal. Bulgarians did not pay attention to these fascistic young people. The official authorities behaved differently, though. I think that is why a total of 460 Jews was unfairly convicted and imprisoned between 1940 and 1941. Responsibility for these unfair sentences lies on  King Boris III 16, who was known to be an ally of Hitler during this period. Of course the Bulgarian government then is also to be held responsible.

Among those imprisoned  from Ruse were my acquaintances Moni Hakim, Sason Panizhel, Liza Hason, Jules Aroyo, Yako Melamed, Salvador Papo, Eli Ashoev, Hor Eliezer, Mois Natan, Izidor Ayzner, Yako Yulzari and others. They were imprisoned because they were detected as being members of the Union of Young Workers.

Meanwhile, 260 other Jews were fighting in the partisan groups. [Editor’s note: These are the actual figures, as the interviewee knows them from her husband, Aron Gavriel Ishakh, who had studied the archives and card-indexes of the Jewish community in Ruse as a chairman of the Israeli Religious Council in Ruse.] Among them from our town were Yako Izidor Yakov and Miko Yulzari. I remember Yako Yakov, who made a career as a political officer after 9th September 1944 and was the director of the theater in Ruse for many years.

The administration of the Jewish community also had its own position on the issue during the war. It counted much on the Jews who led Zionist organizations. The policy of the community put accents – of course we felt these bans as an instance of terror, but we couldn’t do anything against them – on Zionism and the Jewish religious traditions.

The war period unexpectedly sharpened the struggle between the individual Jewish organizations. Their ideological predilections sharpened. On the one hand, all Zionist organizations – Poalei Zion 17, General Zionists 18 and Revisionists 19 – were unified in their idea that the Jews should stay away from any fight against fascism. They thought that any kind of participations of Jews would strengthen the anti-Semitic feelings. They tried to persuade Jews in different ways and I think they were right.

The chairman of the community, Yosif Levi, several times at Erev Sabbath appealed to the attention of parents to do everything they can and exert influence on their children not to take part in the fight against fascism. The youth organization Hashomer Hatzair 20 was of the opposite opinion. The most influential among them were Izidor Ayzner, Yako Yakov and Tinka Dzhain, who organized a course for supporting the anti-fascist struggle.

Part of the young people from the sports organization Maccabi – Moni Hakim, Miko Yulzari, Fifi Mashiah and Liza Hason – attracted a great group of supporters of the same cause. These young Jewish men and women from Ruse, organized in groups of three, led the illegal conspiracy activities against fascism. Although my husband, Aron Gavriel Ishakh, and I did not join them, we were also engaged in the illegal activity connected with the Union of Young Workers.

I remember very well some of their bravest actions. For example, in 1941 during the German invasion of the Soviet Union 21, Leon Tadzher, who was a docker in Ruse and had escaped from a Jewish [forced] labor camp, decided to inflame the oil refinement utilities of the ‘Petrol’ plant. He killed with his knife the German security guard who tried to take hold of him, but was caught by the workers who started running after him. Later, Leon was sentenced to death and hanged.

Leon Tadzher’s full story was as follows. He was born in 1903 in Sofia and he found a way – I don’t know how exactly – to immigrate illegally to Palestine already in the 1920s. He was expelled and returned to Bulgaria in 1934 because of his revolutionary activity against the English colonialist administration.

When back in Sofia he earned his living as a workman in the construction sector. He actively took part in the strike of the sector’s trade union. In those days Leon Tadzher as a prominent Zionist with leftist [communist] views was often invited by the Jewish national library club to deliver lectures on Zionist topics, for example: why should the country Israel be constituted, why should people immigrate to Israel.

Leon Tadzher appeared on the police’s list of dangerous communist activists, that is a criminal for the then monarchist government. So, on 11th April 1941 he was officially asked to present himself before the police and was accused of something he hadn’t done. He was beaten and tormented, after which he was released because of lack of evidence.

After he was let free, Leon was interned to Isperih. Then, after the introduction of the Law for the Protection of the Nation he was sent to a Jewish forced labor camp near the village of Tserovo.

When the war between Germany and the USSR was declared, Tadzher escaped from the camp and was hiding in the huts and orchards near Ruse. He managed to get in touch with the local illegal communist workers who helped him to start working as a docker and after that as a blue-collar worker in the state-owned Ruse factory Petrol under the false name Dimitar Kirov and a Bulgarian identity card.

At the end of 1941, Leon Tadzher set fire to the crude oil refineries of the Petrol plant. The rest you already know. He was hanged on the central town square in Ruse on 17th November 1941.

After this event, the Gestapo, which had offices also in Ruse, demanded that the regional police chief of staff detain 300 of the most distinguished Jews in the town, and send them to the Germans for deportation to death camps.

This is one of my most dramatic memories. The compiling of the list was assigned to the chairman of the Jewish community, Yosif Levi. The list was ready but it contained the names of those next of kin to political prisoners and anti-fascists instead of rich and well-known Jews. In fact, the richer among us managed to buy themselves out of this list for a serious amount of money. The money was handed to the regional police chief of staff, Stefan Simeonov, who was also our delegate on Jewish matters. He had no objections on his turn.

After that, the Jews whose names had remained on the list were arrested and sent to the temporary camps Somovit 22 near the Danube River and Kailuka 23 near Pleven, after which they were to be deported to the death camps. But as it is known – the camp near Kailuka  was set on fire. Among the ten victims of the arson, only one man was from Ruse – Nissim Benvenisti.

The substitution of names in the list as well as the bribery of the Gestapo in Ruse became known after 1944. The chairman of the community, Yosif Levi, then hid in the English Embassy. From there he managed to escape to Palestine. He was not brought to justice, because he was forced to present such a list to the then Bulgarian authorities that were controlled by the Gestapo in Ruse.

From this difficult period, I remember well the victims of the Jewish community in Ruse: Izidor Ayzner, who was two years older than me, and Tinka Dzhain – she was one year younger.

Izidor became a member of the Union of Young Workers in Ruse when he was very young; he was only 17 years old. He was very clever and respected with his knowledge of Marxist ideas. That is why he was very soon appointed secretary of the Ruse Union of Young Workers’ town committee. He was also known for his talent for organizing the meetings of young people. I was among them, too. Thus Izidor could build a strong organization in a very short period of time, which consisted of 150 young men and women, most of them Jews.

What kind of activities were we involved in? Led by him, we were distributing leaflets and were writing anti-German slogans on the houses’ walls at nights, for example. But it didn’t last for long. Izidor was caught by the police during the Law for the Protection of the Nation in 1942 and was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. He was, however, tormented to death in the Varna prison, where he was sent to, as a result of which he died in May 1943.

Ana Ventura was the daughter of the well-known Ruse industrialist Avram Ventura, who owned ‘Zhiti’ factory. Influenced by Izidor Ayzner she became an active member of the local young workers’ organization – of course it was an illegal organization – yet before the Law for the Protection of the Nation was introduced. After Ayzner’s death she became a secretary of UYW regional committee. She organized and led many campaigns against the fascist regime of which my friends and I only heard because we didn’t take part in them. I admired her. Ana Ventura was killed in her illegal lodgings in Ruse in February 1944.  

Tinka Dzhain had a similar fate to that of Izidor Ayzner and Ana Ventura. Tinka and I were both members of Hashomer Hatzair with the only difference that she was influenced by Isi Ayzner and Yako Yakov and became a member of the illegal Union of Young Workers. She took part in many campaigns against the fascist authorities. I don’t remember what exactly they were. She got involved in illegal activities already in 1943,during the Law for the Protection of the Nation, becoming a political commissioner of an illegal fighting group.

In the end she was betrayed by the person in whose lodgings she lived illegally. The police executed her in the village of Bozhichen in the region of Ruse. After 10th November 1989 24, we, the Jews from the Ruse’s Jewish Organization spent own funds to build a memorial for her at her place of death – on the central square in Bozhichen. 

After 9th September 1944 25, my husband worked many years for the police, then called militia, and after the democratic changes in Bulgaria [in 1989] became a chairman of the Israeli Religious Council in Ruse. He has always been one of the most respected people in both Bulgarian and Jewish communities. He is also known for the fact that he introduced the ‘Personal Number’ [‘Edinen Grazhdanski Nomer’ (EGN), which stands for ‘Unified Civil Number’, used to certify the identity of Bulgarian citizens] in Bulgaria after the pattern of western European societies. His major passion – to collect facts and commentaries on the history of Ruse’s Jewry materialized recently in his book ‘Historic Notes on the Jews in Ruse’ [Ruse, 2002].

After the foundation of the state of Israel 26 we all felt it as our country and our sympathies for the Jewish nation increased even further. During the wars in Israel of 1967 27 and 1973 28 we were regularly reading all kinds of commentaries on them in the Bulgarian press, although we didn’t believe in them at all. From the letters we received from our friends there, we knew that the war was incited by the Arabs. I have been to Israel only once – in 1989 – and I loved the life there. When I came back to Bulgaria I felt the difference at once. In fact, from all our relatives it was my husband and I who remained in Bulgaria.

I have two daughters: Sonia, born in 1946, and Roza, born in 1953. My elder daughter graduated from the mechanical technical school ‘Yuriy Gagarin’ in Ruse and now works for ‘Shalom’ 29, being also the chairwoman of the economy commission at ‘Shalom.’ She is in charge of the collecting of rents from the organization’s estates that were let. These funds go for support to the local Jewish organization.

My younger daughter works as a statistician at the Statistical Office. Roza is divorced; her family name was Dalakmanska, but now she is Ishakh again.

My elder daughter’s family name is Grigorova. Her son, Aron, lives in Ramat Gan and in 2004 he became father of a son, whose name is Ben. I am very sad I am not around him in Israel now, so that I can at least get a glimpse of my great-grandson.

Aron graduated from a commercial and industrial management college and is a certified engineer. He works for a company and they are very satisfied with him. Before that his name was Roman, because there was a regulation once [in socialist times] that children from mixed marriages were Bulgarians and they could not have foreign names.

My children were brought up in line with the Jewish traditions by their grandfather and grandmother Menahem and Roza Alfandari. They were very religious people, observed all the traditions and thought very highly of the Jewry. That means they strictly observed Jewish rituals on holidays and on Sabbath.

My parents passed on to my children their knowledge, firstly, about the Jewish cuisine and, secondly, about our holidays Pesach, Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, Sukkot, Lag-ba-Omer. They celebrated these at home. Of course, we used to attend services at the synagogue, but rarely. I mean, we visited the synagogue only for the high Jewish holidays, such as Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Chanukkah, Pesach, Sukkot etc.

The date 10th November 1989 was warmly welcomed by the Jewry of Ruse. As a matter of fact, our regional organization ‘Shalom’ is apolitical. We don’t like focusing on politics, but it was very favorable for us that our estates were given back to us as we now have the chance to lead better lives; now we can also make use of the freedom to reconstruct our traditions. Before that we were deprived of our buildings and we had to pay rent to the municipal Housing Estate Fund.

We were not allowed to observe our rituals in public. They wanted from us to have our events together with the Fatherland Front 30. We didn’t have much choice then because of the policy of the Bulgarian Communist Party’s Central Committee. Their idea was to quickly and easily assimilate Jews through mixed marriages between Bulgarians and Jews. As a result there are almost no Jews in Ruse nowadays, and those who remain are of mixed origin. There are only five pure-blooded families left in Ruse now. I am proud that the Ishakh family is among them.

As a matter of fact, during the totalitarian period, when we were deprived of our estates, we were also deprived of our synagogues. I am speaking of the two synagogues: the big Sephardi one and that of the Ashkenazim. The small Sephardi synagogue was demolished in 1935 because it was then almost in ruins and the Jewish community took a decision to demolish it. An apartment block was built on the site. The big synagogue was given as an atelier to a town council sculptor and he made his sculptures in there. So our synagogue started looking like a bungalow.

The Ashkenazi synagogue was given to the state lottery and they built twelve small rooms in it. When we were given back our estates in 1989, we were also given the two synagogues. We had a double problem to solve. We had to pull down the inner walls in the Ashkenazi synagogue in order to transform it into a synagogue and a club again.

We needed money, but we didn’t have it. That is why we sold an estate. I am speaking of an old house that was in the possession of a Jew who immigrated to Palestine before 1948. The house remained as a property of the Jewish community in Ruse. It was located on Alexandrovska Street, and we started the reconstruction. That happened in 1992.

Meanwhile, the big Sephardi synagogue started falling into ruins. It was crumbling away in front of our eyes, but we didn’t have the money to reconstruct it. We asked for 100,000 BGN [which equals some EUR 50,000] from the central governing body of Shalom in Sofia – but the sum was very high and there was nobody to give it to us.

That was the reason why the governing committee of Ruse’s Shalom decided to sell it to an Evangelist sect. [Editor’s note: It is most probably a smaller neo-Protestant Church.] All the Jews in Ruse are convinced that it is a sect, not a widely accepted branch of the Christian religion. And we sold it. They spent USD 120,000 to reconstruct the building.

It is sad, but it looks now exactly the way it did 50 years ago. But it is no longer functioning as a synagogue. And it will never be a synagogue again, because we don’t have funds to buy it back from the Evangelists. 

If I have to express my personal opinion of the historical date of 10th November 1989, I would rather say I am satisfied with the changes. I feel freer than before, my family also enjoys the new social conditions. After the changes, I, as all other Jews of my age, received the three installments of the aid from the Swiss Fund. It is no secret that both my daughters have their jobs, and both my sisters immigrated to Israel where they feel comfortable.

This is the one side of the coin, though. On the other hand, I don’t’ like the economic changes that took place after democracy was established in Bulgaria. Unemployment, poverty and discontent – that were the seeds of democracy here. Before 1989, everybody had a job, the society was calm, everybody could build his own home. My family was even in the possession of a plot of land where we grew okra and grapes for making wine.

This unemployment has affected the other part of my family: my grandson [Sonia’s son] is jobless, so is my daughter-in-law. It is paradoxical how we reached to a situation when my husband and I have to help them out with money from our pensions; to help them with our advice and to take care of them.

Glossary

Hana Muchnik
Kishinev
Moldova
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: July 2004

Hana Muchnik lives in a small two-bedroom apartment in an apartment building built in the 1970s in Kishinev (Chisinau in Moldovan). The apartment is modestly furnished and one can tell that the family is rather poor. Hana is a very nice lady with gray, neatly done hair and a sweet smile. Hana is very ill: her legs fail her, and it was a problem for her even to come to the door to open it for me. Every move causes her pain, but she is very friendly and hospitable. Hana tells me she’s been thinking of keeping the memory of her ancestors and their life in their little town. She happily agreed to give this interview.

My family backgrownd

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family backgrownd

I come from the small town of Orhei located on the picturesque bank of the Raut River in Bessarabia 1, about 60 kilometers from Kishinev. The long street, I would even call it Jewish, leading from the river was populated by Jews. There were a number of stores and shops owned by Jews on it. Tailor Facer had clients as far as Kishinev, Nisemboin owned a confectionary, medications and hygienic means were sold by Fishelev, the banquet hall was owned by Breutman. Then there were Shistik, Volovskiye, Golbinskiye: they were our neighbors. The majority of houses in Orhei were one-storied buildings: only Fishelev, a wealthy man, built two two-storied houses: one for himself and one for his son. My grandfather and our family lived in a long one-storied building with two front doors: one for my grandfather’s and one for our family.

My paternal grandfather, Joiseph Muchnik, born in Orhei in the 1850s, was rather wealthy. He owned a big leather/shoe store: it sold shoes and leather, glue and components for shoemaking. His clients were shoemakers of Orhei and they often visited my grandfather at home. My grandfather and my father treated them with scorn: the shoemakers’ guild was at the very bottom of the town’s hierarchy. My paternal grandmother died long before I was born. I can’t even remember her name. My grandfather remarried. His second wife Udl boasted of her distant relation to the very Baal-Shem-Tov 2. She was 20 years younger than my grandfather and agreed to marry him for his wealth. They didn’t have children together. She and Joiseph were very religious. They were real Hasidim 3. When my grandfather grew old and blind, and could work in his store no longer, Udl left him and moved to America, where her daughters lived. My grandfather lived to the end of his life in solitude, getting warm by our hearth. He died in 1935.

My father, the oldest of the children, was born in the 1980s. His sister Leya, whom I never knew, came next. Leya married Rozhkovskiy, a Jewish man from Ukraine. They had a son and lived on the Soviet side of the Dniestr after the Revolution of 1917 4. Therefore, during the Romanian rule 5, before Bessarabia was annexed to the USSR 6 we didn’t even mention to anyone that we had relatives in the USSR. Leya and her husband died before the Great Patriotic War 7. I met their son, Moisey Rozhkovskiy, after the Great Patriotic War. He was a veteran of combat actions and lived in Kishinev before he moved to the USA in the mid-1980s. This is all the information I have about him.

Indl – she was called Inna at home – my grandfather’s next daughter, was a beauty. I heard that when she was young and walked along the streets in Kishinev or Odessa 8, men turned their heads after her. She married Iosif Pagis, a lawyer, who was a public rabbi in Orhei. He kept Jewish birth and death records and was a well-respected, and even honored, citizen of the town. Iosif was a Zionist 9, and when the Soviet rule was established in Bessarabia in 1940, he was exiled to the Gulag 10 with Indl and their younger daughter Esphir. Iosif was taken to a camp in Tuman [Sverdlovsk, today Russia] where he died. Indl didn’t live much longer than him. She also died in the north. Esphir got married after the war and returned to Kishinev. About 20 years ago she moved to the USA with her family. Now they live in San Francisco.

The life of the older daughter was tragic. Surah was as beautiful as her mother. Shortly before the war she got married for great love. At the very start of the war her husband was mobilized to the army, and Surah and her husband’s sister, who was in the late stages of her pregnancy, walked out of Orhei. On their way they bumped into Constantinescu, a Romanian officer, whom Surah used to know in the past: he had made advances to her then, but she’d rejected him. He decided to take his revenge. He brutally raped Surah and her pregnant sister-in-law and killed them. Indl’s son Nathan Pagis was an officer during the Great Patriotic War. He got a medical education, graduated from Kishinev Medical University and became a neuropathologist. Now he lives in Canada with his family.

My father’s next sister Sluvah married Froim Pagis, a Jewish man. He wasn’t Iosif’s relative. Sluvah had two children. Her older daughter was lost during evacuation. Sluvah never found her. Sluvah’s son was traumatized by bombings, fear and horror. After the war the three of them returned to Kishinev. Sluvah died in the mid-1970s. I have no information about her son.

My father’s younger brother Leibl, born in the 1890s, also owned a store. His first wife died and he had to raise their son Haim. His second wife Rosa was quarrelsome and irritable. She didn’t accept the boy and he had to live with other people. Rosa and Leibl had two sons: Yakov and Shura. He was a failure both in his family and in his work life and all he thought was left for him was to put an end to his life. Leibl was found hanging in the shed by his house. This happened in the late 1930s. Rosa, who was much affected by this, didn’t even live two years after his death.

Haim, the older son, didn’t get any support from his relatives and moved to Palestine. My mother didn’t accept him, and he didn’t forgive her for the rest of his life. He fought in the war against the Fascists in the English army. Yakov, who was 15 years old, and Shura, 13 years old, evacuated in 1941. Yakov was an epileptic. He had another seizure, fell into a ditch in Central Asia and suffocated. Shura, the younger one, returned to Orhei and visited us occasionally. My sister gave him food and some money. Shura became a jeweler, got married and had two daughters. He wasn’t happy in his family life and began having problems when jewelers who were working with gold illegally started to get prosecuted. Shura resolved the situation in a very simple way: he hanged himself like his father did.

My father’s younger sister Hona, born in the early 1900s, also married a Jewish man. Her family name was Tarover. Hona’s son perished at the front during the Great Patriotic War. She and her husband returned from the evacuation and settled in his house. She and her husband died from typhus during an epidemic shortly after they returned.

My father, Duvid Muchnik, the oldest in the family, was born in the early 1880s. I don’t know whether my father had any education besides cheder. All I know is that he was a rather literate man. He could read and write Yiddish and Romanian. He must have also known Russian. He loved Pushkin 11, but we didn’t speak Russian in our family before the Soviet rule was established. My father, being the oldest son, was helping my grandfather Joiseph in the store before the Soviet rule was established. My father was raised in a religious Hasidic family, but he never became a Hasid. My father was very religious, but he observed religious beliefs other than Hasidic ones. It’s hard to say to what religious trend my father belonged to. All I remember is that he often argued with my grandfather about religious issues. My parents’ marriage was prearranged, as was quite common in Jewish families.

My mother’s family came from the small village of Chichelnitsa, not far from Orhei. Her parents died long before I was born. I think my grandmother had died before my parents’ wedding since my mother named her first daughter after her. [One of the most common Jewish practices is to name a child to honor a relative. Sephardi Jews name their children freely after both living and deceased relatives. However, Ashkenazim rarely name children after living relatives.] My grandfather died a few years later. I heard that my grandfather Anchel Sorotskiy, born in the 1860s, was rather wealthy. He owned land and fields. He hired workforce to work in these fields. He also kept cows and sheep. Mama told me that her family lived in a big two-storied mansion. There was beautiful expensive furniture, musical instruments and toys at her home. Even her and her sister’s dolls, as tall as the girls, were purchased in England. Grandmother was a real lady and supervised housemaids and governesses helping her about the house. From what I heard, Grandfather Anchel had a hard and quarrelsome character. Neither his family nor his employees liked him. The villagers working for him burned down his mansion and cattle farms during some upheaval, and my grandfather actually went bankrupt. He and Grandmother Elka died very poor because my grandfather’s bankruptcy dramatically affected their lives.

My mother’s older brother, Gershl Sorotskiy, got married, when my grandfather was still wealthy. His father supported his family and he actually didn’t learn any vocation. Later he was a farmer, but had no employees working for him and could hardly make ends meet. He and his wife Sosia had eleven children. Two of them died in infancy. Gershl and his family were miserably poor and would have starved had it not been for my mother’s support. Only Gershl’s older son Simon got a higher education. He lived with us in Orhei, finished a gymnasium [lyceum], studied and graduated from Kishinev University and worked as a lawyer. I have hardly any information about his other children. Gershl died before the Great Patriotic War. His wife Sosia and five daughters were in evacuation and after the war they returned to Chichelnitsa. Sosia died at the age of 95. After she died her five daughters moved to Israel. They are rather wealthy now.

Mama’s younger sister Beila, who got married while she was still a girl from a wealthy family, didn’t live with her husband long. When my grandfather went bankrupt and died, Beila’s husband left her and took her son Anchel and daughter Elka with him. I have no information about them. As for Beila, she moved in with us and actually became my second mother. My mother’s youngest brother David died young. This is all I know about him.

My mother, Golda Sorotskaya, was born in 1886. I think she must have studied with a visiting teacher [melamed] at home: this was quite common with wealthier families. She could write and read Yiddish like my father. My parents didn’t tell me about their wedding, but I think it was a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah and lots of guests. After the wedding my parents lived in my grandfather Joiseph’s house. In 1908 Mama gave birth to a girl. She named her Elka. My older brother Haim was born in 1910, and in 1915 my second brother, named Anchel after my deceased grandfather, came into this world. My mother had no other children for a long time before I was born on 18th September 1923.

Growing up

Though I was the youngest of the children and one would have thought I was to be everybody’s favorite, I felt like nobody needed me at all. My sister and brothers, who were much older than me, ignored me and didn’t want to play with me. My parents didn’t take any account of me and could, in my presence, discuss subjects that were not appropriate for a child to hear. So I heard my mother telling a neighbor that I was an unexpected child and a ‘burden,’ and I think this affected my whole life. However, I can’t say that I was mistreated. I had everything I needed and even more, but I lacked warmth and love that each child needs so much. Aunt Beila, who was living with us, was my favorite. I followed her and demanded that she played with me and she never refused me: she played with dolls and stones, read me fairy tales and told me stories. I guess this also helped her to suppress her longing for her own children.

We lived in one half of my grandfather’s house. There were four big row rooms: a living room, a bedroom, another room, where Aunt Beila and the older children lived, a kitchen and a cellar in our part of the house. There was a store, two big rooms and a kitchen in my grandfather’s part of the house. There was a warehouse and sheds, where food products for holidays were stored in the big long backyard of the house. I remember Uncle Gershl riding his wagon into the yard to have sacks full of flour and cereals, jars of jam and jarred fat loaded on it to haul these food stocks back to his home in Chichelnitsa, where his numerous family were waiting for him. Gershl arrived quite often. My father thought we had too much for our family and just ignored these visits of his. Our family was rather wealthy: I guess the store brought good profits. However, there were no luxuries at our home. Mama did all housework herself and only Aunt Beila helped her about the house. Marusia, a Moldovan girl, came in to do the laundry. Marusia could often be late – she had a drinking habit – and I remember how nervous my mother was when she didn’t show up on time. When she did come in, everything got going: there were big boiling tubs with the laundry, the smell of soap and then the washing was hanged on a long line in the yard. 

Mama was an excellent housewife. She cooked delicious food and baked white bread. When my brother and I were fed up with white bread she gave us money to buy brown bread. Jewish traditions were observed in the house, particularly, the kosher rules. The meat and dairy products were kept separately: there were separate utensils, preparation boards and knives for these products. On Friday Mama started the preparations for the celebration of Sabbath. Beila usually did a general clean up and Mama did the cooking. She left the food in the oven to keep it hot. Our neighbors Volovskiye, older people, sent their housemaid to bring their food to keep it till the next day in our oven and pick it up on Saturday [Shabbath]. On Saturday we weren’t allowed to do any work. We had Alexei, a Moldovan old man, come in to stoke the stove, light a candle and take the dinner out of the oven. My father was back from the synagogue by that time, and the family sat down to dinner. My father was very religious. He had a cap on working in his store and wore a kippah, tallit and tefillin on his hand and forehead. My father prayed every day at the nearby synagogue. This synagogue was called the ‘market’ synagogue in Orhei [the construction of this synagogue was funded by merchants and tradesmen]. On Saturday and on holidays my father went to the big, beautiful synagogue where my parents had seats they had paid for.

The children in our family were raised in accordance with Jewish traditions. I was sent to a private Jewish kindergarten, though it existed for no longer than about six months. I was taught the Yiddish alphabet at home. When we had guests, I was put on a chair in front of them to demonstrate my knowledge of the alphabet. My grandfather Joiseph spent a lot of time with me: he taught me Hebrew, told me about the Jewish religion and about Hasidim. I felt that my grandfather needed me in his life and I appreciated it a lot, lacking my parents’ love. Udl had left my grandfather: he was old and he could hardly see and I accompanied him to the synagogue, carrying his prayer book. I went for walks with my grandfather and he gratefully kissed me, wishing me well. I enjoyed the holidays in my grandfather’s house to the utmost. He was well-respected in the town, and I remember the celebration of the Simchat Torah [last day of Sukkot], when older Jews got together in his house to pray, sat at the table having a meal, sang and danced with the Torah – I liked it so much!

My uncle, the public rabbi, was the only rabbi in Orhei [there was a title of spiritual rabbi (kohein) and public rabbi. The spiritual rabbi performed at the synagogue and the public one represented interests of Jews to the state authorities]. When the rabbi visited the town on holidays, he stayed in my grandfather’s house. On these days I felt significant. Firstly, I never left my grandfather’s side on these days and I looked at the visitor with admiration: I believed he was close to God. Religious Jews came to the house to visit the rabbi, waiting for their turn in the fore room and the yard. The shomes invited visitors to the rabbi. Then the rabbi and my grandfather had lunch and I joined them.

There was always plenty of food. According to the Jewish customs, the leftovers are sacred and are given to people. The visitors asked me to say a word for them to my uncle about giving them some leftovers and I was very happy to be of help. This was done every year before 1934, when my grandfather was bedridden due to severe illness. He died in 1935. The rabbi, whom my grandfather had received in his home, came to the funeral. The rabbi recited the mourning prayer for my grandfather. I went to my grandfather’s funeral and took part in the mourning, though according to the Jewish rules the children whose parents were living weren’t supposed to attend funerals or go to the cemetery, but my parents didn’t mind my going to the cemetery. [The halakhah only says that a person is permitted to recite the Kaddish for other close relatives as well as parents, but only if his/her parents are dead. Probably in Hana’s community there were different traditions.]

Our family also observed all traditions and celebrated holidays. My favorite holiday was Pesach. Purim was celebrated one month before the Pesach. This was a merry holiday. Mama baked hamantashen and made fluden, cookies with honey and nuts, and we brought shelakhmones [mishlo'ah manot, sending of gifts to one another], a tray with cookies, strudel, sweets and apples to our neighbors. There was a carnival procession in the streets, stopping by each house. The owners, including my father, dropped their contributions into a special box of contributions for Palestine. I enjoyed the feeling of expectation of Pesach. The preparation started immediately after Purim. Everything was cleaned and fixed, painted and repaired. [The Passover cleaning, the mitzvah of biur chametz – getting rid of chametz – and other traditions described below belong to Pesach traditions according to the halakhah.]

Elka and Haim, the older children, left the house and lived their own lives. Anchel was a little older than me and didn’t enjoy the holidays as much as I did. Our parents bought us gifts. I got new patent leather shoes made by a client of my father’s. I don’t know where my old ones disappeared each time, though I only wore them once. Mama must have sent them to Gershl’s daughters. I also wore a new dress: a lovely velvet or lace dress.

The first sign of the holiday was a box of matzah. The box was locked and it wasn’t allowed to start eating the matzah before the holiday. On the eve of the holiday the special crockery was taken down from the attic. I loved this crockery! The silver spoons and forks were shining, but were cleaned again nevertheless. I had two little cups: the blue and the white ones. The table was covered with a new starched table cloth. In the evening the seder began. At ten o’clock in the morning we had breakfast with the last slice of bread: there was to be no bread in the following days. My father cut a piece of bread into ten little pieces and placed them around the house. His next step was to sweep it onto a plate with a goose feather. I followed him, watching that he didn’t miss a crumb and indicating it if he did. However, he never missed a piece.

Mama and Aunt Beila were busy in the kitchen cooking and stewing, paying no attention to me. I remember getting hungry, nagging Aunt Beila: ‘The child is hungry!’ Mama hasted to fry a goose liver offering it to me, but with no bread. An hour later I get hungry again: Mama offers me a hard-boiled egg. I couldn’t wait till the evening came! The family got together at the table. There was my bed in this room and I knew that I wasn’t going to bed before the end of the celebration. The rules required having guests on seder, but who was willing to come to somebody else’s home! However, Jews found the way out; the military sent out two privates to each Jewish house: it was good for the boys to celebrate with a family and for families to follow the rules.

There were dishes required by the Haggadah and other traditional Jewish food: stuffed fish [so-called gefilte fish], chicken broth with matzah kneydlakh, nicely smelling rich stew, tsimes, matzah puddings. My father reclined on cushions at the head of the table. He dressed up and had his tallit on. I was small and nobody seemed to take any account of me. However, I knew they couldn’t have a holiday without me. At the start of seder my father would address me. I’d stand up and distinctly answer the four questions about the origin of the holiday: the family would all look at me and I’d feel proud. Then I’d fill everybody’s glasses and my own. My father reads the Haggadah, the men repeat after him and the seder begins.

Frankly, I was upset that it was my brother Anchel to look for the afikoman and get a gift, but this was a custom and wasn’t to be questioned. At a certain time my father left the table and opened the front door. It was cold and dark outside. My father pronounced: ‘Whoever is hungry, come in to have a meal! Whoever is thirsty, come in for a drink!’ I don’t remember anybody coming in, but the tradition was followed. The expectation of Elijah–ha-nevi was the highlight of the celebration. There was a glass of wine for him on the table, and he was expected to come in at night. I decided to stay awake till he came in, but of course, I fell asleep. The next morning I thought: well, maybe next time. When I fell asleep each time I plotted something else. I checked the level of wine in the glass in the morning, and when it looked as if there was less wine left I believed Elijah-ha-nevi had visited our house, indeed! This was the happiest holiday ever.

I also liked Rosh Hashanah and I started fasting on Yom Kippur at an early age. I didn’t like the Sukkot: it was already cold and I didn’t want to have meals in the sukkah. However, Papa made me put on something warm and come into the sukkah for a meal. I remember Chanukkah: the Chanukkah candle stand, the candles that my father lit in the evening, sweet doughnuts, the gifts and some money that I got. I liked all holidays, but seder in our family has particularly warmed my heart ever since.

I went to the Jewish elementary school Tarbut 12 at the age of six. Usually children went to school at the age of seven, but I and two other children who knew the alphabet and could read, were admitted to school. When Romanian inspectors came to the school, we had to hide away, because going to school at the age of six was against the rules. The following year I was admitted to the first grade. I was upset and cried bitterly, fearing that people might think that I had failed with my studies, but then I started getting all excellent marks and became the best pupil. I knew Hebrew and could read and write in Hebrew. I finished elementary school with the best marks. I had all ‘tens’ [the highest point in Romanian schools] marks in my school record card.

I wanted to continue my studies in the Romanian public gymnasium, but I didn’t get the sufficient number of points [admission to the gymnasium was based on the results of Mathematics and dictation tests]. My sister Elka had finished this gymnasium with honors a few years before. Then she went to Bucharest, where she entered the University: Uncle Iosif Pagis advised her to enter the Pharmaceutical Faculty. Several years later Elka realized this wasn’t what she wanted to do. She liked literature. While continuing her studies at the Pharmaceutical Faculty she entered the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy of this University. Elka graduated with two diplomas: in Pharmacology and Literature. She went to work in the Jewish school in the town of Arciz [today Ukraine]. She worked as a teacher. In 1933 she married Mendel Vinograd, the director of this school. When she heard of my failure at the entrance exams to this school, she arrived in Orhei and visited the gymnasium where everybody knew her. She demanded my written work and made sure that the mark given for it was fair. At her request I had another exam and entered the gymnasium.

At the end of my first year the average point of each pupil was written on a board. Olympia Machedon, the daughter of the director of the gymnasium, was the first on the list, Popuzha Popescu, the daughter of a policeman, was number two, number three was Olga Timozina, the daughter of a priest, the fourth was Sarrochka Beilis, a beautiful Jewish girl, and number five was Hana Muchnik. Senior gymnasium girls were asking who was this Hana Muchnik and I ran away humbly. Since then I was number two or three at the end of each year. I was awarded a letter of honor or a gift: books, as a rule. In the sixth grade I happened to be the first on the list and was highly disappointed, when I didn’t get any gift. At the end of vacations I received a big parcel from Bucharest. My friend and I went to the post office to receive it: it contained sketch books and books of Romanian classical and contemporary writers.

The national composition of the gymnasium was diverse. There were Romanian, Moldovan and Russian girls in my class. Half of my classmates were Jewish girls. We got along well and were polite with each other. The Christian girls had religious classes, and so did the Jewish girls: we studied the basics of Judaism. On Jewish holidays the Jewish girls were given vacations. I remember mentioning to my friends my concerns about missing two days of school on Rosh Hashanah and having no notes from classes. Popuzha Popescu heard me saying this and offered me to come by her place and pick up her notes. I went to the policeman’s home and knocked on the door. Nobody answered. The door was open and I stepped into the beautiful fore room. Then I humbly opened a few doors before I came onto the roofed terrace, where the policeman’s family was sitting at the table. I apologized, but the policeman invited me to join them for lunch. Then Popuzha gave me her notes. We joined some kind of a scout organization at the gymnasium. We even wore neckties that looked like pioneer 13 neckties.

There were a number of Zionist organizations in Bessarabia in those years. My older brother Haim moved to Bucharest at the age of 15 and entered a vocational school. Haim became a high-skilled worker. He also became fond of Zionist ideas of restoration of Israel. He joined a Zionist organization of young people, I don’t know the name of this organization, and was preparing for repatriation to Israel. In a camp in the Carpathians he met and fell in love with a Jewish girl named Tubele. When he told Mother about Tubele and his intention to marry her, our mother got very angry: Tubele came from a poor family and wasn’t our equal. Haim left his fiancée and moved to Israel in 1927. He got married there and had a daughter. Haim was involved in the establishment of the kibbutz settlements in Israel. In his letters he tried to convince Anchel to move to Israel. Anchel moved to Palestine in 1936. However, shortly after he moved there, he was killed by terrorists.

I wouldn’t say I had steady Zionist interests, but I joined the Maccabi 14 Zionist organization of young people to keep the memory of my brother. This organization also prepared us for repatriation to Israel. They stated that the establishment of our Jewish state must be peaceful. I attended this organization in secret. I don’t think my gymnasium would have appreciated this had they known.

During the years of class struggle in Bessarabia some young people joined anti-Fascists and the others became Cuzists 15, but I was rather apolitical. I didn’t even know who Lenin 16 was. I heard the name of Stalin, but I hardly knew anything about the Soviet Union. When the Red Army entered Orhei in late June 1940, it was something new and different for me. I had finished the gymnasium with honors by that time. Thus, before I could take my Baccalaureate exam [In Eastern Europe the Bachelor’s degree, noted in the diploma refers to the graduation from high school], the Soviet rule was established. My friends and I decided to greet the Soviet Army. I dressed up and tied a red ribbon in my hair. I remember my father saying sadly seeing this: ‘What are you so happy about, Daughter?’

Seeing the Red Army warriors we felt disappointed: they looked exhausted and dirty. A few days after the Soviet rule was established, the repression and arrests began. Our store was nationalized and they expropriated my grandfather’s part of the house to accommodate some of the Red Army commanding officers. They also occupied our biggest room. My father was summoned to the NKVD office 17, but he said they treated him properly. They explained to him that nationalization was a program of the Soviet government and my father had no resentment toward the Soviet power.

I took up a short-term course of teachers’ training. My sister had tried to teach me some Russian, but it didn’t work. I came to the course hardly having any knowledge of Russian, but the others were no better in this regard. I finished this course two or three months later and received a job assignment to the Moldovan village of Malovata. I had tears in my eyes leaving home: this was my first departure from home. The school I was to work at was on the picturesque bank of the Dniestr. I liked the location and warm weather and I understood there were other places to live in besides Orhei. A few days later Mama arrived and rented a room for me and Sarrah Shoichetman from Orhei, who also came to work at the school. The school consisted of two classes: the 1st and the 2nd grades. Sarrah and I worked quietly in our first year there.

During the war

In the middle of June 1941 I went home for vacation. I also took up a course of advanced teachers’ training. On 22nd June we listened to Molotov’s speech 18. He made the announcement about the start of the Great Patriotic War. I went to the center of town where people were gathering by the radio. At that time the first bombing started. People started to panic. We rushed to the basement of a house and waited till the bombing was over. Then I rushed home worrying about my family. I found Mama sobbing after me at home. Bombings occurred every day. We took hiding in the basement, but my father refused to hide away. He said nothing could happen to him at the synagogue and after each air raid alarm he ran to the nearest ‘market-place’ synagogue.

Elka arrived shortly before the war. Her husband was mobilized to the army. She had had a miscarriage that affected her fertility and she couldn’t have children. My sister went to work at the Orhei Medical School teaching medical nurses for the army. When the evacuation began, the medical school arranged for a wagon for our family. We could load one piece of luggage onto it and had to follow the horse-drawn wagon walking. My sister tried to convince my parents to evacuate, but my mother said she wasn’t going to walk and would try to find another wagon to depart. My sister and I agreed with our parents that we would meet across the Dniestr.

We left Orhei on 7th July. We walked for a few days and couldn’t remember when we had our last meal. During air raids we took hiding in hay stacks and when they were over we buried the dead. When we approached a crossing on the Dniestr River, there was a crowd of people waiting for their turn to cross the river. The army units were the first ones to cross. My sister and I headed back to Orhei. The town was deserted, but my parents and aunt were there. They found no wagon and yet again refused to leave with us.

On 13th July my sister and I left the town another time. We crossed the Dniestr and stopped for a rest in a small forest. I had a red blouse on and had to change it: we were told to wear neutral colors for safety considerations. Then we headed to the railway station and after we covered a few kilometers we saw a train. There was a Ukrainian woman and her son on the open train car with some equipment loaded onto it: they didn’t let us board the platform, but an officer, passing by, helped us onto the platform and told the woman off. We moved on, sitting with our backs to one another, but later we made friends with the guy and he was even courteous, helping me to jump off the train during raids. He also watched that we didn’t walk too far from the train when it stopped.

At the Yasinovataya station [today Ukraine] somebody snatched my bag with our documents and 1000 rubles that I had. However, they dropped some of the documents, but the money was gone. We moved on trying to escape from bombings and Fascists. At a station we heard an announcement: ‘Attention of passengers! The train on the first line heads to Rostov, Stalingrad, Kuibyshev and Saratov.’ We boarded this train and arrived at Rostov [today Russia]. From there we headed to the Northern Caucasus. At one station we bumped into Uncle Leibl’s son Yasha. He asked us to take with us a box with silver tableware, but we had our hands full and my sister advised the boy to leave the silverware with some local residents.

Thus, we reached a village in Ordzhonikidze district [today Azerbaijan] in the Northern Caucasus, 2500 kilometers from Kishinev. We were assigned to a kolkhoz 19; I don’t remember its name or location. My sister went to work as a teacher in a local school. I was young and strong and was sent to work at the threshing floor. I worked for two days and got fever measured at 40 degrees Celsius. I was taken to a hospital and the doctors there got together to decide about my condition. They were talking to one another, thinking that I couldn’t hear them. However, I did hear that I had enteric fever. My doctor felt sorry for me and took care of me as he would of his own daughter. I wouldn’t have survived if it hadn’t been for him. My sister was unaware of what had happened to me. The daughter of the head of the kolkhoz, who was also in my ward and whose family brought her eggs, cottage cheese and sour cream pronounced through her delirium: ‘Have you given food to Nyura – she called me by this Russian name – as I shall not eat the food, if she doesn’t have it’. I asked the nurses to cut my hair short, but an old assistant doctor did what he could to avoid cutting my long hair. When my sister finally visited me, she cut my hair. As soon as I recovered, I developed pneumonia, but I survived again thanks to my young age and human kindness.

My sister’s husband Mendel found us. Bessarabians weren’t mobilized to the front-line forces, because the Soviet authorities didn’t fully trust residents of the areas recently annexed to the USSR, and he was released [Editor’s note: probably this fact had different reasons, since later on there were Bessarabians, as well as Bessarabian Jews in the Soviet army’s front line troops]. Mendel carried me to the car waiting by the front door of the hospital and the three of us drove to Makhachkala [Dagestan, today Russia]. From there we took a boat across the Caspian Sea and from there we took a train to Tajikistan. Our destination was Stalinabad [Dushanbe since 1962, today capital of Tajikistan] where we were accommodated in a barrack for over 100 people. Mendel fell ill with typhus and my sister contracted it as well. A few days later the doctor, a pretty Ukrainian lady diagnosed me with typhus. I was taken to a hospital. It took me a long time to recover and I had to learn to walk anew. All tenants of the barrack fell ill with typhus. About seven of us were released at one time and we had to hold hands to get to our barrack across the town.

My sister met me. Mendel had been mobilized to the labor front 20 in the north and he occasionally sent us food parcels. A few months later we stopped receiving any parcels or even letters from him. Half a year later we received a letter where Mendel wrote that somebody had reported that during the Romanian rule he was a Zionist and an active participant of the Zionist movement. He was convicted to ten years of imprisonment and kept in a camp near Norilsk [Taymir, today Russia].

My sister Elka was a very strong person. She stood up to this disaster. She went to work as a pharmacist. She received rationed food with pork fat, or a pork head or offal. Besides, we had bread cards 21.

Life was improving. I made friends with Gita Luriye, a Jewish girl from Latvia. She convinced me to go to the course of medical nurses for the front. It lasted three months and I finished it with honors, but frankly, I didn’t even know how to make an injection. One month later I was summoned to the military registry office. I went there, but when they found out that I was from Bessarabia they released me. It happened one more time with the same result, but when I was summoned there for the third time, the military commander told me to come back with a spoon and a mug. I packed my clothes and my sister went with me to see me off.

I didn’t even realize that I was mobilized. The first sergeant inspected the line of girls and asked me where I was going. He said that if I was going to the front line I didn’t need my suitcase. I was always sensitive to jokes and this time I burst into tears. So, he let me go back home, leave my suitcase there and take a blanket and a pillow with me. In the morning I came back to the unit again: this was the fifth reserve infantry regiment. We were accommodated in the barrack and received some old uniforms. Every day one of us was sent to the front line. I don’t know whether I would have been sent to the front if I hadn’t fallen ill with malaria. Shivering and fever were exhausting me. I felt like this every day. A professor of the institute of tropical diseases, whom I consulted, explained that I had been bitten by two mosquitoes and I had two types of malaria at the same time: three-day malaria and tropical malaria. I had treatment, but I couldn’t overcome it until I finally returned to Moldova.

I was released. My sister helped me to get a job as a medical nurse in a hospital. It didn’t take long for me to understand that this job wasn’t good for me. When a patient died and the doctor asked me to turn him on his bed I was horrified and ran out of the ward. The doctor told me to think over whether I could be a medical worker. I quit the hospital. My sister helped me again. She helped me to get a job as a medical nurse at the blood transfusion facility. I received rationed food and worked there until the re-evacuation.

When in summer 1944 the liberation of Moldova began, my sister started packing to go back home. Elka wrote a letter to the People’s Commissariat of Education in Soroki [Soroca in Moldovan]. Kishinev was still occupied. Shortly afterwards we received a response and started obtaining all necessary documents. We left home in December 1944. We took a train to Moscow where it took us two days to get tickets to Kishinev. It took us three days to get to Kishinev from Moscow. I had visited Kishinev twice before the war and admired the town. This time I saw it in ruins. We hired a wagon to take us to Orhei. The cabman, a young handsome Moldovan man, asked us about where we were coming from and where we worked. Being rather suspicious, I suspected that he probably had something negative on his mind and told my sister about my suspicions in Yiddish, but she calmed me down. When the guy heard that Elka was a teacher and was going to work in Orhei, he asked her whether she could help him to enter the teacher’s training school. My sister told me in Yiddish that the guy had no evil thoughts.

After the war

We got to the town at about two o’clock in the morning. The town was ruined [according to the official information, about 95 percent of the town was in ruins]. The central street was in ruins, overgrown with weeds. The guy took us in the direction of the light. This place happened to be a militia office and we wanted to stay there overnight. The militiaman on duty told us to leave the office. My sister told him we had nowhere to go and we spent the first night in our hometown by the stove in the militia office.

The following day my sister met an acquaintance of hers, who gave us shelter. I went to where our house had been. I was born and grew up in this house, but I couldn’t find anything. Some passers-by told me that the house was hit by a bomb and the locals disassembled the ruins. They told me about my parents and Aunt Beila, who died a terrible death. On the first day the Fascists gathered all Jews of the town at the quarry and killed them. [Editor’s note: not all the Jews were gathered and killed during the first days. For further information, see glossary 22.] Those people told me they saw my mother, father and Aunt Beila walking there. I was sitting, where I was born and grew up, crying. Then I saw three acacia trees where I used to play as a child.

When my sister and I saw each other again, she told me what I had already been told: her colleagues told her the same story. Elka was told that when the town was liberated, the mass shooting site was dug up to discover the remains of the deceased. The documents of her friend Lyonia Averbukh and his wife were also found there. He was a successful lawyer and had an opportunity to evacuate, but he stayed, convinced by his Cuzist friend Papoy, who told him that not a single hair would fall from his head. However, even Papoy couldn’t save his friend. 

Our life was going on. My sister’s husband was still in prison. Elka went to work at the Teachers’ Training School, where she received a room. It was a little room, but there were two beds, a table, two chairs and even a stove in it. It was all right to live in it! I went to work as a cashier in a canteen. My sister kept telling me that I had to continue my studies at the Medical College. However, after having typhus twice and malaria I was too weak to go to study in a college. My sister told me to try at least a technical school. I entered the Financial School in Kishinev, the Department of Finance and Taxation.

I lived in a hostel and often went to Orhei to visit my sister. My sister and I were very close. I forgot the grudges of my childhood, when I thought the adults didn’t like me and laughed at me. Elka was the dearest person to me. My older brother Haim lived in Israel, but we had no contacts with him. I received a stipend and Elka was supporting me. Of course, life was hard, particularly in 1946-47, when the people starved. However, I have the brightest memories of my student years. There were many Jewish students at my school and I had many Jewish friends. There was no anti-Semitism in those years.

However, I faced prejudiced attitudes during the issuance of job assignments 23. I requested a job in Orhei to be with my sister, but all Jewish students were assigned to the worst locations. I was sent to the godforsaken town of Bravicheny where no transportation was available. I had to walk there. Before long, I wrote a request to relocate me to Orhei and sent it to the Ministry of Finance. They relocated me to Susleny, 15 kilometers from Orhei. I worked in the financial department in Susleny for a few years. My boss was very good to me and helped me to get another assignment. I even had a choice between Bendery, Tiraspol or Beltsy and I chose Bendery.

In early 1953, I moved to work in this town. I worked as a financial officer in this town for 25 years. I received a small room in a shared apartment 24. This was the period of the state level anti-Semitism. I wouldn’t say it affected me. I remember that during the period of the ‘Doctors’ Plot’ 25, when all Jews felt that their people were endangered, my supervisor, basically a nice person , told me how she went to a Jewish doctor, who took a long time to examine her, probably intending to poison her. I listened to such things, but had to keep silent. When Stalin died in 1953, I didn’t grieve or cry. Somehow I knew he was the reason for many of our troubles.

My sister was a good teacher. She kept the fact that her husband was in prison secret, but shortly before 1953 her management declared that she would be fired, being the wife of an ‘enemy of the people’ 26. Now I had to support my sister both morally and financially. Fortunately, shortly after Stalin died, her husband Mendel was rehabilitated 25 and returned to Orhei and Elka returned to work.

I was already 30 years old. I knew I had to somehow take care of my personal life. Somebody introduced me to a single Jewish man in Bendery. His name was Isaac Fishman; he was five years younger than me. He was born in Bendery in 1928. I didn’t feel any love toward Isaac, but I was much attracted by his having a big family. I was missing a big Jewish home and the way of life I was used to since my childhood. I gave my consent to marry him. So it happened that I never knew love for a man in my whole life.

In 1955 Isaac and I registered our marriage, and there was a small wedding dinner. I was well-respected at work and shortly after the wedding I received a two-bedroom apartment. Isaac was a mechanic and a highly-skilled one. He was good to me and we had a good life. My husband’s family celebrated all Jewish holidays, and my husband and I joined them and I felt like I was back in my childhood again. We also celebrated Pesach and had matzah at home. I wasn’t religious and my husband was an atheist, but we liked getting together at the table and giving and receiving gifts, being attached to the traditions of our ancestors.

In 1957 my dearest little daughter was born. I named her Goldina after my mother. She was a sweet and lovely girl. She studied well at school and had the dream to study in a college. We led a modest life. Financial employees had low salaries. However, we had everything we needed. I could even afford to take my daughter to the seashore every summer. Perhaps, this wasn’t good for her. Goldina suddenly fell seriously ill at the age of 17: she happened to have lupus, a rare disease of the immune system. The doctors didn’t know the cause of the disease, but they said it might have been radiation at the sea. My dear little daughter died in 1974, and my life lost any sense whatsoever. I didn’t live my life: I existed. Isaac was also much affected by our daughter’s death. Being a man, he couldn’t show his tears and suffering, but it was very hard on him. In 1976 my husband died from a heart attack. I buried him beside my daughter in the town cemetery in Bendery. There were no rituals, but my father-in-law recited the mourning prayer.

My sister and her husband Mendel lived in Kishinev. Mendel was very ill. He couldn’t work after he returned from jail. He received a miserable pension. They received a small two-bedroom apartment. They were very close. They went for walks and talked a lot as if to compensate for the years they had spent apart. In 1978 Elka became a widow. Two years after her husband’s death she developed diabetes and had her leg amputated. I retired to take care of Elka in Kishinev. Some time later I exchanged my apartment in Bendery for one in Kishinev for my sister and me to have a bigger apartment. I tended to Elka for five years before she died in 1984.

In the early 1990s my brother Haim found me. He lived in Haifa in Israel and I went to visit him. I was happy to have one member of my family in Israel. I admired Israel. What a beautiful country! What nice people: smiling, friendly people, the sea, so much sun! My brother was a worker at a plant, but he has had a very good life. He and his wife have a nice spacious apartment. Unfortunately, he lost his only daughter in the 1980s. She was seriously ill and died young. I was considering moving to Israel, but I’ve always been so irresolute and I feared changing my life at my old age. I feared loneliness in a nice, but different country. Haim didn’t try to convince me, giving me an opportunity to make my own decision. When leaving Israel, I knew it was my farewell to my brother. He died a few years ago. In the mid-1980s I visited Orhei and went to the cemetery. All of a sudden I stopped still, staggered. There was a gravestone with my grandfather’s name engraved on it: Joiseph Muchnik. Since then I’ve been visiting my grandfather’s grave and the mass grave where my parents ended their days.

I am very ill and hardly ever go out. I wouldn’t have lived this long, if it hadn’t been for the support of Jewish organizations and Hesed 27. They give me moral, physical and financial support. There is a visiting nurse tending to me. I have many friends in Hesed. I attend the Day Center where I am taken by a bus and where we listen to Jewish songs. I read Jewish publications. I return to my little town in my thoughts. I would like to immortalize the memory of my dear ones and I write articles to our Jewish newspaper. I think, this story that I’m telling today, will also help to keep the memory of my family and the past of a little Jewish town in Bessarabia.

Glossary:

Boris Vayman
St. Petersburg
Russia
Interviewer: Kira Kuzmina
Date of interview: April 2007

I got acquainted with Boris Davydovich Vayman in his apartment situated in one of the new districts in the south of St. Petersburg. Beforehand we had a telephone conversation and I told him about my wish to interview him to know about his life and his family. Boris seemed to be suspicious and wanted to refuse at first. Then he decided to try, but still remained very strict and unfriendly. Nevertheless we made an appointment for a certain day. An elderly man opened the door. He was neat in his dress and looked young for his years, only his hands were trembling when he closed the door. Later he explained that it was after-effect of contusion which happened during the Great Patriotic War 1.

Boris lives together with his wife in a small and cozy two-room apartment. During our first meeting his wife was out. ‘She is always out, she always has something to do’ Boris commented. Five minutes after the beginning of our conversation Boris changed visibly, turning into a very friendly and kind person, and his severity evaporated. While talking he answered several telephone calls, and I understood that he was going to the theatre to watch K. Raikin's performance. [K. Raikin is a popular actor and producer in Russia.] So at the age of 81Boris lives active life filled with different cultural events.

To my mind, Boris Vayman is the most striking instance of a Soviet citizen. He studied at the ordinary secondary school, finished a technical school, and was a worker at a factory. He was a member of the USSR Communist Party, took part in Soviet demonstrations with pleasure, and celebrated Soviet holidays. He was lucky to come across manifestation of anti-Semitism only once in his life. Boris told nothing about a possible slightest (maybe inward) protest against the Soviet regime or against actions of the Soviet country leaders (except the Doctors’ Plot 2, when he was forced to listen to newspaper articles about doctors-murderers). He left an impression that he did not think about events in the country; he simply took things as they were, lived in the present, not analyzing the past and not thinking about the future. 

My family background

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family background

My ancestors came from Belarus. My maternal great-grandparents were born in Kokhanovichi settlement near Vitebsk 3. They were small peasants. My great-grandfather was also engaged in tailoring. They were religious people and observed all Jewish traditions. They were not rich; they were some sort of well-to-do. Unfortunately I know nothing more about them. They lived long time ago, and my parents seldom recalled them.

My maternal and paternal grandparents were also born in Belarus (they lived in the neighboring villages), and my grandfathers were tailors, too. My maternal grandfather's name was Estrinov, but I do not remember my maternal grandmother's maiden name. My paternal grandfather was a tailor of top class, therefore his family was more substantial than the family of my mother. Members of both families spoke Yiddish, they also knew the Belarusian language. Certainly my paternal grandparents were religious people, too. Some time ago I had a photo of my paternal grandparents. From that photo I know that my grandfather wore a frock coat, boots, a hat. He had no payes, only a beard: it was not full, but small and neat. On that photograph my grandmother wore a scarf, and I am not sure if there was a wig under the scarf. She was very tall and slender, on that photo she was in a black dress with a small white jabot.

My parents told me nothing about their house, but I know that they kept hens and a small vegetable garden, where they grew vegetables. They had no assistants: nobody around them had. They observed all Jewish traditions very strictly: attended synagogue and went to shochet if they wanted to have chicken for dinner. The shochet said his prayers and the chicken was considered to be kosher. My grandfathers were members of no organizations or political parties: they were rather far from politics. They were persons of narrow interests, simple tailors - inhabitants of a Belarus village. I know that at their living place there were about 20 Jewish families and Jews lived together with Belarusians in harmony. Nationality never gave cause for contradictions.

I know almost nothing about my parents’ friends: most probably they were people from their surroundings, because they never left their place. I think that my grandparents never left for vacation. I also know nothing about their brothers and sisters: possibly they had none. You know, unfortunately we never talked about them. My grandparents died when I was a child (about 4 or 5 years old), therefore I do not remember their stories (if they really told me them): I guess I was too little to be interested in them. I remember only some sad stories my mother told about the attitude of Germans to people on the occupied territory, including Jews during the World War I (but no details). I also know nothing about my grandfathers’ army service.

I was born in Leningrad in 1926. I cannot tell you how much Leningrad was Jewish at that time. It was a great city where people of many nationalities (including Jews) lived together. There was no Jewish community regarding the city as a whole, but there was a small Jewish community at the Synagogue. Our family did not participate in the community life, but together with my father and mother we visited Synagogue during Jewish holidays. We lived round the corner, but visited Synagogue only on holidays: just to observe Tradition. In Leningrad Jews lived everywhere (in different districts of the city) and the question of organizing a separate Jewish community never came up for discussion. I can tell you nothing about Jewish schools in Leningrad: I attended an ordinary Soviet school. As far as I remember, before the war burst out (by that time I finished 7 classes) there was only one Jewish school at the Synagogue. So, I studied at an ordinary school, and all events that could be considered Jewish happened at home.

In Leningrad there were no typical Jewish professions: Jews were engaged in different business. For example, my father was a tailor at a fashion atelier, and accordingly he had friends mainly among tailors. Before the war I came across no manifestations of anti-Semitism. I recall some episodes from my childhood when my playmates told me something insulting, but I consider it to be caused by an emotion beyond definition: a word and no more. My parents were absolutely politically indifferent, they used to discuss some problems of everyday life in the kitchen and that was all. My parents were members of no organizations or political parties.

Certainly, I remember parades and holidays. On the 1st of May and on the 7th of November [state holidays in the USSR] we (together with my father) participated in demonstrations. [In the USSR demonstrations of many millions were usually organized during state holidays; people had to express their loyalty to the Soviet regime, demonstrate achievements.] It was my favorite occupation, I went on taking part in demonstrations till 1990s. It was especially pleasant to go on demonstration on the 1st of May when it was warm and sunny. People listened to radio broadcasting and sang cheerful songs. For instance, I remember the song about morning light that paints walls of the ancient Kremlin and wakens our glorious Moscow. That song was a necessary attribute of Soviet demonstrations.

It was my mother who used to go to the market to buy food. Usually she went to Sennoy or Troitsky market. She used to buy milk at the same milkwoman. Having got his month salary, father used to buy a box of tangerines every month. I remember the price: every small tangerine cost 20 kopecks, each big one 40 kopecks. Unfortunately he could not afford it more often than once a month.

My mother Badola Vayman (nee Estrinova) was born in Belarus, in Kokhanovichi village. My father David Vayman was born in Belarus, too (in the neighboring village, but I do not know its name). Mother was born in 1895, and father was younger: he was born in 1898. Both mother and father studied in cheder and finished it. Besides my father was a tailor’s apprentice where he learned to sew and became an expert. Mother had got no profession, she was a housewife and took care of children. Their mother tongue was Yiddish; they also spoke Russian and Belarussian (mother knew German, she managed to learn it during WWI German occupation). 

I do not know how they met each other. But I know that they had both a standard secular marriage ceremony and a ceremony in the synagogue. Before the revolution of 1917 people considered marriage according to religious traditions to be legal, and they went to civilian state registry offices only to settle marriage articles. [Registry offices were obligatory in the USSR.] They got married in 1922.

They used to wear up-to-date clothes of city style, no national Jewish clothes. Our family members were people of moderate means. We were 3 brothers, we were always well dressed, booted and satisfied with food, but at the same time we denied ourselves every luxury.

Before the war burst out, we lived near the Synagogue in the separate two-room apartment with central heating and water supply. There was only one trouble: on a lower floor there was situated a city laundry. Washing was arranged in large wooden tubs; hot water evaporated and exhalation got into our apartment through the open windows: it was absolutely unbearable. At last, parents managed to change that apartment. They gave money (my mother’s brothers helped them financially) and we moved to another apartment near Fontanka River.  

There we also had two rooms, a hall, a kitchen with a stove; there was no bathroom, no central heating. That was the way we lived before the war burst out: mother, father and 3 sons. We had no assistants: we could not afford a servant. Mom did the housework and took care of her sons herself. At home we had many books: only secular literature. For the most part it was Daddy who read the books. Having come home after his working day father liked to read Russian and world classical literature: Pushkin 4, Dostoevsky 5, Tolstoy 6, Cervantes [Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) was a Spanish writer] and certainly Sholem Aleichem 7. He never advised me regarding books to read. At school where I studied, our teacher of literature was a distant relative of Gorky 8. She managed to implant the love of reading and collecting books in her pupils. We all loved her very much. After the end of the war in 1948 I arrived in Leningrad and we (all her former pupils who remained alive) gathered at her place. We visited her many times. Parents did not go to library, because it was possible to buy any book you liked. Those books circulated among relatives and friends until they were thumbed out of existence.

Parents did not observe all Jewish traditions, but they celebrated Jewish holidays. They used to gather at one of Mom’s brothers or at our place. Father knew prays and said them on holidays. Parents never were active members of the Jewish community: they were not interested in politics, organizations and parties. The only organization my father joined was a labor union of sewers: it was obligatory.

My father was a participant of the World War I. He served as an infantryman in Grodno [a city in Belarus]. He was there until the end of the war. In 1941 when the Great Patriotic War burst out, he was drafted during the first days, and 2 or 3 months later we received a notification about his death. In fact he was considered to be missing, but till now we know nothing about his fate.

We had very good neighbors and I remember their surname till now: the Korsunskies. They were Russian, they were very kind, and we never had a difference about nationalities. Mom liked them very much. I also made friends with our neighbor Polyansky: he was 2 years older than me. By the way, much later there happened a marvelous coincidence: when the war was finished, I was moving to the Far East and suddenly at a railway station near Moscow met Polyansky. You know, we never met again. I know nothing about him and it was hard to imagine his life after our meeting, because they were on their way back from captivity.

My parents made friends with both Jews and Russians: there was no difference for them. All our neighbors loved my father very much, because he was very kind, the kindest person I knew. Mother often criticized him severely for his kindness, because he was always ready to help, to repair clothes, etc. Daddy had no enemies or evil-wishers. Father made friends with mother’s brothers. They both lived not far from our place.

Summer vacations we (children) used to spend with our Mom in Belarus at Mom’s sister Dasha. Here I’d like to tell you that besides 3 sons, our parents had got 2 daughters (our sisters), but unfortunately they both died at a very young age. One of them (Bella) died in Belarus during our summer holiday in 1940. She was only 1 year old. She ate some grass and fell ill of dysentery. Doctors did not manage to save her life. And our 2nd sister Tanya was the eldest: she was born in 1924. But in 1929 she hit her head somehow and died. In our family only the boys remained alive. We spent our summer vacations in Belarus, and father worked all the time. Rarely he went for vacation to a recreation house (his labor union gave him permits) in Kislovodsk 9 and to sanatorium in Sestroretsk [a suburb of St. Petersburg].

My aunt Dasha (Mom’s elder sister) died together with all her family during German occupation. People suggested her to evacuate, but she refused: she had been told that during the World War I Germans did not persecute Jews. Mom also had 2 brothers: Roman (born in 1893) and Konstantin (born in 1902). Her brothers were tailors, too, but they were tailors of a very high class. Konstantin, the younger brother left for front line, was badly wounded and demobilized. He lived in Leningrad and died in 1954. Roman, the elder brother also participated in war (he served in auxiliary arm). He was demobilized after the end of the war and lived in Leningrad, too. He died there in 1980 at the age of 87. Roman studied at the Textile College in the same group with Kossygin, the future chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers. When Kossygin came to Leningrad, he usually gathered his fellow-students to have a talk. I do not remember where Mom’s younger brother studied. Roman had got a son, but he died at a very young age in 1929: his nurse did not take good care of him (he fell down) and told nothing to his parents. And Konstantin had got 2 sons and a daughter. At present his daughter is 82 years old, she is a doctor (graduated from the 1st Medical College in Leningrad). Konstantin’s younger son has already died, and his 2nd son is now a pensioner and lives in Sverdlovsk [a city in Urals]. He was a nuclear physicist (graduated from the Leningrad Polytechnical College) and worked at Sverdlovsk Nuclear Center.

Parents communicated only with Mom’s brothers. Families met on Jewish and Soviet state holidays (every family received guests in turn), but on Pesach we met only at Mom’s elder brother: it was agreed.

Growing up

I was born on October 1, 1926 in Leningrad. I never attended kindergarten, I was at home with Mom. While I was little I used to spend much time outdoors: I played in the court yard. The court yard was rather small. Its gate was usually closed, therefore it was not dangerous for a child to be there (and Mom kept an eye on me from the window). Later I became a schoolboy. First 3 years I studied at school №4 and then changed it for the school №20 (it was situated near the Maryinsky Opera and Ballet Theatre. [The Maryinsky Opera and Ballet Theatre was founded in 1783 in St. Petersburg.]

Both schools were ordinary Soviet schools, and I do not remember why I changed one for another. My favorite lessons were literature, chemistry and physics. We all liked our teacher of literature very much. Our teacher of chemistry was not extremely good in teaching, but she was so charming that all boys of our class were in love with her. Of course there were teachers whom we did not like, for example a teacher of manual training was a terrible pain in the neck. We also were allergic to our teacher of mathematics. During my school years I never came across manifestations of anti-Semitism. After school I was occupied in no additional studies.

At school I had a friend (a Jew); he was a year older than me. We were good friends, often visited each other and our parents were acquainted. His parents were well-to-do, he had got a good camera and we took photographs and developed them - it was very interesting for me! After school we liked to go to the cinema. If I got good marks at school and behaved well, Mom gave me 25 kopecks for cinema. We liked to go to the RECORD cinema (it was situated in Sadovaya Street). We also frequently visited the so called Sea Crew Club where they arranged festivals. I did not go in for sports regularly, but liked to kick the ball about in the street.

During our summer vacations in Belarus I had many local friends, but in winter we did not keep in touch. Several times we rented dacha 10 in Vyritsa [a suburb of Leningrad] for summer and several times I went to a pioneer camp 11 in Siverskaya [a suburb of Leningrad]. That camp belonged to the labor union of sewers. There were a lot of circles: poker-work and joinery for boys and needlework for girls. For all children they arranged sports games, competitions, and walking-tours.

My younger brother’s name was Naum. He was born in 1929. He finished the Technical School of Soviet Trade. [Technical School in the USSR and a number of other countries was a special educational institution preparing specialists of middle level for various industrial and agricultural institutions, transport, communication, etc.] As he was only 12 years old when the war burst out, he was not drafted and we remained in Leningrad during its blockade 12. As soon as it was lifted, we (together with Mom) left for evacuation. After the end of the war he worked in the Leningrad trading port as a foreman. He had got a daughter and a granddaughter. Naum died in 1986.

The youngest brother Anatoly was born in 1935. He finished a secondary school, served in the army. All his life long he worked at the factory of radio engineering equipment, he was a first class expert. He also had got a daughter, she works as a financier. She has got a son, he is already 22 years old. Anatoly died in 2005 (15 days before his 70th anniversary).

At home we only celebrated Jewish holidays. We attended synagogue (with parents) only on holidays, too. I studied at the ordinary school, therefore I learned neither Hebrew, nor religious traditions. Parents never taught me observing traditions, but I watched them celebrating holidays and studied. Chanukkah was my favorite holiday and I’ll explain you why: on that holiday people give presents to each other and frequently give money; when on Chanukkah we visited our uncles they always gave me money. That is why I loved that holiday very much.

During the war

Before the Holocaust I studied at school. During the Holocaust I was in the besieged Leningrad, then at the Railway Transport School in Omsk. Later we together with my Mom and brothers evacuated to Kazakhstan, and therefrom I left for front. Fortunately Holocaust affected neither me nor my family. We got to know about it much later.

We went in evacuation to Kazakhstan (to Kokchetav) when the blockade of Leningrad was lifted. There Mom got fixed up in a job at a stud farm. I do not remember what kind of work she did, but I can tell you that she received very good salary: we bought a cow and were provided with milk. It happened in 1943 when I was 16 years old. As I was brought in the spirit of patriotism, I went to a military registration and enlistment office (in secret from Mom) to submit an application for sending me to the front line. Officers from the local military registration and enlistment office told me that I was too young, that it was necessary to grow up and put me out of doors. But I was very persistent and at last at the age of 16 years and 8 months they took me to the army.

By the way, earlier on our way to Kokchetav a tragedy happened: I was left behind the train in Kirov (now Vyatka). Mom sent me to buy a glass of berries at the railway station, and at that time the train left. I remained alone without documents and money. The commandant of the railway station took pity upon me and placed me in the hospital: you can imagine what a child from the besieged Leningrad looked like!

I do not remember how much time I spent in the hospital. Later they sent me to Omsk [a city in Siberia] by train. There local authorities gave me new documents (restored according to my words) and sent me to the Railway Transport Technical School to become a machinist assistant. During that period of time I knew nothing about my Mom and brothers, but I knew the address of the wife of my mother's brother: she and her children were evacuated to Sverdlovsk. I wrote her a letter and she informed me where Mom was. That was the way I found mother in Kokchetav. As my technical school was a military organization, they refused to let me off. And do you know what an idea came to my mind? I turned out to be clever enough to ask Mom to send me a document that she was near death! But Mom managed to send me such document (she even managed to make the document attested!).

That was the way I arrived in Kokchetav to my Mom. There I secretly started visiting the local military registration and enlistment office. I did not want to come back to Omsk to the School I did not like. At last they sent me call-up papers and Mom had no choice but to let me go (by the way, she never got to know that it was me who initiated the process). The military registration and enlistment office sent me to the Aviation Military School. I was going to become an air-fitter. The school was evacuated to Petropavlovsk (in Kazakhstan) from Leningrad. There I studied half a year. Of course they did not teach us to be mechanics, they simply prepared us for war: we practised shooting, dug entrenchments, etc. In September 1943 we were sent to Vitebsk region and my soldier’s life started.

I sustained my first shock in entrenchments full of water: at night the water had iced and my feet became pieces of ice, my overcoat turned into ice armor.

At that time we (consisting of the 3rd Belarusian front) were going to assume the full-scale offensive. I got to the division #17 (to the flame thrower platoon). I’ll explain you what it meant. I had to carry a knapsack weighing 6 kg. Inside the knapsack there was a napalm-cylinder weighing 5 kg. In total I carried 13 kg on my back and a gun (flame thrower) in my hands. I pulled the trigger and flame 50 meters in length burnt everything on its way.

The front passed to the offensive and started its fight for liberation of Belarus. Our platoon used to join special storm-troops and we smoked Germans from their covers.

We fought our way through Belarus and crossed the border of Lithuania. In Vilnius during street fighting our weapon was very useful: we burnt fascists out from the houses. There I was shell-shocked for the first time: I was running across the street and fell down. Fortunately I fell behind a wall; otherwise I would have been killed. I regained consciousness in the hospital. The contusion appeared to be very serious: I lost my hearing and became speechless. It was terrible to think that it was for ever. Treatment took 3 months, but my young and healthy constitution helped me to come through the illness. Fortunately both speech and hearing were back to normal. That contusion happened on July 10, 1944. Therefore Vilnius was liberated without me (on July 13).

3 months later I recovered and got back to my platoon (by that time it approached the border of Eastern Prussia). We passed to the offensive on January 13. We quickly went through 3 lines of German entrenchments, but on the 4th one a mortar shell exploded and I was wounded in the leg. I fell down into entrenchment. The wound was not terrible: the bullet missed the bone. I spent 17 days in the front hospital and again got back to my platoon. We participated in the storm of Kongsberg 13.

We burnt enemies out from houses, pillboxes and fortifications. Now I realize that those days were terrible, because we felt the near end of the war and were keen to meet the victory alive. In April we liberated Konigsberg and stopped: we did not move farther, because the war was coming to its end.

But for me the war was not finished, because the war with Japan 14 began. In June they sent us to the Far East by trains. We got off in Chita and went at the march through Mongolia. It was extremely hot there (about 30 degrees centigrade), our way ran through sands. Because of the hot weather, we moved only at nights. They drew a rope between the endmen to prevent soldiers leave the column and be lost in the dark steppe or get under the tracks of tanks (tanks were moving along the roadsides).

So from Chita we moved through Mongolia, through Great Khingan Mountains, reached Manchuria [China] and met the Japanese army. It appeared to be a great surprise for the Japanese; they began to surrender, and we captured Port Arthur [a port in China]. On September 4 Japan capitulated. I went on serving as a soldier in Port Arthur. First I served in the regiment, then in the commandant's platoon (the commander’s guard). Later the commander made me his personal driver. In 1948 he gave me leave of absence and I went to Leningrad, but came back. I served there till 1950 and at last I received my demobilization documents … but at that time a war between Northern and Southern Korea burst out. We had to convoy tanks for Northern Korea. We reached the place, handed tanks over to the local military and moved to Vladivostok [the USSR port on Pacific Ocean] by a warship. From Vladivostok I moved home. So in fact my service ended only in 1950.

After the war

I returned to our apartment near Fontanka River, which remained safe. Mom came back from evacuation in the beginning of 1945. It was possible for the citizens to return to Leningrad only if they had a document that your former living space remained safe. Her brother sent her an invitation and the document, therefore she returned to Leningrad together with my brothers. I saw Leningrad not right after the war, but only in 1948 (being on leave); therefore I do not remember ruins or other effects of war. By 1948 Leningrad was already repaired (for the most part) and put in order.

I returned home and became a metalworker at the Krasny Treugolnik factory. [The Krasny Treugolnik factory produced rubber goods.] I came there on November 1, 1950.

I never discussed the question of emigration and never wished to emigrate: in this country nobody ever griped me, I had no conflicts with local authorities. I was a member of the USSR Communist Party. Probably I was not a 100-percent communist, but I really believed in the bright future. Nobody from my close friends emigrated. Some of my acquaintances left for the USA. I took their departure hard: I felt like a piece of my body broke away, but the idea of leaving never came into my head.

I came to the Krasny Treugolnik [‘Red Triangle’ in Russian] factory in 1950 and worked there till 1991 (until I retired on pension). At first I worked as a metalworker, then as a foreman, later I became a master and then a shift chief. Already being a factory worker, I finished the Leningrad Welding Technical School, and later the Technological College (faculty of the controlling and measuring apparatus). Naturally I was a part-time student.

I came across manifestation of anti-Semitism in 1953 (for the first and the only time in my life) during the time of Doctors’ Plot. Our director liked to read aloud articles about the so-called doctors-murderers, and every time he came to me personally and invited me to listen. He insisted that I occupied one of the front seats and kept vigilant watch on me. I had to listen to those crazy articles, lampoons, and terrible dirt. Till now it is hard to recollect. His attitude to me affected my career. When I worked as a foreman, I was invited to become a head of rationalization department. It was a prestigious position, highly paid. There it was necessary to work with new projects; I liked it and wanted to be engaged in it very much. But the director rejected the suggestion. Later Stalin died and the dust settled. The only thing in my life affected by anti-Semitic laws and moods was my wish to go abroad for touring: of course they did not let me out. So first time I went abroad (to Yugoslavia) was in 1968. After that, touring became easier and I visited Austria and Italy.

I never chose friends according to their nationality. It was not important for me: I am an internationalist.

I got married in 1953. My uncle acquainted me with my future wife. She was 1 year older than me. She was born in 1925 in Leningrad. Her name was Dora Tantvorg. She was a highly educated woman: she graduated from the College of Foreign Languages and knew 2 languages (English and German). She worked as a college teacher. She had got 2 brothers. We lived together 6 years and then got divorced. We have got a daughter.

Later I got married for the second time. We got acquainted at the Krasny Treugolnik factory. My second wife’s name was Ludmila Spitsnadel. She was born in 1931 in Leningrad. I know that her father came from Latvia. We never discussed her nationality: according to her passport she was Russian, but her maiden name gives different information. She graduated from the Pedagogical College named after Hertzen. All her life long she was a trade-union worker at the Krasny Treugolnik factory (she was the head of a cultural department). We have got no children.

My daughter Diana was born in Leningrad in 1954. She studied at an ordinary school. We brought her up according to Soviet traditions. For the most part her grandmother and grandfather took care of her. Certainly she knows that she is Jewish, and she considers herself to be a Jewess, but we never accented it. She graduated from the Technological College. At present she works as a head of technical department at LENGAZ. [LENGAZ was the Leningrad municipal gas economy.] She is married, but they have got no children, and accordingly I have got no grandchildren. My family does not observe Jewish traditions: we do not celebrate Jewish holidays, do not attend the Synagogue. All those traditions are dead customs for us. Among my friends there are both Jews and Russians. Of course all the time I was in touch with my Mom, her brothers and their children (i.e. my cousins), and of course with my brothers. We used to meet at somebody’s place to celebrate state holidays and family celebrations.

Stability came into my life after 1950s. I had got a family, a job. I made a good salary and became an independent person. In 1953 Stalin died and the unpleasant situation at my work improved. The intensity of propagation decreased.

Rupture of diplomatic relations with Israel affected me the following way: in 1968 I was going to Yugoslavia as a tourist. My name had to be approved by the factory administration. Our director invited me for a talk and asked me about my attitude to the conflict between Palestine and Israel. I answered diplomatically that I thought Israeli territories should belong to Israel, and Palestinian ones to Palestine. The administration members smiled ironically and approved my candidature. That was the way I went to Yugoslavia.

I never visited Israel. I had an opportunity to go there, but I did not take the occasion: my health forbade my coming and I did not want to change the climate. I got to know about death of several persons who left for Israel and could not endure the rigors of local climate. It frightened me very much, and I refused to go.

As far as I know my daughter never came across manifestations of anti-Semitism. Her nationality was of no significance during her entrance exams at College or later at her work.

I have no relatives abroad. Some of my acquaintances left for the USA, but it happened about 8  years ago, therefore it was not dangerous for me to be in touch with them (though earlier it could be extremely dangerous).

I was very glad to witness changes in the world political situation. I was especially glad that the Berlin Wall was destroyed. [Berlin wall was erected in 1961 to divide Western part of Berlin from the Eastern one. It was destroyed in 1989. It was symbolical that its concrete was used to construct highways of the united Germany. It was demolished in 1989.] We used to take a jaundiced view of Germany, though today it is an absolutely different country with different principles. They feel guilty of both Holocaust and war and they want to be purged of sin. At present they are absolutely different people and it is necessary to be understood.

In general I cannot say that my life changed much after 1989. About 10 years ago I started taking part in activities of the Jewish Organization of War Veterans. It helps Jews to observe traditions. They behave tactfully: celebrate not only Jewish holidays, but for example the Victory Day (on May 9 they usually rent theatre premises and invite us there). Jewish amateur groups use to take part in great concerts devoted to the Victory Day: they dance, recite poems, etc. The concerts are usually very interesting.

I receive food packages from the Hesed Avraham Welfare Center 15. Some time ago they gave us large packages with a lot of food, but now they are much smaller (unfortunately).

I never received any financial assistance from Switzerland, Germany or Austria.

I was lucky that during my long life I came across manifestations of anti-Semitism only once, but I remember it till now.

Glossary:

Boris Pukshansky
St. Petersburg
Russia
Interviewer: Olga Egudina
Date of interview: June 2006

Boris Efremovich Pukshansky lives alone in a small, very modest one-room apartment. He lived a very interesting life.

Terrible ordeal he underwent would be enough for several persons: German ghetto, loss of family, participation in battles. His work during peace time was also more than serious: he participated in creation of submarine fleet of the USSR.

This elderly and not healthy person immediately changes, when he starts speaking about his way through the war: he straightens his shoulders, his voice gets stronger, and here we see a brave scout who crossed front line many times.

Boris Efremovich did not die to the world: he is interested both in politics and the latest works of fiction, and also in people around him. But to tell the truth, contacts with people are just what he needs most of all.

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

• My family background

Unfortunately I know nothing about my great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers.

Therefore I’ll start with the story about my grandmothers and grandfathers. First I’ll tell you about my father’s parents. His father’s name was David Pukshansky. They said that our surname came from Puksha village, where our ancestors lived. But my grandfather and his wife Hana lived in a small Belarus town Yanovichi. They had got 7 children (for those times it was not many): two sons (Afroim and Zuse) and five daughters (Frume, Sifra, Bela, Leye and Rokhl). All of them except Bela had got children.

My grandfather was born approximately in 1850, and died in 1930. My grandmother was a little bit younger. Both of them lived in Yanovichi all their life long, and were buried there. Grandfather died accidentally and tragically: he was crushed to death by suddenly opened gate. Grandmother outlived him by a short while. After their death my father's brother and his family lodged in their house.

My grandfather was one of shoppy people: some sort of chapman. He bought small items necessary in housekeeping and sold them in neighboring villages. Both my grandfather and grandmother were very religious people. I never saw grandfather without a hat. He had a big spade beard. Grandmother always wore a wig, she told me that her head was closely cropped. They observed strict kashrut, celebrated all religious holidays and Shabbath. They talked to each other only Yiddish, but thanks to their religiousness both also knew Hebrew well.

I know that my grandmother descended from a large family, though I do not remember exactly how many sisters and brothers she had got. And I can tell you nothing about my grandfather's family.

Now about my mother’s parents: her father was Mates Levergant and her mother’s name was Sore Isaakovna (I do not remember her maiden name). They were born in 1850s. They lived in Belarus small town Ostrovno. I do not remember his occupation, I only know that his profession was somehow concerned with wood. For a long time they had no children. But later (thanks God!) there were born my Mum and 3 more children: Berte, Gerzl and Isaak. The family of my mother’s parents was very religious: they strictly observed all traditions. Grandmother and grandfather dressed as expected from religious Jews.

Yanovichi, a small town of my childhood was a real Jewish shtetl. About 80% of its population was Jewish. Even Russians in our small town spoke Yiddish well. Yanovichi was situated about 20 kilometers far from Vitebsk. There was no railroad. I do not remember any stone houses in Yanovichi, only wooden. And I do not remember that Jews in our small town had some special occupations. From my parents I got to know that in our town all doctors were Jewish (without exception), the most well-known was therapeutist Livshits, he was also the most respected person.

There were several synagogues (I do not know how many, but remember that not one). Grandfather was an honorary synagogue visitor. Certainly there were shochetim, all Jews asked for their assistance. Shochetim were always in popular demand.

I was born in 1924 in Yanovichi. First 6 years of my life I lived together with my parents, brothers and sister in the house of my grandmother and grandfather. You see, my father was the elder son among 7 children, and he made his duty to live with his parents and help them. Father told me that in Jewish families the elder son was allowed to marry only if all his sisters were already married or agreed with his marriage.

We lived in a big wooden house. In the court yard there were many household constructions. There were neither water nor electricity supply. We cooked meals in the Russian stove 1, it was also used for heating. The house was illuminated by means of oil lamps. There were no paved roads in Yanovichi.

We always had a cow and hens. Near the house there was a large vegetable garden. Vegetables from it were enough only to feed our family, we never sold them. We had no assistants at home. I remember that it were Mum and father who did almost everything about the house. When my father was little, all work about the house was made by my grandmother, and grandfather earned money (by the way, very little money).

At home we all spoke only Yiddish. Adults started speaking Hebrew when they discussed something secretly (not for children). I was 6 when my grandfather started teaching me Hebrew. But by the moment when members of our family ceased living together, I had time to learn only the alphabet. So I did not manage to speak Hebrew.

Parents were hard on us (children). Since childhood we were accustomed not to break into conversation of adults. ‘Sit still and be silent’ grandfather used to say, and I remember his words until now. Grandfather used to speak in proverbs. I remember some of his favorite vivid expressions: ‘A liar is worse than a thief ‘,  ‘Better strike, than insult’, etc.

Most of our neighbors were Jews. I do not remember any manifestations of anti-Semitism in our town; of course I was a child, but I also don’t remember my parents speaking about it.

I don’t remember a market day in our town, but I remember very well that peasants from neighboring villages brought us different products for sale. They were grandfather’s acquaintances whom he met during his trips. He had fair name, everybody knew that he would never deceive neither in the process of selling, nor buying.

Now I’ll tell you about my parents.

My father Pukshansky Afroim Davidovich was born in Yanovichi in 1884. He finished only cheder. Father (like grandfather) was a very religious person. He earned his living the same way as my grandfather did: peddled wares from village to village. But after a number of years he mastered another profession: he started buying and currying leather. Besides he knew much about domestic animals: people always asked advice from him purchasing cows and sheep. He also was learned in the veterinary medicine. Neighbors often came running to him and asked his assistance in difficult delivery of a cow or in treatment of a diseased horse.

My father was exempt from military service, because according to the law elder son was not eligible for imperial army draft.

My Mum’s name was Genye Matesovna. Her maiden name was Levergant. She was born in Belarus shtetl Ostrovno in 1892. She received only primary education. Marriage of my parents was partly arranged by a matchmaker. I say partly, because after their specially arranged meeting, events developed too quickly for that sort of marriage: my future parents fell in love with each other and got married very soon. Their first meeting took place on the neutral territory in Vitebsk. Wedding took place in Yanovichi in 1919, and the married couple lodged in the house of my father’s parents. As far as I understand, it was not easy for Mum to live there, because Daddy had got 5 sisters, and all of them gave a hostile reception to their young sister-in-law. They all told parents on her. But Mum was a very clever woman, she carried herself with dignity and never stooped to gossip. Therefore little by little everybody started respecting her.

Financial position of our family was very modest. Father was only eager to give education to his children. He used to say that he did not manage to receive education, therefore he wanted his children to be happier from that point of view. Here I’d like to say that all children in our family received higher education (my elder brother had no time to graduate). All of us were always the best pupils wherever we studied.

When I was 6 years old (in 1930), we moved to the city of Liozno. Liozno was a regional center and a large railway junction. There my father was offered to work at a supplying center. But parents also had an idea to give their children opportunity to study somewhere. Probably, it was not so pleasant for sisters of my father (by that time they were no more young) that he left parents: they got used to the fact that my father and Mum took care of their parents. By the way, one of my father’s sisters Sifra and her husband lived in Liozno. By the moment of our leaving for Liozno we were already a family of 6.

After Yanovichi Liozno seemed to us almost Paris. All the streets were paved - this fact shocked me. In general life there was absolutely different. There for the first time in my life I saw people simply walking along the streets - I never saw something of that kind in Yanovichi. Percent of Jewish population was lower, than in Yanovichi. Nobody forced Jews to settle in a certain place, but historically it happened that in the city there were districts with more Jewish and less Jewish population. At first we had no place for living. But later aunt Sifra and her family moved to Leningrad, and we lodged in her house. Her house was small and not very comfortable, therefore father dreamed to move to more suitable lodging. Soon we managed to buy our own house. It was situated not in the most Jewish district of the city, our neighbors were mainly Russians. Parents were always in good relations with neighbors: as they say, they did not argue about borders, but inter nos they spoke about neighbors not always respectfully.

Our house was not very big (we had not enough money for a bigger one), but for us it was cozy and quiet. There was stove heating and no water supply. Electricity supply appeared much later.

We had a large vegetable garden, a cow and hens. Later we even bought a pig, but only to plump it for sale (at home we never ate pork). When I grew up, it came to my mind that probably parents bought a pig to show the neighbors that they were not very religious Jews. You see, by that time Soviet authority already started struggle against religion, and it was possible to expect troubles.

When my younger brother grew up a little, Mum started working as a saleswoman in a food store. We all kept the house together. Each of us (children) had a certain task about the house, and I don’t remember that some of us failed to fulfill it. 

In Liozno there lived 2 or 3 father’s cousins. We made friends with their children.

At home we had a lot of religious books and not many books of other kind. Most often books were brought home by my sister, who studied at a Belarus school. Her books were in Belarussian language. Later I started borrowing books at our school library.

Among us my sister was the most sociable and active. My elder brother was very clever and capable, he had pronounced aptitude for engineering. I also was not a fool, but very silent, therefore some people thought that I was unsociable. When Mum went to Torgsin stores 2 to sell something, she took me with her, because she was sure that I would tell nobody about it. By the way, Mum never went to Torgsin stores in our city, we always went to the neighboring one. That was the way I went by train for the first time in my life. And by car I went for the first time very late in my life: probably already in the army. By the way, if we speak about technical achievements, I’d like to tell you that in our class only one boy had watches. Almost all teachers asked him ‘What time is it now?’ They had no watches.

In 1933 in Ukraine people were starving. We got to know about it, because in our city there appeared refugees from Ukraine, extremely famished. At our city it was a little bit better, but we had food card 3. People stood in lines to buy bread, and the ration decreased day by day. If we had no vegetable garden, we would not survive. We had to buy hay for our cow, and it was also not easy, because only a few owners sold it: every person keeping a cow wanted to keep hay.

• Growing up

At the age of 7 I went to school. In Liozno there were 3 schools: Belarussian, Jewish, and Latvian. Running a few steps forward, I’d like to tell you that the Latvian school was closed first, and the Jewish one functioned till 1938. [In 1918 Soviet authorities permitted national minorities to teach their children at schools in their mother tongue. But in 1938 they issued an edict ordering to teach all schoolchildren in Russian.]

Parents sent me to the Jewish school. My elder brother Mikhail also studied at the Jewish school, Sofye went to Belarussian one, and my younger brother Jacob went to the Russian school, opened instead of the Jewish one. My school was very good. I remember surname of our director - Kaplan, and the head of studies - Raikhshtein. When the school was closed, they accused Kaplan of Zionism. Kaplan taught Russian language and Russian literature, and Raikhshtein was a teacher of Yiddish and Jewish literature. All subjects at school were taught in Yiddish. German and Russian languages were taught as foreign ones. I recollect my school with great pleasure. Most of all I liked mathematics, and later I took a great interest in chess. Chess became my love for ever. At present I am writing a book about chess, and I’ll tell you how it began. After the death of my grandmother and grandfather, father visited Yanovichi from time to time to bow his thanks to their tombs. Sometimes he took me with him.

There we used to stay at father's sister Leye. She had got 4 children, and one of them taught me to play chess. I quickly mastered this game. In the meantime the newspaper Pionerskaya Pravda [literally, Pioneer’s Truth, a newspaper for teen-age pioneers in the Soviet Union] announced a chess competition, and started publishing chess problems. Together with my friend we got the feel of solving them, therefore we began sending them our decisions. I became one of the winners. After that Pionerskaya Pravda and Zateynik magazine organized a correspondence chess match. Each team consisted of 75 persons. Our team won. I was awarded a book Life of Insects. Do not ask me what connection between insects and chess was. Perhaps they wanted chess players to develop harmoniously and widen range of our interests. By that time I became much stronger as a chess player, therefore I began inventing my own chess problems.

I finished 7 classes of the Jewish school and it was closed. I became a pupil of the 8th class at the Russian school. While I studied at the Jewish school, my friends were mainly Jews. At the Russian school I made new friends, not only Jews. Our favorite amusement was football. We played everywhere: in the street, at school. We used every free minute for that purpose. Our ball was not perfect, we played a rag ball. Once my younger brother kicked the ball and broke glass of Stalin's portrait. Mum was invited to school. She immediately replaced the glass and begged teachers not to set the affair going. At that time such child's prank was enough to shipwreck his hopes.

In our city there was a good cinema arranged in the church building (that church was closed during campaign against religion). We often watched films there, tickets were very cheap.

Parents made friends mainly with their relatives - cousins of my father. But they had little time for conversations. In 1939 my mother’s parents moved to Liozno from Ostrovno. They rented a room in the house next ours. After my grandfather’s death in 1940, grandmother lodged at us.

Our family went on observing traditions (as we did in Yanovichi), celebrating holidays. But nobody knew about it: neither neighbors, nor our schoolmates! Father prayed every day, but he did it at home. He did not visit the synagogue.

I remember some political events of that time. I remember well that after occupation of Poland in 1939 [on September 1, 1939 after a long political crisis, Germany invaded Poland] in Liozno there appeared many refugees (most of them were Jews). At school they recommended us not to talk to them (they were afraid of capitalist propagation). I also remember the beginning of campaign, which later received the name of Great Terror 4. In our city there worked an important Communist Party official Deniskevich, he was moved to Liozno from Minsk. Now I understand that his appointment to our small city from the capital of Belarus was the end of his career. A little bit later he was arrested and they instituted open legal proceedings against him. As it was customary at that time, he was accused of sabotage. [According the Soviet criminal law sabotage was considered especially dangerous state crime directed towards enfeebling of the Soviet state. During Great Terror false and ridiculous charges in sabotage were common.] I was present at the trial. Certainly I understood nothing and considered Deniskevich to be a real evildoer. He was sentenced to be shot.

My parents never went away for vacation. They worked days and nights!

Our parents never discussed politics in our presence. So I know nothing about their political views.

As I already mentioned, in our family there were 4 children. My sister Sofye was the only girl in our family, she was born in 1920. My brother Mikhail was born in 1921. I was born in 1924 and my younger brother Jacob - in 1929. We all were born in Yanovichi. Our sister Sofye studied very well, but a little bit worse than me and Mikhail. She became a student of the Pedagogical College in Vitebsk (geographical faculty). When the war burst out, she hurried up home. I’ll tell you about her destiny a little bit later. Unfortunately my story will be short. Mikhail finished school in 1939. Our father had friends (Efross), whose relatives taught in Leningrad in the Technological College. These relatives often came to Liozno in summer. They advised Mikhail to enter their College. Mikhail easily passed entrance examinations and at the College had only excellent marks. By the beginning of the war he managed to finish 2 courses. Mikhail was not eligible for army draft because of a wall-eye, but he volunteered and became a member of people's volunteer corps. [During the Great Patriotic War voluntary detachments consisted of persons who were not called up immediately after the beginning of the war due to different reasons. Badly trained and poorly armed volunteers sustained great losses during fights in autumn of 1941.] In 1941 he was killed near Luga. His surname can be found on the marble board in the lobby of the Technological College among surnames of other victims.

• During the war

By the beginning of the war Jacob finished 5 classes. I’ll tell you about his destiny later.

I finished my school in 1941. On June 21 we had our final party. I received school-leaving certificate with gold frame which included the text that I had the right to enter any educational institution of our country without entrance examinations. I wanted to enter the Leningrad Aviation College. But next day the war burst out and changed my plans 5. It became clear that Germans will soon be in Liozno and it was necessary to evacuate. We kept in mind stories of refugees from Poland about barbarities of Germans, therefore we did not hesitate. First we decided to ship off only children, but Mum thought it over and said that it was not clever to separate during hard times and we should leave all together. Daddy objected (he could not leave his work), but Mum insisted. We started preparing for departure, packed up some things, and registered for departure by train leaving on July 5.

We worried about Mikhail, but hoped that in Leningrad he would be safer, than we were. On July 3 Stalin addressed people on the radio. It was his first speech after beginning of the war. He said that actions took place only on borders and they would not last long. He asked people not to give way to panic. Party authorities trusted Stalin more, than their own eyes, therefore they cancelled dispatching the train. So I consider Stalin to be personally guilty of death of my family members. On July 9 we saw a red glare over the burning Vitebsk. Later we got to know that Germans occupied Vitebsk on July 11. At that moment we understood that it was impossible to wait any more. Father found a horse somewhere, he managed to harness it and we started our way. My parents, grandmother, my sister, younger brother and I went on the cart along country roads, knowing nothing about the way, heading for the east. On the way we met other refugees, mainly Jews. Almost all Belarus Jews suspected what fate awaited them if they stayed to wait for Germans. We saw our army retreating, saw commanders tearing off their insignia (they were afraid to be taken prisoners).

Once we nearly came across a column of Germans, it was necessary to come back. A week passed since the time of our departure. Most Jews who had left Liozno, returned also. During that week the city was destroyed seriously. Our house remained safe, but we lived in it not for long: all Jews were moved to ghetto. Germans arranged ghetto in the city district where there were the poorest houses, sheds, some strange constructions. There appeared gallows: fascists executed Soviet prisoners. Order in the city was supported mainly by polizei soldiers (Russians and Byelorussians). [During the Great Patriotic War people in occupied territories called a local resident serving in fascist police a polizei.]. A German Lampert was appointed a burgomaster. [Burgomaster was the Head of the city administration appointed by German headquarters on the occupied territory]. He was a German who lived all his life long in Yanovichi and had no concern to German army.

In September during Rosh Hashanah in ghetto there happened short circuit, and the entire district remained without electricity supply. Germans considered it to be a diversion (probably it was indeed) and threatened to shoot 10 people if they did not find saboteurs. Germans came to us and chose my father, my brother and me for execution. They were already going to take us away, but at that moment my sister entered the room. The German soldier looked at her in a strange manner and left without a word. Later we got to know that Sofye and his sister were very much alike. Here you see what a moth could sometimes turn the balance.

I started working. Nobody paid for work, we could get food only exchanging or selling something. But nevertheless it seemed to me that I would die without work. I chose the hardest work I could find. Together with several young guys we went to work on sand-pit. It was a real drudgery. Autumn was very cold, and in winter there was severe frost. We had to break to pieces sand which had turned into stone because of frost and to pour it on wheelbarrows. Later other workers had to use it sanding roads for German armies and military equipment. My chief was a person named Korolev. He played an important role in my life, but I’ll tell you about it later.

We had no trustworthy information. Germans informed that the Soviet army was defeated and Moscow and Leningrad kaput. By winter time in suburbs of Liozno there appeared Soviet scouts. Step by step we got to know that the USSR was not defeated yet, it was still at war. Jews in ghetto discussed among themselves different variants of rescue. But all of us understood that if someone managed to escape from the ghetto, his family would be shot.

December, January and February were the hardest months for us. We suffered from frost. But the same was with Germans. They had no winter clothes, because they hoped to win the war before the winter. On February 23 our bomber aircraft attacked Liozno. Next day early in the morning I went to work. I worked together with my fellow countryman Isaak Tsiperson (he was 3 years older than me). Suddenly our chief Korolev approached us and said ‘You, guys, go on working and I’ll be back in a couple of hours.’ It seemed to us strange: he never informed us about his plans. Several minutes later he came up again and said ‘Today Germans will execute by shooting all Jews in ghetto.’ Together with Tsiperson we took our shovels and rushed to the wood. All the day long we were walking somewhere. In the evening we found ourselves near the village where Isaak’s acquaintances lived. We spent the night at their place and continued our way in the morning. Several Jews from that village joined us. We decided to make our way to our armies. Having walked about 50 kilometers, we met a group of our scouts raiding in the rear of the enemy. They told us that if went in a certain direction, we would be able to cross the front line in 2 or 3 days. They moved in the same direction.

We followed the scouts and in 3 days reached disposition of their regiment. I showed them the only document I had - my school-leaving certificate and said that I was a volunteer. And Tsiperson told them that he had exemption from military service. He moved farther (to home front). Later I got to know that he was arrested, because he told everybody about our armies retreating. And I appeared in the army. Though quite a lot fell to my share, I am happy that it turned that way. So in February 1942 I became a soldier of the rifle battalion #21 in scouts platoon of Kalininsky front. It was frosty winter. The occupied territory was supervised by Germans insufficiently: they settled down only in large cities, villages and woods were free of them. In villages there ruled polizei soldiers, and in woods there were organized partisan groups. Our scouts used to go far into the enemy rear. Our group consisted of 15 or 20 persons.

I keep in my mind the first tongue [soldiers of the Soviet army called a tongue a soldier of enemy army captured by scouts] captured with my participation. His name was Arthur Wolfmayer. We captured him near the city of Nevel. We lay in hiding in a wood, and he stepped aside into the wood to meet natural demands. There we took him. He appeared to be a roadman of German army, and we received useful information from him. We had not only to capture tongue, but also to implement other tasks. For example some partisan groups were in fact specially organized by Germans to destabilize partisan movement. We had to find out what groups were true. Each raid lasted about 2 weeks. Sometimes we went very far beyond the front line (about 150 kilometers). During these 2 weeks we did not take off clothes, slept in the wood near the fire. We seldom took food with us: we preferred to take more ammunition. You see, local population always gave us food, though they were almost half-starving. People on the occupied territory seemed to be very confused: they could not understand how Germans managed to move forward far inland so quickly. It was also difficult for them to get used to fast and sharp division of society into partisans and polizei soldiers. People not always trusted us, they thought we were masked enemies. But in general people believed us and put reliance upon us.

Scouts were very much appreciated in the army: the command did its best not to part from them. Therefore they always tried to cure walking cases at their medical battalion and not to send them rearward. [The Medical and sanitary battalion is a separate part of the body of troops intended for its medical maintenance.] In that case after recovery the scout could make his comeback.

In our platoon there were 3 Jews and a couple of anti-Semites. One person (his surname was Mitskevich) even called me a dirty Jew. But on the whole I did not face anti-Semitism in the army.

A fight near the small settlement Blichino stuck to my memory. It was the first operation under trying conditions where we suffered bad losses. In particular, the first sergeant Skobelev (he was loved by all of us) was lost. During the operation we came across several carts with German soldiers. We rushed to the attack, but they reacted very quickly and opened fire. We managed to annihilate all of them, pick up our wounded and killed men and returned to our regiment using German carts.

At the end of December 1942 our group received a task to get a tongue. We decided to take him on the big country road, which German armies moved along every day. Germans checked that road daily: they moved along it in a column of 20 or 30 soldiers and fired at woods. After checking they gave a signal that everything was clear and it was possible to begin movement. On December 30 after their signal we moved secretly towards the road and lay in hiding in the wood. We were lucky: the first vehicle appeared was neither a tank nor a lorry, but a motorcycle with a carriage. It improved our matters. We knocked out the motorcycle having wounded the driver (he died almost at once). We left him in the wood, took the documents he carried, and returned quickly.

The documents appeared to be very important, they played great role in planning full-scale offensive of our armies. For that operation I was awarded a Medal for Bravery 6. The army commander himself arrived to present us (we were 8) with medals. Besides medals we all were granted leaves of absence. It was unprecedented happiness, but (alas!) not for me. I had nobody to go to. I knew nothing about my relatives, except what Korolev told me that terrible February day in Liozno. I was sure that nobody from my family had survived. Later I got to know that it was not absolutely true. In a word, I refused to go home and they sent me to a recreation house. If I found myself on the other planet or in paradise, I wouldn’t be shocked more: there I slept on bed sheets! You see, in fact I had already forgotten what a pleasure it was. I had 3 hot meals a day! And I spent there 10 days. To tell the truth, at the front we did not starve, and scouts received 100 gr of vodka every day. I did not drink it and used to give my portion to comrades. There were a lot of persons interested.

The next raid of our group to rear of the enemy happened in the beginning of March 1943. That day Germans suddenly assumed the offensive. We came to be on their way and did not manage to cross the front line. Therefore we had nothing to do but lie in hiding in the wood. We heard the noise of fight, we understood our regiment participated in it, but we could not contact with them. Suddenly we saw a car, which stopped nearby. Two Germans got off it: one of them wore a leather coat, another one - a jacket and a helmet. Our commander said ‘If we take a prisoner, we will be not so much ashamed of remaining aloof from the fight.’ We rushed towards the car and seized the person in the coat. When we reached our regiment and interrogated the prisoner, it turned out that we took a batman, while the second person in the car was an important German general. We were carpeted for it, though the batman gave us valuable information. Yes, it was wormwood to us, too: not every day we had a chance to capture a general of the enemy army.

In 1943 our army started preparing for full-scale offensive. Therefore they began searching among soldiers people knowing German language (to interrogate prisoners immediately after capture). I studied German at school and they chose me for that purpose. They taught us German language during a month, and after that I returned to my regiment and participated in liberation of Nevel. On October 7 we took it. For that operation our division was named Nevelsky. Fighting was hard: 30 minutes of preparatory bombardment, then tank attack, then attack of infantry. During that attack I was wounded and contused. Many splinters hit my head, my eardrum was broken. At first I was taken to the medical battalion and later (as my wound was severe) to the front hospital. There I spent more than 2 months.

Being in hospital I got to know that soon after Nevel our army liverated Liozno. Before leaving hospital I asked permission to visit my native city. The city was ruined. I got to know that all my family (except my younger brother) was executed by shooting together with other Jews (fascists even brought Jews from neighboring villages to Liozno for executing). About my brother people told me the following: he managed to leave ghetto and reach the house of Zina Popova, a friend of our sister. Family of Zina gave refuge to him for one night. Early in the morning they gave him food, and he left for somewhere. He did not feel hurt: everybody understood that all the family would be executed by shooting for keeping a Jew in concealment. Nobody knew what happened to him and I did not hope to see him alive. More likely I hoped that my elder brother was alive.

After my trip to Liozno I addressed the army headquarters to find my regiment. But they took me as an interpreter, because they had a lot of prisoners and few interpreters. I worked there for a month and then was sent to the rifle battalion #103 (reconnaissance unit). Since that moment my life changed: I did not go to the enemy rear any more, I had to stay at the command post and interrogate captives. The army advanced successfully and soon liberated Vitebsk, Polotsk, Daugavpils. There were a lot of captives. It was necessary to convoy them to our prisoner-of-war camps. Soldiers informed about the following cases: an escort received 45 captives, but brought to the destination point 70 persons. You see, it happened because Germans yielded themselves prisoners at the first opportunity. Sometimes our battalion had to move forward, but there were a lot of captives and no escorts. In that case I used to appoint one of Germans the head of the group, gave him a specially worked out document, and he led his former brother-soldiers to the destination point on his own. 

Later we moved to Latvia, and then to Lithuania. Therefrom we were suddenly moved to East Prussia. On January 17, 1945 we took Tilsit in stride. The city was empty; we met nobody in the streets: all citizens were evacuated far inland. The further approach to Konigsberg was very hard, but nevertheless on April 9, 1945 the city was taken 7. Konigsberg was in siege for some time, inhabitants starved, and we spoke among ourselves that it was our small revenge for Leningrad. But when our armies entered the city, we felt sorry for local residents and fed them up from our field kitchens.

In the beginning of May 1945 they put us into a lorry and brought toward Danzig. Near Putzig there was a small peninsula, which was connected with a very interesting military operation. That peninsula was 50 kilometers long and from 3 to 15 kilometers wide. German armies stood up for it. Field marshal Zaukel was in command. Our task was to persuade them to render themselves prisoners of war. On May 7 we met German delegation, headed by colonel Mangold. From our side the corps commander, the commander of reconnaissance unit (a colonel), and I participated in negotiations. I was their interpreter, but my military experience was also of great importance. First of all we wanted to know the number of German soldiers on the peninsula. To tell the truth, having heard the answer I did not believe my ears and asked again. Then I asked German representative to write it down. The number was enormous: 140,000. We immediately informed Rokossovskiy 8. He encharged us with the task to continue negotiations. We came to agreement about the following: the Soviet army accepted their capitulation and the next day we would meet general Zaukel at his bunker and discuss the terms of surrender.

In the morning of May 8 we arrived to his bunker. We had to discuss technical problems of capitulation: you see, to take so great number of people prisoners was not so easy. Their weapon had to be left on the island, and we had to receive the map with instruction how to find it. Soldiers of our regiment met Germans on the isthmus and sorted them for sending to prisoner-of-war camps. It took Germans several days to leave the island. Soviet command guaranteed all prisoners life. By the way, head of SMERSH 9 told our chief investigator that he was in charge of Zaukel. On the island there were 12 generals, all of them were allowed to take their belonging with them. They did it, though earlier they had asseverated to be interested only in saving their soldiers’ lives. We escorted all those generals to Shtezin. Field marshal Zaukel repeated all the time: ‘Give information in your newspapers that I am alive. My wife in Switzerland worries about me.’ You see, we were not touched by feelings of his wife. For that operation I was awarded Order of the Great Patriotic War (1st Class) 10. It was presented to me on May 16. In total during the war I was awarded 6 orders and more than 20 medals.

• After the war

After the end of the war (Berlin had been already taken) I was still on. Together with several soviet officers we worked all over Germany checking habitation conditions of barracks where our soldiers had to live. We were afraid of diversions. But they did not happen. Citizens hung out white bed sheets as signs of capitulation. So we worked all May long and the beginning of June. I was suggested to remain at military service, but I wanted to return to restful life and said that I was going to leave for Leningrad to study. During my last month in Germany I got to know that my brother Jacob was alive and lived in Leningrad. Therefore I got renewed energy to get to Leningrad.

Now it’s high time to tell you about the story of my brother Jacob. You remember that he managed to run away from ghetto. Having left people who sheltered him for one night, he almost repeated my way along neighboring woods and villages. In one of those villages people told him that they had seen me there not long ago. He spent some time at a partisan group and then they took him across the front line. He went to Chuvashia in evacuation. There he miraculously met our cousin Fanye, who was evacuated there from Leningrad with her 2 children. Fanye took Jacob to her place. He was afraid to be a burden on her and started working. His work was very hard: he helped floating logs. In 1944 when Leningrad was liberated, Fanye’s husband (he was at war on the Leningrad front) sent an invitation to his wife and Jacob 11. In Leningrad they lodged all together and Fanye helped Jacob to find work at a factory. When I arrived in Leningrad, I invited my brother to live at my place and insisted upon his studying. It took Jacob 1 year to pass examinations for 7 classes of secondary school without attending lectures. After that he entered the Motor Transport Technical School. [Technical School in the USSR and a number of other countries was a special educational institution preparing specialists of middle level for various industrial and agricultural institutions, transport, communication, etc.] He worked at motor transport enterprises and later graduated from the Motor Transport College (correspondence course). He had got a daughter Genye (she was named in honor of our mother). Now she lives in Moscow.

So, in the beginning of August I arrived in Leningrad. First of all I went to the military registration and enlistment office and said that I wanted to get demobilized. [Military registration and enlistment offices in the USSR and in Russia are special institutions that implement call-up plans.] And they answered ‘Anyway this year it is late to enter a college, you’d better serve a year more.’ In Leningrad there were many captured Germans who were reconstructing the city destroyed by them. My knowledge of German language was useful. I brought to rights documents of prisoners, drew up their private files. Authorities gave me a room near the city center. I got demobilized in summer of 1946 and entered the Shipbuilding College. [The Leningrad Shipbuilding College was found in 1902.] 

I was taken in without entrance examinations, because I finished school having only excellent marks. At that time my school seemed to me a dream! Having finished the 2nd year, I went to work, because my stipend was not enough for living. I worked at a design office and it was not easy to combine it with my studies. During the war I forgot much I knew at school, and it was necessary to study hard. I was always hard pressed for money, sometimes it was necessary to unload cars at night to get some extra sum of money. Nevertheless I graduated from the College with distinction. Head of my design office wanted me to go on working at them. But during the procedure of mandatory job assignment 12 there appeared Issanin (a member of the Russian Academy of Science), who invited young specialists to work at his design office on new topic: Creation of Undersea Fleet of the USSR. He wanted to give an employment only to excellent students and took me away from my former place of work. That was the way I got to the Central Design Office #16, where I worked about 40 years. It was the only place of my work; therefrom I retired on pension in 1989. My work was very interesting, I acquired good knowledge, was self-confident, and felt to be the right man in the right place.

I had to go on business trips very often. Sometimes I visited different factories, and sometimes it was necessary to dive testing our new submarines. You should know that during such tests a submarine has to dive at its depth-limit, which is twice more than by its usual depth. It was a serious test not only for the submarine, but also for investigators! My business trips were strictly confidential. Even my wife knew nothing about the time and place I left for. First-ever rocket launch from a submarine happened right before my eyes. It was on September 16, 1955. Here I have to say that during years of my work I never faced any manifestations of anti-Semitism. I received awards in peace time, too (I have 3 orders for my work).

Now I’ll tell you about my wife. I married her in 1951 when I was a student of the 5th course. My wife’s name was Sara Isayevna, her maiden name was Sheikhet. She was born in Leningrad in 1927. During the war she was evacuated and lived near Orenburg. She died in 2002, having not reached her 75th anniversary. In the year of our wedding Sara graduated from historical faculty of the Leningrad University. At that time it was extremely difficult for a Jew to be employed as a teacher of history, therefore she started working as a pioneer leader 13 at school. Her salary was scanty, position of a pioneer leader did not require higher education, but many teachers (Jews) had to begin their pedagogical activity that way. Later she managed to find a place of a history teacher at school.

The only son of us Mikhail was born in Leningrad in 1952. He was a very good pupil (it is our family trait). I am very glad that I have managed to implant the love of chess to him. He has the ranks of Master of Sports and Honored Coach of Russia. Mikhail graduated from the Leningrad Polytechnic College and works as an engineer. He has got 2 children: Alexander (born in 1982) and Anna (born in 1990).

We lived in harmony. I always kept in mind my parents’ family as an example. We tried to spend with each other as much time as possible. While my son was little, we always rented a room in a suburb of Leningrad for summer vacation. Sometimes we went to Kislovodsk or Sochi. Very seldom I received permissions for paid trips to a recreation house at my work 14.

When Stalin died, I did not cry (as many others did). I was uneasy and tried to foresee the coming events. Here I have to say that Khrushchev’s speech at the XX Party Congress 15 was not a surprise for me:  I expected something of that kind and was glad to hear the truth.

Doctors’ Plot 16 was a heartrending experience for all Jews. Nobody was in perfect security. But our director Issanin fired only 1 Jew (all heads of institutions were forced to fire Jews at that time): he was a confirmed drunkard and to my opinion the director would have fired him long before.

During events in Hungary 17 and the Prague spring 18 I was entirely on the side of Hungarians and Czechs. I was shocked that the USSR interfered in the internal affairs of other countries in a free and easy manner.

I was very much pleased with victories of Israel in its wars [19, 20]. I did my best to listen to Radio Liberty 21 to receive the truthful information.

I think that Gorbachev 22 and Yeltsin (though they were irreconcilable enemies) did much for our country. I took Perestroika 23 as public good.

I never thought about departure to Israel. My brother always was against it, and I did not want to separate from him once again.

Regarding my Jewish self-identification: I came back to this question only after retiring on pension. Before that we never observed traditions or celebrated holidays. And having become a pensioner, I began visiting synagogue. At present I go there 3 times a week to see Torah scroll carried out. I knew the way to the synagogue a long time ago. In Leningrad there lived my father's sister Sifra. She was an old woman and it was impossible for her to go for matzah, but at Pesach she could not manage without it. It was me who brought matzah to her. I had to buy flour and bring it to the synagogue. Later I came there again to get the product. One day on my way for matzah I met one of my colleagues who never showed love to Jews. He asked me where I was going so early in the morning. I answered ‘Of course to the synagogue: where else can I go?’ He laughed and said ‘I don’t believe you.’ He informed nobody about our meeting, though in fact if he did, I would have got troubles. When many years later I told that story to rabbi, he explained it the following way: the Most High helped me, because I had told the truth. For many years I have been studying Torah without assistance at home. I got to know about Hesed Avraham Welfare Center long time ago 24. When I felt better, I often visited it. Now I receive food packages from Hesed for holidays.

• Glossary:

Antonie Militka
Brno
Czech Republic
Interviewer: Barbora Pokreis
Date of interview: November - December 2004

This interview with Mrs. Antonie Militka took place during our visit to the Jewish Community in Brno. This sprightly lady still works for the local Jewish community, and devotes all her time and energy to people that depend on her help.

My family background

Growing up

During the War

After the War

Glossary:

My family background

My maternal grandparents came from Romania, from the town of Drachinet [Drachinet: the town of Drachinet belonged from 1775 – 1918 to the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, from 1919 – 1944 to Romania, from 1945 – 1991 to the Soviet Union, and from 1991 it belongs to Ukraine – Editor's note]. My mother's parents, Samuel Reiter and Rezi Reiter, were farmers. My brother and I inherited their Jewish names. My name is Antonie Rezi, and my brother is Karel Samuel. I never knew my grandparents, as we didn't visit Romania. I know them only through stories. My mother always reminisced about her beautiful childhood, but relatively hard life on the farm. My grandparents had eight children: four daughters and four sons. The Reiters followed the Jewish religion in everything, and raised their children in the same spirit. They attended Jewish schools. When she arrived in Brno, my mother knew not only Romanian and Yiddish, but also spoke Hebrew and German. Their household was strictly kosher 1 and they prayed before eating.

My paternal grandparents, Karel Michal and Grandma Michalova were from Brno. Grandpa was a book printer by trade. He worked for a printer in Starobrnenska Street. I didn't know him, as he died before I was born. He had a serious case of eczema from the chemicals he used in his work. With this diagnosis he was admitted to the hospital, where he died of sepsis [blood poisoning – Editor's note]. Grandma was a good and hard-working woman. They lived in Vinohradska Street in Brno. Despite the fact that they had three children, they lived in a one-room apartment. They had it modestly but tastefully furnished.

There were three synagogues in prewar Brno. The nicest synagogue stood by the Morava River. Alas, today it no longer exist, because during the Crystal Night 2 they torched it as the police and firemen stood by and watched. It stood alone in a large open space, which is why it was so easy to torch. We used to visit mainly the synagogue in Na Kolisti St. There was also an Orthodox synagogue in Brno, which was in Na Skorepce St. It's still there to this day. It's a small, modern building. I don't remember if Brno had a mikveh [mikveh: ritual bath – Editor's note]. Brno also had a Jewish nursery school, but I don't remember anymore where exactly it was located. On Silingrovo Namesti [Silingr Square] there was a Jewish primary school. We attended it for five years. The Jewish high school was at No. 44 Hybesova St. Today the building serves as one of the pavilions of St. Anne's Faculty Hospital in Brno. During my childhood, all the roads were paved, in some places they were better and in others worse. Streetcars ran throughout the entire city. They didn't run as often as they do today, but it was excellent.

We didn't have one favorite merchant. We bought meat at the kosher shop in Dominikanske Namesti [Dominican Square]. Later, when kosher meat was hard to get and the price increased dramatically, we slaughtered poultry at home. That was our father's job. We always had a lot of geese, chickens and ducks. Sometimes they'd swim away along the river. Mostly they'd return in the early evening, and if they didn't we children had to go look for them. Once a week our father would go shopping at the co-op store in Na Pisarkach, as he was a member and so had a discount.

I remember only my mother's oldest brother, Osias Reiter, who took care of her during World War I. My mother was born in the town of Drachinet, in Romania. She came to Brno during World War I, in 1916. Her oldest brother Osias Reiter served in the Austro-Hungarian army. He had a high-ranking post with the military police. After their parents died, he asked my mother to come live with him in Brno, because there was still fighting going on in Romania. Their village and the surrounding bridges burned down. She saved herself at the last possible moment. My brother helped her through all that military bureaucracy so that he could get her away from where the fighting was. She started working at the age of 16. He found her a job at the post office, where my mother then sorted parcels and letters. After the war my mother's brother returned to Romania. But prior to that he found her a sublet with one older Jewish lady, who became very fond of her. She considered her to be like a member of her family. She was more like an aunt to her. This lady lived a nice social and mainly Jewish life. I don't remember her name anymore, but I do know that she lived in Na Prikopech St. During World War II the building was destroyed by a bomb.

The lady had a large, luxurious apartment. I can still see it today. My mother and I used to visit her. She lived in an older building in a large apartment. All the rooms were large, with white doors and windows. The apartment was luxuriously furnished, with luxurious accessories. I mainly remember the beautiful dining room with candelabras. I felt like I was in a palace. The furniture and accessories were according to her taste. My mother had her own room. The room was more modest, but fit in with the style of the furniture. The lady didn't have her own children. My mother lived alone with her. For the most part, Jews didn't isolate themselves. They regularly socialized at her apartment. Many people would get together there, mainly during holidays, for the Sabbath on Friday evening [Sabbath: The fourth of the Ten Commandments says: "Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy." (Exodus 20:8) because God rested on the seventh day after creating the world. Certain types of work are forbidden during the Sabbath, and believers are supposed to devote themselves to resting and the study of holy scriptures – Editor's note]. In this rich city environment, my mother entrenched the foundations of the Jewish religion that she'd brought with her from home. She learned everything perfectly, because she used to help out, but through this she also learned. When she got married, she was perfectly prepared, because this lady had taught her everything.

In 1922 my mother met my father, Ludevit Michal. They met at one party at this lady's place, where my mother was living. She supported my parents' relationship. My father wanted to marry her, and my mother liked him too. My mother's brother, Osias Reiter, objected that it was out of the question, because my father wasn't of the Jewish faith. He absolutely disagreed with her getting married. Osias was acting in his father's name, who was no longer alive. Even despite her brother's objections, my mother wanted to marry him. Her brother wrote her that if she did so, she should count on his disowning her as her brother. My mother was immensely hurt by all this, because she wanted my father, but on the other hand she didn't want to lose her brother either. She asked that lady what she should do. The lady told her: "How would your brother look at it if this gentleman converted to Judaism?" My mother asked my father, and he said: "Of course, I'll do everything for you, after all, Christianity grew out of Judaism. I'll do everything so that your brother will allow you to marry me, and so that we'll be together and happy for the rest of our lives." My mother asked her brother if the situation would change if her fiancée converted to Judaism. Her brother's answer was that then there wouldn't be any problem. So my father went for advice to the rabbi at the large synagogue.

Conversion wasn't simple. He had to go through everything a Jewish boy had to go through. That meant that my father spent at least three years taking lessons from the rabbi. Besides that, he went to services with my mother. He learned to read Hebrew, prayers, and also history. After three years he had to take exams. He was proclaimed a Jew, and was admitted to the Jewish community. I don't remember my father's Jewish name. So that's how my father became a member of the community.

The wedding took place in 1925 in the large synagogue. The had a proper Jewish wedding. The wedding and banquet was arranged by that lady that my mother lived with. Otherwise, my mother was, alas, alone, because no one from her family came. It was very difficult for them to make the trip there from Romania.

My father's family didn't have any objections when my father converted. They liked my mother very much. They were only concerned whether he'd have the means to provide everything that my mother was used to. They weren't thinking only of food and social life, but also education. My mother was raised according to Jewish traditions that existed in her family. This type of life was financially demanding, which is why they were concerned whether my father would be able to support the family and provide it sufficient security. And you know what young people are like, they'll promise their parents everything. And my father really did live for us. He was very accommodating, and did everything he promised for our mother and for us.

My father was a barber by trade, but despite that worked at a textile mill. He finished technical textile school while working.

After getting married, my parents lived in the city ward of Bohunice, in a rented flat. In 1930, when I was three, my father found out that they were looking for a superintendent at the newly-built Maccabi 3 sports field in Pisarky [a neighborhood in Brno – Editor's note]. There was also an apartment for the superintendent there. The new field had a good location, I think that it was the most beautiful field in the country. There was enough room there for soccer, handball and track and field, and there were tennis courts too. Twice they even held horse races there. There was also a restaurant, and lawns for families that would come during the weekend. They'd spread out blankets there, and play with their children. Jewish families congregated in this beautiful place, usually on Saturdays and Sundays. The superintendent's job was a very difficult one. In those days, machines and equipment to make the job of maintaining the fields easier didn't exist yet. This was precisely the job they offered my parents. My parents worked for the Maccabi, but the income wasn't enough to support us. We also had a large garden and livestock. My mother took care of the garden. She grew fruit and vegetables. This kind of work wasn't foreign to her, she'd learned it back home in Romania. And so we had chickens, rabbits and a goat. The animals had a stable back behind the house. Despite the fact that my father worked hard at the field, he also opened a coal and wood shop in Hybesova Street, in that textile mill where he'd worked before. The owners had moved out, and the company premises had remained vacant. There were large rooms there that were being rented to various small entrepreneurs – carpenters, merchants and auto mechanics. There were tailor's workshops there, and auto repair shops. My father also rented one huge warehouse. He obtained a business license. The coal and wood was brought in from Ostrava. He also leased a truck and a forwarder that transported the goods. The forwarder had a very important task, because the coal wagons could only stand at the station for a certain amount of time. All the goods were stored in that rented space. My father would then deliver the coal directly to his customers. He employed two workers in the warehouse. My father had good relations with his employees. During the winter months, my mother tried to have warm meals prepared not only for our family, but also for the workers. As children, we also had to help carry wood. The workers would bring us large pieces of wood from the sawmill. The wood would then be cut up right in the store. Our parents took us everywhere with them. Whether we were going out into the garden or to the store, we were always together. As I've already mentioned, they weren't strict, but took us with them everywhere they worked, and so we learned everything.

We had a very simple apartment. My parents bought themselves very nice furniture. We had a utilitarian, but nicely furnished kitchen and bedroom. Not only athletes visited the field, but also women visitors with small children that needed to be fed. My mother let them nurse their children in peace in the bedroom, or warm up food in the kitchen. That society was of a certain, high standard. If everything wouldn't have been according to etiquette, and proper, no Jewish woman would've brought her child there. My mother's task was to make sure the changing cabins were clean. She laundered and also mended athletes' jerseys. She also took care of the safe, where she stored money, jewels and documents for players and spectators. The depository was needed, because the changing cabins were left open, and anyone could enter them.

Maccabi Games were held regularly. They were big events, with exercises performed on the soccer field. We had beautiful blue & white uniforms. Many athletes and spectators would show up. The parking lots were full of cars. The leader was Fredy Hirsch 4, who was later active in Prague. He led the entire Maccabi Games. He was a big athlete that mainly taught us to exercise regularly, and also to do track and field. Alas, he died in Auschwitz. During the winter, we used gymnasiums. I unfortunately don't remember the names of the rest of the important athletes. The Maccabi also had a soccer team, and though it didn't ever win, it participated in tournaments every year nevertheless. They didn't pay just at the Maccabi, and when they went to play soccer somewhere else, my father would go with them. He'd carry their jerseys and shoes. Sometimes he'd take me with him.

I don't know if the Maccabi had anything to do with Zionist associations 5. There were several Zionist organizations in what is today the building of the Jewish Community, where young people but also older ones would meet. I didn't belong to any association, just to the Maccabi.

My people were the kind of people that lived for democracy. They were definitely democrats. My father wasn't a member of any organization. My parents were for good will amongst people. That's how they lived and worked. They weren't that interested in politics so as to be active in it. They were interested only in culture. Before their wedding, they used to attend choirs and theaters together.

My mother was one of eight children. Her siblings lived in Romania with their families. We never met, and my mother didn't see them either. She kept in written contact only with her oldest brother, Osias.

My father had two siblings. His brother's name was Josef Michal. He worked as a journalist, but I don't remember where. During World War II he was arrested and ended up in a concentration camp. For political reasons, I think. At that time he already had a family of his own, a wife and daughter. They lived in Prague. The youngest of the siblings, Frantiska, survived the war and lived to a ripe old age, over 90. Her daughter is my only relative here in the Czech Republic. Frantiska never married. She apprenticed in a factory for pots and pans as a decorator. Back then they were manufacturing pots and pans decorated with flowers and various other ornaments. She was very clever and talented. She painted beautifully, which is why she had a very nice job up until the war. During the war everything changed. After the war she helped her daughter, who'd become a seamstress. They both sewed to make ends meet. She died in an old-age home.

My parents never went on vacation anywhere. In the summer, during the sports season, there was the most work. As superintendents of the Maccabi, there was no way they could go anywhere. When we were small, my parents never went anywhere without us. During the winter they'd take us to see children's plays. During the holidays we'd go to synagogue and to various events organized by the school and the Jewish Community. Our life was rich in events the whole year round, but our parents never went anywhere alone, only with us.

Observing the religious side of life was a simple matter for us. As I've already mentioned, my mother knew it all from home. During the High Holidays, we attended the large synagogue. We observed the Sabbath at home. That was Mother's task. She'd prepare a beautiful supper. She'd regularly bake barkhes, and would light candles. She'd serve roast poultry or veal au naturel. On Saturday we'd have shoulet. For the High Holidays we'd have goose. Everything was according to Jewish recipes. We didn't eat any pork. Everything was kosher, because meat was available in the kosher store. Poultry my father would slaughter at home.

As children, we liked all the holidays. One of our favorite holidays was Passover [Passover: commemorates the departure of the Israelites from Egyptian captivity and is characterized by many regulations and customs. The foremost is the prohibition of consuming anything containing yeast – Editor’s note]. For Passover we'd eat matzot and everything was beautiful. We'd buy large sacks of matzot. There was a bakery in Na Prikopech St. that baked matzot. For ten days, we ate only matzot. As children, we liked Chanukkah best [Chanukkah: the Festival of Lights, which also commemorates the Macabbees’ uprising and the re-consecration of the Temple in Jerusalem – Editor’s note], because we'd get gifts. Each evening, Mother would light candles. We'd pray daily, and the most festive food was served. She'd tell us about how it used to be at their house. All the holidays were beautiful, but these two stood out the most for us. Our mother's favorite was Yom Kippur [Yom Kippur: The Day of Atonement. The most celebrated event in the Jewish calendar. The day of "the cleansing of sins". Fasting is observed – Editor’s note]. At school we mainly looked forward to Purim [Purim: the holiday of joy. As is written in the Book of Ester, the holiday was decreed by Mordechai in memory of how God’s foresight saved the Jews of the Persian Empire from complete annihilation – Editor’s note]. It's the holiday of joy, and at that time we'd always play and have fun. I don't remember anymore exactly what games we played, but their intent was for us to not forget Jewish traditions.

Passover, Purim and Chanukkah celebrations took place in the building of the Jewish Community, which was located at 31 Legionarska St., today Trida Kapitana Jarose [Captain Jaros Avenue]. In the building next door, which had a huge hall, the Jewish Community and the rabbi organized holiday celebrations for children and adults. For Sukkot [Sukkot: Festival of Booths. A festive atmosphere reigns during the whole week that the holidays lasts, where  the most important is to be in the sukkah – Editor’s note] they'd always build a cabin [Sukkah: a tent used during the Sukkot festival – Editor's note], where people could pray, talk, drink wine and be merry. The tent wasn't very spacious, only a few people could fit inside, and the rest stayed outside. The tent was built out in the courtyard of the synagogue. This tradition has been maintained to this day. We children would get apples and candy. Unfortunately, my brother missed his bar mitzvah [bar mitzvah - “son of the Commandments”, a Jewish boy that has reached the age of thirteen. A ceremony, during which the boy is declared to be bar mitzvah, from this point on he must fulfil all commandments of the Torah – Editor’s note], because during the Holocaust it wasn't possible, and he had to be in hiding.

For Chanukkah, my father's sister Frantiska, who lived in Brno, would come visit during the holiday. She'd come visit us during Christmas, when we'd be observing Chanukkah. We had festive food and everything that belonged to the holidays. No one in my father's family expressed any objections. My aunt would come to see us at Maccabi along with her daughter, and they participated in everything with us. They all felt good in each other's company. During the holidays, they'd eat with us. Religion wasn't a barrier to anyone. Each respected the other.

It wasn't that difficult for us children to get used to going so far to the Jewish primary school, which was on Silingrovo namesti [Silingr Square]. We got used to it. My favorites were drawing, history and math. Maybe because I was good at these subjects. I can't say which subjects I didn't like. In primary school it was all good, but by high school, I didn't like physics and chemistry. I wasn't interested in that.

I had an excellent professor whose name I don't remember. He was our home room teacher, and liked me a lot. When I arrived at the concentration camp [ghetto] in Terezin 6, he'd been sent with a labor detail to Oslavany, to the mines. He heard from someone that I was alone in Terezin, and made contact with my parents, who were still in Brno. He told them that if they wanted to send me a letter or parcel, to send it to him. He, as a prisoner in Oslavany, was able to send things to Terezin. He supported me for a time, until he returned to Terezin. He wrote me that I should address him as "Mein Liebe Onkel", which meant that the letter was meant for my parents. And my parents really would get it.

We had only a few books at home. My mother liked German books. My father was a Czech. Our parents concentrated on us. They bought us story books and later for school. But as for books, not that they weren't interested, but there was absolutely no time nor money to expand the number of books. They were interested in everything, they tried to fit in, but I can't say that they were able to do something as far as education goes, neither time-wise nor money-wise.

Growing up

I was born in 1928 in Brno. My main memories are from back when I was four, when my brother Karel was born, which was my greatest joy. Beginning at that time, my memories are coherent. We had a beautiful childhood. Everything was for the children. Our parents didn't live very luxuriously, and didn't do much for themselves, but for us they did everything. They concentrated only on the children. If someone looked at it today, he'd say we were spoiled. They definitely gave us freedom and love. Maybe someone would even have misused it. Luckily, we tried to return it to them. They weren't strict, not at all, just in extreme situations, but mostly they trusted us. We could've misused it, we could've said we were in school and they wouldn't have checked up on us. Nor on our schoolwork. We were always something amazing for them, and it was a beautiful childhood.

I remember that when my brother was 5, he got lost. That was something awful. Some children were playing, and suddenly, when the neighborhood children were slowly returning home, my brother didn't return. The Svratka River ran by the Maccabi grounds. It was a beautiful place, you could play sports there, and be surrounded by gorgeous nature. My mother asked where Karlicek [Karel] was, and the other children said that they didn't know where he was. Well, so we started looking for him, and my mother was asking everyone if they hadn't seen him. We asked them to look for him too. They looked along the river and everywhere. An hour, two, but no one saw him. My mother was becoming utterly desperate. After a long time searching, the vegetable growers from the Bulgarian gardens [Bulgarian gardeners: Bulgarian gardeners assumed an important position in vegetable cultivation in all of Europe. Their migration began at the cusp of the 18th and 19th Centuries. They began arriving on Czech territory at the end of the 19th Century – Editor's note] joined the search party too. They knew Karlicek too, because he used to go there once in a while. When they found out what had happened, they left their work and searched. One woman gardener finally found my brother. He'd fallen asleep underneath a veranda where dry hay was stored. He'd hidden there during a game, and fallen asleep. It was an incident with a happy ending. A great danger was that he could have drowned, the river's banks were steep, and it really didn't take much for a tragedy to take place.

During the summer holidays, they regularly organized children's camps at Maccabi. Everything was very nice. When the summer was already drawing to a close, they'd organize a celebration with singing and dancing. Food was prepared, and plays were put on. The way it was at Maccabi was that the children would come there for the day. They didn't stay there overnight, only during the day. We used to go to Maccabi on a streetcar rented by the Jewish Community. The stop was by the old theater. The children would gather there at 7:30, and the streetcar would already be waiting there. The route led towards Pisarky. From Pisarky it took only a little while, as it was only a short walking distance from there. It was this little outing to Maccabi. When they arrived, a perfect breakfast would be waiting for them. After breakfast they'd play and study in various groups led by teachers and student volunteers. There'd be up to 80 children there. The Maccabi also had a kitchen, a dining room and one large room. There the children would gather when it was raining. After lunch at the camp, you had to lie down and rest a bit. In the afternoon, at around 4:00 p.m., it was time to go back to Pisarky to take the streetcar. The trip into town on the streetcar took about a half hour, and around 5:00 p.m. the parents would pick up their children. Everyone envied us the fact that we lived there and didn't have to go into town. The second [camp] session was already preparing to say goodbye to summer, to say thank you to the teachers and workers. The party took all month to prepare, along with an entertainment program. The parents and relatives that acted in it came too. Only Jewish children attended the camp. Only Jewish ones, because the Maccabi was Jewish.

We had a large dog, who was named Tiger because he looked exactly like a tiger. He was huge. He guarded us, but we had more dogs back then. They were all huge. When my brother was born, my parents showed him to him, that here's Karlicek, you've got to guard him. When my mother put the carriage in front of our building, he'd lie down there, and everyone had to give him a wide berth. He'd never let anyone even get close to him. To be on the safe side we gave him a muzzle, that had to be so that some sort of accident wouldn't happen. At night he was very important on those grounds, he'd signal if anyone wasn't wanting to climb over the fence. There were thieves, who only wanted fruit. There were large alleys of fruit trees there, cherries, apples and pears. My parents took care of them, because they were the superintendents. They fruit would be eaten at camp. Whoever in the camp wanted, could pick some, because everything was free.

My best friend at school was named Kitty. They lived in [the neighborhood of ] Hlinky. She and her family died in a concentration camp. We had a lot of common interests. At school we were interested in books and drawing. We liked going on outings. She attended Maccabi. My parents also supported our friendship. I used to go to their place but rarely. After school we'd do our homework together, and then she'd come to our place at Maccabi, and there we'd play with a shovel and so on. Then later I had another friend, Gustinka.

I exercised like all the children, but only in the gym. I never excelled at anything in particular. I liked swimming best, that's also stayed with me. I also had a bicycle; at that time I wasn't attending school yet. From the time he was little, my brother was interested in cars. This interest also saved his life. During the Holocaust he hid in an auto mechanics' workshop while my parents and I were in the prison camp. My brother liked soccer and skiing. We used to go skiing around Maccabi, because all around it were hills. My parents didn't do any sports, just my father would play a bit of soccer once in a while.

As a child I took violin lessons, but I wasn't very good at it. My father dreamt of us being able to play the violin, because he played the clarinet. He hoped that we'd play on better instruments than he. He was thinking of the violin and piano. And when even after three years I didn't make the kind of progress he'd assumed, he switched me to piano. Even though my brother was four years younger, he bought him an accordion. From the age of five he took lessons from this one teacher. The accordion was large, and my brother wasn't able to carry it, and so our father would bring it to the teacher's at the proper time. After the lesson, he'd come get it again. In the meantime, I was taking violin lessons with the Hlavacek family. Mr. Hlavacek was a violin teacher, and his son was preparing for the conservatory. I took lessons with this family. But I didn't do well enough for them to be satisfied with me. So it was decided that I'd take piano. For piano lessons, they sent me to the Mautner family, who were Jews. They Mautners lived in Krizova St. I took lessons there until they began preparing for the transport. At that time all the nice times ended, and that music was part of that too. Not only school was forbidden for us 7, but also interests like music and exercise 9. Thus all that was nice ended, and after the war I no longer had time for similar interests. My brother had real musical talent. My father played the clarinet, I the violin, and my brother the accordion. He tried to make a small band of us, so that we'd enjoy music too. He was always telling us to practice.

When we were later living in that temporary apartment in Hybesova St., beside us was an army command, not the Gestapo, but an army command. When we returned in 1945, the building was empty. As I was walking by, I heard someone playing the piano inside. I stopped and stood and listened to the beautiful music. When the music finished, I looked in, and saw my little brother sitting behind a piano. Right away I ran home to tell my mother to come have a look at how wonderfully Karlicek was playing. She stood there and wept. At that time my brother was 13. I don't know anymore what composition he was playing. When he left for Israel, he took his accordion with him, and eventually my father bought him another two.

We didn't often go to restaurants with our parents. Just once a year, we'd go for New Year's Eve. Our parents never went anywhere without us. This is why when they did go somewhere, it was only there where you could take children, and we'd return home early. So we used to go to the exhibition grounds. People entertained themselves in restaurants and at social events. At the House of Art they'd organize a New Year's party for the children before lunch, and in the afternoon there'd be a New Year's party for the adults. Our parents would go celebrate with us. We'd go home by 6:00 p.m. The other adults would leave later, they'd dance the night away. There was no way our parents would go somewhere alone, or leave without us.

They also used to send us on trips, we were able to go, but we made use of this opportunity only twice. In the summer we were in the Beskids [The Beskids; a nature reserve in Moravia – Editor's note] for 14 days. Once we were in Ivancice, near Brno, for a few days. This trip was organized for children by the Jewish Community. In Ivancice there was a building that had formerly been a sugar refinery, which belonged to a Jew. The building was abandoned. He put the entire grounds at the disposal of the Jewish Community, so that they could organize summer camps there. We were there twice. Once it was for boys, and once for girls, so we alternated. It was amazing in Ivancice, not only the place itself and historical buildings, but mainly its surroundings, nature, forests and water. That was a beautiful summer vacation there. For us, the stay also meant a change, that we weren't just at that Maccabi.

When I got to sit in a car, that was something new for me, because our parents didn't have one. Once in a while some family would take to Maccabi in a car when I was small. Besides that, I was lucky that I attended Jewish primary school on Silingr Square. My classmate Frantisek Tichy, who was from a rich Jewish family, sat beside me in school. They lived in Hlinky, and his mother would drive him to school, and also come pick him up. In the summer she'd ride in a red convertible, wearing a hat. She liked me very much. The way from Maccabi to Pisarky was in the same direction as Hlinky. A streetcar ran there, which I used to take to school on Silingr Square. Instead of Pisarky I'd go to Hlinky, and they'd already be waiting for me there, or I'd wait there for them. She always told me to come there. So I'd come to their building, and she'd come out or already be standing there. In the afternoon she'd drive me back, sometimes she'd drive me all the way to Maccabi. Those were the best experiences, I really was that spoiled by the Tichy family. Well, and Frantisek was a very talented, genial, cute boy. He attended school with me from Grade 1. Back then children didn't associate with each other, as far as girls and boys go, so he didn't talk to me. He sat beside me, but when he saw that I didn't have a green pencil crayon, he'd immediately give me one. He let me see everything he was writing, acted very friendly, but wouldn't let the other children see that he was talking to me, not at all. Imagine that it used to bother me, as I wanted to talk to him. That's stayed in me. He went from Grade 4 to high school. He was very smart, and so didn't attend Grade 5, but went directly into first year [of high school] 9. Only the smartest ones, whose parents had submitted an application and were accepted, only those got in. There were only a couple of them. They got into first year of high school right away, and when I started high school, they were already a year ahead. After that I didn't see him much. And then I saw him in Terezin, during roll call. He was standing across from me, and we were looking at each other. At that time I said to myself that maybe now he'd say a few words to me. He didn't. He looked at me across that distance, and didn't do anything to be able to talk to me. We never saw each other again, he left on a transport. His entire family perished.

When we were little, at that time we didn't experience any anti-Semitism. But when the war began, then we felt it. Our parents' friends even avoided them. We, as children, also went through our share, though we didn't really understand what was happening around us. Some children, but also adults, would try to humiliate us. On our way to school, a group of German boys threw stones at us and called out: "Jews, why don't you go to the Palestine?" My brother was relatively quite spunky. He wanted to retaliate. I had a hard time restraining him, because then it would have looked like he'd attacked them, when they were already turning things against Jews so badly. That happened right after 1939.

During the War

We had friends that used to go to the sports field. Not only people from the Jewish Community and Jews from Brno used to congregate there, but also Czechs and Germans. Before the war, there hadn't been any large differences. That was during the so-called depths of peace.  But the social side of things, I'd say that it was a very hard time for the poor. Games were played at the field, of course there were large tournaments and so also other teams came to play here, not only Jewish teams. There were mutual visits and relationships. Before the war I didn't feel any anti-Semitism, that wasn't until during the war. Back then, some sympathizers alas wanted to gain the favor of the Germans, which is why they behaved very unpleasantly toward us. On the other hand, there were also those that risked and helped Jews. They helped our family too.

When we left Maccabi, we lived in Pisarky. We had a little house, a garden, and beside us ran the river. We three, as Jews, got food coupons – my mother, my brother, and I. The coupons were very modest... just our father had full food coupons. Once, I don't know where anymore, he met one baker, who told him that he'd sell us bread and rolls even without coupons, but that I'd have to come to a certain place for them. The amount we could get with the food coupons wasn't enough for us. The place where I was supposed to wait for the baker was by a bridge in Pisarky. The baker was delivering bread at that time, and was carrying it on his back. He was supposed to come there at a certain time. He arrived, I paid him, he gave me the goods and I went home. But before I got home, I ran into one German citizen who lived near us, had seen me leaving, and so wanted to see where I was going. He'd followed me for a ways. He waited for me on a small footbridge over a wider stream. He spent his time informing on people. I already saw him from a distance, standing on the bridge that I had to cross; there was no other way home. I backtracked a bit. At that time it was the end of February. The ice was already thin, and the water was still ice-cold. I'd gotten to know that stream as a child, so I knew how deep it was in which parts. I put the bread, rolls and my shoes into a bag, which I held above my head, and crossed the stream like this. My coat and the rest of my clothes were wet, because the water reached almost to my shoulders. I didn't care at all that the water was icy and that half-melted chunks of ice were floating by me. That's how I got home. My mother was all upset. That person was waiting for me, he'd probably already lost patience, because there was only one way home there. So let him spot me. I went out into the garden, where he saw me. He was surprised that I'd gotten home. I don't know what he thought, he stopped and looked whether it was me. I'm sure that his enmity grew even worse.

Another thing happened to my brother and I when I was 12 and he was 8. Jews weren't allowed to go to parks and to walk in certain streets. Everything was forbidden for us. Even in the streetcar, we had to stand in a certain wagon. Life was so limited that all our parents would say was don't go anywhere, all you'll do is cause us trouble. They always watched over us. Despite the prohibitions, once on Sunday we went out for a bit. There was a movie for children being shown at the exhibition grounds. We didn't tell our parents where we were going. Each of us got 5 crowns in pocket money for when we went to see some other children. We went to the movie, I think they were showing Laurel and Hardy. We decided to go even despite the fact that there was: "No entry allowed to the cinema for Jews!" We bought tickets, they cost a crown, and sat down amongst the children and waited. The lights went out, and right then before the film began, one lady stood up and shouted: "Turn on the lights, there are Jewish children here!" They turned on the lights and asked her where they were. She pointed at us, and so they led us out of the theater. The usher didn't do anything, he just politely led us out and said: "Don't come here, so you don't have problems like today, and your parents too." So we learned a lesson. Some time later, someone told our mother about our adventure. She asked me why I hadn't told her about it. My answer was that I didn't want her to be upset.

Another incident, after this one, was when my brother was outside somewhere and wasn't coming home for lunch. So my mother started looking for him, and I did too. We asked everyone we ran into whether they hadn't seen my brother. These people immediately began helping and looking for him everywhere. In the streets, in yards, around the river. We were already afraid that he'd fallen in the river. We kept looking for him until the evening, and then one lady we knew that lived nearby brought him. We were grateful to her for it, because she'd heard him calling. There'd been a Czech soccer field there, which was then taken over by Germans; just like we had Maccabi, this was the Brno branch of Sokol 10. The superintendent was a German, named Siegel, who had three sons and a wife. He'd caught my brother before noon somewhere, and locked him up in a shed. He was showing him and telling him how his parents and sister were going to be tortured in Mauthausen 11. By then the war had already begun. My brother was locked up until late afternoon, when that lady had heard him shouting. She came to the soccer field, you could get there not only through the main entrance, but also from the side. She opened it and freed him. My mother was afraid of our father finding out, because he might have gone to have it out with him, and the entire family would've paid for that. My brother was in shock from this incident, and didn't even talk. It was only later that he told us how and what had gone on. He hadn't actually hurt him, he hadn't done anything to him, but just kept showing him how we'd be tortured in Mauthausen. He already knew about it. He caused that child to have a hard day.

Several times the Gestapo called my father in for interrogation. Luckily he always returned. It was a very dangerous time. The persecution was very hard, but even despite that we hoped that we'd see the end of the war, but it kept lasting and getting worse for us Jews.

The Maccabi field was taken over by the Germans during the war. They also used it for sports. We'd walk by and look. Already in 1938, when Austria was suddenly annexed 12, anti-Jewish sentiments began to increase noticeably, and enemies of Jews – Czech ones too, were already showing them that anti-Semitism had carved its path here. At that time we moved to Hybesova St. In 1938 I was 10, when we were evicted from Maccabi. We weren't that free there anymore, all that was still done by Czechs, up to 1938. So right away, my father bought an older house and had it enlarged, and that's where we moved. That took three months. We lived there until 1943, until the Gestapo chased us out of there.

When we left Maccabi, we had a house and garden. We had had to demolish the house and raze it during the war. In 1943 the Gestapo simply ordered us to raze our house within 14 days. My father called the neighbors to take it apart, some things also got buried. Unfortunately, he injured himself seriously during the demolition. He was on the roof, which he wanted to take apart. He was of course not an expert in this. Underneath the roof he also had taken something apart, so he flew through the roof and kitchen. On top of that, the cellar was open, and so he also fell down into the cellar, where he fell on his thigh. They had to operate on him. Within 14 days of that, I was already off to Terezin.

They summoned me to the transport of 7th April 1944. People designated for the transport were gathering by the Veletrzni Palac [Trade Fair Palace]. From there people went to Terezin, or elsewhere. On 9th April they moved us to the main station, where there was already a train waiting for 250 people from Brno and its surroundings. On this train they transported us to Terezin, to Bohusovice actually. At that time the tracks didn't lead directly into Terezin, those were built later. We walked from Bohusovice, where there were already people from Terezin waiting, and wagons onto which luggage was loaded. Everything was transported on these wagons, bread and corpses too.

As a replacement, my parents were given a pitiful, substandard apartment. Excuse me, not given, but my father found it, and that's where we moved. That was still in Hybesova St. We put our furniture into our coal warehouse. Because my brother was close to the workshop. So at night he could cross the street between the workshop and home. The apartment belonged to our former landlady, and was in the courtyard.

When my mother went into the transport in August 1944, she got a summons for my brother as well. At the Gestapo she said that she hadn't seen her child for a long time already. That he'd been lost during the bombing of the city. Despite that, the Gestapo was of course constantly searching for him. Luckily they didn't find him, because we had quite a lot of people that were helping him. They took Mother to Prague. She was jailed there for 6 months, guarded by the Gestapo. Then in February 1945 they transported the prisoners to Terezin, where I once again after a long time saw my mother. She worked in Terezin as well. We waited there for the end of the war. Liberation day was full of joy. But many people found out that their family members were no longer alive. Thus joy mixed with tears. We found out that my father had lost his legs, but that he was alive.

With the coming of Hitler, my father had to produce Aryan papers. Because he was of Aryan origin, he managed to arrange false documents. This is why he was able to keep running his warehouse until 1944. When my mother was arrested, they arrested him a month later. Before he was arrested, a custodian came and took over his business. They arrested him for having a Jewish wife. They notified him that he had to go into internment. They put him on a transport to the Postelberg labor camp, or Postoloprty in Czech. There he lost his legs. It was a labor camp for men that had Jewish wives. The camp was close to a German airport, where mostly prisoners worked. They worked two shifts. In March 1945, they were leaving after the night shift in the dark and in a blizzard, where you couldn't see a thing. The Allies were bombing airports, and the prisoners were repairing them. They worked through the day but also into the night, and would then go home. The roads weren't safe, because it was dark and you couldn't see. They walked close to some railroad tracks. Trains would pass by the airport, transporting everything that they needed. The prisoners were returning along the tracks, and a freight train was passing by, being pushed by a locomotive. There was a wagon in the front, and you couldn't hear or see the train. The prisoners were walking in single file along the tracks to the camp. One was calling to the next, look out, a train. My father was in front, they called to him: "Look out, a train!" My father heard something, and so jumped aside. But apparently he tripped, because among the large rails there were also small rails, for wagons for material. He tripped on these tracks, and then it hit him. His body fell alongside the tracks, and his legs stayed there. The train ran over both of them. This happened in March 1944. The railway workers were Czechs. They didn't see my father as a prisoner. They quickly took him and bandaged up his bleeding legs. They brought him to Most, to a German hospital. After the war, they operated on him. In the beginning, my father was very badly off, emotionally. We consoled him, up till then you'd taken care of us, now we're going to take care of you. The main thing is that you're alive! My father walked on prosthetics, and that's how he ran his store.

Now back to Terezin. As soon as we arrived in Bohusovice, they took our luggage, as the way to Terezin was relatively long. Terezin is actually brick ramparts, it's a fortress. Everything in the camp was numbered and had a name. New prisoners were registered and told to hand in money and valuables, and that then we wouldn't have any problems. Otherwise they'd liquidate the entire transport. If everything takes place properly, that they'll assign us work and we'll have a better life here than soldiers at the front. But if they find money on one of us, or gold, medicine, or something of value – contraband, then all 250 will go to Auschwitz. Immense stress ensued. I'd found out that we were going onto the transport only a short time beforehand. Two of my mother's lady friends came, because my mother had half-collapsed from it, and all night they sewed marks into my garter belt.

Between two layers of material – one outer one and one inner one, she sewed a few thousand marks. She also baked cookies and cakes, and told me what to wear. They put on me three sets of underwear, blouses and sweaters, leggings, a skirt, knee stockings plus a coat on top, even though it was already April. I couldn't even button the coat because of so many layers of clothing. She said: Tonicka, what you're wearing will most likely stay with you. With the suitcase it's worse, that can get lost. They filled my pockets with medicines, cotton balls, toothpaste and soap. They stuffed it all in so that I'd have these things to start with. I asked myself what would happen now, I've got thousands here, plus one silver ring. I hadn't taken any more than that. I handed it in. I saw my friend Edita Weiss, who lived in Zahradnicka St., how she took off a wide leather belt and cut it into pieces. The marks were falling out all over the place. She had marks sewn into that belt. I saw everything people were giving away in a crate that had been prepared, covered by a sheet. Nothing remained but for me to take off that belt of mine and throw it in there. No one dared to endanger others because of money.

Working in the Transportleitung was one young woman, a student, who came over to me: "You're Tonicka Michalova, remember me, I used to exercise at Maccabi. Where are your parents?" I answered that for the time being I was alone. "Well, you know what, if they ask you whether you've already found accommodations, tell them that you're going to the girls' home at L410, to No. 24, I know there's room there. After all you know how to work in gardens and fields, so apply for that. Apply for everything right away, voluntarily and on you own." When my turn came, they wrote us all down. Then we were searched, which was performed by female Gestapo members. That girl I knew kept an eye on me, and also brought me to the Mädchenheim, where there were 32 girls living. There were  three-story bunks built in the room.

I was weeping profusely. One girl came over to me, later she became my best friend, and said to me: "I don't know why you're crying. I'm here three months, and I haven't cried yet. And yet, when I look out the window, I can almost see Litomerice, where I was born and grew up. I can't go there, but despite that I didn't cry." At that point I was a bit ashamed. "You're lucky, once a week we get better food for going to the garden. You'll get some. You've very lucky to have gotten in here, and that you've got extra food rations." In the end we became such good friends that we shared everything. We got along very well. We helped each other, but unfortunately things were constantly changing. They were selecting for the transports, and girls were leaving with their parents. When I arrived there, they were already opening the barracks. Before that, children were separate, men separate, women separate. When I arrived we were able to get together, before that they couldn't even see each other. Not long after, mass transports began.

At first I worked on the ramparts. It was soil that hadn't been tilled since the times of Maria Theresa. First we had to weed out deep grass roots, and carry the weeds down on stretchers. I think the ramparts were about one story high, with roads on them. Later the roads disappeared, because compost was carried up onto them, into which plants were planted. Almost everything went to Gestapo families, and some of it also went into the ghetto kitchens. You also knew how to steal something from there. It was dangerous, but of course we took something, and something was also issued to us. Mainly during harvest time, then we'd eat our fill. We'd carry it home, and for example exchange it with old people for bread, as that was in short supply. Every fourth day we got 1.5 kg of bread for two of us for four days. We drew lines on the bread. We had two small slices per day, morning and evening. Every second day was only soup, one day there was only coffee. One slice – that wasn't enough.

There were various guards. There were also hired Protectorate 13 police, mostly also decent ones. They even helped us carry parcels when we were returning from work. When we were outside the ghetto, occasionally someone would throw a parcel into the bushes. The policemen would act like they didn't see anything. When the international inspections were supposed to come, all the "effects" were made. A major cleanup began, a café opened, money was printed, and everything had to be washed, even the sidewalks. At that time life in Terezin was grand. They came, inspected what they could, and left, satisfied. As soon as they left, the Calvary of thousands of people in transports began, and everything went straight into the gas. Everything was very cleverly disguised.

We were very careful with ourselves, as far as cleanliness went. Our surroundings too. Alas, despite our efforts, we were tormented by stink bugs and lice. Each day we battled for cleanliness. Once a week we could put our bed sheets into the laundry. The girls had various characters. Once one girl arrived, who from one day to the next learned everything, even though at home she'd been waited on hand and foot by cooks and maids. On the other hand, another one had the type of nature that she acted as if she'd never in her life changed the cover on a duvet. We told her that if you don't mind, your sheets aren't clean and don't smell nice, it bothers us, and you've got to change them. When she resisted, we were so nasty that we threw her things out the window into the mud. We didn't care if she cried, we just wanted her to learn the rules. When she didn't like it, she moved away from us. They moved her into accommodations full of old, pitiful dying grannies; there she realized how much worse off she was. We felt best when we were learning things. We didn't only learn school things, but also how to dance, poems, etc.

When I met my mother in Terezin, I was glad to see her. At the same time, I realized that I can no longer look out for just myself, and that I have to help her as much as I can. From that point on, I had to watch out that nothing happened to her. We were of course hoping the war would end soon. All of us wanted to live. We were afraid that if the Germans didn't manage to empty the camp in time, they'd slaughter us on the spot. That was what we were most afraid of, that they'd kill us right there.

We were preparing for the moment of liberation. We knew that at that point, chaos would ensue. This is why my mother and I agreed on which streets we'd walk down. She lived close to Hamburg [the Hamburg barracks – Editor's note], and I lived on the town square at L 410. Towards the end of the war, where before there had lived about 5,000 people, they'd now stuffed about 60,000 prisoners. That meant that the streets were full of people during the day. Not only in the morning and when they were returning from work, but they were mostly always completely full – on the sidewalks, on the streets, always. When you walked along one side, you couldn't see anyone on the other side. That's why I told her that she had to get to such and such a place. I walked along the route with her twice, and taught her the way. That was my greatest wish, for me to not lose my mother, or her me. That's why we agreed on this. When the Russians arrived in their tanks in the morning, they futilely called out to us. We were afraid to come out. Only when people we knew arrived, and said that they were Russians, did we come out. We knew that soldiers had arrived, cars and tanks, but we still didn't believe that the war was over, and that they were Russians.

After the War

As soon as the war ended, they notified us that trains to Prague were going to be organized. My mother and I said to each other, all right, let's go. Two of my friends also said that they'd go with me to Brno. I proposed that we had to get close to the station, because when the train arrives, there'll be a crush of people. At the station there was one building that was in ruins from the bombing. There, we set up camp on the courtyard gallery. The building was a couple of meters from the tracks. There was no guardrail there, but despite that, we camped out on the gallery for the night. My mother tied us to some metal post, I don't even know where she found the rope. We were on the first floor, and she was afraid that if we rolled over, we'd fall down. Squalid, but despite that, we got some sleep there. In the morning we went to the train. We managed to get only into open cattle wagons, but were on our way to Prague. On the way, people greeted us at each stop, we had baskets of cakes and food, they wept and embraced us, asked us about people, one about the other, whether there wasn't someone there. That's what our trip to Prague was like. In Prague they were already waiting for us, because when we left, they'd hoisted a yellow flag above Terezin. A yellow flag means heavy quarantine. Typhus had broken out. There was no more leaving Terezin. Some people were even under quarantine for two months, had no place to go, and were dying there.

In Prague the Red Cross caught us. They checked us thoroughly, as to whether we were healthy, whether we didn't have lice and scabies. They took everyone to the station at Masaryk [Train] Station. They didn't let anyone go, there was a whole army of them. It was something amazing, they were holding us out of fear that we were coming from the camp and were bringing epidemics and dirt with us. They held us for only a few hours. After the checkup we were allowed to get on the train again. The train traveled for a long, very long time. In all, the trip from Terezin lasted about three days.

We arrived in the evening at the station in Adamov. Adamov is about 25 km from Brno. The trains from Adamov to Brno weren't running, because the bridges had been destroyed. In Adamov, there was one lady waiting for us who had a grandson who'd also been in Terezin. She asked about him right away. We wanted to walk, but she offered that we could sleep over at her place. She had a house, a dairy. She was constantly asking about the boy. Her daughter had married a Jewish man, and they had a little boy. They'd taken him along with the husband. Several times she'd written me a letter, my father had given her my address in Terezin. I'd never seen the boy. She kept waiting for the transport from Terezin to arrive, which is why she'd found out about that train. She let us have a bath. She made coffee with milk and gave us something to eat. In the morning we went home on foot. We had an indescribable fear of what our home would look like. Here they were already saying that Brno had been bombed. We asked people as to how it looked on Hybesova St., we were afraid for Karlicek. We found out that not one building on Hybesova St. had remained standing. Our neighbor, Mrs. Jilkova, said that Karlicek was at Mrs. Ruprechtova's. Finally we met. He said: "See mommy, I always told you that Tonicka would return from the concentration camp, and here she is." They didn't bring Father until a week later, in a wheelchair. My mother wasn't able to push him around, her health was broken. My father was given a newsstand so that we could support ourselves, and I had the store. We'd gotten everything back, except for the fact that my father was an invalid.

When they'd arrested my mother, my father went to his friend's place. Mr. Sturza was the owner of an auto repair shop, and at the same time was a racer. My father was complaining to him, they took my wife away, and I'm just waiting that any minute I'll be going. Most of all, he was afraid for Karlik. Mr. Sturza, my father's friend, said no problem. Karlik will be in the shop, he visits here anyways. He'll get keys to the workshop and the office, and when he'll be in danger, he'll sleep there. I'll give him a pair of overalls, and he'll blend in, there's about eighteen apprentice auto mechanics anyways. The apprentices were Czechs. He said that this would be the best place for him to hide. Sturza wasn't allowed to repair civilians' cars, only German army, police and Gestapo ones. He wasn't allowed to even change a light bulb in a civilian car; everything was designated for the army. So my brother got a pair of coveralls. Mr. Sturza claimed that my brother was his best apprentice, and that they didn't have to ask him to anything twice. When they'd bring in a car for repairs, the hood had to be opened and they'd lay a blanket under the car, because the mechanic worked underneath the car. It wasn't like today, with all those machines. And then, when it was fixed, he went with them for a test drive, they had to test it out. That's how he survived. As far as the other boys go, they probably knew something. When one of them knew something, they all knew it. Some parents, when they were giving their boys snacks, also gave them one for Karlik. They were from the countryside, because those that lived in the city didn't have such resources. In the city, it was quite bad as far as food went. We also knew a butcher whose store we used to shop at, so they also knew that Karlicek was there. This family also supported him, and they used to send him a small pot with food. My father left him some money, so he could also buy food for himself. But he himself couldn't go to the store to buy something, he couldn't go outside. He always asked someone, who bought it for him. No, no one ever turned him in.

One lady, by the name of Jilkova, lived on the ground floor of that building where they'd moved us during the war. Her husband was doing forced war labor in Germany. They had three children. She knew that my brother was in hiding. Once they were looking for him there, who knows, perhaps even more than once. She said that the Gestapo had come and were asking about Karlicek, whether she ever saw him. No, she told them. And whether she doesn't know where he is, that they want him to come to see the Gestapo. They told her: look, it would be good for you to remember, you could pass on to him a summons to come to the Gestapo on a certain day. On top of that they then warned her that she's not in such a good situation, with her husband doing labor in Germany and she with three kids. So it'd be better for you to do what we want. She was quite frightened by that. My brother then told me that as he was sneaking through the hallway, she was waiting for him. Karlicek got a scare, who was that standing there, and it was Mrs. Jilkova. She was very kind to him. Karlicek, you know, I'm terribly sorry, but the Gestapo was here, and here's a summons. You've got to go there, I'm afraid for my husband and my children, if I didn't obey them and didn't give you this summons, they'd be in danger. Karlicek took the summons and said, don't worry Mrs. Jilkova, I'll go there. He took it, went home, packed his bags, taking some money, cards, photos and some clothes. He locked the apartment and walked across Brno. We had some friends in Vranov. He walked across all of Brno, through the forest. He arrived in Vranov before dawn. Those friends of ours took him in. He told them that at home the Gestapo were looking for him. Our friends had a house and garden in Vranov, even there he couldn't go outside, but at least he had everything that he needed. He was worried about our apartment, what if someone robbed it. He didn't last long there, and so he thanked them and after two weeks he went back. He was rarely in the apartment, and slept in the workshop. One other lady used to help him, who lived at 55 Hybesova St., Mrs. Ruprechtova. She was Jewish, and her husband was a Christian. They had three children. She and her daughter survived, one son, a student, was shot in Brno. They other son was married, they shipped him and his whole family, that is, his wife and child, to Terezin, I saw them there once. She knew that Karlicek was in that workshop across the street. She snuck over there and told him that on Friday evening, once it's dark, she'll leave the building unlocked and he can come over to her place and have a bath. And what was very important, and for him impossible, that he can also sleep over there, and leave in the morning. So he had Fridays there, on Friday evening Mrs. Ruprechtova would take him in. He had it very good there.

Alas, her son and his wife and six-year-old son were in Terezin for a very short time. They transported them to Auschwitz. Mrs. Ruprechtova stuck to me after the war, and I constantly had to tell her about what they'd been doing in Terezin, where they'd been, how they'd lived. She also asked whether they could still return; I said that they could, if one of them was ill, they'd still be in some sanatorium somewhere. She just kept hoping and hoping that her son's family would return. I constantly had to repeat the same story to her, what life in Terezin had been like, and when I'd last seen them. So this was the woman that used to bathe my brother, and in the morning fed him and gave him clean underwear. She put herself in danger, because taking care of a Jewish child equaled an immediate stay in a prison camp.

After the war, my brother was supposed to enter second year of council school. But he didn't know any of the material. That wasn't yet the biggest problem, that he hadn't attended school for three years. When I returned from the camp,  they brought me my father wrapped up, legless, from the camp, my mother's health was broken and she had heart problems. My brother hadn't been in school for three years, he'd just been hiding wherever he could, but on the other hand, he knew how to repair cars. All I saw was the problem that he was supposed to attend school. I was terribly worried. I was 17 at the time, right away I ran to the school board and there I asked whether they could advise me as to what I should do for my brother, that he was supposed to start school, but he'd be at the absolute bottom of the class, which would be terrible. At the school board they told me that over here, by the convent, is something like an orphanage. There were abandoned children there, being taken care of by the nuns. They said to me, if we give you a letter for reference for them, you could take your Karlicek there, and we'd ask them to take care of him every day, and prepare him for school. They'll do it, because there are child care workers there. Karlicek wasn't thrilled by this, because he was free, he'd managed to take care of himself even when the Gestapo had been looking for him. But I convinced him that this would be no good, and so I took him there. He always came home for one day. After two months, around the middle of August, he announced that he no longer wanted to stay there. He'd learned a few things, and then started attending first year of council school. It's true that he was supposed to start in second year. His education wasn't all that, three years were missing of course, well, he did what he could. He dreamt about leaving for the Palestine; he yearned for it terribly. At home, he attended the Hashomer movement 14, where he was preparing to leave for the Palestine. In 1948 he succeeded; he was 17 at the time.

No one we knew went with him. My mother was unhappy, she was afraid for him, that he'd be alone and without family. To this he said, don't worry, on the other hand I'll be free. And I don't want to listen to anyone maligning me any more, I won't stay here, Mother forgive me, but I'll come visit you, and you'll come visit me too. When he arrived in the Palestine, they put him up in Ramat Gan. In those days there weren't any cars there, all he wrote about was the sun. I asked him how are you, how are things going. So he wrote back, lots of sun and sand here.

My brother enlisted in the army right away. He served under the Jordan Hills, he didn't even go to sleep without his rifle, it was very dangerous. He was a big hero. He's not the type of person to complain and be unhappy. He said that it was good there, fine, we didn't do anything there, that's it. He was happy. He always returned to that kibbutz. When he was leaving in 1948, customs officials came to our place and checked what he was taking with him. He wanted to take his bicycle and accordion along. He played the accordion very well. The customs officials didn't allow him to take the harmonica, nor the bike. I said, just take what you want, and see what happens at the border. Well, so he packed those things up as well. The border guards didn't check the wagons, whether it had all passed through customs. My mother and I went with him to Breclav, where the customs people were. In Breclav, the trains were switched towards Austria. It was very sad at the station. I told my brother that when the customs officials arrive, to start playing some Czech folk songs on the accordion. When he began playing, everyone was thrilled by it. They just looked at his papers, but not his bags, because they were in the freight cars. He played, and they liked it. The train was about to start, it had already moved a bit, to connect to an Austrian locomotive, at which time we said, hey, we'll go to Austria. My brother agreed, and we got on. Then my mother said: And what about Dad? And so we began banging on the doors, to the guards, and so  they stopped the train, and we said goodbye. We had the chance to leave. Later he reproached us for it in letters. You're always writing me that you're sad, you should have all come at once, but you can still come to Israel. My father was worried about how he'd make a living there and all. In the end we found out that my father would have gotten post-war compensation, that even we would have been able to live off it. I wasn't scared of work. My mother was no longer able to work, as she had a weak heart. Living in a kibbutz, that wouldn't have even been a question for me. My brother used to say, I'm leaving with a light heart because I know that Tonicka [Antonie] won't abandon you. If I wouldn't have been here, he wouldn't have done it. My mother was very unhappy, but my father always said that he saw him as a great hero, and if that's what he wants, let him go his own way.

When my brother arrived in Israel, it was of course a big change for him, one he wasn't expecting. He went to the Haogen kibbutz. There were a couple of Czech boys there. So he began learning how to farm. They put him, who'd studied to be an auto mechanic, to work doing irrigation, they had to reclaim the desert. There were patrols there too, because the Arabs were stealing cattle from them at night. So it wasn't an easy life there. Collective live wasn't all that ideal either. He was young, and so began to miss certain freedoms, and the idea of only working, and not having even a penny, only for food and clothing, that happiness didn't last long. He had an accordion with him, and that was all as far as culture went. There were no cinemas, no theater, they had to put on all the plays themselves. On one such occasion he first met his wife.

He's still in Israel. He worked for two or three big companies. At first he worked for an Italian company, and then as a manager for Volkswagen. Later he built his own workshop, and employed auto mechanics. He himself was an excellent mechanic. He studied at Volkswagen and also repaired Japanese cars. Later, he unfortunately lost a leg. Now he's paralyzed. Despite his handicap, he comes here every year; they put him on the plane in a wheelchair, and I pick him up from the plane, and so we see each other every year. I used to go there often before.

My sister-in-law was studying education in Tel Aviv at the time. She was still living with her parents. Once a girlfriend of hers invited her to a celebration at a kibbutz. She saw my brother playing there, and was very attracted to him. She complimented him on the nice music, and said that she'd like to learn to play the accordion. They came to an agreement, and in the end she invited him over. He was also in the army for another three years, he went from that kibbutz straight into the army. When he returned, he got married. He was 21. My sister-in-law's name is Nica Cvi, her surname is Michalova now. They had a daughter, Shani. Alas, my brother is seriously ill, he's a paraplegic and is missing one leg. They had to amputate it. On top of that, he then had a stroke.

Shani ended up getting married, to an Israeli. After the wedding, her husband said that he had an uncle in America, and that they could take over his store for a year. That they could make more money there than in Israel. She loved him, and so agreed. They stayed there for about a year, but then he didn't want to return. Shani wanted to return at all costs, because she has friends and her parents only in Israel. She didn't feel at home there, and didn't want to stay there for any amount of money. It was a big battle, my sister-in-law had to go to America. It took three months until Shani got divorced and could return home. Her ex-husband stayed there, and after the divorce he married some Jewish girl. He thus became an American citizen, as she was an American. A year later he divorced again, returned to Israel, and wanted Shani back. But at that time he revealed his reasons, that he'd wanted to get American citizenship. Shani's ex-husband had a worldly nature, he wanted to travel all over, to be free. Shani told him that he'd disappointed her once, and that she no longer trusted him, and that she'd rather be alone. So now she takes care of her ill parents. She also has work that interests her. At first she worked for a large company. Besides that, she studied at the Faculty of Science. Then she started her own business, flower arranging. She arranges for weddings, decorates theaters and ballrooms. She started her own garden on the roof of the house. She works as a landscape architect. She's happy. She takes care of her father every day, helps wash and dress him, and then runs off to work.

When Mom and I returned from Terezin, it wasn't easy to start living everyday life again. It's true that we were all alive. My brother had survived too, people helped him. As for my father, they brought him without legs. We'd all lived in very tough conditions, but we'd managed to escape with our lives. My father was terribly unhappy that he was no longer of any use, now that he had no legs. We consoled him, up to now you took care of us, now we'll take care of you. Right away we asked for a newsstand, which they also granted us. My father also got a wheelchair. We opened the newsstand right away. I used to take my father there. My father sat behind the counter, with the goods around him, and served people. In the evening we'd go home. The newsstand was on the other side of town, we were far away from it. Each time, people had to help me onto the streetcar with the wheelchair, and then off again. Four people had their work cut out for them to lift him up. There weren't any streetcars with access for the handicapped, but one could get by. At the age of 17, I had to care of my invalid father and the newsstand. My mother was at home, she was very weak, and so couldn't work. She was glad when she managed to cook a light meal. We had a large garden, we'd gotten it back. My father worked alone in that newsstand up to the age of 78. I used to go there with him almost every day. After 1948 15 the Communists limited sales 16, but it was enough for him to make a living. Mainly he was satisfied, that he was working, that he'd remained in contact with people, and that he was supporting himself. He died in 1983, at the age of 83. Despite not having legs, he was physically and mentally healthy. My mother was only ever at home, she had a seriously ill heart, and died at the age of 59.

We couldn't get our house back, as we'd lost it. We'd had to raze it. After the war, we returned to our pitiful apartment. My mother immediately began looking for someplace for us to move into. Someone told us that in the building just around the corner, on the ground floor, there was a vacant three-room apartment that had been abandoned by a family that had left for Germany. So we went to the National Committee, which of course immediately issued it to us. We were also given another option, but my father had that wheelchair, so we could only live on the ground floor. So we began living again, began working, and were happy.

My brother was associating with young Jewish people, and studying. He wanted to leave for Israel, and was systematically preparing for it. He said that he doesn't want to listen to someone call him "Jew". He wants to be in our country, and doesn't believe that the Germans won't return. As a child, he overcame something that he can't forget. He survived bombing, queues, he can't forget that there were dead horses lying on the corner, and people were cutting meat off them. He didn't want to live here. Our Mom was distraught over it. When he was born, he'd meant the whole world to her. Our father on the other hand, said that it's heroic of him, you've got to support him. Karlicek left when he was 17.

I couldn't abandon my parents. It was out of the question, it wasn't at all to be considered. My brother said: "After all, you've got Tonicka, otherwise I wouldn't leave, if you were here alone. She won't abandon you." But now even he says that despite that, we should've all gone, because even so, they assigned him to a kibbutz. If we would've gone to the kibbutz too, we would of course have lived and worked there, just like here. Even though our father didn't have legs, he was very capable, he had a head and hands, and would have made a living there too.

We had friends that left too. We admired them, because they were, after all, going off into the unknown. Even though it was our country, it's not that easy to arrive somewhere with just some bags. You can never know how it'll be and what'll be. The desire to be free was the strongest thing for them. Not everyone was satisfied to be "accepted" in Bohemia. I can't say that we're oppressed here, but here and there an anti-Semitic remarks comes along. Personally, I think that anti-Semitism is just envy. I even convinced some people otherwise. "Hey, you're a Jew? Aren't you ashamed of it?"

"Why should I be ashamed? I've never hurt anyone, and neither did my parents, nor our ancestors, so I don't know why I should be ashamed. Imagine, I'm even proud of it. Why do you think I should be ashamed of it? Why don't you like Jews, should everyone who's a Jew be ashamed of it now?"

"My mother told me that she worked as a servant for Jews, and they didn't treat her well. When we were little, and were learning about religion, they told us that the Jews killed Christ."

"It really is sad that they oppressed your mother. It's too bad she didn't leave such a family. But do you think that it couldn't have happened that she'd have worked for Christians, and would also have experienced injustice? I unfortunately can't defend those people, if they weren't good to your mother, but she should definitely have left them. That wasn't because they were Jews, that was because they perhaps didn't have good character. There are only two things in the world: good and evil. And what else do you want to blame Jews for? Do you think it's our fault that we're of the Jewish religion? We're just as much Czechs as you, we just have a different religion. We were born here, just in Jewish families. We inherit the religion and traditions of our ancestors, but that doesn't mean that we're bad. Of course, in each nation and each country, there are good and bad people. And so it is also among citizens of the Jewish religion. Is it someone's fault that he's oppressed and doesn't know why? Is when, to whom and where you were born your fault? Is it your fault? And what if you wouldn't been born into a Jewish family? Think about it, and try to put yourself into this situation. Maybe you wouldn't even been happier than you are today. You wouldn't have been led to hate. They would've only taught you to believe in God, in good. They would have led you to education. You're still young, you can still learn, so that you'll realize that you can't let yourself be influenced. As far as Jesus Christ goes, the Jewish didn't crucify Jesus. I can tell you that. The Romans decided about it, and also executed the verdict."

This hate seems to be endless. Today priests come to us and ask for forgiveness, that this hate towards Jews had been there since it's been mentioned in books. That nation was persecuted for it didn't do, and Hitler took advantage of this thought, which was very bad. This lady then apologized to me, I told her: "It's not your fault that they led you to hate like this." One blames another for what's not his fault, and on top of that tries to crush him, he wants to eliminate him and kill him.

I met my husband, Ladislava Militky, at the spa in Lipova in 1956. At first we wrote each other letters, then he invited me over to his parents' place. I also invited him to mine, and in September, in 1957, we got married. He moved to Brno. I was undergoing treatment, I'd had frostbitten toes from Terezin, when we used to go outside. In Terezin we didn't work just in the fields, but they also sent us to do construction work. They were organizing the building new barracks for the prisoners. There was water and ice everywhere. The Germans also made use of us during hunting. We served as beaters for pheasants and rabbits. They selected several beaters from our group. When they took us with them, our shoes got soaked. It was cold, below freezing. Our shoes didn't have time to dry properly by morning. Actually, they almost never dried out. That's how I got my frostbite. I was treated for it for several years. When I was getting married in 1957, I still had it. It was over ten years that I suffered from it. One friend of mine, who was in Bergen Belsen 17, got such frostbitten feet during the march 18 that her toes fell off. She also died right away. My husband had some sort of eczema, which is why he was at the spa. That's where we met, and in the end got married. I always wanted to marry a boy that was educated, handsome and from a good family. Which is also what happened. We were happy. We had a boy. He makes us happy.

My husband, Ladislav Militky, was born on 12th January 1929 in the town of Litovel, in the Hana region of Morava, near Olomouc. His father worked for an agricultural savings bank. He prospered there, they even built a villa. They did well, for ten years he was an only child, until his sister was born. My husband isn't a Jew. I got along very well with his family. They got along well with Jewish families, in fact, not only did they know them socially, but also visited the baths with Jewish families. One of my husband's best friends is also from a Jewish family. There wasn't even a hint of anti-Semitism amongst them.

My husband worked in construction, and worked in various jobs. After he moved to our place in Brno after the wedding, also completed hotel school. He worked in a student cafeteria and in various recreational facilities. That was all fine. But a crisis took place in our lives. His social life took on an unfortunate direction. In his youth he did various sports, after the wedding he participated in sports only passively, and liked very much to attend games and various contests. Unfortunately, this hobby caused him to be more interested in it that than the everyday life of his family – his wife and son [Ladislav Militky, familiarly Ladicek – Editor's note]. So the spent less and less time with his family – later women that wanted him also came along. In the end we got divorced, because he literally abandoned his family.

We were divorced in 1978. After the divorce he moved in with one woman that lived out in the country, who'd been chasing after him for three years. He used to claim that he was thinking about us, even out there. After a year and a half he wanted to return. Living with this woman, he had to make a living with manual labor, to which he had an adversity. In response to that, I said to him: "That's what you wanted, so go ahead and see it through." My husband was always educating himself, he understood, read and studied everything. He knew a lot. He was like a dictionary. But work around the house – like the car or yard – that he disliked. We also had a cottage. The way he saw it was that we didn't need all that, because maintaining it requires work, which was my invention. He always said that we didn't have so much work that needed to be done, that it was just I who was inventing it. For him, the household was a launch pad, when he left, he also returned. Although he died last year, and did love us, he didn't know how to show his love the way it should be done. To just say I love you and give you some money, that's not enough. Love has to be proven through sacrifice and work. If you don't prove it, then it's not a true relationship. When he returned, he claimed that something has to be fixed. Of course, nothing was fixed, just troubles arrived. Personally, I was never able to tell him that I no longer wanted him there. So he stayed. He got a weak stroke, and a heart attack. We were still divorced, but lived together for another 25 years. People kept asking me, why don't you get rid of him and move out.

I never took my husband's keys from our apartment away from him. Our son was studying in Ostrava, and came home from the dormitory regularly. When our son was at home, my ex-husband also used to come for a visit. We also used to go on smaller trips together. I think that despite our divorce, my husband was unable to cut himself free of his family. My life focused on the life and future of our son. Under those conditions it was no longer so simple. Luckily I still had my father. I always felt that the most important thing was that we had a son together. He grew up. He got married, and they had three children. Today they're all studying and working, and everything's fine. I never remarried, even though I could have.

When my son was in Grade 2, they notified us that he'd been selected for a newly opened elementary school. The school started with Grade 3. Each school was supposed to select two of its Grade 2 students. Our son was also one of them. I agreed, so did my son. We were supposed to decide which class he was to go into. I wanted him to go into an English one, while my husband wanted our son to go into the French one, because he'd also graduated in French, in which he was fluent. I asked him why he'd chosen French. He said because then he'd be able to help him study. I told him that I didn't think that he'd help him study. English opens up the world. Already back then, in 1966, I was saying that. He retorted, no, no, French. To this I replied: "Yes, before the war, but English is useful absolutely everywhere. He can go wherever, a everywhere he'll be able to speak and study." I'd also taken English for two years, I'd also taken courses and so on. So I said to myself that in the beginning I can help him, and then we'll see. In the end my son did go to an English school, though it was at the other end of town. I was extremely concerned and afraid for him. He was little, going to Grade 3 on a streetcar, and had to transfer in busy places. Despite that he did well, they took everything in English, and the only thing they took in Czech was Czech. Already after one year he knew how to speak English. In the beginning they learned through playing and songs, which he didn't even know how to translate, but knew what they were about. Within a year he could communicate in English. When we went to Israel, he spoke English on the boat. At that time he was 9. He translated everything for me. My brother was amazing, and left money for us with the captain, so that we could enjoy ourselves on the ship. We were there for two days, as back then you could still travel by steamship. We stayed in Israel for two months. It was good there, my brother was still healthy. He had work, he was an auto racer and had a beautiful life.

Ladicek applied for a school of foreign trade. When he returned from the entrance exams, he was excited that he'd known it all, and that he had the questions answered as they were writing them on the blackboard. A week later a letter arrived, I don't remember exactly what it said, but something to the effect that they weren't accepting him for political reasons. So I carefully explained to him that even despite the fact that he knew everything, not everything we strive for always works out. Ladicek was of course miserable because of it. I called some high schools to find out whether they still had room. My son was always very good at drawing, so I also called vocational schools, so that if they took him as a house painter, he could, if he was still interested in studying, get into tech school later. I went to see the economics school principal, and asked him for the reasons they hadn't accepted him, when he'd been one of the best in the entrance exams. And why are they punishing children and taking away their future, when nothing's their fault? Then the principal asked me if we'd be satisfied if they accepted Ladicek into general economics. That it may not be foreign trade, but that's a narrow specialization, and if he didn't manage to find work with some company doing foreign trade, he'd have to learn and work in general economics anyways. He explained it beautifully to me. At home I asked Ladicek whether he'd be satisfied if they accepted him into general economics. Of course, of course, he said. He did well in school, he won a shorthand contest. Once his teacher called me in and said that during the four years she was teaching him, there was no better student. After the graduation exams, his teacher turned to the teaching staff and proclaimed: "Don't forget that his student was accepted here on appeal."

After high school he applied to Economics University in Ostrava. There he met his wife, Venuska. After first year, their son, Zdenecek [Zdenek] was born. When they were graduating, and coming to the front for their diplomas, Zdenecek was already nodding to them, and saying "Aha, mom and dad." They eventually had another two children, Michaela and Jiri. We helped them, during the day we took care of the kids and they attended school, and during the evening they studied together.

Zdenek did artistic facades and stuccoes on castles. He also knew how to draw very well. After high school he'd wanted to attend civil engineering, but he didn't pass his math exams. He got a job with one company that was in the roofing material business. He's supplementing his studies with night business courses at university. Michaela is studying to be a teacher. Jiri is still in high school. During the school year, I see my grandchildren less, but we call each other relatively often. When the grandchildren were small, they spent a lot of time at my place.

Our boy attended university in Ostrava. There was no economics school here, and that's what he wanted. He also played competitive badminton for one club. Despite the fact that he played a lot of sports as a boy, I used to take him to hockey, to the arena. He was already on the ice at 5:00 a.m. About three times a week, we'd get up at 4:00 a.m., sometime with tears, too. In the meantime, there was soccer too, but he came to like badminton best. He  traveled, competed, and liked it very much.

After the war, I at first helped my father run the newsstand. Later I worked at a machine works, where I stayed for 20 years. They put me into the computing center. We put together production reports for the finance department. We put together calculations for the accounting department for parts production, for which we issued salaries for workers and experts. I did that for 20 years. Technology advanced during that time. I liked this work, on the whole. After some time, I switched jobs and went to the computing center of a railway construction firm, where I was manager for four years. Sixteen girls worked there. We worked for all of Moravia. The head office was in Bratislava. From there I retired. In 1986 they called me from the Jewish Community, which was under the leadership of Mr. Arnost Neufeld. His secretary was leaving, and they asked me whether I couldn't take her place. I was a bit afraid to take the job, as I didn't want to commit myself. I could've been someplace else, where there was money to be made, because at that time you worked for the Community almost for free. Sometimes a person wants to do something good, which may not be paid so well, but is all the more useful.

I still work for the Jewish Community today, the difference just being that I only visit people that want it, or to be more precise need it, or I take them to the doctor, as the case may be. I just do social visits, or when there's some sort of event. Before that I was a social worker and was also in charge of the secretariat. We established contact with old people that needed it, who were for the most part alone.  Every decent family, when they have a grandma or grandpa, takes care of them in all respects. And when people who were alone needed to be taken to the doctor, or to be brought or taken somewhere, to be accompanied to the synagogue or outside, whatever, we did it. Then this activity developed to the point that if a woman was living alone, volunteers from us would come and help her out. Sometimes we arranged nursing services, or for example she'd need to call a plumber, get something fixed or painted, so we organized all that. Simply put, we kept in touch with those people that asked for help.

My colleagues at the railway construction firm didn't express anything related to me being Jewish. Perhaps they might have had certain anti-Semitic thoughts, but luckily they didn't express them. When I started there, there was comparatively harsh political vetting. The strictest conditions were for someone who was applying to the army, to the police, and then to the railways. At that time, the political officer that was interviewing me told me that he liked the fact that I'd told him everything, that I had a brother and friends in Israel. "Well, Mrs. Militka, I like that you're telling me everything openly like this. We've also got employees that deny everything. So we're looking forward to you working here." I didn't have problems. And I told him, why should I try keep it a secret, maybe you knew about it even before I arrived. In my preceding job, every time I arrived back from a trip abroad, they'd call me into the political department. They wanted to know whom I'd met with and so on. There were unfortunately people there whose work consisted in monitoring other, according to them suspicious people. Once I said to them: "I don't have the education nor the personality to move about in these spheres that you're asking about. When I went to Israel, I went to see my brother, his wife and daughter and my girlfriends, and to see the country. I got to know its history and historical sites, and relaxed by the sea. And nothing else... and I was happy that I was with my brother, because every day with him is valuable to me. The Germans robbed us of a lot of time, when we weren't able to be together. Now we again can't be together, though we've not done anything to anyone, and despite that we're not allowed to be brother and sister, neither here nor there. " To which he replied: "Would you like to live there?" I said: "Not for now."

"And why?"

"It's very hot there." They saw that they won't budge with me.

Especially in Communist countries, people tried to avoid work and made up various excuses and stories. I can't claim it for sure, as I didn't see it around me. I just know that there were those that informed on each other. That was unpleasant. Otherwise they didn't avoid work. Informers were also paid for their work.

I was happy when I got my pension. I'd already been making plans how we were going to do and enjoy everything when I'll have the time. Everyone who's healthy looks forward to that. But I retired right after a gall bladder operation, and was weak. Then I realized that with each day a person gets older, and has to battle against it. Despite the fact that I like my apartment and household, I miss having people around. That's why I said to myself that I had to get well and get out among people.

My son has a positive relationship with Judaism. When he was little, he used to go to the synagogue with me. We observed holidays, and didn't eat what was forbidden. For Passover we'd make food from matzot. Even to this day, I make stuffed fish, which I like very much, and bake barches, roast meat. Because my husband wasn't a Jew, I tried to prepare their holidays for him. We used to observe those too.

My grandsons are also interested in Judaism. They read books and study literature. They weren't brought up in any faith, as their mother wasn't religious either. My grandsons aren't registered at any Community. Venuska is afraid that what happened to us could happen again, that someone could come, take the register and would then have them.

My parents observed Jewish traditions. Not as much as before the war, of course. They didn't eat kosher anymore, but they didn't eat what was forbidden. My parents are buried at the Jewish cemetery. Karlicek managed to get permission to come to our mother's funeral, but alas when it came to our father's, he wasn't successful. He wanted to arrange permission in Israel, but they [the Czech Communist government] wouldn't give it to him. He also tried it through the Swedish embassy, he even got to Vienna, but no further. He had to fly back to Sweden. Because of him, we postponed the funeral by ten days. Back then the times were such that they didn't allow siblings to see each other, for a son to come for his own father's funeral. They didn't respect people at all.

I told my son about what took place during the Holocaust. I was very careful, just fragments, so he had to put it together himself. It wasn't like now, when we're sitting here and I'm telling you everything. I wanted to protect him, because it's been proven that the fear gets passed on up to the second generation, that even his children would still have been afraid... I wanted to protect him from that. My son is registered at the Community, but his children aren't. Venuska is afraid that what happened to us could happen again, that they'll take the records and would then have them, too.

I always liked to read. Even now, my apartment is full of books. My son's books that he didn't take with him are still here. They've also got a lot of books at home. I concentrated mainly on literature for my son. He was always interested in history, so we used to buy him books on world history. When newspapers were still cheap, my husband used to subscribe to all the dailies. He always read a lot, and was like a walking encyclopedia; it's just too bad that he never shared his knowledge with anyone. He never asked me what he could do so that I'd read more. He claimed that there wasn't that much work, that I was making the work up.

We used to go on vacations to Romania, and to Yugoslavia. We also had a cottage, where we spent our free time. My father never understood why we used to go on vacations, when it was so beautiful at our cottage. He always used to say, the sun, mountains, beautiful nature, what else could you wish for. But we used to go because of people, in each place there were different people, different customs. Once we managed to meet up with my brother in Romania. It was, how would I put it, neutral territory. He came from Israel, and I from Czechoslovakia.

Before 1989, my brother was in Czechoslovakia for our mother's funeral. Once a trip from Israel was organized for those that had family in Czechoslovakia. I think that an ad came out in the papers. My brother also applied. The trip was through a travel agency. He was with us for a while, and then he joined a tour group and they traveled to beautiful places in Bohemia – Karlovy Vary and so on. That was a year before our father's death. They then didn't let him come for the funeral. The tour was advantageous for the state, because it put foreign currency into the state treasury. Lately, my brother has been coming every year. In Israel they put him on a plane, and I then pick him up. Alas, now he's a paraplegic, but despite that he comes here regularly.

I didn't have a lot of time for friendships, because I devoted my entire life to my son. Ladicek was a very active child. He used to play hockey, soccer, and I don't even know what else. Besides that, I worked, and every day I visited my invalid father.

The year 1948, the arrival of Communism, meant almost nothing to me. I was taking care of my parents. Right after the war, my father got a newsstand. After Communism arrived, various prohibitions and limitations were issued, what you could and couldn't sell. He wasn't allowed to sell tobacco and tobacco products. He could only sell newspapers, magazines and some smokers' accessories. And even that was left to him only so that they wouldn't limit the life of an invalid that had returned from a prison camp. So that he wouldn't lose his customers, my father used to buy cigarettes for the full price, and then would sell them for the same price. He'd noticed that while buying magazines, people would also buy cigarettes.

The worst thing about Communism was that people weren't free. Everyone was monitored. You couldn't travel freely. There was constant harassment by the authorities. Once, I traveled illegally to Israel without my passport – you see, you could persuade the customs people to not stamp your passport. The way we did it was that I went to Frankfurt to visit a girlfriend, and from there secretly to Israel. Upon my return, the StB 20 was waiting for me. Someone had seen me at the airport in Frankfurt. I told them, that's possible, my friend took me to see so many places, it seems to me that we'd passed a couple of airports. I don't know Frankfurt, how should I know that it's an airport? After a few hours of interrogation and intimidation, they finally released me, because they realized that they wouldn't get any further with me. It was quite unpleasant, because they kept using phrases like "we'll prove it", "we know everything about you." and so on.

In 1968 the Soviets arrived 21. My son was at a Pioneer summer camp, and I was terribly afraid for him. I wanted to go see him. I went to see someone I knew, to borrow his motorcycle. He was persuading me in all manner of ways to not go there, that it's nothing but tanks on the road now, and that it's dangerous, but the children are definitely in a safe place. Finally he succeeded in changing my mind. Ladicek returned home after a few days; camp had ended early. At work they were assuring us that they'd hung a Red Cross flag in front of the camp.

When the state of Israel was created, we were happy, that those people would finally have a home. When a person has a home, he becomes stronger. I always admired people that set out into the unknown. Even Karlicek, when he left, said that for him it would be enough to get something to eat and to have a place to sleep. I felt very proud at the time.

My brother and I wrote each other. We were allowed to send letters, and also got them from him. Occasionally it happened that they were opened, but we got them. During the wars I was afraid for my brother. At the same time, I was proud that such a small country managed to defend itself against so many Arabs. In a figurative sense, it was like for example a small country like Slovakia defending itself against surrounding countries. That pride, that a handful of Jews managed to defend themselves. I just never understood why they called Israel an aggressor, when it was the Arabs that attacked.

I've been in Israel countless many times. I liked everything, especially the people, their character. Many compare them to a cactus. On the surface they've got dense thorns that prevent access to them. Inside them is sweet milk. They maintain a certain distance from foreigners, I guess it stems from the fact that no one behaves considerately towards them. They can't expect help and understanding from anyone. But when they see that you're honestly interested in them, they open up. Few nations have a heart like they do. They have an amazing patriotism. Here, young people avoid military service, but there everyone tries to fulfill his patriotic duty. In the beginning I didn't like that reserve of theirs.

Glossary:

Ihil Shraibman
Kishinev
Moldova
Interviewer: Nathalia Fomina
Date of interview: November 2004

Ihil Shraibman is an old man of medium height, with thick gray hair, gentle features and shrewd eyes. He turned 91 this year. It takes an effort for him to move around his two-bedroom apartment. His sweet-looking and energetic wife Marina, who is much younger than him, is always by his side. She treats him tenderly and sweetly calls him Ihilenka. I admire Marina: she is a real writer’s wife. Marina is Russian, but she’s learned Yiddish to understand her husband’s creative works and assist him. She knows the history of the Shraibman family very well, and when Ihil has a problem with remembering something, she comes to his help. The spouses often switch to Yiddish. Yiddish is Ihil’s mother tongue and he switches to it when he can’t remember a Russian word. Ihil and Marina live in a nicely furnished apartment in Botanica, one of the central districts in Kishinev. Marina is a great housewife. She keeps the apartment ideally clean. We have our meeting in Ihil’s study. There is a desk with a computer on it, a bookcase, a cozy sofa and a portrait of Markish Peretz 1 on the wall. Beside it is Ihil’s portrait, made by Mihay Greku, an artist in Kishinev. Ihil is used to giving interviews as a writer and some of my questions like, for example, the one about his grandfather Zusia’s appearance surprised him. Answering my questions Ihil often referred me to his creative works: ‘I wrote about this a long time ago.’ When I asked him to describe the Jewish holidays in his family he smiled: ‘Don’t you know about celebrations?’

My family backgrownd

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family backgrownd

My paternal grandfather, Ihil-Avrom Shraibman, came from Vadul-Rashkov in Bessarabia 2. There are two towns called Rashkov: Ukrainian Rashkov and Vadul-Rashkov in Bessarabia, located on the bank of the Dniestr River. When in 1918 Bessarabia became Romanian territory 3, the Dniestr formed a border between the USSR and Romania and there were no more boats sailing across. We used to say: the Dniestr has been closed. Vadul-Rashkov had no more communications with Odessa port, the railway station was a long distance away and the town grew poorer. Jews resided in the central part of the town, and the Moldovan, Russian and Ukrainian population lived in the suburbs. The streets were narrow and curved and one-storied cottages were close to one another. There were sign boards: ‘Butcher’s’ or ‘Tailor’s’ on some of them. In spring and fall the streets were impassable. There were four synagogues, a cheder, elementary and talmud torah schools in the town. My grandfather Ihil-Avrom was a cantor. He died six years before I was born. This happened in the 1900s. I was his first grandson and was named after him.

My grandmother Hana was very kind like all grandmothers, and very smart. I can’t remember her maiden name. She owned a small grocery store where she sold tea, coffee and cereals. She also sold kvas [a kind of beverage] and dried sunflower seeds, popular with Jews and Moldovans. The store was in the house and the house wasn’t big. There were two rooms and a kitchen with a big Russian stove 4. The house was lighted with kerosene lamps. The house was plainly furnished: there was a square table, a few chairs, a bedroom and a wardrobe. My grandmother had many children. I remember almost all the names. They were religious like all Jews in the town. They celebrated Sabbath, followed the kashrut and went to the synagogue.

I remember my father’s older brother Shapseh very well. Uncle Shapseh was tall and handsome. He had beautiful black eyes, but he was blind. Shapseh lived with Grandmother. He made his living by lotteries. My uncle and his old companion traveled to smaller towns with lottery tickets and rewards: clocks, samovars or silver cups. They sold their lottery tickets for five lei [the national currency of Romania] each. After selling tickets they returned home, invited a few residents of Rashkov and arranged the lottery. They wrote the winning numbers on paper strips and the rest of paper strips were blank. Then the winnings strips were picked and my uncle and his companion delivered the rewards to the winners’ homes. When I was eight, my uncle fell ill suddenly during one of his trips, died and was buried in some distant town: relatives failed to come to his funeral. 

My father was the second son in the family and after him came Meyer. They said in the family that Uncle Meyer was going to study in the yeshivah, but this dream of his wasn’t to come true. He had to help Grandmother with the store and take care of the younger children. However, Meyer spent every free minute reading his books. When his time came, he married Zisl, a Jewish girl from our town. He got some training to become a shochet, moved to the faraway village of Shepteban’ and worked as a shochet for the rest of his life. In the 1960s a Jewish woman from Shepteban’ told me that Uncle and his family wanted to evacuate during the Great Patriotic War 5, but Germans captured them before they managed to cross the Dniestr. Uncle Meyer, his wife Zisl and my cousins Malka and Tsylia were beaten to death with sticks with sharp ends.

Uncle Zusia was my father’s youngest brother. His wife’s name was Tuba. They had a son. His name was also Ihil. Uncle Zusia died before the war. Tuba and Ihil were killed by the Fascists during the war. When my grandmother died in 1931, my father and his brothers argued about the inheritance grandmother had left. It wasn’t much, but the brothers never restored their good after that. 

I also remember my father’s two sisters. One of them was Feige-Beile. She was very beautiful. She married a Jewish villager and moved to live in his village. She and her husband occasionally visited the town, I remember. She died from consumption when I was about ten.

There is an interesting story about my father’s other sister Reizl. I remember her. She was very beautiful. This happened on the other bank of the Dniestr at the time of the Civil War 6 in Russia, when Ukrainian Jews were looking for rescue from Petliura’s 7 pogroms in Bessarabia. It happened in winter, when the Dniestr was covered with ice. I even remember Mama giving food to some refugees in the kitchen. They were heading to Kishinev from where they were hoping to move abroad. One night two guys from the other side of the Dniestr knocked on the door, pushed it inside and entered the house. Everybody was asleep. One of the guys said, ‘Erez Yisroel’ [‘Land of Israel’ in Yiddish]. Grandmother and her daughters woke up, ‘What’s the matter?’ The guys were wearing military uniforms and this scared my grandmother, but they happened to be no militaries. At that time people wore whatever they could get. One of them, Ovsey Zayatz, saw Reizl and stayed to live with them. I think he lived in Rashkov for about two years. He married Reizl and opened a store. Later they moved to Bucharest, looking for a better life. They stayed there for a year or longer since Reizl visited us once. She stayed a week in Rashkov and then they moved to Canada. Ovsey was a nice person. He worked in Canada as a private teacher. Later some of his former students lent him some money to open a grocery story. He did well and became a rather wealthy man. They had children. They wrote to us and even used to send their relatives ten dollars as a gift during the Romanian rule.

My papa was born in the 1880s during the tsarist rule. He could read and write in Yiddish, but he had no profession. He also knew Romanian and some Russian. He had to support the household after my grandfather died. In winter he went around villages working for tobacco producers. He sorted out the tobacco, had very little sleep – two or three hours per day. He came back home in spring before Pesach. Papa was very kind, taciturn, reserved and not a merry person at all. I thought he was handsome. I remember him with and without a beard. I liked him, when he didn’t have a beard. He looked younger then. He always covered his head. He didn’t go to the synagogue on Sabbath, but he did on holidays. He and my mother were neighbors and fell in love with each other. Mama always said they were very much in love and had married for love.

I remember my maternal grandfather, Zusia Chokler, very well. He was born and lived in Vadul-Rashkov. He took over any job at hand to support his numerous household. During the tsarist rule he was a ferry man on the Dniestr. On the days of fairs he hauled wagons, Moldovans, Jews, bulls and chickens from one bank of the river to the other. Grandfather Zusia also dealt in lotteries, but the main occupation of his life was architecture. Grandfather Zusia designed and constructed houses. My grandfather built one of the four synagogues in town. This was the synagogue for the commonest people in the town, who had no craft. There was an open book made on the front wall of the synagogue with two lions with their forelegs up on both sides of the book. Over the lions there was an engraved inscription in Hebrew: ‘By the effort of rab Zusia Chokler’. When my brother Isrul was born, Grandfather Zusia put me on one knee and him on another to tell us fairy tales that we could listen to for hours.

My grandmother’s name was Yenta, but I can’t remember her maiden name. I remember her. She was a housewife like all Jewish women at the time. She was short and always had her head bandaged: she suffered from frequent headaches. Grandmother Yenta stuffed pillows with feathers. There was white fluff everywhere in the house. My grandfather’s household was kosher and they all celebrated Sabbath like all other Jews in the town: they had a festive dinner and lit candles. They went to the synagogue on holidays and fasted on Yom Kippur. My grandmother and grandfather had four children. My mother had a brother and two sisters. 

My mother’s older brother Srul died young. I can hardly remember him. My brother, born in 1920, was named after him. My mother’s older sister Ida was a spinster and lived with Grandmother Yenta, helping her to stuff pillows. Ida wore her hair in two plaits. She died before the war. The other sister, Dvoira, married a man from Kodyma [today Ukraine] before the Russian Revolution 8 and lived in the USSR. I never met her. When Bessarabia was annexed to the USSR in 1940 9, we received a letter from them, but then the Great Patriotic War began and we never met.

My mama Reizl was born in Vadul-Rashkov in 1892. She finished elementary school and two grades of secondary school. Mama was beautiful. She had long thick hair, blue eyes and extraordinarily soft skin. She had a good sense of humor and laughed a lot. Mama loved my father and us, her children, and always said that love was most important of all things in life.

My parents got married when they were 19-20 years old. They had a Jewish wedding with a chuppah. They rented an apartment. After the wedding my father opened a store and Mama was a housewife. I was born in Vadul-Rashkov in 1913. We often changed apartments and I remember four-five apartments that we rented. There were usually two rooms and a kitchen in these apartments. Then one acquaintance moved to America and sold his house to my father for a very low price. There were two rooms, a kitchen and a cellar in the house. However, we didn’t live there long. It was in a quiet spot and too remote for the trade to go well. My father built another house near where Grandmother Hana lived. We moved into this house with two rooms and a store in it. The former house was ours, but nobody lived in there. My parents had ten children. After me my brother Isrul, named after Mama’s brother, was born. Then came Iosif, Buzia, Feiga, Shapseh, Luba, Zisl [Zina], Hana [Anna] and Ida. Shapseh and Luba died in infancy, Feiga died at the age of ten, when she was at school and even wrote poems.

We celebrated Jewish holidays at home. I remember Vadul-Rashkov before Pesach, when there was a lot of sunshine in the town. The windows in the houses were open, some people were engaged in whitewashing their houses, some were dusting their beds and the others were digging around the trees. Mama always did a general cleanup before Pesach. She cleaned the windows and doors, whitewashed the kitchen and burnt out the crockery. When the house was clean she took out the Pesach crockery. All I remember is that all children had little wine cups with handles. Mama made keyzele, the matzah pudding, gefilte fish and chicken broth. She baked latkes from matzah flour. We bought ordinary wine for Pesach. My father conducted the first two seders, reclining on cushions and according to all the rules. He followed the rules of the Haggadah where they were described in detail. It also contains di fir kashes, the four questions and the answers to them. Initially I posed the questions, being the oldest and then my brothers took over: ‘Mah nishtanah halaylah hazeh mikol halaylot’ in Hebrew. My father put an afikoman, a piece of matzah, away and we were to look for it. However, I don’t remember getting a gift for it. We didn’t have guests on seder – just ourselves.

Shavuot came after Pesach. Mama only cooked dairy food on Shavuot.

We fasted and went to the synagogue on Yom Kippur. On Rosh Hashanah Mama made round-shaped challah and we ate apples with honey.

The children loved Chanukkah. And I remember it well. We lit chanukkiyah on this holiday. We cut out the inside of a potato, poured oil in it, inserted a wick and lit it. Every day another candle was added. They were on the window sill. We, the kids, were given some money, a little bit, of course, considering that there were so many of us. We also received a dreidl. Mama also made potato latkes.

Growing up

I was born on Purim. I remember how hamantashen and fluden were made. My wife Marina always makes hamantashen on Purim. Jam and nuts were to be prepared in advance. We also took shelakhmones around, but this was not as colorful as Sholem Aleichem 10 described, when children and adults took gifts to their relatives and acquaintances. However, there were no purimspiels, though my father told me that in his youth there were real performances in Vadul-Rashkov.

I went to cheder before I turned six. My teacher Dovid-Iosif was short, hunchbacked and very old. He never raised his voice. He taught us the aleph-beth, reading and writing. After finishing cheder I went to the Jewish talmud-torah school, also an elementary school, but more secular than the cheder. Then I finished a Romanian elementary school. The director of the school was Jewish and there were Jewish pupils in it. Then I finished two grades of a secondary school. There was a public library in Vadul-Rashkov. I liked reading in Yiddish, Romanian and Russian. There were books in Hebrew, Yiddish, Romanian and Russian in the library. The Romanians closed it at some time, but later they reopened it. I was about nine years old then. I remember that day well. I was waiting for the library to open, sitting on the stairs. I was the first one to come in there and register. I went to the library to borrow books almost every day. Within a few years I read all the books in this library. I remember the librarian advising the visitors who had a problem choosing a book to read: ‘Ask the boy over there’ and I recommended them a book to read. 

On 13th March 1926, when I was to turn 13, I was to have my bar mitzvah. Bar mitzvah is an important day in the life of a Jewish boy. On this day he becomes a man. He has one square leather box with philacterias inside wrapped upon his arm, and anther one placed on his head. On bar mitzvah the boy is supposed to say a speech in Hebrew about the Jewry and his faith in God. My seide [‘grandfather’ in Yiddish] Zusia prepared me for this most important event. I remember him visiting us – we lived in a basement then – to teach me my speech. However, literally a few days before my bar mitzvah my aunt Ida ran in agitation and woke up my parents: my grandfather had died. Mama and Papa put my brother Isrul and me into their bed and went there. They came back at dawn and took Isrul and me to our grandfather’s home. Little Buzia and Feiga stayed at home. When we came, my grandfather was lying on the floor wrapped in takhrikhim under a black blanket. There were candles on the floor. There were people all around him crying. My brother Isrul and I were standing and not crying. Then I remember he was carried to the cemetery. Then we walked back home. On our way we stopped by a stream. My father said, ‘Well, Grandfather isn’t here any longer’ and started to cry. I cried, too. After a while we went on home. My father loved Grandfather Zusia dearly. He was very smart. The adults sat shivah, but I didn’t. I made my speech by myself.

When I turned 14, I took up teaching in the village of Shestachi, 15 kilometers away from Vadul-Rashkov to help my father support the family. I had four pupils: three boys and a girl and three adults, their parents. One had two children and the two others had one each. They agreed to accommodate me during the winter: I stayed and had meals during a specified time period with each family. I taught them reading and writing in Hebrew. The boys were older than me and weren’t quite eager to study. They made me tell them fairy tales and stories. Every Friday afternoon I walked back to Rashkov and on Sunday morning I returned to Shestachi. On my way home I was plotting stories for the boys. I earned a few hundred lei in this season. 

At the age of 16 I went to the seminary in Chernovtsy [today Ukraine]; it trained teachers for the Tarbut school 11 in Hebrew. There were such schools in every town in Bessarabia. However, I already became a leftist. It resulted from my reading: if one read Itshack Perez 12, one became a leftist for sure. In my opinion, the Jewish literature was leftist, rather than Communist. In Chernovtsy I didn’t hesitate to join the ‘Krasny Shkolnik’ [Red pupil in Russian], an underground youth organization; it was some sort of Komsomol 13 for pupils. We had secret meetings and distributed proclamations. I remember bringing some to the seminary where I gave them to the first-year students. One of them reported on me to the director. Our director Mark, chief rabbi of Bukovina 14, taught us religion. The next day Mark told me to come to his office after classes. He took a proclamation out of a drawer: ‘Is this yours?’ – ‘Yes.’ – ‘You must know who you give them to. Don’t be stupid again.’ He could have expelled me, but he didn’t. He never touched upon this subject again. I also remember Doctor Porat, our literature and language teacher. The students loved him.

However, I never finished the seminary. The Siguranza [secret police of Romania] arrested me and a few others three months before we finished the third year. I was taken to the jail in Chernovtsy. There were 28 inmates in the cell. Most of them were young people. The jail was for the prisoners waiting for a trial. I was released before the trial and went home to Rashkov before Pesach. Families were hiring tutors for their children at this period and I went to teach in a few houses. I stayed in Rashkov for a few weeks between Pesach and Shavuot. On Shavuot the gendarme chief arrested me in the street. He kept me in the cell till late at night. He had received an order from Chernovtsy to send me out to the trial and had no right to arrest me, but he rather wanted to get his one hundred lei. My father brought him the money in the evening and the gendarme released me. The next day he sent me over to the station on a horse-drawn carriage. My parents were seeing me off. However, when I arrived at Chernovtsy, my comrades decided that I shouldn’t go to court. They collected some money and sent me over to Iasi [today Romania]. Somehow I wasn’t looked for.

When I turned 19, I was conscripted to the army. I served in a regiment in Iasi. However, the Romanian power didn’t entrust rifles to Bessarabians. We were doing drills. On the eve of 10th May, the national Romanian holiday, we took the oath of loyalty to the King [King Carol II] 15, and participated in the parade. On 11th May we were ordered to give back our uniforms, took our old clothes from the attic and were sent to do field work 10 kilometers from Iasi. If somebody could afford to pay 1000 lei, they could stay at home. There was a halutz camp nearby. The campers were preparing to move to Palestine. They were trained to do agricultural work. Many young people adopted Zionist ideas in the camp. One acquaintance of mine from Rashkov moved to Palestine then. To move there one had to obtain a certificate from a Zionist organization.

When my army service was over, I moved to Bucharest from Iasi. I stayed a while in a dormitory. Its director was my acquaintance from Rashkov. Then I went to work as a prompter at the Jewish theater. This was when I heard the name of Avrom Goldfaden [Avrom Goldfaden (1840-1908): Jewish playwright (Hebrew and Yiddish), founder of the Jewish theater in Russia and the USA. Comedies ‘Wizard’, ‘Two Duffers’, ‘Schmendrik’, plays ‘Sulameth’ (1880), ‘Bar-Kohba’ (1882), the father of Jewish theater]. Avrom Goldfaden arrived in Iasi from Russia and was going to publish a magazine. He met the ‘Broder zinger’ [Brody singers’] group and created the first theater in Romania on the basis of this choir. Our theater staged Jewish plays: Sholem Aleichem’s, Mendele Moykher-Sforim’s 16 plays, Rappoport’s play ‘Gadibuk’ staged by Yevgeniy Vachtangov [Vachtangov Yevgeniy Bagrationovich (1883-1922): Soviet producer and writer] at the ‘Gabima’ Moscow Jewish theater, the play was translated by Bialik 17 for the theater. There were also numerous rag plays in Yiddish. I wasn’t that interested in working for the theater. I started writing.

I had started writing back in Vadul-Rashkov. Itshack Perez was my idol. I showed my first works to my friends. In Bucharest I had my first publications. In 1936 I sent my first story to the ‘Signal’ magazine in America. It was published in Yiddish. The title of the story was ‘Erscht tretn’ [First steps]. I also wrote two short stories. However, I wasn’t even aware that they were short stories. I thought it was poetry. Unrhymed poems were in fashion at that time. The first miniature was entitled ‘Lign schtein in dem hant fun sculptor’ [Lie stone in sculptor’s hands], and the second one was ‘Testament.’ I thought I would adopt a genre based on what they published. They published the story and miniatures and since then I’ve written stories and miniatures.

I married Olga Kalyusskaya, who came from Vadul-Rashkov, in my second year in Bucharest. She was a midwife. We met at one of my friends’ place. I don’t think she was interested in me, when we had seen each other before living in Bucharest: she was a damsel and I was still a pup. Olga was eight years older than me. She was born to the family of Yefim Kalyusski, a farmer. Olga’s father had died and I could hardly remember him. Olga left Rashkov after finishing school and finished a midwives’ course in Bucharest, I think. She was an extraordinarily kind person and people liked her. She had many friends. Actually, we didn’t register our relations, but started living together. Later, when the Cuzists 18 came to power we registered our marriage in the town registry. I continued working at the theater and writing. I had my stories published in newspapers in Warsaw and America. My first book of short stories and essays, ‘Meine Heftn’ [My notebooks], was published in Bucharest in 1939. This was an edition of 1000 copies and I paid for the publication. I was planning to have ten such notebooks with general page numbering and later have them bound to have one thick book and I left 500 brochures of 1000 for this purpose, but it didn’t work. I only managed three notebooks, when in 1940 repatriation to Bessarabia began. I didn’t consider staying in Romania since nobody stayed. Firstly, there were already German officers in Romania. Germans had one foot in Bucharest already. And, secondly, the Iron Guard 19 already persecuted Jews. The Iron Guards pinned swastikas on Jews if they bumped into them in the streets. They beat Jews brutally, if they resisted.

In 1940 Olga and I arrived in Kishinev and rented an apartment. I liked the town a lot. It was beautiful, an old Jewish town: there were many Jews living in the town and there was Yiddish heard everywhere. However, there were no publications in Yiddish in Kishinev besides the ‘Word of cooperator,’ a small newspaper of a cooperative association. Romanian authorities had closed the ‘Undzere Tsayt’ [Yiddish for Our Time] Yiddish newspaper back in 1938. I had my works published in the ‘Der Shtern’ [The Star] newspaper in Kiev. My first story, ‘Happiness,’ about our departure from Romania was published there. It also published three other stories that I wrote. Olga worked at the Jewish hospital. This hospital is still there. It had belonged to the Jewish community, but at that time this was the state owned hospital #4. The Jewish community was no longer in Kishinev.

On my first days in Kishinev I met the Jewish poet Yitsyk Fefer [Fefer, Yitsyk (Isaac Solomonovich) (1900-1952): a Soviet Jewish poet.]. He was a captain and was mobilized to the army service in Kiev. He had heard about me from a girl in Orhei; she had met me in Bucharest. He also wrote in Yiddish and was interested in my writing. Fefer suggested that I organize a creative meeting and we appointed the day for the meeting. There was another young Jewish writer who had arrived from Bucharest. We had met in Bucharest. His surname was Kishinevski. I didn’t see him after the war. He must have perished during the war. I was admitted to the Union of Wof the USSR [creative public organization of professional Soviet literature workers, established in 1934]. I became a writer and didn’t have to get a regular job.

I believed in the Soviet Union and if some things were wrong we believed them to be temporary difficulties. There were, for example, Red Army soldiers selling watches in the streets: it made a bad impression. Shortly after the establishment of the Soviet regime food stores started running out of food products. There was an earthquake in Kishinev in fall 1940. We jumped outside through the windows. However, only old and worn buildings were damaged or collapsed. In early 1941, residents of Kishinev began to be deported. None of my acquaintances suffered from this, but I heard about such occurrences. One morning I saw trucks with people. They were taken to the railway station at night and put on trains to Siberia. On 21st June 1941 the Union of Writers organized a meeting dedicated to the 1st anniversary of the establishment of the Soviet rule in Kishinev. It was conducted at the conservatory on Saturday. The meeting was opened by Bukov [Bukov, Yemilian (1909-1984): a Bessarabian poet, wrote prose after the war], chairman of the local department of the Union of Writers of the USSR. I read my story in Yiddish, it wasn’t the best one, but it was about the revolution.

During the war

The next day Kishinev was bombed: the war began. I was mobilized to the army and the following night I slept on the floor at a school building. Early in the morning we walked to Vadul-Voda. From there we moved across the Dniestr, Ukraine, heading to the east. I met Liviu Delianu, a Moldovan Jewish writer, in this group. We kept together. Though we were mobilized, we weren’t sent to the front line forces. We were moving to the rear of the country. Later I got to know that the Soviet commandment didn’t trust the Bessarabians, as they were former nationals of Romania. We reached Dnepropetrovsk and the front line was moving after us. From there we moved to Zaporizhzhya and then reached Transcaucasia where we worked in a kolkhoz 20 for a few months. When the German troops approached the Caucasus we moved on to Central Asia.

So I happened to be in Uzbekistan. My wife Olga found me in Tashkent [today capital of Uzbekistan]. In the evacuation agency we obtained an assignment to the kolkhoz named after Stalin of the village of Savat kishlak. There were three Stalin kolkhozes in this district. However, we couldn’t go to the kolkhoz since Olga fell ill. She was taken to hospital. There was a chaihana inn [tea-house in Uzbek] in the district town where kolkhoz workers could stay when they visited the town. Olga happened to have caught fever that resulted in pneumonia. She was dying. I went to Tashkent to get sulfidin [a sort of medication]. I bumped into Sidi Tahl, an actress of the Jewish theater, whom I had known since Bucharest, at the railway station. Sidi and her husband helped me to get two packs of sulfidin. This saved Olga’s life.

When she recovered, we went to the village. Olga had her head shaved in the hospital and she wore a white kerchief on her head. Though she was still weak, she went to work as a midwife in the kishlak [Central Asian village]. She picked up the Uzbek language promptly and the Uzbek residents understood her. I was sent to work at a school, but this was an Uzbek school and I couldn’t teach there. All I could do was work as a secretary. The huts in the village were made of straw and clay. They had flat roofs where the locals dried grapes and apricots. These huts were called ‘kibitka.’ Olga and I rented a hut from an Uzbek woman, whose husband was at the front. There were other people in evacuation from the Jewish kolkhoz 21 from near Odessa. They were mostly children, women and old people. There were also Ukrainian and Russian people in evacuation.

My father, mother and sisters Zina, Hana and Ida also found us in Uzbekistan. Some time later a crew was formed from those in evacuation and I was appointed its leader. At first we worked in the field harvesting wheat. I was provided with a donkey, being a crew leader. Early in the morning I was the first one to show up in the field. My donkey was loaded with two linen bags full of flat bread cookies. I measured field sections for each crew member and also one for myself. I also worked with a reaping hook. It was 40 degrees above zero. The heat was oppressive. There was a little hut in the field. Starting from about 11 o’clock we took shelter in this hut. At 4 pm we went back to work, when the heat reduced. We worked till dark.

I wrote in the evenings in our kibitka hut. I wrote the book ‘Dray zumers’ [Three Summers]. It contained short stories describing our life and work in the evacuation. This was a good book that I wrote in my own manner without taking into consideration the specifics of the ‘Soviet style.’ I sent a few short stories from this book to the ‘Der Emes’ [Truth in Yiddish/Hebrew] publishing house in Moscow. Shortly afterward I received a letter from the secretary of the Bureau of Jewish Writers at the Union of Writers of the USSR, Peretz Markish. He wrote that he liked the ‘Chaver Brover’ [Comrade Brover] story from this book and he wanted to publish it in his almanac ‘Tsum Zig’ [Towards Victory]. This big almanac was published in spring 1944 and my story was one of the first in it.

Olga gave birth to a baby in this kishlak. It died and we buried it in the kishlak. In 1944, when we moved to the Ursatievskaya railway junction, our second son Edward, Edik, was born. By that time I had submitted my book ‘Dray zumers’ for print. Peretz Markish invited me to a creative meeting in Moscow. There was a train to Moscow via Tashkent from the Ursatievskaya station, but it was impossible to get tickets. No tickets were sold, and that was it! People stood in lines and begged, but no! A week or two later we finally managed to get on a freight train with other passengers to Moscow. It took us a whole month to get to Moscow. The meeting in Moscow was a very interesting one. I read stories from the book ‘Dray zumers.’ There were at least 50 Jewish writers at this meeting. Markish was chairman of the meeting. He opened it. The other writers also spoke and said many warm words about my book.

In fall 1945 we returned to Kishinev. We arrived on 8th November. I remember the day because we ate white bread sold on 7th November 22. We were told there was a parade in the town on this day. The town was in ruins. There were ‘No mines’ signs on many buildings. Another family resided in our apartment. I showed them my passport with the residence address stamp 23, but it didn’t work. We were temporarily accommodated in the corridor of the Union of Writers. There was a wide sofa where Olga, I and our little son Edward slept. Edward was one year and nine months old. The board of directors had its meetings in the room a few stairs up from the corridor and we occasionally attended the meetings, standing on the stairs. 

Mama, Papa and my sisters also returned to Kishinev from Uzbekistan. My brothers Isrul and Buzia also arrived in Kishinev. They had worked in the evacuation in Uzbekistan. Iosif went to the army at the end of the war and came as far as Berlin. Zina, the oldest of my sisters, went to work as a cashier and got married soon. Hana entered the Teachers’ Training College and Ida, the youngest, went to medical school. My brother Isrul, who worked as a crew leader at the furniture factory, helped Papa to get employed by the factory. Iosif worked as an accountant and Buzia was a foreman at the carpet shop where Moldovan carpets were weaved. Our family lived in Kishinev. My brothers got married and had children in due time and so did my sisters Hana and Zina. Mama and my father lived with my childless younger sister Ida and her husband. Papa and Mama observed Jewish traditions after the war. They always had matzah on Pesach. They fasted on Yom Kippur and went to the synagogue.

After the war

We resided in the corridor of the Union of Writers for about six months. There was an army kitchen facility near our former apartment. When this facility was vacated, the family living in our apartment notified us promptly. We moved into this facility before the other willing incumbents did. There were two rooms and a kitchen there and we lived there till we received an apartment from the Union of Writers two years later.

In 1946 my book ‘Dray zumers’ was published in Moscow. This was my first book published in the USSR. In 1948, after the murder of Mikhoels 24, the anti-Semitic campaign of struggle against cosmopolitism 25 began, the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee 26 was dismissed. Many writers, who I knew and corresponded with, were closely linked with this committee. In 1950 I was accused of nationalism and expelled from the Union of Writers. I expected arrest since many Moldovan Jewish writers had already been arrested. Rivkin, one of them, died in prison and the others were released after Stalin died [1953].

This was a horrible time, the time of fear that I can still feel. This was the fear, when one was even afraid of mentioning it. You know, if you are afraid, it means that there are grounds for you to be afraid. There were books written about famine: Hamsun [Hamsun, Knut (1859-1952): Norwegian writer, winner of the 1920 Nobel Prize in Literature.] wrote the book ‘Sult’ [The Hunger, 1890], and other writers… But nobody wrote a book about fear. I’ve never read one. Fear is a terrible thing! The hunger goes away, but not the fear. I was deeply depressed and had to stay in a mental hospital for six months. My wife Olga never left me. She was the kindest person. She was a faithful and reliable friend and she always supported me. She was always my first reader.  

On 12th August 1952 a group of Jewish writers was executed: Dovid Bergelson 27, Peretz Markish, David Gofstein [Gofstein, David Naumovich (1889-1952): a Soviet Jewish poet], who lived in Kiev, Lev Kvitko 28, Yitsik Fefer. Many representatives of the Jewish intelligentsia were executed. Then there came the period of the ‘Doctors’ Plot’ 29. There were rumors that echelons for sending Jews to the Far East were prepared 30. Rumors said that Stalin wished to deport Jews to save them from people’s anger. I cannot tell how true this was, but there were such rumors. When Stalin died, this was over, but I felt no relief. I cannot say that I heard about Stalin’s death with joy or relief… However, I think he was a merder [murderer in Yiddish]. He can be called so even for his execution of writers and Soviet intelligentsia. There were hundreds of thousands of camp prisoners 31, tens of thousands of them never returned home, and these processes started in 1937 32. He issued orders for all of these doings. In 1953 I was restored in the Union of Writers of the USSR. The 20th Party Congress 33 in 1956, and Khrushchev’s 34 speech was nothing new to me, everybody knew something, but none of us imagined the extent of these crimes. We had hopes for improvements in the future then.

I wasn’t a Zionist, but when Israel was established in 1948 I was glad for Jews. I knew how important it was for Jews to have their own country. However, I wouldn’t say I was a great supporter of Israel, but my sympathy was growing in the course of time. I was particularly worried about the liberation wars in Israel: the Six-Day-War 35, the Yom Kippur War 36. So many victims! There are still victims in Israel. In the 1970s first mass departures started in Kishinev. There were meetings conducted where those people who decided to move to Israel were declared traitors in public. My acquaintances also started moving, but I never went to the railway station to see them off. My wife did, but not me. I’ve never considered departure to Israel, America or elsewhere. I didn’t want to leave here.

Khrushchev’s thaw was truly a thaw. Since the 1960s the situation in the country and the attitude toward people was changing. The 1960s was a good time. The situation of the Jewish writers in the country was improving. The ‘Sovetskiy pisatel’ [Soviet writer] publishing house was publishing books in Yiddish: five books per year at the most. In 1961 the ‘Sovietische Heimland’ magazine was established. Its chief editor was Aron Vergelis [Vergelis, Aron Alterovich (1918-2001): Soviet Jewish writer]. My miniatures were published in the first issue on 1st August. Three-four years later I was assigned to the editorial board of the magazine. Members of the editorial board were to gather twice a year in Moscow. Besides, other writers were involved in editorial board meetings to reach a wider audience. Manuscripts of new books were sent to members of editorial board for review and references, so to say.

Everything was fine at my home. My beloved son Edward was a cheerful and quiet boy. He went to the kindergarten since we both worked. At the age of seven Edward went to a music school. I wanted him to become a musician. My friends recommended me the best violin teacher for younger children in Kishinev. His name was Veschkautsan. He auditioned Edward and said he was a gifted boy. He taught Edward for four or five years before Edward went to study with another teacher. He spent a lot of his time playing the violin. His first teacher demanded that he played a few hours per day. I had to sign up his timetable and his teacher made sure that he followed it. Edward had all excellent marks.

Olga and I often spoke Yiddish at home and Edward can speak and write Yiddish. However, I didn’t specifically teach him Yiddish. At that time I still had the fear of being arrested. If somebody got to know that I taught my son Yiddish they might have formalized the accusation of nationalism made to me earlier. After finishing school Edward entered the conservatory in Kishinev. Olga died in 1967. Her death was a hard blow for me: I lost my wife and a faithful friend. We buried her in the Jewish cemetery. We buried her in a coffin and I didn’t order the Kaddish. I didn’t want to follow the ritual at the time. After Edward finished the conservatory he was offered a job at the Moldovan State Symphonic Orchestra.

I wrote a lot in the 1960s and often went to work to the Creative Houses of the Union of Writers of the USSR [specialized recreation homes to create conditions for creative work]. One of the most popular of these was located in Maleyevka near Moscow. I went there for a few years in a row in March. Each writer could have a room on his own. There were nice doctors in these centers. I met many famous writers from Moscow and other Soviet republics. I have many bright memories and books in many languages that the authors gave me. In summer I worked in the writers’ creative house in Yalta. I also went to Dubulti near Riga. In the Creative House in Pizunda [town and cape on the Black Sea in Georgia] I met Arkadiy Raikin [Raikin, Arkadiy Isaacovich (1911-1987): a popular Soviet actor, director of the Soviet Theater of Miniatures], he stayed in the House for Actors nearby. I often walked with him and his wife. He liked to speak Yiddish to me. He was a wonderful person. I wrote most of my works in Creative Houses. My three novels were written there: the trilogy ‘Zibetsnyorike’ [The Seventeen-year-olds], ‘Veyter’ [Further] and ‘Zibn yor mit zibn hadoshim’ [Seven Years and Seven Months]. They are based on my biography. You know that every writer writes about himself. Whatever he composes it’s still about himself. In other words, if he doesn’t have himself in his mind, he has nothing to write about. And if he has his life inside, all events and details, they make material for his works. So, the main material for a writer is his life. Even if he narrates it on behalf of his characters.

On 25th June 1968 I met Marina in Pizunda. I was staying in the Creative House in Gagry [town by the Black Sea in Georgia]. She came on vacation to Gagry with a group of teachers from the Ural. They had stayed 18 days, when one day, when the weather wasn’t so good, they decided to go to an organ concert in a cathedral in Pizunda. They were going back to Gagry on the boat of the Union of Writers when we met. Marina was under 30, she had thick auburn hair, bright eyes and an astonishing smile. When we met, we held hands and never parted since then. She stayed in Gagry and from there we traveled to Sochi where Edward came on tour. We stayed in Sochi for a month. Then Marina went back home to Kurgan in the Ural and I returned to Kishinev, but I wrote her three-four letters per day. We parted in August, and in October Marina visited me in Kishinev. I went to visit her on New Year’s Eve and stayed for three months. Marina was a solfeggio and music literature teacher at a music school. She also studied at the extramural Department of Choir Conductors at the Cheliabinsk College of Culture. We got married in June 1969. I was happy. The only thing that saddened our joy was that it was hard for Edward to accept Marina. He loved his mother so much.

From the first minute of our acquaintance Marina asked me to spell her name in Yiddish. This was the start of her acquaintance with the culture of my people. This was the first time she met a Jew. She studied Yiddish to be able to read my works and now she knows it better than many Jews. We speak Yiddish at home and she is my first reader now, like Olga was in the past. She tells me that when I work and when I read my works to her she lives the happiest moments of her life. I value her opinion more than that of many critics. I think I’m very lucky: I met two wonderful women: Olga and Marina.

Edward married Zhanna Kucheruk, a Jewish girl, much younger than him, in 1970. Their marriage didn’t last: they belonged to a different social class and our families were incompatible: hers belonged to business people. Edward and Zhanna got divorced. He remarried 13 years later. His second wife, Inna Shoichet, was Jewish. She was a student of the Polytechnic College, when they got married. She obtained an engineer’s diploma, but she never worked in her field of specialization. They lived with us for a year, but then we exchanged our apartment for two. Edward was working in the Opera Theater Orchestra and later he worked on the radio and TV. The Opera Theater toured all over Europe. In 1984 his daughter Olga was born. She was named after Edward’s mother. In 2000 Edward and his family moved to America. They settled in Miami Beach. My brother Buzia had moved to the USA in 1992. My sisters Hana and Zina also live in Florida, USA. Edward is a violinist and the director of a chamber orchestra. He also gives solo concerts. He thinks he has a more successful career in America than he would have had here. My granddaughter Olga finished school in America very successfully and entered the University in Palm Beach where she has a scholarship.

My mother died at the age of 89, in 1980. My father had died eleven years before her. The summer three years before she died something happened that we all remembered. I described this in a miniature. Mama was seriously ill and bedridden for a few weeks. My sisters attended to her. One day she turned very bad. She was lying with her eyes closed, her face grew very pale and she turned yellow. Ida screamed, ‘Mama!’ Zina and Hana joined her, ‘Mama!’ and then Mama opened her eyes and asked, ‘What happened?’ She lived three more years after this. We buried her at the Jewish cemetery beside my father’s grave and I recited the Kaddish.

When Perestroika 37 began, I had positive feelings about it, but then the situation changed and the results were not quite as expected… The Jewish life has revived and improved since the start of Perestroika. The society of Jewish culture was established in 1989 and I was a part of it. My students, the Kishinev writers Boris Sandler, Mikhail Lemster and I were among its organizers. There are other writers, who think I am their teacher: Mikhail Felzenbaum, a very good poet, Zicia Veitzman, Jean Krivoy. The Jewish newspaper ‘Nash golos’ [Our Voice in Russian] was established in Kishinev then. It was published in Russian, but there was one page in Yiddish and I had Yiddish publications in this newspaper.

Thirteen years ago the Yiddish center at the Kishinev Jewish Library [1991] was established. I was elected its chairman. We gather every month. I read lectures about Jewish literature and writers. Besides, I was acquainted with many writers I lecture about. I never write essays about the writers I don’t know in person. I only write about those, with whom I was friends. We conduct our meetings in Yiddish and only those whose Yiddish is not sufficiently good make speeches in Russian. Hesed 38 Jehudah provides assistance to me like it does to many other Jews. My wife and I receive food packages. I often make speeches, when Hesed invites me to its events.

In 1997 I published the ‘Schtendik’ [Always] book in Yiddish in Israel. I was invited to visit Israel on this occasion. This was my first trip to Israel. It’s hard to describe my first impression. It’s still vivid in my memory. Is it possible to find words to describe the excitement any Jew feels standing by the Wailing Wall? Marina and I left little notes there like everybody else did. We met with my brother Isrul’s family in Ashdod, who came to Israel in 1995. My brother died shortly after their arrival. We spent three weeks in Israel. We had meetings with writers in Israel, but my meetings with my readers were the most significant ones for me. Presentations of my book took place in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Ashkelon, Rehovot, Richon LeZiyon, Ashdod…  I was given a warm welcome at those meetings. What I read was received with great attention. I remember a woman in Ashkelon. She and her husband drove us to the station from where we were to leave for Jerusalem. She said with tears in her eyes, ‘We’ve never had such writers before.’ My books were read by former residents of the USSR and nationals of Israel. Hebrew is the state language, of course, but Yiddish is also our national language. There are wonderful books in Yiddish and it shouldn’t disappear from the life of Jewish people.

I was invited to foreign countries several times, but the most memorable was the Yiddish festival in Berlin in 2003. Four other writers: Boris Sandler, Mordhe Zanin, Gennadiy Eistrach and Lev Berinskiy and I were invited. Before going there I was asked to inform the organizers which works of mine I was bringing there. I sent them about 30 short stories for them to select at their discretion the ones they wished me to present at the festival, but they selected all of them. Marina and I were met by director of the festival. The evening in Berlin was brightly lighted and he took us around the town and showed us the most beautiful places. The next evening I read my short stories to the public. Lev Berinskiy read his poem before it was my turn. I read my short stories in Yiddish and then the director of the festival read their German translation. It took us a while to read 30 short stories and then 30 another time, but the public wasn’t tired. They were a success, a great success.

Glossary

Gitli David Alhalel (nee Levi)

Vidin

Bulgaria

Interviewer: Patricia Nikolova

Date of interview: January 2006

Gitli Alhalel (nee Levi) is a delicate and cultivated woman. Her home is in Kale, the old Jewish neighborhood in Vidin, very close to the Danube River. The modest flat of the hospitable Alhalel family is cozy and tidy. Although Gitli may look to be a bit overshadowed by her husband, the distinguished Mayer Alhalel, she is clearly the backbone of the family. Her calm and peaceful behavior balances the energy of her untiring husband, enlivens their home and lights it up with her smile.

Most of the Bulgarian Jews came from Spain and so did my ancestors. 1 Far back in the 15th century Jews were persecuted from Spain in 1492 by the royals Fernando and Isabella, because they refused to adopt Christianity. Some of the Jews sailed across the Mediterranean Sea in the direction of North Africa, others passed through Italy and France. A significant part of them settled on the Balkan Peninsula. They were all from the Sephardi group. 2 That’s why all Jews in Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, Macedonia and former Yugoslavia speak Ladino 3 and not Yiddish, for example [the language of the Ashkenazi Jews, who live in Russia, Romania, Germany, Poland and the USA] The nice thing is that all Jews on the Balkan Peninsula can communicate with each other in Ladino. That language is a kind of medieval Spanish, the so-called ‘language of Miguel de Cervantes’ 4 which does not resemble modern-day Spanish.

My parents have different origin. My father David Avram Levi (1898 – 1969) is a Sephardi Jew born in Vidin [port city on the right bank of the Danube in Bulgaria, 220 km. away from Sofia]. My mother Rashel Avram Levi (nee Benjosef, 1899 – 1975) was also born here, but she is half Ashkenazi Jew. That is, her mother, my grandmother Ester, whose family name I do not know, moved from Germany to Bulgaria due to reasons unknown to me. My father was a middleman and my mother – a housewife. I have a sister – Ester David Fintsi (nee Levi), who is five years older than me. She was born in 1925 in Vidin. She lives in Sofia now and she worked as a clerk. She has two daughters: Madlena and Sheli Fintsi, who also live in Sofia.

At home we always spoke in Bulgarian and in Ladino. We spoke both languages at the same time very rarely (maybe when I was a child) - for example, my father or my mother would say something in Ladino, and I would answer in Bulgarian or vice versa. Of course, before I started school I spoke to my peers in Ladino, since we lived in the Jewish neighborhood, Kale. The truth is that the times were different then. I mean, there were not so many mixed marriages between Jews and Bulgarians. Nowadays, the first language children learn is the Bulgarian. At those times my parents and the parents of all children I knew were Sephardi. So, our mother tongue was Ladino. We spoke it at home and outside, we also used it in the Jewish school, because we were all Jewish children from Sephardi families and it was the language closest to us.

I was born in one of the most beautiful Bulgarian towns on the Danube River, which was the capital of the Second Bulgarian Kingdom 5. My hometown is Vidin, or Bdin, as they called it in the past. Every Jew born in Vidin remains in love with this town and the country. As a child I loved going for long walks along the river. If you stop at the bend of the river, you can see Kalafat straight in front of you. Here, in Vidin, people like saying metaphorically that the lights of Kalafat are like the lights of life, because at first they are broad, then the river waters shrink them more and more until they dissolve in one single ray.

Our house had two entrances. I remember that we had to pay it in installments because our family was not rich. That is why our landlords lived with us at the beginning. My family lived in one room and every month my father would pay part of the sum for the whole house. Unfortunately, we did not have a garden. But we had a yard with cobblestones – they were very clean, because we washed them every day. We also had electricity. There has been electricity in Vidin since the first half of the 20th century. At first we had some additional sheds – the hen-house, the outside toilet, the ‘shupron’ [a shed for coal and wood: the word comes from French and means 'to enter'. In Bulgaria it has another dialect meaning – a shelter covered in a hurry.] We were very close to the street where the children played all day. As a child I did not know any special games, nor did I have many toys. I remember that at first the girls and the boys played separately. We, the girls, used to jump over a rope and laugh all day long. Later, we played ball together with the boys. There were no other interesting games.

At the end of the previous century Vidin was quite a modest and small town. About 19,000 people lived there. The Jews were around 8,000 (significantly more than they are today). [According to the first census of the population, lands and cattle in the newly-liberated from Turkish rule Bulgaria – a census done by the temporary Russian authority over the Bulgarian lands (1878-1879) the overall number of Jews living in Vidin region was 2202 (1114 men and 1088 women). They lived predominantly in the cities and were 0.94% of the local population, among whom there were also Turks, gypsies and Wallachians. In 1900, 1905 and 1910 only in Vidin the Jewish population was respectively 1,784, 1,873 and 1,727 people. The overall number of citizens in the town was respectively 15,791, 16,387 and 16,450, among whom the Bulgarians were the most (followed by the Turks, the Jews, the gypsies and Wallachians) (the data was taken from the State Archive of the town of Vidin)]. I remember that the chairman of the Jewish organization at that time was Rozanov (I do not remember his first name). I also remember that the Jewish school was only up to the 4th form (equivalent to the present 4th grade). Adon [meaning ‘mister’ in Ivrit] Haim Levi, also from Vidin, taught us Ivrit from the Torah, and before that we read fairy tales in Ivrit. But we studied the letters for a whole year. After that adon Niko (Nissim) Sabetay taught us Ivrit and I also liked him as a teacher. Of course, at first I made mistakes all the time, it was very hard to learn Ivrit, because no one at home knew it. But I gradually got used to it and I even started to like it. I still remember one of the teachers (but I do not remember his name). I only remember that in the first grade we had a special teacher, who was also a headmaster. He taught us in gymnastics. We had classes outside near the Danube, that’s why I loved them. There was also a chamber mandoline orchestra in the school and my father came to conduct us. At that time I learned to play the accordion (that instrument was very popular at the start of the previous century).

From the school subjects I also loved literature, because I loved reading. As a child I read mostly the classics, such as Hugo, Balzac, Stendhal, Mayne Reid, Jack London, Jules Verne, [Maxim] Gorky 6. Later I started reading the so-called progressive [i.e. left-wing] literature written after 9th September 1944 7 – Lenin, Stalin, Marxist literature. I read many such books, probably because my father had them at home even before Bulgaria turned from monarchy into a republic [1946]. At that turning point in history there were three popular newspapers: ‘Utro’ [Morning] 8, ‘Zaria’ [Fireworks] and ‘Zora’ [Dawn] 9. What was typical about them was their different political orientation. For example, ‘Zaria’ was a progressive newspaper. It was, in a way, the forum of the new times. In other words, it was a leftist newspaper, popularizing the socialist ideas. ‘Zora’ was a fascist publication and was not bought by the common people – only by Branniks 10, Legionaries [Bulgarian Legions] 11, ‘Otets Paisii’ 12 members and chauvinists of the kind. ‘Utro’ was more social newspaper. You could see Jews reading ‘Utro’ or ‘Zaria’ in the streets, the barber’s and coffee shops.

When I finished the Jewish school, I had to continue my education in the local Bulgarian high school, which was also close to Kale. I was glad, because I liked learning. We also had many teachers and new subjects, which I found interesting. I had good marks. All the Jews in the school had good marks and no one had better marks than us. I loved our maths teacher, Miss Vasileva. Most of the girls loved her, because she was nice to us. There were obligatory classes in religion at that time, but all Jewish children were forbidden to take part in them. (the ban was imposed by the board of the school in which I studied. Everyone, including us, Jews, considered the ban normal for the times). We felt very hurt, especially in the winter, when we had nowhere to go during that time and we had to wander around along the river.

As a child I was very proud of the fact that our synagogue in Vidin was the most beautiful synagogue in Bulgaria. It was built in the end of the 19th century [the Vidin Synagogue, built in 1894 in neo-Gothic style was the second largest synagogue in Bulgaria. Now it stands as a ruin, but its restoration as concert hall is planned by the Bulgarian national Jewish organization]. Its exterior architecture was very beautiful and the acoustics inside was also strong. I went there mostly with my mother and went to the balcony, as all Jewish women did. To be honest, my mother went to the synagogue more often than my father, because he was an atheist and adamant communist even before 9th September [1944]. I loved going to the synagogue on Erev Sabbath, or as they say in Ladino, Sabbatua Nochi.

I loved it not only for the Pesach chocolates liked by all children, which we received from chazzan Meshulam. By the way, our shochet was the father of my friend Mimi Pizanti’s uncle. We had a number of rabbis, but I remember only the name of our last rabbi Avram Behar, who moved to Israel with the Mass Aliyah 13 in 1948. He distinguished himself with his bravery when he saved a lot of people, most of them children, during the floods in 1939. But after he left for Israel, nobody received any news from him. Most probably, he continued to be a rabbi there. Now the Vidin synagogue is in ruins and it will hardly ever be renovated. My heart breaks, when I look at it now.

Every Friday night my mother and I cooked in the kitchen, afterwards we washed ourselves, changed our clothes and prepared the chicken for Sabbath. We had bought it from the market before that, and on Thursday I had to take it to the shochet in the synagogue to slaughter it. I would bring it quickly back home and give it to my mother. She did not scald it with water, because it was forbidden, she plucked it and singed it and then she cooked it. When the Saturday ceremony ended, there was always food left. As for Saturday itself, as I said, we cooked on Friday and on Saturday we prepared sweets only. The word most often used by the Jews in Kale [the Jewish quarter] was ‘mitzvah’ [meaning charity in Hebrew]. The neighbors gave each other sweets and crackers, exchanged recipes, news, argued and laughed. For Purim my mother prepared sweet ring-shaped buns with ‘alkashul’ (biscuit dough with honey and walnuts). According to the tradition the sweets had to be preserved for Pesach, that is, they were eaten a month later. But I liked more the sweets sold by the grandfather of my future husband Mayer Alhalel. His grandfather was Naftali Alhalel and his grandmother who made the sweets was Mazal. All the children in Kale really believed that she brought us good luck [her name means ‘luck’ in Hebrew].

On [Yom] Kippur, the day of absolution, we had to fast all day [Editor’s note: children under age of 9 don’t fast, then they start fasting little by little. Boys start to fast as long as adults do by the age of 13, girls from 12.] But in the evening a hen was slaughtered, after which all Jewish families gathered in the synagogue. On Sukkot, the holiday celebrating the gathering of the harvest, we made tents in the synagogue. [The Ivrit word 'shalash' is identical with the Ivrit word 'sukkah' and is much older. The following example from the Torah illustrates that: 'Live in shalash for seven days: All native-born Israelites are to live in shalash so your descendants will know that I had the Israelites live in booths when I brought them out of Egypt.' (Leviticus, 23:42:43) The shalash is a temporary dwelling of Jews in the desert. The sukkah is the same but it is lighter (like a tent) while the shalash had three or four walls and instead of roof, they put branches of wood, bamboo sticks, stones etc. During the seven days of the holiday Sukkot the Jews slept, fed and celebrated there, that is why, it was a tradition to decorate the shalash (the sukkah) from the inside. The information was taken from the Israeli book 'Liyot Jeudi' (the title means 'To be a Jew' translated from Ivrit) written by Menashe-Gad Rashovski and published in Ramat Gan. Its editor was Miriam Mishal, 1991.] That nice holiday originated from a miracle, which took place during the escape of the Jewish people from Egypt in the distant past. While they were crossing the desert on their way to Israel, their God surrounded them with miraculous clouds. During the day they protected the people from the scorching sun and during the night – from the unbearable cold. On Purim we organized very beautiful masking balls. We also decorated ring-shaped buns with red paint in the form of flowers. On Chanukkah we still light candles. When I was in my 2nd grade, we celebrated Chanukkah in the cinema hall in the neighborhood. We had prepared a scene to act. I was playing the second candle and my mother had bought for me a black velvet dress with a white collar. I was followed on stage by the third candle; we were seven candles altogether.

On the day before Pesach the Jewish house had to be cleaned so well that you would not be able to find a crumb of bread anywhere [mitzvah of biur chametz]. We cleaned thoroughly all furniture, rugs, curtains, we even painted the walls. We boiled the dishes in a mixture of water, ash, salt and soap. We were allowed to eat unleavened bread only, the so-called matzah. We, the Jews in Vidin, prepared the matzah by ourselves so we made it in separate flat loaves. We kneaded the loaves without yeast, and they were as hard as stone. On Pesach we always put a white blanket and special dishes, which my mother took out only for the holiday, the so-called ‘lalos’ in Ladino. The legend of Pesach has to be read by the father [the oldest man] in the family, but my father was not religious, so our family skipped that. I have been present at that ceremony in other families, where the father or the grandfather read the legend (Haggadah) about Pesach and before he started the youngest girl in the family would give him a jug of water to wash his hands. That was the ritual purging from the sins gathered during the year. And the father or grandfather would start reading the prayer, washing his hands from time to time. The text read by the head of the family was about the misfortunes God inflicted on the Egyptians: ‘snakes, lizards and natural disasters’. Another tradition was observed in my home as well. My mother would hide a piece of matzah [afikoman] and I had to find it. It was believed that the child, who finds it, would be very happy all year long. What I also loved about the holiday, was that it went on for eight days. We didn’t work on the first and the last day only. Then my parents and I always went to the synagogue. And there the rabbi would chant in Hebrew. The Haggadah (or the legend about Pesach) says, ‘What has happened this evening, different from all other evenings - every other evening we are different, but this evening we are all gathered at the same table.’ Then follows a praise to God, ‘You are the king, you are the Master, you are all to us…’ Then the rabbi would read in Hebrew and tell the story of Moses.

Every Friday was a market day in Vidin. The market was in the center of the town. It was very colorful, and yet a typical village market. The women usually sat on the ground surrounded by lots of baskets, there were no stalls at that time. So, the vendors were all villagers from the nearby villages. Apart from animals, fruit and vegetables, they also brought charcoal to Vidin. All villagers around Vidin were Wallachians [In this case these are immigrants from central Romania, or more precisely the Wallachian region, from which their name comes. Their immigration into Bulgaria, northern Greece and Macedonia took place after the disintegration of the feudal system. The Wallachians were mostly nomads, cattle breeders, and in particular, sheep breeders.] There was no Bulgarian village around Vidin without Wallachians. I was very happy when my mother went to the market. Like all Jewish women at that time, she would walk around the market at least three times, in order to buy nice and cheap products. On Fridays I usually accompanied her to the big market in Vidin. It had three areas: a cattle area, next to it an area for wood and grain and one for fruit and vegetables. I preferred the last one. There was a large scale in the center of the market where people went to measure the products they had chosen. Of course there were a lot of small shops around the market owned by retailers, who were mostly Jewish. Most of them were retail workers, they usually sold manufactured goods in their little shops. Very few of them traded in wool or flour. There were almost no tinsmiths, farmers or fruit growers. There were a couple of booksellers but I do not remember my parents ever taking me there.

The Baba Vida Fortress 14 is in the center of Vidin. The town itself has a number of zones circling the fortress. The first zone surrounds the fortress and was a ditch in the past. The second zone surrounds the back part of the fortress. And the third zone is the so-called ‘reduti’ [the word comes from French and means a trench for one-man defense]. In fact, the Jewish neighborhood Kale took the most part of the second zone. It was the most favorable neighborhood, because it was the highest neighborhood in Vidin. During the great flood in Vidin in 1942 (when the Danube River flooded our town) the people from the whole town came to Kale. It was the only neighborhood, which was not affected so seriously.

I remember that scary flood very well, because I was 12 years old then. I got really afraid. The Danube River flooded the town because ice had obstructed its path. The river is usually not a pretty sight in winter. That particular winter it had frozen, but a big wave came and broke the ice. The waters of the river got obstructed by the ice and entered the town. For two days the whole town, except parts of Kale, was flooded by the water. Fortunately, there were no victims, apart from an old lady who died from natural causes at that time. I remember how mobilized all the people were then. All students from the upper classes of the men’s high school spread in groups around the neighborhoods to save as many people as possible. They went around the town in military boats and ordinary fishing boats, in which they transported the people from the low one-storey buildings. All of those people had left their belongings behind and fled towards Kale. Of course, most of the buildings were destroyed. On some of the preserved old houses you can still see the sign placed in 1942 showing the level the water reached then. There are also houses where the level was higher than a man’s height. That disaster could be compared in part to the recent tsunami floods in the southern part of the world.

Kale was and still is the oldest Jewish neighborhood in Vidin. It was founded when the Jews came to Vidin two centuries ago [the presence of Jews in the vicinity of Vidin dates from Justinian (527-565)]. It is between the Bath and the Baba Vida Fortress. In fact that relatively small area included the whole town at the beginning; that is, the original town was quite small. Now, the residential district ‘Benkovski’ is located there. In the past there were a lot of little streets such as Kaloyan St, Samuil St etc. And in the middle of the neighborhood was Kanlu Dere St (these are Turkish words, ‘dere’ means a river, but I do not know what ‘kanlu’ means). It was the border between the Jewish and the Turkish neighborhood, which was larger and more populated than ours. They even had another Turkish neighborhood called Ag Djamia [Mosque]. The new part of the town was established in the 1920s and the Bulgarians lived there. The Jews and the Turks remained in the old part. That is why there were very few Bulgarian families in Kale (between 40 and 50 families) especially during the Holocaust [the Jewish community of Vidin did not suffer severely during World War II. The decree of expulsion in 1943 was not carried out.].

We have always had good relations with them. At those times the Jews were mostly craftsmen. There were also tinsmiths, the streets were full of barber’s shops, bakeries, workshops of carpenters and glaziers, in which mostly Jews worked. They all lived in Kale and had workshops in various places in town.

Usually there was a fair on the 28th August in Vidin. All students and children, including me, loved going there so that our parents would buy us confetti and sweets. But unfortunately, I remember the bad events more clearly. For example, when the Law for Protection of the Nation 15 came out in 1942 a disgusting man appeared in the Jewish neighborhood, Ivan Zviara [meaning ‘the Beast’]. I witnessed how he banished our neighbors, the Pizanti family, from their own house. They were five of them and they had to sleep in the hen-house. They slept on the floor, without being able to enter their home or use their belongings. People said that the same fascist and evil Bulgarian, Ivan Zviara, went to the Aegean Sea when the Germans led the Aegean Jews 16 sacrificed by King Boris III 17 to the ships, which transported them to the Maydanek concentration camp 18. People also said that returning from there Ivan Zviara brought back so many unnecessary clothes and things that his wife did not know what to do with them or what they were used for.

Mimi Pizanti, the youngest of the three daughters in our neighbors’ family escaped from home later on and fought together with the Bulgarians at the front. All my friends in Vidin were brave Bulgarians and Jews (there were also many Armenians and Turkish people in our town too). My first experience of the Law for Protection of the Nation is also related to Mimi Pizanti, who is older than me. It happened in the Bulgarian high school where all the Jews studied after the 4th grade in the Jewish school. In March 1941 all students of Jewish origin were ordered to wear the disgraceful yellow stars 19. In that freezing March morning the high school headmaster Mr Cholakov ordered all students to go out and form columns in the schoolyard. Then he said: ‘Gitli Alhalel, Veneta Ilel, Beka Pinkas, Stela Paparo, Mimi Pizanti, Beka Arie, Fifi Kohen (there were also others but I do not remember them) – two steps forward!’ We did that and heard him say: ‘From now on you are not welcome in our school!’ I felt as if I had just been punched in the stomach.

I remember how Mimi Buko Pizanti was humiliated once at school. Some of our classmates had anti-Semitic attitudes towards us. When the Law for Protection of the Nation came into force, we put on the yellow stars and wore them at school. [Jewish children did go to school for a short while wearing the disgraceful yellow stars. After that they were really banished from the classroom because of their Jewish origin. The reason was that the anti-Semitic Law for Protection of the Nation was adopted on 23rd January, 1941. As for the children of the Bulgarian Jews, there was really a paradox because they had to go to school for a couple of months, wearing the yellow stars and studying side by side to the children of the Legionaries. They were banned to go to school in March 1942 when the Law for Protection of the Nation was in full swing.] Once the daughter of the police chief in the neighborhood (who was also the class chairman) shouted in the schoolyard after Mimi: ‘Take off your badge, or I will fine you!’ Mimi said: ‘I can’t take it off, because your father will lock me in…’ It was a very ugly scene.

Before that incident happened Mimi and I were in the same UYW group 20. The person in charge of the group was the future professor Avram Pinkas, a distinguished surgeon. The group also included Marsel Varsano, Leon Pinkas, Beka Aladgem. I was also a member of ‘Hashomer Hatzair’ 21. When we were in the last grade in junior high school we all received a leaflet propagating the establishment of a Jewish state. A committee was formed and we went to its meetings. One of the requirements for the foundation of Israel was that the Jews should immigrate there. We were divided into groups. There were people two years older than me, in high school, and two years younger than me, still in primary school. We sang songs and had fun. But most of the time we listened to lectures on various topics – from political to religious (on the essence of religion) and emancipation ones. Some members spent days discussing the fate of the character Nora in ‘Puppets’ House’ by playwright Henrik Ibsen 22. No matter how meaningless such discussions may seem through the lens of time, they helped us mature. In that way, we developed our individualities and learned to be independent and work in a team.

When the Law for Protection of the Nation was adopted in 1942 we were not allowed to leave Kale, nor go to school or leave home very often. At that time the advantage was that we could easily enter the neighbor’s yard through doors in the fences. So, all of us, the children, passed from house to house all the time, without going out on the street and spent all the time together. In fact, that helped us much to go through that period. Thanks to those small doors between the yards, we even saved people who were sought to be arrested. For example, the famous anti-fascist Asen Balkanski [The only thing the interviewee knows is that his origin is Bulgarian. He was born in the village of Chuplene, Belogradchik region and around World War II he escaped to Yugoslavia. There is no further information about him.] - commander of a Yugoslav partisan squad hid in the basement of my friend and neighbor Mimi Pizanti for a long time. In the end, a phaeton was arranged for him to leave the town, but he was caught at the border with Yugoslavia and shot as a political prisoner.

After the end of the Law for Protection of the Nation the situation in the whole country improved. In other words, you could breathe more freely. And yet, the new times after the changes in September 1944 could not obliterate my memories from the recent past. When the Law for Protection of the Nation came into force in 1942, we had to wear yellow six-beam stars made of plastic. They placed a notice with a yellow star on the door of every Jewish home. We were all registered in the municipality as special Bulgarian citizens of Jewish origin. Of course the clerks were not very nice to us. There was also a commissariat on the ‘Jewish problem’ in Vidin and in all Bulgarian towns [Commissariat for Jewish Affairs] 23. We were afraid to pass near it and were also afraid of the Branniks and Legionaries who beat us and humiliated us. There were some streets where we did not go to at all, because there was a special order that Jews should not go out after 9 pm. Our food was rationed, it was very little and one and the same. That was definitely the hardest period of my life, a real nightmare.

The people in Vidin also discussed a lot the demonstration on 24th May 1943 24 in Sofia against the internment of the Sofia Jews and the deportation of the Bulgarian Jews 25. That demonstration started from the Jewish school in Iuchbunar 26, the present-day 134th Dimcho Debelyanov High School and continued to Klementina Sq, where the Jewish Home stands today. [Bet Am] 27 People said that the police caught up with the demonstrators there, dispersed them and arrested many people. Many other were pushed in lorries and transported to labor camps 28. That demonstration was led by rabbi Daniel 29, who later hid at Bishop Stephan’s place [Exarch Stephan] 30. The Sofia bishop definitely supported the Jews at that time.

There were also some Jews who changed their religion in order to save their lives. Then the authorities ordered that the baptized Jews should not be separated from the rest. That is, the disgraceful Law for Protection of the Nation affected them too. In my opinion, and in the opinion of many other people there was not anti-Semitism in Bulgaria. The anti-Semitism was imported here. Or maybe it was based purely on spite and envy, which is something else, neither patriotism, nor chauvinism, nor pride, nor anti-Semitism.

The Soviet army entered Bulgaria not as a conqueror, but as a liberator and the people welcomed it warmly. All authorities have their positive and negative sides. Fascism was good for its supporters, gave them rights and privileges. But the more progressive people wanted to resist that policy, which helped the Germans oppose Russia. A partisan movement developed in Bulgaria, which resisted the support of the Bulgarian government to the Germans. The government, in turn, killed the partisans, set their homes on fire. The terror in that period, especially between 1943-1944 was great. Many young people died, so did many Jews, especially in Plovdiv [a Bulgarian city in Southern Bulgaria, 200 km away from Sofia] and Sofia. There was a concentration camp in Kailuka 31 in Pleven where relatives or brothers of partisans were imprisoned. One summer day in 1944 some fascist organizations set the camp on fire and killed about ten Jews. They were old people, who could not escape from the flames in time.

My husband [Mayer Rafael Alhalel] told me that the people in his first and second labor camp were about 300-400 people. They were divided into groups: a Vidin one, a Vratsa one and a more general one including workers from Jewish origin born in Northwest Bulgaria. The Vidin group had a ‘seemed-to-be’ vicious and cruel supervisor: that is he cursed the Jews and made them do the hardest work in front of his superiors, but as soon as those superiors went away, he started playing belote with the Jewish men. It was only after 9th September that my husband learned that their strict supervisor was also a UYW member. But he became a supervisor in a Jewish labor camp, because he was very poor and he needed money.

My husband and I married in 1948. Our wedding was on 9th July 1948 in Cherven Briag [a town in Northern Bulgaria, 150 km away from Sofia]. Before that we lived together for one year in Cherven Briag. We married before the registrar on a weekday. I did not have a wedding gown, nor did he have a wedding suit, because we could not afford them. After the wedding we went back to Vidin where we looked after our parents. To be honest, there was a moment when we thought about leaving to Israel. But our parents - his and mine - did not want to, because the four of them already felt old. And yet, many Jews older than them left their life in Bulgaria and emigrated. When we lived in Cherven Briag, we lived comfortably. My husband was involved in many party [Bulgarian Communist Party] activities. I worked as an accountant in the meat processing plant and the construction company in Vidin. I retired at those two positions.

My husband was also born in Vidin in 1923. He has secondary high school education. He is a polygraphist (a printer). I remember clearly the relatives of my husband, because we were neighbors. His grandfather was a confectioner and the Jewish children loved him very much. He owned a small confectionery in Kale and sold ice cream and Jewish sweets made by my husband’s grandmother Mazal. For Pesach she made biskuchicos con lokum [Ladino: pastries with Turkish delight], roskitas [Ladino: ring-shaped buns], petikas de almendra [Ladino: almond sweets], which we, the children, loved a lot. His grandmother Mazal was famous as one of the most beautiful women in Vidin. His mother [Bulisa Rafael Alhalel] was a seamstress, she sewed ladies’ underwear and men’s shirts.

He has a sister, with whom I have always got on very well. Her name is Lea Yosef Halfon (nee Alhalel). She was also born in Vidin in 1915. She has always been a housewife and she lives in Beit-Avot (Israel) with her family. Her husband’s name is Yosef Halfon. Their son is Simanto Yosef Halfon.

My husband and I have two children – Streya Mayer Puncheva (nee Alhalel) and Sheli Mayer Vladeva (nee Alhalel). The elder one, Streya, was born in 1949. She graduated from the chemical technical school in Vidin. She has been working as a chemist in the local meat processing plant for some years. My younger daughter Sheli was born in 1954 and is a construction engineer. Unfortunately, she does not have children. I have grandchildren from Streya, who also worked in the municipality in Vidin. My granddaughter Yanita lives in a kibbutz now. She has a family in northern Israel (I do not know the name of the kibbutz). My grandson Lyubomir, who is director of Bulbank in Sofia, also has children. Their names are Konstantin and Mihaela.

After 9th September 1944 my family continued to celebrate the high Jewish holidays such as Rosh Hashanah, Tu bi-Shevat (called mostly Frutas in Ladino), [Yom] Kippur, Pesach, Sukkot etc. After 9th September 1944 the general approach of the party was against all religions. The Communist Party forbade people of Jewish origin to gather on their holidays. Yet, we found ways to celebrate. Most often, we visited other families. We did not always go to the synagogue, because my husband and I were active party members, so our activities were observed and at that time visits to the synagogue were not approved.

All Jews in Bulgaria were watched closely before 1989. The Jewish community could not gather on any occasion, even on our high holidays – in the Jewish home or in the synagogue. In other words, we had to ask for permission some of the structures of the Communist Party. Our properties were also nationalized [that is, the properties of the Organization of Jews in Bulgaria ‘Shalom’ 32]. After 10th November 1989 33 the situation improved. Then the contradictory restitution law was adopted. It was unfair to the individual citizens but helped our organization. Let me be more specific. Some of our fellow citizens living in Sofia did not own any properties, except the flat owned by the municipality, which they rented. When the law came into force, those people were thrown out on the street by policemen, who threw out their belongings without waiting for the municipality to give them another place to stay. Those flats were returned to their previous owners, who already had a number of flats. That is why I said that the law was unfair. On the other hand, it is not a bad law because it returned the properties of the Organization of Jews, which were nationalized after 9th September 1944. Let’s also not forget that after 10th November 1989 ‘Joint’ 34 and the respective foundation from Switzerland sent us aid during the economic crisis and high inflation. Of course, I see the benefit from the changes and approve of them.

I am saddened by the fact that the small number of Jews in Vidin (only 26, the others have died or immigrated to Israel) do not have a comfortable life after the fall of the communist regime. The paradox is that now when we have the freedom to gather any time we want, there are too few of us left here. Now the Jewish community is well organized only in Sofia. Here the organization exists in misery and its chairman Zhak Moshe finds it very hard to raise money. The Jewish community in Vidin has had a sad fate since 10th November. We are mostly elder Jews. We gather once or twice a month to celebrate a holiday, for example Pesach, Rosh Hashanah, Purim, Chanukkah, Yom Hashoah [Holocaust Remembrance Day], Yom Atsmaut [the day of independence of Israel, introduced as a national holiday in 1948]. Unfortunately, we are not as active as the Jews in Sofia. Unlike us, they gather often at specific days during the week and at weekends. They have a number of clubs, for example ‘Golden Age’ club [of the elderly people], ‘Health’ club, and the club of the disabled people. They listen to lectures on political, social and economic topics, go to the cinema or to the theater, on excursions, dance and do gymnastics, do everything a pensioner needs to do in order to feel part of society and of the Jewish community. We, in Vidin, do not do most of these activities. We also have problems with our properties. That is what I mean by saying that our organization is in misery.

Present-day relations between Bulgaria and Israel are much different than the ones before 10th November 1989. At that time Bulgaria kept friendly relations with some of the Arab countries, which did not approve of the existence of Israel. Iraq was such a country, the country where now the Bulgarian army tries to restore peace, advocating the US policy. Politics is strange. During totalitarianism we did not speak much about the saving of the Bulgarian Jews, although there were some films and books on the topic. Yet, today, this fact is emphasized by each of the democratic Bulgarian governments. On the other hand, at the end of January 2005 when the world celebrated the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the people from the Auschwitz concentration camp (only 2000 people survived thanks to the Russian army) we were the only European country that did not send its Prime Minister to the commemoration ceremonies there. Another curious detail is that the present Prime Minister [i.e. Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Prime Minster of Bulgaria between 2001-2005] in Bulgaria is son of a monarch: King Boris III, called by Hitler ‘The Fox’. That same king was in good relations with the national socialists and Hitler. It was King Boris III who introduced the degrading Law for Protection of the Nation and sent those misfortunate 11 343 Jews from Aegean Thrace and Macedonia to certain death in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Treblinka. But, as people say, politics is complex. That is why I think that the changes here after 1989 have contradictory character.

My family and I followed emotionally the development of Israel, the positive and negative changes. We are worried about the constant war there. I remember well how the UN decided to decree the foundation of the Jewish State in 1948. At that time all Arab states denounced that, saying that such a country could not exist. The following precedent was created: the Palestine state was seized by Egypt and Jordan. Naturally, most of the Arabs were banished from Israel, in fact their lands were no longer theirs (in 1948 when the Israeli state was founded the Jews all over the world were allowed to buy land in Palestine). So, the kibbutzim appeared, which are the most liberal form of communism. They are cooperative form of farming, in which everyone works as hard as the others and owns as much as the others. The Jews in Bulgaria worried a lot about the events in Israel after 1950. I remember that in the 1950s Zionism was declared a form of fascism. Then people in Bulgaria discussed secretly whether citizens of Jewish origin could be appointed to leadership positions in the communist party. Because at the time of the Warsaw Pact, for example, Bulgaria was forced to renounce diplomatic relations with Israel. The other countries from the former Soviet bloc did the same. 35 Yet, despite the weak relations and the distance, we were able to follow the events in Israel and discussed them among each other.

I went to Israel twice with my husband before 10th November 1989. The first was in 1964 and the second in 1973. The third time was in 1993. I see the remarkable difference between the early and late Israel, in a positive sense, of course. What is important is that we liked Bulgaria more. That is why I stayed here. And we do not regret that at all, neither my husband nor I. 

Glossary

Polina Leibovich
Kishinev
Moldova
Interviewer: Nathalia Fomina
Date of interview: March 2004

Polina Leibovich is a short young-looking lady, with dark hair with hardly any gray streaks. She has smooth skin with a slightly pink complexion. She speaks looking at her counterpart intently. One can observe a strong and independent character and a great sense of dignity behind her pleasant and gentle manners. During our conversation, Polina asked for a break every now and then. She has hypertension and suffers from frequent headaches. Being 79 years old, Polina still shows interest in people and the taste of life: during intervals she willingly talked about literature, theater and modern cinema. She lives in a two-bedroom apartment with all comforts on the first floor of an apartment building in the quiet Rykhanovka district in the center of Kishinev. Polina leases a smaller room to two students of Kishinev University - she likes having young company. Polina’s room is clean and spacious. There is a couch covered with a plaid, a big cabinet with a cupboard and a bookcase by the wall, a low table and two armchairs by the window in her room. She willingly agreed to tell us the story of her life and her family, though she mentioned at the very beginning that she wasn’t going to talk about the Holocaust. However, at the end of our discussion she told us a few episodes from this tragic period of her life. She wanted to mention the people who helped her to survive. We sat at the big dinner table during our conversation having tea with candy which has been Polina’s weakness since childhood.

My family backgrownd

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family backgrownd

When I was born, my parents were old people, so they told me about my grandparents. My maternal grandfather, Gersh Iris, came from Kishinev in Bessarabia 1. My grandfather was a soldier in Nikolai’s army 2. He served in the tsarist army for 25 years. I don’t know whether he was a cantonist 3, but he never quit his Judaic faith. According to my mother, my grandfather had a business and provided well for his family. My grandmother, Cipora, was a housewife like all Jewish women at that time. I only know four of my grandparents’ children, including my mother.

My mother’s older brother, Samuel Iris, was an actor. I don’t know what town he lived in, but he worked in the popular Jewish drama troupe of Fischzon touring across Ukraine. Uncle Samuel moved to South America before I was born where he wrote plays in Yiddish for the Jewish theater. I don’t know whether he had a family or when he died.

My mother’s second brother, Yakov, was also born in Kishinev. When the Romanians occupied Kishinev in 1918, he moved to Paris, France, with his family. I can’t remember what he did for a living. I think he was a businessman and he must have been successful. His family was very wealthy. Yakov had three sons, my cousin brothers. One of them was called Shymon. He was an engineer, and then there was Avraam, another son, who was an artist. I don’t know the name of the third son or his occupation. One of the brothers had a son, born in France. His name was Lucien and at home he was called Loulou. Loulou was a very beautiful child and once he won the 18th place at a beauty contest. My mother told me about it, and the family was very proud of him. Loulou graduated from the Medical Department of the University. He worked as a doctor, and he still lives in Paris. I correspond with him. I have a good conduct of French, and this correspondence is no problem for me.

My mother’s youngest sister, Rachil, completed the gymnasium in Kishinev during the rule of Nicolas II 4. Rachil had a fiancé whose name was Lampert. He moved to America in the 1910s and settled down in New York. She followed him there and they got married. Rachil’s husband had a network of textile stores. Aunt Rachil was a housewife. Her daughter was born in the late 1920s. She was named after my grandmother - Cipora. Later, her name changed to Zora. Zora was an actress. She could play the piano very well. Aunt Rachil kept in touch with our family before and after the war [Great Patriotic War] 5. Aunt Rachil and her husband lived a long and happy life. She died in 1968 at the age of 88. Her husband died a few years earlier. Zora is about seventy now. She lives in New York. She studied French to be able to correspond with me.

My mother, Shyfra Sohis [nee Iris], was born in Kishinev in 1877. She was short, had a nice physique, big blue eyes and dark hair. She was extremely kind and gentle. My mother was the oldest child in the family and the family couldn’t afford to pay for her complete education. That’s why my mother finished four years in the gymnasium and got married at the age of 16.

My paternal grandfather, Rahmiel Sohis, came from Latvia where his family resided in a small Jewish town. My grandfather was a rabbi, a teacher, as my father used to say, and all the Jews of the town went to ask for his advice. My grandfather died young. I don’t know when the family moved to Kishinev, but my father was born in Kishinev in 1869. All I know about my paternal grandmother is that her name was Shyfra just like my mother’s. She was a housewife. I faintly remember my father’s sister, Sarah, who also lived in Kishinev with her family. In my early childhood I met her and her children. I know that they survived the war, but I don’t know what happened to them then, perhaps, they moved abroad.

My father, Yakov Sohis, was born in 1869. My grandfather insisted that my father finished a yeshivah. He was very well educated in Judaism. He knew the Talmud and Tannakh and was interested in the Jewish philosophy. In his youth he worked with my maternal grandfather, Gersh Iris. That was when my father met my mother. They liked each other and got married in 1893. The bride was 16 and the bridegroom was 24 years old. Of course they had a traditional wedding under the chuppah. After she got married my mother wore a wig that Jewish women were required to wear. In the only photograph of this period she wears a wig, but later she quit wearing a wig. After the wedding my parents settled down with Grandpa Gersh. After my grandpa died, my parents opened a dairy store that became the start of my father’s business. I know very little about my parents’ life before my brother Shymon was born, though this is quite a long period of time. My brother Shymon was born on 17th March 1918, when my mother was 42 years old. I was born six years later, on 2nd April 1924. I was named Cipora after my grandmother.

At that time my father owned a store of men’s clothes on Aleksandrovskaya Street. I know little about his business, though I know that my father made charity contributions to the Jewish community like all other wealthy Jews. We had a big house in the wealthy Jewish neighborhood, Irinopolskaya Street. There were three, three-bedroom wing annexes in the yard. They also belonged to my father and he rented them out. There was the mansion of Perelmuter, a wealthy Jew in Kishinev, near our house. The lawyer, Levenstein, and his family lived near him. They were educated and respectable people, and our family had good neighborly relations with them. There was a wealthy Romanian or Moldovan family living in another mansion, but we didn’t know them. There were five rooms, a kitchen and back rooms in our house. My parents had a bedroom and Shymy – that was how we called my brother at home – and I had our own rooms, there was also a big living room and a dining room. We had ancient furniture of red wood, velvet curtains and crystal chandeliers. There was a piano in the living room, but I didn’t study music. Unfortunately, I have no ear for music, though I love and understand it.

I remember that my parents loved each other dearly. My father was a big tall man with a small beard and moustache. When he would introduce my mother to somebody, he would say, ‘You see this small woman. Oh, she is worth a fortune!’ There was a warm atmosphere at home; they had such a beautiful life together. I never heard one swear-word at home. My mother was so smart, kind and gentle. She always wore a hat to go out, dressed like a dame, and wore her golden jewelry. I remember that she had a nice silver purse – it looked like silver net. My father was very witty. He was a big humorist and could make people laugh. I never saw him sad. He was always full of energy and optimism. He wasn’t fanatically religious; there was even some frivolity in his character, but he prayed every day. He never started anything without praying first. He started every morning with a prayer with his tallit and tefillin on. My father always had a yarmulka on at home. My mother also taught me to pray in Hebrew, I can still remember it: ‘Shema Yisrael Adonai eloheinu Adonai ehad…’ ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One’… this is what I think it means. I had a small siddur in my childhood. I still have a siddur, though I don’t think I am a fanatic believer.

My mother was a housewife and we had a housemaid to help my mother do the cleaning and some housekeeping while my mother cooked herself. She made delicious Jewish food: gefilte fish was number one, of course. Jews like gefilte fish. She also made chicken broth, yeisek flesh – sweet and sour meat stew. My mother made delicious pancakes from stretch dough. It stretched like parchment paper – very thin. She filled them with cottage cheese adding fried onions – very delicious. Our family also liked pte [petcha] – hardly anybody would know the word. It was cooked from calf legs bought at the market. It was cut to smaller pieces, cold water was added and it was cooked for seven to eight hours like holodets [holodets: a cold meat dish, usually made of boiled bones with little meat on them, the meat is mixed with the bouillon and cooled, after which it becomes jelly-like because of the high percentage of gelatin in it]. Two hours before the end of cooking, onions, carrots, garlic and spices were added, and then vinegar or lemon juice. It was served hot, but I never ate it for I didn’t like it unlike the rest of the family. I liked Moldovan mamaliga [boiled corn flour] that my father cooked. This was the only dish my mother allowed him to cook. When the family felt like having mamaliga, my father made it. It goes without saying that my family followed the kashrut.

Besides a housemaid, there was my nanny living in the house with us. She was a Russian woman, rather old. I don’t remember her name; I just called her ‘nanny’. My mother said that the first thing my nanny did, when she came to live with us in the house and heard that my name was Cipora, she said, ‘What kind of name is that? I will call her Polina, that’s it!’ So, it was her initiative that everybody in the family began calling me Polina and now everybody calls me so. Only in my documents I am Cipora. The nanny was very good and was devoted to our family. She was like a member of our family, but she was quite a drunkard, as they say. Often a policeman took me back home from a stroll for she would be lying on the pavement drunk while I would quietly play beside her, when they found me. My mother was terrified by this situation saying each time, ‘This was the last time. It’s impossible to go on like this’, but my nanny didn’t have a place to go to, and my mother was so kind that she tolerated her. She lived her life with us. She loved me and loved our family. At the age of three or four, I was sent to the kindergarten and not to a Frebelichka [Froebel Institute] 6.

My mother was involved in charity activities along with other Jewish women in the community. They were called patroness dames. There were two marble plaques with the names of these dames on the wall of the choral synagogue, and on one plaque there was the name of Shyfra Sohis. My mother sacrificed herself for the sake of others. She was ill having calcula in her gall bladder. She had attacks of acute pain at times, but as soon as she felt better she got up and hurried to the lower side of town where poor Jews lived. She distributed special coupons to poor Jews and they would go to the Jewish community to receive food products.

My father used to say, ‘You really have no love for yourself. You’ve just suffered from pain. We were fussing around you not knowing what to do, then you are up and on the run again.’ This is the way my mother was. Besides, poor people always came to our house. My mother appointed the time for them to come. She gave them wood or food. She gently told me, ‘You go open the shed and leave him alone there. Let him take as much as he needs.’ We were a hospitable family. I try to follow this tradition in the memory of my mother. There was also a children’s home named after Babich in the community. Babich was probably a founder and chief contributor to the house. My mother also worked there. She couldn’t stay quietly at home. She just had to go out and help people.

Our family observed Jewish traditions like all other Jewish families. We strictly observed Sabbath. My mother baked challah in a special oven. I also had one recently, but I gave it away. My mother cooked cholent, chicken broth and fish for Sabbath. She left the food on a special grate with lamps above it to keep the food hot. On Friday evening my mother lit two candles in silver candle stands. My father always had the company of a poor Jewish man, when he came home from the synagogue for Sabbath. This was a rule. Before a meal my father always recited a prayer in Hebrew, and my mother translated it for me. On the afternoon of Sabbath we always sang songs called zmires. We did no work on Sabbath; we didn’t even turn on the lights. My father had many religious books, and every week he read me an article from the Torah which is habitual for Jewish families. I could listen to him for hours. I remember that Shymy also sat with us. My father read in Hebrew, also called loshen koidesh [‘holy language’ in Yiddish], and of course, interpreted each word to us.

Growing up

Pesach was the main and my favorite holiday. Shymy and I got presents for sure. I usually got a pair of patent leather shoes for Pesach. There were preparations for the holiday. In fall my mother started making goose fat: she had a special board and utensils to melt the fat. This fat was kept in a special jug in the attic where fancy crockery for Pesach was kept. Before Pesach the house was cleaned thoroughly. I remember that my mother thoroughly cleaned the kitchen utensils that she had no replacement for. All chametz was removed from the house. My mother also distributed coupons to the poor for them to receive food products for the holiday. My mother took the crockery from the attic after the house was cleaned up. It was beautiful crockery of thin china. There were silver wine glasses and silver tableware. The table was always covered with a beautiful white tablecloth.

At the end of the day, before seder, everything had to be ready. Undoubtedly there was fish, meat, matzah pudding and haroset – ground apples with wine and nuts to symbolize the clay that Jews worked with, when they were slaves. There were candles lit in silvery candle stands on the table and the seder began. We always had quests on seder. My father and brother conducted the seder: this was a tradition. My father told us about Moses who led our people from Egypt. My brother, Shymy, asked the four questions – fir kashes. He would ask, ‘Why are we sitting on this night? My mother or I didn’t say anything, but I knew the fir kashes by heart. I’m not sure, but it seems we also sang zmires on Pesach. My parents and whoever was our guest had their glasses filled with wine. The children also had a little in their glasses. Each adult was supposed to drink four glasses, but I don’t remember for sure whether they did.

I had a little thick glass with a little handle called a koise. There was a big copper glass for Elijah the Prophet on the table. It was polished and shining as if it was made of gold and there was the candle light reflecting in it. The glass was filled with wine. My father used to say, ‘Look carefully. Elijah will come at midnight and open the door.’ We left the door open for him to come in. Seder began early in the evening, but ended very late. Gradually, the scene became blurry in my eyes: the candlelight and the shining glass for Elijah. I always fell asleep and never knew whether he came or not. And I never saw him.

Rosh Hashanah was a wonderful holiday. I loved it. It is the Jewish New Year. My parents went to the Choral Synagogue. My mother took me with her and we sat on the upper tier with the other women. Before we started going to the Choral Synagogue we went to another synagogue which I don’t remember. There was a festive meal on Rosh Hashanah with apples and honey, a round-shaped challah loaf and broth with mendelakh – little pieces of dough fried in oil.

On Judgment Day [Yom Kippur] my parents fasted and so did I. I fasted at least till two o’clock. I started fasting at about the age of 14. My father came from the synagogue in the evening and had a shot of vodka with bronfn and lekakh. Bronfn is vodka and lekakh is honey cake. Eggs were frothed to make lekakh. Then the family sat down to dinner. I remember that on Yom Kippur my mother served broth with little dumplings filled with meat. They are called pelmeni in Russian.

I liked Simchat Torah very much. My father used to hold me and go for a walk, when I was small. I always waited for Simchat Torah with a special feeling. We, children, walked with little red flags and red lollypops on sticks. I remember the Torah being carried out and we kissed it stretching our little arms. I remember this well. How wonderful those years were!

On Sukkot we made a sukkah in the yard from special planks that were kept in the attic. On top, the sukkah was covered with straw or reeds – I don’t remember for sure. We got together with our Jewish neighbors for celebrations and had meals in the sukkah all week long. Sukkot is celebrated in fall. When it was cold, we wrapped ourselves in warmer clothes, but still had meals in the sukkah.

On Chanukkah my father gave me Chanukkah gelt. I don’t remember what I did with it – bought sweets, I guess. I also remember merry dreidel whipping tops. We had a big silver chanukkiyah on the window. Every day another candle was lit in it.

On Purim my mother made hamantashen for our family and for poor families. She visited them before Purim taking baskets full of presents to them a week before Purim. My parents were rather old and we didn’t have noisy celebrations at home, but there were jokes, and children visiting and we had fancy dress costumes on.

I was a stubborn girl and wanted my wishes to come true. It was hard for my mother to handle me and she often said, ‘I will send you to school’. I was six, when my mother had enough of my unbearable character and sent me to school. It was a Romanian elementary school one house away from our house. The teaching was in Romanian at the school. My parents didn’t know Romanian. We spoke Yiddish or Russian at home, so I had to learn Romanian. I don’t remember having any problems in this regard. I did well at school, but I was probably a hoyden. I remember an incident, when I was in the fourth grade. There were only girls in my class. I demonstrated my adroitness to them running on the desks, when a teacher walked into the classroom. She asked, ‘What is this? Stretch out your hand!’ Hitting pupils on their hands with a ruler was a common punishment.

I was very independent and spoiled – hitting me on my hand? No way! I jumped off the desk, grabbed my bag and I even remember the words I said, ‘Draku suei schcoala sa!’ [God damn this school!], and went home proudly. At home I said I wasn’t going to that school again. A week passed and then the teacher came to our home. I remember her last name – Pekush – she was Czech, it seems. She came in and asked, ‘What’s happened?’ My mother replied, ‘I don’t know, she doesn’t want to go to school, but she wouldn’t say why.’ I was there in the room. I guess they found the right words to convince me to go back to school. That’s what I was like.

I adored my brother Shymy. He was six years older than me and I was jealous that Mother bought him whatever he wanted. Shymy was a little boy, when our parents bought him a big toy car with pedals that he drove in the yard. At 13 Shymy had his bar mitzvah. I remember many guests and they all brought him presents. When I was at school, he already studied in the lyceum and was popular with other students in Kishinev. He was good at basketball and volleyball; he was the captain of these teams in the Jewish sports community Maccabi 7. When on holidays Maccabi teams took part in parades, my brother always marched in the first rows.

Shymy was very handsome. He was tall and slim and had a special bearing – royal and sportive. I always went to watch his teams playing and I always sat as close as I could, though Shymy asked me to sit further behind fearing that the ball might hit me. I always cheered for his team and wanted everybody to know that I was his sister. I was jealous when Shymy went on dates in the evening and asked him to take me with him. Sometimes he took me with him. Shymy taught me to dance tango – this dance was popular at the time. Tango became the only dance I can dance. He was also a member of Betar 8, I remember that Betar members were ardent Zionists and so was Shymy.

After graduating from elementary school, I went to the French Jeanne D’Arc gymnasium. It was a private gymnasium, the most prestigious and the most expensive in town. There was competition to enter the Dadiani and Regina Maria gymnasiums, but not to our gymnasium. They charged a lot and admitted all who could afford to send their children to study there. We had French teachers, Monsieur Clemant, the language teacher, Madame Pobelle, and Madame Pizolit. They were intelligent and educated people knowing the etiquette. We had summer and winter uniforms. The winter uniform was a black gown with a white collar and the school emblem on it, dark blue coats and hats with small rims, decorated with a ribbon from the same fabric. In summer we wore skirts and white blouses.

During the war

When the fascists came to power in Romania, we began to wear a plain uniform of a military kind. On holidays the flag of the gymnasium was raised in the yard. The biggest national holiday in Romania was Zece May, on 10th May 9, ‘Unire principatelor’ – Union of all principalities. At the start of each academic year there was also a flag raised by the honored gymnasium students. I remember I was authorized to raise the flag – I was tall and slim. I’ve never been a girl of fashion. I like plain clothes. All gymnasium students wanted to be kind to me knowing what kind of a brother I had. They walked with me during the intervals. Shymy’s girlfriend, Gusia Necler, was my special friend. She was about two years older than me.

My favorite subjects in the gymnasium were botany and natural sciences. I liked flora and animals, but the French language was number one. I could read in French for days, and I liked reading aloud to hear myself. Our teachers told us that we had to read aloud to hear ourselves to master the pronunciation. I could read books in French and this helped me to enrich my vocabulary. I always looked up new words in the dictionary. I didn’t do that well in math, and in senior grades my parents even hired a private teacher for me. In Kishinev it was quite common to hire the gymnasium graduates or senior students to give private classes, so I had one. They were mostly Jews since it was more difficult for Jews to find jobs in Kishinev, and they gave private classes.

There was no anti-Semitism in the gymnasium. My closest and best friend was Mania Feider, a Jewish girl. Her father was a commercial agent, and her mother was a housewife. They were wealthy, but they didn’t own a house. They rented an apartment. We spent all our free time together. I visited Mania and she visited me at home. We trusted each other with our secrets and read books together. Mania and I liked knitting and embroidery. Mania perished in the Kishinev Ghetto 10 during the war.

The Kishinev of my childhood and youth wasn’t so big. Its population was less than one hundred thousand. [Polina is wrong here, according to the all-Russian census in 1897 Kishinev had 108,483 residents, 50,237 of who were Jews.] There was an upper and a lower town. The lower town was a poor and dirty neighborhood. The upper town was a fashionable place, particularly Sadovaya, Nikolayevskaya and Aleksandrovskaya Streets. There were posh stores on Aleksandrovskaya Street. One of the biggest stores was the Barbalat garment store. Perhaps, Barbalat was the name of the owner. Its owners shipped their goods from France and other European countries. I remember that they also sold some clothes from my father’s store. There was also a shoe store, I don’t remember the name. These stores were for wealthy people.

There were also small stores. Most of them belonged to Jewish owners, but there were also Russian-owned stores. I can’t say now whether they were open on Saturdays, but I can say for sure that if they were, there weren’t Jewish shop assistants working in this case. There were also street vendors. One of them was a Greek vendor who sold ice-cream in waffle cones. It was delicious ice cream far better than what they offer nowadays. In winter this Greek man sold khalvitsa, an extremely delicious oriental sweet toffee. The children liked it a lot. My mother didn’t allow me to eat khalvitsa outside. Imagine me eating khalvitsa in the street! This would have been bad manners. There were numerous confectioneries in the town selling cakes, hot chocolate, delicious nut khalva. There was an expensive Zamfiresku cafe on the central street. Businessmen or enamored couples met there in the afternoon.

There were horse-drawn cabs and trams running along Nicolayeskaya and Harlampievskaya Streets. Before the Soviet regime [1940] they were almost empty and hooting: Dong! Dong! During the Soviet power they were overcrowded and hooted the same. During the Romanian regime a tram ticket cost 30 bans. When my mother gave me money to take a tram I saved it to go to the cinema. A ticket to a movie cost 18 Leu, it was expensive. Since I didn’t want to ask my parents for the money to the cinema, I tried to save. One paid for an entrance ticket to a movie and could stay in the cinema as long as they wished. In Kishinev there were a few cinema theaters: Odeon on Mikhailovskaya Street, and Coliseum on Alexandrovskaya Street. I remember silent movies, when there was a pianist playing. I remember the stars of silent movies: Rudolf Valentino, Mary Pickford.

Kishinev residents used to walk along Aleksandrovskaya Street near the Triumphalnaya Arc. Mothers and nannies took little children for walks on the boulevard. Young people went for walks in the town park where there was a monument of Stefan the Great [The ruler of the Moldova principality in 1457 - 1504, who conducted the policy of centralization]. I liked going to this park to sit on a bench with a book and then I secretly watched the enamored couples. There was a central library on Alexandrovskaya Street near a big bank with two stone lions at the entrance where my mother and I used to borrow books.

There was an Agricultural College and a Religious Faculty in Kishinev and most Jews left Bessarabia to study abroad. Those who wanted to study medicine went to Italy. Graduates from Italian medical institutions were regarded as good doctors in Kishinev. My brother Shymy went to the University of Bucharest after finishing the lyceum in 1936. He never finished it due to persecution and abuse of Jews that started in Romania. Shymy was proud and independent. He had a fight with the Cuzists 11 once and then he had to leave Bucharest for the fear of his life. He came home and said, ‘I won’t study there any longer. I’ll go to Palestine. Palestine is my Motherland and I’ll move there anyway.’

In 1938, when he was twenty, he moved to Palestine with other halutzim [halutz is a pioneer in Hebrew – participant of the Jewish settlement Erez Yisrael from the late 19th to the early 20th century]. There were 300 of them on the Greek boat ‘Aspir.’ They paid the captain and he took them on board in a Mediterranean post. The boat arrived in the harbor of Haifa, but the passengers weren’t allowed to get off board. Palestine was under the British mandate and the Brits didn’t accept Jews. They were at sea for three months with hardly any food or water before they managed to get off-board. From there they were sent to a quarantine camp.

We didn’t hear from Shymy for a long time and were very concerned. My mother and I even went to a fortune teller. She said, ‘Your son will work and will have a very good life.’ We believed her and looked forward till we could see each other again, but this wasn’t to be. World War II, fascism, began. When in 1940 there was the Annexation of Bessarabia to the Soviet Union 12, my father was ruined. The store and houses were taken away from us. My father had to go to the police station many times and each time he said ‘good bye’ thinking that it was for good. I don’t know why we weren’t sent away with other wealthy people that the Soviet power was deporting from Bessarabia in 1941. This was a terrible time!

There were other families living in the house, one family in each room, this was a real communal apartment 13. We stayed to live in the living room. One NKVD 14 officer, who came to search the house wanted to occupy the living room, but this time my mother was firm. ‘Pick your hat, you aren’t staying here! The three of us are enough for this room.’ And he left. The gymnasiums were converted to schools and had numbers [see school #] 15. Most of them became Russian schools, and there were few Moldovan ones. By that time I had finished six grades in the gymnasium and went to the ninth grade of the Russian railroad school #1. Though my Russian was poor I picked it up quickly since we sometimes spoke Russian at home. I was doing all right at school.

Our family didn’t have anything to live on. We leased a corner in our living room to a man from Russia. So there were four of us sharing the room: my mother, my father, I and this man. He was a Soviet official staying with us temporarily waiting for his wife and son. He was a decent and honest man and paid us his rental fee for the corner. My parents also took work to do at home like sewing buttons on clothes. Probably, one of my father’s former suppliers helped my father to get this job. My father was 73 and my mother was 64 years old. What could they do? I couldn’t wait till my summer vacations when I hoped to find a job to help my parents, but then the war began on 22nd June 1941. Germany attacked the USSR.

We didn’t evacuate. My mother was very conservative. She didn’t want to leave the place. I yelled, ‘Mama, come on… Papa, you see, everybody is leaving!’ My mother said, ‘Can’t you remember our life during the Romanian regime? Where would we go?’ Of course, we knew about the fascists and how they treated Jews, but it was probably my parents’ age that they didn’t care, but they should have thought about me. Well, whatever the reasons, we happened to stay. When the Germans and Romanians occupied Kishinev, an officer of the German army, a Czech man, settled down with us. He talked with my parents. He was a good man. He used to say, ‘Go away, they will kill you!’ An old Jewish man, my father’s acquaintance, who knew German, interpreted for us. He sent his son away and he, his wife and his old grandmother stayed home.

My parents should have done the same; they just didn’t understand that they had to do it! Later, I met my father’s acquaintance in the camp in Golta. [Following the Antonescu-ordered slaughter of the Jews of Odessa and Bessarabia, the Romanian occupation authorities deported the survivors to camps in the Golta district: 54,000 to the Bogdanovka camp, 18,000 to the Akhmetchetka camp, and 8,000 to the Domanevka camp. In Bogdanovka all the Jews were shot, with the Romanian gendarmerie, the Ukrainian police, and Sonderkommando R, made up of Volksdeutsche, taking part. In January and February 1942, 12,000 Jews were murdered in the other two camps. A total of 185,000 Jews were murdered by Romanian and German army units]. He was alone and he said, ‘Polia [affectionate of Polina], I am all alone, and they will kill me one of these days’.

Before Bessarabia was annexed to the USSR, Romanian troops trained near Kishinev, and some high-rank Romanian officer stayed in our apartment. When the German and Romanian troops came to Kishinev in 1941, he came to see us and left a sign on the door that there was a Romanian officer staying there. It helped us to escape from searches for some time. However, in fall we were sent to the ghetto in Kishinev, and in January 1942 all inmates of the ghetto were taken across the Dnestr to Odessa region. My father was very ill, and I managed to get a place in a train car for him. This was the last time I saw him. My father was killed near the village of Yasinovo in Odessa region. My mother was with me. She couldn’t walk and we dragged her holding her by her arms. On the way they began to kill exhausted people. I survived by some miracle and ran out of this crowd. I didn’t care whether I would go alone or with the crowd and I escaped. It was a frosty night. It started snowing and there was wind. I didn’t see anything.

I knocked on the door of the first hut on my way. An old man’s voice said, ‘Go away, they will kill me because of you.’ I went to the cowshed. Though I was afraid of cows, I stayed there a whole night shivering from the cold. The old man saw me in the corner when he came to feed the cows in the morning. He asked, ‘What are you doing here?’ I couldn’t talk, when the Romanians were shooting at the people I screamed so loud that I tore my chords. I somehow explained who I was and he said, ‘You know, since you are here, come on in.’ They were an old Ukrainian couple. They burned my clothes as there were lice in them. Then they washed me. She rinsed my head with alkaline water; there was no soap. There were lice on each hair on my head and she was sitting brushing my hair to remove them. A complete stranger that she was! Then she gave me her dress and let me sit on the stove bench to warm up. I stayed there for two weeks before I restored my voice by having hot milk and honey.

The old man was the secretary of the village council of the kolkhoz 16, and he wanted to help me, but what could he do! He said there was Yuschiha Belinskaya, a lonely old woman living in a farm near the village of Bobrik: ‘You go there and tell her I sent you, but before you go to Bobrik to see Batko, also secretary of the village council, tell him that I’ve asked him to issue you a document with a stamp that you are baptized and that you are from the Odessa children’s home.’ The old man told me about the children’s home and how to get there for me to give correct answers in case they asked. Batko did everything as the old man requested and issued me a forged certificate, but he warned me to only show it to common people, not to any officials. So I headed to the farm of Yuschiha Belinskaya. She showed my document to her neighbors and allowed me to stay in her house. I stayed there till spring. In spring the old woman’s cousin brother, Vasia Belyi, came to stay in her house. He wanted the house considering her being old. He worked for the Germans and I grasped at once that he would even kill me himself or report on me to the Germans. I left Yuschiha.

I was captured in Bobrik. There were other Jews that they captured in the district. We were locked in a shed on the outskirts of the village. I was sure they were going to burn us. Women were sobbing and screaming, but it didn’t happen. Our guards were two red-head soldiers wearing German uniforms and they probably weren’t fascists. They let the men free as soon as night fell. Then they began to let the women free in small groups. By the morning there was an old woman and I left, and they said, ‘Go where you want.’ This old woman and I went to the village of Lubashovka. Where were we to go? We had no idea, and we got to the gendarmerie. I don’t know what happened to the old woman, but I was taken for interrogation. A Romanian man interrogated me. There was an interpreter. I told my story and didn’t mention that I understood Romanian. He asked me who I was and I said that I was a soldier. He said, ‘Soldier? I will show you what kind of soldier I am. Puk, puk, puk – shi es gata [You’re done - in Romanian].’

I stood quietly pretending I didn’t understand. Then the interpreter took me to the shop where Jews from Lubashevka were working. I began to work in this shop and also told them that I was Russian and came from the Odessa children’s home. Once, a local Jewish man approached me, ‘You know I’ll help you. There is a woman whose children live in this house. She brought us food. I will talk to her. Maybe she will take you with her.’ This woman’s name was Nina Tsvetochnitsa. She went to the gendarmerie and said, ‘Why are you keeping her here? I know her well, she was in the children’s home with my children. Let her come with me.’ There, what great people I met. I stayed with her for some time. She also starved.

Then I ran away from Lubashevka and went to Golta. This happened in early 1944. In spring, when the Soviet troops were approaching, the Romanians had other things to think about than us. A local girl approached me and said, ‘We are Baptists and we want to take a Jewish girl with us.’ She told me to follow her. I stayed with them till the Soviet troops came. After the liberation I went to work in the village of Gandrabury, Ananiev district, Odessa region. It was a big village and there was a ten-year school where I worked as elementary school teacher. I was eager to go back to Kishinev, though nobody waited for me there, but somehow I believed that there was a good life there and people were dressed nicely like before the war and I was ashamed of the shabby clothes I had. Then I thought ‘be what may’ and went to Kishinev on summer vacations. I went to the university and ascribed myself to the Faculty of Moldovan language and literature. I needed a certificate to obtain a letter of invitation to go back to Kishinev. I obtained a letter, went back to Gandrabury, went to Ananiev, and submitted this certificate to the district prosecutor, which enabled me to return to Kishinev. This was the only possible way during Stalin’s regime.

Shortly afterward, when I recovered from the horrors I went through, I wrote to Aunt Rachil in America. I told her about my mother and father’s death, asked her whether she had any information about Shymy since he was the only close person I had. I had a good memory and remembered two addresses of my aunt in New York: Ardel Street and Pickman Street. I sent the letter having little hope it would reach her, but a few months later I received her response. My aunt wrote to me that Shymy was alive, and sent me his photograph where he wore a military uniform. She wrote to him about me and our parents. Then I received a long letter from my brother. It made a long journey before I got it. He wrote about his life in Palestine. He worked a lot. He delivered milk to customers, washed cars in a garage and picked any job and studied simultaneously. Aunt Rachil sent him money and he graduated from the University of Jerusalem and became an engineer. During World War II, Shymy volunteered to the British army to fight against Nazis. He was an officer and had a higher education. He had awards. My brother was a brave man. In Palestine Shymy changed his surname from Sohis to Sofar.

I learned about his life from Aunt Rachil. Occasionally I received letters from him. During the Soviet times it wasn’t safe to keep in touch with relatives abroad 17. When Shymy’s dream came true and the Jewish state was established, Shymy took part in the war for independence in 1948, when the armies of five Arab states attacked Israel. Shymy got married before Israel was established. His wife, Pnina, arrived in Palestine from Poland with her parents at the age of eight. She got a medical education and worked as a cosmetologist. Later, she quit her job and became a housewife. They have no children. Shymy became a professional military. He participated in the Six-Day-War 18 in 1967, and in the War on Judgment Day in 1973 [see Yom Kippur War] 19. He took part in four wars. They live in Rishon Le Ziyon.

I corresponded with Aunt Rachil. She sent me parcels and tried to help me as much as she could. In the first letter my aunt wrote, ‘Maybe you’ll come to America?’ I couldn’t explain that this was impossible considering the Soviet regime. Then she wrote, ‘You must have good friends and can’t leave them.’ It never occurred to her that nobody would let me out of the country and that I might have been arrested if I tried.

I have dim memories about the first months of my stay in Kishinev, this was 1946 already. I was looking for a place to live, and an old woman, Russian or Moldovan, offered me a place to stay. She had a dark dirty room that looked like a shed. I slept on an old box. It’s scary to recall this life. I was admitted to the extramural department of the French language at Kishinev University. Since I didn’t have a certificate of secondary education, I was supposed to finish the tenth grade via correspondence. After completing my first year at university I went to study in a Moldovan evening school. I also went to work. I got a job as an assistant accountant at the buttery. There I met my future husband, Boris Leibovich. He was chief of the raw material department at the buttery. Boris was nine years older than me. He was a nice looking man with somewhat old-fashioned manners that were unusual for me. Boris came from a village.

Boris introduced me to his parents. I was very worried, when I first went to see them. I was ashamed of my more than modest clothing. I had just one pair of stockings. Once I fell on my way from the school in the evening and there was a big hole on one stocking. I was good at sewing and darning, and made a knee-big darn on the stocking. I pulled my skirt down to hide the darn, but Boris’ mother saw it anyway. Later she confessed that thanks to this darn I made a very good impression on her. ‘I knew at once that you’ll make a good housewife,’ she said.

My husband’s parents came from the village of Kriuleni. His father, Yakov Leibovich, was a grain dealer. They also had a small store where his mother, Esther Leibovich, was the owner. Boris was her fist child. She gave birth to him when she was twenty. They were wealthy people, but when the Soviet power came they were dispossessed of their property. During the war they evacuated to the town of Frunze [today Bishkek] in Kyrgyzia [today Kyrgyzstan]. They kept their belongings and brought their Moldovan carpets back home. There were seven children in the family: three daughters and four sons. They all got secondary education and were very smart. Their mother never forced them to do things.

After the war

When they returned from the evacuation they did what they liked to build their own life. My husband’s sister, Anna Barash [nee Leibovich], and her family lived in Pinsk. Mark, the middle brother, also lived there. He was a shop assistant in a textile store. The rest of the family lived in Kishinev. Grigoriy was the only one who graduated from a technical school. He worked as an engineer. Alexandr, the youngest brother, worked as an electrician in the theater. He was married to a Russian woman. The girls married wealthy Jewish men. Mara’s husband’s name was Fima [Yefim] Kiselyov, and Clara’s husband was Senia Berg. Anna and Clara and their families live in Israel, and Mara, the youngest, lives in America. The brothers of my husband are dead already.

My husband, Boris Leibovich, was the oldest of all the children. He was born in Kriuleni in 1915. After graduating from secondary school he helped his father. During the war Boris wasn’t mobilized to the army having short sight of minus 19. He couldn’t see without glasses. He was a very gentle and educated man, though his education was different from mine since I grew up in a more intelligent family. I always enjoyed visiting people with him. He could eat beautifully and beautifully courted me. He called me ‘kind child’ in Yiddish.

When Boris proposed to me, I talked to Bertha Yakovlevna, the aunt of my friend, Zina Veisman. Zina lived with her aunt. Bertha Yakovlevna treated me like her own daughter and even loved me more than Zina. I always asked for her advice. I liked visiting them. They were poor, but Bertha managed to make their home very cozy. She always put starched embroidered place napkins on the table and managed to set the table with such chic that even miserable food looked appetizing and it reminded me of my home and my mother. So, I went to ask for her opinion. Boris was nine years older than me, and I wasn’t sure if I loved him. On the other hand, I was alone, had no home, and he was a decent man and he loved me. Bertha told me at once, ‘Polina, he will make a wonderful husband; he is so tender with you. You are sure to love him.’ She told me a lot and I sort of received a motherly blessing from her.

We got married in 1947. We invited 40 guests to the wedding. We were poor and couldn’t afford a big dinner. Therefore, we only served desserts. My husband’s cousin sisters made a ‘napoleon’ cake, strudels with apples and cookies. I didn’t even have a white gown. Boris’ younger sister, Mara, gave me her white dress for the wedding. My mother-in-law made me a short veil from old laces. We had a Jewish wedding. Boris and I fasted on this day according to the rule. The ceremony was conducted by Epelbaum, a former assistant of Rabbi Cirelson, a well-known and respected man in Kishinev. Cirelson perished on the first days of the war, when a bomb hit his residence.

There was a chuppah in Boris parents’ apartment. I remember us walking inside the chuppah. Then we sipped from a wine glass and broke it. Epelbaum issued a ketubbah, marriage contract, and two witnesses signed it. I kept it for a long time, but now I can’t remember where I put it. Then we were invited to dinner. My husband and I had strong chicken broth. The rest of the guests had wine and desserts. There wasn’t much joy. The guests were my husband’s age and older, most of them being his colleagues, they didn’t feel like entertaining. They danced a little. My husband’s relatives did their best, but I cried a lot thinking about my parents and Shymy, as there were no guests from my side at the wedding. This was a sad day for me. I don’t think I danced.

After the wedding we lived with my husband’s parents. They had a three-bedroom apartment in a big one-storied building on Stefan Velikiy Street. There were 19 other apartments in the house. Boris’ sister, Clara, and her husband lived in one room, Boris’ parents lived in another, and we got the third room. The rooms were spacious with 3.5 meter high ceilings and tiled patterned stoves. Our room was the biggest and the most beautiful. The walls were whitewashed and decorated with a color pattern. However, it was almost empty, there wasn’t even a table. There was only a wide couch covered with a Moldovan carpet where my husband and I slept. His mother gave us a blanket and bed sheets. Mara also slept on a sofa in this room before she got married and moved out. Later, we made a back door to the yard and built an annex corridor and a kitchen. It was nice and my son still tells me, ‘Mother, do you remember how nice it was in our apartment on Stefan Velikiy Street?’

My husband’s family was patriarchal. They treated me well. We got together to celebrate holidays and birthdays, but we knew little about one another. I didn’t quite understand this; in my family it was different. They were tight-lipped and weren’t open with one another. I had the warmest relations with my mother-in-law. I even called her mama. She was so kind to me. I can’t find words to say how warm and gentle she was. She was also reserved and tight-lipped, but it always seemed to me that she wasn’t quite happy. I heard from other people that during the evacuation my mother-in-law didn’t talk to my father-in-law for a long time for some reason. I didn’t know any details, but I believe she must have been hurt. My mother-in-law wasn’t so religious, though her husband bought her a seat at the synagogue where she went on Jewish holidays. She didn’t do any work on Sabbath, of course. Like in my parents’ family, they didn’t work on Saturday. I didn’t do any housework on Saturday, but I had to work at school, of course.

After the war there was one synagogue in Kishinev, but neither my husband nor I went there. It was overcrowded on holidays, the building was too small. I stayed outside a little occasionally. We celebrated Jewish holidays. On Pesach we always had matzah, but nobody could conduct the seder. We bought matzah at the synagogue, but in the first years, when it wasn’t so good there, I made matzah at home. It wasn’t kosher since I made it on the same table that I used for everyday cooking, but the main thing was to have matzah on Pesach. I always fasted on Yom Kippur. It was necessary for me. I only stopped fasting recently due to my health condition. On Chanukkah all children in our family were given Chanukkah gelt. My son has grown up, but he still remembers how his father and uncles gave him Chanukkah gelt.

My son was born on 22nd March 1949. This was a great event and a gift on my birthday since I was born on 2nd April. My husband took us home from the maternity hospital on the eve of my birthday and we rode home on a two-wheeled cart since there were hardly any cars in Kishinev then. I held my son, who was wrapped, strongly. On the way my husband told me ceremoniously, ‘You know, I’ve bought a table for your birthday.’ It was an expensive gift at the time. According to the Jewish customs, the mother names her first baby and I named my son Yakov after my father. My husband’s father also was Yakov. He died one year before at the age of 60.

My mother-in-law helped me a lot in the first months after my son was born. She helped me to wash the baby and change diapers. She often took Yasha [affectionate for Yakov] to her room so that I could have a nap. I stayed away from work for three years looking after the baby, but I continued my studies in the evening school. My husband looked after our son and I rushed to school. I didn’t send our son to kindergarten as there weren’t many of them and it was next to impossible to get a child there. Besides, I didn’t feel like leaving my only son in the care of other people. I felt happy to be his mother. When asked what day is the most memorable for me, I always reply, ‘My son’s birth.’

Yasha was a strong boy. Once or twice he had children’s sicknesses. When he turned four, I was already working at the school. I graduated from university, obtained a diploma in French and became a Moldovan teacher at a secondary school. I rushed home from work. Yasha was waiting for me on the porch. He could wait for me for hours. Seeing me at a distance he ran to me stretching his arms. It felt so good to hold him, so warm and dear he was. Yasha went to the school where I worked not far from where we lived. Frankly speaking, I wanted to have him close. He did well at school. He liked literature and humanities. My life was filled with household care, I liked my work and took little interest in politics, but the policy broke into people’s lives.

When in 1952 the notorious Doctors’ Plot 20 began, my friend Zina’s uncle Veisman was arrested. He was far over sixty and they sentenced him to exile in the North. Zina told me they discovered a photograph where he was with a doctor from Moscow who had been arrested. His wife, Bertha Yakovlevna, whom I loved, lived alone. Once I met her at the market. She said she had no information about her husband. Though my husband and I didn’t have much at the time I took all the money I had in my pocket and gave it to her. I wanted to help her at least as much as I could. Anyway, I didn’t do any shopping on that day. Later she moved to her son who was also a doctor; he lived somewhere near Moscow. She left a book by Gorky 21 with Zina for me. She wrote on the title sheet, ‘To smart and kindhearted Polina from Bertha Veisman.’ Her husband perished in exile. The Doctors’ Plot was closed after Stalin’s [1953] death, but so many innocent people suffered. I didn’t care about Stalin’s death. I always remembered what Stalin did to my parents before the war. I remember the mourning meetings at school, many people were crying.

My husband and I had a harmonious life. We never raised our voices to one another. This was like it was in his family and in the family of my parents. If he hurt me unintentionally, I would cry all day long, but never showed any signs to him, when he came home from work. I did what I was supposed to do pretending that nothing had happened. He washed himself after work and I set the table. I believe this was a right approach to marital life. Boris’ sister, Clara, and her husband sometimes had rows that we could hear and Clara always pointed out to her husband how exemplary our relations were.

Boris worked as chief of the raw material department at the buttery all the time. At that time everybody tried to take advantage of the position he had at work, but my husband was different. He wanted to have a quiet life. We didn’t want anything more than we had. When delivering the raw stuff to the buttery, kolkhoz representatives tried to cheat by lying on their trucks to increase the weight by 60-80 kilograms. The receivers of shipments shut their eyes to this receiving their share, but my husband was an honest man and knew his business. He even made an innovative proposal installing a special looking glass on the scales to see whether there was somebody on a truck. His colleagues said, ‘I won’t have it and nobody else will.’

We went on vacations together. Our favorite place was Odessa. Each year we took a train to Odessa. We used to rent a room near the sea, somewhere like Chernomorka [a village at the seashore near Odessa], or the 16th station of the Bolshoi Fontan [resort area in Odessa], and often in Arkadia [Arkadia is a well-known Odessa beach, a recreation place]. We spent most of the time by the sea. Boris could swim well and he taught our son and they swam far into the sea and I would sit on the shore worrying. In the evening we had walks and went to the Opera Theater. I liked and still like Odessa. We returned to Kishinev with a sun-tan and felt well rested. At times my husband got free vacations at work and went alone since I didn’t get a chance. I did renovations at home and I enjoyed painting, buying a rug or a shelf, made new curtains and then sat on the sofa enjoying the results of my work.

Boris loved theater and we never missed the first nights in Kishinev theaters. In Kishinev there was a Russian Theater and the Moldovan Opera and Ballet Theater that later split [1957] to two theaters: a drama and opera, and a ballet theater. My husband and I were good at Russian and Moldovan. We liked opera. In summer, theaters from other towns of the USSR came on tour to Kishinev. We often went to the cinema after work, while our son was in his grandma’s care. My husband took no interest in politics. He always thought about work, anyway. He didn’t join the Communist Party and was skeptical about the Soviet regime after it dispossessed his parents of their property. However, we subscribed to newspapers and magazines. My husband preferred ‘Izvestiya’ 22, that wasn’t so biased as ‘Pravda’ [Truth, the main paper of the Communist Party of the USSR]. I subscribed to a few professional magazines. One was ‘Foreign language at school.’ In 1961 we received a new two-bedroom apartment. This is where I live now. We earned well and had a good life, but we only lived together for 15 years.

My husband died in 1962, at 47, from cancer of the pancreas. We buried him in the Jewish cemetery. My mother-in-law invited a rabbi to recite the Kiddush. She sat shivah, but I had only three days off from work and then I had to go back to work, though I wore mourning clothing. I was 38 years old. I never remarried. My son was 13 and I raised him myself. My son and my job were essential to me. Yasha finished school in 1966. I wished he became a doctor, but in Kishinev, due to the state anti-Semitism, it was difficult for Jews to enter the Medical College. He went to Tyumen in Russia, where they have oil fields. He entered the Tyumen Medical College. However, he studied there for one year and then said he couldn’t be a doctor. He couldn’t stand blood and couldn’t work in the dissection room.

At that time a Higher Engineering Military School opened in Tyumen. Yasha entered it. This was what he had dreamed of since childhood. He only went to the Medical College for my sake. After finishing school he was offered to choose his future job between Khabarovsk, Moscow and central Asia at the mandatory job assignment 23 session. However, a Jewish military could make no career in Moscow, and Central Asia was too different. So he went to Khabarovsk. He didn’t return to Kishinev, but he visited me every year.

After my son’s departure work became number one in my life. I worked in two schools teaching French in daytime school #7 and Moldovan twice a week in the evening school. I got along well with my students in the evening school. They regarded me as their friend. They shared their problems with me. In our school there was a Moldovan boy. His name was Boldishor. He tried to enter the fifth grade several times, but failed, and he was already 16 or 17 years old. I bumped into him at the entrance to the school before the beginning of an academic year and he complained that they didn’t allow him to go to school again. I felt sorry for him and talked to the school director. I asked the director to let him come to my class where I was a class tutor. He appreciated this so much and tried hard to study better and managed to finish the tenth grade.

A few years later I met him at the market on the eve of New Year. He ran to me from a distance shouting, ‘Polina!’ I turned my head and saw Boldishor. I asked, ‘What are you doing here?’ He asked me what I was doing there and I told him that I was looking for a calf leg for holodets. He said, ‘Stay here, I’ll get one for you.’ It was hard to buy a calf leg before the New Year, but he brought me one. Then he took my bags and accompanied me home. I asked him on the way, ‘How are you doing? I know nothing about you.’ He replied, ‘I’m doing well. I sell meat here at the market. I’m married, we have a child and I’ve bought good furniture.’ He spoke Moldovan, but then he switched to Russian: ‘I’m living to my pleasure!’

There was another incident. One of my students, he was 28 or over, fell in love with a young teacher, but she rejected him. Then he came to talk to me and spoke for a while about his love. ‘Polina, only you can help me. Talk to her, please!’ One winter evening he came by and we went to this girl. There was no transportation and there was ice on the ground, but I walked beside the man across the town. What else could I do, when he showed so much trust in me! I don’t remember the name of the girl, but she happened to be a smart girl. My student was rather plain, but kind. She listened to me and we talked for quite a while and the ill-starred guy waited for me outside. My mission was successful. After this discussion I saw them together several times. Perhaps, they worked it out. And there were numerous times like this. My students liked me and I liked them. My former student, Dasha, she is 60, bumped into me once and we found out that we lived in the same district. Since then she’s come by to see me almost every evening.

I also liked working in the daytime school teaching French. I taught them like I had been taught in the gymnasium: ‘Read aloud as much as you can, listen to yourself to master the correct pronunciation.’ When the deputy director visited my lesson, she approached me after the lesson and said, ‘I don’t know French, but seeing that your children raise their hands and answer, you are at the right place.’ Since then she often visited my classes and invited young teachers to learn from me. I liked knitting and watching TV after work, or I read. I also went to the theater and cinema with my friends like I had done with my husband before.

My son got married at the age of 29 in 1978. He was serving in Belogorsk Amur region. He married Valentina Madiarkina, a Russian girl from Belogorsk. Valentina graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Pedagogical College, but she had such a thin voice that she couldn’t work at a school. She went to work as chief of the Soyuzpechat office, and later she had an administrative job in the district educational department. I didn’t mind her being Russian, no! As soon as I received my son’s letter with a complete description, as they say, I wrote them a whole page of a greeting telegram. I didn’t care about the nationality of my daughter-in-law, but I cared about what kind of person she was. Some time later they visited me. Valentina was worth all the nice words that I wrote in my telegram. She deserved to be my son’s wife. I love her dearly. In 1979 my grandson Andrei was born, and in 1986, my granddaughter Olga. Andrei followed into his father’s footsteps. He graduated from a higher engineering military school in Cheliabinsk and now he is a captain of the Russian army. Olga is a student of the Faculty of Foreign Languages in the Pedagogical College in Blagoveschensk.

In 1979 I turned 55, and I had my documents processed for a pension, but I continued working at the school. However, I had problems with my blood pressure and it was difficult to work as a teacher. I went to work as a deputy director for extracurricular activities at the district house of pioneers. This was easy work and I used to joke, ‘How come I didn’t know about this house of pioneers before?’ I worked there for eleven years. In 1985 my mother-in-law died. She lived as long as 88 years of age and had a sound mind. We buried her in the Jewish cemetery beside my husband.

In 1990 I visited Shymy in Israel. It’s impossible to describe how we met, 52 years after we parted. I can’t find words for it. I can only say that we sat in a restaurant in Rishon Le Ziyon, when they played the tango. Shymy turned to me and said, ‘You will dance, you remember, Poli.’ All I could dance was the tango, which he had taught me when I was just a girl. And we danced. Shymy showed me around Jerusalem and Israel. I admire this country. It’s a pity that the current immigrants hardly resemble the halutzim, with whom my brother arrived in Palestine. In 1995 Shymy visited Kishinev. I was happy, but there was also sadness in my brother’s meeting with the town of his youth. We couldn’t even go to the graves of our parents; there are no graves. Shymy calls me every week. He is 86 and he doesn’t look like himself. He and Pnina are very thin, they don’t eat, damn it.

When Gorbachev 24 came to power, I had an impression that things would change and life would improve. He changed the world undoubtedly, but I can’t say that our lives have improved, probably, it’s even vice versa. Intellects have become miserably poor and they are respectable people, for example, doctors and teachers. I know pensioners who can only afford milk. Once I came to the store to buy food for my cat Murka for four Leus. There was one of these rich men standing beside me and he wanted to pay for me, but I felt hurt, ‘No, no, I can afford to pay for this. Don’t do it.’ I wouldn’t have accepted his offer even if I didn’t have anything to pay with. I like giving, not taking.

However, perestroika 25 changed the Jewish life in Kishinev, Jews sort of woke up. At first the Sochnut 26 came up. I wasn’t fully informed to describe this process completely, but I remember that young people took a big part in it. They arranged Sabbath celebrations, sang Jewish songs and opened a club for young people. When in the early 1990s in Kishinev they began to enroll children into a Jewish school, I went to the director of this school and told him I wanted to work for them. I was eager to work with Jewish children. He offered me to teach Moldovan. They didn’t study French, they studied English. I was also involved in the enrollment of the children. It was a secular school, but they also studied Jewish traditions and Hebrew. I worked in this school for about four years. Then the school moved to another building in a distant district of the town and I had to quit. I was 72 already and it was hard for me to commute so far, though we had a school bus to take us to school.

However, I couldn’t sit at home and so I went to teach Moldovan in specialized English school #53, near my house. Then there was a conference arranged by either Joint 27, or Sochnut where I met the directress of a Jewish kindergarten. Her children performed a concert for the participants of the conference. She offered me to work for them. When the academic year began I thought, ‘I teach Moldovan at school #53, and the Jewish kindergarten isn’t far from the school, so why not work there, too?’ And I made a decision to teach two hours in the afternoon in the kindergarten, but at the age of 73 I had a hypertension stroke and I had to quit the school and the kindergarten. Later, when I felt better, I went back to the kindergarten and I don’t regret it.

I never imagined how interesting it would be to work in the kindergarten. I point at one child calling him a ‘teacher.’ He sits beside me and begins to ask questions. Other children raise their hands to answer. Then everybody who wants it acts as a teacher. I made this method my practice in the kindergarten recently, though I used it often at school. I didn’t think it would work in the kindergarten, but this was a preparatory group, where they could manage it all right. It’s becoming hard to work. In the middle of the year I tell Svetlana Mikhailovna that I won’t work next year, but she laughs, ‘You say each year that this is the end of it.’ She is a wonderful person.

Our Hesed 28 Jehuda helps me and other Jews a lot. They are doing a great job since there are many needy pensioners. I also go to the warm house. It’s great that we can talk and support each other telling what we remember about Jewish traditions. Some of us study the traditions fundamentally reading modern literature on this subject. We also have common memories of our childhood years in Kishinev, about studying in the gymnasiums. Sometimes young people from the Gilel organization visit the warm house. They have so much energy of the youth. They tell us about the Jewish culture and sing songs. However, it was different in my childhood. There was no propaganda of Judaism as there is nowadays. Jews just observed their traditions, and this was their way of life. They couldn’t live otherwise. Now they sort of open the gates for us: some accept it and others don’t. I’ve felt ill lately. My strengths are deserting me. Human life is so short to manage it all. My son and my daughter-in-law invite me to join and live with them. They are concerned about my health, but I don’t feel like leaving Kishinev, everything is so familiar here.

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