Travel

Raya Teytelbaumene

Kaunas

Lithuania

Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya

Date of interview: October 2005

Raya Teytelbaumene met me in her apartment located in a three-storied building on Kestucchio Street, in the heart of Kaunas. Raya has a nice and large apartment with furniture from the 1970s. Raya had a dressy outfit on. Her hair was neatly done. Raya was very affable and agreed to the interview right away. Unfortunately, during our conversation I understood that her memory failed her. Raya didn’t remember the names of her relatives and certain events. She seemed to be unwilling to speak of the events related to her husband’s job in the postwar times. She tried to hide in her shell when I started asking questions regarding her membership in the Communist Party and the struggle against peoples’ enemies 1. I have to believe her as we have no right to doubt the sincerity of people we interview. I can understand Raya, as Lithuanian authorities consider the Soviet rule as an occupation and those who worked for the Soviets to be criminals, especially those who were in managing positions in punitive bodies.

I am from the small Lithuanian town of Vilkaviskis, located not far from the border with Russia [about 150 km from Vilnius]. I spent my childhood and adolescence in that town, which stands on the picturesque river Sheshupa. My mother was born here and her parents were most likely from Vilkaviskis. I didn’t know my maternal grandfather. He died long before I was born. I don’t even remember his name. His last name was Tsiglyarskiy. I remember my maternal grandmother. She lived with my mother’s sister Taube in the small town of Pilvishkiai, not far from Vilkaviskis. At that time Grandmother seemed very old to me, though she was only a little over fifty. She was rather slender and tall. She was dressed in dark, but beautiful clothes, becoming to her age. Grandmother didn’t cover her head. I assume she wasn’t very religious, though she went to the synagogue sometimes, observed Jewish traditions and celebrated all holidays. My first childhood recollections are about my grandmother. She left for the USA when I was four or five, and I didn’t see her since that time. Grandmother apparently died after the war, when we didn’t keep in touch. I don’t even remember her name.

My grandparents raised three daughters. They were brought up traditionally Jewish. They helped Grandmother about the house since adolescence. They were taught how to cook Jewish dishes. Thus, they imbibed Jewish traditions and peculiarities of the Jewish mode of life. Mother’s elder sister Chaya was born in 1890. Her husband, a Jewish man, Belostotskiy, owned a small tannery, where pork hide was tanned. Chaya never worked. Her husband was rather prosperous, so Chaya’s family did pretty well. They lived in their own house on the central street of Vilkaviskis.

Chaya had four children. The eldest Rysha, born in 1910, left for the USA, when she was single. She married a Jew there. He was also from Vilkaviskis. Her husband was a barber and worked in America as a barber. Rysha didn’t have children. In 1950 her husband died and Rysha left for Israel, where her siblings lived. Rysha lived in Israel for many years. She died in the 1970s. Chaya’s next daughter, Taube-Basya, married a very wealthy man, with whom she left for Palestine in the early 1930s. I don’t remember her husband’s name. Basya has children. They are currently living in Israel. Basya died at an advanced age, in 2000.

Chaya’s younger daughter Yudita, born in 1920, left for Palestine shortly before the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War 2, with Chaya and her husband. They left in time. If they hadn’t left, Chaya’s husband definitely would have been deported 3 to Siberia, as he was a well-heeled man, or the whole family would have perished during the German occupation. Yudita was also married. Her husband died a long time ago. Her son Gidon lives in Israel. Yudita is still alive. We are still writing to each other. The youngest in the family, Chaya’s only son Tuvia left for Israel with his parents. He was married. He died in 2001. His wife and daughter are living in Israel. Chaya lived until the 1980s and died, when she was over ninety years old.

Mother’s second sister Taube was born in 1898. She lived with her family in the small Lithuanian town of Pilvishkiai. Taube married her cousin Meishe, the son of Grandmother’s sister. I can’t recall her name. Taube and her spouse owned a rather large grocery store, where both of them worked. They had a large house. Taube’s family and Grandmother lived there before she left for America. I was friends with Ente, Taube’s daughter, who was a couple of years younger than me. We played together when I came over to see my aunt. Taube’s family – she, her husband and daughter – perished in 1941 during one of the first Fascist actions in Pilvishkiai.

My mother, Sheina Tsiglyarskaya, was born in 1894. Mother and her sisters got elementary Jewish education. She knew how to read and write in Yiddish, Russian and Lithuanian. She was good at counting. Mother didn’t work when she was single. She got married, when she was rather young: 17 years old. She married the person she loved. Father didn’t have any relatives or acquaintances in Vilkaviskis. He fell in love with my mother the first time they met.

I know much less about my father’s relatives. My father is from Poland. I don’t know what town he was from. During his adolescence he came to Lithuania. He stayed in one of the towns in the vicinity of my mother’s town. His parents remained in Poland. I never met them. I don’t remember their names. I assume they were born in the 1870s. Once in the late 1920s Father went to see his parents, as his dad was ill. In a while Father came back very sad. He said that his father was very feeble. It must have been the last time he saw him. Father never spoke of his parents in my presence and never went to Poland again, so I think Grandfather died after my father’s visit to him.

My paternal grandmother, whom I didn’t know, most likely died during the German occupation, before the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War. Probably, my paternal grandparents were very poor. If not, why would Father have left them? What I know for sure about my Grandparents Rogozhik is that they were very pious. In my father’s words, Grandfather never took his kippah off. He had a long beard and payes. He was a true Hasid 4. He prayed all day long, went to the synagogue, observed traditions, celebrated all Jewish holidays, fasted.

My father, Morduchai Ragozhik, born in 1892, was an only child. At any rate, I never heard anything about siblings. Father went to cheder, which was customary for Jewish families. I don’t know if he continued his education. He most likely finished a couple of grades of elementary school as he was literate. Father was a worker in the Vilkaviskis tannery, which belonged to the husband of Aunt Chaya, Belostotskiy. Father kept working there after getting married.

My parents got married in 1912, when my mother was 17 years old and Father was only twenty. Both were young, gorgeous and infatuated. Young marriages weren’t common among Jews, but they were considered desirable. My Tsiglyarskiy grandparents organized a wedding party for my parents. It was a true Jewish wedding. The bride and groom went under a chuppah in the only synagogue in Vilkaviskis. The first-born, Chaim, came into the world in nine month. The next one, Boruch, was born in 1915. I, the long-awaited daughter, was born on 21st July 1918. I was given the Hebrew name Rachel.

Our family lived in a big house, inherited by my mother. The whole family lived in that house, while my maternal grandfather was alive. It was a large two-storied house, located in the central part of the town, on Vilniaus Street. There was a plot of land of two hectares around the house. It was the most precious property we had. My father was a natural born gardener. I don’t know who imbued him with the love for trees, where he learnt that art. At any rate, the garden was amazing. Fruit trees were planted there. There were all kinds of wonderful sorts of apple, pear, plum, cherry, sweet-cherry trees. Apart from that, there were wonderful corners of the garden with decorative plants and flowers. There was a pond, where Father bred carps and other fish. There was an arbor on the bank of the pond. We often went there in the evenings to have heart-to-heart conversations. The orchard was created by my father. I’m still wondering, how he could manage to work at the factory and take care of the garden. Especially in spring and fall, when there was a lot of work in the garden. We had to sprinkle the plants, cut the crowns of the trees, fight with the plant pests, bugs, gather harvest, put it in storage or in the basement.

Father hired farm hands: Lithuanians, who worked under his supervision. These were common Lithuanian boys and girls. They respected my parents and treated them kindly. He deserved it since he was very honest, valued other people’s work, and Mother always tried to provide hearty meals for the employees. Lithuanians called my mother Sheina. I was affectionately called Rachelka. The orchard was so beautiful that it was famous beyond our town. People from other cities of Lithuania came to see our orchard. Father was especially happy on those days as his labor and merits were recognized. He gladly shared his experience with the visitors and Mother fed the guests right away, which was common in Jewish families.

There was a garden apart from the orchard. Almost all vegetables were planted there: potatoes, beets, carrots, cabbage of different sorts, all kinds of herbs and spices. There was a chicken coop at the back of the yard. We always had chicken and turkeys. There was a time when Mother kept a cow. Then it was sold, as there was nobody to herd it. We also had a dog. We, the children, adored it. The dog had its own kennel, but Father was so kind that he let the dog out and we ran around with it in the garden.

I loved our house very much and remember every corner of it. There were four large rooms and a kitchen. It had a layout typical for Lithuania: one after another along the façade of the house. The largest room was the drawing room, which was used as a dining room at the same time. There were a large carved cupboard, dining table with chairs and a large mirror, reaching from the floor to the ceiling. A radio appeared in the same room in the 1930s. The second room was a bedroom. There were two wooden beds, a wardrobe with lots of drawers. The other two rooms were used as bedrooms for my brothers and me. Later on, when my brothers finished school and left the town, Mother started leasing their room. A young Lithuanian, Stasis, occupied their room. He studied at the seminary in Vilkaviskis. He became a priest after finishing it, but still he kept living in our house. He loved my parents very much and loved me as a sister. He was a truly religious Catholic, but it didn’t stop him from living in a Jewish house and loving its inhabitants.

My mother took care of the house. When I became a little older, five years old, Mother wanted to do something. She bought a small store and started selling things. It was a grocery store. Her main customers were peasants from the adjacent villages. There was flour, cereal, herring stored in special barrels, sugar, matches, soap etc. That store was like any other small store and shop kept by Jews. The stores surrounded the market square. As they say, there was no room to swing a cat on Fridays and Wednesdays, especially in summertime. Vegetables, fruits, milk, meat and other agricultural products were sold straight from the carts. Having sold their goods, the peasants made necessary purchases in Mother’s store. Then they went to a small beer bar to celebrate their sales. The bar was also kept by a Jew. On Sundays Lithuanians and Poles – there were a lot of them in Vilkaviskis – dressed up and went to the cathedral with their entire families.

Jews also went to the synagogue. The only synagogue in Vilkaviskis was almost in front of our house, and every Friday and Saturday my father went there. Father always covered his head. In summer he wore a linen cap or kippah and in winter he put a hat on. On Fridays and Saturdays he went to the synagogue in a dressy vest suit, not in casual clothes. He also put on a nice kippah and tallit. Mother also went to the synagogue on Saturday, though she didn’t do it with such faith, as she was brought up in a family not as religious as my father’s. She put a kerchief on her head when she went to the synagogue. Usually on Saturday I went to the synagogue with my mother. I liked our synagogue very much. It wasn’t very big: a wooden, one-storied building with carved ornamentation. Men and women prayed in different rooms. There was a whole praying hall for men, and women had a smaller place to pray. There were black ebony seats in the praying hall. It was very clean and beautiful.

Our family wasn’t rich, but due to my parents’ prudence and hard work, they had all the necessary things for a worthy life. The furniture in our house was simple, but well-made. The house was sparkling clean as my mother couldn’t stand filth and dust. Almost always we laid the table with fruits and vegetables, which were grown in our garden, fish bred in our pond, as well as eggs, chicken and turkeys. We only bought dairy products and butter at the market. As for other products, they were available in my mother’s store. All our food was kosher. When needed, Mother bought meat in Jewish stores. My brother or I took the chicken to a shochet, whose shchita was in the yard of the synagogue. I watched the shochet cut the chicken’s neck, moving deftly and precisely. Then he hung the poultry on special hooks over the tub, where the blood would trickle, and only after that he returned the poultry to us.

Beginning in 1925, when Mother’s business developed, a housekeeper – a Lithuanian lady called Marite – moved into our house. She didn’t have a family, so she was sincerely affectionate to us. Marite cooked the food in the kitchen, a large room with the stove in the center. The food was cooked on the stove, bread and pies were baked in it and stew and Sabbath chulent were cooked there also. Dairy and meat products were cut with separate knives. There were separate sets for dairy and meat dishes as well as kitchen utensils.

We strictly observed Sabbath like any other Jewish family. Neither Mother nor Father worked. Father also didn’t do any gardening. On Friday we got ready for Sabbath. The house was always rather clean, but on that day it was dazzling. There was a freshly-starched table cloth. Mother baked challot on Thursday. They were placed on a tray covered with a clean napkin. As a rule, for Saturday, mother cooked all kinds of tasty Jewish dishes: chicken broth, liver pate, forshmak, different tsimes – a new one each time, from beans, potatoes or carrots. Gefilte fish was a mandatory dish on the table. We didn’t have to buy fish as Father caught carps in our pond. Mother cooked tasty stewed fruit for desert. In summer she used fresh fruit for that and dried fruit in wintertime. On Friday night Mother lit candles, placed in a beautiful silver candlestick. On the way from the synagogue on Saturday, my mother or I dropped by a neighboring bakery, where we and our neighbors kept the chulent: a large pot with stewed meat, potatoes, beans and onion. Chulent was a mandatory Sabbath dish. After lunch Marite cleared away the table, washed the dishes, and we went to our rooms to have a rest. In summer I went to sleep in a hammock, suspended between the trees in our garden.

We prepared thoroughly for Jewish holidays. Usually the holiday was celebrated by the entire, large family. Aunt Chaya and her family came over to us, or sometimes we went to her place. Mother cooked the best dishes for the holidays; usually there was the same menu for the holiday feast: gefilte fish, chicken stew, tsimes, imberlach, teiglach – pieces of dough boiled in sugar syrup.

The year started with the fall holidays. I remember the sound of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah. It seemed to me that the trumpet was right next to us as the synagogue was close by. There were a lot of fruits, including apple honey and homemade honey wine, on the table. My parents obligatorily fasted on Yom Kippur. I started fasting from the age of fourteen. Arbor twined around with ivy and vine was used as a sukkah on Sukkot. Mother set a small round table in the arbor. Father had meals there, and drank a little bit of wine. We ate at home as it was rather cold and rainy in Lithuania at that time. We weren’t used to celebrating Simchat Torah, though mother made much richer meals at home than usual. I ran up to the synagogue to watch the singing and dancing Jews carry out the Torah scroll from the synagogue and walk around the synagogue with it.

For some reason I don’t remember winter holidays, Chanukkah and Purim, very well. On Chanukkah, Mother cooked a lot of potato dishes, casseroles and doughnuts. There was a large dish with hamantashen on Purim. On that day Jewish kids were running around the city with trays full of shelakhmones – presents. Mother also baked many hamantashen and all kinds of cookies. My brother and I went to Aunt Chaya with our presents, and her kids Yudita and Tuvia came to us. Then all of us had fun, swapped the presents and ate them.

Pesach was the main holiday of the year. Father brought matzah from the synagogue and since that time there was a festive atmosphere in the house. All children were given presents on the occasion of the holiday. While I was small, as a rule I was given a new dress and patent leather boots. All dishes we had been using during the year were placed in a large sack and taken to the garret. We weren’t allowed to touch them during the holiday period. Father brought Paschal dishes from the garret, which were used exclusively for Pesach by our family and Aunt Chaya’s family. For the first seder usually people got together at our place, as my mother cooked better than Chaya. Father led the seder, reclining on the pillows. He was clad in festive attire. We already knew that the afikoman was under the pillow and found it. We asked the question about the origin of the holiday by turns: I, Yudita and Tuvia.

Apart from the usual dishes there were the following ones on Pesach: bitter herbs, eggs, matzah and others. There was no bread at all, but there were a lot of matzah dishes: kneydlakh, tsimes and casserole. For desert Aunt Chaya brought an unsurpassable matzah cake. It was the best thing she cooked. It was year in, year out the same holiday, the same traditions, but for some reason we were anxious about it, expecting something new and unusual. I started liking Jewish holidays when my brothers Chaim and Boruch left home. My brothers would come home, when all Jews were eager to come home.

My brothers went to the Jewish elementary school. The elder one, Chaim, finished a Lithuanian lyceum – the Jewish one wasn’t free, but the Lithuanian one was free of charge. Besides, my brother dreamt of becoming a pharmacist, and he had to have good Lithuanian for that. Upon graduation Chaim entered Kaunas University, the Pharmaceutical Department and moved to Kaunas. Having graduated from it in 1938 he went to Birzhai and was employed as a pharmacist at a private pharmacy. Boruch, having finished lyceum, learnt the profession of a photographer and worked as a photographer in Vilkaviskis.

When I turned seven, I also went to the Jewish elementary school. It was a private school, but the tuition fee was rather affordable for people with medium income. Poor families – there were a lot of them in Vilkaviskis – were exempt from tuition fees for their children. I made many friends at school. They were two girls, Rosa and Manya. We went strolling together after classes or on the weekend. All subjects were taught in Yiddish in our school. We studied Jewish classical literature. We had religion class as well. We had joyful celebrations of Jewish holidays at school, Purim was the special one. On that holiday there was a carnival, the Purimspiel. Almost all kids had traditional Purim costumes of Esther, Haman, Mordecai and Ahasuerus. I learnt about the origins of Jewish holidays at school. We merely celebrated them at home, and we, the kids, weren’t told anything about them.

I was a mediocre student. I didn’t get straight excellent marks, but I didn’t have poor marks either. I studied there for four years. When my parents had to choose where my education would be continued, they decided that I should attend the State Lithuanian lyceum that my brothers had attended.

I successfully passed the entrance exams and became a lyceum student. Lithuanians, Poles, Russians studied in our class. There were two Jews: I and a boy named Yankel. Teachers treated us kindly, without picking on any nationality. When there was a Bible class, Yankel and I didn’t have to attend it. We had a free hour. As for the rest of the subjects, we studied them the same as other students. I was good at Lithuanian and had no problems with my studies.

I had Lithuanian friends here. They treated me very kindly. We even treated each other to traditional food. I brought them hamantashen and imberlakh. The girls treated me to an Easter cake. However, there were a couple of girls in our class, who offended Yankel and me. There were cases, when they openly called us kikes. My friends stood up for me at once and punished those who hurt me. When teachers found out about the conflict, they didn’t ignore it. They called the culprits into the teaching room and had a very strict conversation with them, saying that all people were equal. They tried to make them feel ashamed and soon there were no more conflicts. When I was studying at the Lithuanian lyceum, I communicated with my Jewish peers less and less. I had no opportunity and willingness to take part in any Jewish youth organizations, but my brother Boruch was always fond of Zionist ideas and even started talking of departure for Palestine.

I studied at the lyceum for eight years. By the time when I was in the seventh grade, I didn’t want to finish lyceum as I had other interests. The matter was that I met a young man and was infatuated with him. Vilkaviskis was a small town, where everybody, especially the Jews knew each other. Once an adult, tall and handsome guy came up to me and said that he liked me a lot. He called my name and said he would wait for me to grow up, for us to get married. Fayvel Teytelbaum, born in 1909 somewhere in Russia – I can’t recall where exactly – and moved to Vilkaviskis with his mother, when he was a child. Fayvel’s father had died a long time ago, and his mother Riva had a small house, where she lived with her son. Fayvel was the bread-winner of the family. He worked at the soap making factory, owned by some Jews. Fayvel was a very gifted and honest guy. He was respected and valued by the owners. Fayvel made pretty good money. He asked me out to eat ice-cream. We often strolled hand-in-hand.

These were the happiest years of my life. However, parents didn’t approve of my infatuation and were against Fayvel as he was much older than me. I was in love, and my parents understood that there was nothing they could do to separate us.

I understood that I would be married soon in spite of my parents’ will. I thought that learning some profession would be more important than finishing the lyceum. I left for Kaunas, where I entered the Jewish professional seamstress school and started learning that profession. I rented a room with several girls on Maku Street. I made new friends here as well. They were keen on Communist ideas and all of them were underground Komsomol members 5. I also gave in and the ideas of equality and fraternity were close to me. I also entered the Komsomol. However, I was a poor member. I didn’t fulfill the assignments, as I was much more interested in my private life. Fayvel didn’t leave me in peace. He came to see me very often. We became close and my chosen one insisted that we should get married. My parents couldn’t help agreeing to that. In 1936 Fayvel and I went to Kaunas. Our marriage was registered by a town rabbi. There we went under a chuppah in the synagogue. We celebrated our wedding at home. It was very modest: a dinner for the relatives arranged by my mother.

My parents gave us their large bedroom. They changed their attitude to Fayvel. They saw that my husband loved and took care of me, he literally worshipped me. They also loved him. We had lived in Vilkaviskis for a couple of months. I decided to continue my education, and Fayvel and I left for Kaunas. I recommenced studies at school, worked in the school workshop and got a scholarship. Fayvel found a job at a comparable factory to the one where he had worked in Vilkaviskis –the one that produced soap. We rented a room on Kestucchio Street. The three of us lived there – my husband and I and my brother Chaim, who was studying at Kaunas University.

I was happy. I loved my husband and he adored me. We never parted. I loved Kaunas; we went for walks in the city, and to the cinema, which was a new attraction to me. My husband bought me presents that he could afford. He tried to get fashionable clothes for me. On holidays, we went to see my parents in my hometown. Our room with clean linen was always ready for us as well as a tasty dinner. Now, the time of farewells started. Chaya’s family, Yudita and Tuvia, left for Palestine. My brother Boruch followed them. By that time he was a good photographer and made pretty good money, but Zionist ideas, inherent in him, finally broke through and Boruch dreamed of Palestine. Mother cried as if knowing that she was saying good-bye to him for ever. I envied my brother a little bit, but my husband and I weren’t going to leave. I was totally apolitical, stopped thinking of the Komsomol and seeing my mates from the Komsomol unit.

At that time, in the late 1930s pro-Fascist movements were founded and there were a couple of cases when open anti-Semitism was displayed. Neither I nor my husband were affected by that, though. Both of us belonged to the circle of a Lithuanian youth, looking to the East, to the Soviet Union. I should say, not only poor Jews hoped that the Soviet regime would change their lives for the better, the middle class of the Jewish society also preferred Russia. We didn’t know anything about the wave of the repressions, arrests 6, how Stalin and his clique exterminated true Communists. Fayvel yearned for Russia as he was born there. His elder sister Chasya lived in Moscow and he hadn’t seen her for years.

That is why when the Soviet Army 7 came to Lithuania in 1940 we were happy to be annexed to the USSR 8. Crowds of people threw flowers to them. Since that time our life changed slightly. My husband, who wasn’t drafted into the army due to his lame leg, became an activist. He was appointed director of the plant, where he had been a common worker. I finished typing courses and found a job in the regional committee of the trade unions. There were some changes in our Vilkaviskis. Mother’s store was nationalized. She didn’t work anymore. Father kept working at the factory, which was also nationalized. We were lucky. Our house wasn’t touched and nobody else was accommodated in it. Our land wasn’t taken over and father kept on working in his favorite garden. Mother was happy that my brother, who became a rather famous Zionist in town, managed to leave for Palestine. Otherwise, the Soviets would have exiled him like many other Zionist activists. The town synagogue was still open and Father went there. I think he did it out of the habit, to stick to the traditions.

We enjoyed our lives. Of course, we understood what Fascist Germany was threatening us with, but we hoped that there would be no war. Though, in 1941 there were military training alarms. We had civil defense classes at work. It was a bad premonition. On 22nd June I worked, though it was a Sunday. I had a lot of things to do. We lived not far from my workplace. I went to work and quietly did what I had to. My husband came to see me two hours later. He was really worried, even at a loss. Fayvel said that the war had broken out: Fascist Germany had treacherously attacked our country. Fayvel told me to stop working and to leave immediately. We went in the yard, where there was a cart. Fayvel made arrangements with some Lithuanian to take us away from the town. We didn’t come back home. My husband took money and our documents along. The only clothes I had were the ones on me: a summer dress and sandals. So my husband and I left Kaunas.

It was an escape. We had covered about twenty kilometers. A Lithuanian cabman decided to come back on his cart, as he was worried about his wife and children. We walked on the road along with other lost people, who had left their homes. Defeated units of the Red Army were also with us. Some wounded soldiers were going on trucks. Those who were slightly wounded supported each other. Some cars with military were ahead of us, they didn’t take any civilians with them. Bombings started. Military planes bombed us, though they saw that we were ordinary civilians. There was screaming. Children were weeping. Some old people were carried on stretchers. When the bombing was over, some of us remained immobile. We walked almost without any stops, just taking some rest in the woods or on the curb. We munched on some rusks on the road, which my husband had taken with him. We drank water from the wells, which were by the road. We were in a hurry as Fascist armadas were close on our heels. I was constantly thinking of my parents and brother, as they had stayed in Vilkaviskis, which was occupied in the first hours of the war, being close to the border. We didn’t have any information about my brother Chaim either. My husband’s mother Riva also most likely remained in the occupation.

We had been walking for a long time. On the border with Latvia we got on some truck and went to a small Latvian town, which was still in the rear. If forgot the name of the town. All of us went to live in the houses of locals. It was calm for a couple of days. There were no bombings and it appeared to me as if the war was very far away. Soon the German army approached the Latvian border. We took the train together with other fugitives and went towards the East. It was a locomotive train, crammed with fugitives. People were sitting in the aisles, on the roof. It was a long trip, no less than two weeks. The train made frequent stops. People scattered during air-raids. What we feared the most was that we could miss the train or lose each other. Death became a natural thing. After every bombing there were less and less people in our car.

We managed to get some boiled water at the stations. Sometimes, special salvation teams fed people with soup or gruel. The train headed in the Eastern direction and the bombings ceased. We reached the Siberian city of Omsk [about 2500 km from Moscow], where my husband’s distant relatives were living. I don’t remember their names. I just remember that a rather elderly couple was very hospitable to us. I took a bath for the first time in many days and put on clean underwear and clothes. I had a hearty meal and went to sleep in a clean bed.

I liked Omsk. It was a big city, where people could find a job and a place to stay, but we were really scared of the harsh winter. We weren’t prepared for it at all, as we didn’t have any warm clothes and we hardly had any money left. We were advised to go to some republics of Central Asia. It was much warmer there, and much easier to survive. So about three weeks after our arrival in Omsk my husband and I bought train tickets and left for Kazakhstan. We addressed the evacuation point in the capital of Kazakhstan, Almaty, and we were sent to the small town of Kargaly, about 25 kilometers away from Almaty. My husband received a notice from the military enlistment office, but he wasn’t drafted into the army. First, he had an innate physical defect: one of` his legs was shorter than the other. Secondly, at the beginning of the war those who were from the Baltic States weren’t involved in military actions as they weren’t trusted.

My husband attracted much attention. Firstly, he was born in Russia, secondly, he was a very attractive person. They had a conversation with him in connection with the coming victory of the Soviet Union. He was also told that during peace time the NKVD 9 and the Prosecutor’s office would need people. My husband was offered a job in the Prosecutor’s office. He took the offer at once. They sent him to attend some special courses in some town. They were short-term, and in three months my husband came back home and got a job with the Prosecutor’s office of Kargaly. He worked as an investigator. We were housed with local people. We were given a small room. Besides, we didn’t have to pay anything for the rent.

We had a pretty good life. Of course, we knew what it was to starve and be cold. It was the hardest at the beginning. When my husband worked for the prosecution he got a good ration 10 and our life was getting better. From dawn till night my husband was busy at work. I was not used to idle, so I decided to do something as well. I rented a shed from the landlady at a good price and bought a pig. I started feeding it. When it grew big I sold it and earned money. Soon I bought a cow. Now our life was just wonderful. From then on I would work hard all day long. I herded the cow, made fodder for the pig, and it was worth it. We had milk. I sold most of it and we had a good living. The hosts, a Kazakh family, with whom we were staying, were only surprised at me, as there were rumors that Jews didn’t like and didn’t know how to work. My hard work won their respect. We were on good terms, though with time I started understanding that they were somehow terrified of my husband.

We spent three years in Kargaly during the war. In summer 1944 my husband was called to Kaunas, as soon as it was liberated. I sold my belongings real quick, left something to the hosts to say thank you for their hospitality and we went to our motherland. Now we were going in an ordinary passenger car. We stopped in Moscow. I was struck by the capital of the Soviet Union. I had never seen such a huge and beautiful city, even in prewar times. I couldn’t even imagine anything like that. Then we came back to Kaunas. My husband was given a room in a communal apartment 11 on Botvinsk Street. He started working right away.

Fayvel started looking for our relatives, tried to find the witnesses and soon he learned the bitter truth. During the first days of the occupation my father was taken to the Catholic clergy seminary located in Vilkaviskis. He and a couple more male Jews were made to go upstairs, to the second floor. Lithuanian Polizei 12 were standing on both sides, flogging them with birch rods and hitting them with the butts. My father was beaten to death. We found out that among the murderers there were people who had known my father, worked in our garden, ate and drank in our house. So we found out about their surreptitious permanent hatred towards Jews.

Having learnt about that [what happened to her husband], my poor mother went to her sister Taube in Pilvishkiai. There all of them – my mother, Taube, her husband and daughter Enta and other Jews –  were taken to the river Shepusha and drowned. Thus, my mother perished. Chaim, my favorite brother, turned out to be in Kaunas ghetto 13. The action in the first days was aimed at killing the intelligentsia. Hitler taught that a nation couldn’t exist without intelligentsia, so its representatives were murdered in the first place. 600 males were killed in the first action. My brother was among them. It happened in the forest, not far from Kaunas. My husband’s mother Riva also perished in Vilkaviskis during one of the first actions.

I took that sorrow really hard, but still I had a hope that some of my relatives had survived. I had to go on, to pull myself together. Fayvel worked really hard, though he didn’t tell me anything about his job. There were all kinds of talks about the squads of Lithuanians, who didn’t abide by the Soviet regime, and committed crimes and murders. When I asked my husband where he came across such people at his work, he just jokingly avoided the subject and calmed me down. Fayvel loved and cherished me as I was much younger than him. He didn’t find it necessary to share those things with me. In a while upon my arrival, I finally got pregnant. I gave birth to a son ten years after our wedding. It happened in 1946. The boy was named Simon.

When our son was born, one room wasn’t enough for us anymore and our lodging conditions were improved. We moved to a small two-room apartment on Kestucchio Street. I still live there. As soon as my dear son grew up a little bit, I started my husbandry again. I made a garden in the yard of our house, where I planted all kinds of vegetables, including potatoes. It was not our main source of income. I bought a cow, then a pig, then another cow and we started having a very good living. Our boy grew up having fresh cow milk and homemade butter in the years when these products were in demand. I sold milk. It was so nice and fatty that there was a long line of people wishing to buy it from me. Of course, it was hard for me to work, but I always thanked my parents in my heart, as they had taught me how to work since childhood.

We made friends. In general, those were my husband’s colleagues. They knew that I was hospitable and always offered a tasty dinner. I enjoyed having guests around. They were mostly Lithuanians. One of them, my husband’s employer, lived in the neighboring room and ate with us almost all the time. Often I heard the conversations at the table, when my husband’s comrades rebuked him for not joining the Communist Party. My husband cracked jokes in reply. Even now, I don’t know why he wouldn’t join the Party. His nationality was also the reason of our unhappiness.

In the early 1950s, when anti-Semitic campaigns were in full swing 14, Jews were dismissed from managing positions, and even arrested. All papers and mass media spoke of doctors-murderers 15; my husband was called by his boss and openly told that all Jews were considered harmful, besides he had not joined the Party and thereby had proved that he disdained Soviet ideology. Fayvel was fired. These were our black days. He took it very hard. He would stay in bed all day long with his face turned to the wall. Soon, in 1953 Stalin died. Neither I nor my husband shed any tears. I think Fayvel was one of the few who understood Stalin’s role in arrests and execution of innocent people. I started getting that too. Neither my husband nor I were rehabilitated 16. Anyway, I don’t think he would have accepted the offer from the prosecution as he had been offended there.

Soon my husband was offered a job as a butcher on the central market. He had to agree to it. He decided that he would work there temporarily, but it turned out so that Fayvel worked there until his retirement. He was physically strong and it was a peace of cake for him. Well, I should say, it was rather lucrative, even a prestigious job in the Soviet time. We lived comfortably thanks to that. Our son went to school, and I decided that I could also work. I sold my cattle just in time, as soon it was banned to keep cattle in Kaunas, and I found a job as a cashier at the same place where my husband worked: the central market. I worked there for eight years.

My husband and I never broached the subject of his previous work. In general, we didn’t speak about politics. Our own interest was the family. That is why we didn’t discuss the ХХ Party Congress 17, where Stalin’s cult of personality was dispelled. We worked hard and made good money. By that time we had changed a small apartment on the first floor for a large three-room apartment on the third floor of our house. My husband found the responsible person in the Ispolkom 18, and he helped us get it.

Our son went to a Russian school. There were a lot of Jewish children there. He had many pals, who came over to us very often. Our house was always open for our son’s friends. They ate here, had a chat and listened to music. We bought our son a tape-recorder. There was good furniture, and a TV set in our house. All those things were in great demand in the Soviet time, but my husband got it easily, as everybody wanted to have their own butcher. Good meat could be bought only if people had connections. Everybody wanted to eat, and the director of the radio store and chief accountant of the furniture factory were not an exception. All of them came to my husband and he managed to hide a better piece for his clients and they paid him back with favors.

Every year we went on vacation. Usually we were in Palanga and Druskininkai. Usually we got privileged trade union trip vouchers. If we couldn’t do that, we went to the resorts and rented a room from local people. We loved holidays, but, we mostly celebrated family ones, like birthdays or memorable days. Soviet holidays – 7th November 19, 1st May – were also celebrated in our house. Jewish traditions and holidays were rarely observed. I strove to celebrate at least Pesach. There was always matzah for that holiday at home, though everybody ate bread too.

Up to the 1970s we didn’t have any communication with Israel, as correspondence with this country was practically banned 20. Then my brother Boruch found us. He and his family had a prosperous life in Israel. He had gotten married a long time ago. He had worked as a photographer all those years. He owned a photo studio. In the late 1940s Boruch’s triplets were born: three girls. One of them was called Dvoira. Aunt Chaya and her children lived in Israel as well. Boruch started talking me into leaving for Israel. But my husband thought our life to be good, saying the best was the enemy of the good. Besides, he had heart trouble and he was afraid that he would not be able to stand the heat. In the mid-1970s Fayvel left work as he got unwell. By that time I was retired. We had enough savings and both of us got a pension. In 1977 my husband died suddenly. I was overcome with grief as I loved my husband very much and we had lived together for 41 years in peace and harmony.

Our son did well at school and after finishing it entered the Kaunas institute of land management the same year. Upon graduation my son worked in the design institute. Simon married a Jewish girl, Riva. My husband and I were against that marriage as we didn’t like the bride and her parents. But like with my parents earlier, we couldn’t prevent it and they got married. We didn’t get along with my daughter-in-law from the very beginning, we just tolerated each other.

Our son lived pretty well. We helped him buy an apartment and a car. In 1972 my grandson Solomon was born. My son loved me very much and didn’t share his problems with me. It turned out that he had heart pains and did not see a doctor. He didn’t take good care of his health. In 1990, when he was only 44, my Simon died suddenly of a heart attack. It was a great grief for me. I kept to bed for the first time. I couldn’t do anything at first. I even had to hire a housekeeper, who took care of me and gradually helped me regain my footing.

I have been practically by myself since then. I hardly communicate with my daughter-in-law. My only joy is my grandson Solomon. He finished the art academy and became a rather famous artist. Solomon lives in Vilnius. He often has exhibitions there. He has traveled all over the world. His art is popular and his pictures cost a lot of money.

After my husband died, I went to Israel twice. I loved the people, their mode of life. It is a pity that I couldn’t find strength to move to Israel earlier. I visited all my kin and regained communication with my brother. Boruch was a widower when I came to Israel for the second time. He started talking me into moving to Israel and staying with him until the end of his days. I agreed and started processing the documents. When I was busy with all those formalities, I received a telegram from Israel saying that my brother had died. Now, I am totally alone.

I live comfortably. However, I have a minimal pension – 350 litas [ about 130$] – and get 35 litas for my husband. The newly-gained independence of Lithuania 21 had a negative impact on the well-being of the people, including me. We pay a lot for utilities. When we have to pay for heating in winter time, it comes to about 100 litas. But I get by, because I lease a room to a student. Besides, the Jewish community helps the remaining Jews a lot. We get food rations, medicines. I have lunches at the canteen of the community. It means a lot to me. Besides, a community worker helps me about the house. I am a very old person and it is hard for me to take care of myself.

Now, as I am old, I adhere to Judaism again. I fast on Yom Kippur, cook Jewish dishes, and celebrate holidays in the community. Soon my friends and I are going to attend the Rosh Hashanah celebrations at the community. My only grandson doesn’t forget about me. He often comes to see me. He enjoys my Jewish stew and tsimes. Unfortunately, he isn’t married. I don’t have any great-grandchildren. I hope I will live to see that joy and look after them.

Glossary:

Henryk Umow

Legnica

Poland

Interviewer: Jakub Rajchman

Date of interview: July 2004

Henryk Umow is 86 years old, and he grew up in Lomza, where many Jewish families lived before the war. During our two meetings in his apartment in Legnica, Mr. Umow told me about Jewish life in Lomza and about his experiences of Polish-Jewish relations in Jedwabne 1, where he spent some time in the mid-1930s. Mr. Umow doesn't want to talk about the Holocaust period; he lost his mother and two sisters in the Lomza ghetto, and still finds it too painful to speak about. His story is interesting and full of insight into the difficult relations between Poles and Jews in Poland.

My name is Henryk Umow. Before the war my name was Chaim Umowa, but when the Russians entered Lomza in 1939 they registered me as Umow, because, they said, Umowa is feminine. [In both Russian and Polish, nouns ending with ‘a’ are usually feminine.] And then after the war I changed my first name to Henryk to make it more Polish. But my sister [Zlata] always called me Chaim, even after the war.

I was born in Kolno, a little town near Lomza, on 17th May 1917. In 1920, during the Polish-Bolshevik War [see Polish-Soviet War] 2, my family moved to Lomza. My father said that bullets where whizzing over our heads as we rode to Lomza in the cart. Which means I survived the Polish-Bolshevik War – everyone in the family says I was at the front!

My father’s name was Icchak Umowa. He already had two children from his first marriage: my brother Benzir was born in 1908, and my sister Zlata was born in 1910. Later, besides me, he had two more daughters with my mother – my younger sisters: Leja was born in 1920, and Esterka in 1922. My mother’s name was Dowa Umowa, nee Friedmann.

I don’t remember any of my grandparents, either on my mother’s side or my father’s. I don’t know where either family came from, or how they came to be in Kolno, where I was born. We never talked about it. I didn’t know anyone at all from either family, except for my mother’s brother, who was a shammash in the Jewish community in Jedwabne, and whom I lived with for a while. But I don’t even remember his name. Also, I know my brother and sister from Father’s first marriage had some family in Warsaw, but that was his late wife's family. There was an aunt too – Mother’s sister, I think – she married one of the owners of a carbonated-water plant. Wirenbaum was his name, but they emigrated to the US. I only remember that like us they lived in Lomza on Woziwodzka Street.

I remember Father well, even though he died before I was nine. He was tall – I came up to his shoulders, like Mother. I know he was a tailor by trade, but he didn’t work. He stayed home; I didn’t know exactly what he did – I was too little. He said he was a middleman, in horses or wood or whatever – it was always a bit of extra income. I remember that Father never hit us. When I’d done something wrong he sat me down and gave me a talking-to. And when I started to cry he’d ask why I was crying, since he wasn’t hitting me. But I would have rather be thrashed, and I’d tell him to do it. But he said that if he beat me, I’d just cry a while and then do something bad again. I had to sit and listen – he thought that was the best way to raise a child. I remember that, and I did the same with my own children.

Mother wasn’t tall – about the same height as me. She was my older siblings’ stepmother, but they respected her and called her Mother – she was like a real mother to them. Mother was a hosiery maker – she had a machine, and she made new stockings and repaired the runs in old ones. Sometimes she’d make new heels or toes for socks. Having them repaired was worth it to people – it was cheaper than buying new ones and they saved a few groszys that way. The best season for her was spring – that’s when the most young ladies would come to have runs repaired. My mother was a very good cook. Actually my favorite dish has always been every single one; I’ve always said there’s just one thing I won’t eat for love nor money: what we don’t have! And when Mother would ask if something she’d made tasted good, I always told her that if I’m still alive, that means it tasted good. I figure Mother was most likely born in 1895 or 1896. I used to have a picture of her from before she was married, but it got lost.

My brother Benzir was ten years older than me. We called him Bencak, and then later, after the war, he changed his name to Bronislaw. He was a shoemaker by trade – he made new uppers for shoes, and also patched holes when necessary. I don’t remember much about him from before the war, because when Father died, he and Zlata went to Warsaw, to live with their late mother’s family. I know he got married there in Warsaw, to the daughter of a master shoemaker that he worked for. His wife’s name was Roza; her maiden name was Pomeranc. I only visited them once before the war, for a few days. Mother sent me to find work in Warsaw. I remember I went there by car – by truck – some driver took me. I was there about three days, but there was no work to be had, so I went back to Lomza.

My sister’s name was Zlata – in Polish Zofia. Here in Legnica, after the war, after she died, when there are memorial prayers in the synagogue, I asked them to refer to her as Golda. Some people asked who in my family was named that. You see, Zlata means ‘gold’, and in Yiddish that’s Golda. She was eight years older than me. She was a communist, a member of the SDKPiL 3 and then the KPP 4, and she got in trouble for that. I’ll never forget how one time I took a job guarding an orchard, to earn a little money. There were two of us, and the other boy had the night shift, but he went to sleep in the shed, and that’s when there was a break-in and something was stolen. Some guys from the secret police came to ask questions. And as soon as they heard my last name, they asked me how I was related to Zofia Umow. When I said she was my sister, they asked right away whether I fooled around with communism too. I managed to wiggle out of it somehow, but they kept an eye on me for a long time after that. All the time they thought I was collaborating with my sister. I remember she never got married. There was a man who hung around her and I think he even wanted to marry her, but she didn’t have time, because she was put in jail every time she turned around. And that lasted up until the war.

My two other sisters, Leja and Esterka, were younger than me – Leja was two years younger, and Esterka four. I was always spanking Leja, because she was beating up little Esterka. Leja was such a practical joker. On 1st April – April Fool’s Day – I remember she told a couple to meet each other in two different places, the woman in one place, the guy in another, telling each of them that the other had asked to meet them there. Or she’d send a midwife somewhere where no one was having a baby. I used to have a picture of her with me in the park in Lomza, but it got lost.

In Lomza we lived on Woziwodzka Street at first, on the corner of Szkolna [Street], and then on Krotka [Street], which was later called Berek Joselewicz [Street]. On Joselewicz [Street] we had an attic apartment, a kitchen and two little rooms. I remember my youngest sister, Esterka, was still in the cradle. There were these skylights there, and once a pigeon got in through them, and Mother had Bencak catch it and made pigeon soup, and my brother and sister ate the meat off the bones.

I was a very sickly child. I remember that my parents kept goats specially for me, so that I could have goat’s milk, because it’s healthy. We were poor, but Mother made sure our food was kosher. She did all the cooking for the holidays herself, and on Sabbath there was cholent. I remember that once I was in one of the rooms eating a non-kosher sausage I’d bought for myself as soon as I’d earned a bit of money, and it smelled really good. Mother called to me from the kitchen, asking me to give her a piece of it; she didn’t know it was pork. So I told her I was very hungry but that I’d go buy another one for her. Mother cared about keeping kosher and I didn’t want to upset her. So I dashed to the shop and bought a kosher sausage. Something similar happened with Leja: she saw me eating ham once, and she kept looking at me – she wanted me to give her some. I told her I wouldn’t give her any, but that she could take some herself. Because that way it would be her own decision to sin – I didn’t want to encourage her to sin.

Not every street in Lomza had plumbing in those days; on our street they still sold water by the bucket. There were lots of Jews living in Lomza. Almost everyone in the building where we lived was Jewish. I remember there was one woman who made wigs – we called her ‘Szejtel Macher’, which means wig-maker. The assistant rabbi also lived there; I don’t remember exactly who he was and what he did for a living, but that’s what everyone called him. And the owner of the whole building lived on the second floor; he had a butcher shop. I met his son after the war – he had a butcher shop here in Legnica. He gave me meat for free many times. The only Pole in the building was the caretaker. And I remember that I’d play with all kinds of kids – Polish ones too – in the courtyard of the building. Once I heard how they kept saying ‘fucking hell’; I didn’t know what it meant and I repeated it over and over. I went home and asked Mother, and she said it was a dirty word. And I go back to the courtyard and keep on repeating it. I remember that – Mother must have come up with a very deft ‘explanation’ of what it meant. I didn’t understand it until later.

Our family wasn’t too religious. Father went to the synagogue on Fridays and Saturdays, but he didn’t have payes. He took me with him on Saturdays. I had to go – Father wouldn’t put up with any dissent. We had electric lighting and we used it on Saturdays as well – we didn’t ask anyone to turn on the lights for us. Some people asked Poles to do that, I remember. During Pesach we definitely didn’t have bread – Mother always made sure of that. Every crumb had to be cleaned out, just like you’re supposed to. Some of the pots were made kosher: we poured in water and threw in a red-hot stone and scalded it that way. Other dishes were kept separate, used only during Pesach – plates, spoons and so on – after all, you’re not going to make kosher a plate!

We had matzah too: we went to a bakery, where the women rolled out the dough, and one guy made the holes in it and then it went in the oven. But I’d always keep a couple of groszys in my pocket to buy rolls on the side – I wanted to see what a roll tastes like during Pesach. But I never spent that money, because every time I left the house to buy that bread, I was so full that I didn’t want to buy anything to eat. I don’t recall any seder, because when Father was alive I was still too little, and later there was no one to lead it: Father had died, my brother had left, and I was too young. We just had a normal supper. And on normal days Mother also made sure our food was kosher. When she bought a chicken, she’d have me take it to the butcher so that the ritual was carried out. And when she bought meat, it had to be thoroughly soaked and salted.

The synagogue in Lomza was on the corner of Jalczynska and Senatorska [Streets]. There was also a prayer room a little further down on Senatorska [Street], and another not far from our apartment. I don’t remember any others. You had to pay for your seat in the synagogue. I remember that Father had bought a place, to the right of the bimah, I think. It was a beautiful synagogue, with the signs of the zodiac painted on the ceiling, all twelve signs. That was the main decoration. I remember there was a balcony where the women stood. There was a mikveh too; I was there just once, with Father. That was one Friday, just before Sabbath. I had to go into the water three times – we said in Yiddish ‘taygel machen’ [to take a bath]. That’s the only time I was there; normally we washed at home, using a basin.

We spoke Yiddish at home, and I could read Yiddish too. There was a series of books called Groschen Bibliothek [the Penny Library] – these little booklets, published in Yiddish. I read Spinoza, and The Spanish Inquisition, about Torquemada [Tomas de, first Inquisition-General (c1420-98), a Dominican monk whose name has become a byword for cruelty and severity] and how Jews were burned alive, and about the Dreyfus trial. [Dreyfus, Alfred (1859-1935): central figure in the Dreyfus case, which divided France for four years. An officer of Jewish decent in the French artillery, Dreyfus was accused and convicted of having betrayed military secrets. He was sentenced to life. He was finally proven innocent and pardoned in 1906.] They were just little booklets, but what stories! I remember I left tons of those little books behind when I left Lomza.

Father died in 1927. He was 57, and he had a lung disease. I was in the hospital at the time, because I was also very sickly. I remember that my brother came to get me, but the doctor didn’t want to let me go, because it was the second time that year that I’d been hospitalized for rheumatism. The first time it was my groin, the second time it was my knees, and the doctor didn’t want me to have to come back a third time. It was in April, just before Pesach, and it was cold and wet. And if I’d come down with the same thing for a third time, it would have become chronic. But Mother begged him to let me come home. She had to sign a declaration that I wouldn’t go to the funeral, but I had to see him! And I saw Father laid out at home, and I began to sob. When they took his body away for the funeral, they left me with some neighbors who kept an eye on me to make sure I didn’t go out anywhere, not even out in the courtyard.

When Father died, Bencak and Zlata went to Warsaw to live with their late mother’s family. They knew Mother wouldn’t be able to support them. Even with just the three of us children it was hard. Mother arranged for me to live in the Jewish orphanage. That was lucky, because it meant she could take care of my sisters, Leja and Esterka. The orphanage was on Senatorska Street, in a nice building of its own. That building is still standing. On the ground floor there was a room where they had prayers, and a dining room, kitchen and storage room. On the second floor there was a playroom and the office, and the sleeping quarters were on the third floor. I remember there was a Jewish school on the same street, and between the school and the orphanage was a hospital.

Life in the orphanage was nice. The house-father was nice. Everything was done Jewish-style, and in accordance with the religion. In the morning when we got up we had to wash, then off to the prayer room for morning prayers. Then afternoon prayers and evening prayers – we had to pray three times a day. We ate all our meals together in the dining room. And the cooks had some trouble with me, because I kept finding hairs in my soup. After I pointed it out a few times, it stopped happening – apparently they started wearing headscarves. On the big holidays we got together with the children from another orphanage and celebrated them together.

I went to the cheder, which was right next door. I was very inquisitive in school – I was always asking: ‘why?’ But in religion the dogma is what it is and you can’t ask why. So the teacher was always sending me to stand in the corner – that was my turf. He said I was a big free-thinker, and that I could learn everything if I wanted to, but I didn’t always want to. They even wanted to send me to a yeshivah for rabbinical studies, but I didn’t want to go. But I often feel that orphanage did me a lot of good. I don’t know how Mother arranged for me to live there, and if she hadn’t, I would have turned into a street kid. Being a boy, it would have been easy to run wild, but in the orphanage there was discipline and order. And I saw my mother and sisters often – I went home for dinners, usually on Saturday, because during the week I didn’t have time, what with the cheder, and after classes there was homework to do.

I had my bar mitzvah ceremony in the orphanage as well. I remember there were several of us 13-year-old boys and we all had our bar mitzvah ceremony together. And after that, when I didn’t want to study anymore, I had to leave the orphanage and start working. While I was still in the orphanage they apprenticed me to a tailor. That was a first-class craftsman! But I didn’t take to that line of work, and he got rid of me. Then they turned me over to another one. I learned fast there; after a month I was better than the other boy, who had been there a whole year. But instead of teaching me, the craftsman sent me shopping with his wife, to carry the bags, so I ran away from there. But I had to go back home – I was about 14 or 15 then.

When I returned home, Mother gave me 25 zlotys. That tided me over for a while, but I had to start working. First I went to work for a cap-maker – a craftsman who made caps, partly by hand and partly by machine. I helped him make caps for veterans of World War I and the Polish-Bolshevik War. But later he didn’t have any more work for me, so I was unemployed again. Finally one of the orphanage board members – a shoemaker by trade – needed to hire a boy, and he hired me, and taught me the trade. I worked as a shoemaker up until the war. First for that craftsman, and then for another one, whose workshop was in a building that had a plum-jam factory in the basement. And that’s why I don’t like plum jam – I saw too much of it being made. Exactly what he did with those plums I don’t know, because I didn’t look inside, but I remember to this day all those plums lying on the street.

In 1935 I got very sick. It turned out to be pneumonia. I remember that Mother didn’t allow them to use cupping glasses on me , and I don’t know the reason, but the doctor said later that that saved my life. I was very weak and had to stay in bed. And this was in July, the time of year when everyone went swimming. I always went swimming in the Narwia [the river that flows through Lomza] at that time of year, but that year I couldn’t. At one point I started coughing up blood. Mother was working in the other room, and I called her, and she sent for the doctor right away. When he came he said I was out of danger, that now I’d get better. And not long after that I was on my feet again. And I quietly got dressed one day and went to my aunt’s house – the aunt who married Wirenbaum. I was still very weak, but I wanted to go somewhere. So Mother went hunting for me, and when she found me she yelled at me, because I hadn’t let her know where I was. That was a serious illness, but somehow I managed to pull through.

Not long after that I went to live with my uncle – my mother’s brother, who was a shammash in the Jewish community in Jedwabne. There was a job waiting for me there. I worked and had meals at the master craftsman’s place, and slept at my uncle’s. I was in Jedwabne for a few months. I don’t remember the town itself very well; I know there was a synagogue, but a much smaller one than in Lomza – more like a prayer room. I didn’t have much contact with the Jewish community; I went back to Lomza for holidays, except once, when the boss and his family went out of town for Yom Kippur and he asked me to keep an eye on his apartment. I don’t remember my uncle very well anymore either. I don’t remember his first name; his surname was Friedmann. He had a short beard, trimmed to a point. He didn’t have payes. His son studied at the yeshivah , and I remember that once he spent a few days with us in Lomza, and I saw how he shaved. He made lather from some special powder that burned the hair, then he spread it on and removed it with a little stick, because he wasn’t allowed to use a razor.

The one thing about Jedwabne that has stayed in my memory is the anti-Semitism. When I was going back to my uncle’s from work I had to go through the town square. And there were Polish kids sitting on the steps there. Once when I was passing, they threw a cap at me. It landed by my feet, so I kicked it and kept going. And the next thing I knew I was surrounded. I didn’t stop to think, just punched one of them in the mouth and started running away. Then they started throwing rocks at me. So I picked one up and threw it at them, and ran to the other side of the street so their rocks wouldn’t hit me. And then one of them saved me. I don’t remember his name – I know his brother was a communist. He calmed the others down. Then they demanded that I hand over my knife – they thought I’d wounded one of them with a knife. I showed them my hand with a bleeding finger that I’d cut when I punched the guy in the mouth, and I told them that that was my knife. They calmed down then. But there was a lot of anti-Semitism in the town. [Editor’s note: Following the publication of Jan Tomasz Gross’s book ‘Neighbors’, which revealed that Poles had carried out a pogrom on the Jewish population in July 1942, Jedwabne was stigmatized and has become a sort of symbol of the cruel anti-Semitism of provincial Poland.]

When father had died and I’d come back home after four years in the orphanage, we lived on Dluga Street in Lomza. That was our last apartment – we lived there until the Nazis drove us out. It was on the ground floor, in an annex; we had a very small room and a kitchen. I remember that when we had a houseguest – for example my sister or brother from Warsaw – I’d sleep under the table so they could have my bed. After all, I wasn’t about to share a bed with my mother or my sisters! It wasn’t what you’d call luxurious.

I had a few friends in Lomza, and sometimes we’d get together for a drink, to celebrate something, for example new tailor-made clothes. I remember that two friends – also Jews – and I all had new clothes made at about the same time, and we wanted to celebrate. And since they lived on the outskirts and I lived in the center of town, we celebrated at my place. I remember that was the first time my sister Leja ever drank vodka – and she downed a whole glass at once! And she wasn’t drunk; she just laughed at us. I was about 20 years old then, and she was about 18.

There were other ways of having fun too. There were two movie theaters in town, and we went to the movies. Most of them were in Polish, but there were Yiddish films too. I remember a movie called Ben Hur – that was in Yiddish. The first time I went to the movies my brother took me. That was just after my father’s death, but before my brother went away. I was about nine years old then. My brother was working in Lomza then. I don’t remember the title, but it was some kind of war film – some soldiers with pikes came on the screen, and I got scared and hid under the seat. And I told my brother we were lucky there was a pane of glass [between us and the soldiers]. I didn’t know they couldn’t see us from there. And he laughed and said it was called a screen. But it was my first trip to the movies! There was also a friend called Aaron Ladowicz – I'll never forget him until the day I die. His father was a shoemaker, and he worked with my brother. Right after a movie, he could always sing all the songs from it perfectly. What a memory he had!

There were also various Jewish youth organizations in Lomza. For example the ‘shomers’ – Hashomer Hatzair 5. They had their get-togethers in a separate building – it was open almost every day from 5pm. They had different lectures, Jewish ideas, but also dances and parties. I signed up as a member there, to stay off the streets. I remember that was where I ended my career as a caretaker. I was supposed to make sure everything was cleaned up and so on. And in the basement of the building, some fruit dealer had a warehouse, and there were apples in it. Everything was behind a grate, but we got ourselves a stick and put a nail in the end of it. And every day he lost two or three apples.

I met my fiancee at the ‘shomers’. Her name was Judis Fuchs and she had beautiful eyes – blue ones. I still remember her eyes – to this day I’ve never seen any like them. She was younger than me – born in 1920 or 1921. Her father was a porter: he hung around the town square with all his ropes waiting until something needed hauling. My mother didn't like it, but I wanted to marry Judis. I promised her we’d get married, but only after I got out of the army, because a man who hadn’t been in the army was nothing but a jerk-off.

I didn’t take much interest in politics. I didn’t belong to any party, just – I don’t remember who talked me into it, but I joined Hahalutz 6. That was a leftist organization. But just before the war broke out I resigned from it, because they were getting ready to go to Israel [Palestine], and I didn’t want to. I had a girlfriend here, and we were engaged, and anyway I couldn’t leave my mother alone with just my sisters.

I remember that I liked to work out. In Lomza there was a Jewish athletics club called the Maccabees [see Maccabi World Union] 7 and there were training sessions there every day. They were run by a sports champion who had even been in the Olympics – I’ve forgotten his name. They weren’t professional training sessions, just simple exercises. I was stopped pretty often by the Polish secret police then, because I would leave the house in the evening with a little package, and they thought my sister had come and that I was handing out some sort of illegal communist leaflets. Then I started taking a different route, in order to avoid them, but it was too far to go, so I thought: ‘so let them check me.’

The Maccabi club in Lomza was quite good, especially in soccer. When there was a match with the Maccabees and the LKS – the Lomza Sports Club, in which only Poles played – the stadium was always full. Because the Jews were playing the Poles. And the Maccabees frequently won. I remember they had some good players – three brothers named Jelen. The youngest of them ran so fast his feet barely touched the grass. Once during a half-time he heard that the Poles wanted to rough him up good to eliminate him from the game, and that the coach was going to take him out of the game just to protect him. So he ran out onto the field and rested there during the half-time, so that the coach wouldn’t replace him. And his brother – I don’t remember if it was the oldest or the middle one – once kicked the ball so hard that the goalkeeper slammed into the goal along with the ball. When a match was held on a Saturday, there were always Hassidim [see Hasidism] 8 standing at the [stadium] gates in their payes trying to stop Jews from going to the game, because it’s not permitted on Saturday. But hardly anyone listened to them. I remember the stadium was on the road into Lomza from Piatnica, a village north of Lomza. It was a really beautiful stadium.

Everywhere we lived, both before and after my father’s death, it was always the same: all Jews, except for a Polish caretaker. Most of the Jews were traders or craftsmen. I remember that one family had a windmill; that was on the way to Lomzyca. On Senatorska Street a Jew named Golabek had a mill, but an electric one, not a windmill. One Jew also had a sawmill; one had a brewery, another a textile factory. Then there was the Mirage Cinema – the owner of that was a Jew too. There were lots of Jewish shops. And on Sundays Jews sometimes did some stealthy business in their shops, by the back door, since they couldn’t open officially. [Working on Sundays was prohibited by law to accommodate the Christian majority.] Even Jews told a joke about how one Jew asks another: ‘How’s business?’ The other tells him that he loses money every day. So the first one is surprised – how come he hasn’t gone bankrupt?! The shopkeeper explains that he has to close on Sundays, so he doesn’t lose money then, and it all comes out even.

Relations between Poles and Jews varied. When there was some kind of holiday, for example Corpus Christi Day and there was a procession, Jewish kids were kept at home. [On Corpus Christi Day Catholic churches traditionally organize a street procession, during which prayers are said at four altars set up along the route.] And I think that was right, because they only would have gotten in the way. But there was a lot of anti-Semitism at times. There were two movie theaters in Lomza: the Mirage, which was Jewish, and the Reduta, which was owned by a Pole. But Jews went to both and made up the majority of the audience. Then the NDs [National Democrats, see Endeks] 9 set up a picket line around the Reduta and only let Poles in. And the place was full of empty seats. The cinema owner had to bribe them – 2 zlotys for philanthropic purposes – to get them to stop the picketing so that Jews could go in again.

Another time they stood in front of Jewish shops and didn’t want to let Poles go in. Their motto was ‘stick with your own kind’. It was a market day, and a lot of country people came after they’d sold their own wares, and they wanted to buy something: because they knew a Jew wouldn’t cheat them, and that they’d get better goods cheaper, and even get things on borg [Yiddish for credit] sometimes. But the NDs didn’t want to let them in. So the farmers went to their wagons and got their T-bars and drove the NDs off. It was the same when the NDs formed a picket not far from a company that a Jew owned, but where only Poles worked. They sorted old second-hand clothes there and packed them up for alterations. And all these workers came to that Jew and said they wanted a short break to straighten something out. So he let them go, and they went and beat up those NDs, and that was the end of it.

I had some adventures myself. Once I was walking down the street and a Jewish guy tells me not to go further, because some NDs are hanging about. But I kept going and they didn’t recognize me as a Jew, because I didn’t look at all Jewish, mostly because I was blond. Another time I was walking with a Hasid dressed in Jewish clothes, and we saw some Polish country boys sitting a little way off. I told him not to say anything, and we kept going. They were saying to each other: ‘Look! That Jew-boy is walking with one of us!’ And they didn’t touch us. I was thinking to myself: ‘You fuckers, it’s not one Jewboy, it’s two!’ Another time I was walking along the sidewalk by myself, and there were two guys on the other side. I heard them arguing about whether or not I was a Jew. And a moment later one of them ran up to me from behind and tried to kick me in the butt. I didn’t see him, just felt that he was behind me, and I instinctively reached out and grabbed his leg. And he fell down – could have cracked his skull open. And then the other one said to him: ‘I told you he’s one of us!’

When Hitler had come to power and the war was near, people talked about it. The NDs were on his side. But then some of them came to their senses and said that Hitler had used the Jews to distract them, and armed himself and now he was going to kill them. But I thought to myself: ‘You were on Hitler’s side, so now you’ve got what’s coming to you.’ By 1939 anyone who had a radio was listening to it and talking about it. I spent time at Hahalutz – they had a radio, so I heard Hitler bellowing sometimes. Then in August I came up for army recruitment. I was glad, because after the army I was going to marry my fiancee. I went to the commission and they gave me a check-up. I weighed 48.2 kilos then, but I was healthy. The doctor listened to my chest and I was classified as Category A. [Category A is the highest, indicating full fitness for active military duty.] I remember there was a rich guy’s son with me – he had a lung condition.

I chose the infantry, and I knew that in April of the next year I’d be on active duty. So I went back to work. But that was August [1939], and the newspapers were already saying that there might be a war. Then there was some sort of provocation – they wrote about that too. And one day – I think it was a Friday – I was at work as usual. We didn’t have a radio there, but I went home for dinner and someone said the war had started. I had something to eat at home, and went back to work, and the boss said ‘there’s no work anymore – there’s war’.

When the Germans were close to Lomza, I ran to the barracks and said I was a recruit. They told me the Germans were close and that I should escape, and that if need be they’d find me and induct me. So I escaped to Bialystok. Some very distant relatives of ours lived there – some kind of cousin of Mother’s. I never knew them at all – that was the first and last time I ever saw them. I spent a few days there and moved on. I remember that the Germans chased me all the way to Suprasl [10 km northeast of Bialystok]. I went back to Lomza, where my mother and sisters had stayed. The Germans were in Lomza for ten days and then our ‘allies’ came [see Annexation of Eastern Poland] 10.

I nearly wound up in the Russian police force. I was asked to join, but I thought I didn’t know Polish well enough, and besides, how could I boss around the old [Polish] authorities? So I escaped again, heading toward Bialystok. And then when the Germans came back, we all wound up in the Lomza ghetto. But I don’t want to talk about that. I lost my mother and two sisters there, and it’s too hard for me to talk about it. Too painful. I only know that when the ghetto was liquidated [The ghetto that was formed in July 1941 was liquidated in November 1942, and the surviving residents were transported to Zambrow (20 km south of Lomza) and from there to the camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau], I managed to escape and I hid in the home of a communist in the village of Zawady [3 km south of Lomza]. And that’s where I hung out until the liberation.

The only ones who survived the Holocaust were my brother Benzir and my sister Zlata, from Father’s first marriage. Zlata was in prison just outside Warsaw when the war broke out, and when the fighting drew near, the prison staff unlocked the criminals’ cells so they could escape. But they broke down the doors of the political prisoners’ cells and they all escaped together. My sister managed to walk all the way to Warsaw, which still hadn’t been surrounded. Then – I don’t know how – she and my brother both managed to escape to Lithuania. And they lived through the whole war there.

The rest of the family died. Mother and my two other sisters, Leja and Esterka, died in the ghetto. I don’t know what happened to my uncle from Jedwabne – I reckon he was burned in that barn along with the others. The only others left were the ones who had emigrated to the USA before the war. That uncle – I don’t remember his name – sent me a letter right after the war, asking me to describe the political and economic situation in Poland, and I was so stupid that instead of writing back to him, I turned the letter over to the authorities as attempted espionage. [Editor’s note: In the early years of the communist regime in Poland, every attempt at contact with people abroad, especially in the US, was likely to be regarded as attempted espionage.] And just think – he might have arranged for me to come and live with him.

I stayed on in Zawady for a bit after the liberation, and then headed west, to the Recovered Territories [see Regained Lands] 11, because I no longer had any home or family. And that's how I got to Legnica. That was in 1946. I remember that there were a lot of Jews here. Later on, during the Sinai War 12, there was a joke going around about Nasser threatening that if Israel didn’t stop fighting he’d bomb the world’s three biggest Jewish towns: Legnica, Swidnica and Walbrzych. There was a Jewish committee, and I went there first, because where else was I supposed to go? That committee, it was like all the Jewish organizations – whoever was involved most closely with it got the most out of it. There were various gifts from abroad coming in – clothes, materials, money. They’d sort through it and keep the best stuff for themselves and give the worse stuff away to whomever they wanted. I never got anything. Once, I remember, they sent me to Wroclaw to pick up some kind of parcel. It was a great big package, with all kinds of things in it. And the train was so crowded I had to ride on the roof with that package, and every time we went under a viaduct I had to lie flat to keep my head from being knocked off. And I brought the package to the committee, and they didn’t give me anything! But I didn’t care. I had some clothes to wear, and enough money to feed myself.

At first, just after I arrived, I worked for the Russians, in a tank factory [some Soviet military industry were moved after the war to Poland]. That’s what we called it, but really it was a repair service that had been at the front and then, after the war, remained in Legnica. I didn’t want to work as a shoemaker anymore, because there was work only in the fall and spring. I pretended I was an electrician and they believed me. And I became an electrician due to that ‘ailment’ of mine – just one look and I get the hang of things. [Mr. Umow likes to joke about his inborn ability to learn.] My son and my uncle have that too. I became the staff electrician. At work I often talked with one Russian who had been at the front when Lomza was captured. He told me they had huge losses, and I asked him which side they’d taken the city from. When he told me it was from the north, I told him it would have been far easier from the south, the way Lomza was taken in World War I – that’s what older people in Lomza had told me. He said it was too bad I hadn’t been there with them, because I would have been a hero. Later on they wanted to put me on a pay-per-job system, and I quit – as a staff electrician I was mostly waiting for something that needed doing, and how much would I earn for spending five minutes to change a fuse?! Then they came to my house a few time and wanted me to come back to work – they’d put me back on salary and even give me a raise. But I thought: ‘The Russians are here today, but they’ll be gone tomorrow, and I’ll lose my job then anyway.’

I found another job almost immediately. A vacancy had just come up at a vinegar plant and I went to work there as an electrician. Then they merged the vinegar plant with a winery, and the chief engineer told me to go to the winery, because it was bigger. When I looked at those apples lying on the ground and pouring down the flue onto the production line, it reminded me of that plum-jam factory from before the war that made me stop liking jam. The same thing happened with apples. I worked there for a little while, then went to work for the police. I’d rather not say how that came about. I was in the secret police, in intelligence. I was trained in Wroclaw, and then worked in Legnica. I didn’t wear a uniform – I could only put it on on a superior’s orders. Later they wanted to transfer me to Wroclaw. I agreed on the condition that I be given an apartment. They gave me a transfer, but no apartment. I didn’t earn enough to have two homes, so I commuted to Wroclaw. Fortunately one decent officer told me to submit a petition and that they’d transfer me back to Legnica. And I wound up working in the office in charge of identification cards, and that’s where I ended my career.

For a long time I had almost no contact with the Jewish community. While I was working, I didn’t have time to go to the community or to the TSKZ 13. Anyway it was a long way from my home. It was only after I retired that I started attending both. Because I didn’t feel like cooking, and I could always have dinner at the Jewish community, and chat a bit. And at the TSKZ there were sometimes concerts or other events.

In the 1960s I thought about going to Israel. But my wife messed that up for me. There were these two Jewish merchants that I used to borrow money from frequently. I always paid them back, so they were happy to lend to me. And without saying anything to me, my wife turned them in for gambling. And she came to my office, saying I was going to get a reward. I bawled her out for butting into other people’s business. I wanted to get it all straightened out, but it was too late, and they put them both in prison. As soon as they got out they emigrated to Israel. And – well, I was afraid to go there, because I was sure they thought that it was me who had turned them in, and if I ran into them there, who knows what might happen. So I stayed in Legnica. And I still owed one of them 200 zlotys. I still haven’t paid him back.

I never personally experienced much anti-Semitism in Legnica. When someone tried making comments, I’d just shut his mouth for him. Only one time, when I was in Walbrzych visiting a woman and went to church with her, I heard a sermon where some bishop – I don’t remember where he was from – said that when Jesus was asked if he was a Jew, he had said no; but a week later the church was celebrating Jesus’s circumcision [Mr. Umow is referring to the celebration of Jesus being presented in the Temple on the eighth day after his birth.] And I didn’t personally experience anything when those events in 1968 took place [see Gomulka Campaign] 14. Just one Pole asked me why I didn’t leave the country. And he even proposed that we exchange ID papers, so that he could leave in my place. Another Pole told me that in the art school in Legnica, one of the teachers locked the Jewish students in a room and kept watch to make sure nothing happened to them. That was his duty as a human being. And I also heard about one Jew who left the country then – he came back to Poland later and wanted to put flowers on Gomułka’s grave, to thank him for kicking him out. Because he’s doing very well now.

I didn’t belong the PZPR 15. There was a time when everyone had to belong, but then they threw me out, and took away my membership card. I don’t want to talk about how that came about. Later they told me to submit a petition and they’d take me back in, but I didn’t want to. Once when I was sitting in the army canteen two Russian soldiers sat down with me, and I explained to them that I agree with communism but don’t belong to the Party. Why? Because when the committee secretary or some other member steals things, and I have to call him ‘comrade’ – if he’s a thief that makes me one too. I’d rather call him ‘mister’. I remember that those two looked at each other, bought me a shot of vodka and left, saying I should forget they’d ever been there. I understood – I knew that just for hearing something like that they could end up in Siberia.

I met my wife here in Legnica, while I was working for the police. She was Polish. I found out her life story too late – I should have left her sooner, but as it was our daughter had already been born and I didn’t want to abandon her. My wife had told me that a German had lived in her family’s home, which was in a town near Tarnowo called Mosciki. I sometimes said to her: ‘what, he couldn’t live anywhere else?!’ And later it turned out that she’d lived with that Nazi! I got a divorce in the end, but far later than I should have. Anyway I’d rather not rehash it.

My daughter Grazyna was born in 1951, and my son Bogdan two years later. Both of them grew up knowing they have Jewish ancestry. My son didn’t and still doesn’t have any contact with the Jewish community, but my daughter keeps in touch with it. She goes there for dinners, sometimes helps out when it’s needed. Sometimes when there’s a holiday she helps get everything ready. She never takes any money for it, and of course they have to pay the cooks and so on. My daughter lives on her own; she has three children, and two of her sons are away from home. She’s on public assistance and has a hard time too. My son lives here with me. After he married and he and his wife moved in, they lived in the little room; now I’ve given them the big one and live in the little one myself.

My brother and sister, Benzir and Zlata, stayed on in Warsaw after the war. I used to go there on vacation pretty often; I even had a picture of us together not long after the war, at the unveiling of the monument to the ghetto heroes. But that picture’s lost too. My brother had a daughter named Lila – a very pretty girl. She was born just before the war, in 1939. He sent her to Israel when she was a teenager, and then he and his wife emigrated to Australia. And right away he arranged for his daughter to come there too, because he didn’t want her to serve in the army, and in Israel if a girl is 18 and single she goes to the army. [In fact marital status is not a criterion. Only girls from Orthodox Jewish families do not serve in the army.] It was at the beginning of May 1963 that they left the country. And my sister died that same month.

My sister worked for the Russians after the war – she was always hanging around those little Red sweethearts. She even wanted my daughter to come and live with her in Warsaw, but my wife wouldn’t agree to it and I didn’t insist. Now I regret that – maybe she’d be better off now. Back then in May 1963 when Zlata died – I remember I came [to Warsaw] on the 3rd to say good-bye to my brother. Zlata was already in the hospital then; I remember that she didn’t want me to kiss her, because she had jaundice and was worried about my children. And that was my last conversation with her. On 16th May I was at home, and the doorbell rings. I open the door, and it’s a telegram [informing Mr Umow of his sister’s death]. I remember it was 5:05pm. When I read it I started bawling like a child. I didn’t have any family left. When my sister died, I got a letter from my brother, written in Yiddish. And my wife – a Pole – mislaid it somewhere and I couldn’t even write back, because the address was lost. And I haven’t heard anything [from him] since. My sister’s medals were left to me – a bronze service cross and a Work Banner Second Class [order of merit awarded by the state], the documents as well as the medals themselves. When I worked for the police some guy told me that I could wear those medals on national holidays. I told him no – I could wear what I’d earned myself, but I wasn’t going to parade around in my sister’s medals for her accomplishments.

And so I live from day to day. Every day I’m prepared for it to be my last. I’m 86 years old already, working on 87. I can barely see anymore, not even my own writing. I’ve already got a plot waiting for me in the Jewish cemetery in Legnica; all that’s left is to move in. But I don’t mind, because the one thing I’m sure of is that I’ll live until I die.

Glossary:

NESIM ALKABES
Istanbul,
Turkey
Interviewer: Meri Schild
Date of Interview: June 2005

When I went to interview my friend’s father, Nesim Alkabes, I had not met him; all I knew was that he liked to talk and had a lot to talk about. I went to their home in Levent [a neighborhood on the European side of Istanbul] situated in a new complex. He and his wife are very affable and pleasant people, I had a great time in their company. Nesim Bey (Mr. Nesim) is 1m70cm tall, with white hair and blue eyes, and a radiant face. The fact that he has trouble walking has not stopped his optimistic, happy nature, and he is full of jokes. He is slightly portly and is very hospitable. His spouse Erna Hanim (Mrs. Erna) is 1m60cm, tall, well-kept despite her age and radiant. Her features indicate that she was very beautiful when she was younger. Erna Hanim, like her spouse has a pleasant personality, is hospitable, and is a good cook as well as a good wife. This couple, Nesim and Erna Alkabes are representatives of an old Istanbul family. In their simply and tastefully decorated clean home, you are surrounded with a peace of mind. When you enter their home, the kitchen is situated on the left and a 25 square meter living room is situated across a not-so-small entrance hall. To the right of a short corridor, there is a medium sized bedroom, an office and a smaller bedroom. Even though the bedrooms are not large, they reflect the peace of mind of the occupants. Right across their bed is a large, color picture of their wedding day. They were both good-looking. Thinking that at the time people did not have the luxury of hairdressers and makeup, I realize that Mrs. Erna is as beautiful as an actress and Mr. Nesim is as handsome. The office is where Nesim Bey spends most of his day. Unfortunately he suffers from Parkinson's, and he spends his days reading geography books, consulting atlases, taking detailed notes on different countries as a mental exercise. According to him, he has covered 190 countries. He files the information on every country’s capital, surface area, population, gross products and the languages spoken. Nesim Bey enjoys studying books on Turkish and French History as well as geography. He follows the weekly Jewish newspaper, Shalom 1, takes notes on it, and pastes some of the articles and pictures on his walls.

Family background

Growing Up

During the War

After the War

Glossary

My family background

My paternal grandfather was named Nesim Alkabes, grandmother Sinyoru Alkabes, and my  maternal grandfather was named Hayim Vitali Alkabes Sisa. But I never met any of my grandparents, therefore I do not have any information on them. I only knew my maternal grandmother Ventura Sisa. (Unfortunately I do not know her maiden name.)
Ventura Sisa was born and raised in Hasköy; she was a tall brunette with dark eyes, and was a very cultured and helpful person. All Sephardic Jews conversed in Judeo-Espanyol [Ladino] 2 at home or among themselves then. In addition to that my grandmother was fluent in French and Hebrew (due to the fact that she studied at the Alliance Israelite 3 in Haskoy). That is all I remember about her, when I knew her she was already a widow and spent most of her time in our home. Unfortunately I do not remember when she died.

I do not know the education level of my paternal grandfather Nesim, who was very pious. He also conversed in Judeo-Espanyol like every Jew. He was born and raised in Balat [One of the neighborhoods on the European side where Jews lived] and owned a fabric store in the same neighborhood in a two-story brick building. At the time, there was no domestic fabric industry. My grandfather used to sell fabrics on the first floor, and ready-to-wear clothing (men’s pants and suits) on the second floor. In this store where my father took over eventually, fabrics imported from Czechoslovakia, Germany and England were sold between 7 and 9 liras per meter and the price was low for the superior quality of the merchandise. My grandfather also served as a volunteer usher (honorary) at the synagogue in Balat.

My father Hayim Vitali Alkabes was born in 1881, and grew up in Balat, on Leblebiciler street [a neighborhood on the European side of Istanbul]. (The fact that it was also Atatürk’s 4 birth year was a source of pride for him). He studied at the local Alliance Israelite Universelle school until he was 13. He learned to be fluent in French there. In addition he learned Hebrew and studied religion at home studying with a rabbi for 5 years.

When my father turned 15, my grandfather taught him to take over the job and he focused all his attention on the affairs of the Synagogue. In this way, my father became a merchant and had a business at a very young age. Since he was in charge of the business, he earned the money for his family, in other words my father would give my grandfather a monthly allowance for the family’s expenses. In this store, there were 2-3 employees helping my dad (I don’t know their responsibilities).

In 1918, my dad decided to expand the business and rented a 4-story building in Sultanhamam [the region on the European side where wholesale businesses are concentrated], across Hacipolo Han [owned by a Greek citizen where there were sellers of dry goods] along with three gentlemen named Zakuto, Galimidi, and Treves (because I was very young I do not remember their full names). In this way, they formed the company of “Vitali Alkabes Zakuto et Compagnie” [French for “Vitali Alkabes Zakuto and Company”] with four partners. My father had a 50% share, and the others 18%, 12% and 15%. On the first floor they sold fabrics, on the second floor men’s apparel, and the other two were reserved for manufacturing. When we say manufacturing, they would cut the pieces necessary for the ready-made clothing. But let me be clear here, there were no machines to do the cutting, all the fabrics were cut by hand. The cutting was done by our scissor-expert Nisim Nebabis. The fabrics that were cut by hand were given to outside workshops for tailoring. This was how the job was divided inside the store: My father was in charge of the fabrics, and Mr. Galimidi was in charge of the ready-made clothing. Mr. Zakuto and Mr. Treves helped Mr. Galimidi in the clothing business.

In those times different ethnic groups usually lived separately. For example, of the 50-60 thousand Greek citizens, half lived in Fener, most of the Jews lived in Balat and Ayvansaray, and the Muslims lived in Eyup. [These neighborhoods are on the European side and close to Balat]. I think my father had an affinity for learning and talking in foreign languages; he would converse in Greek as if it was his mother tongue even though he had no formal education, his Greek customers would mistake him as one of their own when he chatted with them. They would ask him: “Ines Romeos veya Ovreos?” [Greek for: “Are you Greek? or Jewish?”].

My father was one of the 36 best known fabric merchants, that is to say, we were considered wealthy. He was good at his job, he was very attentive and pleasant with customers, and he was a very good salesman (now they call it marketing expert); he would convince every person who entered the store to buy something. But he would never lie to them in order to sell merchandise, he would always tell the truth, in one word, he was an honest merchant.

Starting in 1935, Sümerbank 5 founded factories in Merinos, Hereke and Defterdar [different cities in Anatolia] and started “domestic fabric” manufacturing. After that date, importing fabrics became very expensive and we started selling domestic fabrics too.

My father had two sisters and two brothers. Ester (born in 1875) and Coya (born in 1878). I do not know their education levels. I only knew that Tante Coya [that’s how he called his aunt] married twice, got divorced both times because of financial problems, and because she did not have kids. My father, who was a very good and compassionate person would always host her in the house we grew up between Pesach and Shavuot.

My father’s other sister, Ester was fluent in French (unfortunately I do not know her education level), she was married to someone with the last name Gabay, I don’t remember his first name. He died on the field in the Turkish War of Independence 6. (I wasn’t even born yet, I don’t know many of the details). Tante Ester and her daughters Margorit (we called her Margo) and Ojeni became widows and my aunt who was a strong woman continued struggling through life. Tante Ester had both her daughters educated in Alliance Israelite, her daughters’ French was as good as their mother tongue. Margo worked at the Grand Rabbinate with Haribi Rafael Saban for 15 years. (He was our Grand Rabbi, the grandfather of  Rıfat Saban, the lawyer). She married Sami Kazes and had a daughter named Coya. Coya is married to Selim Sages; they have a daughter and a son. (I don’t have any further information). Now they reside in Istanbul, in Gayrettepe [a neighborhood on the European side that was popular with Jews in the 1970’s]. Öjeni is married to an accountant, Rıfat Ventura and did not have children. Rıfat Bey made his living by being the accountant for 34 companies. Rıfat Ventura died around 1975,  Öjeni around 1980, both are buried in the cemetery in Arnavutköy. Tante Coya died in 1959, Tante Ester in 1960. Both my aunts are buried in the cemetery in  Kuzguncuk [a neighborhood on the Asian side of Istanbul].

My father had two brothers named Ishak (born in 1887) and Moiz (born in 1884). Uncle Ishak was born in 1887 and grew up in Hasköy [a neighborhood in the European side of Istanbul]. He studied in Balat [another popular Jewish neighborhood in the European side of Istanbul] in the Yeshiva. When my grandfather died my father took over to enable his brothers to get jobs. He opened a store for Uncle Ishak in Sultanhamam  [the commercial district on the European side where wholesale goods are bought and sold] where he sold goods such as suits, pants and coats and in this way provided him [Uncle Ishak] with a job. Uncle Ishak was married to a lady who we called Tante Viktorya. (I don’t know a lot of details about this lady). As far as I know she spoke Judeo-Espanyol and of course Turkish. Unfortunately they did not produce children from this marriage. My Uncle Ishak died in 1963, he was buried in Kuzguncuk. A few years later, when his spouse passed  away, we buried her next to my Uncle Ishak.

Uncle Moiz was born in 1884, like the rest of the family members, he also grew up in Hasköy. Because he studied in the Yeshiva in Balat he knew Hebrew very well. When he was around 23, 24 years of age, my father opened a store for him in Sultanhamam right across Uncle Ishak’s store, selling men’s suits and coats, just like he did for his other brother. This store was bigger compared to Uncle Ishak’s. Uncle Moiz was married to a lady named Rasel (Caldean). (Unfortunately I do not know her maiden name). They had three daughters and three sons. Their names according to their birth years were as follows: Ojeni (born in 1912) Ortans (born in 1915), Ester (born in 1919), (Liyaciko) Eliya (born in 1921), (Nisimiko) Niso (born in 1923) and Rifat (born in 1925). All three girls studied at Alliance Israelite.

Unfortunately Rasel died very young in 1943. After her mother’s death, one of the daughters, Ester took over her father’s care. My Uncle Moiz died in 1958, he was buried in Arnavutköy cemetery next to his wife.

Among my cousins, Eliya, we used to call him “Liyaciko”, studied in a Turkish school in Balat. However Liyaciko never liked his school and one day when he was 9, he ran away from school. The police were notified and they found Liyaciko in Silivri [It is one of the summer destinations on the European side now. Even now with all the highways that were built it takes 2 hours to get there from the center of Istanbul] and returned him to his family. I don’t know how he went there, the police brought us Liyaciko. Following this event, Uncle Moiz placed Liyaciko as an apprentice in my father’s store. In 1948 he married Ernesta Fresko, the sister of Sabetay Fresko who was a merchant of ready-made clothing in Sultanhamam, they had a girl and a boy (Mose). While everything was going well, he was stressed by the 6-7 September events 7 in 1955, and was feeling bad about the political climate when the brother of his spouse Ernesta who was settled in Milan said to him:
“My dear sister, we were very sorry to hear about the events in Istanbul. You can come here whenever you want, we will help you in any way we can” and Eliya took his whole family and moved to Milan. He opened a fabric store there and raised his family. Their daughter (I don’t remember her name) is an educator and currently works at a Jewish school in Italy. His son Mose is a gynecologist, I know that both his children are married, that he even has grandchildren, but because they are far away, I don’t have detailed information about them.

Unfortunately Liyaciko died in 1961, his spouse Ernesta in 1963; they are both buried in Italy.

My other cousin Niso, we used to call him  Nisimiko, studied in Balat like his older brother, started working as an apprentice to a leather merchant at a very young age. In  time he learned the trade and opened a store in  Kapalicarsi [Covered Bazaar] 8  and became a leather merchant. He married Luiza (I don’t know her last name). They were very wealthy, they lived at Nisantas. [A neighborhood on the European side where the rich lived after the 1945’s]. They had two sons. Their children studied in Istanbul but I forgot the names of the schools. In 1965 Nisimiko passed away and was buried in Istanbul. His spouse  Luiza had a brother who was settled in Panama. After her husband’s death, Luiza and her children went to stay with her brother and stayed there. Because the Spanish spoken in Panama is so similar to our Judeo-Espanyol, they did not have language problems. When they went there the sons were 32 and 33 years old, they earned their living doing import and export. Luiza is still alive. The children travel to Italy once in a while for business, so they have occasions to see their cousins. (One of my daughters Rosita lives in Italy.)

[I could not get information about Öjeni, Ortans, and Rıfat despite my insistence.]

My mother was one of four siblings.

My mother’s youngest brother Nesim Sisa (born in 1893) only went to school for three years (I don’t know where he studied) and was forced to start working at a very young age. Because of his hard-working, honest and enterprising personality, he learned the ropes of the business where he was apprenticed in a very short time and opened a 4-story store in Karaköy named “Galata Bonmarsesi". [One of the centers of commerce on the European side]. On the ground floor there were men’s shirts and shoes, second floor, men’s suits, coats and ready-made clothing, the third floor was manufacturing and the top floor was the warehouse. The back side of the top floor was next to the “Zülfaris Synagogue” [today it is the Jewish museum that was inaugurated by the 500.th Year Foundation] 9.

Nesim Sisa married Fortüne Aluf (I don’t know her birth date), a graduate of Alliance Israelite at the age of 23. His wife’s brother, Rafael Aluf was one of the famous stationary merchants of his time. In his store in Tahtakale, which was his own property, he would manufacture notebooks by importing paper [One of the important neighborhoods on the European side where today every kind of merchandise is sold wholesale]. Nesim and Fortüne lived in Sishane, in a flat in the family apartment “Aluf Han” a little further down from the Italian Synagogue. [One of the neighborhoods preferred by Jews on the European side]. Their marriage produced Elvir (born in 1921), Beki (born in 1923), Ester (born in 1925) and Meri (born in 1930), four daughters. All of them graduated from Saint Benoit. [French missionary school] [In those times this school was only until the end of junior high, so it was only eight years].

Beki, Ester and Meri married right after school. (Then it was very rare for girls to study a long time, when they had prospects, they would be married right away at 16-17 years of age). Only their oldest daughter Elvir studied in Robert College [today’s Bosphorus University] 10, because she studied in English, she knew it well. There, she met Sabetay Elvaşvili who was of Persian origin, dated him for 2 years and then got married at the Zulfaris Synagogue in 1945. They had a daughter named Rosita and a son whose name I cannot recall. Elvir’s husband Sabetay was also a good merchant. He would bring silk fabrics from Bursa. One of his customers reported him for cheating on the price. Sabetay and his family were deported to Diyarbakır in 1943 for 3 years. Still, both  Sabetay, and Elvir were such warm and affable people that the mayor of Diyarbakır became their closest friend, every night their families would get together and play poker. From then on they were under the protection of the mayor. When their deportation period ended, they were forced to leave the country because of Sabetay’s Persian nationality and in 1946 moved to Israel, where they raised their children. In 1950, on a spring day, when their son was 2 and their daughter 3, Sabetay climbed a tree to pick a fruit that his daughter Rosita had seen and desired, and just as he was about to pick it, lost his balance and fell. As a result of the fall, he was badly injured and contracted tetanus. His body did not respond to the therapy and unfortunately he died 3 months later (I don’t remember the year). Elvir married an Iraqi Jew 6 months after his death and they still live in Israel.

Beki married Vitali Illel after graduating from St. Benoit at the age of 18. (I don’t know the education level of Vitali)  At Marputçular [A neighborhood on the European side where commerce is prevalent] he would sell “Boneterie” (men’s shirts). His father-in-law (Beki’s dad) was his son-in-law’s best customer. They had two sons (I don’t know the names). One of them moved to Italy. The reason was that this son who had followed in his father’s footsteps in the business did not make it, because he could not pay his debts, he took his family with him and started a new life in Italy. I don’t have much information about this person. Their other son stayed in Istanbul. He has mental problems, he has always been a burden to his family. I don’t know why he has always been depressed. I don’t know where he is now...

The daughter of Nisim Sisa, Ester also studied in St. Benoit. She married Albert Baruh in 1955 at the Zulfaris Synagogue. He was in import and export, they moved to Israel in 1960. They had 2 sons. They are both still alive.

Nisim Sisa’s other daughter, Meri also studied in St. Benoit like the other members of the family. She married a thread manufacturer Momo Levi in 1960. They had a daughter. This girl married a Muslim gentleman and had three daughters. Momo unfortunately died in 1990 and was interned at the Arnavutköy cemetery. Meri still lives in her flat in Macka (one of the best neighborhoods on the European side). My uncle Nisim’s spouse Fortüne Sisa died in Istanbul in 1980 and is buried at the Arnavutköy cemetery. After his wife’s death, my uncle Nisim who had been suffering from diabetes for a long time went to London thinking he would get better care and unfortunately died there. His family brought his body back to Istanbul and buried him next to their deceased mother.

Turkey (consequently also Istanbul) was being governed by occupying countries during the 1910s and the English and French governments would give a certificate called “Protégés Orientaux” to every person leaving the country; [these certificates would be considered that person’s passport]. My mother’s two other brothers Albert and Vitali Sisa (I don’t know their birthdates] did not want to live here [Istanbul] and in 1918 went to France to try their luck and settled there. After they left, they were forbidden to reenter Turkey because they did not have a Turkish passport. Both brothers lived in France as “Protégés Orientaux”. They did not have any papers to prove they were Turks. In time Vitali became sales manager for the firm he had been working for and married a lady from Strasbourg, they had two daughters. He died around 1975 and was interned there. Because they were far from Istanbul, I did not know this family, I do not have much information.

His brother Albert became the night guard for a store, [now it is called “Security” personnel] he also married a French Jewish lady, they had a daughter named Elvira. In 1950 the Turkish president Celal Bayar 11 declared a pardon for Turkish citizens living abroad as “Protégés Orientaux”, and allowed them to visit their country for 3 months every year. Alber took advantage of this pardon and came to Istanbul with his daughter, we met and took them around with my family. I will never forget, one Sunday I took my wife, my 3 daughters and my 2 guests to a place with live music; “Beyaz Kelebekler (White Butterflies), Henny Vasilaki” who was famous at the time, were playing,  the table was filled with “filikas” [a type of cheesy börek made with phyllo dough], haydari [made with yoghurt, garlic and mint], kroket and mezes of different kinds, I had paid 30 liras for 6 people for the food, drinks, fruit and coffee we consumed (this could have paid for one month’s rent). After this visit we did not have a chance to meet again, but we kept in touch by corresponding on every occasion. Albert who died in 1983 is buried in France. His daughter Elvir worked for the French municipality for long years, I think she retired and now lives around Versailles. I don’t have any information about Albert’s wife.

My mother Sara Merkada was born in 1891 and raised in Hasköy. [A neighborhood on the European side]. She first attended the preschool in the English school in Hasköy (at that time it wasn’t usual for girls to attend school in a lot of families) and unfortunately attended school only 2 years. Her father who owned a grocery store said: “You studied for two years, that is enough for you” and removed his daughter from school and kept her at home to help her mother. Apart from Judeo-Espanyol, the only foreign words my mom knew was to count up to 100 in English.

The fathers of my parents knew each other from the business community; they arranged for the marriage of the young couple while talking to each other one day. When they met, my mother was 17 years old, with a height of 1.80 cm. and a weight of  115 kg., and my father was 27 years old with a height of 1.55 cm., and a weight of 65 kg. None of these contradictions prevented their marriage. They had 11 children but only 6 survived. Öjeni (Surjon 1911), Ester (Krespi 1915), Elvir (Alkabes 1917), me Nesim (1920), Eli (1923), Albert (1926). These were our birthdates and we struggled through life. Our other 5 siblings died (I don’t know the cause of their deaths, maybe they were premature etc., my mother never talked about this, anyways we were very young).

My father was very authoritarian despite having a small frame, my mother on the other hand, was very easy-going, very respectful towards her spouse, she was someone who had dedicated her life to her family. Because my mother was 10 years younger than my father, he was the boss in the house. My father loved us a lot even though he was authoritarian and would do everything we asked as much as he could. Still, on the Sabbath, we would keep our distance from him and never demand anything. That’s because my father normally smoked 1,5 packs of cigarettes a day, and on the Sabbath, refrained because of his faith and would be very cranky. My father was a religious man and my mother would carry out the religious obligations as much as she could in deference to him. Even though my mother was religious she would not wear a wig, she would only use a scarf when she was out on the street. Because we were raised in a religious household, we still live and perform according to our religious beliefs.

In our house, my mom, my dad, 6 children, our maid Fatma, who was the wife of a policeman and my father’s widowed aunt “Tia Hursulachi” (that’s how we called our great-aunt) lived all together. Because there were a lot of us, my mother was very busy; my mom, my aunt and my grandmother, who spent most of the year with us spent almost all their day in the kitchen. That is why my mother left the house only once every two weeks, because she was overweight, (I could call her “obese”, apparently she was fat since she was a child) my father would take her with a horse-carriage even to a distance of 200 m. (We used to live on Istiklal Caddesi then, instead of vehicles, there were horse-carriages “Fayton” [A comfortable wooden carriage pulled by one or two horses, with a maximum capacity of 4 passengers]. Someone had to get on the horse-carriage before my mom every time, otherwise the carriage would tip off balance and fall on its side. Other than horse-carriages there were trams for public transportation “Tramvay”. There were two categories of trams: the green one cost 5 kurus, the one we called first class and which was red, cost 8 kurus. There were only 5 to 10 taxis. My mother could not take the tram or the taxi. My father enjoyed life, along with my mother, they would frequently go to “Londra Bar” (London Bar) on Istiklal Caddesi. He liked to drink raki 12. They would drink, eat appetizers, and listen to music. When I grew up, occasionally I would join them (there were 8-9 ladies who had beautiful voices and who would sing traditional Turkish music).

My father did not quit smoking while alive. Even though our doctor Sinay said to my father: “Mr. Vitali you will die, please quit smoking”, he kept at it without giving up and died in 1965 at the age of 81 due to heart failure. Because he was from Kuzguncuk we interned him in the Kuzguncuk cemetery. (I forgot the first name of the doctor).

Growing Up

I, Nesim Alkabes, was born on July 21st, 1920 in our brick home that was 30 m. further from Galata Kulesi [the Galata Tower: a neighborhood on the European side where Jews congregated in the beginning of the 20th century] with the help of a midwife. All my other siblings were born in this house like me. My father had bought this house with his savings. We lived on one flat and rented out the other 3 flats. We lived there between 1920-1928. As far as I remember, it was not a big house. The entrance opened up to a hallway, at the end of it was the bedroom of my maternal grandmother, but it was such a small room that she did not have a bed, she would make one for herself every night on the floor. We had a closet we called “Yükli” in this room. We would put items such as mattresses, comforters in there. The system of sleeping on a floor bed worked for all of us, we all slept on the floor. We warmed the house with a coal-burning stove as well as a Belgian stove called “Salamandra” where you would feed it coal from the top and remove the ashes from the bottom. The maid lit these stoves. In the bathroom of this house, there was a shower boat, we didn’t have a tub, and once a month, in accordance with the rules of kashrut, we would go to a hamam in Kasimpasa together with all the ladies of the house (because I was still young). We would go there with a horse-carriage, this was a big event for us (paseo). The men would go to “Galatasaray Hamami” every Friday.

My father always preferred investing in real estate. Accordingly, he bought a 3-story, 8 bedroom wooden house in Galatasaray (on Kaleci Kulluk Street) [A neighborhood on the European side]. This was a neighborhood preferred by Greeks. He rented out the bedrooms in this house for 8 liras a month to either divorced or widowed Greek ladies, in this way he helped them out a bit. These apartments would share the kitchen and bathrooms on each floor.

Until the 10th anniversary of the [Turkish] republic, Friday was the official rest day of the week. After 1933, it was changed to Sundays. The reason for the change in days was that everywhere in the world Sunday was the official holiday. The fact that we had Friday as the holiday was affecting the stock market and the economy suffered as a result.

My first school was where the Neve Shalom Synagogue 13 is located now [A neighborhood called Sishane that Jews preferred at the beginning of the century]. We had a synagogue called Knesset there, below the Synagogue we had our Jewish primary school. After I studied for 3 years in this school, I went to Saint Benoit for junior high and graduated. When I was only 8, my father provided me with 5 years of religious education in the form of two hours twice weekly from Rabbi Gabay who came to our house, just as his father had done for him. My father was very wealthy; we would pay the Rabbi 2 liras a day, sugar cost 28 kurus. The cost was decided by Atatürk then. “Bu iki lira babama bir bardak su gibi gelirdi” “These two liras were like a glass of water for my father” [this is his saying]. As result when I celebrated my bar-mitzvah, my Hebrew and knowledge of the Torah was excellent. We celebrated my bar-mitzvah ceremony by inviting three priests from my school and our relatives to our house on a Sunday.

The home I remember most was in Beyoglu [a neighborhood on the European side on a street called Rue de Péra where people would dress up to walk around or to shop] the 4th story of “Meymenet Han” which was located on the corner of the hill where today stands the Palais de France. On the ground floor of this apartment we had a store called “Bazar de Bébé” where they sold children’s clothing. Because our apartment was located in a corner where the main street and the side street met, there was a lot of light and space. It was 200 square meters, and in the living room, out of 8 windows, 5 looked out on Istiklal Caddesi and 3 to the side street [today it is called Nuri Ziya Sokagı]. Next to the living room we had a room called “Fumoir” [french for “smoking room”], which was quite large. Whenever we had guests, my sisters’ girl and boyfriends, my father’s friends or our relatives, smoking was allowed only in this room; in addition we had a gramophone in this room and we would play waltzes, tangos etc. with what were called “stone records” that were produced by “Sahibinin Sesi” and that we had bought for 2 liras (we could buy 6 kg. of sugar with this money, a kg of sugar was 28 kurus, bread was 8 kurus).

Other than our dance parties there were nights when we hosted dinner parties, other than the Sabbath or the holidays. As you can imagine our nights were very lively in our home. My father’s sisters Tante Coya, her two daughters and Tante Sarina would come to visit two to three days a week, we were a large family; twice a day the butcher Dalva  (Someone who sold kosher meat in Shishane) would stop by and take orders. My aunts also placed their orders and always my father would take care of the bill.

We had beds in this house for the first time. Our system of sleeping in this house was like this: My three sisters in one bedroom, in the other us three boys, in the master bedroom my mom and dad with their own bathroom [parents’ bathroom]; (my father would take a shower every morning before he left the house even then). We had another bathroom other than the parents’, and in yet another bedroom our aunt (we used to call her Tiya Hursulachi) and our maid Fatma hanim slept. My father was a very humane, family-oriented person. He took in our widowed aunt who was desperate after her husband’s death. We called her “Tiya” [Ladino for “aunt”], she spent the last 8 years of her life with us; she was very pious and unfortunately we found her dead the morning of a Shavuot day in her bed, we interned her next to her husband as our religion dictates. My Tiya loved me and protected me so much that she was like my personal attorney.

Our home was one of the modern ones of the time, we had electricity and running water. Our house was heated by two Salamandra stoves located in the hallway and the living room (it was harder to keep warm than a coal-burning stove because it was much larger and we had to remove the ashes of the coal that was put from the top, from the drawer located in the bottom and add coal again before it went out) and a Chinese stove in the dining-room. The job of Fatma Hanim was really hard in winter, thanks to her, the rooms we lived in were always warm. Our bedrooms though were cold, on snowy days our father would put rugs on top of our comforters. We would heat water by burning logs on a stove-type apparatus. The stoves in the kitchen worked by gas piped into buildings. We have always had Muslim household help. Only, when I was 18, we had a 15-year-old helper named Fortüne from Bursa. My first life experience was with this girl. When, 3 months later, my mom became aware of the situation, it was the end of my first love affair. After that day we never again had a non-Muslim helper.

We would bathe on Fridays because it was “Shabbat”, we would give the Sabbath bride its due. As I said, because my family was religious we tried to live accordingly. On Saturdays, there was no cooking or showering. All the food was prepared by my mom and Tia Hursulachi, starting on Thursday and mostly on Friday. We did not have pressure cookers then, our Sabbath meal was prepared with two days’ labor (today usually most of the meals are cooked in pressure cookers by Sephardic ladies). In this way we would rest on Saturday. On our return from the synagogue we would eat “Biskochikos [a kind of cookie] prepared by my mom and drink hoshaf (stewed fruit juice) [prepared the day before]. 

Because my father was the oldest and the partner with the largest share, the other partners and their spouses, the accountants (one was Mr. Bohor, I don’t remember the name of the other) and their spouses, their friends, the secretary in the office, Mlle. Margo, all came to our house on the holidays.  Mlle. Margo later became the long-term secretary to the Grand Rabbi “Harbi Rafael Saban” who was very open-minded, and receptive to reform and change. (I don’t remember who was the Grand Rabbi before Rafael Saban, following him it was Rav. Asseo for 41 years). Margo married Sami Kazez when she was 30. They would always come to our house for the holidays (Passover, Shavuot, Sukkot), they would greet my mom and dad and chat. Normally on a Passover night we were 10 for the seder, with my father’s sisters Tant Coya, her two daughters, Tant Sarina (Ester) and our secretary Mlle Margo, we would be 14 at the table.

The rent for this house was  120 liras. (As I said before, my father was so wealthy that this rent money was similar to drinking a cup of sea water) (At the time a captain’s salary was 90 liras). My father was very extravagant; after we rented the house, he brought two painters from Italy. He had them decorate my sisters’ bedroom with pink flowers, the boys’ bedroom with blue flowers and his room with flowers of different colors.

Even though we had hot water and a bath tub in the house, the ladies still went to  Galatasaray Hamam on specific days of the month. My dad and us boys did not have such specific days to go to the Hamam. Even though the Hamam was so close to the house my mom was so overweight that she had to go there with a horse-carriage.

The story about Fatma Hanım who lived in our house and helped my mom with housework was as follows. My father had a very good customer in Gönen [A town near Balikesir on the Marmara Sea] whom he gave merchandise to. The farmer brother of this customer had married his daughter to a policeman working in Istanbul Aksaray Karakolu [A neighborhood on the European side]. But this uncle police had to sleep in the police station every night except Wednesdays, so to help with the household budget they could place her in a dependable home as a live-in. My dad explained this offer to my mom and they accepted; and Fatma came to live with us. Her husband would come every Wednesday evening to pick her up and bring her back Thursday morning. They were such conservative people that Fatma never left the house other than on Wednesdays. Fatma lived with us for 8 years. One day when her husband said: “I am sorry, I have become a sergeant, I want my wife to live with me”, Fatma left us.

At home we would all sit around in comfortable pyjamas, neither my mom, nor my dad had special clothing that they wore at home. Because the house wasn’t very warm, we would wear jackets called “Coin de feu” (short jackets made from sheltand fabric). The girls wore long robes made again from sheltand.

Of course when the family started growing and the fiancees would visit we could no longer wear pyjamas. For example, my wife Erna has never seen my dad like that, my father was always in a suit and tie.

When we lived in this house I was about 8 years old and was studying in Saint Benoit junior high school [A French school on the European side where girls studied until 8th grade and boys studied until end of high school]. Before St. Benoit, I went to the school beneath Neve Shalom, there the curriculum was Turkish. My father wished that I learn French so he enrolled me at St. Benoit. Before I started I took a test and enrolled in the second grade of “Petit College” [The name given to the primary school department of this school]. In this school we only had 3 hours of Turkish classes a week, these were History,  Geography and Turkish, the rest of our classes were in French. At the time report cards were given every weekend. I was a very good student, my grades would change between 16 and 18, out of 20. In our class of 32, I ranked 4th in general, and 1st in math. Our French principal would say: “Vous êtes dans le bon chemin mon petit, continuez” [you are on the right path my little one, continue].

I would bring this report card home and my dad would sign it with a lot of pride. 

What a nice coincidence that today we reside in the same apartment as my class teacher, Mademoiselle Palensya (of course she is quite old now, she lives here with her son. We meet from time to time and reminisce).

As I said before, in this place we had our synagogue which we called Knesset and beneath it our primary school. There were only 40, 50 children left and most of them started getting their education in other schools rather than the Jewish school. The Grand Rabbi of the time, Rav Harbi Rafael went to see our president Celal Bayar and requested a bigger synagogue for the Jews because our population was growing. As a result of this initiative, the Neve Shalom Synagogue 13 was built.

In this apartment our downstairs neighbor was the fabric merchant David Anjel and his family, upstairs neighbor was M.Ü. Mayer, who was one of the famous brokers of the time and imported fabrics and ready-made-clothing from Europe. (I do not know what M.Ü. stands for, that was his name). My father would sell fabrics in his store that this gentleman imported.

Our second home was on the first floor of Dilber Han in Tozkoparan. This building was built by someone named Benardete who was an importer in Canakkale. We rented a flat on this 6-story, 12 unit building. Our rent went down to 42 liras when it was 120 liras for our home on Istiklal Caddesi. When you entered the house first you entered a hall, and that would open into the living and sitting rooms. In the back there were 7 bedrooms. We had to feed logs into the stove to get hot water in the bathroom. The heating of the house was also with a stove in winter. We had electricity and running water.

During those years my father was still a partner in the company “Vitali Alkabes Zakuto et Compagnie”. The business continued until 1932. The effects of the recession that happened in the U.S.A. during 1929- 1930 started affecting Istanbul in 1931. The I O Us (I owe you) started returning without being paid. My father had signed these I O Us and had to pay the value on them. My dad was continually trying to pay his debts.

At the time, as a result of a proposition from France for my oldest sister Ojeni who was born in 1911, my mom, dad and sister left for France in the summer of 1932 for what they thought was a 15-20 day trip. Their trip to France proved to be quite difficult. First they took the boat named Stella Moris to Marseilles which lasted 8 days and then from there took the train to Paris. This voyage coincided with a period named “Shiva Avsarmeta” (the three weeks of mourning) unbeknownst to them.  They were able to come back 2 months later. During those weeks, there can be no marriages by the Rabbinate, no house buying, no new clothes and no moving into a new home. They were there and had nothing to do, so they stayed in a hotel for 2 months, married my sister and returned. My sister’s wedding was done in a hotel (just like in Israel, the rabbi came to the hotel). The ceremony wasn’t done in the synagogue (my brother-in-law was an atheist, maybe that’s why it did not take place in a temple, I am thinking that he must have accepted being married by a rabbi out of respect for my father), in the evening, after a family dinner for 90 people, my mom and dad returned to  Istanbul again on the boat named Stella Morris after an 8-day voyage.

When my father returned after this long break, he saw that the ripple effects of the American recession had spread all over Turkey. One of his partners in the store had passed away and the others had pulled back their capital when they realized they could not meet their debts. The store was on the edge of bankruptcy. My father got very upset and said: “When I was away for two months what did you do this place? How could you not pay the debts?” “If we had paid the debts, we would be penniless, our kids would starve. We did not have a choice.  This economic crisis has brought down all of us” they replied and annulled their partnership. My father was obliged to give up our store. My father had a lot of investments. He paid all of our debts by selling each flat in our 4-story house in Kuledibi for 12,000 liras (for a total of 48,000 liras) and another flat in Galatasaray for 8,000 liras. [Neighborhoods on the European side where Jews live together].

One day, when I was still 17 years old, my father said to me: “My dear son, you are the oldest of my three boys, I am already 56 years old and very tired; you finished junior high and learned French well, you are almost a genius in math, you took accounting lessons, you also speak Spanish, you are well educated, from now on please come and help me." “But daddy, what are you saying? I want to study law” I replied but I could not defy my father and started in business.

With the money he got my father opened a new store in Mahmutpasa, on Rızapasa Yokuşu (Hill) [One of the oldest neighborhoods on the European side where wholesale commerce is done]. It was a fabric store and the first ones he sold were the leftovers from the old store. My father had such an honorable reputation in the fabric industry that the merchants who imported merchandise from England would prepare the bills and give them to us as consignment. We would sell these fabrics, calculate our money and make our payments within 1 to 1,5 months. There was no domestic manufacture of fabrics in Turkey, all of Anatolia would buy foreign fabrics from Istanbul, our business was doing well because supply and demand was quite high. In this store and in the old business,  Rafael Levi and my cousin Eliya worked with us. Customers from outside Istanbul would come to our store to choose merchandise. We would pack these, warehouse them in  Sirkeci [A neighborhood on the European side] and in the evenings truck them and send them to their destinations. I started working in the store when I was 17, I was in charge of accounting and the customers. My brother-in-law Henri’s (In Judeo-Espanyol we called him Haskiya, the husband of my sister Öjeni) father Nisim Surjon was sent as an ambassador to Italy by Padisah (Sultan) Abdülhamit 14. Nisim Bey (Mr. Nisim) did not get along with his wife, she settled in France in the 20th. arrondissement [neighborhood]. At the time their son Henri was studying in Galatasaray Lisesi (highschool). It was a boarding school, when he graduated he tried to go to France to get a law degree but the Turkish bureaucracy did not give him a passport. That’s because Istanbul was occupied by the French and British then. Henri applied to them, and got the “Protégé orientaux” certificate and left for France, but the Turks rescinded his Turkish nationality. How unfortunate that the French also did not accept him as French. My brother-in-law finished his law degree with this certificate and married my sister Öjeni in 1932.

My father had transferred 20,000 Turkish liras to France as a dowry for my sister. With this money, the young couple opened the store “Bonneterie” on Rue des Pyrenees. My sister would stay at the store and my brother-in-law would go to adjacent cities to buy merchandise and take orders. The pleasant days unfortunately were short-lived because the world was on the edge of a new war.

During the second world war when the Germans invaded France, they could not touch my sister when she said “I am a Turkish citizen." The Nazi hunters were after Jews like everywhere else in the world. The staff of the police station where my sister lived would learn that the Germans were coming to look, beforehand, and warned all the Jews. Because my brother-in-law Henri was neither Turkish nor French nationality, he would escape to the nearest villages when he heard. He would hide for a few days and then return home. My sister’s store was open for business and she would earn some money. Her husband would come whenever he could, shower, eat, take some money, and when he got news, he would take the train and go hide in the nearby villages. This continued  for 4 years. Only once when he was at the train station, just as he was boarding the train two Germans noticed him. When they started asking: “Stop, who are you? What are you?” my brother-in-law who had been an atheist until that day, prayed for the first time: “Please God, save me”  One of the Germans took pity on him and can you imagine that he said: “Let him go, maybe he has a child."

My brother-in-law boarded the train right in front of the Germans and descended at the Gare St. Lazare. He went to the synagogue there, took lessons of Torah and Hebrew from the rabbis and as if this were not enough, started fasting 5 days a week. For a long time he only ate on Tuesdays and the Sabbath. He took a vow that he would live this way because G-d had saved him from going to the camps and he followed it. He became the volunteer custodian of this synagogue.

During his escapades, he became a member of French Underground Resistance, he never fought the Germans, but he gave blood 7 times to injured French soldiers. When the French government became aware of this, they said: “From now on you are a French national” and gave him his French passport.

Their store remained open between 1932 and 1941 for about 9 years. One of the Germans became manager in the store, took over half the money earned, my sister could not tolerate this for long and transferred the store to another merchant. She received a good amount of goodwill money from this transfer, their house belonged to them, they had no rental expense, my brother-in-law Henri had started working as a salaried employee at the  synagogue near Gare St. Lazare where he was the custodian. In this way they lived independently.

My sister gave birth to a son named Leon Davit Surjon. Leon is a full Frenchman. He completed his whole education and career there. He became an employee of the Ministry of Finance after graduating from university. Today he is 67 years old and currently is an inspector in the ministry. I was able to meet him when he visited Istanbul in 1987.

When Celal Bayar became president, he granted a pardon to a lot of people like my brother-in-law who had been expelled and passed a law allowing them to enter Turkey for three months a year. That’s why my brother-in-law and sister were able to come visit us after many long years. I was married to my wife Erna in those years and we lived in Kadıköy [A neighborhood on the Asian side]. My brother-in-law stayed with us for only three months but took advantage of his time here. My sister and her son Leon stayed for  5-6 months, of course when it was this long, we rented a small flat in the apartment owned by my father’s second wife Mrs. Eliz [the information is provided later]. There was a period of 7-8 months of discord between my brother-in-law and my sister, finally my brother-in-law convinced my sister and the family resumed their life in Paris. Because my brother-in-law was French, my sister also took on the French nationality, they were both eligible for social security by the French government. My brother-in-law died in 1995, my sister in 1999 in France and were interned there.

My wife Erna Adoni was born on December 25th, 1924 and raised in Kadıköy. We met in 1947 at a party given by a mutual friend, and we liked each other.  Because she is a graduate of St. Benoit like me, she speaks it as well as I do. When we decided to get married, Erna was 22, and I was 27. We went to ask for her hand from her father. I asked for a dowry of 25 thousand liras but he indicated he could not. He gave me a counter offer: “I will give you 10 thousand liras. You live with us for 2-3 years until you have enough savings (Meza franka, [Live-in son-in-law]), you won’t be responsible for any expenses, in this way you will save money."

I loved Erna so much that of course I accepted this offer. Other than my father-in-law, Erna also had an offer: “Look Nisim, I am a fan of Fenerbahce, you are a fan of Galatasaray. If you do not become a fan of Fenerbahce I will not marry you.” [The most important two soccer teams in Turkey]. I was obliged to accept and we had our civil ceremony on June 5th, 1947 in a place called 6. Daire [The office where weddings are officiated belonging to the municipality of Sishane, a neighborhood on the European side where Jews live]. Following that we got married at the Zülfaris Synagogue on August 10th, 1947 [On the European side, in Karaköy, where the Jewish museum is located now]. After our wedding, we spent our honeymoon in Tarabya Hotel for 2 days [On the European side, overlooking the Bosphorus, one of the trendiest hotels of the time where all rooms overlooked the water; today unfortunately it has been transferred to the private sector and is in ruins] and Bursa Celik Palas for 4 days. I was done with my military service by then and was working with my father.

My wife Erna’s older brother Leon Adoni who was born in 1922, graduated from Saint Joseph High School and finished medical school in Istanbul Tıp fakültesi (Istanbul School of Medicine). He did his residency in dermatology. He opened a clinic on the famous Abanoz Street, because maladies like syphilis were very common here (this street was on the European side, and was very popular among men). But the number of patients he had, coupled with the limited opportunities alienated Leon from here (Istanbul). He decided to try his luck in the United States. He took private lessons to improve the English he had learned in school. He applied to Ohio State in 1950 and when he was accepted, he immediately left. His specialty was very relevant. Beautiful, young girls would come for treatment of acne, and a lot of men, gonorrhea etc. Thank G-d he became popular in a short time. From Ohio he went to Cleveland, then to Philadelphia. One day, he had a Russian Jew named Berenice as his patient, he fell in love with her while treating her acne. They married a short time later, had three sons. In time they owned a beautiful, 3-story villa with a garage, backyard and pool. Thank G-d they became very wealthy, they are in good shape.

A few years ago we visited them for a few weeks. Berenice is a very pleasant, nice and smart lady as well as being practical. One day, while we were there, she said to Leon: “Shall we give a party in honor of your sister and brother-in-law tonight” and she proceeded to call and invite 40 people. My wife Emma started to panic: “It is 11 a.m., how will you manage to feed so many people? There is nothing in the house." Berenice, without a care in the world, got in her car and said: “Bye bye, I will see you in a little while, you go ahead and sunbathe, swim, enjoy yourselves."

A few hours passed (we are not used to this kind of thing), a catering company came, immediately they set out tables in the garden, 3 waiters arranged the food on trays and served. All this expense cost 400 dollars. Berenice inherited money from her dad, she was rich. She never worked, she only replaced the secretary in her husband’s office when she went on vacation.

Their oldest son has a drugstore. The younger son buys real estate, repairs them and resells them. They have produced grandchildren for them. The middle son remained single, I don’t know what he does. But none of the three have any financial difficulties.    

My father-in-law, Moiz Uriyel Adoni, was born in 1895. I don’t know which school he studied at but he is a primary school graduate. He learned French by practising. My father-in-law was someone I respected a lot. He was very knowledgeable on some subjects as well as being  pleasant and cordial.

The home-furnishings store opened in Beyoglu [on the European side, where Rue de Pera is located, the place where the trendiest stores are located and where the most fashionable people shop] by a family who had emigrated from Italy to Istanbul, Lazarro Franko (name of store and name of family are the same), was a company that continued from father to son. My father-in-law started working with the third generation of this family as an apprentice at a very young age. As the years passed, his boss grew to like him. He made him a partner in his store with 10% since my father-in-law’s knowledge of the business and his customer relations were very good. There were three partners in the store (I don’t remember the names).

My father-in-law would go to Ankara [the capital of Turkey, where all the political events happen] to get measurements for the upholstering and curtains of Cankaya Palace [the villa where the president resides, even now], would bring samples from the store and ask Atatürk: “Here you go, my pasha, whichever fabric you prefer, that is what we will use for the upholstery." They were pretty close with the Pasha. My father-in-law would always personally attend the business he had with the government, he did not trust anyone.

Let me tell you an incident demonstrating how humble Atatürk was. One day when my father-in-law was measuring the upholstery for the sofas, Atatürk said: “It would be better if we carried this sofa to the other room." My father-in-law responds: “Certainly, my pasha, let me call one of the staff." “What am I here for, if you hold it from one end, we’ll do it together” he said.

Another memory involves Atatürk’s tailor. Atatürk’s tailor was a Jew with the family name Hazmonay, someone who was very good at his job and who stuttered, his workplace was in Tünel [A street off of Beyoğlu, on the European side]. In one word, he was a “first class” tailor... Atatürk would bring the fabrics for his suits from Ankara, call Hazmonay, have him take his measurements and place his orders for everything including tuxes. Atatürk liked Jews and all other non-Muslims, I appreciate both him and what he stood for and try to apply his ideals to this day.

Lazarro Franko’s grandchildren were capitalists, my father-in-law was the one in charge of the whole operation in the company. He was known and trusted by everyone in the commerce industry in both Ankara and Istanbul as well as the banks.

The lower floor of the store was the warehouse and a bathroom, the top floor was where home-furnishing samples were displayed. At midday, they would close for an hour. Usually the other two partners would go home for lunch. My father-in-law would bring his lunch from home and eat there since he lived in Kadiköy. Because he was the oldest person in the store, he was always in possession of all the keys, including the safe. One day, during lunch break, when my father-in-law went downstairs to wash his hands, he was murdered by a person who was both night guard and salesclerk in the store, at the age of 83 (in 1978) using a tie. The partners, unaware of the incident, found the doors unlocked when they returned. There was no nightguard nor was my father-in-law around. “Moiz, Moiz where are you?” they called out and when there was no response, started looking for him. Of course the scene in the lower floor was horrible and the guilty party had run away. They called the police.

Later, of course, the culprit was captured and interrogated. At the interrogation he said: “I killed Mr. Moiz because I thought there were 1500 dollars in the safe." “I did not do this murder alone, I called my cousin to the store and we spent the night there. In the morning when he showed up, my cousin hid downstairs, I did my daily chores as usual. We had planned it all. At lunch time when Uncle Moiz went downstairs to wash his hands, my cousin was going to strangle him, take the keys and open the safe, and we would run away. Everything went according to plan. However, we found 1,500 Turkish liras, not 1,500 dollars." The court sentenced them to 18 years in jail. There were two pardons in time and they got out in 10 years.

At the time I [Mr. Nesim] was working at “Bahar Mefrusat”. When I got the news, it was unfortunately too late. What a pity that the most important event among the bad ones that happened to our family was for such a senseless reason. My father-in-law had worked for 65 years in this business and he left 85 thousand liras in his will. This sounds like a funny amount now but at the time it was valuable.

My mother-in-law, Roza Uziyel was the niece of a very wealthy family. She had finished the British school of the time, she did not speak French (Unfortunately I do not know the name of the school). Even though I do not know how she met my father-in-law, they got along beautifully and were always very happy. My mother-in-law had two siblings named Albert and Roza.  My mother-in-law was a very talkative, pleasant and giving  person. My wife’s family was as religious as mine.

Both my father-in-law and my mother-in-law’s brother Albert would go to the synagogue before work. Uncle Albert was a graduate of Saint Joseph. He was very knowledgeable and educated but he was not bold, he was timid. Because of his personality, Uncle Albert would work in the store of Lazarro Franko as an employee for 300 liras a month. When he retired, of course they compensated him but it wasn’t a satisfying amount of money.

My mother-in-law’s sister Fani did not get married since her family could not afford a dowry and was single all her life. Unfortunately we lost my mother-in-law at a very young age, at 62, within three months, from a cancer of the uterus, we buried her in   Kadıköy.  My mother-in-law’s sister Fani said: “Moiz, if you don’t remarry, I will take care of you and my brother Albert."

My father-in-law lived in the same house as Albert and Fani for 20 years as a widower. Aunt Fani took care of them for long years and one day I said to my wife: “Erna, if you want, let’s ask your aunt to come live with us, she can help you and it will be a change for her. What do you think?” Fani was very hardworking person, so much that she even helped with our kids’ homework. Our children loved this great-aunt. One night, she was in a lot of pain, we gave her medicine, it did not work, we took her to see a doctor, gave her the medicine that was needed, but she was still in pain, and moaning. One night before I went to bed I prayed: “Please G-d, help me find a medicine so I can save this woman." Of course not every prayer is answered, but I prayed so wholeheartedly that  I dreamt of a rabbi who told me: “In the morning wake up early and mix this... and this... with water in the kitchen, have your patient drink this on an empty stomach for 3 days” (I don’t remember the details).

Excuse me, but late at night, when I got up to use the bathroom, Fani was also awake: “Fani, don’t eat anything, I will give you something” I told her. I ran to the kitchen and prepared the mixture I dreamt about and had her drink it. Truly, in three days her pain was gone. How can I not believe in this holy being? Of course he does not give us everything we want, but still we have a sense of his presence close to us. Fani died 28 years later, at the age of 77, and we buried her in Kadıköy.

Since both his siblings were dead, we did not want to leave Albert alone, he was already 80 years old. We took him home and took care of him. We had a spare bedroom and this is how we lived for 3 years. Later he was half paralyzed, it was not possible to take care of him at home. We were obliged to put him in Or-Ahayim Hastanesi (Hospital) 15. The expense was steep, thankfully my wife’s brother Leon from the United States helped financially. Albert lived in this manner till 1986. We interned him in Kadıköy. We took charge of all the burials in this family, we had the stones made by an expert we know in Kuledibi.

During the War

I was called to military service between 1942 and 1945. I was a soldier in the 3rd regiment of the 2. Air force battalion for 36 months, i.e. 3 years. In the first year of this period, we built the Malatya airport by mixing sand with cement and water. In the following 6 months, we dug gutters that were 2 m. deep in Adana airport to drain rainwater and filled them up with stones. The next 6 months I was a “writer” in the Canakkale Regiment. I would take roll call every morning and evening. I would look for runaways, I would grant doctor’s visits to the sick ones. Here also they were building an airport, the soldiers were working under harsh conditions. These soldiers needed 2000 calories a day, I took care of the food supply. I spent the next year in Yakacik Samandra [a neighborhood on the Asian side], and the last six months in Zonguldak Kokaksu as the writer of the regiment. There were quite a few Jewish youths from Izmir and Istanbul in this regiment.

The first year of my military service I was in Malatya as I said. We had a client in Asirefendi Caddesi (street) [A neighborhood on the European side], Naim Rejion who was a fabric merchant and he had a branch in Malatya named “Faik ve Sevket Bitlis." Once a week, on my off day I would go to this office, write a letter to my family and send it.

I had served in Malatya for a year and progressed in the building of the airport when the undersecretary of the air force of the time,  Zeki Dogan, came for an inspection and said: “These kids have worked very hard, they are tired, send them back home for 3 weeks."

I always say “G-d knows what he is doing." Before I came home for my leave of absence (the year 1943), the Ministry of Finance had demanded 100 thousand liras as “Varlık Vergisi” (Wealth Tax) 16. When I heard this I wrote to my father: “My dear father, you cannot pay this money, our net worth is only around 35, 40 thousand liras, we cannot cover this 100 thousand liras. Whatever you do, try to hide the merchandise in the store of Uncle Nisim” I said. Before my father could ponder how to hide the fabrics, I was back home on vacation and the next day my father said to me: “My child, I will not go to work today, I am very tired. You have been in this business for 5 years, you will know what to do” and sent me.

I took my siblings aside and told them: “None of you go to school today, you all come to work, I have a good plan, we will save this business together." We went to the store. I cut up 9 meters from each fabric and packed it, my siblings carried these packages to my uncle’s store all day. My uncle reserved a room in his warehouse for us, we hid all the packages there. As you can see, I stole my own merchandise. The next day 3 people came from the Ministry of Finance. “You owe 100 thousand liras. When and how will you pay?” “I swear, this store belongs to my father. I am a soldier, I have a leave of absence, I am helping my father” and I showed them my papers. “As you said, you have no say in this store, do you know the price of this merchandise?” “Of course, but I cannot allow you to sell them below the purchase price” I said, but their attitude was hardening and I was a soldier, I had to keep quiet. “We will sell all this merchandise against your debt, but since this will not cover it we will send your father to Askale [a small town in the east of Turkey where non-Muslims who could not pay the Wealth Tax were deported]."

My father first paid 6 thousand liras against his debt. That day 101 rolls of fabric were sold, they made 33 thousand liras from that, so we could pay 39 out of 100 thousand. They paid 2 liras a day to work in Askale, so according to the calculations, my father had to stay there till the end of his life and unfortunately my father who was 59 at the time spent 10 months in Askale under very harsh conditions. They would shovel snow all day, as I said, my father was pious and it was not possible to find kosher meat. He only ate dry bread, olives and cheese all this time. Since they did not have beds they would sleep on a chair in the coffeehouse where they were favored, and they would go to the bathroom in the open. He had to spend very miserable days. As luck would have it, a customer who used to buy merchandise from us and who was in Askale went to the captain and asked: “May I ask permission to take Vitali Alkabes once a week to my home?” and the captain who pitied my father consented. In this way, even if it was once a week, my father could satisfy his basic needs such as bathing, sleeping and a hot meal.

Of course, we were all very sad at the time. My siblings were in school, I had to go back to my military unit, and when we were all wondering how we would pay the rent and the house expenses, a neighbor friend who was a merchant asked: “My son, Nisim, I would like your father’s store, how much goodwill money would you like?” I asked for 10 thousand, but settled on 7 thousand. I gave half of this money to my mother, and I took the other half. In the military the food was tasteless, I was obliged to buy from the cafeteria. My mom rented out a room in the house, and in this way provided for the house expenses.

My Uncle Nisim Sisa was settled with 90 thousand liras tax, he had enough profits from his store, he was able to pay his debt.

Another time I had a three week leave of absence, I sold the fabrics that we hid in my uncle’s store and converted them to money.  In this way we provided help for my mom again.

The 2nd World War was going on while I was in the military service, as you know, the Germans were trying to take over all of Europe, Winston Churchill (the British Prime Minister) came to Adana (a region on the southern part of turkey) by plane. He had a meeting with the staff of the British, French and Greek consulates and the president of the time, Ismet Inönü 17, for 8 hours. Churchill said to Ismet Pasa: “If you would open a front against the Germans, we could surprise them”. Inönü rejected Churchill’s offer; “No, I am not going to enter my country in war.  The Germans are very strong, my country cannot live through another war."

After the meeting with Inönü, the staff from the embassies took turns and during the talks, when Churchill learned that people over 55 were battling death in Askale because of the “Varlik Vergisi” (Wealth Tax), and that 15-20 people had already died, he said: “What kind of an injustice is this, how can your conscience allow you to send these poor old people to death. You will immediately grant them pardon and release them” and my father and the others returned home. Most of the ones who returned had lost a lot of weight and were ill. My father, despite losing 9 kilos, was healthy.

My father rested for a while then decided to open another business to earn a living for the family. Rafael Aluf who was a distant relative became partners with him for 30 thousand liras. At the time I was about to get married to Erna, as I mentioned before my father-in-law had given me 10 thousand liras as dowry, I became partners with this money. My father put together the money we earned selling the hidden fabrics and the savings of my mother and had a capital of 6 thousand liras. In this way we formed “Vitali Alkabes ve Ortaklari Adi Komandit sirketi” in Mahmutpasa Manastır Han [A neighborhood on the European side where wholesale commerce is done on a big scale] in 1945, and we worked there till 1965 selling wholesale fabrics.

After the War

On May 27th, 1960, there was a military coup. The prime minister of the time, Adnan Menderes 18, foreign minister Fatih Zorlu and others were hung after a long period of interrogation and judgements. As the political situation was so precarious, the economy also started suffering. Our customers started missing their payments. We were paying the vouchers that we had signed. We received a voucher every hour. We had a credit of 30 thousand liras in Ziraat Bankası. Even though I had been married for 15 years, I had never asked for money from my father-in-law, but unfortunately I was in such a bind that I had to ask him: “My dear father, do you have money? Can you lend me some?” “ I have 20 thousand liras, it is yours” he replied.

Even though we took 15 thousand liras from my older brother Albert, we could not get a handle on our debts, the vouchers kept coming. We sold our merchandise at half price, finally we paid all our debts 100%. We did not want to settle with the creditors and unfortunately went bankrupt. We closed the store on December 31st, 1965. My father died on Febr. 29th, 1966.

Of course life went on and I had to continue working and earning money, I had a family.  For a year I worked as a middleman. That is to say, I would provide a client with goods, in return I got a commission from the merchant where I bought the goods. One day, “Marcello Ajas”, who was a fabric merchant said to me: “the son of Fıcıcıoglu (owner of the store, someone I knew very well, a ready-made clothing merchant who I sold quite a bit of merchandise), is going to the military, they need someone reliable, if you want apply, at least you will have a salary." As soon as I learned I went and said: “Good day Halil Bey (Mr. Halil), how are you? I heard you are looking for someone, if it is convenient, I would like to apply." “Wonderful, as you know my son is leaving for the military, there are 25 people working in the company. I won’t be able to handle it alone. You know the business very well, you could help me a lot. How much salary do you want?” “Truly, I would be very happy if I got 500 liras a week." That was good money at the time, a kilo of meat cost 8 liras. I worked for 6 years with these conditions.

Later I was employed by the company “Bahar Meftrusat” for a salary of 42 thousand liras. I worked there as a sales manager for 10 years and retired. This store also has an interesting story. At the time the brothers Max and Michel Suraski, who were British Jews, had a fabric company. These gentlemen had opened a branch in Istanbul, this store was a 4-story business. During the rush of the Wealth Tax, they gave their merchandise (the merchandise in the store) to the nightguard Hüseyin Gürpinar, by paying him to take it to a warehouse in Sultanhamam in the late hours of the night and hide it there. Later, they sold this merchandise and smuggled the money to England. They were able to return home without incurring any damage. One of these brothers was married to a lady from Istanbul, he had Wolf and two other sons whose name I can’t recall. When Wolf became an adolescent he went to Israel and unfortunately died in a heart wrenching traffic accident. The other sons stayed in England. Unfortunately I don’t have more information about this family.     
           
My mother developed varicose veins in her legs after her second pregnancy due to being overweight and for 25 years lived with open sores. My mother would clean these sores every day and dressed the wounds. At the time I was working in my father’s store, my father would say”: “Take money from the safe and buy your mom the supplies she needs." I would never let the house run short on these supplies. My mother went to a professor in the German Hospital for a check-up when she was 56 years old, when the doctor said: “Merkada Hanım (Mrs. Merkada) I can dry these sores with electrical beams, it is a very easy operation, don’t worry, you will be very comfortable." We took my mother to the hospital, the professor claimed that the surgery was successful. My mother stayed in the hospital for 8 days, then she returned home, but she was getting worse and worse. We realized she was ill and took her to see Dr. Barbut who was a cousin of my mother and the chief doctor of Or-Ahayim Hastanesi (hospital) [the first and only Jewish hospital on the European side]. He told us: “When your mother’s wounds were open, they would drain, now when they are covered, the infection stays in the body."

Unfortunately while we lost time at home, the infection had spread and reached the brain. Dr. Barbut took over my mother’s care. He put her on “Ilkaparin” (a kind of antibiotic), (one box cost 33 liras and she had to take 3 boxes), her body did not respond well to this therapy that lasted two months and unfortunately we lost my mother in 1947, in the hospital while my wife and I had been engaged for only two months. Because she was born and raised in Hasköy, we buried her there.

After he lost my mother, my father did not marry for 3 years. According to the Jewish faith, when a man is widowed with young children, he has to marry the sister of his deceased wife. My father did not follow this tradition, but married a childless lady, Eliz Franko, in 1950 with a civil ceremony. There was no religious ceremony in the Grand Rabbinate because they did not approve of this marriage. Eliz Hanım (Mrs. Eliz) had a 5-story building next to the Grand Rabbinate building of today. [on the European side, on Yeminici street close to Tünel] She lived in one of the flats and rented out the others. Before she and my dad were married they both signed papers forfeiting their rights to the inheritance at the notary. (After the death of either one, the other would not have the right to inherit). This building belonged to Eliz Hanım, after she died it went to her family. According to their agreement before the wedding, my father would give Eliz Hanım 300 liras a month for expenses, the rest she would take care of.

Eliz Hanım was a very good lady and took very good care of my father, they got along very well for the 16 years that they were together. Our store was at Mahmutpasa then  [on the European side, one of the important centers of commerce], my father had grown old and every night we would return home by taxi (it was 5 liras), go up one flight of stairs, and I would leave my dad with Eliz Hanım. When we got home, Eliz Hanım would have prepared some appetizers and set the table. Before I could even say: “Have a good night.” “No, I will not let you go, first have a glass of raki, then go home” she would reply.

As I mentioned before, my father took care of his clothing. Even though he suffered from an insidious disease, on the outside, he had no symptoms. When my wife and I went to visit him one morning we found him sitting in his chair as usual in his suit and tie; his face was ashen; unfortunately he was having a heart attack and could not breathe, even though we loosened his tie we could not prevent death. He died in 1965 at the age of 81, we interned him in Kuzguncuk.

A year after his death, Eliz Hanım also died (I don’t remember where she was buried).

My older sister Ester was born in 1915. She graduated from Saint Benoit, and then completed the tests of Baccalaureate at the Palais de France with “outstanding academic achievement." In this exam there were subjects like Histoire (history) and Geographie Française (French geography), Geometrie (geometry), Botanic (biology). We had a beautiful piano in our house.  Both Ester, and my other older sister Öjeni had taken lessons from the same instructor and they both played the piano well.

Ester married Yako Krespi in 1938 in the Zülfaris Synagogue [today it houses the Jewish museum inaugurated by the 500. Year Foundation]. My brother-in-law, Yako had a hardware workshop in Tahtakale, he would manufacture different sized tin boxes. From this marriage they had Viki (1940), Jojo (1943) and in (1948) twins named Hayim and Moshe.

My niece Viki, who was born in 1940 graduated from Saint Benoit. She married Mevorah Lago, a lawyer from Edirne in 1960, in the Zulfaris Synagogue. They had two daughters. One of them is named Eti, I forgot the name of the other one. Both are graduates of university. In 1990 Viki’s husband unfortunately passed on, he was buried in Istanbul. She married a gentleman named Jak a short while later (I don’t remember his family name), they currently live together.

Her daughters worked with the Turkish Airlines and they sent both of them to Israel. One of the girls is in charge of the Tel Aviv office of Turkish Airlines, she is married and has children.

The other girl is married to a gentleman who is a shirt merchant and has children (I don’t know the names). These two nieces currently reside in Israel.

My other nephew Jojo who was born in 1943 also finished Saint Benoit. He opened a metal hardware workshop in Dolapdere [A neighborhood on the European side], went to be with his sibling in Israel at the age of 35, worked with him for 5 years; returned to  Istanbul. He married a lady named Beki at the age of 48 (I don’t know the last name). They did not have children, maybe they did not want them. His business is in Sishane [A neighborhood on the European side where the Jews lived at the turn of the century, today it is a tourist area and houses complementary electrical industry]. He imports projectors from Israel and sells them. He is 62 years old now.

The twins on the other hand celebrated their bar-mitzvah ceremony at the age of 13 in the B'nai Brith building of today. At the time the business of Yako (Jak) unfortunately wasn’t going well and he had a hard time raising so many kids. When Hayim and Moshe turned 14, they sent them to Israel and settled them there.

They, themselves settled in Israel after marrying their daughter, 10 years after the kids went to Israel. Ester died in 1995, my brother-in-law preceded her, they are both buried in Israel.

Hayim sells electronics. He married Beki who had emigrated from Istanbul and had three children. Two of the kids are college students, the other one manages a small gyros restaurant.

Moshe on the other hand is a military captain, there is a very interesting story about his career. The Israeli government had made an agreement with France about buying 5 ships but even though they had been paid for, the ships were not being delivered. The government devised a plan where they changed the last name of Moshe, prepared a new passport for him and flew him to France with a few helpers. The team reached France and raided the ships that belonged to them and brought them to Israel. My information about this period unfortunately is limited, I have been removed from events like the birth of Israel, and they did not write letters. Moshe’s wife is of Algerian origin, I don’t remember her last name, but his marriage to Maggie produced two sons. One of these children, I am sorry to say, died in a traffic accident at the age of 13, the other one is about to open a butcher shop.

My sister Elvir who was born in 1917 graduated from Saint Benoit like all of us and spoke French as well as a French born person... She married a Bulgarian Jew who was a drummer, unfortunately their union did not last long, they only stayed married for one year and separated; they did not have children. After this experience my sister unfortunately became schizophrenic, she was constantly sick and would get therapy. Her last years were spent in “La Paix” [Private psychiatric hospital]. My sister Ester and I would take Elvir on the weekends when she felt better to the movies with the doctor’s permission.  

My brother Eliya who was 3 years younger than me was born on November 3rd, 1923, after finishing Saint Benoit attended the Technical University and got his masters in mechanical engineering. As a result of his education he knew French and English. He was very good friends with Süleyman Demirel 19 who was our prime minister for a long time since they studied in school together. Süleyman Bey graduated a year before my brother Eliya. Eliya, like Süleyman Bey, graduated with “outstanding achievement” on his diploma. Süleyman Bey started out with a masters in mechanical engineering; likewise he was the head of the Water Department in Ankara. My brother, when he graduated said: “I will go to Ankara and look for a job” and left home. He got to Ankara, and when he talked to Süleyman Bey, he told him: “There is an empty desk there, go sit down.” My brother Eliya worked there exactly 4 years.

Later Burla Biraderler [One of the first companies importing electronics from Europe] was opening a new branch and were looking for workers; someone came to ask Eliya: “How much do you make here? Come and work as a manager for me," so he started with them and was a manager in the company Burla Biraderler for 15 years.

My brother Eliya dated Suzi Strumza and married her in Zülfaris Synagogue, he loved her so much (his wife), he did not even get a dowry [the synagogue on the European side where the weddings of the time took place. Today it is replaced by the Jewish museum established by the 500th Year Foundation].  My sister-in-law Suzi went to a Turkish school. She spoke French well even though she learned it by listening only. This marriage produced Rina and Vili with his twin Teri.

Their daughter Rina had a very successful and remarkable education. After graduating very successfully from Robert Kolej (College) [today’s Bogazici University (Bosphorus University)], she became the English teacher at Macka Teknik Universitesi (Technical University) for long years and retired from there. I don’t mean to brag, but our family produced a lot of smart people. Rina married Izak Eskenazi. Izak sold medical supplies. Their marriage did not last long, they were obliged to separate. From this marriage, Rina had two daughters. Today they are settled in the United States and are married (I don’t know the girls’ names, nor where they work).

Their son Vili became an engineer like his dad. He is married to a Jewish lady from Istanbul. Today he is the father of two children who are 25 and 30, but I don’t know their names or anything else.

Their other daughter Teri emigrated to Israel after 1980. There she married a Frenchman and had a daughter. Teri had mental problems, I think that is why their marriage did not work. After divorcing, the daughter settled in France with her father. Teri, on the other hand, currently lives in a Kibbutz, she lives on the social security she gets from the government.

My sibling lives in Suadiye [A neighborhood on the Asian side], even though he is 82 years old, he still earns money translating books about electronics. Since we have both grown old, we can only communicate by phone, we see each other only on holidays or special days.

My older brother had an evening that I am proud of. As I said, my brother and Süleyman Bey were so close that when Süleyman Bey took over the presidency, he invited my brother and his wife to Cankaya.

My brother Albert who was born in 1926, studied at Saint Benoit, and then became an engineer like our older brother Eliya. His [Albert] French and English are also excellent. Even though there is a belief that non-Muslims are not employed by the government, Albert got a successful result from a test given by the government and became a “Control Engineer” for the government [government employee]. First he built a 7-story building for the Electric Company in Okmeydanı. He built the Electric Center at Batman and returned to Istanbul. As his 8th job he did the check-up of  Atatürk Kültür Merkezi (Cultural Center)  His job was to check the material used in making the buildings, not to permit theft, misplacement or reduction in materials.

Albert married Ivet Galin (I don’t have information about her family or her education). They had a daughter and son. Their daughter Sara is married to Dario Katalan. I know that their son-in-law Dario has a factory but I don’t know what he manufactures. Sara has two sons, ages 13 and 17. Unfortunately I don’t know their names.

My brother Albert’s son Heymi Alkabes is a gynecologist. He married a lady with the family name Arditi, but I am sorry to say the marriage ended in divorce in such a short time as 6 months. He went to Sıvas for his obligatory service, he worked at the health clinic there. There he met his colleague, pediatrician Berna Hanım and got married. Even though Berna is Muslim, she is very close to the family, we like her a lot. Of the boy and girl twins they had, the boy lived a very short time because his brain hadn’t developed. Their daughter is a very healthy young girl (I don’t know her exact age).

Erna and I had three daughters from our union. Our oldest daughter Sara was born in 1948, Rosita in 1950, Stella in 1954. I earned good money in the period when we were raising the kids, we did not have financial difficulties. As I explained before, my wife Erna is from Kadıköy and we lived with her family for 2 years. Later we moved out of our in-law’s house and lived around Kadıköy in a house with a heating stove for another 3 years. In this house the living room was right across the entrance hall, and we had 3 bedrooms and a bathroom off of a pretty long hallway. We would heat our 120 square meters house with a Belgian made stove that we had bought for 230 liras. Our kitchen and our bathroom could not be heated in very cold weather.  

When our oldest won the right to enter “Nisantası Isık Lisesi”, we moved to Nisantas [on the European side] (1955). This house was on “Safak Sokak” which is parallel to Rumeli Caddesi which is the main route in Nisantas. This house was also 120 square meters and had a stove. When you entered the square shaped hall opened up to the livingroom and “salle a manger” [dining room]. We had a large earthenware stove in our living room. We had a salamandra stove in the middle of the hallway connecting this side with the back of the house. At the end of the hallway we had our and the girls’ bedrooms. We would leave the bedroom doors open and warm up with the heat from the stove in the hallway. As you can imagine, our rooms could be considered cold in winter but we never got sick, our children were quite healthy in this regard. Our bathroom and kitchen was quite modern, we got our hot water from the water heater that was connected to natural gas. All of our three daughters finished their primary education in Isık Lisesi and went to Saint Benoit for high school.

We had 7-8 couples as friends, on the weekends whenever weather permitted we would go on picnics, sometimes with kids, and at other times meet up in homes, chat and play cards. After a certain year (I think around 1960), we bought weekly tickets to “Konak Sineması” (movie theater) so we saw a movie every week. We would go to the theater once a month, as well as the movies. In addition, there was the trend of “Muzikhol” [music hall] then. There we would be served food from a fixed menu and we would listen to the most famous singers of the time. On new year’s eve, we would always attend a ball outside of the house, we would eat, listen to music, dance and have fun till the morning, when we returned home in the morning, the girls would have woken up, we would eat breakfast together and then we would go to bed. Our daughters have always been very understanding, they would play quietly while we slept.

Our oldest daughter Sara dated Erol Penso for 8 years and married in Neve Shalom on March 1970. They always lived on the European side, in a modern house. They raised two sons named Ceki (1972) and Niso (1974). Our daughter Sara always wished to study in college, while she was raising her family, (1997) she entered the university placement exam which is very hard and got accepted to the French Language and Literature faculty in Istanbul University, graduated in 4 years. She has the right to translate and translates books and scientific articles. Their son Ceki has been married to a nice girl for two years, Niso on the other hand is engaged, G-d willing we will marry him in December. Currently we reside in the same apartment.

Our middle daughter Rosita married Jojo Balibarıssever (September 30th 1973), a chemical engineer who graduated from the Bosphorus University, in Neve Shalom after finishing high school... My son-in-law worked for long years with Charles Danon who owns the Istanbul branch of Guido Modiano, which is centered in Italy. In 1980, Mr. Guido offered my son-in-law a job in Italy since he was very happy with his work. In this way the family moved to Milan. Guido Modiano’s company manufactures fabric machines and my son-in-law would market them here, when they moved he started marketing them to the whole world. The company has a profit of 8% from each machine sold, my son-in-law, in addition to his fixed salary, (the boss likes him so much that) gets 1% of this profit. Each machine has a sale price of at least 1.5 million dollars (you can make the calculations). That is why their financial situation thank G-d is very healthy. Their two children Semi (1977) and Rifka (1976) are now grown up. Their son Semi works in a very important advertising company in Italy. Their daughter Rifka studied child psychology in a university in London. During that time she married Remi Menenson (Ashkenazi Jew, French origin) in 2004. They currently reside in London. Rifka works as a child psychologist in a Jewish school in London. Her husband Remi is  the head of Deutsche Orient Bank’s London branch. Remi’s mother is Jewish, father Catholic. This family unfortunately could not continue with their marriage and are divorced. Mme Murielle is a pediatrician, lives in Paris and is very religious, the father has settled in the United States and is remarried to a Christian. We met Mme. Murielle when she came to Istanbul on the occasion of the wedding.

Our youngest daughter Stella graduated from Bosphorus University with a degree in chemical engineering with outstanding achievement.  With the help of the Israeli government she did her masters and doctorate in “The Weismann Institute of Science” in Rehovot for 8 years. After graduating she sent all her diplomas to New York and applied for a job. Of course she was accepted, she has been working as an academic for 20 years while continuing her research. She is now a United States citizen and is single. She comes every summer to Istanbul for 3 weeks to see us.

As you can see, we have grown old, thank G-d for our children, they always look after us. We live in the same apartment as our oldest daughter Sara, she comes every day to check on us, and when the weather permits, takes us to either to eat seafood or have a cup of tea by the Bosphorus with our son-in-law and sometimes with the grandkids. We have been retired for a long time (January 1st, 1985), I get 520 thousand liras, my wife Erna gets 500 thousand liras from social security. (After the death of my father-in-law, the partners continued depositing his social security in his daughter Erna’s name, when she completed 5,000 work days, she had a right to retire.  In this way my wife also gets social security payments). The money just about covers the household expenses. We manage thanks to our daughters, we live in such a house. If not, we would have to live in Kasımpasa in a one room house, and live on carrots and potatoes. Thank G-d, they are all “reconaissante” [appreciative]. Rosita and Stella help us financially, Sarika and Erol help out financially as well as they can, but the moral help they give is boundless. Unfortunately, I have grown quite old, I have Parkinson's, tachycardia, shortness of breath and prostate problems, that is why I wake up depressed in the mornings, and on such days cannot say my morning prayers, even though I try, I cannot do it. I turn on the television, listen to some music, feel a little better, after having my breakfast I go into my office and read the newspapers, and cut out the articles I like and file them. Some nights I wake up around 4, go into the kitchen and make myself vegetable soup and carrot salad. Now I spend my time eating.

Glossary:

Avram Moisey Pinkas

Sofia 

Bulgaria 

Interviewer: Stephan Djambazov 

Date of interview: February 2005  

Avram Moisey Pinkas, 78, lives alone in a two-room flat on the last floor of a standard concrete block of flats in Musagenitsa - one of the nice Sofia’s residential areas. His wife Lilyana has died and his daughter Adriana lives with her two daughters in the USA, where she works. His daughter is divorced, but her ex-husband looks after Avram, as the latter says. Avram is a vigorous man, he doesn’t put much emphasis on his Jewish origin, and thinks his daughter doesn’t either. However, he keeps in touch with Jews in Sofia, mainly with his childhood friends, among whom is the famous Bulgarian theater director Leon Daniel, whom Pinkas meets every week. Otherwise, he almost never goes to the synagogue and the Jewish cultural club (Bet Am), which has become a very attractive place for many Sofia Jews now.  

My ancestors came somewhere from Central Europe yet during the Ottoman Yoke 1 here. Memoirs of an Austrian diplomat who arrived in Vidin in 1838 read that he was welcomed here by a Pinkas who was an interpreter at the Austrian Embassy in Vidin. The text also says that this Pinkas had already adapted himself to the surrounding Balkan situation and had already lost his European and Austrian ‘polish’. The roots of the Pinkas family in Bulgaria start from Vidin, go through Lom and reach Ruse. In a book about the Jews in Vidin I found the name of my grandfather who was something like a street vendor. I thought he was a trade intermediary in the grain crops business. The father of the famous Bulgarian painter Jules Pascin 2 (who lived and worked in Paris at the beginning of XX century) was in the wheat trade and I thought my grandfather worked for his company. But perhaps there is something I don’t know. My grandfather moved to Ruse from Lom. He was a middle-class man – when he arrived in Ruse he bought a house from a Turk. It was probably cheap because the Turk was to emigrate and the house was an adobe. My grandfather’s name was Mair [Moisey Pinkas], while my grandmother was Bea [Pinkas (nee Almozino)] – Beatrice. She was an intelligent woman. She used to read books in Ladino. At home, they spoke Spanish, but my grandfather could speak Bulgarian, too.  

My mother’s family came from Razgrad. Researchers of economy in Bulgarian territory of that period found the name of my maternal great-grandfather in some Turkish papers. His name was Sadak Geron and he was a guarantee to people who took loans. My grandmother told me that a long row of shops in the Razgrad’s main street was owned by her father. Sadak Geron was rich and helped debtors. When the Russian-Turkish war 3 kicked off, he got frightened and gave a bag of gold coins to each of his children, so that they would hide it. After that, he moved to live in Palestine. In old Hebrew Sadak or Sadik means ‘Saint’. He moved to Palestine after the Liberation of Bulgaria 4. My brother told me he found his traces there – a professor in the Jerusalem University was telling that a Sadak Geron helped him when he moved to Palestine, so that he could study and become a professor. My maternal grandfather Avram Geron was a trader – intermediary in the leather business in Razgrad. He used to travel around the villages in winter when people were sticking some of their livestock and he was buying the leather. But he didn’t have good luck with this undertaking. He had three daughters and a son. After the Liberation of Bulgaria from Ottoman Yoke in 1978 he moved to live in Ruse. My maternal grandmother’s name was Simha – an old Jewish name, something like the Bulgarian Sofia [Editor’s note: actually the name is of Greek origin (Sophia) and means ‘wisdom’]. She was a housewife and she couldn’t speak Bulgarian - she could speak Ladino and Turkish. But my grandmother and grandfather were no longer rich – in fact they were quite poor, because as my mother used to tell me – when they were in Ruse they didn’t have what to eat and my grandfather used to cook a salt of lemon with water instead of soup. They used to wear standard clothes. 

My father [Moisey (Bucco) Mayer Pinkas] was born in 1889 in Vidin. He completed his fourth grade in the primary school and started working as an employee at a trading company. At the beginning, he had to sweep the pavement most probably, as every freshman. I have seen a picture of him in a military uniform. I can’t say where he was in the World War I 5, but what is sure he was taken hostage by the English near Salonika (Greece). I have asked him what they were forced to do. ‘We had to clean the ship’ – he would simply say. Then he was liberated and came back to Ruse. Later, he found a job with a big company owned by Jews in Ruse, and step by step he was promoted to the position of a traveling tradesman. He was traveling between Gorna Oryahovitsa, Elena, Ruse, Sevlievo and Dryanovo and that’s how he found his clients. He was selling haberdashery goods of the ‘Obon Gu’ company (‘the good taste’). My aunt told me that once tradesmen from the country came to the company for which my father was working, and the son of the company’s owner tried to serve them, but they said they wanted my father to attend to them. They preferred him, because they trusted my Dad – everything what he had told them about the goods had turned out to be true. After that he and my uncle formed up their own enterprise, because they had already gained some clients. They worked as both retail and wholesale sellers. I remember my uncle (my mother’s brother) teaching me how to make parcels, how to fill in declarations and various forms.   

My father had a sister and two brothers. Chelebi Pinkas, who lived in Bucharest and Constanta, was younger then my father who was the eldest. Chelebi married in Silistra, before the town was annexed by Romania [after WWI], and had two daughters. He remained a Bulgarian citizen even after the town became part of Romania. He moved to Bucharest and then to Constanta, where he opened a clothes shop. In 1940, when Dobrudzha was regained by Bulgaria, Romanian authorities expelled him from the country because of his Bulgarian citizenship. So he, together with other people like him, were waiting at the border with Bulgaria, because Bulgaria didn’t want to let them in. My mother then went to Varna to meet with certain generals, even the regional governor and she managed to get permission for these people to be let into Ruse. Their luggage had arrived in the town long ago before them. Until 9th September 1944 they lived in Ruse, after which they went back to Romania. Later, my uncle suffered from ulcer and he had to undergo a surgery, which caused his death. 

My father’s other brother Albert Pinkas (Avram), who was the youngest, studied to become a rabbi in Germany. There he started singing in operettas and made records of evergreens translated into Bulgarian for the ‘Columbia’ records studio. That happened in the 1930s. When he came back to Bulgaria he found a business partner (because he didn’t have the money – he was poor) and they opened a factory for production of record disks. All the records were made in Germany. Even during the Hitler’s ruling he used to take whole orchestras to Germany to make records. In Bulgaria, the records made by ‘Simonavia’ company were somewhat dull. In 1939-1940 he went to Bucharest and left the company to his partner here, who robbed him. From Bucharest he moved to Belgrade where he opened another factory. When the German troops entered Serbia he was given 48 hours to leave the country. He had Iranian passport and was stopped at the border, because Bulgarians didn’t give him a transit visa. However he had a friend in Sofia - she was a designer and used to sew designer’s clothes for the ministers’ wives – she had a nice apartment in Sofia. So, when he called her she managed to take the Interior Minister Gabrovsky out of a session of the Council of Ministers and got a transit visa for Albert. He was let in, but at the station he was given a place with the transit passengers so he couldn’t get out of the departure lounge. Aunt Klara (my father’s sister) was then living in Sofia and went to see him, and she called my father. He immediately took the train in the evening, and got in Sofia in the morning where the two brothers saw each other for the last time. Albert went to Persia and after that – to Palestine. But he was captured by Englishmen and sent to a camp. After that he lived for a while in Israel, but he was not satisfied with the fact that he was not given the permission to export and import goods. Later he used to come to Bulgaria often – he had many friends here. Then he moved to Italy and spent his last years in Milan – he traveled around Europe as a trade intermediary. He used to offer everything – from diamond powder for polishing to women’s stockings.    

In my mother’s high school diploma it was written that she was born in 1904. But it is dubious, however, if this was her actual year of birth. It is ridiculous that my mother [Rashel Avram Pinkas (nee Geron)] couldn’t speak Bulgarian, but she had a diploma from a Bulgarian high school showing very good scores. She did have high school education, though, after which she worked in several offices, but she soon left them. I have asked her ‘Why?’ and she would say: ‘They wanted to take advantage of me.’ That was before she got married, and after it she became a housewife. 

My mother’s brother Yosif died of throat cancer. He used to smoke a lot. They were one brother and three sisters in the family. The eldest was Rebeca, who was a dressmaker. She married a Jew from Varna who later moved to Ruse where they lived. She was ill and stayed in bed, but always knew all the gossip from the neighborhood. Their father was a good man, but he also used to smoke much. He was a very professional accountant, though. The other sister, Ester, also married a widower with two children (a boy and a girl). His name was Zimmermann. She gave birth to her own child – Yosif who lived in Ruse. Her husband bought four shops in the town center and would always say that he would give each nephew a shop. But he died early. Yosif’s wife was not satisfied with her life because she had graduated from the Pedagogical Institute in Dupnitsa, but he never allowed her to become a teacher. They didn’t have children and my grandmother lived with them. She died shortly after my uncle. He was a very religious person – he had a luxurious prayer book – with incrustation and silk clothe for wrapping the book. We were always together with him on the high holidays. He used to come and collect all the nephews when there was a fair in Ruse and take us there. He would always buy something for each of us. After which we used to take a photograph of us all at the fair. When he got ill, he could no longer run his trade business and at the end - the cancer suffocated him. At that time our house had already been transformed into something like a store for the goods.

I have always wondered how my mother decided to marry a widower with two kids and my aunt told me: ‘She was in love with him.’ My mother was staying at the door when once my father came to negotiate something with her brother, and then he kissed her. My mother’s knees gave way beneath her. They had already known each other because they were some kind of distant relatives. My mother fell in love – Dad was a handsome man. However he was by 15 years older than her. And my mother married him in spite of the protests of her relatives. When my father died in 1945 he was 56, while Mum was 41, alone and with three children. They didn’t make difference between the children from his first marriage and us – we were equal and we felt each other as real brothers. The younger son [Mayer Moisey Pinkas] from his first wife died of cancer – he was a very good technician, he had golden hands as we say. For a long period of time he was denied his request to start working for the military complex in Israel, because he had been a member of the Union of Young Workers in Bulgaria 6. Finally they accepted him. After that, I remember him showing me some magazines where they praised him for something. The elder brother [Yakov Moisey Pinkas] did not have any profession. In 1948 he started working something in the accountancy department of ZHITI factory (for iron and wire). His wife was economist and in 1949 they decided to move to Israel. 

My mother and father had a religious marriage in 1925 most probably. In Ruse we lived in my paternal grandfather’s house. It was situated in the Jewish neighborhood. The house my grandfather Mair had bought was large, but it was an abode – it was built directly on the floor. There was a narrow entrance hall with doors on the both sides of it. At the end of it - two steps lead to the so- called living room. The floor was wooden, but the basement was beneath the living room and the room was cool in Ruse’s summer heaths. There was a nice windowpane that overlooked a beautiful large garden with many trees – it was green and shady. We had a big walnut tree, peach trees, apricot trees, morello-trees, plum trees and pear trees. My father used to make us dig beds so that we could grow vegetables, but this happened seldom. I remember that my parents’ bedroom was on the left, and there was another room behind it – narrow and long where housemaids were accommodated. Mum and Dad, however, decided to enlarge their bedroom and removed that room. We had four rooms together with the living room. The furniture was ordinary. My parents’ bedroom was however nice – white veneer with black edges. The beds for the children were metal with bedsprings. In one of the rooms there was a couch under the window where we had meals in winters. There was an armchair in my mother’s room, while in the living room there were some Vienna chairs on high slim legs. There was also a sofa with mirrors. There were many silver souvenirs, sideboards and other stuff. There was also running water in the house. The toilet was inside the house – in the room where the fireplace for the washing machine was located. However, there was no heating in the toilet and it was cold. There was a septic pit in the yard.   

We lived in this house, and my grandmother Simha with my uncle [Yosif Avram Geron] lived in another one – he always lived in rented houses. The houses he lived in were all nice because he was a tradesman of establishment. We lived with my paternal grandmother, because my grandfather had already died. I remember both my grandfathers very vaguely, because I was very young when they died. I remember the funeral of my grandfather Avram with the religious figures. I don’t remember the funeral of my other grandfather, though. Bulgarian Jews from the generation of my grandfathers were not so religious. Before that, they were a lot more religious. My grandfather had only a small beard, but it was quite standard. I can recall my grandmothers because I was nine or ten years old when they were still alive. When my sister [Elana (Suzana) Ben Yosef (nee Pinkas)] was born we were already five kids, and my grandmother lived alone in one room. My mother pressed dad to send his mother to live with his eldest son in Sofia. And her son did receive her but not in his house, because he had married a younger wife from a prominent Sofia family; he sent her to live with the mother of one cousin of theirs in Tsar Boris Street in a huge building with a yard called ‘Moskowitz Palace’ – it was built to be let to tenants.

We weren’t poor, but we weren’t rich either. I was wondering how Dad managed to pay the rent for his shop. He had a shop in the town center – in the main street. The house was a building, I had only read in the novels of – it was huge with stores in the second and the third floors. We used to sell haberdashery, clothes for curtains and curtain rods. My father was the first to import curtain rods from Germany – in the 1930s a tradesman from there came to Ruse and he ordered them. After that, almost every second household in the town had such curtain rods fixed – my brother was fixing them at the beginning, after that I joined them, too. Dad was also selling buttons and other things of the kind. Dad and uncle were working together at the beginning, but then they separated. I think this happened because Dad had a huge family, while my uncle lived alone with our grandmother – he didn’t have children. Dad needed more money because of the huge family – and he remained in the shop, where he devoted himself to retail sales, while my uncle opened a new one.

My mother always had a housemaid at home. I remember that when I got the scarlet fever, my mother made all my brothers stay with relatives and at home we were only three of us – my mother, the housemaid and I. Once I had a terrible nightmare – in my dream somebody wanted to cover me up with a big glass – there was a hand stretching through the window above my bed. I startled and began crying ‘Mum, I have a pee.’ She was sleeping then but she woke up and sent the housemaid to see what was wrong with me. She woke up on her turn, came to me and started shouting – ‘Misses, fire in the house!’ The chimney was burning – so we got up and began screaming: ‘Help!’ The fire brigade was just round the corner, they came quickly and put out the fire. After 1941 Jewish families were no longer allowed to have Bulgarians for servants. So my mother started hiring Gypsy women instead. On St. Dimitar’s day five to six girls would come with a negotiator to discuss their accommodation and wage. My grandfathers and grandmothers may have had servants, too, but I can’t say it for sure. In the Jewish neighborhood where we lived, there were predominantly Jews, but some Bulgarians and Turks lived there, too. We never had quarrels with them. Next to us lived a military doctor’s assistant – a Bulgarian, we used to call him uncle Ivan. It was he who would take care of us when some of us was ill – he carried out blood-letting or cupped us when some of us had got the flu. I don’t know if any of my grandfathers had served in the army. Next to us, there was a Turkish family living also, who sent me a huge pumpkin and baklava [Turkish sweet] as a gift for my bar mitzvah.   

I was born on 24th March in Ruse in 1927. My father’s first wife got ill and died in hospital in Bucharest. Her sons, Yakov and Mayer, were five and six years old when dad married my mother. I am my mother’s eldest son; a year and a half after me my brother Marko was born and much later, in 1934, - my sister Suzana, as we used to call her, but her birth name was Sultana. When she married in Israel her mother-in-law and father-in-law changed her name to Elana – so that she would have a Jewish name. 

I attended a kindergarten a year before I became a schoolboy – the kindergarten was at the Jewish school. I started studying Ivrit there. We had a teacher who couldn’t speak Bulgarian, because she had come from abroad. At home, my mother and the maidservant looked after us. We had a big yard where we used to play.  The ‘Maccabi’ organization 7 also had a big yard and we used to play football there. On Sundays, we used to go the gym hall. We had a sports community and we had plans for building a gym hall. It was almost constructed, but never finished, so it had neither baths nor changing rooms.  However, the gym hall had all the required equipment – parallel bars, horizontal bars, wall bars and we used to go there to play from an early age.  

There was an Itzko Aizner who later made of us members of the Union of Young Workers – he was in charge of looking after children at the gym hall on Sundays. He had an amateur cine-projector, and managed to find from somewhere silent films and showed them to us. He explained them and as a whole he made fabulous performances. I liked Ivrit at the Jewish school, although I didn’t understand everything. I also liked Bulgarian language, grammar and the novels from the readers. I got an especially strong impression from the novels about Levski 8. We used to study Ivrit and Jewish history, which was called Toldot. There are some people who think that the name of the Spanish town of Toledo comes from Toldot - and that it had been a Jewish town. We used to study the Old Testament in Ivrit, and we studied Ivrit from the Old Testament. There was a teacher who had taught my uncle, too. His name was Bucco Delarubisa and he used many Turkish and Ladino sayings while speaking. There was one Jewish school in the town – with between 20 and 25 pupils in a class. It was a four-year primary school and a three-year junior high school, after which the pupils had to attend the Bulgarian high school.  

In my childhood years, Ruse had around 3,000 Jews out of some 50,000 inhabitants. But now I remember a lot of Jewish shops in the town’s main street. Next to my father’s one was the shop of the brothers Aladjem, next to which was the bookstore Beniesh. It was very special because the owner was receiving German and Italian editions. During the Abyssinian War there were illustrated books with pictures of Abyssinia there. Next to it there were also some other Jewish shops - Khalef who was selling hats, opposite to it there was a glassware shop, another Jew was selling shoes in the same street – and I remember his sons continued their studies in the German school even after all other Jews withdrew their children from there after 1933. 

The Jewish community was very united. There was a Jewish municipality that collected certain taxes according to the financial status of the respective family. There was a rich Jew who was probably the only one to have a private steamship – tugboat as well as barges. His name was Lazar B. Aron. He was a big shot and didn’t want to pay taxes to the Jewish municipality. He even bribed journalists to write articles against our municipality.  He used to wear an exquisite, nicely designed light grey suit with a black belt and a bowler hat.  

In Ruse there was a big synagogue, and another one, smaller, midrash. There was another one – Ashkenazi synagogue - it is a club of the Shalom organization now 9; it had been transformed into a sports hall after 9th September 1944 10. The walls of the old synagogue were one meter wide, there was also a huge chandelier – brought perhaps from Austria – it was a luxurious one. I don’t know if the synagogue is still functioning now because it is all laths and plaster already. The small one was destroyed so that a street to the river might pass – it was before 1944. The club Bnai Brith was next to this synagogue – it was a very elegant house where weddings, balls and other celebrations were organized – it had a nice huge ballroom. Opposite to it, there was another big house, whose ground floor was hired by ‘Malbish Arumim’ organization (which means ‘provides clothes to the poor’). Middle class people – traders for example – used to gather there on Sundays to play cards; they entertained themselves. In the yard of the Jewish school there was a small building made of bricks – we used to hang the birds for Yom Kippur that had been stuck with a thin knife by the shochet. He hung them on these hooks so that the blood may drain off them. The school was destroyed in 1940 or in 1941 during the earthquake in Vrancha, Romania, and no access to these buildings was allowed for a certain period. The ‘Hashomer Hatzair’ organization 11 was also situated there. 

My parents were relatively religious. We marked the holidays. On Chanukkah I would kindle the chanukkiyahs and read a prayer in Ivrit – I was good at Ivrit and when I first went to Israel, the people were surprised I could speak it. When I became 13 I was asked to say my prayer in the synagogue, because I was good at it. So I was reading: ‘A present for the school canteen, a present for somebody else…’, while the rabbi was whispering in my ear: ‘Ten eggs for the rabbi’ and I said it aloud: ‘Ten eggs for the rabbi’. After which, at noon, Dad asked me: ‘What have you said: What ten eggs for the rabbi? He came immediately to take them!?’ On the high holidays, all the family used to go to synagogue.  

Bar mitzvah was a great holiday. My elder brother had his bar mitzvah in the club for the middle-class people – he had many guests and received many presents. At that day, I was introduced to a maritime captain who had saved my brother’s life in a trip to the isle, when my brother had dropped in the water and could have drowned. On bar mitzvah the boy who was celebrating had to read something as a promise.

As a young boy, I didn’t feel any anti-Semitism. There were several jokes of course – you go to the cinema and somebody would banter with you. Among the Jewish organizations, ‘Hashomer Hatzair’ was very active and every year they used to organize ‘hashara’ – they went camping, where they were marching and getting prepared for emigration to Israel, to cultivate the land there. They would usually go to Obraztsov Chiflik [‘model farm’] near Ruse. Some of the poorest people and more educated intellectuals used to attend their gatherings. Most of us, however, were members of ‘Maccabi’. On 6th May, St George’s day, 12 the day celebrated by the Bulgarian Army, every time we had representatives of the Jewish school, or ‘Maccabi’. We marched in white shirts and blue trousers. Everybody marched this day – Ukrainians, scouts, Armenian organizations, even legionnaires 13 in their brown uniforms. We were all together on St George’s day. There was also a Spanish ambassador, Aftalion was his name, who appeared in a three-angle hat, white feathers and a rapier. The Italian one also attended the ceremony. The teacher in gymnastics at school used to start a patriotic song and he made us marching while singing. I was seven years old during the putsch of 1934 [14 (see: Georgiev, Kimon)]. Ruse was all blocked – that I remember very clearly.

I had some books at home, but not many. My elder brother Yakov (Jacques) had more books because he had got influenced by the leftist ideas during his study at the high school. I remember he had books by Maxim Gorky 15. I had looked through Yakov’s ‘Brown Book’ for the persecution of Jews when I was still a teenager. He used to receive the newspaper of the Youth’s Union. When he graduated from the high school, Dad sent him to Romania to study industrial chemistry, because my uncle (my father’s brother Chelebi) lived in Constanta, Romania. I remember that my father used to read something before going to bed, but I can’t remember what exactly. Our family received the ‘Utro’ daily and some other newspapers. I learnt to read and write from the newspapers – I loved reading them. When once I found newspapers from 1927, the year I was born, I read them to see what had happened this year.   

When I was a child, once we went to Varna – we were all of us together with my brothers. My sister had not been born yet. Once the whole family went to Varshets, near Oryahovo – we went by train and a car. We took a taxi from Varshets back to Oryahovo where we took the steamship to Ruse. I remember the automobile stinking of petrol and rubber. When we grew up a bit, Mum took us (my brothers and me) to Dryanovo where we stayed with a tradesman who was a friend of my father’s. We visited Dryanovo Monastery and stayed for the night there – it was very pleasant. In 1941, if I remember rightly, my mother went to Kyustendil’s mineral baths. We accompanied her, of course. But before that we had visited Bankya, near Sofia, with my parents. It must have been in 1936.

In Ruse people were very musical. There was a Jewish musical group ‘David’, that possessed all the needed instruments to form a philharmonic orchestra. In the 1930s some rich Jewish boys formed a jazz band and they ordered the instruments directly from America together with the parts. Every year or at least once in two years this band performed an operetta. There was one operetta ‘Karmuzinella’ – directed by the then-famous Bulgarian actor Matyu Makedonski. He directed also ‘Sunny Boy’ by the American singer Al Johnson. Matyu staged the play and the whole town was singing ‘Sunny Boy’ that season.

There were various traders in Ruse – they were in the cloths business, haberdashery, ironware – there was even a tradesman who had put a sign ‘Industrial Store’. There were many craftsmen – four or five tinsmiths. One of them was an Ashkenazi Jew – he was an expert in covering roofs with tin sheets. Perhaps he had been in the town since the period of the Russian-Turkish War because Russians used to cover their roofs with tin sheets. One of his sons was a glazier. Some younger men who had graduated from the technical school had opened their own workshops with one or two lathes, too. There was also a brush maker. One of the best dressmakers and tailors in the town was a Jew again. There was also a man who had a private bank, but he closed it and started selling cloths. There were also two or three Jewish lawyers. We had five doctors. Everywhere in the neighborhood, we had running water in the houses and electricity as well, but there was no sewerage system. 

Friday was the market day. My father used to go shopping to the central market; there was another one – smaller. My mother had to cook for seven people these days. We had meat to our meals as much as two times a week. Once a week it was beef, the other time it was chicken or some poultry.  The rest of the time we had Lenten fare. However, Mum knew dozens of different vegetable meals – for example she could make balls of spinach, unions and potatoes. The meat was only kosher. The rabbi used to go to the slaughterhouse and put his seal. So when you go to the butcher’s and see this seal, you can simply say ‘I want from this’. We would buy from different tradesmen – it depended on which way would Dad come home after he closed his shop at 12 o’clock on Friday. He could not pass through the butcher’s, he could pop in the grocer’s. There were several such grocers – Jews whom we used to buy from. When he was to buy something, he could decide to buy us a whole cart with watermelons for example - he hires a cart, selects the watermelons and we all go home to unload it. The same happened when we had to buy logs for the winter. Turks from Deliorman [a region in Northeastern Bulgaria, around the town of Shumen, with a significant Turkish population] came to Ruse to sell their wood. We used logs and coal for heating. There was one wood stove in the wall between the two children rooms. My mother and father had another one in their room.   

My father was a broad Zionist and every time voted for the broad socialists. But he was never a member of a party – he was just a broad Zionist. My parents’ relationships with the neighbors were good. Their friends were mostly Jews. However, there was a period when they used to gather with another group of friends including the head of the State Security Service in Ruse – Savakov was his name. Every Sunday my parents would go somewhere – they used to play cards when visiting somebody in the afternoons. They used to gossip – it was a group of seven or eight Jewish families. They played a game with cards called ‘remi’. The played poker, too. They played on money bets, but very small sums – stotinki [Bulgarian equivalent of cents]. A man from that group had some relatives in Paris, while another one, who was a money-changer, had some money to be exchanged and the exchange rate in Paris was very favorable, so he gave the money to the first man. The latter, however, gambled them away in a casino in Monte Carlo and he lost the courage to come back to Bulgaria. Because he had to give the money back. His family – three kids and a wife - lived in very poor conditions here, but all their Jewish friends helped them while he was in France. And after a year or so, they decided they should bring him back from France. They did not remit his debt, but they bought a kiosk for him, where seamen – Czechs, Hungarians, Germans used to exchange their money. So he bound himself to return the money step by step taking care of his family in the meantime. It was a kind of friendship that deserves mentioning. 

I was never a victim of anti-Semitic reactions from the part of my teachers, but from pupils – yes. When I was at the high school there was a small legionnaire that tried to banter with me, but we had a Bulgarian friend – strong and well-built member of the Union of Young Workers – he just took him by the armpits and lifted him up after which the boy ran away. Later we became very close friends with this Bulgarian boy who helped me then. In the third grade of the junior high school I took private lessons in Bulgarian grammar. I was not good at all at this subject and we had a very refined teacher in grammar, a Bulgarian woman, who agreed to give private lessons to me. When I studied at the Jewish school, my friends were Jews. Even in our group of UYW we were Jews only. But at the high school I had one or two Bulgarians for friends. We still meet with them now.  Apart from our school responsibilities, we regularly went to the cinema. There was a cinema in the neighborhood, called ‘Odeon’. We often watched films there. There was a total of four cinemas in the town. We used to watch American films, but I liked the French ones, too. There was an American sequel series ‘Andy Hardy’. Mickey Rooney [a popular American actor] was playing Andy Hardy and he was starring in each of the films in the series: ‘Andy Hardy in New York’, ‘Andy Hardy…’ - God knows where… He was a very good actor.  

We used to gather sometimes on birthdays – we were both girls and boys. We also used to dance - we had a record disk with dance music and we used to listen to it all day long. The gramophone was a mechanic one. During the war a café was opened in a shop and it became something like the Jewish café. We used to gather there. The Maccabi organization had a cultural section, too. We had a group leader there and he used to make us play ‘court sessions’ – we had to write our speeches in advance. It was interesting. Once a boy from Haskovo came to lecture on the sex subject. 

I started swimming in the Danube River when I was 9 – before that I was weak and often ill. After the age of nine I started getting stronger. But we never visited beaches. There was a wooden building with two wooden swimming pools next to it – the first was for men, the second one – for women. The river water flowed into these pools. It was not until we became 15 or 16 when we started swimming in another place – it was outside Ruse and it had sand and the riverbed was flatter. It was after 1944 when they opened a beach with a big opened swimming pool for both men and women. The river then was already dirty. Swollen corpses of animals floated on it and tree trunks were carried perhaps by some floods.   

In summers, together with my parents we used to go to Obraztsov Chiflik or to Lipnik, where there is a park now. These days, however, there was only a spring and a forest. We would wake up at 3 o’clock in the morning and walk the 12-kilometer distance to Lipnik. Sometimes we used to go only teenagers there. When the economy started to recover in 1933-1934, the whole group of friends around my father used to hire a bus to go there. Then they could afford it to go by bus to Obraztsov Chiflik, too. There was also an Austrian steamship agency that used to organize various celebrations and offered river cruises for 24th May 16. And then we, the children, received Vienna ice-cream with two biscuits into it. We also visited the hunter’s park in Ruse – we used to have diner on Sundays there. There was a bus line to that place. We didn’t go there regularly – just sometimes. There was also a train that had a stop at Obraztsov Chiflik – it was the train for Varna. My friends and I were on our way to Obraztsov Chiflik on 22nd June 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Some students from the Agricultural School broke the news for us when we came to Obraztsov Chiflik. I was 15 then. 

The anti-Semitism in Bulgaria came from the institutions and the laws that were adopted. The Law for Protection of the Nation 17 put restrictions for us. My father as a trader had to pay a one-off tax that swallowed his capital. He had to close his shop, because no Jews were allowed to run stores in the main street. However, the students who were studying at the high school were not expelled from there. But the Sofia students who were interned 18 to Ruse from Sofia were not let to study in the high school. We were not allowed to walk in the town’s main street, we could only stay in our neighborhood. We used to go for walks in David Street which was the central one in our neighborhood. Our group of friends had chosen another street where to walk – it was a smaller one. We were around ten of us and the writer Dragomir Asenov was one of us [The real name of Dragomir Asenov is Jacques Melamed (1926-1981): a writer and playwright. Dragomir Asenov is a literary pseudonym and not a changed name. He spent six years in an orphanage. He graduated university after World War II. In the early period of his work he wrote a lot of pamphlets, articles and features for the press. The late works of the writer are devoted to Bulgaria's history and the modern times. His most famous works are his plays 'Birthday' (1964), 'Roses for Doctor Shomov' (1966), 'Hot nights in Arcadia' (1970), which were staged in Bulgaria and abroad] – he used to lecture us; there were other interesting people, too. We used to gather at somebody’s home, mainly at the houses of two of the girls. At our gatherings we didn’t only have mere talks. Our parents approved of these meetings because they could see we were serious people. We had to wear those yellow stars. The curfew hour was set to 9 p.m. By that time in the evening we had to be back home and we couldn’t go out after that. The so-called legionnaire boys came to our neighborhood to have fights with us. Some more strict nationalists used to curse us at school. We continued studying at the high school, but in 1942 the high school was dismissed and we were sent to our houses to hide from the bombardments. I had then only two years before graduation. And we resumed our studies yet in 1944. They didn’t change our names – we had, however, four names. Instead of Avram Moisey Pinkas I became Avram Moisey Mayer Pinkas. They just added our grandfather’s names to the three we already had. We had yellow identity cards, where the four names were written.      

In 1942-1943 I started working for a young Jewish man – his father had a cardboard workshop. He was making dressing-cases of cardboard and leather. There were mirrors in them and room for combs. I worked for him for several months until one day I came back home and told Dad we could make such things alone. He had long been despaired – no jobs for us, Mum had let all the rooms in the house – some relatives had come to live there because they had been interned from Sofia, as well as a man from Ruse together with his wife from Romania. And when my father heard what I had said he uttered: ‘Let’s see.’ So my brother and I made some of these dressing-cases, he took them and he went out to the bazaar. When he came back he was fluttering with excitement: ‘We are starting, we are starting’ he shouted. After that, he bought mirrors, cut them into smaller ones and we started producing these cases. He came back to life – he was a tradesman. And it was this way that we managed to patch up the situation somehow because Dad had to take loans before that - my uncle Chelebi had helped him for a certain period.  

In 1943 I was involved in the so-called Cherven Conspiracy. There was a group of Jews who went underground and the members of the Union of Young Workers gave me money to buy them windproof torches, medications and other useful stuff. We collected also some clothes and put them into a suitcase or two. One of us took a suitcase to the baker’s where someone had to come and take it, but nobody came and the baker called the police. They took the suitcase and asked the parents of those who had gone underground to identify the clothes. I had put three or four of my father’s winter undershirts in that suitcase. At noon my aunt came (her son Mois was among the arrested underground revolutionaries) and said: ‘When I saw these undershirts I was about to lose consciousness’ – she had immediately got aware of whose that clothes were, but she had said nothing. After that, more than one hundred people were detained, because the underground revolutionaries who had been arrested, were forced to give away all the people who had helped them in the region. 

We were arrested, too. Of course, we were of no interest to the police, but we were set free after we spent some time under custody and we got a lot of hiding. We were arrested seven or eight people among whom was Moil Levi, the surgeon who later made the by-pass operation of Lyuben Berov in Israel [Lyuben Berov was Prime Minister of Bulgaria in 1992-1994]. We were arrested together with him one morning and we were set free together, after they made a speech for us. However, we were released on recognizance not to leave. One day they called our parents and told them to show up the next day at the port at seven in the evening. It was June 1943 and we thought we were to be deported. However, we were interned to the school in Somovit, where they had organized a camp – it was my father, my mother, my younger brother and sister, and I, because my elder brothers were sent to forced labor camps 19. It was such a starvation then! We thought the barges were waiting for us to deport us. Besides – all the Jews from the inland were interned to places near the Danube River. It looked like as if this was the goal – convenient places for future deportation. We stayed there for a while after which we were set free – only several families were released, though. There was an officer there who was beating even old women, he was slapping us in an effort to scare us. He was replaced by a lawyer in a police uniform – who was milder – and then we got a permission to go to the Danube under escort to have a bath now and then. Later they moved the camp to Kailuka 20 near Pleven – where the arson of the bungalows happened and several old people were burnt in the fire. Authorities said it was an unintended fire and after that everybody was set free.       

When the Bagryanov’s cabinet came into office shortly before 9th September 1944 [Ivan Bagryanov was Prime Minister from 1st June 1944 till 2nd September 1944] and the ban for traveling was cancelled, I set off for Shumen. My brother was working in the forced labor camp on the road to Veselinovo. So I went to Shumen, and from there I got to Smyadovo by train, where from I walked to Veselinovo. My brother was so excited when he saw me. I stayed there for the night and the next day I set off back to Shumen, where I stayed for a while. On 8th September 1944 in the afternoon we went to the building of the town’s jail when the political prisoners were set free. Some friends of mine and I decided to go to Gorna Oryahovitsa by train where we expected to meet some other friends who were set free from the Pleven’s prison. On 9th September 1944 we met some acquaintances and we were off to Ruse together with them. A spontaneous meeting happened at every station. However – the train stopped at a point 30 kilometers away from Ruse – the Russians had entered the country and had blocked the railway line. So we set off on foot – in Dve Mogili [Two Hills] village some communists found a cart for our luggage - and we walked to Ruse where we got back in the evening.    

I was a police officer after 9th September 1944, I guarded the building of the regional government – I stayed there for the night too, I had a gun. It was for a month or so. After which I took up my high school education again – the secretary of the regional government had called for us and had said: ‘Now, go to study!’ We were paid a monthly policeman’s wage and we took up our high school education again. I had been in some amateur artist activities under the guidance of theater actors yet from the period of my high school. I used to hold performances for the workmen – I was reciting verses and such things. We formed up the Mayakovsky 21 club there and the club continued its existence in Sofia at the House of Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship organization when we moved to study at universities in the capital. Before that my father had formed twice joint-venture companies with partners, and his partners cheated him twice. Dad opened a small haberdashery shop after 9th September 1944 and when he died in 1945 the shop was to be run by my elder brother, but he found a job in Ruse’s ZHITI (‘Iron and Wire Industry’ – a plant for barbed wire and nails) and so my mother had to take care of the shop. But she couldn’t manage it. Finally, she closed the shop and started selling all kinds of things from home. At a time she was letting some parts of the house – to a motorist from Navigation Maritime Bulgaria and his wife – they were living in two of the house’s rooms. Even so, my mother lived in poor conditions.   

When I graduated from the high school I tried to start working something, but I was an amateur. I changed many jobs when I finally decided to apply for the theater school in Sofia - there was still no VITIZ (Higher Institute of Theatrical Art) these days. [In 1947 The Theater School, following a decree of the National Assembly, was transformed into DVTU (Public Higher School of Theater), later known as VITIZ (Higher Institute of Theatrical Art) during the communist regime and as NATFIZ (National Academy of Theater and Film Arts) after 10th November 1989.]. I used to prepare myself for admission together with Leon Daniel with whom we were friends from Ruse – we had lived in neighboring houses there. I applied for the school in 1947 and I was admitted to enroll in the first master class of Philip Philipov [a famous Bulgarian theater director]. I did not receive scholarship, because D.B. Mitov (journalist and intellectualist) had called the Jewish boys and told us (we were 12 of us) ‘Turn your scholarships down, so that more students may get scholarships, the Consistory will give you money anyway.’ So we agreed with him, but later the Consistory stopped our money – the other students could afford to buy watches and we lived in poverty - I have had tea with bread for supper. My friends and I were living in a nice rented flat – but we couldn’t pay the rent – actually we bilked the owners with the rent for three or four months. After that, I failed my exams and I had to go back to Ruse, because there were no make-up exams these days. I took up amateur artistic activities with a company in Ruse. After a while, it became a paid position with the Dimitrov’s Youth’s Union [22 (see: Komsomol)]. 

That’s how I spent 1948 and in 1949 I applied anew, this time to study staging. I was admitted again. And I failed my first-year exams again. The class tutor was Georgi Kostov. One day I met Philip Philipov in the street in Sofia and he told me: ‘Oh, Mois – that’s how he used to call me - you have ‘poor’ (2) [out of 6] in staging, but you have ‘good’ (4) in acting. You know, I will let you in the acting class again.’ The same day I met Georgi Kostov: ‘Oh, Pinkas, he said, the first year in staging is really difficult – sketches, things. I will write ‘satisfactory’ (3) to you – next we’ll have parts from plays – it’s easier.’ I told him of what Philipov had told me just before minutes, and Kostov seemed satisfied: ‘Oh, really, very good, very, very good.’ So I continued my studies in the class taught by Philipov. The last year of my studies Radoi Ralin [Radoi Ralin (1923-2004), penname of Dimitar Stoyanov, was one of the greatest Bulgarian satirists during the totalitarian period] came to VITIZ to search for young students. I turned up immediately at the editorial office of the ‘Starshel’ [‘Hornet’] satiric weekly where he was working then. Then he told me that the newspaper celebrated its anniversary every year – in the form of public reading usually – but he asked if we could think of something more theatrical. ‘Of course, we could’, I said. Then Zahari Petrov and Vasil Aprilov joined us with the question: ‘Where should we start from?’ I told them they already had it in the newspaper and suggested to start from the foreign policy articles. The newspaper then had a regular Friday material ‘Ridgeway in Europe’ – Ridgeway was the General Secretary of NATO then. So we made up several sketches – Ridgeway in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Turkey. And that was how we started. 

We did create a play – every evening after the usual study exercises at VITIZ we gathered to rehearse the new performance – it was late in the evening after 10.30 p.m. – the authors watched us, corrected the text and on the other day we would rehearse again at the editorial offices of ‘Starshel’. I invited some colleagues, because Radoi wanted more actors – he wanted it to be a theater. I created the roles myself – I used to read the newspaper and pick up characters. A bit later Philip told my colleagues at VITIZ I had passed the final state exam because I had managed to create a performance out of nothing. The first night came out in 1953, after Stalin’s death – after that we played it in many theaters and we were paid some money from the entrance tickets. We had a very good manager. We made a total of 16 performances, but then someone complained about certain passages in the text and Valko Chervenkov [Prime Minister and General Secretary of the Bulgarian Communist Party at the time (1950-1956)] called for Chelkash [Starshel’s editor-in-chief] and told him: ‘You’d better occupy yourselves with the newspaper, there are people who will do the theater.’ That is how the performances were stopped – but it was a brilliant show – the theaters were overcrowded.  

We graduated in 1953 and we had to fulfill our military duty as candidate-officers at the military school in Kyustendil. When we came back in August, we were called by Slavcho Vasev [a journalist and one of the people in charge of the cultural issues at the Ministry of Culture] – and he sent us to Dimitrovgrad to form a theater there. So I set off for Dimitrovgrad. I married in the summer of 1954. My wife was then studying industrial chemistry in Sofia. We knew each other yet from the Sofia period of the Mayakovsky club. She, Lilyana Kirilova Mandicheva, was one of the singers at the club. In the middle of the theater season (1954-1955) I left Dimitrovgrad and came back to Sofia where I couldn’t find a job. Ivan Bashev, who was then Minister of Culture, did not allow Albert Angel to hire me at the Selski [Village] Theater, situated in the Sofia town center opposite the Sofia University 23, because I had left the Dimitrovgrad Theater.   

So I stayed unemployed for a year. After that I was employed with the Selski Theater – we were traveling around the country and I could send money to my wife. It was like that until 1959 when I told her I was not going to play again for the Selski Theater. It happened that Vili Tsankov [famous Bulgarian stage director; at that time director of the Burgas Theater] let me join the Burgas Theater company, where my friend Leon Daniel was the stage director. Leon had assigned me a nice role in ‘The Death of Sisyphus’, but I came late from Israel where I had gone to visit my mother and brothers. My mother, sister and one of my brothers moved to live there in 1948 [24 (see: Mass Alliyah)]. In 1949 my eldest brother (who was married and had a child) emigrated there together with my younger brother who was studying here mechanical engineering. He continued his education in Israel. 

I myself didn’t want to go to Israel because I wanted to become an actor. I couldn’t even imagine to go there and be an actor, although later I found in some of the largest Israeli theaters some Bulgarian actors who had been interns in Bulgarian amateur companies. They had neither graduated from a theater academy as I, nor spoke Ivrit. So most probably I would have been in those theaters, if I had gone there. So be it. I didn’t want to go, because all my friends were here, in Bulgaria – Leon Daniel, Dragomir Asenov, some others. We were inseparable yet from our childhood years. Leon was born in Ruse, while Dragomir had been interned to Ruse together with his family. 

I visited Israel for the first time in 1959. We were let to go, but my daughter, Adriana Pinkas, had to stay here with her grandmother. She was born in 1958. It was a hard year for my wife – she was pregnant – but she did her state exams. My wife and I stayed in Israel for a month and a half. She had to meet my mother, my brothers and relatives. We visited Israel once more in 1990.    

So, I came late because of my visit to Israel and Leon Daniel had given the part to Leda Tasseva [a famous Bulgarian actress], and I almost didn’t play this season. But at the end of it the theater had some problems on ideological reasons and 16 of the actors were hired by other theaters. Nobody took me, though. So one evening we were out to a restaurant in Burgas with the cinema director Nikola Korabov and I asked him: ‘Why don’t you take me in the cinema?’ He said they really needed assistant directors, but the candidates were asked to pass a test. I asked him if he could help me with the preparation for the test, he said ‘yes’ and did his best after that. I applied for the position and passed the test. I asked the commission to write me a certificate that I had passed the test – and I brought it to Karalambov, the newly appointed director of the Burgas Theater. I needed to show it to him, because as a member of the Bulgarian Communist Party, they were not allowed to let me leave the theater. But the new position was an open one and the test I had passed was a reason enough to let me go.   

Well, I had my leave and I stayed in Sofia for four or so months when I was in the variety show until Sharleto [the cinema director Lyubomir Sharlandjiev] invited me as an assistant director for his first film ‘Chronicles of the Feelings’. So I worked there for five months and after that I found myself jobless again. After that I was an assistant to the director Georgi Alurkov. Then I got a permanent job with the film center as an assistant director. The Piskov family [cinema directors Irina Aktasheva and Hristo Piskov] invited me as a second director for ‘Monday Morning’. After that I became a man of age – over 40 years – and I said to myself: is the assistant director’s job something I would like to do – to co-ordinate actors, to find people, to organize mass scenes. No, it wasn’t for me. So I started searching for topics for shorts and popular science films. And I found my place in the Sofia Studio for Popular Science Films where I worked until retirement. I worked there although one of the directors there, Chukovski, was a kind of an anti-Semite. I made between 20 and 30 films and I retired in 1987.     

My Jewish origin was not an obstacle, because I haven’t put much emphasis on it. When Bulgaria cancelled its diplomatic relationships with Israel I attended a gathering where a lot of bullshit was said – but what could one do – you had to listen. My daughter was not allowed to go to Israel when she graduated from the high school – they were afraid she was to marry there. But when she got married in Bulgaria she was allowed to go there together with her husband. It happened before 1989. We hardly brought her up in accordance with the Jewish traditions. Now she lives in America together with her two daughters. Her ex-husband is in Sofia and works as a tradesman. They got divorced. She is now looking after her children and he is looking after me. We haven’t observed the Jewish traditions. We may have eaten matzah from time to time. I have occasionally visited the synagogue. 

My life hasn’t changed much after the democratization process that started in 1989 25  – I don’t work any more, so I can’t feel the unemployed man’s worries. Now I read books and I have a group of friends – we meet with the brother of Dragomir Asenov – he is an expert at the oncology institute in Sofia – we have been friends with him yet from our childhood years in Ruse. Every Friday I have dinner with Leon Daniel, we just have a sip and talk. There is another Jewish family I visit. My wife died at home of cancer. The ‘Joint’ 26 association used to pay some money for the medicines. My pension is 160 levs [around 80 USD]. I rarely go to the synagogue and Bet Am 27. I have received aid from the German ‘Claims Conference’ - they paid around 7,000 EUR in three installments. I still have from this money and I don’t waste it – I bought the land lot of the summer house in Staro Selo village, and I went to America to visit my daughter – and I think I can still count on some of this money for two or three years. 

Translated by Alexander Manuiloff 

Glossary 

Sarah Rutkauskene
Vilnius
Lithuania
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: October 2005

I was told about Sarah Rutkauskene in the Jewish community of Kaunas. I asked her for an interview and she instantly agreed to it. I came in her apartment. She is living with her daughter Lina. Her apartment is in the building constructed in the 1970s. Sarah is a rather elderly lady of sound mind. She gladly communicated with me. At times during our conversation I understood that her memory would fail her, so I assisted her with my questions which helped rebuild the verity of the story. Sarah accepted me in her room, where moved after war. She was sitting on an old couch. Her bed was not made, as she kept to bed almost all the time. Today is Sarah’s birthday and sometimes we had to stop when the children and grandchildren came with presents and dainties to congratulate Sarah. The apartment looked ramshackle, showing that was occupied by elderly ladies who had no neither efforts nor means to keep it clean and organized. I also congratulated Sarah on her birthday and wished her health, well being, quiet life and 100th jubilee.

My family background
Growing up
During the war
After the war
GLOSSARY:

My family background

My maiden name is Klug. I was given a double name Sarah Polya. I was named after paternal grandmother who died at parturition a long time ago, when she was 22. Mother’s relatives were against naming me after her as they said that I would be doomed for a short life. (editor’s note: according to the Jewish tradition, the newly born baby was supposed to be named after deceased, nevertheless it was a bad omen to name a baby after the person who died young.) My father was persistent. I had a long life. I am 89.

My paternal grandfather Benjamin Klug, born in 1859, lived in some hamlet, where he tilled the land. He had a lot of land, where he and field hands were working. Benjamin was married thrice. I do no know anything about the first wife. He had two grown-up daughters from the first marriage. I saw them couple of times when I was little. My grandmother Sarah Polya was his second wife. She died when giving a birth to the third baby- my dad. When the guys grew up, they needed to get a good education. Benjamin sold his land, house and a husbandry and bought a house in a small town Jelva, not far from Ukmerge [about 70 km from Vilnius]. My father spent his adolescence. I was born and raised there as well.

Our town was situation in a picturesque place on the river scroll. On one of the hills , at the place, where the river turned, there was a town and on another one there was a village, which was mostly Jewish families lived here. As a rule they were tradesmen and craftsmen. There were the stores in the downtown. Some of them sold manufacture goods, other groceries and pharmaceutical products. There were workshops here- tailors’, cobblers’, hatters’, glazers’ and joiners’. It appeared that the representatives of all crafts lived in Jelva. They Jews and Lithuanians not merely got along, but they were friends and trusted each other. Often, Lithuanians and Poles could not pay for the products purchased in the store. Then the surname and the amount of debt were entered in the book and in the autumn after harvesting the debtors were supposed to come to store and pay back the debt. Nobody was dishonest or fraudulent with the owners of the store.

My grandfather Benjamin Klug was a merchant. He was a grain trader. He did not have his own warehouse. Usually he went from village to village and made agreement to buy the grain from them in the fall. The grain purchased from the peasants, was taken by Benjamin to Ukrmerge in a cart. He sold it to grain traders there and had pretty good interest. I remember his wife vaguely. She had lived with us for several years and died at an elderly age.

After his wife’s death grandpa lived with one of his daughters from the first marriage, but he often called on us. He loved me very much as I was the elder granddaughter of his son. I even remember how he took me for a walk in the forest, where we made a hut. Then he put the berries on a white sheet of paper and pretended to be a chicken, which was nibbling on them and I burst into laughter. Grandpa Benjamin was loved by everybody. He was of short height, athletic, always neat and tidy. He always wore kippah and tallith when he went to the synagogue on Saturday. In summer 1922 grandpa took a usual trip to the village to agree on the grain. He felt unwell and asked a peasant for a glass of water. He had been dead by the time the peasant brought the water. He died from heart stroke instantly at the age of 63. Benjamin was taken to Jelva, where he was known and loved by people.  His body was taken to his daughter’s house. When my mother took me in her hands to take me there so that I could say good-bye to grandpa, Jewish ladies were trying to stop her. They said, in accordance with Jewish traditions, babies, whose parents were still alive, were not supposed to see cadavers or even worse say good-bye to them. my mother replied that grandpa loved me very much and deserved that I should say good-bye to him. I remember we entered the room, which was full of people in black clothes. We came close to grandfather, who was lying on the floor. Mother wiped his forehead and told me to kiss it. I was scared as it was unusual for me to see his immovable body.

Grandpa Benjamin had 5 children – two daughters from the first marriage and three sons from Sarah Polya. The elder daughter Malka, born in 1880s, in whose house grandfather had lived until he died, moved to Panevezys shortly after his death. Her husband was a furrier, a rather rich man, so Malka lived comfortably not only from material standpoint. I do not remember her husband’s name, it began with Vov. When he died, Malka and her children managed to flee from fascists. When great patriotic war was over, they came back in Lithuania, wherefrom they shortly left for Israel. Malka died in 1970е and Rosa is currently living in Israel. I cannot recall the name of grandfather’s second daughter. I remember that she lived in Ukrmerge with her husband and children. She died there with her family during the occupation 1 of great patriotic war.

Father’s elder brother Itschok was born in 1892. he was a cobbler. In late 1920s he, his wife Chiena and daughter Khava left for South Africa. There Chiena gave birth to two more children- a girl Leya and a boy. She died young, without even reaching 40. Itschok died in 1950s. Khava, who had been very beautiful since childhood, had the title of South Africa beauty queen and married a millionaire. She helped her parents and her siblings lived in her place. Now Khava is still alive. She has a large family – many children and grandchildren. Leya is currently living in Israel.

Father’s second brother Elieser ,who was two years younger than Itschok, also left for South Africa. Before his departure he married a Jew from Jelva. I do not remember her name. His sons were born in Africa. Both of them were very gifted, graduated from Cambridge. They are married and currently living in London. The elder one became a famous atom physicist. Two years ago he was in Lithuania and called on us. Elieser had a long life and died in 1980s.

My father Ieguda Klug was born in 1896. He was raised without mother, but grandfather Benjamin made home full of warmth and trust. I do not know what part his raising was taken by his third wife, but my father was brought up very well, treated people wonderfully. He was a very kind person. Father went to the elementary school, then started assisting grandfather with grain trading. He married at a young age. He was almost twenty. He was four years younger then mother, but when he saw her he fell in love with her once and for all and started courtship.

           My mother’s maiden name is Yashinskaya. Her father, my maternal grandfather Iechiel Yashinksiy was born in 1850s in some Lithuanian town. I do not remember its name. I do not know who his parents were. All I know is that the family was very religious. Grandfather went to cheder, eshiva, and then entered rabbi school. I do not know whether the latter school was. I assume it was in Panevezys. During the studies Iechiel Aria understood that rabbi were usually very poor, depending on the community and parish, who pay for their maintenance. He saw them wearing one and the same clothes all the time, their wives barely scraping through, their children wearing hand me downs. Right before finishing school, before taking final exams, Iechiel refuse to become a rabbi. He decided to be a craftsman. He became an apprentice of one very good tailor and agreed with him that he would pay for accommodation, meals and training after starting making money. My grandfather’s teacher turned out to be a very decent man and when grandfather became a tailor he took no money from him. Besides, he gave good clothes to grandpa and money to start business. In a year or two grandpa had his own tailors’ workshop, where about 8 people were working. Dad said that he paid the ladies with gold as there going to save it for their children’s training or weddings, and men were paid money.

Soon Iechiel Aria married my grandmother Leya. She was born in Dublin, the capital of Ireland and spent her childhood there. When she turned 15 or 16 , her family moved in Lithuania. I do not exactly where they grandpa and his young wife got settled. It was a small town, located not far from Ukrmerge. Here they had lived for many years. Grandfather had tailors’ business, and grandmother raised children according to Jewish traditions. There were ten of them and every year or a year and a half a new baby was born. In 1920s grandparents moved to Ukrmerge, where they lived to see the Soviets come to power 2, and then the beginning of Great Patriotic War and occupation. They died here during one of the first actions in summer 1941.

I had not known all mother’s siblings. One of those whom I knew was the eldest sister Chaya. She was born in 1885. At the age of 14 she was sent to some relatives in Canada, where she grew up, got married and bore children. This is all I know about her. Mother’s second sister Berta, who was two or three years younger than my mother, was very beautiful. She married a musician, a Jew with Polish name Kovalski. It was a love wedlock. They left for Canada to Chaya. Berta had two daughters. One of them Sarah recently wrote letters to us. I cannot recall when Berta died. She had a long and happy life.

Mother’s youngest sister Mere Sheine was born in 1900. She was a true beauty- the most beautiful the family. Neighbors and relatives called her beauty ». She fell in love with one Jewish lad Leib. His mother left for USA in 1914 due to the just unleashed World War One and could not come back. Many people were sorry for him and in accordance with Jewish traditions invited them in and fed. Thus he came home to my grandmother and Mere Sheine fell in love with him at first sight. Leib was a very tall and strong guy, a true Jewish handsome guy. They had a beautiful Jewish wedding. The whole town was there. After wedding, Mere Sheina moved to his small house beyond the river in Ukrmerge. By the beginning of great patriotic war they had two or three children. Leib and Mere Sheina did not manage to escape from fascists and remained in occupation. They had a pretty quiet living for couple of months when Germans came as they were not in the downtown, but beyond the river, where Lithuanians lived mostly. Once, Leib went in the city to buy products. He stood in the line and then asked to give him some products before his turn came. One Lithuanian went outside and called the fascists saying that a Jew «was jumping the queue». Germans took Leib in the yard and started beating him. He was not willing to give up, he took an axe from the butcher and rushed to fascists. Leib was shot dead right away. Mere Sheine and her children were killed during one of the actions in a while after Leib’s death.

Out of all mother’s brothers I knew Itschok the best. He lived in the province. He was a tailor. Our family said that he was a good one. He could make garments (including outer ) for ladies, gentlemen and for children just the way grandpa was. In the middle 1900s he left with his family for Canada. Itschok’s son Naum was a professor. He was about ten years older than me so I assumed that Itschok was born in 1880. In 2003 Naum was in Lithuania, called on me and said that father reached 90 being mentally and physically sound. He had been a tailor all his life. Another mother’s brother Kivi, who also lived with his family in a province, was killed by fascists in 1941. I saw him only once during his visit in Ukrmerge. This is all I know about him. Mother had brother Meyer, whom I do not remember very well. He lived somewhere else and once he came to us with his daughter Sima. Meyer’s family, including Sima also perished during the occupation.

My mother Riva Yashinskaya was born in 1891. She got a home Jewish education. She knew how to read and write in Yiddish and knew the prayers in Ivrit. Mother was very beautiful, but in 1914 she had chicken pox, which left the scars on her face. At that time she was living in Vilnius. Grandfather taught her the basics of sewing and she worked as a seamstress. My parents met in Vilnius. Father and his brother Elieser came here on some holiday. In spite of mother being four years older than him and with the pox marks, which she took hard, father fell in love with her. My parents got married in early 1916. I never asked them where they were wed, but I know that it was in accordance with Jewish rites.  

Growing up

After wedding, parents settled in the house, where father’s elder sister and her family, grandfather Benjamin, father’s brother Elieser were living. Parents occupied a small room. Here I was born on  10 October 1916. Life was pretty hard during the first years of my life. It was hard for my mother to live here with another family. Then there was a story which radically changed the life of our family.

Grandfather’s house was in front of Lithuanian cathedral, in about 10 steps to it. There was a padre’s home in about ten meters from the cathedral. His wife and children lived there. Unfortunately, I do not remember the padre’s name. I remember that he had a brother Petras. In 1917 or 1918, Polish army was dislocated in our town during World War One. They made plundered both Lithuanians and Jews. Once grandfather hear the cries: «Benuleki (that was the way grandfather, father and his brothers were called), help!». Father and grandfather, took what was at hand- spade, club, darted to padre’s house. There was priest’s wife on the threshold crying out as a Pole was going to cut her fingers, since she could not take her rings off in panic. My grandfather hit the guy, who was holding the lady, with a club and the second was trying to run away. Grandfather ran to the Jewish cemetery right away to hide there among the tombstones and father ran somewhere. He took a horse and rid to the village. Some strangers – both Jewish and Lithuanians- ransomed Benjamin. They had been trying to save his life all night long – exchanging cold and warm sheets. He had been between life and death for a week and finally he started getting better. When the Poles retreated, there was a calm period. During the service the padre at the pulpit told his parish that my father and grandfather saved him and he owned his life to him. Knowing that we did not have a large land plot, he cut a big land plot from the church and gave it to father. He also asked the Lithuanians to build the house for us- people started brining timber, oaken boards. Lithuanians built a nice large wooden house for several months. Father did the finishing. When the house was finished, the padre noticed that there was no room for the husbandry and gave another land plot for that, probably it was half a hectare up to road, where the was a room for the well and garden. There was a shed and a land plot with the clover for the cattle. There were nice sheds for fire wood, coops, sheds, stables. Our house was very large , consisting of four rooms and a huge kitchen. There were some more premises in the upper storey, which father leased. The cell was the house length. Since that time father and padre had become friends.

We became well-off in a large house. In early 1919 my brother Leibl was born. Then in 1920 a girl was born. She was given a Hebrew name Janina ( means dove in Ivrit). Only in five years mother gave birth to a very handsome boy, who was blue-eyed and fair-haired. He was named Benjamin after grandfather, who died several years ago. Then in 1927 Beinish was born and the youngest beautiful baby Miriam was born in 1931. Relatives, especially grandpa, loved me best of all as I was their first granddaughter. Mother said that my relatives hugged me and tossed me up saying: «wise head,beauty!»

My parents worked hard and therefore our family was very well-off. Apart from our house, father owned farm land in the village. He hired Lithuanians to work for him and paid them upon harvesting. They had very good relationship. Father paid them well. When the peasants were in Jelva, thee called on us where they could always be accommodated and fed. Father planted wheat, rye, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, beat and the whole land plot for planted. Father planted clover and other feed grains for the cattle. There were several cows in the shed. Their milk was nice and fatty. It was enough for the family and for processed products. Mother made butter, sour cream, cheese and curds. Part of dairy products was sold to regular customers. Mother also bred the poultry. There were a lot of hens, turkeys and geese. Once mother asked me to count them. When I reached 40, I was lost. Father also had horses, which he took care of with the special care. A Lithuanian man helped father with the husbandry. Living with the Jews, he learned Hebrew so well, that he even helped us, children do homework, when we were going to school. Mother had a Lithuanian cook, who learned how to cook good Jewish dishes under mother’s supervision. The kitchen was very large. There was a large stove in the center of the room. It was used for cooking and baking. Mother baked bread as she could not recognize purchased bread.

The four well-furnished rooms, taken by our family, were in the bottom part of the house. It was a good carved furniture made by good mahogany joiners. There were a large round table, chairs, couch, and cupboard in the drawing room. There two large wooden beds in parents’ bedroom. There was a small baby crib by mother’s bed, where the babies were sleeping. There were two more bedrooms- one for the boys and another for my sister Janina and I.

My parents were very religious and since childhood plied us with the religious beliefs and dogmas. Every day started with morning hygiene, prayer during which the people were turned to the east. Those who had not prayed, were not given breakfast. I remember one case during the prayer. I was a little girl and did not always get the sense of the prayers. I just memorized them by repeating after parents. There are such words in the daily prayer: «God, thank you for not creating me a woman ». Those words are pronounced by me. Once during the morning prayer I repeated those words after father. He pushed me as we were not supposed to interrupt the prayer and said that those words were to be said by him, grandpa and m younger brother. I listened to him closely and the next day repeated those words again either because of being remiss or stubborn. Father reiterated his edification. The next day I said those words again. Father just ignored me and did not say anything. Then I heard him speak to mother to bring me to reason. Mother said that I was too small and could pray the way I wished. All Jewish traditions were strictly observed in our house. Mother usually covered her head with the kerchief, when she went to the synagogue she put a beautiful cover. I am used to kashrut since childhood. There were a lot of dishes in the kitchen - 12 sets of silverware, sets of dishes and utensils for meat and milk, which were kept separately in two chests.

I loved Sabbath very much in Sabbath and was looking forward to it. On Thursday mother baked Challahs, buns and some other tasty things – cakes. At times she made a creamy cake, lekach- honey cake or meat pie. Friday morning mother stoked the stove. If it was necessary, mother bought meat in kosher store and fish. The rest we had. Mother send someone from our family to shochet, who cut one or two chickens for the festive diner. She also made gefilte fish, forshmak from herring, liver pate, chicken or meat broth, all kinds or tsimes, imberlakh. In general, we had a very rich table. We enjoyed soups. Even on Saturday mother made some soups either meat soup or chicken broth, macaroni soup or vegetable soup with beans. She made cholnt for Sabbath- it was made from potatoes and beans in a pot. There were two Jews in our street who took the cholnt for some small amount of money. They put it in the stove beforehand and gave it back on Saturday while it still was warm. On Thursday the whole family went to the bathhouse. On Friday we took bath at home and put clean clothes on. On Friday father and his sons went to the synagogue. Mother , sister and I stayed at home. When they came back from the synagogue, we sat at the table. Mother lit candles and father said a prayer. He also broke the challach and gave the first pieces to us. After dinner all of us did what they felt like. Some of us read, others went out for a walk or went to bed. The synagogue in Jelva was large, two-storied, wooden and bricked. Mother, I and later Janina prayed there on the second floor. On Saturday father picked up cholnt on the way from the synagogue. On that day we could not do anything. Lithuanians worked in the yard and the cook served the food. Rarely, when she was not at home on Saturday (her day off was on Saturday) we ate cold food. On Sabbath we could not even light a match, nothing to speak of stoking the stove. After meal, everybody took a rest. I liked reading books. Sometimes the whole family went for a walk. Usually people strolled along the bank of river Jelva ,where the Lithuanian village started. There were a lot of trees, including the fruit ones. In spring they blossomed making the air fragrant. It seemed to me like Eden. People came here with the whole families, all dressed up like it was supposed to on Saturday.

Jewish charity was very developed. Each rich and middle-class family implicitly fostered a poor family. In our house there was such a rule. On Friday, mother took two clean kerchiefs and put food there- ten eggs, curds, cheese, butter, challah, half of the hen. Being the eldest I was told to take it to poor families. As a rule I took it to poor elderly Jews Chaya and Chava, who were living nearby. If a poor girl or an orphan guy were to get married, the members of the Jewish community took care of the wedding arrangements – they collected money for that and even helped the families after wedding. It happened also in cases if someone got sick or died, God forbid – it was also on the account of the community.

My father was a very respectable man. His was kind not only to all Jews, but also to Lithuanians, Poles. Nationality did not matter for him. I remember such a case. Once there was a funeral procession passing by our house. There were people from Lithuanian hamlet, located about 12 km away from Jelva. A young was to be buried. They said he had cold beer after bath, got pneumonia and died. His wife and several children left after him. The procession went to the cathedral, where Lithuanian cemetery was located. In 20 minutes I was that the procession was going back with the cadaver. I ran after the father and he came up to those people. It turned out that a poor widow did not have time to pay for church service and funeral of her husband and the padre did not even let them inside. Father asked them to wait. Then he took a platter and put 5 litas there ( it was pretty big money for that time). Then he called on the neighbor, who also put some money there. In an hour or two father collected a considerable amount -200 litas and gave it to the widow. The procession headed to the cathedral. After that the widow knelt down in front of our house and said the words of gratitude. She tried to return the rest of the money (about 50 litas), but father said that she would need it for her children.

What happened was very strange and unpleasant to me as our family was friends with the padre and I could not get how he could act like that. Padre often invited my parents for Christmas dinner. I also was in his house. Padre was very intellectual, he knew Ivrit and read Hebrew texts. When he could not understand something, he always sent someone for me. I was well up in Hebrew since 10. I was lazy to go past our large land plot and padre’s people made hidden path. Everybody liked me in padre’s place- the servants and even big black watch dogs were affable to me. Parents did not invite padre on large Jewish holidays. When mother made gefilte fish, father always invited him as he adore that dish and even smacked while eating it. When I was 11-12, I started liking music. There was neither theater nor concert hall in our town and the only place where I could hear music was a cathedral. I often came in during the service. At times I would stand by the cathedral listening to the organ. In a while the neighbors told my father about it. I had had independent character since childhood and said that I did not listen to the service, but to the music and I was not going to reject that pleasure just because old Jews did not approve of it. Father kept silent and I think he agreed with me.

The most remarkable holiday was Pesach. We got ready for it in advance- cleaned our big house thoroughly. Children got the presents – clothes and footwear. Usually the money for it was sent by the relatives from Canada or Argentina. Several days before the holiday a delivery boy brought a large hamper with matzah from the synagogue, usually he was from a poor family. Pascal kosher dishes were taken from the garret- there was everything- both set of table dishes- starting from porcelain and up to silverware and kitchen utensils which were used only once a year. Everybody had his own shot glass. I got my tot with flower painting from uncle Elieser’s wife, when I helped her get ready for the holiday. On the eve of the holiday father carried out the rite of chametz banishment – he picked up the remaining of leaven bread and solemnly burned them in the yard. On the first day of the holiday, on the sedder all relatives came to us from synagogue as my mother the eldest daughter in law. Father was reclining on the top of the table and carried out seder. Apart from the traditional dishes (gefilte fish, chicken broth with kneydles, tsimes) there were the tastiest dishes mother could cook. There were also a lot of deserts. The wine which we had on this holiday was made by father from honey and raisons. During the sedder all traditions were observed- searches for afikoman, four traditional questions asked by younger children, awaiting Ilia, the prophet. As a rule we marked the second seder in the place of the relatives. 

The rest of the holiday did not appear to be special. There was a veranda for sukkot holiday. There was a removable roof, which was removed and covered with tree branches and leaves during holidays. The door to the house was open, the table and chair were set and we had meals there during the holiday. Children were most agog for Channukah as on that holiday they received money from all the relatives. I remember, when uncle came up to us, he gave me 2 litas as I was the eldest, the rest got 1 lita. On that holiday candlestick was lit and everyday a candle was added. It was placed on the window sill. We ate potato fritters and sang channukah song, which I still remember.

On Purim mother baked a lot of pastries- mostly triangular hamantashen. There were enough for the family and for the presents which were taken to the relatives and neighbors. We also got the presents. We had fun all day long comparing deserts and cookies, comparing which were better and always mother’s were the best. She was a unique lady- kind and strict at a time. Other ladies always came to mom to ask for a recipe or for a piece of advice. Mother always found a free time and kind word for everybody.

I started studies early. When I was five, mother told father to hire a coach for me. Father hired a private teacher for me. She taught me the rudiments of Jewish literary – alphabet and reading. I had been taught at home for two years and then father took me in cheder. I know that only boys went there. I still cannot get how father could convince the teacher for me to study there. The fact was that I was the only girl in the class of ten boys. Our teacher was disabled and he wore special shoes because of his valgoid legs, but he was a great expert in Jewish studies. I sat at a desk separately from the boys. I did very well and was quick to learn. I had studied there for three years and by the age of three was very fluent in Ivrit. When I went to the synagogue, everybody was surprised to see the girl reading prayers in Hebrew. My father took special pride in me. He often bought newspapers in Ivrit , took them home and enjoyed my reading them.

When I turned 10, father took me to Ukrmerge, where I entered Jewish lyceum. Subjects were taught in Yiddish, and I had to learn a lot of knew things. At first I lived with my grandparents Jasinskiys’, who had moved to Ukrmerge a long time ago. In about two years my parents sold their house and moved to Ukrmerge. It was the time for my younger siblings to study so they decided to be closer to children. Grandparents were elderly and got irritated with children’s noise and rattle, so in about two years they moved out.

I loved studying. It was easy for me. I had a lot of friends among my classmates. We marked Jewish holidays in lyceum, staged performances, where I took an active part. I sang well, often took part in amateur concerts.

As compared to Jelva Ukrmerge was a bigger town with the population of 12 thousand people, most of whom where Jews. There was a Jewish theatre, different organizations, in general the life became very interesting. The youth took part in different youth Zionist 3 organizations. Beitar was the most active 4. The organization was rather bellicose and I did not take part in that movement. I entered Hashomer Hatzair 5 – «young guard», which called for buyout of Jewish lands and revive Jewish state in a peaceful way. My younger brother Leibl and sister Yanina also entered lyceum. Though, my parents paid minimum fee for us – 30 litas per month, it was rather large amount for our family. I had studied there for five years and decided that I was adult and it was the time for me to help my parents.

In 1936 when I finished the fifth grade, I was employed and did not come back to the studies. My parents did not mind it. First, they needed some material support, and also I was very literate for that time as compared with other girls as they studied for 2-3 years. I was employed as a sales assistant in the grocery store. The owner of the store was a Jew, whose name I do not remember. He treated me very well as I was honest and skilled. At that time I kept attending the classes at Hashomer Hatzair and was getting more and more carried away with the ideas of revival of the Jewish state. I had new friends with whom I spent time. We went to the Jewish theater, walked in the park, discussed our future. Three years had past and I found out that there was a Jewish kibbutz in Kaunas, where the youth was getting ready for repatriation. I wanted to try a new life and I found life in kibbutz romantic. In summer 1936 I asked for permission from parents, who could not say no to me, and left for Kaunas.

Kibbutz people lived in one house in Kaunas suburb. I was welcomed in their team. I housed in the room with another girl and shortly after that they found a job for me. I was for the Jewish dentist as a governess for his child. The family was very rich. The daughter went to the Jewish lyceum and I was supposed to take her to to/from lyceum, do homework with her, go for a walk, to the library. I did not do anything as those things were taken care of the servant. I was paid very well for those times- 150 litas per month. I practically did not spend the money as I had meals in the house of the doctor. In accordance with kibbutz laws the earned money was to be given to the leader. He allocated the money in line with the needs of all people from kibbutz and the decision of the general meeting. Part of the money was spent on food. There were two people in kibbutz who cooked the food for everybody. All purchases were to be approved by the board of kibbutz. Besides, when the money was distributed, the salary of the member was not taken into account, just his needs. For two years they bought me the boots only once because I could not get to work without them. I was concerned with that. I wanted to have a private life, to be fashionably dressed, buy presents for my parents and siblings. I could not spend all my life there. Besides, I did not have money to help out my parents. I even was supposed to get the permission and ask for money for the rare trips home. Within this time many people from kibbutz left for Palestine, but I did not have enough money for that.

When I came home, the situation at home was full of love, kindness. It seemed to me that I was a little girl, whom the father was proud of. I was not willing to go anywhere. Parents did not have such a big husbandry in Ukrmerge as it was in Jelva, so father became a grain trader. By that time Janina quitted her studies at lyceum and became apprentice of the seamstress in Ukrmerge who lived in front of our house. She started earning money and gave it to the parents. Janina became rather independent. She even went on vacation to Palanga and came to me in Kaunas. Leibl went to rabbi school in Panevezhis. As his grandfather Iechiel Aria he was disappointed in the spiritual care as he saw the poverty of rabbi. He even had to wear a coat in summer as his pants were torn. Once he came home and said that he would not come back in eshiva. Leibl started helping father with work. Younger brothers and sister Miriam were still studying in the lyceum.

Upon return to Kaunas, I found another job and left kibbutz. I was the governess. I worked for a wealthy Jew Finkelstein. He owned a lot of canneries in Latvia and Estonia. He produced sprats and other canned fish. He also owned the plants in the USA. Usually on new year his whole family went on vacation to the USA for two weeks and I was given a vacation. I was the governess of his daughter Sonya and did my job very well. I had my own room in the large house of Finkelstein. I had meals there. They bought me clothes. Now my salary was 200 litas. In while I changed my job not for being unfairly treated for being offered a higher salary. Within those three years I had to change my job once again. I always worked for Jewish families. In 1939 I was invited to work for the famous timber trader. The family was also very rich.

I started thinking about my future. I was at the age when I had to think of my private life. I had friends, but I spent more time with my lad than with others- we wnet to the cinema, for strolls on the weekend. But still, I was not in love with him. I was more attracted by more solid and mature men. In summer 1940 soviet army came in Lithuania 6, and all Baltic countries were annexed to the USSR 7. My hosts worried a lot, waited for the changes and in the first days the authorities did not carry out repression. I remember my host giving me money and telling that I should buy warm footwear and clothes as they would be exiled in Siberia and I would go with them. I had a different fate.

In summer 1940, the host as usual rented dacha for the whole family and went there with them. We were living in the village not far from Kaunas. There was a wonderful nature here- woods and lakes. I often went to the lake and once I noticed one young man looking closely at me. The next day he invited me for a date. I understood at once that he was the man of my dream. He was my ideal- much older and more mature than me. Though, he a Lithuanian, but it did not stop me. Soon we became close. Benis (full name Benedictus) Rutkauskas was born in 1904 in a small Lithuanian hamlet not far from Vilkovishkis. He was a peasant. He was involved in politics at a young age and became the member of the underground communist party. At Smetona’s regime 8 in1929 he was sentenced to 15 years in prison, 11 out of which he underwent. He was librated by the soviet regime. Upon his release, he was sent in hamlet for recuperation. Thus,.we met there. Within the first two week Benis did not know that I was a Jew as I looked like a Lithuanian and was fluent in that language. I had to show the document for him to believe me. When he looked at it, he said that he did not care.

We started seeing each other openly when I came in Kaunas. Benis proposed to me. His parents were dead and he had no siblings, so he needed permission from my parents only. Only Janina knew about our relationship. I took my sister and friend that she kept the secret having said nothing to the parents. In November 1940 Benjamin and I went to Ukrmerge. Benis asked for my hand. My mother stealthily whispered to me that she liked my fiancé very much as she thought that it would be better to marry such a handsome Lithuanian than a poor Jew. Mother did not share her opinion with father, who was dreaded by the fact and it was the first time I could see him in such an angor. There was a scandal and Benis was turned out. Of course, I left with him. We went to Kaunas. I was always independent and I was not going to make concessions now as I did not want to lose the person I loved. Soon Janina came to us as father turned her out having known that she was aware of our relationship and did not reveal it. Then Leibl came trying to talk me into submitting parents’ will and part Of course, Leibl was not going to kill anybody and told me about it. I did not have any secrets from Benis and told him about father’s plans. It was my most dreadful mistake as Benis had never forgiven Leibl.

On 12 December 1940 Benis and I registered our marriage in the state marriage registration authorities. We had no wedding, no rings. We were happy to start a new life. Benis held as high position – he was in charge of the communications department of Kaunas oblast, he was a respectable man and the member of the communist party, but he did not want to enjoy any benefits. We rented a room, where Benis, Janina and I lived. Janina started working as a seamstress. I did not work. Shortly after wedding I got pregnant and I had very strong toxicosis and I felt unwell.

In spring 1941 husband suggested that we should visit my parents. It was his initiative to improve my relationship with the parents. We came in Urkmerge. Parents were amiable and I understood that the reason for it was not the willingness to accept him, but the fear for him as he was on a high post and could easily affect their fate. There were a lot of repressions and many people were arrested and deported to Siberia 9. Many Jews were exiled from Kaunas, including Finkelstein and my other bosses. After war I found out that Finkelstein died in Siberia and the sank into the oblivion. Little Sonya, whom I loved so much, died in the train on the way to Russia.

During the war

We stayed in Ukrmerge for two days and went home. In couple of weeks I was told that father had been arrested. It happened in such a way. Leibl’s friend lived in our house. He was a guy from Kaunas, who rented a room from us. He was a communist, an ardent stickler of the regime. Once father argued and said that the state, which did not recognize God and the right of people for belief, was to perish. That guy informed against father right away. He was arrested and exiled in Siberia in a while. I even did not ask Benis to interfere and ask for father as I understood that he would refuse me. fortunately, the house was not sequestrated and mother had a place to live. She took her parents there as well. We did not go to Ukrmerge any more as I understood that my husband would not like to compromise himself with that trip.

Husband found out about the unleashed war right away. There was no time to wait for organized evacuation, as it was clear that fascists would enter Kaunas soon. Benis quickly organized our departure. I was in the driver’s cabin as I was 6 months pregnant. Benis and Janina got in the truck body, where the luggage was placed. On the way we picked up the family members of our driver. We were one of the first to leave on 22 June 1941. There were no bombings on our way and we rather swiftly crossed the Lithuanian border on Byelorussia. Here we made a short stop. The military took our truck in Byelorussia. Here we parted with the driver and his family. My husband talked to the commander of the military unit and indicated that I was expecting a baby. Thus, we got on the truck with the militaries and traveled for a while with them. We spent a week in a military camp, which was in the rear. We asked to send us farther in the rear, and the arrangements were made for us to take a train. We were helped to get on the locomotive train, packed with the fugitive, heading for Tartar republic. I vaguely remember the way. My husband told me to take a side berth. I was asleep almost most of the time.

We got off at Kuchmar station, which was not far from Kazan [Tatarstan, about 800 km to the East from Moscow]. We settled in a small room in the house of the locals, who treated us very kindly. Sister took care of house, and husband went to work. Here we lived two month and a half until I bore a baby. My girl came into the world in late August 1941. Husband wanted to call her Lena 10 after Lenin, but her name was accidentally written Lina. We decided that it was also a nice name as Lina means flax in Lithuanian, we still call her that name. when the daughter was born, we moved to the village Mamafe, not far from Kukhmar. It was easier to survive in a village at that time.

The four of us lived together until the New Year of 1942. Janina and my husband worked in kolkhoz 11, and got skimpy trudodni 12. Our life was hard like it was with most fugitives. Husband and sister also got bread cards 13 for working people and I was given 200 gramps as I was dependent. Janina and Benis gave all they could to me as I was a nursing mother. Benis was eager to go in the lines. He volunteered to join 16 Lithuanian division 14 as soon as it was founded. He was a rank and file in the artillery. In January 1942 he went in Balakhna, where the above-mentioned division was being formed. In about 3 months Janina also joined Lithuanian division.

I stayed with Lina. We were living at home, where five families of evacuated lived. There were no Jews among them, I was the only Jew there. Mother and daughter from Latvia, two Lithuanian old ladies, young Lithuanian with a baby and Russian family were living in one house. We were very friendly, helping each other. It would be unlikely to survive in those years without each other’s help. Our house at the end of kolkhoz orchard and I was hired to watch it along with the adjacent gardens. It was not a hard work. Besides, I was given fruit, vegetables and honey from the apiary. The deputy chairman of kolkhoz often called me over to wash the floors in his office or do some other odd jobs. Every time I was given a loaf of bread for that. When the horse was cut in kolkhoz he asked me to come over and gave me a piece of meat. In the morning we, the ladies fugitives, took the jugs and came to the shed where the milkmaids brought the milks to be given to the state. Each local lady from kolkhoz gave us a little bit of milk. at times we would get only a glass, but there were cases when I could bring the whole jug for my girl. Once, I was asked to wash the floors in the dairy premises and I was given couple of spoons of butter for that. It was a real riches. All I brought home was shared with my neighbors as they also had the kids. Benis was constantly writing to me from the front. At first he was at the leading edge, and in 1944 he was appointed to attend officers’ courses in Ufa. Straight from there he was sent in the army ,which was liberating Lithuania. Husband was liberating Kaunas- there were battles at Green Mountain [editor’s note.: one of the Kaunas districts], and entered the city with the leading units.

After the war

On the first day upon liberation of the city he was assigned the chairman of the municipal ispolkom 15. He processed the letter of invitation for me to come back in Lithuania. In September 1944 we came back in Kaunas. We were so happy to see each other. Husband took us in our house. He got a large house, which was meant for high state officials. It was a wonderful two-storied house in the downtown of the city. Before war it used to be the residence of some diplomat. There were all necessary things in the house- the furniture, kitchen with the utensils and the dishes, stove, several bathrooms, Study with a great library. All of that pertained to the state, but we could live there for the period when his position was effective. In spring 1945 I gave birth to a son, whom we called Romualdas.

This were good. I got a good food ration from special distribution. Unlike most people we did not starve after war. The only reason for my tears at night was the understanding that I would never see my relatives again. My husband found out from his contacts that all of them perished in Ukrmerge during occupation. Though, nobody knows the details or my husband has not told me. my mother, brothers Benjamin and Beinish, little sister Miriam, grandfather Iechiel Aria and grandmother became the victims of the fascists in Ukrmerge.

In spring 1945 Janina came to us. She was a military nurse at 16 Lithuanian division and underwent a valorous path at war. Benis helped get a job at the textile factory. In a year the factory was relocated in Vilnius and Janina went there. She got an apartment there , where she had lived for several years.

In early 1945 my brother Leibl found us. He said when the war started he managed to escape and the he served in Lithuanian division. He was lucky to be a cook in the army at first, only later he was transferred in the army when many soldiers died. The division was in Latvia, where the fascists were resisting hard. Leib managed to get the leave for couple of days hoping got see us and get the assistance from Benis to get demobilized or go be enrolled in support unit of the army. Leibl was very touchy and tender, totally inapt for war. He was in panic not to get in the leading edge. Husband still remembered that Leibl was to kill him and could not forgive him that. When Benis came home for lunch I told him that Leibl was in our place. Husband still remembered that Leibl was supposed to kill him before the war and could not forgive him for that. He told me that he would not stand him being at the same table with him. He even ignored my request to help my brother. Leibl and I were having lunch, when he left. In a while my brother died in Latvia. I never reproached my husband of my brother’s death. First, I could not return the past, secondly, there are situations when a human being is beside himself.

When our son was born, Benis was relocated in a small town on the bank of Baltic sea Klaipeda, where he was assigned the chairman of municipal Ispolkom. I went with him. We also were given a wonderful mansion and servants. Benis worked very hard, he never shared his troubles with me. I only could hear about Lithuanian resistance, sabotage, which were set up by them. Benis got the ulcer for being nervous. He needed fresh diary products. At that time high officials were prohibited to have their own husbandry. Husband addressed to the central committee of the party with the request to keep a cow. His request was satisfied and we bought a cow. We had fresh milk and I learnt from my parents how to make butter, curds and other things.

Husband found my father using national security channels. He got settled in Krasnoyarsk. There he met a woman, a Jew from Latvia. They lived in civil marriage. He had a good life there. He built a house, had some livestock- cow and horse. Husband arranged a permit for father to visit us. In 1946 he was visiting in Klaipeda. I talked father into staying and he was most likely attached to his second wife. So he stayed for couple of weeks with us and returned to his wife. When he came home he told the neighbors that he had an influential son in law, about our posh house and good living in Lithuania. He was called by militia and asked to repeat his story and then took his passport away and then they added that he would not be able to go to us as he talked too much. Father was so shocked that he could get it over. He became mentally deranged. Then he got a cancer. In 1951 father died. I sold the cow and sent Janina to Krasnoyask. I could not go myself because of my children. Sister was late as father was buried in the common hospital grave.

In 1947 husband was transferred to Marijampole, where he was also the head of municipal authorities. Shortly after our arrival, there was a dreadful story, which changed our lives completely. There was a coming Lithuanian holiday, for which people baked pancakes. The employee of social department invited all employees for dinner. My husband was also invited.  Benis came home and said that we were invited for dinner and had to get ready. I was pregnant with the third baby and said that I was feeling unwell. Then Benis also refused to go there. I tried to convince him saying that he was supposed to mark national holiday with the Lithuanians, but he insisted on staying with me. It saved his life. At night there was a telephone call it was the head of state security committee  [KGB] 16. He asked where Benis was. I was surprised and said that he was at home. It was a pitch dark night and Benis was asleep. Then I heard that person say to somebody: «Benis is alive». It turned out that at night the house where his colleagues got together, was attacked by gangsters and everybody was killed. The hostess and even small children, who were at home, were killed.

I was taken to the hospital as soon as I went home. Parturition started because of the stress. I gave birth to a son whom we called Andrus. Commission came from Moscow. Husband lost his job right away. He was constantly being interrogated as he was the only survivor, which looked suspicious to the soviet regime. By that time he was in black list. In about a year he was reprimanded by the party for not mentioning the leading role of comrade Stalin in his speeches. He was reminded of that. Fortunately, husband was not arrested or repressed. I think it was protected by the first secretary of central party committee Snezhkus, who had known Benis since the times of underground communism. Husband was not restored in his position as he was forbidden to hold high positions. Benis was very worried but I told him that the most important was that he was alive, our son was born and we would go on.

As soon as the party circles, one of the party activists from Panevezhis gave husband a call. He offered him a position of the brewery manager. So, we left for Panevezhis. Here we rented an apartment. Benis ran the brewery so well that it became one of the leading enterprises though it was with losses before. We had stayed there for two years. In 1949 Snezhkus called my husband and told him to come to Vilnius. Collectivization commenced 17, and again they needed people who were dedicated to the communist party. Benis was appointed the chairman of municipal ispolkom in Sirvintos, and we moved there. Since that time we often changed the places of residence. Benis was also appointed to manage crisis. Children and I were traveling with him. I had never been the member of the party, but I always listened to what my husband had to say, supported him, gave him advice. In a word, I was a real friend to him.

When in 1950s the struggle with cosmopolites started 18, I was afraid that husband would get into trouble for his wife being a Jew. In Lithuania Jews were treated much better than in Russia. There many party activists were married to Jews. Even Snezhkus had a Jewish wife. We knew about doctors’ plot 19 and of course understood that it was tosh. When Stalin died in 1953 my husband did not cry. Moreover, we even smiled stealthily. Divulgement of Stalin’s cult at ХХ Communist party congress 20 was for Benis as a breath of fresh air after being in the marsh. Husband was transferred in Jonava in 1956 where we stayed for four years. I had always been a housewife. I raised the children. I always had a baby-sitter and housekeeper, whom I supervised. We liked to mark holidays at home- our and children’s birthdays, memorable dates. We marked no religious holidays neither Jewish nor Lithuanian. I did not like marking soviet holidays. There was no use in that as we always were invited somewhere. We often marked them in the town theatre or at some companies. Benis got the invitations an I accompanied him.

I practically had no friends. I had always lived husband’s and children’s lives. In those years I did not communicate with the Jews as it was no approved in the party circles. My biggest friend was Janina. She lived in Vilnius. She worked as a secretary of agriminister. Then the minister was transferred in security , but Janina still kept in touch with him. In 1956 Janina met a famous Jewish artist Hona Goldfein. He had a problem. He and his parents filed the documents for Polish visa, wherefrom they wanted to go to Israel. They did not get a visa, so they addressed to Janina for her to contact that minister for him to assist. They even offered her money. Sister did not take the money, but asked for having a fictitious marriage with him so that she could also leave. They agreed on that. Janina convinced her friend to help with the permit for the whole family. He did not want Janina to leave motherland, but still he helped. In 1957 Janina and her fictitious husband left. I said good bye to her, but Benis did not come over for a good-bye party as he feared of getting into a trouble again. Janina an Hona had lived in Poland for half a year. Joint hardship made them closer. When they came to Israel, their marriage was not fictitious any more, they were a real couple. Hona became a famous theatrical artist in Israel. Janina gave birth to a daughter here. Hona died in 1990s having built a wonderful mansion , where Ruth, her family and Janina are living. I have been keeping in touch with my sister all those years. Now she often calls me. Benis was always interested in Janina’s fate. When there were wars in Israel, we did not talk much about it. Neither husband nor I stuck to the official point of view on the events, but I was more prone to believe what was written in the papers.

We had lived in Jonava until 1960. Husband had rather acute deceases. He had ulcer. In 1960 at the age of 56 he retired preterm. We moved to Kaunas, where we were given a good apartment. Benis got personal pension. We had enough money, but he was not used to idle and soon he became in charge of security department of Lithuanian television. He had worked there until 1970s. In his last days Benis was sick. He died in 1986. His friends, old members of party –bolsheviks - 21 came to his funeral.

My children took father’s nationality. First of all it was common, second of all they identify themselves as true Lithuanians. They went to good schools, did well. When Lina finished school, she entered Kaunas university , the history and literature department. He was fond of art and quitted her studies at her last year as she did not want to be a teacher. So, she has not got a diploma. In late 1960s Lina married the student of Medical Department. He was a Lithuanian. His name was Pupuskenyane. Their private life was not OK. Shortly after their daughter Asta was born in 1968 they got divorced. Asta finished food college, then institute. She is married. She has a wonderful husband and two daughters – Astesa and Stesya. Lina is retired. She is fond of art. She is painting landscapes. Lina is living with me. I moved to her after her husband died. Romualdas family took our big apartment.

Romualdas graduated from military academy. He served in militia, then in state security. She was the chairman of state security committee of Shaulai region. Then he worked for police. Now he is 50. he has just recently retired. He has a Russian wife Tatyana and two sons- elder Andrus, born in 1978, and younger Simon, born in 1981. Andrus followed into the footsteps of my father. He is also working in police. The younger became sports physician.

Younger son Andrus finished sanitary and technical college. Then he studied in Kaunas university , but like Lina he had not graduated from it. Now is the owner of sanitary engineering company. His wife is Lithuania Neele. They have two children elder son works as tradesman at pharmaceutical company. He is married, has two children ,and younger Algerdas is in the final class at school.

My children became true Lithuanians, patriots of their country. They know that their mother is a Jew, respect my past and commemorate the perished. They are pure Lithuanian in their conscience. Romualdas, who was friends with Jews most of all, was in Israel as he was invited there by his Jewish friends. They even paid for his trip. When he came back , he said it was like paradise, but he wanted to live in his motherland.

I remained by myself in a way as after husband’s death I did not have friends any more. I communicated with husband’s friends only. I am not needy. I get a large pension 905 lita for my husband [editor’s note: about 350 dollars]. I felt myself alone morally and I came back to my roots as if I got the call from childhood, I started going to the synagogue, mark Jewish holydays, pray. It was so easy and natural to dip into the world of values which have been dear since childhood. There is a Jewish community in Kaunas. It was open in early 1990s. I am an active member of it and I get some help from them. 1990s I regularly went to the synagogue. The last time I was there was on Pesach four years ago. My daughter Lina also goes there, she orders prayers for our kin, buys matzah on Pesach. My children come to me on holidays, paying the tribute to my Jewish roots. I am about to start praying daily like I was taught by my father. I even recalled Hebrew. Probably I had never forgotten about my roots as this is the best knowledge in my time. I read the Bible every day and recollect my childhood, our town, my parent and the Jewish world, I grew up . Today I turned 89. My children, grandchildren and great grandchildren have been visiting me since early morning. They love me, and it makes me happy.

GLOSSARY:

Lilly Lovenberg
City: Budapest
Country: Hungary
Interviewer: Ildiko Makra
Date of interview: May 2004

Mrs. Lilly is 86 years old. She is a woman of short stature and average weight, gray-haired, and an exceptionally nice, smiling person. Though she has difficulty walking, she is completely self-sufficient at home.

Her fresh mind doesn’t show her age, and she is spiritually a very balanced, cheerful personality. Generosity and care flow from her personality, especially in regard to her family, children and grandchildren.

She’s extraordinarily good-natured, and her value judgements are sober. Since the death of her husband, Lajos Lovenberg, she has lived alone in a two-room apartment in good condition, on the second floor of a multiple-story apartment building in the city.

Her modest home is orderly and clean. The shelves of the bookcase are lined mostly with books on Jewish themes, but also photos of her family, grandchildren and husband, and a few nice religious objects.

She spends her weekends at her children’s homes. Lilly said that she thinks its especially important that future generations understand the events of the past, primarily the destiny of the Jewish people, and mostly the story of the Holocaust, everything the Jews went through and had to suffer during World War II.

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

• Growing up

I’m Lilly Rosenberg. I was born on 1st January 1918 in Hetyen [today Ukraine], Subcarpathia 1.

My mother, Maria Klein, was born in 1871. There was a one year gap between her and my father. Jakab Rosenberg, my father, was a merchant and farmer.

He was born in 1870. Both of them were born in Hetyen. We weren’t strongly religious, but we observed the holidays, and prayed. My mother kept a kosher kitchen. Both of them perished in Auschwitz [today Poland], in 1944, in the crematorium.

My father had only lived in Hetyen, before they took him to Auschwitz. He started working when he was fourteen, and got together enough money to buy 40 hold of land in Hetyen. My father, my brothers Moric and Gyula, as well as our coachman took part in World War I. While they were there, my mother had to look after her other four children and the farm.

Having arrived back, Moric bought the farm from the money he had saved during the war. The farm was managed by Moric and my father from then onwards. Anyhow, the other sons were helped with university education while the daughters with finishing four classes of the civil school. 

My parents had six children: three boys and three girls. My eldest brother, Moric, was 24 years older than I. Gyula followed, then Berta was born in 1904, Jozsef in 1908 and Erzsebet in 1911. Apart from me, only Gyula survived the war [WWII]. He went to Spain in 1929. He lived in Madrid for two years.

Then he went to Venezuela, because his wife’s brother was an engineer, and lived there, so they went there. They lived there for some time, then went to Dominica, and lived there for a longer period. He wasn’t in Europe during the war. He died in 1968.

Berta got married in Szamossalyi to a produce salesman. They had three children: Judit, Eva and Marta. My older sister, who was separated from the family, was with me to the end, but she couldn’t take it. We were liberated, but from the starvation she caught typhus. I survived, and she died in Prague [today Czech Republic] on the return trip.

Jozsef was a doctor, but died young. He didn’t marry. In Marseilles [France], he was shot down with his partner. He was one of twenty doctors who fled from Prague. The Germans caught them, and executed them in 1944. 

Moric was taken to Auschwitz also. He took care of the finances, because he was the oldest, since Gyula wasn’t home. Once he got so involved in the work that he got a hernia. That’s how he got into hospital during the time when all the Jews had to register.

The doctor knew him and respected him, and took him in among the patients and operated on his hernia. In Auschwitz, they first picked him to work, but when a German went into the bath, and saw his fresh thirty centimeter scar, they took him away to the crematorium. 

When I was a child, Moric and Berta were mostly with me. We worked at home, did handwork, sewed, while Moric directed the farm work. We went to a Calvinist school in Hetyen. I liked mathematics the most. Later I liked history, too.

I was raised in a decent, religious family. My parents taught me every tradition. Our household was kosher. I went to cheder, and learned to pray. I liked Pesach the best because we had special dishes. 

There were 150 residents in Hetyen. It was a small village, but pretty. There were only three Jewish families in Hetyen. The closest religious community was in Beregszasz [today Ukraine], and that was Neolog [see Neolog Jewry] 2. I went to cheder in Ujfalu, my parents always sent me there during vacation.

My aunt Pepi [Valter, nee Rosenberg] lived there. In the summer break, I learned how to pray in Hebrew for two months, year after year, until I became a big girl. There was an older man, who taught the Jewish children. There wasn’t a Jewish school in the area.

Our house in Hetyen had three bedrooms, a big veranda and a big yard. I remember when I was three years old, there was a Czech-Hungarian border realignment [see Trianon Peace Treaty] 3. The English and French came with big automobiles.

We were playing on the road with a little boy, with black, broken stones which were to be used to fix the dirt roads, when these cars came by. They said, ‘Oh my, the border re-alignment is today.’ That was in 1921. They separated Tiszakerecseny. We were also on the borderline, on the Czech side. 

In my youth, we went to Kaszony[mezo] for get-togethers. We sang and danced. We sang the Hatikvah 4, the anthem of Israel today. This was in the Czech period, so I could have been 17 or 18. There were many Zionist organizations in Beregszasz, and I went to the Somer [see Hashomer Hatzair] 5. It was so centrist. Dezso Rapaport organized the Zionist movement. Uncle Berti [Bertalan Bernat] was a big Zionist, he always told us to learn a profession, because they needed that in Palestine.

Once I went to visit Berta in Szamossalyi. That’s when I first heard the huge anti-Jewish instigations, at a rally before the election. Then what happened was that a Calvinist bishop arrived in Hetyen at the Calvinist church and gave a speech. Everybody went to hear the bishop speak.

He was a very democratic person. And he said, ‘Unfortunately, hard times are coming, black clouds rumble above us. German boots are already stomping on the streets of Prague. I’m afraid, that black clouds with reach us soon.’ I still remember those exact words. Then we didn’t have to wear the yellow star yet, we still went about freely.

[Editor’s note: Yellow stars were introduced in Hungary after the Nazis occupied the country on 19th March 1944.]

Before the deportations, I started to work, in 1942. In Beregszasz, I learned to tailor and I taught tailoring, because Uncle Samu, the exceptionally big Zionist, said, ‘No diplomas, learn a trade, because in Israel that’s what is important.’ So I learned a trade and continued to do it. The Jewish laws affected everything, our whole lives. The educational ones meant I couldn’t continue my tailoring classes. I had been learning to sew for a year, and tailoring with a famous seamstress.

I was still in Hetyen in 1942, and was still teaching tailoring, but I had to stop because racism really started then. Fascism had spread to a few places. Hetyen hadn’t yet been touched. It hadn’t been decided yet, that Jews couldn’t have industries, but it was clear that we had to sell the business: the spices and general store.

We weren’t allowed to have a business. Moric, Erzsebet and I were home then. Gyula had married, Jozsef was studying in Prague. My older sister had found a husband in Mateszalka District, in Szamossalyi and had three children. You could travel, but Jews weren’t allowed to continue their business activities; I had to give up teaching in 1942.

• During the war

When the Germans entered Hungary [see German Invasion of Hungary] 6, it was put up that every Jew had to put five days of food together, and to be in readiness by a certain time. I already told you that Moric got a hernia from the hard work. I’d never seen anyone so tortured in my life, as my brother was then.

They operated on him, it was a success. Meanwhile, they had taken us to the ghetto. When they came to register all the Jews, there were no Jews in the hospital, and Erzebet and Moric weren’t home. So they weren’t registered anywhere. A couple of days after Moric’s operation, they both came to the ghetto on their own, to be together with us.

At the beginning of April 1944, the constables 7 came for us, stopped a wagon at our gate, and we had to get into it. The whole family went: first my father, then Mother, then me.

They took us to the Beregszasz ghetto. We were on the grounds of a brick factory.

At the end of April 1944, they took the area’s Jews and the Ruthenians together, by transport. At the beginning of April, they had begun herding us into the ghetto; we were in the ghetto for a month. We stayed under the roof in the brick factory.

The food we brought with us ran out in a few days. Then Etelka, the watchman’s wife came into the ghetto. She said, ‘They say that they’re killing all the Jews, all of them.’ I told her, ‘Etelka, whenever there’s a big harvest, one or two staffs of wheat are left. I’m going to be one of them. I’m going to survive.’ I told her that. 

On 30th April 1944, they took us away, and on 2nd May, we arrived in Birkenau [today Poland]. They told us they were taking us to work, and the old people would go to special treatment. They didn’t say where, just that it was in Germany.

They didn’t tell us anything, just treated us like animals. In the boxcars, everybody went together, but when we arrived, and got off the train in Auschwitz, they separated the women from the men. The trip took two or three days. The train stopped along the way, but we couldn’t get out.

We just stayed in the boxcars the whole time, the little window was barb-wired, and we peeked out of there. Some died along the way, they threw them out. My parents, Moric, Erzebet and I were together. At Kassa [the city was on the Hungarian-Slovak border], when the Hungarian constables gave us to the Germans, my brother was laying there fresh out of his operation in the train car; we were crowded together.

He said, whatever happens, Lilly is going to survive. We had to leave our belongings there. ‘Everyone move calmly, everyone will get their belongings,’ they said in German. Everything was in German. We understood; my parents spoke German fluently. And for those who didn’t understand, someone translated to them. 

In the ghetto, they had already told us that whoever had valuables, gold or jewelry, had to take it off. We took everything out. I left a watch. When we arrived in Auschwitz, the people in striped clothes, who had already been there for a long time, from Slovakia and Germany, waved at us not to bring anything in.

So I took my watch and threw it to them. They yelled in German, ‘Men together, and women together.’ When we had been separated, they yelled for the women over 60 to step aside, a German SS [man] pointed in which direction!

My mother was 70 years old and weighed 85 kilograms. She had been 100 kilograms a long time ago, but when these troubles aroused, she lost weight. That’s when we got separated from each other. We thought we would be able to visit each other. The Jickovics girls, three sisters, also from Hetyen, were there with us the whole time.

Their mother went together with ours. But we decided that Erzebet would go with the older women to take care of them. Then they took us into the bath where we had to unpack our clothes; we were still in our own clothes, when we went to bathe. The older residents [the prisoners] started staring at them, and came for them. I said, ‘Don’t touch them, they are mine!’ They had a good laugh, and then took them.

They shaved us bald; we got a full length gray dress, big clothes, knickers, stockings and a pair of socks. We had seen a group, all bald. ‘How they look!’ we said. We thought they were crazy. They told us, ‘Just wait, soon you’ll be crazy too.’ And then it was our turn. When we came out, we didn’t recognize each other. We looked around to see who was where, everyone had totally different faces.

As we moved, I hear somebody yelling, ‘Lilly, Lilly!’ My sister came with a loaf of bread in her hand, the baked kind from home. ‘What did you do? How could you leave Mother?’ I asked her.

‘I didn’t want to, but the Germans wouldn’t let me go, they beat me back with a rubber club.’ ‘And why did you take the bread from Mother?’ I asked, and she said, ‘He took it from her and gave it to me.’ I said that not all Germans are the same. Erzebet survived all the horrors. She died on the way home, but I’ll get to that later.

Moric was chosen for work, and when he went into the bath, a German saw his thirty centimeter fresh scar and took him away to the crematorium. The first day, when we had to stand for the ‘Zellappell’ [German for roll call], at 4am the fun had already started. Zellappell means the counting.

That’s when they counted us. I got two socks, and one was a really warm stocking, which came up to my thigh, the other was a short sock. And bald, in the dawn cold, I tied a turban on my bald head, so I wouldn’t freeze. When the SS came to me, he slapped me so hard, I thought my head had fallen off. ‘What are you thinking? You have a turban on!’ He took it off my head. I had no idea it wasn’t allowed. Such a hard slap on the first day for me!

Our barrack commander, Alizka had been there for four years, and was a Slovak Jew. The barrack commanders were Jewish also, but there weren’t just Jews, there were also Ukrainians. There were those who had been convicted of something. There were Communists, and German prostitutes. They convicted them, and they worked in the camp as overseers.

There were robbers and killers, too, it was only that their sign was a green triangle pointing down. Every three months, they put the people who worked at the crematorium into the crematorium, so there wouldn’t be anybody to talk about what happened there. They made the Jews do all the internments. 

Erzsebet’s condition was weaker than mine. They often took her to the hospital, where she got a little better, but soon broke down again, and they took her in again. Once they whispered behind me that yesterday there was a big selection at the hospital, and my sister was one of the selected. That night I escaped to the hospital, and found my sister: she was alive. 

They put us in the group called Canada. The Canada group meant we sorted the clothes taken from the transports of Jews. [The Canada command was a group of hundreds of inmates in Birkenau, whose job was to meet the arriving trains, unpack them, and sort the different valuables and belongings found on each train.

The warehouse where the belongings of the dead were sorted was called Canada.] The better things had to be packed separately. The underwear and everything had to be separated. It wasn’t hard work, and we got the very nice clothes, the striped ones: grey and blue stripes and a blue silk belt.

We had a red scarf on our heads, and everything was brand new. We got black boots which we had to shine up every day. We had to march nicely because the international express train passed by there. We went to work next to where the train went by. So foreigners saw what great things the prisoners were doing. That lasted six weeks, because then the transport from Hungary was over. And our jobs were done, Canada was shut down.

They put us to work cleaning up ruins. We had to dig out the rocks with a pick-axe from the dilapidated and bombed houses. It was horribly heavy work. We had to load the big rocks into a coal tub. When the tub was full, 18-20 of us pulled it by the thick ropes attached to the side.

We had to transport that for I don’t know how many meters. I was in the 18th group. After we’d dumped it, we had to put the stones in nice piles. After we made the piles, we pulled the coal tub back, and started the work again. That went on for a while. Then they put us in potato-loading: loading train cars full of potatoes for soldiers. I was scared by then, because my arms were really heavy.

When we arrived, they gave us bread, and I thought it was home-made soap, that’s how it looked. That’s what we had, plus two dekagrams of margarine, plus they gave us a half liter of soup which was concentrated. It looked like the slop they used to give to the pigs at the neighbor’s house in Hetyen. There were potatoes in it. Everyday we got the same thing, no variations.

For dinner, we got a cup of black coffee: something brown with saccharin. You had to save your bread. I don’t know how many dekagrams it was, but it wasn’t a half kilogram. I always went out to the trash heap, and collected the vegetables off the top, which the kitchen had thrown away. We washed them well, and in a tin can on two bricks, we cooked what we had found, inside the barrack. There was a place in the middle of the barrack for that. 

In the area of the Lager [German for camp], where we were, those who were chosen for work could do things like that, because they didn’t inspect us. After work and before Zellappell, we had an hour to travel freely between the barracks. Those in Lager C didn’t go to work, they didn’t get food. They were exterminated.

In the beginning, we didn’t even know. We found out, about three weeks later, that our parents were no longer alive. The barrack commander, Alizka, yelled for silence, because there would be big trouble.

There were 800 of us in one barrack, and so there was a lot of noise, and she was always scared, and in revenge she told us to remember where we were, and that our parents had been cremated the day we arrived. We had always seen the big fires. They don’t bury people here, they burn them. We didn’t think we would end up there.

They only took Jews and gypsies to the crematorium. The gypsies worked in the neighboring barrack, and one day no gypsies came out, not even one. They said that they had cremated 3,500 gypsies that night. It was horrific. When we found out they had cremated the gypsies, and we didn’t know who would be next in line, we panicked. 

Then we were storing potatoes. That was our work after Canada, and since I was the daughter of a landowner, I knew how to store potatoes. We took 50 kilogram crates over to the railway to the warehouse. Once, somebody hid four potatoes.

One of the SS [women] carried a mace with a ball on the top like the swineherds used to have. I wasn’t there, because my sister was in the hospital then. I had just gotten back, when everybody was standing there with their skirts up, and she’d beaten their bottoms.

Everybody got clubbed eight times. She told me to stand in line! I got them too, but with full force. Those who got it first, she hit with her full anger. Our behinds were blackened. Then we looked at each other to see how badly our bottoms had been beaten, and the Germans were peeking in.

One of them said to the clubber, ‘How could you beat them like that, they’re women.’ And when our shift was over, the more sensitive one came over to us and said, ‘Everybody can take four potatoes, but hide them, so they don’t see them at the entrance.’ That’s how they compensated us.

It happened one night, when I first heard Hungarian from someone other than my colleagues. I went out to the trash pile to look for something. In the dark, I heard a guard cursing in Hungarian, ‘God dammit, what do I do? Shoot her?’ He was talking to himself. When I heard him I thought, thank you God, there are Hungarians here! So I went away, he didn’t shoot me, I got lucky that night.

[Many Hungarian ethnic Germans, so-called ‘Schwabian’ SS, served in the camps. There were also Transylvanians, ethnic German ‘Saxons’, who knew Hungarian very well. For example, one of the selector physicians, Victor Capesius was often sent out to the Hungarian transports, because it was very calming for the deportees that someone spoke their mother tongue.]

Once, we got near a cabbage field around noon near where we worked. There the girls ran in, one, then another, and got out a cabbage, and ran back. I was so scared, I didn’t dare. I saw the guard there, he was aiming at me. I called out to him in German to let me take a cabbage. Not possible. But what did he do? He turned around, turned his back to me.

I understood that he didn’t want to see anything. I pulled one out, and my friend pulled out two. I barely stood up, when I heard an SS on a horse galloping towards us, and poor Nelli started to run with two cabbages.

She shouldn’t have run away. I didn’t run away. I stood petrified, and let the cabbage drop from my hand, and waited. When he got there, he jumped off the horse, put the reins in my hand and jumped on Nelli. Well, Nelli in her wood clogs, and pipe-cleaner legs, got it. He hit her with the highest degree of sadism, kicked her, cut her, crushed her and humiliated her, ‘Die Schweine-Judin!

If a German officer says stop, and you dare run away!’ He left her there, Nelli had pissed and shat herself. Everything came out of her. The German took down our numbers and said that we were going to court, because it was forbidden to steal cabbage. What hurt me was that the others who had also taken cabbages had fled. 

My sister had sent word from the hospital to bring her some kind of vitamins, a little cabbage leaf. That’s why I took the cabbage. Well, then we went to court. Three days later, they called us over. The woman judge addressed me to tell her what happened. I told her that my sister was in the hospital, and I wanted to bring her some vitamins, a little cabbage leaf.

That’s why I pulled out the cabbage. ‘And the guard?’ she asked. I said, ‘I didn’t see him, he was standing with his back to us. And that’s why I dared to pick the cabbage.’ The woman judge liked the fact that I didn’t get the guard involved in it. That’s why she didn’t punish me by having me shaved bald again. The punishment was to shave the hair which had grown back on our heads. 

That meant a lot, because around then there was talk about the front getting closer. And they took transport away from there. We were punished with a red mark on our backs. [In Auschwitz, the political prisoners got a red triangle, this mark was on their chest, in front.] This marked that we couldn’t go out of the Lager grounds to work. That was our punishment.

There was no time limit: we didn’t know how long it would last. Those prisoners who had this mark were condemned to be cremated. But this was secret. [In this story, this could only be some kind of SS-authority, perhaps the Gestapo Politische Abteilung, but it’s likely, that they simply summoned them to a high-ranking SS guard (woman). And since this was Birkenau, it’s truly miraculous that they weren’t immediately shot.]

I was put in the punishment barrack, and my sister Erzebet stayed in the other barrack. There was food in the punishment barracks. They had milk there, and boiled potatoes. I took some milk to my sister because they gave us the best of what they cooked. The workers just got the scraps.

Those who were punished were long-time prisoners already. There were Jews, Ukrainians and also high-ranking ones there. They had their connections with the kitchen. We were in Birkenau [(Brzezinka)] 8 for six months. 

Suddenly we heard that they were taking the transport to Germany. The order came that nobody could leave the barracks after dark. Trucks were coming, and we had to get on. This was what they told the punishment barrack. There was lots of screaming, and rumbling.

When the barrack was half empty, the barrack commander came over holding a little girl by the hand, maybe sixteen years old. She told me, ‘You and Nelli come with me.’ She took us to the empty part in the back. She said, ‘Hide in here, in one of the beds farthest in the back, on top, in the hollow of the bed.

The sound of a fly is not loud, but don’t even make that much noise. I’ll come back for you!’ We got in and waited in silence. Suddenly, the barrack emptied out. There was a horribly great silence: you can’t imagine what that terrifying silence was. We stayed there covered up.

I heard an SS officer asking the commander woman, ‘All 800 are gone?’ She said, ‘Yes’ in German. The officer left, and the woman came over to us with tears streaming down her face, ‘So now you can come out. Come out, that’s all I can do.’ I didn’t understand what she meant by that. We followed her. ‘And where do we go?’ we asked. ‘Wherever you want’, and she left.

Only later did I find out that we were the only three who survived that night, out of 800. The others were all killed that night.

After that, I went looking for my sister in the barrack I’d been banished from. It was completely empty. I started to ask around and they said, ‘They’re over there, crammed together, two barracks in one, like herrings. A train is taking them in the morning.’ And so I went over there, and good Lord!

The guard, who was a prisoner too, didn’t want to let me into the barrack where my sister was. I showed him my number, and told him to look for my sister. I told him that she was in there, and that I had been left behind. He let me in. I screamed out her name and found her. She was squashed. I almost passed out from the horrible smell in there.

Then in the morning, they started for the trains. They gave us two slices of bread for the trip. And we had a backpack, which I had saved. It’s in the Yad Vashem 9 Museum in Israel. 

We thought they were taking us to Germany. We didn’t know what day it was. We had to walk to the trains for nearly two days straight. Then we had to stop because there weren’t any more trains, they had to give them to the army, they needed transport. They put us in a giant tent, a thousand of us slept on the bare ground. They brought us soup, but it was so salty, that we couldn’t have it. It was nettle soup.

Then, two or three days later, a train came and took us to Ravensbruck 10. There we were in quarantine for three weeks. We got soup at noon. It was a huge camp. Some went out to work. There was so much sadism, cruelty.

They beat up the prisoners; they were dirty, and muddy. It wasn’t like in Birkenau, or in Auschwitz, that there was a number on our arm, but instead there was a huge swath of lime on their backs, and a cross on their clothes. You could see they were prisoners from far away. They were numbered, but their backs were marked.

But they didn’t take us to work, we were under observation in quarantine, to make sure we didn’t bring any typhus or diseases in. Beds were side by side. Next to me there was a woman, she was very glad to be in her own clothes. It turned out that she was the wife of the Captain of the Budapest Police.

I asked her, ‘Well, how did you get here?’ She said, ‘They called my husband in for interrogation once and he never came home. I went looking for him, I waited and waited, they said he would come. Then I asked to speak with my husband. They told me to get dressed, take some clothes with me, and they brought me here. Here I am. I don’t know anything about my husband.’

They then transported us further. We traveled for days in the train, and arrived in Germany one night, in a small camp 200 kilometers from Berlin, Malchow 11. Malchow was a labor camp. We arrived at night, there were no lights, no water, there was nothing. Everybody had diarrhea, and all kinds of problems.

Everybody went to the makeshift wood shack nearby to take care of their business, but early the next morning, we cleaned it out, because an SS woman came. We had arrived in a strange place, and didn’t know where the toilet was. We didn’t know anything. But we weren’t the only ones who’d done that.

This SS woman saw that we had cleaned it up, and she said, ‘We did the same thing, we didn’t know where the WC was.’ It was humane of her. We were in quarantine for a while. They only gave us a couple of faggots of wood, so there wasn’t really any heating. There were 38 of us in those bunk beds on legs. And we only had a thin black and white blanket on us. 

It was already late fall, because the grass was frozen. We were ordered to rip out the grass. After we did that, we were ordered to go near the forest to cut sod squares. They put me in an automobile, but I thought I was going to die. It was so numbingly cold, without clothes, in drizzly, rainy weather. But thank God in the last minute, the SS woman couldn’t stand the weather either. She cancelled the work and we went back.

After that, they assigned us to work in a munitions factory. We had to go on foot a long way, eight to ten kilometers. In the morning, we got a cup of black coffee, and 20 dekagrams [7oz.] of bread. At the work place, where we were assigned, we went into a long, enormous, indiscernible forest, a terribly long way, but you couldn’t tell anywhere on the road, where we were. We went underground, below the forest. There was a huge munitions factory under the whole forest, 58 bunkers.

I went to a bunker where we filled shells with gunpowder. As I wasn’t in such a bad shape as some, they put me on the machine. The filled shells came down the conveyer belt in boxes, and I had to jerk the machine. That sent the box further down the slide. But if I didn’t pull the machine precisely, we would all blow up. The German said, ‘Be careful, it has to be precise, otherwise we blow up.’ We worked there for a long time.

Then when one machine broke down, a worker came to fix it, who was French, and he always sang. And in his song, he let us know that we shouldn’t be scared, we would soon be free, because the front was coming. There was nobody there who could have told us that.

We worked everyday, we left and we came back. Twelve hours of work a day, but we had to keep the place tidy when the other shift came in. We worked two weeks day shift, and two weeks night shift. That went on for quite a while.

One day, one of the little shells jumped into the pocket of one of the prisoners. When it was time to leave, near the gate, he tossed it out. The Germans found it, and they thought there was some kind of conspiracy going on. They didn’t let us go to work, they drove us out into a clearing, and we had to stand in a circle. ‘Tell us what’s going on, who brought the shell in?’ Nobody knew anything! Then we ran in circles. All day running, and running.

They gave us no food and no water for three days. After the third day, every tenth person fell over and died. And then they gave us a little coffee slop one day. More running, running again, people fell out of the circle, by the weekend it was every fourth person. Nobody knew anything. One of the SS women passed out, she couldn’t stand the sight of the torture. After some time, somebody cried out that there was a crazy person among us, and he threw the shell. We hadn’t worked for a week. 

When they let us work again, we had a half hour lunch break. They gave us a cup of soup, with a carrot floating here or there. We tried to survive on our own. Since we were in a forest, at noon we went looking for milkweed: a kind of weed that drips a white liquid when you pick the stem or leaves, and wild sorrel. You were lucky if you found it. We ate that.

We couldn’t go to the trash pile anymore, and there weren’t vitamins on the trash heap at dawn, like in Birkenau. The front was closing in. We didn’t have to work. There started to be less Germans.

They didn’t give us food. We were very hungry. Hunger was terribly strong. I went to the trash can, looking for horse bones, because there was a little meat here or there on them. Then an SS woman came and started to whip me. But I didn’t care about the whipping, I took that bone. That bone meant life. I washed it as well as I could, cut off what I could, that was food. I was reduced to 38-40 kilograms.

We got an order not to sleep two on a bed. But there was no heating, it was cold. My sister lay down next to me. We put the blankets together, and then an SS woman came in, and saw my older sister laying there. How did she know that it was her who had come over and not me? She pulled my sister down.

Grabbed the wide whip from her waist, and started thrashing her back. ‘You obey orders! You aren’t allowed to sleep there!’ She beat my sister’s back bloody. Everybody swooned, they couldn’t stand to look. The poor thing survived that too, and we survived it, but it’s impossible to forget. A week later, further transport arrived. Then they ordered us: two to one bed. A week earlier that was exactly what they had beaten her back bloody for.

There were a couple more days, when not only two slept in a bed, but those who came had to sleep on the ground inside the barrack. More groups came because they started evacuating there in Malchow also, and they took prisoners deeper and deeper into Germany. The courtyard was filled with prisoners. If somebody had to go to the toilet, when they returned, there was no place for them. There the prisoners were stripped off their human dignity. There were a lot of bad people there.

Some were capable of betraying their own kind, out of envy, because they didn’t get something. One time, an SS officer came in one evening, and asked us who wanted to work. My sister and I immediately volunteered. He said we had to clean an apartment. Now the others wanted to go, too. ‘I don’t need any more, just the two who volunteered first,’ he said.

The cleaning was good, because the German put three pieces of bread out that he didn’t want. He had cookies, which they’d sent from home, garlic, whatever, he had it all. We stole a little bit of everything. That little bit meant life. Then my sister and I each put the bread into the satchel which we had under our skirts so that we could get it past the gate. But my hand froze to the basin when we had to clean out the coal ash from the stove, and sweep up the coal dust. We cleaned it beautifully, and brought him coal, he was very satisfied. This also meant life for us.

We went again: my sister and I volunteered to help carry soup in large pots. But we also brought our cups with us, under our skirts, and we ladled them full and drank while on the way back. But my own kind went and betrayed us. They’d sunken to the point where nothing mattered to them, they’d gotten that far. 

I stayed sharp. When we arrived, by the time we had drunk the soup, we washed the cups and put them back in their place. The woman came immediately to our cubicle, and saw that the cups were clean. ‘So you lied!’, and the traitor got slapped. She didn’t volunteer to work, but she was jealous that we drank a cup of soup. I could keep track of time.

In Ravensbruck also, when we went to sleep there, our room was next to the kitchen. They brought the big pots of soup from the kitchen, when the guard left, I immediately counted out the exact moment, and poured out a plate, we both drank it, then I washed it and put it away. That’s how I stayed alive.

When they started to evacuate Malchow, the Germans fled. But a German officer came, and told us to take whatever we could carry from the warehouse, because we won’t get anything to eat for a week. Nobody would be able to give us food, because there’s no telling which group would get here first. I was the last one into the warehouse.

There was only a little sugar left, I found a rag and put the sugar in it. Then an SS in a coat stepped in and said, ‘How dare you come in here?’ And pointed his gun to shoot me. But they weren’t allowed to shoot us by that time. Germany had already fallen. This was the beginning of May, in 1945. On 2nd May I was liberated. 

• After the war

He really should have left already. There were still Germans there, but everybody knew they’d lost the war, and well they were scared to do something that might get them court-martialed. I was lucky that one woman had seen him coming. She hid behind a door, and started screaming. He was surprised that I wasn’t alone, and so he couldn’t finish me off. Then he hit me in the head. My head bled really badly, but we were in the hospital, because they emptied the barracks and the sick stayed behind.

They said they were going to execute the sick. But I didn’t leave my sister there. It was such a horrible situation, everybody messed themselves, laying there in their own dirt. My head was bleeding so one of the women knew who the doctor was, and implored her to bandage my head. ‘I haven’t got anything, the best I can do is wash and bandage it with paper,’ she told me.

The Germans left and we stayed. Then the French, Red Cross assistance, and volunteer nurses arrived. They started making order. My sister said, ‘Get out. Get something to eat.’ They were taking food to the Germans, and I got onto the little wagon from where the French were bringing it, so they had given me a spoon of warm soup for my sister.

The guy knocked me down so hard, I almost passed out. Then the others started abusing him, ‘Aren’t you ashamed to treat a woman like that?’ his partners said. Then he tried to make amends, but it didn’t matter to me anymore. I had a little self-respect in me. Then I saw in the window a piece of sausage which they had put aside for somebody, and I took it. I had a bad impression of the French.

Then they left, and they put us in the barrack where the Germans had been. It was a little better. Then the Germans became our servants. They cooked, cleaned, and everything. Then the Russians came, and we were very glad. A liberation group, a 20,000 man army surrounded the camp. They broke into the camp where the German women were, and slept with them.

We were there for a while, then all at once the Red Cross cars started coming. They gathered us, and we went into town, to Malchow. In one of the buildings there, it was like a palace, two old ladies were closed in. ‘There’s nothing left, they took it all. We’ve got nothing left’, they said. ‘We don’t want to hurt you, we just want to eat’, we told them.

They had nothing to give us. We kept going. We collected valuables here and there, what we could, and packed them into the suitcase to take home. I had two big suitcases, and I got blankets, I sewed a dress for myself out of an eiderdown quilt. Then all the aid organizations came, except the Hungarian Red Cross. The Yugoslav, Czech, they all came. Finally, we reported that we wanted to go to Czechoslovakia, because we were here under the Czechs. With that they took us to Prague. It took four days.

In Prague, they took both of us to different hospitals. We were there for three more weeks. I couldn’t get out of bed, but I was looking for my sister. There was a boy there, who was also a Hungarian Jew, who came from the Ruthenian region. I asked him to find my sister. I couldn’t get off the bed. He left, looked and looked, and in the end, he found her. Then we asked the doctor to let me go.

I found my sister, I saw one of her eyes was glassy, unclear, it had ‘patinaed’ [literally ‘tinned up’]. ‘Lilly, we’re going home, right, I’m going to be better, too, and I’ll go with you in a week,’ she said. ‘It’s visible how much you’re changing for the better!’ I said.

One of the Czech women who worked there, and knew Hungarian, called me over when I came out. She said, ‘Your sister would have died already, but she couldn’t. She was always calling for you, Lilly, and Moric, her brother. She waited so badly for you.’ When I went back the next day, she had died of typhus, and the water filled her up. She was full of water. The local Jewish community office buried her in Prague, in the new Jewish cemetery, in row 13.

I went home alone, it was terrible. In July, I went back with the three Jickovics sisters. Around then, there were train robberies, and they knew that the Jews were all taking back something with them, and then they broke into the next car, and totally robbed the men there. A boy came with us, who was also from Hetyen, with his three female cousins, and escorted us home. He sat by the window, in case somebody tried to climb in there, he’d stop them. That’s how we didn’t get robbed.

When we got to Pozsony [today Slovakia], the young conductor asked us for our tickets. We told him that we didn’t have tickets and that we were coming back from the Lagers. He told us he wasn’t interested, and to show him proof. That’s how he tricked us.

We showed him our identification cards, the proof we got in Malchow that we were in the camp. He collected them from all of us, then he said he’d give them back unless we paid for our tickets. We didn’t have any money. He took everybody’s identification, so we arrived home, and nobody had proof that they had been in the camp. 

When we arrived in Budapest, we went to Sip Street [Budapest Jewish Community], and they gave us proof on the basis of our tattoos, which showed when we arrived there and what our numbers were. That was our first identification. My number is here on my left arm: A-6742. We went to the accommodation for the camp victims, and then went to visit my cousin who had returned home.

I knew there was a lot of work waiting for me in Hetyen. I was left on my own. I went home, knowing my parents were no longer alive, Erzebet was dead, and I didn’t know anything about Moric. But a boy came from the neighboring village and told me not to expect him.

My parents, Berta and her three children all perished. One was fourteen, one eight and one four years old. Her husband died in a work camp. Erzsebet died on the way home, Jozsef was shot in France by the Germans. Gyula wasn’t in Europe during the war. He lived in America, and regularly sent letters and packages. But we never met. I just saw photos of him. Then I knew I was completely alone. He died in 1968. I didn’t know anything about him until his death. He’s buried in America.

When I went home, a villager was living in our house. When they took the Jews away, they divided up their [the Jews’] homes. He’d been given ours. He said it was his house, they had given it to him, but he agreed to empty one of the rooms for me and give me lunch.

As for those who we had given valuables and money, they returned everything: Gabor Suto was a respectable landowner. When they started taking the crops from the Jews, he even arranged for two wagons of wheat to be put at his place, to give back to them when this thing was over. That’s what happened. After the war, he brought back the full crop. 

Then I got married. After liberation, Hetyen became part of the Soviet Union, and we became Soviets, those laws were valid for us. At that time, they said, ‘The land belongs to the one who works for it.’ [Editor’s note: The landownership reform law of 1945 allowed possession of 100 hold of land, except for peasants who could own 200 hold, and people who fought exceptionally against the fascists in battle, could own 300 hold.

The lower limits of the law seemed radical at the time the law was made, and at the same it was really very arbitrary, as if they’d said fifty or five hundred was the maximum.] I soon met my husband, a very handsome boy, but very poor. We met in Beregszasz. A family who had relatives of my relatives in Ungvar brought us together. They told me to go to him, and that he wasn’t a debauched man. He was 32, and wasn’t married. 

Lajos Lovenberg, my husband, was an orphan, born in Beregszasz on 24th August 1912. His mother died in 1924. He was raised by his relatives. His father remarried, and he couldn’t accept his stepmother, so he left. He wanted to keep his religion strictly. He worked for relatives. He kept the books for them.

He finished eight years of elementary school, and graduated from the commerce school in Beregszasz. By the time we got married, my husband was taking me to school after work. ‘You always take me to school, why don’t you enroll?’ I told him. He did, and we graduated together.

He had been in the work service, among the first to be called up, and among the last to come back. He’d been there for six years. First he served in Hungary, then they gave him to the Germans, but they put him to work in Vienna [today Austria]. They worked hard.

On 19th March 1946, there was a chuppah in the courtyard of the Beregszasz synagogue. My wedding dress was partially made from a Red Cross package. I bought little pieces to go with it. When we were in Prague, on the way home from the camp, we got 1,500 crowns: I bought a pair of sandals with it. The weather was beautiful on our wedding day, bright, not a cloud in the sky.

A week later, on 24th March we had a civil service in Hetyen.

When I got married, Bela Tot, the self-proclaimed owner of my house, emptied the kitchen, so that we could use one room and a kitchen. My husband was on his way to Beregszasz, when a man he knew stopped him. He said he’d found a wallet in the grass, with documents in it that were Bela Tot’s. My husband took it, and brought it home. He looked into the documents.

Well, the fascist committee had given him the use of the house. We went to a lawyer, and he told us we had to sign over the papers from my father’s name to mine. It was an immensely great feeling, when I closed the door that night. That’s how I got my house back. Then we got children.

Life went on, hard times came, my husband found a job. He got a position at the financial department, collecting taxes in the village. He was a very intelligent man, he became the notary. Then they reported on my husband. An attorney came out to investigate the report.

My husband wasn’t willing to give him anything: ‘because I didn’t do anything,’ he said. ‘I was only following my orders.’ Later, the hearing came, and I took clothes to my husband. Well, then I stayed with my two little children. I was left alone with a four and a half month old and an eighteen month old child in 1948.

He stayed there for ten years. Later, we appealed, but for nothing. When Stalin died [1953], they examined the documents and found it was a false suit; they overturned it and made restitution. After four years, he came home, and became employed as a buyer. I was in health work, for twelve years altogether. 

Since 1978, we’ve lived in Budapest. I found work immediately. First at the waterworks, I worked for half a year, then at the Gas Company, where I worked for sixteen years as an accountant. I already worked in Beregszasz as a pensioner in the department.

I retired when I was 53. My husband also worked in the Gasworks all the way up to 1996. My husband departed from us on 24th September 2002. We buried him in accordance with the Jewish traditions in the Jewish cemetery.

• Glossary:

1 Subcarpathia (also known as Ruthenia, or Zakarpatie): Region situated on the border of the Carpathian Mountains with the Middle Danube lowland. The regional capitals are Uzhhorod, Berehovo, Mukachevo, Khust. It belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy until World War I; and the Saint-Germain convention declared its annexation to Czechoslovakia in 1919.

It is impossible to give exact historical statistics of the language and ethnic groups living in this geographical unit: the largest groups in the interwar period were Hungarians, Rusyns, Russians, Ukrainians, Czech and Slovaks. In addition there was also a considerable Jewish and Gypsy population.

In accordance with the first Vienna Decision of 1938, the area of Subcarpathia mainly inhabited by Hungarians was ceded to Hungary. The rest of the region was proclaimed a new state called Carpathian Ukraine in 1939, with Khust as its capital, but it only existed for four and a half months, and was occupied by Hungary in March 1939. Subcarpathia was taken over by Soviet troops and local guerrillas in 1944.

In 1945, Czechoslovakia ceded the area to the USSR and it gained the name Carpatho-Ukraine. The region became part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1945. When Ukraine became independent in 1991, the region became an administrative region under the name of Transcarpathia.

2 Neolog Jewry: Following a Congress in 1868/69 in Budapest, where the Jewish community was meant to discuss several issues on which the opinion of the traditionalists and the modernizers differed and which aimed at uniting Hungarian Jews, Hungarian Jewry was officially split into two (later three) communities, which all created their own national community network.

The Neologs were the modernizers, and they opposed the Orthodox on various questions.

3 Trianon Peace Treaty: Trianon is a palace in Versailles where, as part of the Paris Peace Conference, the peace treaty was signed with Hungary on June 4, 1920. It was the official end of World War I for the countries concerned.

The Trianon Peace Treaty validated the annexation of huge parts of pre-war Hungary by the states of Austria (the province of Burgenland) and Romania (Transylvania, and parts of Eastern Hungary).

The northern part of pre-war Hungary was attached to the newly created Czechoslovak state (Slovakia and Subcarpathia) while Croatia-Slavonia as well as parts of Southern Hungary (Voivodina, Baranja, Medjumurje and Prekmurje) were to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians (later Yugoslavia).

Hungary lost 67.3 percent of its pre-war territory, including huge areas populated mostly or mainly by Hungarians, and 58.4 percent of its population. As a result approximately one third of the Hungarians became an - often oppressed - ethnic minority in some of the predominantly hostile neighboring countries. Trianon became the major point of reference of interwar nationalistic and anti-Semitic Hungarian regimes.

4 Hatikvah: Anthem of the Zionist movement, and national anthem of the State of Israel. The word ‘ha-tikvah’ means ‘the hope’. The anthem was written by Naftali Herz Imber (1856-1909), who moved to Palestine from Galicia in 1882. The melody was arranged by Samuel Cohen, an immigrant from Moldavia, from a musical theme of Smetana’s Moldau (Vltava), which is based on an Eastern European folk song.

5 Hashomer Hatzair: ‘The Young Watchman'; A Zionist-socialist pioneering movement founded in Eastern Europe, Hashomer Hatzair trained youth for kibbutz life and set up kibbutzim in Palestine. During World War II, members were sent to Nazi-occupied areas and became leaders in Jewish resistance groups. After the war, Hashomer Hatzair was active in ‘illegal' immigration to Palestine.

6 German Invasion of Hungary: Hitler found out about Prime Minister Miklos Kallay’s and Governor Miklos Horthy’s attempts to make peace with the west, and by the end of 1943 worked out the plans, code-named ‘Margarethe I. and II.’, for the German invasion of Hungary.

In early March 1944, Hitler, fearing a possible Anglo-American occupation of Hungary, gave orders to German forces to march into the country. On March 18, he met Horthy in Klessheim, Austria and tried to convince him to accept the German steps, and for the signing of a declaration in which the Hungarians would call for the occupation by German troops. Horthy was not willing to do this, but promised he would stay in his position and would name a German puppet government in place of Kallay’s.

On March 19, the Germans occupied Hungary without resistance. The ex-ambassador to Berlin, Dome Sztojay, became new prime minister, who – though nominally responsible to Horthy – in fact, reconciled his politics with Edmund Veesenmayer, the newly arrived delegate of the Reich.

7 Constable: A member of the Hungarian Royal Constabulary, responsible for keeping order in rural areas, this was a militarily organized national police, subordinated to both, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Defense. The body was created in 1881 to replace the previously eliminated county and estate gendarmerie (pandours), with the legal authority to insure the security of cities.

Constabularies were deployed at every county seat and mining area. The municipal cities generally had their own law enforcement bodies - the police.

The constables had the right to cross into police jurisdiction during the course of special investigations. Preservative governing structure didn't conform (the outmoded principles working in the strict hierarchy) to the social and economic changes happening in the country. Conflicts with working-class and agrarian movements, and national organizations turned more and more into outright bloody transgressions. Residents only saw the constabulary as an apparatus for consolidation of conservative power.

After putting down the Hungarian Soviet Republic, the Christian establishment in the formidable and anti-Semitic biased forces came across a coercive force able to check the growing social movements caused by the unresolved land question. Aside from this, at the time of elections - since villages had public voting - they actively took steps against the opposition candidates and supporters.

In 1944, the Constabulary directed the collection of rural Jews into ghettos and their deportation. After the suspension of deportations (6th June 1944), the Arrow Cross sympathetic interior apparatus Constabulary forces were called to Budapest to attempt a coup. The body was disbanded in 1945, and the new democratic police took over.

8 Birkenau (Brzezinka): From October of 1941 to March of 1942, a camp called Auschwitz II. was constructed three kilometers from the main camp in southern Poland (on the border of Silesia and Galicia). This death camp was the main collection and distribution site for the Jewish and Roma (gypsy) deportees transported from European countries that joined or were occupied by Germany. This is where the systematic elimination of the nationalities deemed undesirable to Nazi ideology took on industrial proportions.

After the prisoners incapable of physical work were selected out and killed, those remaining were transported on to forced labor camps and war factories. The eliminations took place in four crematoriums; the people herded off the railcars into the gas chambers in the basements of the crematoriums - originally used for disinfection - were poisoned there with cyanide gas (Zyklon B). In 1944, the camp was capable of murdering and cremating 6,000 people daily. Aside from this, biological experiments were performed on living people on the camp’s grounds.

The aim of the experiments was the examination of the physical effects of various extreme conditions practiced on a human body, as well as the control of sexual potency with “medical” intervention. By the time the camp was liberated on 27th January 1945, at least 500,000 to 2,000,000 people were killed in Birkenau.

9 Yad Vashem: This museum, founded in 1953 in Jerusalem, honors both Holocaust martyrs and ‘the Righteous Among the Nations’, non-Jewish rescuers who have been recognized for their ‘compassion, courage and morality’.

10 Ravensbruck: Concentration camp for women near Furstenberg, Germany. Five hundred prisoners transported there from Sachsenhausen began its construction at the end of 1938. They built 14 barracks and service buildings, as well as a small camp for men, which was completely separated from the women’s camp. The buildings were surrounded by tall walls and electrified barbed wire. The first deportees, some 900 German and Austrian women were transported there on May 18, 1939, and soon followed by 400 Austrian Gypsy women. At the end of 1939, due to the new groups constantly arriving, the camp held nearly 3000 persons.

With the expansion of the war, people from twenty countries were taken here. Persons incapable of working were transported on to Uckermark or Auschwitz, and sent to the gas chambers, others were murdered during ‘medical’ experiments.

By the end of 1942, the camp held 15,000 prisoners, by 1943, with the arrival of groups from the Soviet Union, its numbers reached 42,000. During the working existence of the camp, altogether nearly 132,000 women and children were transported here, of these, 92,000 were murdered. In March of 1945, the SS decided to move the camp, so in April those capable of walking were deported on a death march.

On April 30, 1945, those who survived the camp and death march, were liberated by the Soviet armies.

11 Malchow: A small German town in the province of Mecklenberg-Pomerania. In 1943-44, a prisoner of war camp was added to the munitions factory beside the town, that worked as a sub-camp of about 4000 deportees for the Ravensbruck concentration camp.

Liza Lukinskaya
Vilnius
Lithuania
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: February 2005

I met Liza Lukinskaya in the Jewish community of Lithuania. As usual she came there to see her friends and discuss topical issues. Liza is a stocky, fashionably dressed woman with neatly dyed hair. She appeared to be outgoing and agreed to be interviewed at once. We met for the second time in Liza’s apartment in one of the relatively new districts of Vilnius. She lives in a house, similar to the Soviet buildings of the 1960s. Liza lives in a good three-room apartment with light wall-paper and fancy curtains and flowers that reflect the character of the owner: kind and easy-going.

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

My family background

My paternal grandfather, Leizer Abramson, was born in the middle of the 19th century in Kaunas. He was a merchant. He owned a small furniture store in the center of the city. His business was rather lucrative. Grandfather’s family was rich and they had their own house in Kaunas. Grandmother Hana-Beila was eight years younger than him. In accordance with the Jewish tradition she got married at a young age and became a housewife, taking care of their home and raising the children. I didn’t know Grandfather Leizer. I didn’t live to see him as I was born in 1920. At that time the whole family – grandparents, their adult children and their families, young single children – were exiled from Lithuania. When World War I started, the tsarist government exiled Jews from frontier territories. My grandfather’s family happened to be in Ukraine, but I don’t know where exactly. Grandfather died there in either 1916 or 1917.

I heard that Grandfather was a religious person, but not a zealot. He observed Jewish traditions, celebrated holidays, went to the synagogue and had his own seat there. I remember grandmother Hana-Beila. When the family came back to Lithuania, on holidays she came from Kaunas to Siauliai, where one of her daughters lived. Grandmother seemed very old to me. I remember that she prayed in the mornings. On Fridays she and I lit the candles on the eve of Sabbath. Grandmother didn’t cover her head, but as for the rest she totally looked like a traditional Jewish woman. She died in the early 1930s in Kaunas and was buried at the Jewish cemetery there.

Leizer and Hana-Beila had ten children – four sons and six daughters. All of them got traditional Jewish education. The boys finished cheder, then lyceum. I don’t know anything about the education of the girls. Anyway, the children of Leizer and Hana-Beila were literate people. By the irony of fate none of the daughters had children, and the brothers had two or three children. All of my father’s siblings perished during the Fascist occupation. First Hana-Beila gave birth to daughters. Then the boys were born. The eldest sister Ida, born in the late 1870s, helped her mother raise the younger children, and rejected all her fiancés. Ida remained a spinster. She never worked and lived with grandmother Hana-Beila.

When her mother died, Ida moved to her sister Fanya, who was one or two years younger. She was a famous milliner. Fanya owned a large hat store and atelier, where she and a couple of dozens of her employees made beautiful, fashionable hats. All the stylish ladies from Kaunas knew Fanya. She was married. Her husband, a Jew, Keirauskas was deported 1 and exiled to Siberia in 1940. It saved his life. Ida and Fanya died in the Kaunas ghetto 2. Ten years after the Great Patriotic War 3 Keirauskas came back to Lithuania. I don’t know what happened to him. After Fanya died he didn’t keep in touch with our family.

Liza, born after Fanya, was also married. I don’t remember her husband’s name. He died before the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War. Liza also perished during one of the first actions of extermination in the second Kaunas ghetto. I don’t remember my father’s other sisters. Our family rarely kept in touch with them. I know that one of them, the youngest, stayed in Ukraine. She remained single and died at a very young age.

My father was the eldest of the brothers. Then Abram was born in 1890. He was a violinist and worked in the orchestra of the Kaunas opera theater. I don’t recall his wife’s name, but I clearly remember his children’s names. The eldest, Israel, was my age. Before World War II he was a student. The younger Lev and Anna went to a lyceum. Abram’s family perished in Kaunas ghetto during its liquidation in 1944.

Samuel Abramson, born in the 1890s, followed Abram. He was a representative of a large trade shoe enterprise, Salamander, in Kaunas. This enterprise is still known all over the world. He ran the Salamander store in Kaunas. I don’t remember the name of his wife and two children. They also became Nazi victims in Kaunas ghetto. My fathers’ younger brother, Yakov Abramson, born in the 1900s, and his wife owned a hat store in Kaunas. Both of them ran the business. They had two sons, who perished in the ghetto with their parents.

My father, Isaac Abramson, was born in 1887. Having finished cheder he went to one of the Jewish lyceums of Kaunas, though I don’t know how many grades he finished. He was exiled to Ukraine with his family and in 1917 met my mother, who was from Romny, Sumy oblast [about 250 km east of Kiev]. Father also lived there at that time.

My mother’s parents were from Ukraine. Most likely they were born in Romny in the 1870s. Mother’s father, Tsal Dubossarskiy was also a merchant. He was very rich. I don’t know what exactly his business was. I didn’t know Grandfather – he died in 1922 after our family came back to Lithuania. Grandmother Anna was a housewife and brought up the children. After her husband’s death Anna moved to Kharkov [440 km east of Kiev], where she lived before the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. During the war my grandmother was in evacuation in Ural. When the war was over, she came back to Kharkov. After the war she lived only for two years. I didn’t see her then and was not able to find out about her life.

My maternal grandparents observed Jewish traditions and celebrated holidays as did the paternal ones. They also went to the synagogue, but in my mother’s words they did it because it was customary for the Jews, not because of their religiousness. They tried to raise their children – two daughters and three sons – to respect Jewish traditions, but they kept abreast with the times. Mother told me that they had governesses who taught them foreign languages and music.

I didn’t know my mother’s brothers and their children. I don’t remember the names of all of them. The eldest brother Alexander, born in the early 1900s, was a callow youth, ran away from home during the Civil War 4 and joined a Red Army squad. He fought in the cavalry and became a Bolshevik 5. When the Civil War was over, he finished the Construction Institute in Moscow and worked as an engineer at some military plant. He lived in Moscow all his life. He was appointed to high positions. Alexander had a son, whose name I don’t remember. He also lived in Moscow. Alexander died in the 1970s.

The second brother, Aron, who was one or two years younger than Alexander, was a career military. He went through the entire Great Patriotic War and then lived in Kharkov. He died in the 1980s. The youngest, Yakov, also lived in Kharkov. He worked as a chief accountant of some pharmacy administration. He was in evacuation in Ural and after the war lived with his wife and children in Kharkov. He survived Aron by a couple of years.

My mother’s only sister Katya was much younger than she. I have a picture, where teenage Katya held me in her arms. I was four months old in that picture. I don’t remember Katya. She stayed in Ukraine. She died from pneumonia in about two years after we had left. She was only 17.

My mother, Feiga Dubossarskaya, the eldest in the family, was born in 1898. She obtained a wonderful education. She finished a Russian lyceum. I don’t know what language was spoken in the family of Grandfather Tsal. My mother was proficient in Russian, both oral and written, but she didn’t speak very good Yiddish and had an accent. Mother was taught music and played the grand piano. She was good at it. I don’t know how my parents met. In 1917 they got married. They didn’t have a traditional Jewish wedding. It wasn’t the right time: the years of the Revolution 6, Civil War, hunger and pogroms 7. In 1918 mother gave birth to my elder brother Abram, and on 13th May 1920 I, Liza Abramson, was born. By that time Lithuania had gained independence from Russia 8. Many Lithuanian citizens came back to their motherland and in 1921, when I was a year and a half old, our family – my mother, father, brother and I – came back to our motherland in Kaunas, which was the capital of Lithuania at that time. Almost all of my father’s family came back there.

Growing up

Here in Kaunas my parents rented a small two-room apartment on the outskirts. I have some vague memories from my childhood in Kaunas. I remember a big round table, a large parental bed and beautiful velvet window curtains. Once, my mother asked me to give her a pair of scissors. I took them and ran to the sofa, where my mother was sitting. I fell down on them and hurt my neck. I still have a scar. I was a bad trencherman and my mother was constantly trying to scare me with gypsies. I was afraid of them for many years. When I was five or six, Father was offered a well-paid job and our family moved to Siauliai [about 200 km from Vilnius].

Father was assigned to a good position. He was a representative of the owners of the Guberniya brewery. This company is still an important brewery in Lithuania. Father was a very gifted and literate man. He was fluent in Russian and Lithuanian, both oral and written. He also knew Polish and German. He had a lot of responsibilities: starting from concluding contracts with stock houses and stores and up to quality control of beer. Siauliai was the second city in Lithuania after Kaunas in terms of population and importance. It was multinational. 30-40 percent of the population was Jewish.

I was a feeble child. When I was unwell, the pediatrician Kantorovich came over. There was also a doctor at the plant where father was working. He was a Lithuanian. He was also called, when needed, and treated our family free of charge. There were a lot of Jews in Siauliai – merchants, businessman, intelligentsia: doctors, lawyers, teachers of Jewish schools. There were two synagogues in the city. The first place we lived in was near a large two-storied synagogue, located in the vicinity of the train station. My father went to the synagogue at that time and took my brother and me with him. I liked to see my father change in the synagogue. Usually he was funny and kind. When he put his tallit on, he looked older and stricter.

There was an old building of a confectionary in front of our house. So it smelled like sweet caramel in our block. There was a military unit and an orchestra in the yard of our house. My brother and I enjoyed listening to bravura marches and waltzes they played almost every day. Our apartment was rather small, consisting of two rooms: my parents’ bedroom and the room I shared with my brother. At first, it seemed to me that father didn’t make that much money in Siauliai, as my mother did the house chores and cooking.

Soon Father was given an apartment near the brewery and we moved to a new place. The office of the brewery was located in the former mansion of some respectable countess. It was a beautiful two-storied building with a yard, fence and a gate. There was a 24-hour security guard by the gate. It was closed for the night and the guard would walk around the yard with a dog and didn’t let in any outsiders. The office of the brewery was on the first floor together with the small premises of a music school. There were several apartments for the employees of the brewery on the top floor.

We had a four-room apartment. My parents purchased new furniture. There was a beautiful carved cupboard in the drawing-room as well as a table, chairs and a sofa with silken upholstery. The bedroom furniture was made from nut wood – a wide queen-size bed, mirror, dresser and large wardrobe with a mirror. There was not too much furniture in the small dining-room: a table with chairs, a small round table, where the telephone and address book were placed. Mother embroidered very well and she decorated the room with embroidered pictures and cushions and white starched laced table-cloths.

Father started making pretty good money and we felt it. We acquired a beautiful grand piano made of mahogany. Mother played it. My brother and I were taught music at home. Besides, I had an English tutor, who came over to us. We had a housekeeper: a Russian lady, Nina, but my mother, a great cook, didn’t let her cook without her guidance. She spent a lot of time in the kitchen. Food was cooked on primus stoves – there were several of them in the kitchen. There was also a stove, where Mother baked different pies, cakes – tartlets, rolls and all kinds of desserts. I still consider her cake ‘Napoleon’ to be the acme of culinary art. Mother cooked Jewish and Ukrainian dishes. She made wonderful borscht with garlic pies, vareniki [a kind of stuffed dumpling] with meat stuffing, curds and potatoes. Puffy meat patties were always served with broth. I don’t know what kind of cuisine that is.

We had all kinds of modern novelties in the kitchen. In that period of time people started canning food. Father bought a German apparatus with jars and glass lids. Mother made stewed fruit and canned them. Then she put them in a special boiler. We had a fridge in the kitchen: a special crate, where a metal box with ice was put. The ice was brought from the brewery. When it melted, more ice was brought again in a couple of days. There was a special cooler for pickles in the cellar. Father made them. He salted tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage in large barrels and stored them in the cellar.

My parents mostly spoke Russian at home. Mother knew Yiddish, but Russian was closer to her. Of course, I understood Yiddish as my father tried speaking it with me. There was a Jewish school by the synagogue and my brother and I went there. I went to that elementary school for two years. Subjects were taught in Yiddish. There were several Jewish schools and lyceums in Siauliai. When I grew up a little bit, Father made arrangements for my brother and me to be transferred to the Jewish lyceum. Here I started studying a language that was new to me: Hebrew. It was a prestigious institution. Father had to spend a lot of money on my tuition. I don’t remember the precise amount.

The lyceum wasn’t far from home. My brother’s friend lived close by. His parents owned a cab and they usually gave us a lift with their son. Once, in winter time, when it was frosty, the three of us came to the lyceum, but my brother and I weren’t let in. It turned out that Father left on a trip and didn’t manage to make the payment. My brother and I had to walk back home across the town. When Father came back, he was furious. I had never seen him in such a frenzy. He went to the lyceum right away and took our documents. The headmaster of the lyceum understood his fault and tried to correct the situation. He came to my father with his apologies, but Father wasn’t willing to listen. He hired teachers for us, who came home and crammed us for the Lithuanian lyceum. In summer 1929 my brother and I entered it rather easily. He went to the boys’ and I went to the girls’ lyceum.

Father’s friends also belonged to the middle class. As a rule, husbands worked and their spouses were housewives. Mother’s friends came over every once in a while. They had tea or coffee with Mother’s pies, browsed fashionable magazines and played cards. Women met once a week. Each of them received guests in turns. Sometimes they went out to eat ice-cream and drink liqueur. Mother often took me with her. She was a fashionable lady. She had her clothes made by the best milliner in Siauliai. She enjoyed shopping. She liked stores that sold readymade goods and haberdashery. Mother always went to the store where threads, yarn and knitting needles were on offer. The owner of the store gave classes on needlework to beginners.

On weekend our whole family often went out together. There was a central park in front of our house. It was shady and beautiful. There was a chestnut alley not far from it. In summer Father rented a dacha 9 for us a room and veranda in Pagegiai [about 200 km from Vilnius]. It was a splendid place, with seven lakes in a row. Mother was good at kayaking. Every day she and I swam in the lakes. Sometimes she put us in the kayak. My parents were great swimmers. Special belts were made from corks for my brother and me. Soon we also learned how to swim. As a rule Father came over to us for a weekend and we had picnics in the garden or in the forest.

My parents weren’t religious, though they kept up the traditions. Meat was bought only in kosher stores. Chicken and other poultry were always taken to a shochet. Sometimes Mother bought a tidbit-pork ham. She kept it in paper and gave it to me and my brother when nobody was around so that the neighbors wouldn’t see. When I said that we couldn’t eat pork, Mother gave me a surprised look and said, ‘Where do you see pork, it’s ham!’

Sabbath wasn’t celebrated at home the way it was in traditional families. Though, my mother did her best. She baked challot, put wine and candles on the table, lit the candles herself. On Saturday there was always a festive dinner, but Father didn’t go to the synagogue, moreover he had to work as Saturday was a working day at the brewery. Only when Grandmother Hana-Beila, who celebrated Sabbath, came to us from Kaunas, the whole family was at the table, and Grandmother said a prayer. Grandmother died in the early 1930s. I was very sick at that time and Mother couldn’t leave me. Father went to his mother’s funeral by himself. Grandmother was buried in accordance with the Jewish rites. The mourning period was also observed.

We celebrated Jewish holidays at home. I remember Pesach best of all. The house was prepared for the occasion well in advance: cleaning, dusting, polishing, dressing the windows with beautiful curtains, putting a beautiful table-cloth on the table. The dishes were well taken care of. There was a special set of Pascal dishes, stored in a certain cupboard. The rest of the dishes were given to some Jews to make them kosher: they soaked them in some tub and then deterged them with sand. Matzah was brought from the synagogue in a large hamper covered with a cloth. No special rites in connection with the banishment of chametz were conducted in our house. I asked Father the four traditional questions, as I was the youngest in the family, during the first seder.

There were all traditional products on the table: eggs, potatoes, some bitter herbs etc. Of course the table was lavishly laid with festive dishes, cooked by my mother. She cooked delicious kneydlakh made of onion, fried with chicken and goose fat, eggs, matzah flour and chicken broth, boiled in chicken broth. There was always gefilte fish, chicken stew and all kinds of tsimes 10. Mother cooked great imberlakh – a Jewish dish, made of carrots and ginger, boiled with sugar before thickening, put in layers on the board and cut in different shapes. Mother also baked cake from beet with nuts, a scrumptious sponge cake from matzah flour. Well in advance Father made wine from hops, honey and raisins. Mother also made teyglakh – honey and sugar boiled in syrup with ginger and a pinch of lemon acid, made in different shapes: rolls and spirals.

For Purim my mother always baked very tasty hamantashen with curds. On those days Jews brought presents to each other – shelakhmones. Trays with desserts were brought to us from Mother’s friends and she sent presents in her turn. A chanukkiyah was lit at home on Chanukkah. It was put in the window in accordance with the traditions. Potato fritters were also made. There was a feast in the evening.

I vaguely remember the fall holidays. When we were living in the old apartment by the synagogue, there was a sukkah made by the neighbors in our yard and we also went there. I remember the holiday of Simchat Torah when Jews would joyfully carry the Torah scroll. My brother and I were able to watch those holidays, when we were living by the synagogue, but those holidays weren’t celebrated at our place.

In 1935 Mother received an invitation from my grandmother. She had all necessary documents processed and went to see her in Kharkov. Her brothers, who were serving in the Soviet Army, were Communists. They didn’t know about her visit. When Mother came to Kharkov, Grandmother sent them a telegram saying that she was severely ill and asking them to come. Mother’s brothers saw her in secret. If it was known that they had seen their sister, who was living in a capitalist country, they might have shared the fate of the thousands of those repressed 11 by Stalin. Moreover, they didn’t even talk about their mother.

When I became a student of the Lithuanian girls’ lyceum I was mostly in a female environment. I was the only Jew in my grade. Actually, another Jewish girl joined our grade two years before my graduation. I was friends with Lithuanian girls: Polina Uskaite, Gribaite, Lukasheite. We were friends for ages. My classmates, both Lithuanian and Russian, treated me very well and paid no attention to my nationality. There was only one teacher, Vishinskine, who was an ardent anti-Semite. Even during the classes that had nothing to do with ethnicity she blamed Jews for all kinds of trouble. I was very active and sociable. The girls liked me. My friends and I went for walks in the park. We gave each other hugs. Sometimes we went to cafes to eat ice-cream, watched movies. There were two movie houses in Siauliai at that time. There was the Lithuanian Drama Theater. I liked to watch performances there. I liked everything, connected with the theater and the stage. My dream was to become a ballet-dancer. I loved amateur performances. I danced on the school stage, played the grand piano and accompanied singers on the piano. I felt like fish in the water.

In the last but one grade we had a Judaic class. Less than ten students out of the entire lyceum attended that class. When I was a junior student I was a member of the Lithuanian scout organization Ptichki. I never joined the scouts for senior students. When I was a senior student, I started seeing boys. I went out with a Lithuanian boy, Eduardas Kudritskas. It even seemed to me that I fell in love with him. At home I even started bringing up the subject of marrying him. Then my parents said that they would marry me off only to a Jew.

My brother Abram didn’t do very well at school. Starting from the fourth grade Father transferred him to a Yiddish lyceum where it was easier to study. But Abram had a talent for music. He started playing the accordion, the piano. In 1938 he was drafted into the Lithuanian army and he served in a musical squad in Siauliai.

I succeeded at school and in 1938 I graduated from the lyceum ranking among the top students. I wanted to become a doctor. In order to enter the Medical Department at Kaunas University I had to take an exam in Latin. We had studied it only for two years and I was afraid that I wouldn’t pass it, so I decided to enter the Biology Department. I could enter it only via an interview and then get transferred to the Medical Department in a year, which wouldn’t be complicated. I parted with my friend Eduardas and left for Kaunas. Soon I forgot about him. Puppy love goes by very quickly. I settled at the place of my Aunt Fanya, my father’s sister. The first years flew by very quickly.

During that time certain political changes in the country affected our family. Father, a respectable man, who had worked at the brewery for a long time, got a mild hint to leave his post due to an anti-Semitic wave. He wasn’t fired. They let him choose any Lithuanian city where he could be in charge of the stock of the brewery. Thus, my parents left for the small town of Skaudville [about 200 km from Vilnius]. Father’s salary barely changed, but he suffered morally from being unjustly laid-off.

In 1939 I submitted my documents for a transfer to the Medical Department. The 1st-year-curriculum of our faculties was identical. All I had to do was to go though a physical check. The medical board declared me unqualified for a doctor’s career, though I was healthy, while my Lithuanian friend, who was afflicted with tuberculosis, was enrolled in the Medical Department as per resolution of the same board.

In that period of time Fascist youths appeared in Lithuania and a vexing incident took place at our institute. In a chemistry lecture, those youths demanded from a Lithuanian professor, who was holding lectures for two faculties – Chemistry and Technology, to make Jewish students take separate seats at remote desks. The professor refused and said that all students were equal at his lectures. There was a terrible scandal, the professor had a heart attack and was taken to hospital immediately. Neither he, nor the rector of the institute conceded to the gangsters.

I was a good student, besides I didn’t have to pay practically anything for it. My brother was transferred to another town, not far from Skaudville. We tried to use any chance to visit our parents, be it vacation or holidays. During one of my brother’s leaves, which concurred with my holidays, both of us went to Palanga. It was a wonderful month: warm, care-free and we were sporting on the coast of the warm sea, mixing with people of our age, going dancing and to the cinema.

During the war

In June 1940 the Soviet Red Army troops came to the Baltic countries and Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were annexed to the USSR 12. Many poor Jews hoped for a better life and they welcomed the Soviet soldiers as liberators with flowers. Other rich Jews and Zionists 13 stood still, awaiting trouble, which soon came. Many of them were exiled to Siberia. My parents took it as a mere fact, but their life changed as well. There was a tank division with the families of the soldiers on the border with Germany, in Skaudville. My mother, a funny and sociable woman soon made friends with those ladies. She played the piano in the army club and militaries often came over to my parents’ place to listen to music and have a good time.

Our class was transferred to Vilnius University. I moved into the hostel. I had a modest life like any student from another city. As earlier, all subjects were taught in Lithuanian. We started studying Russian, which was familiar to me as my mother spoke Russian with my father. The Komsomol organization was founded 14, but I didn’t manage to join it.

The last year of peace before the war brought me joy and love. I met a wonderful Jewish lad. We fell in love with each other. Ilia Olkin was born in 1919 in the Lithuanian town Panemune. His father, David Olkin, was a pharmacist. He had his own pharmacy in the town. Ilia’s mother, grandmother and three younger sisters lived in Panemune as well. I can’t remember their names now. All of Ilia’s relatives perished during the German occupation. We started seeing each other and spent almost all our time together as Ilia also lived in the hostel. Soon Ilia became the leader of the Komsomol organization of Vilnius University. He was one year my senior. He was working at the chair and dreaming of post-graduate studies. Ilia came to Skaudville with me and asked for my hand in marriage. My parents liked him very much. Having met my parents, Ilia introduced me to his. Thus, the first year of my first true love had passed.

In late May 1941 my brother was demobilized. He came to Skaudville. Having passed our exams, Ilia and I were on the verge of going to my town to see my brother and discuss our wedding, but fate dictated different things. In the night of 22nd June Vilnius was unashamedly bombed. First we decided that it was some civil defense training, which we had got used to in the previous year. Soon, it was clear that the bombs were real. There was fire after the bombs had been released. I tried calling home, but there was no connection. On the second day I, Ilia and three of his pals decided to leave. We took some necessary things and documents – we had hardly any money as we didn’t manage to receive our scholarship – and went to the train station. It was hard to get there. The trains weren’t leaving. Then we decided to walk towards the East, to Russia. I remembered that my grandmother Anna lived in Kharkov, on Feurbach Street, and Mother often told me that I had to go to Granny in the event the war started.

We were walking on the road along with thousands of people. People with babies and old men, who could barely walk, were on carts. Many were going on foot in the Eastern direction. The Soviet troops were retreating with us. It was accompanied with bombing, during which people hid away in the bushes by the road and in ditches. After the bombing not all of them came back to the road. It was dreadful and seemed interminable. We were let in some places to spend the night. We didn’t have money and Ilia’s pals paid for us. They were much older and had money on them. On our way retreating soldiers in passing cars told us that the Germans had entered Vilnius.

We reached Belarus – I remember the name of a village: Berezovki near the town Kobylniki [150 km from Minsk]. We stayed with local peasants, whom our friends paid good money. We had stayed with those people for about a week until the moment when some of the retreating Soviet soldiers said that if they sheltered Jews, the Germans would shoot them. The host took us to Kobylniki in a cart. There we stayed for a couple of days at the place of a local Jew. We saw Fascists there. The next day there was the first Fascist action. They demanded all members of the Communist Party and male Jews to step out into the square. On that dreadful day Communists were shot and Jews were ordered to bury them. Ilia and his pals were also there. In the evening they told us about it with horror. One of the men was shocked. He didn’t see any way out and decided to hang himself. I, the only woman in our company, turned out to be the most decisive. I said that we wouldn’t be staying there any minute longer. We had nowhere to go and we decided to return to Lithuania – be it as it may, at home even walls seemed more helpful.

In spite of the curfew hour, we went out of town through back yards and alleyways, reached the forest and spent time there. On the way back we walked mostly at night, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. Sometimes we were given a lift, but still we walked most of the time. A couple of times we asked some people to let us spend the night in their farmstead, but none of the hosts let us in. I can’t blame them and I don’t think they were anti-Semites. The order of the Fascists had already been conveyed to the population and they knew that they would be shot if they sheltered Jews.

So, we reached Vilnius. Our dear and favorite city bode danger. Fascists and Lithuanian polizei 15 were all over the place. We were told that the polizei were looking for Ilia as he was the secretary of the Komsomol Committee. We decided to leave Vilnius and go home. We were lucky: some cart heading for Kaunas took us. There were 25 people in it. We reached some farmstead in the vicinity of Kaunas and a police patrol stopped us. All the Jews were told to leave the carts. I started explaining that we were poor students on our way home and besought them to let us go. I succeeded in that: we were the only ones whom they let go. I don’t know why, but during the years of occupation I was really lucky when I was about to face death. It was the first time of my luck, and you will be able to see other spells of luck further in my story. We were released and we ran after that very cart and got on it. We were detained in the vicinity of Kaunas. It was horrifying as that time we were stopped by the Fascists and again I talked them into letting me go. Ilia was arrested. I could only shout to him that I would be waiting for him in Kaunas at Aunt Fanya’s place.

Aunt Fanya was alone. Her husband was exiled to Siberia one month before the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War. Aunt Fanya had a forlorn hope to see me alive. She told me that all men were shot and I should not hope to see Ilia again. She also said that somebody in Siauliai saw my parents and brother on the truck with the wives and children of the militaries. As it turned out later, our family was saved thanks to Mother’s hospitality and cordiality. Military guys and their wives loved her and when the war was unleashed, Russian militaries came to our house and sent our family in evacuation together with their wives. I found out about that after war. Now, when my aunt said that parents had left, I felt better. At least some members of our family could count on being rescued.

I understood that I had no place to go in Skaudville and stayed with Aunt Fanya. The first evening I stayed with her, a gypsy came over to read the cards as Aunt Fanya was very worried about her husband and started believing gypsies. Aunt, who had never believed neither cards nor fortune-telling, talked me into cartomancy. That lady spread out the cards and told me about all my life. She said that I was worrying about one young man, who was detained and that he would come to me in three days. Two men and one woman were on a long trip, also thinking and worrying about me. I would also meet them, but in three or four years. All those things came true.

Ilia came back in three days. He survived by a miracle. He was taken to prison, where Jews were detained before getting shot, but it was packed. The drunk polizei didn’t want to bother, kicked him on his back and let him go. We started living at Aunt Fanya’s place. Daily hazards and adversity made us close and we practically became like husband and wife. It was dangerous to appear in the city, especially for young men. Every day they were caught and executed. We didn’t want to venture out again. I went out to get some scarce products for our food cards. There was a curfew hour in the city, and it started earlier for the Jews than anybody else. I took silver spoons my aunt gave me to the commission shop. When they were sold, I wasn’t given any money and told instead that Jews needed no money as soon all of us would be murdered.

In July it was announced that Jews were to settle in the ghetto. First there were two ghettos – a big and a small one. There was an overhead crossing connected to the small ghetto. There were vehicles on the road and people were walking in the streets, while we were prisoners and forbidden to leave the ghetto territory without a guard. Aunt Fanya and I were in the small ghetto. My husband and I lived in one small apartment with Aunt Fanya and Aunt Ida, who moved to the ghetto with us, and some strange woman, who wanted to join us.

All ghetto prisoners were supposed to work. I and my husband did digging work at some construction sites at the aerodrome in a crew of young and able-bodied people. We were escorted by Jewish policemen on our way to work. All prisoners had yellow hexagrams on the back and on the chest. A Judenrat 16 was founded in ghetto, which was in charge of all vital issues and followed execution of the orders of the commandment. There was Jewish police in the ghetto. All craftsmen, tailors, cobblers and tinsmiths, who could be of any use, were issued working IDs.

The Fascists even had an orchestra in the ghetto, where Uncle Abram was playing. There is his picture with several members of the orchestras of ‘die-hards.’ My aunts Fanya and Ida didn’t have anything: they were housewives. In about a month Fascists made a tentative action: they cordoned off the ghetto, placed machine-guns on the bridge and ousted everybody from their houses. We stood in the square for a long time, and the Fascists just mocked us and let us go. When in a while the same situation happened again, everybody was relatively calm, thinking that they would let us go after taunting us. Nothing of the sort: it was the most dreadful action on liquidation of the small ghetto – on that day the Fascists sent ten thousand Jews for execution. On that day I didn’t go to work as I felt unwell. Ilia happened to be in a crew at the aerodrome and they were permitted not to return to the ghetto as the next working shift wasn’t released from the ghetto. I was waiting for my husband by the gate and crying, without knowing whether he would come or I would have to die alone. My Ilia came back, he couldn’t part with me.

They started classifying people: craftsmen were set aside. All of us – my husband, I and three elderly ladies – turned out to be among those who were to be taken to nowhere. At once I darted to the policemen and said that my husband and I were young and could work, and added that we were working hard at the aerodrome and would work even harder. He separated me and Ilia with the butt of his gun. We were taken to the big ghetto with a small cluster of craftsmen. In the morning we saw my aunts Fanya and Ida being taken to get shot. Then we were allowed to come to the small ghetto and take some things. I found something: a brown coat with a fur collar, given to me by Aunt Fanya, was hanging on the fence of our house, the place where I left it before the action. I took my coat and it served me for a long time, keeping me warm in wintertime, during the occupation and preserving the memory of a dear person.

We started living in the big ghetto. We could only leave the ghetto on our way to work. We settled in the place of my Uncle Abram Abramson, who had been a violinist before the war. He had a good house in Kaunas and they were given three rooms in the ghetto. Almost all musicians perished after the liquidation of the small ghetto and the orchestra didn’t exist anymore. Uncle Abram was involved in hard physical labor like all men. I lived in Uncle’s apartment by myself, and Ilia found lodging at the place of his friend. The matter is that my uncle’s wife was a greedy woman and constantly was rebuking me for eating their daily bread. Once I finished working late at the aerodrome, came home and turned on the light in the kitchen to cook some food. My aunt came in and said that I shouldn’t waste electricity at night and turned off the light. The next day I told Ilia that I wouldn’t stay with my relatives any longer. He found a room where a guy, whose entire family had perished, was living. We moved in with him. In a while Ilia and I registered our marriage at the Judenrat. In the evening we had tea with bon-bons. That was the way we celebrated our wedding.

Food was the most vital problem in the ghetto. Ghetto dwellers, who managed to keep some precious things, exchanged them for products. We had nothing: we left Vilnius empty-handed. We earned our daily bread this way: old people, who had no chance to leave the ghetto, gave us some things to exchange for products and told us what they wanted to get, we received the surplus. E.g. from exchange they wanted to get a loaf of bread or a certain quantity of grain, and what we got in excess of that belonged to us. My husband even managed to get caramel for me. I had a sweet tooth and there was some underground store in the ghetto where he bought me candies. I don’t know how the owners of the store managed to get products. They most likely had their person in the police.

The second problem was work, which was very hard. We had to work under any weather conditions: in terrible heat and in minus 30 degrees below zero. Now I had somebody to protect me – my husband, who always was there for me in adversity. Once I didn’t go to work, when the frost was severe and stayed at home. Jewish policemen found me and made me go to work in severest frost. After that my aunt literally made me go to one of my acquaintances, married to a Jew, who was a foreman of a special team, which served for Estonian and Fascist big-wheels. That lady was a nurse and she worked at the first-aid post. Before the war she was friends with my mother and even came to see my parents in Skaudville. The nurse recognized me and made arrangements for me to work in the city – I cooked food for the team, where her husband was working. I managed to get some food for me and my husband.

Once, in the apartment of some Fascist boss, where that team was repairing something, his wife let me use the telephone. I called my Lithuanian friend. She came over there and we had a long talk. Then she brought me food a couple of times. I was lucky in many things. People treated me very well. Even policemen and Fascists sympathized with me. For instance, we were sent to gather apples in one of the orchards. The German guard whispered to me in German: ‘Take apples with you, I will be scolding you in front of everybody, but you pay no attention to that.’

Once I met a Lithuanian soldier, who used to play in a brass band in our yard in Siauliai. Though he saw me when I was a girl, he recognized me. He also gave me a large chunk of bread and sausage and saw me off to the gate of the ghetto. Once I was in the group of the youth sent to harvest potatoes in the village. I was missing my husband. In about three days he came and brought me a couple of candies. My husband made it possible for me to leave work there and come back to the city. People from the ghetto were often taken to work to other cities. Some of them were even taken to Estonia. We were afraid of being included in those teams. People said that Estonian policemen were very cruel and working conditions were very harsh. People died there very quickly. At any rate, I don’t know any single survivor from those who worked in Estonia. Once I was included in that team and policemen came to get me. I was given some time to pack and they took me. I thought I wouldn’t see Ilia ever again. Shortly after that he came. With the help of his friends Ilia made arrangements for me to be released – as if I was sick and couldn’t work in Estonia. Those friends of my husband were from the underground.

By the end of 1942 my husband had become an active member of an underground organization, acting in the Kaunas ghetto. It was a strong and large organization, which had infiltrated all the authorities of the ghetto, including the Jewish police. They warned people of the coming actions so that as many Jews as possible could be saved. My husband also was on assignments of the underground. He got weapons and brought them into the ghetto. I don’t know whether the people from the underground were involved in the organization of the insurrection in our ghetto, but they had been provided with weapons by 1944.

One of the tasks of the underground was to save young people and children. The latter were stealthily taken from the ghetto to an orphanage, to Estonians, who presented them as their own children. It was so to say a global task, viz. not to let the fascists fulfill Hitler’s order on the ‘Final Solution of the Jewish question’ 17 that is the extermination of Jews as a people. It was obvious that the underground members decided not to fight within the ghetto as it led to irrevocable losses and deaths of innocent ghetto dwellers, who had nothing to do with the underground organization. It was decided to arrange escapes for as many people from the ghetto as possible.

In November 1943 my husband Ilia Olkin left the ghetto in a group of five people. The group had connections with Lithuanians. They were met and taken to Belarusian forests. My husband said good-bye to me and both of us hoped to see each other again. My husband asked his friends from the underground to make arrangements for me to leave the ghetto at the earliest convenience and take me to the place where I could wait for the Soviet Army. In a while the intermediary gave me a letter from Ilia. That man took people to Belarus. He came back for another group.

Life was hard for me when my husband left, but I thought that he broke through the ghetto, would help me leave it so that we would meet in a partisan squad and never part again. The spring of 1944 was very hard. There were constant actions in ghetto. People were taken to executions more often. In April the Fascists carried out the most horrible actions against children. Within an hour they walked from house to house and took all the ghetto children, including infants. Everybody, who couldn’t find a shelter, perished.

The underground organization also reinforced its activity. Now people were taken out of the ghetto en masse. Security guards by the gate were bribed and many people were taken via the gate. The whole network was organized. Women were taken from the ghetto in a truck as if for work and they weren’t coming back. Of course, all that cost a lot of money as both Germans and policemen were to be bribed. Unfortunately, I should admit that Jewish policemen made a fortune on the sorrow of their fellow Jews. It was important to take people from the ghetto, but it wasn’t the most important thing. People, having left the ghetto, were to be provided with shelter. Underground members also took care of that.

I was haunted by premonitions. No news was coming from Ilia. Besides, his friends from the underground paid more and more attention to me. At that time they knew that my husband had perished. I also felt it, but nobody told me about that. The underground members told me about the place on the free side, where I could go into hiding. They acted fast. They met a Lithuanian woman. Her last name was Kutorgene. She was a rather elderly lady, a doctor –ophthalmologist, who had her own practice in Kaunas. Kutorgene had already saved one Jewish girl. One of her patients was a Catholic priest, who helped her save people. That priest made arrangements in the convent to hide a Jewish lady. The only condition was for that woman to speak very good Lithuanian and not to look typically Jewish. I met all those requirements and underground members suggested that I should leave the ghetto. I met Kutorgene at a house, where I was supposed to come after my escape. At that time I wasn’t in the ghetto and I could come into the city while performing work in the service team.

Before leaving the ghetto I went to see my relatives –Uncle Abram and his wife, Aunt Liza and the rest. I said nothing of my intentions as it was dangerous. It was problematic to leave the ghetto at that time: police guards had been replaced by SS-security who couldn’t be bribed. I couldn’t leave with the team as the number of those who entered the ghetto had to be the same as those who left, otherwise the whole team would be shot. My escape was prepared beforehand. First of all, I was well dressed. The cobbler made me a good pair of shoes. I looked like a true Lithuanian, not like a harrassed ghetto woman. There were secret places in the fence made by the underground members, where barbed wire was cut and connected by pegs. It was done in an area far from the main gate, out of sight of the guards. That manhole wasn’t checked by the Fascists who thought that it was impossible to get through there as it was coming onto a street so overgrown with weeds that it was difficult to walk through. I buried my documents in a convenient place. One of the underground members, my husband’s friend, helped me walk through, he distracted the SS-guard, took him aside, while I parted the wire and crept though the hole and dashed to the impassable street. This happened one evening in late May 1944.

I saw the crew on their way back from work to the ghetto, and I hid for nobody to recognize me and call me. I managed to cross the bridge and came to the center of the city, where Kutorgene lived, near the Opera and Ballet theater. I went to her office, where the patients were received, and made an appointment. When it was my turn, I entered the office. Kutorgene recognized me immediately and took me to the living-room. Soon her consulting hours were over and she came to me. Kutorgene told me to sit at the table and we had lunch. Her son came and she introduced me to him, saying openly that I was a Jew from the ghetto. I understood that her son was aware of her anti-Fascist activity and thought that I shouldn’t be afraid of him. But Kutorgene didn’t tell her relative, who was seeing me off to the station and buying me the train ticket to the convent, that I was a Jew. She just told him to see me off, saying that I made up my mind to become a nun. On my way, the man was talking me into not going to the convent and staying in this world as I was so young! I kept silent.

I saw a lady from my lyceum at the train station and tried to hide away, for her not to recognize me. I asked the man to buy me a train ticket. I didn’t want to attract attention by the booking office. I wasn’t frightened, on the contrary, for the first time in so many years I felt free. However, I was to be very disciplined and attentive. When I tried to get on the train, a Lithuanian guy started chatting me up. I was flirting with him, having decided that if I was of a somewhat suspicious appearance, he was beyond suspicion and it would be easier for me. I talked the guy into going in the freight car, not in the passenger car. There were fewer people and it was dark in the freight car, so it would be difficult to distinguish me. We had been talking for a long time and I fell asleep. Suddenly I woke up from words spoken in Yiddish. I was speaking Yiddish in my dream. The guy was looking at me agape and I burst into laughter and said that I was learning German and spoke it in my dream.

I got off in the town of Dotnuva [about 100 km from Vilnius], the place in the closest vicinity to the convent of Saint Katrina, where I was expected. I calmly went up to the policeman at the station and asked where I could call the convent from. He took me to the director of the train station and I called the convent. I was told to wait at the station and they sent a cart to pick me up. When it arrived, it turned out that they were supposed to go to another place before the convent. I was afraid to go with them as in that place the crew from the ghetto was working and I didn’t want to be recognized. I went to the convent on foot.

They were waiting for me at the convent. The abbess, Mother Prontishke, was very affable with me and invited me to sit at the table at once. There were well-forgotten products on the table – I had even forgotten of their existence – bananas, oranges, apples, fried chicken and fish. The abbess and the priest were sitting at the table. They started asking me about life in the ghetto. I felt really drowsy as a result of fatigue and tension since my escape from the ghetto. I begged them pardon and said that I was really sleepy. The abbess took me to a room with three bunks. She tucked me into bed and said that I shouldn’t get up in the morning when the girls would be going to pray as I should rest as much as I wanted.

In the evening, when the girls came back from work, I was asleep. Early in the morning, the bell rang calling for prayer. One of the girls came up to me, kissed me on the cheek and calmly invited me for a prayer. I explained to her that the abbess allowed me not to pray today. After that nobody addressed the issue of praying. The abbess gathered all novices and told them that I was a Jew and would be in hiding there. The food would be brought into my cell and she strictly forbade everybody to say anything about me, even to their closest relatives.

I stayed in the convent until the arrival of the Soviet troops. I rarely left my cell. I started knitting to kill time. The girls brought me threads. Of course, it was sad to stay in almost all the time and I took walks in the convent garden. It was the season when the berries ripened: currant, strawberries. I enjoyed eating them straight from the bushes. Sometimes I went to the cathedral by the convent. I sat in the last pew so that the parishioners wouldn’t see me – people from local villages came to the cathedral – and I listened to the Catholic mass.

In a while another Jewish woman was brought to the convent. I don’t remember her name, though I would like to find her now. Her parents and little brother were shot. That woman was baptized in the convent and took the veil. I always wondered at how desperately she was praying. It wasn’t clear to me how one could become an apostate. Nobody compelled me to pray in the convent; moreover nobody forced baptism on me.

May and June had passed. It was early July 1944. The German army was retreating. A Fascist unit was positioned in the convent garden. I had been staying in my cell for several days. When the Soviet troops were approaching, the abbess had the girls go home as she feared repressions from Bolsheviks. I also was to go. I was dressed like a true Lithuanian peasant. Looking at me, the girls were crying and laughing at the same time, so unusual I looked. They came to love me during that period of time. We were given a cow. Thus, the three of us – a girl, me and a cow – went to her farmstead. The girl told her parents and neighbors that I was a Lithuanian teacher from Vilnius, escaping the Bolsheviks. However, one of her neighbors told her mother that I was most likely a Jew, but luckily he didn’t betray me.

When the Fascists came to the farmstead, they were sympathetic when they heard my story and ranted about the Bolsheviks. One of them knocked on my window and offered me to run away with them, when the Soviet troops were approaching. I replied that I couldn’t leave with the army and would have to go my own way. In the morning the Soviet army entered the farmstead. I was the first to come up to them. I was overwhelmed with joy. I couldn’t believe myself: three years in the ghetto were behind me. I told the soldiers that I was a Jew from Kaunas and they broke joyful news to me: Kaunas had already been liberated. On that very day I went back to the convent. I wanted to say good-bye to the girls and the abbess, who saved me. I stayed there for a couple of days, and decided to go back home. I was looking forward to seeing Kaunas, finding out something about my parents and husband.

After the war

It was the end of August 1944. The abbess kissed me and gave me some food and money for the road. I walked through the forest to the train station. On the way some cart caught up with me. I was lucky again – the cart was driven by my school teacher from Siauliai. He recognized me and took my things on the cart. I couldn’t get on it as it was full. Thus, we reached the train. There were no tickets. Only militaries could get on the train. Then some military said that I was his wife and I was let on the train. Thus, I got to Kaunas. There at once I found the underground members, who helped me leave the ghetto.

During the liquidation of the ghetto all my relatives perished: my father’s siblings. The members of the underground organization told me that my husband, Ilia Olkin, perished in spring 1944. He died by accident. A partisan squad, where he served, was dislocated to a Belarusian village. At night, on the way back from the task, my husband said the password. The sentinel shot Ilia either because he didn’t hear the password, or because it had been changed. He was severely wounded and passed away by the morning… My premonition was true. I became a widow without a chance of knowing the happiness of married life in peaceful times. My mood was terrible and I thought that I wouldn’t get married again and keep the last name of Olkin.

I decided to look for my kin. Those, who were seeking their relatives, sent letters to the municipal council of Kaunas. There I found a letter written by my father. He was hoping to find his brothers and thought that they would know something about me. My loved ones had no idea that I happened to be in Kaunas at the beginning of the war. They were looking for me in Siauliai and Vilnius, sending inquiries there. My name was Olkina at that time, but they were looking for a Liza Abramson.

My parents and brother were in evacuation in Ural, in the settlement of Kosa, Komi-Permyak oblast [1500 km from Moscow]. In 1944 they came to Kharkov, where after the evacuation Grandmother Anna was living. I sent a letter to their Kharkov address – in Russian but with Lithuanian letters as I didn’t know the Russian alphabet. Having received my letter, Father was crying and laughing at the same time, walking to and fro in the room. He called Mother from work. She was working in a pharmacy. My parents wrote me a letter, to the address of the municipal council. There was no place for me to live in Kaunas and I stayed with my acquaintances. I found out that all of them were alive and healthy.

My brother Abram had married his friend from Vilnius during the war and now he was living there. My brother’s wife was the daughter of the most famous tailor in Vilnius. My brother was seeing her before the war, but it happened so that they met again and got married in evacuation. My brother was drafted into the army and served in the 16th Lithuanian division 18. Since he was an excellent accordion player, he joined the military orchestra right away. Right after the liberation of Vilnius a Lithuanian band was founded, where my brother played the grand piano. His wife was a singer and she worked with him. I went to see my brother in Vilnius. At that time they lived on the premises of the philharmonic society. At first, I stayed with them. We slept on the floor.

I started looking for a job. My sister-in-law’s cousin Hana was a famous underground member and partisan, a member of the Communist Party. She recommended me to the secret department at the Council of Ministers of the Lithuanian SSR. The job was very serious. We received top-secret letters and orders and distributed them to different ministries and authorities. I wanted to go on with my education, at Vilnius University, but I didn’t manage to study as I was very busy at work. Being employed at a governmental institution I got good product cards – the best products available, even delicacies – while by common food cards 19 only insufficient products were given. In the postwar period life was hard and people starved. Soon I was given an apartment – a wonderful two-room apartment in the heart of Vilnius. I moved there with my brother and his wife. I sent an invitation to my parents as they wouldn’t have been able to return to Vilnius without that document. Soon they came and moved into my apartment. Shortly after that, Father found a job in the office of subsistence production.

I kept friendly relations with Abbess Prontishke at first, after the war. The convent was threatened with closure due to the politics of the Soviet regime, in accordance with the struggle against religion 20. As per request of the abbess I arranged for her an appointment with the plenipotentiary of the Council of Ministers for Religion. She came to Vilnius, stopped by at our place and met with that person. He treated the abbess with respect, but nothing could be changed. Soon the convent was broken up and closed down. The abbess left for her motherland and I never saw her again. I also saw Kutorgene. She worked as a doctor for a couple of years in Kaunas. She died in the mid-1950s.

Soon after my parents arrived I went to my hometown, Siauliai, in order to get some documents in the archive as I didn’t have a birth certificate and school certificate. The first person I saw when getting off the bus was Eduardas Kudritskas – my friend from childhood and my calf love. He was happy to see me alive. We had a long talk. Eduardas saw me off and came to Vilnius a couple of times hoping that I would be with him. But it turned out to be quite different.

There was a Soviet military unit not far from our house. My brother met three officers and invited them to come over to us. One of them, Colonel Vladimir Lukinskiy, a tall handsome man started courting me. I didn’t mind his courtship as I liked Vladimir very much. It wasn’t that I forgot about my husband whom I loved, just being young… Vladimir Lukinskiy was much younger than me. He was Russian, born in Leningrad in 1924. Vladimir came from a rich family. His mother Katerina was from a noble family. She raised her son in a wonderful way. Vladimir was well-read, educated, loved opera and classical music. I found him very interesting. While we were mere friends, my parents treated him very well. Gradually our relationship changed. We fell in love with each other and Vladimir proposed to me. All of a sudden Father opposed to that. He was flatly against my marriage to a non-Jew. He remembered Eduardas and was sorry for not letting me marry him, and again I was dating a non-Jew.

Once in winter 1946 I invited Vladimir for lunch. He brought canned products and firewood. In that period of time it was hard to find supplies. When Father found out that Vladimir made all those presents, he put everything in the garbage can. I told my fiancé the way it was. He reacted calmly to that and invited me to a restaurant. Here he ordered all kinds of delicacies: caviar and ham. Since that time Father started turning out Vladimir, when he came over. Father went on a trip and I decided to have a talk with Mother, woman to woman, and told her about our love. Mother said that I would marry him only ‘over her dead body.’ Then I took my nightie and left home without anything. In spite of the fact that it was my apartment I left everything there, even my food cards, for my mother.

Vladimir and I rented an apartment and moved in there. Once in the evening after work we were passing by my house. Mother was on the threshold and said, ‘Dinner is ready.’ Thus, Mother accepted Vladimir. When Father came back from the trip, Mother told him that I was living with Vladimir. Then Father collected all the presents he had brought me, Mother took linen, table cloth, dishes and they came to see us. Since that time Father and Vladimir became as thick as thieves. My husband never remembered how my parent gave him a hard time at first.

I insisted that Vladimir should be demobilized from the army. I didn’t want to be an officer’s wife and spend all my life on the road. He was demobilized and found a job. Our marriage remained unregistered for a while. The red-tape Soviet laws demanded either the documents on the divorce with Olkin or his death certificate. I didn’t even have the marriage certificate, issued by the Judenrat, as I buried all the documents when leaving the ghetto. I had to walk from one office of a dignitary to another and finally we were permitted to get our marriage registered. It happened in 1946.

In 1948 I gave birth to a son and named him Alexander. For a while my son and I were living with my parents. When our son turned seven months my mother-in-law – my father-in-law had passed away by then – exchanged her apartment in Leningrad for an apartment in Vilnius and we moved in with her. Our apartment was in the heart of Vilnius, consisting of two rooms and a kitchen. One room was taken by my mother-in-law and the other by my husband, son and me. My mother-in-law was a wonderful, clever and kind woman. She accepted me and loved me like her own daughter, helping me in everything, especially in raising our son.

My husband was a member of the Communist Party. I didn’t join the Party as I had been in the occupation. At that time it was disgraceful. After my son was born, I kept working at the secret department for a while and in the early 1950s, when state anti-Semitism was rampant, I was told to quit my job because I wasn’t a Communist. I found a job as an HR inspector in the Lithuanian Consumers’ Council. At that time my husband was called to the military enlistment office and drafted into the army for the second time. He was to be sent to the border with China, but he was lucky. He met his friend from the army in the military enlistment office and he offered my husband to go to Leningrad to teach at some courses for officers.

My husband left for Leningrad and I stayed with my son. It was January 1953, when the Doctors’ Plot 21 was in full swing and doctors-poisoners were the most topical issues in the papers and radio. There was tittle-tattle among Vilnius Jews that there was an order to deport all Jews to Birobidjan 22. I called my husband in Leningrad and told him about these rumors and added that if I got deported, I would leave my son with my mother-in-law. It was a very hard time. I was calm only after Stalin’s death. My husband insisted on my moving to Leningrad. We decided to leave our son with my mother-in-law and I moved to my husband. We lived in Leningrad for three and a half years.

Ekaterina Nikolaevna did well raising my son. My parents were also helping. Every day my mother came over to spend time with her grandson, but Alexander was missing his parents. I insisted that my husband should be demobilized as we had to come back to Vilnius and raise our son. In 1957 Vladimir was demobilized for the second time and we came back home. I found a job in the book-keeping department at a tinned food plant. I was promoted to chief accountant and worked there until my retirement. I left work in 1987.

My husband and I had a wonderful life together. In 1973 we got a nice three-room apartment, where I am currently living. My mother-in-law lived with us. She was a second mother to me. Ekaterina Nikolaevna died in 1976. As for the material side, we lived pretty modestly, like most people during the Soviet regime. We owned neither a car nor a dacha. But we often attended concerts, theater performances, read a lot, went on vacation to Palanga and the Crimea. We liked the village of Rybachiy in the Crimea, not far from Alushta. We made friends with a local family and went there on vacation every year.

Neither Jewish nor Christian Orthodox holidays were celebrated by us as Vladimir was a member of the Party. I often cooked Jewish dishes and laid a festive table on Pesach. While my parents were alive we went to see them on Jewish holidays. It was a family reunion: I with my husband and son, and my brother and his wife; they didn’t have children.

My father lived for 82 years and died in 1969. My mother invited an old Jew from the synagogue and he read a prayer for my dad. I couldn’t have my father buried in accordance with the Jewish tradition – without a coffin. I couldn’t picture that my father would be in the earth. Father’s funeral was secular. Мy mother died in 1986, she was buried next to my father at the Jewish cemetery of Vilnius.

My brother’s family did well. He worked at the Lithuanian symphonic orchestra and his wife was a singer at the Opera and radio. My brother was afflicted with cancer and died at the age of sixty. His wife left for Israel. She never remarried.

My son was a wonderful boy. He was an excellent student at school and he obeyed his parents. I can say that I didn’t have any problems with him as a teenager. When he came of age and was to receive his passport, the issue of nationality came up 23. Vladimir said that it was up to me. I had a talk with my son and told him that he had always been a Jew, but he should put the Russian nationality in his passport, not to feel any discrimination in his education and career. My son did as I told him. His nationality is Russian, but he is a Jew in his heart.

My son served in the army, entered the university and finished the Economics Department. During the Soviet regime he was in charge of the bureau of heating appliances of the largest plant. That plant went bankrupt and Alexander doesn’t have a permanent job. He is involved in small business. My son divorced his first wife, who bore him a daughter, Yulia. She finished the Philology Faculty. She is fluent in English. Yulia is a business lady. She has a daughter, my great-granddaughter Anastasia. My son married for the second time, a Russian woman named Natalia. The most important woman for my son is me, his mother. He loves me dearly and comes to see me every day. My son buys me all kinds of scrumptious things I like and helps me about the house. My son started taking special care of me after my husband’s death in 1998.

Since that time I am on my own. Jewish life was revived in the period when Lithuania gained its independence in 1991 24. I think it was the only positive factor of perestroika 25 and the breakup of the USSR [1991]. I don’t like the altercations in the Lithuanian parliament. It seems to me that every member of the government is thinking only of himself. Life in Lithuania became bleak, and there is no sense in leaving for Russia as my motherland is here, and nobody is waiting for me in a different place.

My husband, who had always been friends with Jews, suggested leaving for Israel in the 1970s. I didn’t want to as, unfortunately, during the occupation I saw different Jews – some of them were starving, others were making money on that. That is why I don’t want to live in a purely Jewish environment, though I have been to Israel and liked it a lot.

As a former ghetto prisoner, I receive a pension from Germany and I have a pretty comfortable life. I can even help out my son financially. Now I am a member of the Jewish community of Lithuania. Every week I come to the department of prisoners of ghettoes and concentration camps tour community and perform different assignments. I celebrate Jewish holidays with my friends. This way I revived my Jewish life. I don’t feel lonely.

Glossary:

Israel Gliazer
Ternopol
Ukraine
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: June 2003

Israel Gliazer is a short elderly man with thick gray hair and shrewd dark eyes. Regretfully, Israel’s memory occasionally fails him. He cannot remember the names of his close people. He felt excited during our meeting since this was the first time that he got an opportunity to speak about his life with every details. Israel lives in a small two-room apartment with his wife. There is plain old furniture of 1960s in his apartment. There are photographs of his relatives and children on bookshelves. He has free meals at the Hesed diner every day. He talks there with other old Jews. On Saturday Israel teaches Yiddish in the local community and sometimes he joins them on Sabbath. His wife has to stay at home due to her health condition and Israel tries to spend as much time with her as possible. Sometimes their neighbors and acquaintances come to see them. Their sons visit them often.

My family background

Growing up

Before the war

During the war

After the war

Recent years

Glossary

My family background

I come from Western Ukraine. This land belonged to Austro-Hungary before World War I, later it belonged to Poland, in 1939 it became a part of the USSR and at present it is a Ukrainian terrain. My mother’s mother whose name I don’t remember and her father Gershl Leviter were born in a small town called Skalat, Ternopol district, in the middle of 19th century. My grandmother had died before I was born. My grandfather worked at the mill owned by some wealthy Jew. He was religious. Like all Jews of his time he wore a kippah and had beard. He went to synagogue on Saturdays and holidays. My grandparents observed traditions and holidays. My grandfather lived a long life. He died in late 1939.

My mother's family was a middle class family. My grandparents had a house in Skalat where only my mother’s older sister and her family stayed to live with their parents. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the names of my mother’s brothers or sisters. All I know is that their two older brothers had some argument with their father and moved to America shortly after World War I. There was no contact with them afterward. One of my mother’s older sisters, her husband and their children lived in Zborov town, near Skalat. They perished in the ghetto in Skalat when fascists exterminated the remaining Jews in early 1944 before Soviet troops came to liberate the area. Only their younger daughter Etka survived by some miracle. She moved to Israel after World War II. She got married and lived a long life. There was another sister living in Skalat with her family. They also perished in the ghetto. Only Velvel one of her children survived. He had finished the Faculty of Judaism in Warsaw University before the World War II. During the war he was in the Soviet army and after the war he left for Israel where he worked as director of school for many years. Velvel died in 2001.

My mother Pesia Leviter was born in Skalat in 1886, she was the youngest daughter in the family. At her time Jewish girls got their education at home. My mother and her sisters had a visiting teacher. They got religious education and were taught to read and write in Yiddish. They learned housekeeping, cooking and Jewish traditions and holidays. My mother and her sisters were raised religious. My mother’s marriage was prearranged by a matchmaker that was also customary in Jewish families. After my mother got married she moved to Pogdaytsy near Skalat where her husband Iosif Gliazer came from.

My father’s family came from Pogdaytsy. I also grew up in this town. It’s a picturesque town in the Carpathian foothills. Its population at the beginning of 19th century was under 15 thousand people, and 6 thousand of them were Jews. There was also Polish and Ukrainian population. There was a German colony1 near Pogdaytsy - Benkensdorf. On Sunday there was a market in the central square. Food products from the German village were the most expensive and popular since Germans were very clean and accurate. There were two-storied stone houses, a catholic church and a big and beautiful synagogue in the center of the town. In my childhood I used to listen to a cantor in the synagogue. There was an old Jewish cemetery with engravings in Hebrew on gravestones. Besides the central synagogue there were few smaller synagogues that belonged to craftsmen guilds and there were also Hasidic2 synagogues and prayer houses. There were Gusyatin [by the name of the town from where their tzaddik came from] and Chertkov Hasidim [by the name of the town from where their tzaddik came from]. My paternal grandfather Menachem Mahnes Gliazer and his big family belonged to Gusyatin Hasidim. My grandfather was a craftsman, and was a very religious Hasid. He raised his children to profess Hasidism.3 My grandfather Menachem and grandmother, whose name I don’t remember, died before World War I. They had many children. Some of them died in infantry, and I don’t know their names.

My father’s older brother Shymon Gliazer, born in 1870, was a craftsman. Shymon died before World War I, shortly after my grandfather died. I don’t know the name of his wife or children. All I know is that his younger daughter Sarra, born shortly before he died, survived World War II. After the war she moved to Wroclaw, Poland. Sarra died in the middle of 1960s. Her son Moishe lives in Sweden now. My father’s brother Yakov, Yankel in the Jewish manner, born in 1872, became a wealthy man before World War I. He owned the biggest garment store in Pogdaytsy. The wealthiest families were his clients. Yankel, his wife and children, whose names I don’t remember, perished in the ghetto in Pogdaytsy during the Great Patriotic War. My father’s older sister Sarra and her husband also perished in the ghetto in Pogdaytsy. Her older son Moishe served in the Polish army. He escaped to the Soviet army before Nazi troops came to Poland. Moishe was at the front. He perished in 1943. My father had another brother whose name I don’t remember. He had died before I was born. I know that his son Fishel Gliazer, who was a member of the Communist Party of western Ukraine, served in the Soviet army and was at the front. He later joined the polish army where he was deputy political commanding officer. After World War II Fishel and his family lived in Warsaw and held high official posts in the Party leadership. He was wounded during the Great Patriotic War. These wounds caused his untimely death. His children are chemists. They live and work in Stockholm, Sweden. All children of my grandparents got religious education. The boys finished cheder and the girls studied at home with melamed teachers. I don’t know whether my father’s brothers and sisters were religious when they grew up, but I believe they observed Jewish traditions that they were taught when they were children.

My father Iosif Gliazer was the youngest in the family, he was born in 1880. He studied in cheder few years like all other boys in Hasidic families. Later he became a high skilled glasscutter. He owned a small crockery and household store and small glass cutting shop in the center of the town.

My parents got married in 1906. In 1907 my sister Etl was born. We called her Etka in the family. Moishe was born in 1909 and Velvel followed him in 1912. In 1914 World War I began and our father was recruited to the Austro-Hungarian army. My mother and the children moved to some distant relatives in Czechia, [editor’s note: by that time that territory was called Galicia], to escape from the war. Regretfully, I don’t remember the name of the town where they lived. Our father returned from the front in January 1919 and our family returned home in Pogdaytsy. I, the youngest son, was born on 3 November 1919 in Pogdaytsy. The youngest of children in our family was Sarra, born in 1922.

Growing up

Our family lived in a small stone house in the center of the town. There were 3 rooms and a kitchen in the house. There was a tiled stove in each room and in the kitchen. We actually had all we needed. At times we had to mortgage our house and move into a smaller one, but then we managed to pay our debts and move back. Whatever the times we always had a fresh challah bread at Sabbath and our mother made delicious dinner of beef and chicken meat stew and gefilte fish when things were better, or something different when she couldn’t afford fish. On Friday afternoon my mother and older sister were in the midst of preparations to Sabbath: they cleaned and washed floors, covered the table with a starched white tablecloth and cooked food to last two days: Friday and Saturday. On Friday evening my father closed his store and shop. We washed ourselves clean, put on our fancy clothes and sat down to dinner. Our mother prayed over candles and our father said a blessing to Holy Saturday, children and food and we started a meal. On Saturday our parents went to synagogue and one of the children carried their book of prayers. When it was my turn I carried it for them. After the service in the synagogue, our parents invited a poor person who could not afford to observe Sabbath – this was a custom that we always observed. My mother and father observed all Jewish traditions, observed kashrut strictly. My father wore a kippah at home and put on a wide-brimmed hat to go out. My mother always wore a dark wig becoming to her dark eyes. My parents were very strict about their religious life since they were Hasidim. They went to the Hasidic synagogue near our house on weekdays and on holidays they went to the central synagogue and I joined them to go there.

I have the best memories about observing Pesach. We had new clothes bought for us before the holiday and felt good about it. There was a bakery where they baked matzah and we used to spend hours watching them make matzah for our family. We thoroughly cleaned up the house before the holiday removing chametz. Nobody did any work through 8 days of the holiday. My father and older brothers were at home and played with younger children. It was a lot of fun since we didn’t spend this much time together when father had to go to work. We also visited friends and relatives and had guests at home. We didn’t eat any bread through 8 days of the holiday – there was not a piece of bread in the house. There was flour made from matzah used for baking strudels with jam and nuts and very delicious cookies. We kept kosher crockery in the attic and took it out at Pesach. There was a dish with Haggadah food: an egg, potato and bitter greeneries. I also remember this holiday since I posed four traditional questions during the first seder to my father who comfortably sat on pillows at the head of the table. Those were questions about the history of this holiday and our father told us about Exodus of Jews from Egypt.

We fasted at Rosh Hashanah. [Editor’s note: He means Yom Kippur] children fasted from the age of 5. [Ed. n.: Usually children start fasting from the age of 9, but for a shorter period as adults, until they turn 13.] We also observed Purim. There were costumed performances at Purim. Performers sang and told jokes and it was fun and laughter. Mother baked delicious pastries that we gave to friends, neighbors or even strangers. At Chanukkah we had a party with guests that gave us some change and our parents gave some money to their children.

The boys in our family went to cheder. We studied Jewish basics: we began with Hebrew alphabet and studied the language to be able to read prayers. Later we studied Torah and Talmud. There were no fixed terms of the course of studies in cheder. Usually children from poor families studied longer since this was their only chance to get some education. Children from middle class or richer families ignored cheder, when they went to a grammar school or other educational institution. My older brother Moishe didn’t continue his studies after the cheder since he had to start helping our parents to support the family. Moishe finished an accounting course and worked in our father’s store. There were no other employees working for my father. Velvel had a chance to go to a grammar school where he studied 5 or 6 years. He had to quit after he had had an argument with the director. He became an apprentice typesetter in a printing house and after finishing his training he began to work as a typesetter. 

I was a spoiled boy being the youngest in the family. I had my whims: one time I wanted to have better clothes than we could afford or toys that children from wealthier families had. I didn’t understand that one had to work hard to earn one’s living. I went to cheder at the age of 5 and I studied two years. Then I went to a state lower secondary school. There was no Jewish school in Pogdaytsy. There were Polish, Ukrainian and Jewish children in our school. There wasn’t any national segregation in those years. The word ‘zhyd’ was definition of nationality in the dialect of our area while in the USSR it was an abusive term. We studied Polish and Ukrainian literature and language. We studied Ukrainian classics Taras Shevchenko4 and Lesia Ukrainka5 and Polish classics Adam Mickiewicz6 and others. Children attended religious classes according to their faith. Jewish children were in class of rabbi Levental. He was a very intelligent man known in the area. I remember his friend visiting him, who was the head of Catholic diocese. He spent few days with his friend rabbi Levental in Pogdaytsy. This was a blessed period of time when representatives of all nations lived in peaceful consensus. During the Great Patriotic War rabbi Levental perished in the ghetto in Pogdaytsy.

I enjoy recalling the years of my youth. When I turned 13 I had a bar mitzvah ritual. Long time before my coming of age my parents bought me a tefillin and taught me to wind it on my right hand and head, but of course, I did it after I had bar mitzvah ritual. During bar mitzvah I recited prayers in Hebrew. There was a party at home. My mother and sisters cooked delicious food and we invited friends and relatives. They gave me presents, greeted me and wished happiness. After I came of age [13 years old] I began to attend the synagogue with my parents regularly. I went there every Saturday, put on my tallit and tefillin and prayed with other men. Of course, I wasn’t a deep believer like my parents, but I tried to be loyal to hem and attended the synagogue as required. I finished school in 1933 went to work at the printing house where Velvel was working.

Before the war

There was some confusion in our family at that period. The situation in the country was uncertain as well. There was a number of Zionist organizations, and there was also a socialist and a communist party in Poland. [In 1921 the Soviets and the Poles signed a peace treaty, which gave Poland substantial territories in the east that were mainly populated by Ukrainians and Belorussians. The internal political situation in Poland was not very stable]. In 1927 my sister Etka was attracted by Zionist ideas of establishment of an independent Jewish state and moved to Palestine with a friend of hers where she took part in the establishment of kibbutzim. Our parents respected her decision. She married Shmuel Gorin in Israel and they had two children: son Shmuel and daughter Nargisa. She sent us greetings on Soviet and Jewish holidays. Other members of the family didn’t share her enthusiasm. We were having a good life here and had no intentions to look for any different life. 

My older brothers Moishe and Velvel became fond of communist ideas and joined the Communist Party of Western Ukraine, forbidden in Poland [the Communist Party of Western Ukraine, formed in Lvov in 1920s spread its activities to the areas populated by Ukrainians in Poland. Their goal was reunification of the Ukrainian people, unification of Ukraine and annexation of the Western Ukrainian territories to the USSR. This Party merged with the Communist Party of the USSR in 1939. Many of its activists were arrested]. My father was trying to convince his sons to resume their faith and turn to Hasidism that was more important than any political tendencies to my father. He even consulted the rabbi about his disobedient sons. However, Velvel and Moishe didn’t listen to our father. Velvel printed illegal communist flyers in the printing house that they spread. Velvel and Moishe were arrested and imprisoned in a political prison in Drogobych. In 1934 Moishe was granted amnesty, but Velvel had to sere his longer sentence. We have a photo where Moishe was photographed with other political prisoners released from the prison in Drogobych. There were representatives of different parties even hostile to one another in this photo: communist party of Western Ukraine, socialist party and even Ukrainian Nationalistic Party – there is a brother of Stepan Bandera7, Ukrainian national patriot, communist party of Poland. At present Bandera is an acknowledged national hero and patriot of Ukraine. He lived in Drogobych. This area belonged to Poland before 1939. Bandera struggled for the independence of Ukraine and reunification of the Ukrainian people.

I joined the Zionist organization of young Jewish people Hashomer Hatzair, that means a ‘young guard’. It was a left-wing social democratic direction preparing Jewish young people to life in the Jewish state and its protection from enemies. It was something like a scout organization: we did physical training, wore uniforms and ties and learned contemporary weapons. However, our organization did not call us to armed struggle for the establishment of a Jewish state that was different from followers of Zhabotinskiy8. We didn’t have armed struggle in our plans. Each organization had a club where young people had classes and observed Jewish holidays. I remember Purim in 1934 when my sister Sarra and I attended a celebration in our club wearing our costumes.

However, peaceful life was not long. Hitler came to power in Germany and we were aware of his attitude toward Jews. In 1938 followers of fascists made their appearance in German neighborhoods, in Poland. The idea of Fascism had many followers and reached our town gradually. There were fights between the various national groups, Polish and Ukrainian, at times they united to fight with Jews: their idea was that Jews were to blame for all their troubles. Once we were also attacked by a group of Polish teenagers when we were coming out of our club, but there was no dramatic outcome that time, it was just one of these fightings and cursing. Mass media published anti-Semitic articles with illustrations: a Jew in black clothes and hat, with a beard, payes and huge nose throttling a farmer or worker, indicating that Jews were to blame for all hardships of life. We laughed at it having no idea that it would result in genocide and extermination of Jews. Well, even though we underestimated fascism, none of my friends or surrounding wanted to live in a fascist country. For this reason we had hopes for the Soviet Union that condemned fascism strongly and sympathized with Spanish people in their struggle against fascism, [during the Civil War in Spain]9. We were shocked to hear about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact10. We thought it was a deal with fascists. When Hitler attacked Poland we decided to cross the border of the USSR. Actually, this was the only choice for my friends and me. If we had stayed we would have been captured by fascists. Few of my friends were recruited to the Polish army. Few of my other friends and I decided to start moving to the east.

There were 6-8 of us. When we reached Grimaylov town we heard that Soviet troops were moving to the Polish rescue. We joined a Polish garrison in Grimaylov, Skalat district and decided to wait for Soviet troops. We stayed in a basement overnight. We had cold weapons and two guns. We were concerned about our encounter with Soviet troops. What if they thought we were spies and didn’t believe that we sincerely wanted to join them? We left the basement in the morning. A polish officer roe his horse to the central square and announced that the Polish garrison was leaving and Soviet troops were coming to the town. The officer also warned citizens against theft and marauding and left the square. An hour or two later Soviet tanks drove into the town. Jews and Ukrainians came out to greet Soviet troops while Polish residents stayed in their houses. I stayed in Grimaylov for few days and then got a drive back to my hometown.

There was already Soviet power in Pogdaytsy. They nationalized11 small stores and shops, including my father’s store. Soviet authorities had them removed and installed a monument to Lenin12 in the central square. My father managed to take home the remaining goods, tools and materials. He sold out the goods and continued to take orders from clients at home. Moishe assisted him as before. He married Rivke, a Jewish girl, in 1937. Since Moishe was a member of the Communist party he didn’t want a Jewish wedding, but our father and his fiancée’s parents insisted and they had a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah at the synagogue. In 1938 their son was born. Velvel was also married. I don’t remember the names of his wife, daughter or son. When the soviet power was established Velvel became chief of the military commissariat in Pogdaytsy. I worked in the nationalized printing house. It formerly belonged to Mainlis, a wealthy Jewish widow. In early 1940 I was recruited to the Soviet army.

Since I had a lower secondary education my commandment sent me to the communications school for junior commandment at an air force division in Primorskiy region in the Far East, 7,000 km from home. At the beginning I was having a hard time since I didn’t know Russian. Officers and soldiers had a friendly attitude and helped me a lot. I studied the language and technical subjects simultaneously. My commandment wanted to send me to an officer’s school, but changed his mind due to my poor Russian.

During the war

In May 1941 after finishing my school I was assigned to service in the military aerodrome in Primorye, near where our school was. I often received letters from home. My mother was missing me. She begged me to try to get a transfer to Kiev, but I was too shy to ask them. It turned out to be better for me since when the Great Patriotic War13 began I was far from home. We heard about the war in the evening of 22 June 1941 after dinner. We usually marched to our barrack singing march songs, but this time our officers didn’t give us an order to sing. It seemed strange to us. We were told to get together in the conference hall where we heard about perfidious attack of Germany. This was 12 o’clock Moscow time. [Editor’s note: the time difference between Moscow and the Far East is 9 hours.] We heard the Molotov speech14.

Radio operators didn’t get sufficient training. A group of us was sent to take a course of advanced training in Irkutsk. From there groups of radio operators were sent to the front. There was panic and confusion on the first days of the war. There was a lot of injustice. I heard that officers shot radio operators that failed to ensure communication with combat squadrons or planes accusing them of sabotage. My fellow comrades even told a sad joke that at the beginning of the war more radio operators perished than infantrymen. We needed better training provisions to improve communications and there was a special school of radio operators organized. I was selected to work as a training instructor in this school. I don’t know the exact location of this school. It took us less than 24 hours to drive there. I trained radio operators in this school until late 1942. Every 4 months we sent another group of newly trained radio operators to the front. 

In our military unit we lived in barracks, 4 tenants in a cabin, with a shower and toilet facility on a floor for 30 tenants, but there was always hot water and there was heating. My other 3 tenants were Russian officers. I got along well with them. Before 1942 we received more or less sufficient food, but then it got worse. In spring 1942 we only got some kind of soup with just one spoon of cereal with goosefoot or dandelion herbs. Cadets got swollen from hunger. In spring 1942 we even failed to form a unit to send it to the front since our cadets couldn’t move from hunger and exhaustion. Medical commission selected the most exhausted cadets and sent them to a camp where they got better food. I wanted to be included in that group, but I probably didn’t look that bad. In late 1942 I was assigned to be chief of radio station in an aerodrome in the rear of the 4th Ukrainian Front. Our unit was based near Kherson and Nikolaev in the south of Ukraine. We were following our troops advancing to the west. We lodged in barracks or dugout huts in the woods. We got along well and supported each other. We got sufficient food especially that every day our fellow comrades perished and we shared their food. Every day we received 100 grams of alcohol and we drank them in commemoration of those that perished. Our fellow comrades perished during their combat flights or during frequent air raids. In late 1943 some female radio operators arrived at our unit. I must say we cared about them. I cannot remember that they got hurt. Even if such things happened the girls’ fellow comrades taught abusers how to behave.

I joined Komsomol15 in the army and prepared my application to the Party for submittal. However, they didn’t admit my application since I was an ‘untrustworthy element’ from the point of view of my commandment. It was a standard attitude to residents of the areas that were recently annexed to the USSR. Several times my fellow comrades submitted requests for my promotion, but again they refused for this same reason.

My fellow comrades were of different nationalities. We got along very well. Nobody cared about nationality issues. People were valued for their human merits. There were demonstrations of open anti-Semitism, however. There was a Jewish pilot in our military unit. He was a brave warrior awarded with medals and orders. Once an officer from another train abused him at a railway station. He called him ‘zhyd’ and said that he had bought medals and orders. They began fighting. Our guys came to his defense and another party also fought on the offender’s side. Chief of the station had to give a signal for the trains to move before time to stop this fight. I had a friend, commander of a radio operator platoon. He was Loginov, a Russian officer. We shared one earth house for almost a year when he said once that the only merit of Hitler was extermination of Jews. Then I told him that I was a Jew. He was stunned and said ‘I can’t believe it. But you are a decent man!’ I don’t think he changed his attitude towards Jews after our conversation, but he agreed that they [Jews] had done no harm to him. He didn’t even meet many of them in his provincial town. How did he come to saying so? I don’t have the slightest idea. It was a hard moment for me. We were friends no longer, but I had to deal with Loginov in service.

I felt particularly bitter to hear this kind of things since I’d already heard about brutalities of fascists on occupied territories. I didn’t have any information about my family. I didn’t lose hope, but I understood that the worst things could happen to them. At the end of the war in spring 1945 our regiment was relocated to the vicinity of Vladivostok in the Far East. When military action against Japan16 began our unit within the structure of a division was relocated to the Korean port of Chongjin. A Japanese military school and two divisions were in defense of the town. Shortly after we occupied the port Japan capitulated. I was assigned to headquarters of 25th army in Pyongyang. I issued an army newspaper Krasnoye Znamia (Red banner) there. They were trying to convince me to take up a military career, but I refused.

Firstly, when I was in Vladivostok in 1945 I met a girl of my age. Her name was Ludmila Orlova. I fell in love with her. She came from a Russian family in Tambov. After finishing Moscow Pedagogical College she got a mandatory job assignment17 and went to work as a Russian teacher in Vladivostok. Ludmila was pregnant. I wasn’t quite ready to live my life with her, but I understood that I had to marry her. Besides, I was eager to go home and find out what happened to my family. In late 1946 our son Yuri was born in Vladivostok and shortly afterward I was demobilized. We went to Tambov where we got married. We had a civil ceremony and stayed few weeks with Ludmila’s parents. Her parents were religious and belonged to the sect of molokans18. They were very decent people. They welcomed me and invited us to stay and live in Tambov, but of course, I couldn't wait to go back to Western Ukraine. I left for Pogdaytsy and my wife and child stayed there hoping that I would come back or find a job and come back to take them to our new home.  

After the war

I heard the horrific truth there – my family perished. My parents and sister moved to Skalat at the beginning of occupation. They were in the ghetto in Skalat with my mother’s sisters and they all perished when fascists eliminated the ghetto in the end. My brother Velvel’s family perished in Pogdaytsy. Velvel perished at the front in 1944. Only Moishe, my older brother, who was in the Soviet army survived. Moishe was wounded at the beginning of the war. He had to take medical treatment in a hospital and after the hospital he worked at a plant in Sverdlovsk. He found his wife Rivka in Ural, where she was in evacuation. Their son had died in a train during their trip. There was a short period after the war when residents of western regions were allowed to move to Poland. Moishe and Rivka moved to Wroclaw and then to Warsaw in Poland. I visited them several times in the 1950s. Moishe worked in the Polish Ministry of Finance, he was a clerk, but I am not sure about this. Moishe was an invalid of the war. He was severely ill and died in the late 1960s. His son lives in Stockholm, Sweden.

I couldn’t bear the pain of losing my family. I decided to stay and live near their graves the rest of my life. Our house in Pogdaytsy was ruined. I went to work at the printing house. My wife and son joined me soon. Our second son Vladimir was born in 1948. I named him in honor of my brother Velvel. My wife became a teacher of the Russian language and literature. There was a need in polygraphic specialists and I even got a job offer from Kiev, but our regional leadership didn’t want to let me go. They promised to give us an apartment and promotion, well, as they say, they were promising the moon and the earth. Finally we received an apartment in Pogdaytsy. I was deputy director of the printing house. Actually, only a member of the Party was supposed to hold this position. I submitted my application again. I had had a candidateship of over four years when only one was required. Mine was so long since I openly kept in touch with my sister Etka from Israel.

In 1948 I was enthusiastic about establishment of the Jewish state. I liked Israel, but I never wanted to leave the place where my family perished. I never considered moving to Israel. I corresponded with my sister Etka, even when correspondence was not allowed in 1940s–1970s, I received mail from her via Poland and Czechoslovakia, she sent her letters to the brother living in Warsaw, and my brother re-sent them to me. Poland was a socialist country and correspondence was allowed. (I visited Etka in 1999. She died two years later.)

Finally I joined the Party in 1950. Then I was appointed director of printing house in Chertkov near Pogdaytsy. After the war the attitude toward Jews changed. There was routinely and state-level anti-Semitism. Relatives of Jews shot in Pogdaytsy installed a monument in Pogdaytsy. Some barbarians pulled it down a week later. (There is a new monument installed in the 1990s in Pogdaytsy in honor of the Jews that perished during the war. It was funded by Jews from the USA, Israel and Germany. Many guests came to the opening ceremony.)

I also faced anti-Semitism. I was hardworking and had excellent organizational skills. People said about me that I could bring to success any failing business. It was true. I took up a lag of a printing house in Chertkov and within two years of my directorship we receive an award of all-Union Red banner: the highest industrial award in the USSR. I was offered to become director of a failing printing house in Ternopol. For this position I had to obtain approval of head of propaganda department of the regional party committee whose last name was Bobrichev. The man who was to introduce me to him, went into his office and I stayed in the hallway. Few minutes later I heard Bobrichev say loudly ‘Is there nobody else, but a zhyd that you can suggest?’ I didn’t stay a minute longer. I know that Shelekhov, who came to introduce me to the party leadership, was trying to explain that I was the best, etc., but I went back to the hotel and took a morning bus to Chertkov. 

This happened in the very height of struggle against cosmopolitism19 and Doctors’ Plot20. I remember a leading regional official telling a story that he saw some Jews getting to the water pipeline to blast it. It was impossible to believe it, but many people did. There were many provocative statements like this. I always believed in the ideas of communism and never doubted that a communist state had to follow communist principles, but I never worshipped Stalin blindly. I saw much injustice at the front and after the war and I had never doubted that the leader of the country was to blame for this. Even criminal thoughts occurred to me at times that Stalin was living too long. I took his death in 1953 with hopes for something better. Denunciation of the cult of Stalin in 1956 at 20th Congress of the Communist Party21 gave more hopes that real communists finally came to power. Unfortunately these hopes did not come true and our country and we went on this bitter way of hopes and disappointments.

Recent years

In 1962 I finished extramural department of the Ukrainian Polygraphic College. I got a profession of production engineer. In the early 1970s I accepted a job offer from Ternopol after Bobrichev had resigned. I received an apartment, my wife went to work at school and our children studied at the same school. I was chief of department of printing issues at the regional printing agency and later I became director of a failing printing house. It became one of the best, as usual, when I took up business.

My sons adopted their mother’s nationality when they were obtaining their passports, but I think they are close to Jewish spirits and ways. They have a typical Jewish surname of Gliazer. For this reason they faced anti-Semitism when they were entering higher educational institutions or getting employment. Our older son Yuri finished school with all excellent marks, but he failed to enter Kharkov Aviation College. They told him directly that they had filled up the Jewish quota and there was no place for him. He finished the Radio Electronics College in Kharkov and became a high skilled specialist. He has a Russian wife named Alexandra. They live in Krivoy Rog. His older daughter Tatiana, born in 1970, finished Moscow Engineering Physics College. She lives and works in Moscow. His younger daughter Oksana is a medical equipment expert. She finished Ternopol Medical College and lives in Ternopol. My younger son followed into his older brother’s steps. He finished the same college. He lives and works in Ternopol. His daughter Alyona is a candidate of technical sciences. 

My wife and I lived a good life. We raised our children together, traveled to resorts and hardly ever separated. We worked a lot and could manage very well. We invited guests and friends on birthdays and Soviet holidays, sang songs, listened to music and talked about life. We didn’t observe any religious traditions or holidays. In 1990 Ludmila fell ill and died of cancer. Her sister Nadezhda, who was single, had lived with us since the late 1980s. After her parents died in Tambov she moved in with us and we became a family. Nadezhda is a very nice person. She has always supported us and helped our children and grandchildren. We decided to get married and live the rest of our life together.

I retired few years ago. I was enthusiastic about perestroika22. We got an opportunity to travel to other countries and get to know the truth about our country and that horrible regime that we lived our life with, but perestroika made the life of pensioners very hard. We’ve lost our savings and we receive such small pensions that we can hardly pay for our lodging. I think people had many hopes for perestroika, but nothing happened to improve our life. I am glad that the country is moving toward democracy and nations have got an opportunity to develop their cultures. There is Hesed in Ternopol. It provides assistance to older Jews. My sons also support me. I am a member of the community. I teach Yiddish in the club and conduct celebration of Sabbath in the way my father did it. There is nothing for me to learn. I acquired it with my mother’s milk and remember well what I am supposed to know. I haven’t become religious. We do not observe traditions at home, but I am glad that we haven’t forgotten what our fathers and grandfathers bequeathed to us.

GLOSSARY:

Sonia Leiderman
Mogilyov-Podolskiy
Ukraine
Date of interview: July 2004
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya

Sonia Leiderman is a lady of average height. There are hardly any signs of gray in her thick wavy hair. Sonia has one leg amputated up to above her knee.  She cannot walk and moves around her apartment in a wheel-chair. Sonia is a sociable lady full of energy. She readily bursts into laughter and jokes. She only finished 3 forms at school, but she has a bright natural sound mind. She surprises me with the depth of her thoughts and accurate expression of her mind. She lives with her daughter, who takes care of her. Sonia’s daughter and her son-in-law are away from home going to work and Sonia feels lonely.  She enjoyed telling me about her life and felt happy about having a listener and somebody to talk to. Those people, who have more grounds to feel optimistic would envy Sonia’s optimism and her sense of humor.  

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

My family background

My father Itzyk Weisenberg was born in 1899 in Mogilyov-Podolskiy [315 km from Kiev] Vinnitsa province of the Russian Empire. I never saw my father’s parents. They died, when my father was just a teenager. My grandfather’s name was Shmul. As for my grandmother, I don’t know her name. I don’t know what my grandfather did to earn his living. My grandmother was a housewife like all married Jewish women at the time. My father didn’t tell me about his childhood. Of all his brothers and sisters I only knew his younger sister Klara, Haya in Jewish. [common name] 1 She also lived in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Klara was married and her family name was Shtern. She had one daughter, whose name was Lisa. Klara’s husband left his family shortly after his daughter was born. Klara never remarried. She worked as a seamstress at home, fixing bed sheets and altering old clothes.

Mama’s parents came from the Jewish town of Ozarintsy near Mogilyov-Podolskiy [12 km from Mogilyov-Podolskiy, 305 km from Kiev]. I think that my grandfather Yevzel Gempeld and my grandmother Fania were born some time in the late 1860s. My grandfather was a tailor. Before the revolution of 1917 2 he owned a small shop, which was expropriated after the revolution and my grandfather did sewing at home.  His younger son Mikhail assisted him. My grandmother was a housewife, which was quite common for Jewish women. They had many children, but they all left their parents’ home before I was born. During the Civil War 3 some of my mother’s brothers and sisters moved to the USA. There were no contacts with them, and mama never told us anything about them. Perhaps, she was just afraid to talk about them considering that in the 1930s it was not safe for Soviet people to have relatives abroad 4. Soviet authorities did not appreciate people corresponding with their relatives abroad. Thos people might be arrested and deported. So, the best thing was to forget these relatives. Mama was born in 1901. I also knew mama’s older brother, whose name I don’t remember, her older sister Riva, born in 1898, and her younger brother Mikhail, Moishe in Jewish, born in 1909, the youngest child in the family. He was single and lived with my grandparents in Ozarintsy. Riva married Motl Kagan, a shochet in her town. Riva and her husband lived in their house not far from my grandparents. Riva had three daughters: Hana, Vera and Yekaterina. Mama’s older brother learned tailor’s vocation from his father. He lived with his family in Luchinets village [30 km from Mogilyov-Podolskiy, 300 km from Kiev], was married and had two sons. I don’t remember his wife or children’s names since we did not communicate.

Ozarintsy was a big village divided into two parts: Ukrainian and Jewish neighborhoods. There were many such villages in Vinnitsa region. Vinnitsa province was within the Pale of Settlement 5 during the czarist regime. Jewish families lived in the central part of the village. There were about 200 houses in the Jewish Ozarintsy. Of course, residents of the Ukrainian and Jewish areas socialized and had friends, but each part still had its own way of life: Ukrainian and Jewish.  There were no conflicts, Ukrainians were invited to Jewish weddings and Jews went to Ukrainian weddings. Jews were craftsmen: tailors, shoemakers, blacksmiths, carpenters and tinsmiths. There was no anti-Semitism in the village and Ukrainian and Jewish residents got along well. Jews spoke Yiddish, but also knew Ukrainian and Ukrainian residents could speak Yiddish.  

Many Jews were also engaged in farming and cattle breeding.  They lived in the center, but had their fields outside the village. The Jewish community supported older people and widows with children. There was a synagogue and a shochet in the village. There was also a cheder before the revolution, but after the revolution it was closed and turned into a Jewish primary school with teaching in Yiddish. There was a Jewish cemetery, a hospital, a drugstore in hospital in the village. Actually, there was everything necessary the villagers needed to live their life. 

Before and during the revolution and the Civil War there were pogroms 6 in Ozarintsy made by numerous gangs 7: Denikin troops 8 also made pogroms. Mama told me that during pogroms Ukrainian villagers gave shelter to Jewish families, risking their lives.   

All Jews in Ozarintsy were religious. Even when the Soviet regime struggled against religion 9, Jews never gave up observing Jewish traditions they went to the synagogue, celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays at home. The younger generation was not so religious or even gave up religion.

I remember my mother’s parents. My grandfather was a stout man of average height. He wore a black suit. At home he always had a black yarmulke on, and wore a hat to go out. He didn’t have payes, but all old men in Ozarintsy had beards and my grandfather had a big black beard with streaks of gray. My grandmother was short and thin. She always wore skirts with gathers and long-sleeved blouses. She always covered her head with a black kerchief. My grandfather and grandmother were religious. They celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays. Their children were also religious. Mikhail, whom I knew well, always went to the synagogue with grandfather on Sabbath and Jewish holidays. My grandmother went to the synagogue on Jewish holidays like other Jewish women.  

Mama told me that she always wanted to leave Ozarintsy for a big town. Of course, Mogilyov-Podolskiy can hardly be called a big town, but my mother, a common Jewish girl from a small Jewish village, found it attractive. After the revolution she moved to Mogilyov-Podolskiy. I don’t know whether my mother had any education at all: she could hardly read words or write her own surname. She was looking for a job and was offered a job of housemaid in a Jewish family.  Mama worked for few families doing shopping, cleaning and baby sitting for them. I don’t know how she met my father. Mama hardly ever told me about her life. My parents got married in 1922. They were both poor, and a big wedding party was out of the question.  There was a chuppah installed in the yard of my mother parents’ house, and then my grandmother made a small wedding dinner with my mother and father’s relatives. After the wedding my parents returned to Mogilyov-Podolskiy. They rented half of a small house in the center of Mogilyov-Podolskiy, in the Jewish neighborhood. There were two small rooms and a kitchen in the house. The kitchen was behind a partition in the room.  There was a big stove heating the rooms and the kitchen, and mama also cooked on this stove. Water was fetched from the well three houses away from where my parents lived. There was no plot of land near the house. The houses adjoined to one another in the center of the town. There were 2 old apple trees near the house, and a wood shed and a toilet in the backyard. My father made a table, wardrobes and cupboards, plank beds and stools for the house.

Mogilyov-Podolskiy was a quiet and cozy town in the south buried in verdure, surrounded with the hills covered with woods. It is located on the bank of the Dnestr River, and the other bank of the river was the territory of Moldavia or Bessarabia 10. Before 1940, when Bessarabia belonged to Romania, Mogilyov-Podolskiy was a border town with the middle of the Dnestr River being the border line between the USSR and Romania. In 1940 Moldavia was annexed to the USSR. Jews constituted over half of the population in the town. They resided in its central part. They lived in small houses. Wealthier houses had tin sheet or tiled roots while poorer houses had thatched roofs.  Ukrainians, Russians and Moldavians lived in the suburbs where they could have more land to do farming and supply food products to the town. Jews were craftsmen and traders and worked at the mechanical plant. There were few synagogues before the revolution. After the revolution there were only two synagogues left. They operated till World War II. The main synagogue was near the market in the center of Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Another one, a smaller synagogue was located near the railway station. There was a shochet working near the market, and housewives brought chickens to the shochet to have them slaughtered. There was a Jewish 4-year primary school in the town. There was a Jewish, Orthodox-Christian and Catholic cemeteries on the hills.

Growing up

Mama was a housewife after getting married. Their first daughter was named Zina – this is a Russian name, Zisl in Jewish; she was born in 1924, their second daughter Etia was born in 1926. I was the third daughter in the family. I was born in 1932. I was named Sonia, and my Jewish name is Sosl. My younger sister Nyusia was born in 1939. She was given the Jewish name of Hana. She was called affectionately Hanusia - Nyusia at home, and this name was put down in her birth certificate. It was hard for my father to provide for the family of six of us.  My father made plain furniture, doors and window frames. We could hardly make ends meet. Nyusia and I wore our sisters’ clothes that they had grown out of.

My parents were religious, and however hard the Soviet regime struggled against religion, they never gave up their belief. They observed Jewish traditions and could read their prayer books in Hebrew. They prayed at home every day. Their generation of Jews in Mogilyov-Podolskiy was religious. We always celebrated Sabbath at home. Mama made dough in a big wooden tub on Friday morning to make bread for a whole week, and a smaller tub with dough for Saturday wheat challot. Hen she finished with bread, mama cooked the Sabbath dinner and food for Saturday. Mama tried to do no work on Sabbath. We were poor, but mama always made something special for Sabbath. In autumn, when fish was not so expensive, she made gefilte fish, chicken broth with homemade noodles – we could have these almost every Sabbath. On Friday evening the family got together. Mama lit candles and prayed over them. Then we sat down to dinner.  On the next morning my father went to the synagogue. Mama went to the synagogue on Jewish holidays like other Jewish women. When my father came home from the synagogue, he read his prayer book. My older sisters went out with their friends and I sat beside my father listening to his wonderful stories about David and Goliath, Isaac’s sacrifice and granting the Torah to Moses. Of course, I didn’t know these were the Biblical stories and listened to them as if they were fairy tales.

We celebrated Jewish holidays at home. I particularly remember Pesach. There was a Jewish bakery not far from our house. About a month before Pesach this Jewish bakery switched to baking matzah.  Mama always made savings for Pesach. She bought sufficient matzah to last for 8 days, when no bread was allowed. The matzah stocks were kept on the attic where we also kept our special crockery for Pesach. Mama and my older sisters made a general clean up of the house before Pesach. All corners were cleaned and all things were taken outside to be cleaned. On the eve of the holiday mama removed all bread and bread crumbs from the house and only then she could take the matzah and crockery into the house from the attic. Mama bought a chicken and had it slaughtered by the shochet. She cooked a chicken, and made dumplings from the matzah flour and eggs. Mama made matzah and egg, corn and potato puddings and made pancakes from matzah flour that we ate with jam.  On Pesach my parents went to the synagogue in the morning, and Zina and Etia went with them.  I stayed at home, being too young. My father conducted seder on the first evening of Pesach. I was a quick girl and always managed to steal the afikoman, a piece of matzah to crown the seder and gave it to my father for ransom that was usually a toy or some sweets. There was a wine glass filled with wine for Elijah the Prophet, and the door was kept open for him to come into the house. My father and mother recited prayers and we sang Pesach songs. Another big holiday was Yom Kippur, the Judgment Day. The Kapores ritual was conducted on the eve of the holiday. Mama bought a white rooster for the father and white hens for us. The hen was to be taken by is tied legs, turned around the head with the words: “May you be my atonement”. Then these hens were slaughtered and mama cooked broth with them. Adults had a sufficient dinner before the first star appeared in the sky and then fasted for 24 hours. Children either missed one meal or didn’t fast at all. In the morning of Yom Kippur all Jews of Mogilyov-Podolskiy went to the synagogue. Everything looked very festive. Men wore black suits and hats, and women dressed up and wore silk shawls on their heads. They all were carrying candles to the synagogue. They had to pray at the synagogue a whole day till the first evening star appeared in the sky. Then they returned home to have dinner with the family. I also remember Chanukkah. All visitors gave children coins.  Every day mama lit another candle in a big 9-candle stand – the chanukkiyah. We also celebrated other holidays, but I don’t remember any details. So we lived till the Great Patriotic War 11 began.

Both of my older sisters went to the Russian general education school. I also went to this school in 1938, when I was 6 years old, but I was a tall and strong girl. My sisters taught me to read and write a little, and our teacher allowed me to come to the first form, though other children were admitted to school at the age of 8. I didn’t study very well. I was a vivid girl and it was hard for me to sit still 45 minutes that our lessons lasted. The teacher always had to talk with mama about me turning around at school and talking to other children. I became a young Octobrist 12 at school. I also sang in the choir and went dancing at school.  There were Jewish children and Jewish teachers at school. There was no anti-Semitism at school. I think anti-Semitism appeared after the war.

In June 1941 my summer vacations began. Etia finished the 6th form and Zina was having her graduate exams after finishing the 8th form.  The summer was warm. I spent time at the riverside and walked and played with my friends. On Sunday, 22 June, mama promised that we would go to the cinema. We were looking forward to Sunday since we didn’t often go to the cinema.  In the morning mama was doing housework and I was playing outside with my friends, when my father came into the yard and said that he heard on the radio that Germany had attacked the USSR and that Belarus and Kiev were already bombed. All I knew about war was that boys played the war, and I could not understand why my father looked so worried and why my mother burst into tears.  I was 9 years old and did not understand that this was the end of my childhood.  

During the war

My father received a summons to the recruitment office. My parents decided that Mother and the children should leave the town for a village to be on the safe side. Our neighbors were going to Chernevtsy near Mogilyov-Podolskiy [30 km from Mogilyov-Podolskiy, 290 km from Kiev], and my parents decided to go with them. They hired a wagon and packed only the most necessary belongings. When we reached Chernivtsy, we rented a room from a local Jewish family. My father went to the mobilization point in Vinnitsa. Shortly afterward we heard that Germans occupied Mogilyov-Podolskiy.

In Chernevtsy mama and my older sisters went around village houses asking for work. Occasionally they got some job, but at times they returned without any earnings. I had to look after my younger sister Nyusia. We were always hungry. Mama left few boiled potatoes or a little cooked cereal for a day. We ate this miserable food at once and kept waiting till mama and sisters would come back and bring some food. I also wanted to help the family. Once I talked our landlady into taking my sister in her care while I went out looking for work. For some reason I had no doubts that I could do any work. I knocked on the door of the house that looked wealthier than other houses to me. The owner of the house came out and I asked her about work. She asked me what I could do and I replied that I could do anything she needed. She gave me a spade and a bucket and told me to dig potatoes in her vegetable garden. I had never done this before and even saw a spade for the first time in my life. Some time later the mistress of the house came out to look how I worked. When she looked into the bucket, she clasped her hands and said that she would give me some food, but I had to stop digging potatoes, or she would never have potatoes for the winter. Each potato in the bucket was cut by halves in the bucket. She gave me some food and also packed the potatoes I had dug out for me to take home.

Some time later Germans came to Chernevtsy. They started mass shootings of Jews. They killed 13 men in one day, and then – 12 more. Jews were not allowed to come into streets after dark. Germans arranged raids. They sent the captives to the Pechora camp 13. People said there were no survivors in this camp. We moved into a Ukrainian house for reasons of safety. One night another raid began and our landlady told us to take a hiding. Mama, little Nyusia and my older sisters hid in the cellar. There was no space left for me to come with them, and our landlady hid me in her house covering me with a blanket. A German and a Ukrainian policeman came into the house. The policeman noticed me, but he didn’t say anything.

It was not safe to stay in Chernevtsy  and mama decided we should go back to Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Our landlady’s husband rode us there in his wagon. There was a Jewish ghetto already in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Our house was within its boundaries, and there were already Jews from Romania and Bukovina 14 accommodated in it. There were too many of them and they didn’t want to let us in. Mama begged them to let us stay in the kitchen. There was nothing left in the house: while we were away local people took away our furniture, utensils and clothes. We slept on rags and newspapers on the floor. Germans had left the town by then and there were Romanian guards in the house. Villagers from neighboring villages brought food products to sell or exchange by the fence of the ghetto.  We had no money or anything to offer a deal for food. The villagers got thirsty while bargaining and then I went to the fence with a kettle of water offering them to drink. They took sips of water and threw me an apple, a potato or a piece of bread over the fence. So I managed to get however little food for a day. Of course, this was a miserable contribution into the family of five of us, but this was still better than nothing. I also managed to get out of the ghetto, when there were no Romanian guards or policemen nearby. I didn’t look like a Jew, but rather like a village girl. I walked barefoot, had plaits and a kerchief on my head. We needed something to stoke the stove. We got together in a group of 4-5 of us to go to the forest. We usually went there in the dark and were scared. 4We didn’t have knives or axes and had to use our teeth to break off thicker branches.  Later I started leaving the ghetto looking for a job in the town. Housewives hired me to do cleaning for them, wash dishes or sit with their children. They didn’t give me money, but gave me food. Mama and my older sisters also went out looking for work, but it became more and more difficult to find a job. We decided to leave the ghetto and go to Ozarintsy where my mother’s relatives lived.  We left the ghetto one night. Mama and my older sisters took turns to carry little Nyusia. We walked all night till we got to my grandfather and grandmother’s house in Ozarintsy. There was also a ghetto there. My grandparents and my mother sister’s houses were within the boundaries of the ghetto. My mother sister’s husband was at the front, and she and her daughters lived with grandmother and grandfather. Some Jews from Bukovina were accommodated in their house. Our relatives were happy to see us alive. They told us that my mother’s brother Mikhail perished on the first day of occupation. He and other men were at the synagogue, when Germans came into the town. They surrounded the synagogue and began to shoot. Few men escaped. Mikhail and other men were killed inside the synagogue. They were found embracing each other. This ghetto was even more unsafe than the ghetto in Mogilyov-Podolskiy: the town was small, and they watched over each Jewish inmate of the ghetto. My mother’s parents and Riva had some belongings that they could deal for food, but there were five of us and they could not manage to provide food for all of us. There were new groups taken to Ozarintsy and every now and then there were raids and the captives were killed. It was scaring. Every night we sat quiet fearing to have lights in the house to not attract attention to us. So we had nothing left, but return to Mogilyov-Podolskiy. We left one night. There was another Jewish woman with a child and a Russian family going to Mogilyov-Podolskiy. On our way we met a Romanian soldier. He ignored us, but approached the Jewish woman, who had a typical Jewish appearance and hit her so hard that she fell on the ground. He turned away and left. He could have killed her… We went on. We managed to get into the ghetto unnoticed and went to our house, but there was another family living in our kitchen. My papa’s sister Klara gave us shelter. She lived with her daughter in a small room in her house, and when we came to live in her house, there were already 7 of us in a 10-square meters room. We were just stuffed in the room. There was a bed where Klara and her daughter Lisa slept and a big table in the room. Mama and Nyusia slept on the table, and my sisters and I slept on the floor. Almost all inmates of the ghetto lived like this. The wells were dirty and the water in them stunk.  There was no soap to wash ourselves or our clothes. Everybody had lice. Then epidemics of typhus occurred one after another. There was an enteric, spotted fever and relapsing typhus in the ghetto. If one fell ill in a house, the rest contracted it.  Mama also fell ill with typhus. A woman from Bessarabia, a medical nurse, living in Klara’s house, covered mama with wet rags and told us to remove them only when necessary. Thanks to her, we did not contract typhus. In winter 1943 Klara fell ill with typhus. At that time Romanians were sending ill people to hospital to make injections. Only later we got to know that people were dying from these injections. Those were medical experiments on people. Klara was taken to hospital where she had an injection. Mama took her back home. Klara died few days later. Mama was very weak. My cousin Lisa and I took Klara to the Jewish cemetery on sledges. There was a pit where all dead were thrown and when it was filled with dead bodies, there was lime added to and then the pit was backfilled with ground. Lisa stayed with us.

Germans and Romanians captured people in the streets to send them to Pechora. Actually, they were to send inmates from Bessarabia and Romania to the camp, but they had money and valuables and paid ransom to Romanians to be left alone. Since there was an order to send people to the Pechora camp, the Romanians captured people during raids. I got out of the ghetto to work or beg for food.  Once I was captured in a raid. There were about 100 captives in this raid. We were lined and ordered to march to Pechora. I was very scared. I was the only child, the rest of captives were adults. One night we stayed in a field and another night we were taken to a fenced spot. Here was a shed where our guards took turns to sleep. I knew that I would not survive anyway, and that I had to try to escape. If the guards killed me, well – I would die here or in the camp, but I knew I had to try. I climbed over the fence at night and went away at random. I didn’t know where to go, but I wanted to go as far as possible from this place. I walked through the wood all night, but in the morning a Romanian patrol captured me. The soldiers were asking me something, but I did not understand them.  They took me to the gendarmerie and locked me in a little room with a barred window near the ceiling.  There was an old Jewish man in the room. He asked me where I came from. I don’t know how long we were in this room, when a policeman came in and said laughing that he was ordered to dig a pit and bury us alive. The old man began to beg to let me go.  He said he was an old man and didn’t fear death, but I was just a child and he should have mercy. The old man took few golden coins from under the lining of his jacket and told the policeman he would give him these coins, if he let me go. He said nobody would check how many people were buried in the pit. The policeman released me. I still remember the face of this old man, my rescuer. Mama and I wanted to find his grave after the war, but we failed. There were too many such unknown graves scattered around in Vinnitsa region.

I went back to Mogilyov-Podolskiy. I walked at night fearing to walk during the day. Every now and then I went to an outskirt of a village to drink some water from a well or pick an apple from a tree, but then I went back to the woods. In the morning I fell asleep in a quiet spot. I didn’t know the way and was afraid that I had lost it. It was cold already – this was autumn. I had a summer dress and a kerchief on my head. Once I saw a village girl picking mushrooms and asked her to sow me the way out of the wood. She gave me some milk and bread and took me to the edge of the wood and from there I went on. Soon I saw Mogilyov-Podolskiy at a distance. I came through a hole in the fence and found my family. They knew I had been taken to Pechora and didn’t hope to see me alive.  

Mass shootings of Jews began in the ghettos in nearby villages. There were mass shootings in Ozarintsy where my mother’s family lived.  My grandmother, grandfather and my mother’s sister and her children got lucky: a policeman warned them of the forthcoming action and they managed to hide away. There were many Jews killed in those days. When their executors ran out of bullets, they buried the rest of Jews alive. The moment Romanian guards or policemen came into the streets we ran to hide in the bushes on the bank of the Dnestr. They captured those, who were at hand. This continued till about the middle of March 1944. Then we saw that the Germans and Romanians were leaving. There were loaded wagons and numbers of soldiers and officers near the bridge over the Dnestr. The bridge was narrow and they couldn’t move fast over it. Germans and Romanians were arguing about who was the first to cross the bridge. We were hiding in the bushes. On the early morning of 19 March 1944 Soviet tanks came to Mogilyov-Podolskiy. All people ran into the streets to thank soldiers for the liberation and were happy to be free. However, it was still dangerous to walk near the Dnestr: there was a German sniper on the opposite bank of the Dnestr shooting at the people on the bank. Then he was killed. Life was gradually improving. The war was still going on, but it was over for us.  The Romanian Jews staying in our house left and we could move into our house. My cousin Lisa also left for Romania. She met a Jewish guy from Romania in the ghetto, who was in the ghetto with his parents. They fell in love with each other and got married, when the town was liberated. Hey had a traditional Jewish wedding and the rabbi from the central synagogue conducted the ceremony. Lisa and her husband moved to Palestine shortly after they arrived in Romania. This is all I know about her. I hope she’s had a good life.

We still didn’t have sufficient food, but there was a different countdown point for us: we were happy to be walking in the streets without fear of raids or shootings. Mama’s relatives wanted us to come to Ozarintsy and we did so. My mother sister’s husband Motl was a shochet. He bought meat from farmers and sold it at the market. They always had meat at home. I had forgotten the taste of meat during the wartime. Once I was told to make soup with goat meat for the whole family. I started trying little pieces to check whether the meat was soft enough and I ate a whole piece of it. I never again was given such responsible chores. I wanted to get a job to help mama. A village woman hired me to look after her daughter, do cleaning and washing. She didn’t pay me, but she provided three meals per day. Later her relative came to do this work for her, and the woman didn’t need me any longer. Once I came into my mother sister husband’s slaughter shed and saw some grains on the floor mixed with dirt and wood chips. I took a closer look at it – this was salt. Salt was valued high during the war. We could not afford to buy it and ate food without salt. Perhaps, Motl was using it to keep skins from damaging. I gathered some salt from the floor and rinsed and dried it. It worked out all right. I took some more salt and had a whole bucket of salt on the next day.  I went to sell it at the market. A glass of salt cost as much as a loaf of bread. People were buying alt well. I was only concerned that somebody might steal my money. A Ukrainian village woman, selling her products beside me asked me who I was and where I lived. I told her I was shochet Motl’s niece – everybody knew him in Ozarintsy. I asked her permission to put my money into her basket. When I sold the salt, I left the market forgetting about the money. In the evening this village woman brought me my money home. Motl asked me how I managed to earn this much money and when he heard the story, he exclaimed:  ‘Smart girl, you will make your way wherever!’.

During the occupation we didn’t have any information about my father. My mother thought that we should stay at home in case my father was looking for us. Her relatives suggested that they would take care of my sisters. My older sister Zina stayed in Ozarintsy with our aunt. She went to work as a lab assistant in the Ozarintsy affiliate of the ‘Zagotzerno’ (Grain stocks) office. Etia went to live with my mother’s older brother living in Luchinets. I asked whether I could stay to live with them, but Motl replied I was quite capable of taking care of myself and my little sister.  We returned home. In late summer 1945 my father returned from the front. He went to work as a carpenter to the mechanical plant, which resumed its operations. My father made wooden boxes for the plant products. My younger sister Nyusia went to school. My older sister Zina also returned to Mogilyov-Podolskiy and went to work at the Zagotzerno office. Of course, our life improved. My father received a salary and food packages. Zina worked as a lab assistant. She made tests of the grain that kolkhozes supplied. She received about 0.5 kg grain for test purposes and then employees could take this grain home. Mama used to crash it with a pestle in a mortar and cook it.  

After the war

My parents wanted me to go back to school, but during the occupation I got used to live on my own and I didn’t quite feel like resuming my studies. I thought I had to go work and make my own contribution into the family budget. I had only finished 3 forms at school, and I was 14 years old.  Nobody wanted to hire me until I finally convinced director of a trade office to hire me.  I started selling milk. It was hard work: I got very little money for this work while I had to work all day carrying heavy milk cans. I asked director to give me some different work and he sent me to sell fish. So, I worked as a fish vendor in a kiosk at the central market for the rest of my life. I retired from there. It was hard work. There were no loaders and I had to carry heavy boxes with frozen fish and cut heavy briquettes into pieces. I never had a chance to sit down during the day: there were always customers lining up; I had no breaks. There was no heating in the kiosk: it was freezing in winter, and it was hot in summer. I didn’t go on vacation trying to earn more. My customers liked me: I joked and was cheerful and tried to serve them as best as I could. There were 3 fish kiosks one next to another, but there were always people lining to my kiosk. It’s a small town where people know each other, and I knew all of my customers.  

I got married in 1952. Our neighbor introduced me to her distant relative Semyon Leiderman. There were not many young men around: many perished at the front and the others – in ghettos. Shortly after we met Semyon proposed to me. Semyon was born in Luchinets village in 1926. His Jewish name is Shmul. His father Haim Leiderman was a burial man at the Jewish cemetery in Luchinets, and his mother was a housewife. Semyon had an older brother Yefim and a younger sister Anna.  Semyon’s parents were religious, but their children were far from religion like many others of their generation. During the war Semyon and his parents were in the Jewish ghetto in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. His older brother was at the front. Before the war Semyon had finished 8 forms of the Russian general education school. After the war Semyon stayed in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. He went to work as a turner at the mechanical plant, which was later converted into the plant of agricultural machine building named after Kirov. Yefim returned to Mogilyov-Podolskiy after the war. Anna got married and moved to Batumi in Georgia with her husband. Her husband’s relatives lived in this town. Her husband died a sudden death. Anna’s mother moved to Batumi to live with her daughter. She died in the middle 1970s.

We didn’t have a Jewish wedding. Life was very hard and we could not afford a big wedding party.  We registered in the registry office and in the evening had a small wedding dinner with the closest relatives. We lived in our little house with my parents and my younger sister Nyusia after the wedding. My older sisters were married to Jewish men from Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Zina’s family name was Weiss. Zina had two children: daughter Bella, born in 1950, and son Alexandr, born in 1953. Zina continued working as a lab assistant at the Zagotzerno office. Etia’s family name was Pekelis.  She never went back to school after the war. She had finished 6 forms at school before the war. Etia worked as an ice-cream vendor. Her husband worked at the mechanical plant. Etia had two daughters: Maya, born in 1951, and Sima, born in 1952. Zina and Etia lived with their own families.

My mother’s father Yevzel died in the early 1950s. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Ozarintsy. The funeral was traditional Jewish. There were very few Jews left in Ozarintsy, but they all came to my grandfather’s funeral. My father recited the Kaddish over my grandfather’s grave. My grandmother moved to live with my mother’s sister Riva after my grandfather died. My grandmother died two years after my grandfather’s death. She was never ill and was very active. She died quietly in her sleep. My grandmother was buried beside my grandfather’s grave. We came to their graves every year on anniversaries of heir death. My father recited the Kaddish according to the rules.  

Our older son David was born in 1953, and our daughter Maya was born in 1957. We did not raise them Jews. We spoke Russian with the children. I spoke Yiddish to my parents and my husband and I switched to Yiddish, when we did not want our children to understand the subject of our discussion. We celebrated Jewish holidays, when we lived with our parents. Our parents also celebrated Soviet holidays with us:  1 May, 7 November 15, Victory Day 16, Soviet army Day 17, the international Women’s Day in  8 March. In the early 1960s the plant where my husband and father were working built an apartment house for its workers and we received apartments in this house. Our old house was removed. My parents, my sister and our family had apartments in the same house, but on different floors. We joined our parents to celebrate Jewish holidays. Of course, mama could follow the kashrut no longer: there was hardly possible to buy food products in stores at the time, and we could not choose, whether this food was kosher or not.  

In January 1953 newspapers started publishing articles about the Kremlin doctors who were believed to try to poison Stalin [Doctors’ Plot] 18. It was hard for me to believe it. I think, this was the time anti-Semitism came into being. The newspapers focused on these doctors’ Jewish nationality stressing this factor as much as possible. Many people spoke negatively of Jews and could abuse a person just for being a Jew. I remember Stalin’s death in March 1953. Actually, I’ve never taken any interest in politics. I had to take care of the family and work for them. I had no time left for anything else and I didn’t care. However, at that time I cried grieving after Stalin, as if I had lost someone dear. It felt as if the whole world collapsed. Everybody talked about how we would be able to live without Stalin. People were concerned and did not know what to expect in the future.  Then on the 20th Congress 19, Khrushchev 20 spoke about Stalin and his helpers’ crimes. Of course, I believed everything he said. Then there were talks that if Stalin had not died he would have deported Jews to Siberia like he did with the Crimean Tatar and Chechen people. So I think Stalin’s death was a rescue for Jews. Actually, considering whatever I read about Stalin later, I believe him to have been a mentally ill person. It would be hard to explain his acts, his unjustified cruelty and insidiousness.

My son fell ill with measles at the age of 6. It developed into meningitis. Unfortunately, this disease had its aftereffects. David recovered physically, but he remained retarded. I talked to his tutor at the kindergarten and she spent more time with him, which had a positive outcome, but when my son went to school, his teachers did not want to spend more time with him. They told me that I had to send avid to a school for mentally retarded children. We didn’t have any choice. My son had a hard time in this school. The children mocked at him and beat him, and he came home in tears almost every day. His health condition grew weaker and weaker and he had to go to a hospital in Vinnitsa more and more often. I had to do work at home, visit him in the hospital and go to work. I also had to take care of David, when he was at home. He could not take care of himself. David died in 1989. We buried him in the Jewish cemetery. The community helped us with the traditional Jewish funeral.   

My son’s ailment had an impact on my daughter. She was a healthy and smart girl, but men did not dare to marry her. Of course, all people in Mogilyov-Podolskiy knew about David’s condition and were afraid that this disease could be hereditary. Then I met Igor Kotliar, a Jewish guy from Karaganda [Kazakhstan]. I helped him to enter the trade vocational school and find a job at a store.  I introduced Maya to Igor. They got married shortly after their acquaintance. They didn’t have a Jewish wedding. My daughter and her husband lived with us. Maya worked as a shop assistant at the store. Their older daughter was born in 1977. She was named Zinaida after my older sister Zina who died from cancer in 1973. My second granddaughter Irina was born in 1984. She was named after my father, who died in 1981, the first letters in their names are the same. We buried my father in the Jewish cemetery in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. The synagogue did not operate, but there was a prayer house where my father and mother went to pray.  The old people from this prayer house helped us to bury my father according to Jewish traditions. My parents lied with my younger sister Nyusia and her family. Nyusia married Dunovitzer, a Jewish man, in the middle 1960s.  Their son Igor was born in 1965, and son Yevgeniy - in 1970. Mama stayed to live with Nyusia. We tried to support her as much as we could trying to help her live over her loss. Mama died in 1986. She was buried beside my father’s grave.  After my parents died we gave up religion and never again celebrated Jewish holidays. We celebrated birthdays of members of the family, New Year and Victory Day. The other Soviet holidays were just ordinary days off for us.  

In the 1970s mass departures of Jews to Israel began.  Our friends, acquaintances and relatives were leaving. My sister Etia and her family and Zina’s daughters moved to Israel. We didn’t consider departure. I understood that since neither my husband nor I had education and there was little chance for us to find a job and start our life anew. Besides, I had to take care of my mentally retarded son and his doctors did not recommend a change of climate of surrounding to him. So we stayed here, and when my husband’s health condition grew worse we stopped thinking about departure.

We could hardly make ends meet. Besides, I tried to save some money hoping that when my husband and I retired, we would travel and enjoy ourselves. I took these savings to the bank. We had never traveled on vacation – we had to stay where our son was to take care of him. Besides, we didn’t want to be a burden for our daughter, when we grew old: old people need medications and doctors and this all requires money. We were hoping that we would manage at our old age having our savings, but then perestroika 21 began, and all our hopes turned into ashes. Of course, perestroika brought a lot of good to younger people: there is freedom of speech and press, private business, which was subject to criminal persecution in the past, is allowed. People got a chance to correspond with their relatives and friends abroad without fearing the KGB 22. It became possible to travel abroad and invite foreigners to visit. However, old people do not need this. We’ve only consumed the bitter fruit of perestroika. The material level of living grew lower; our savings decreased in value and then were gone [The disintegration of the USSR in 1991 also resulted in the newly independent states introducing their own national currencies. Soviet Ruble ceased existing. Many people lost their life-time savings.]. My husband and I were pensioners at this time. Again we were starving. Our pensions were hardly sufficient to pay our apartment fees and just for the most necessary food. Later, when the USSR fell apart, we were scared. We left our apartment to our daughter: there were 6 of us living in a little two-bedroom apartment and this caused many rows between us. My husband and I borrowed some money and bought half of a little private house in the district where the ghetto used to be. We returned some money, but to pay back our debt in full we had to go to work, but there were no jobs available. My sister Etia sent me some money from Israel to pay back my debts. Nyusia also supported me. She and her family moved to Dneprodzerzhinsk in Dnepropetrovsk region [50 km from Dnepropetrovsk, 380 km from Kiev], where her son Igor got a job assignment after finishing the Vinnitsa Polytechnic College.  Igor moved to Israel in the late 1990s. Nyusia, her husband and their younger son Yevgeniy live in Dneprodzerzhinsk. 

I became an invalid in 2000. I was walking back home from work, when a man attacked me in the dark entrance of the building and stabbed me with his knife: and he did this just to snatch away my bag from me: there was just enough money in it to buy 100 gram of sausage! I had to stay in hospital for a long time. The doctors were very sympathetic to me, operated on me at no cost and brought me to recovery. The man cut my femoral artery and I lost my leg: they amputated it as high as above my knee. When I was in the hospital, my husband decided he didn’t want an invalid of a wife and found another woman. Of course, I felt painfully hurt, but what could I do… I had to learn to live alone. Fortunately, my daughter didn’t leave me in trouble. By that time my older granddaughter Zinaida finished a medical school. She could not find a job here and moved to Germany. She learned the language and found a job. She is doing well. Recently my younger granddaughter Irina followed her sister. I live with my daughter and her husband. They look after me and help me around. My sisters also remember me. I corresponded with Etia and Nyusia and they helped me with money. Etia died last February. Her daughters write and support me.  

When Ukraine became independent, the Jewish life began to revive. There is a Jewish community and Hesed 23 in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Though I’m bedridden and do not go out, they remember me. They deliver hot meals to my home and a visiting nurse and a volunteer from the community visit me. I’m very happy, when they come to see me. My daughter and her husband are at work and I miss talking to people. I welcome the volunteers very much. When they celebrate a holiday in the community they tell me about the celebration and keep me updated on everything new.  I receive Jewish newspapers and enjoy reading them. I think every person can find something interesting there.  The community provides medications to me and supports me, when I have to go to hospital. They are good people – very good people. I thank them for their care and support.

Glossary:

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

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

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

My family background

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

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

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

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

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

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

My early life

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

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

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

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

The famine

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

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

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

Before the war

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

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

During the war

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

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

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

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

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

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

After the war

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

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

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

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

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

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

GLOSSARY:

Asia Matveyuk
Kherson
Ukraine
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: September 2003

Asia Matveyuk lives in a standard one-bedroom apartment in a big 9-storied apartment building of the late 1970s in a residential district of Kherson. This apartment is clean and full of light. There are many handmade articles in the apartment: made from bird feathers, ivory, embroidered articles and dolls – all of them Asia’s works. She says she inherited this talent for handcrafts from her mother. Asia is slim for her age. She wears a jeans dress, has colored and nicely done hair, manicure, and she looks young for her age. Before the interview Asia shows me a number of albums with greeting cards from her frontline friends from different towns and countries. She tells me that in the article dedicated to her military past she was called a ‘girl from a  legend’. When telling her story she changes and I can really see a young girl in her.

My family backgrownd

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family backgrownd

My family came from the south of Russia where in the Azov region, in Kherson and Nikolaev steppes  [present southeastern Ukraine, about 500 km from Kiev] during the rule of Catherine the Great 1 settlements of the minorities, so-called colonies were established on rich fertile lands. In the middle of the 18th century the tsarist government of Russia sent Polish, Greek and German minority groups to populate the areas that previously belonged to the cossacks 2, who were actually exterminated.  Later, in the middle of the 19th century, they deported Jews to this area. They took to farming.  My paternal and maternal relatives lived in one of such colonies in Novopoltavka Nikolaev region where the Jewish population was prevailing, but there were also Ukrainian and German residents. Jews mostly dealt in farming, but they didn’t forget about traditional Jewish occupation in crafts. There were tailors, shoemakers, glasscutters and carpenters in our colony providing their services to the population of the town. This colony was actually a big village consisting of a German, the largest Jewish and Ukrainian parts. The Jewish sector was in the central part of the village.  There was a synagogue in the Jewish neighborhood and there were churches in the German and Ukrainian parts.  Jewish colonists tried to educate their children. Boys attended cheder until they turned 13. They received traditional Jewish education. There was also a Ukrainian school in the colony. During the Soviet period Jewish children moved to bigger towns where they could get a higher education. 

I remember my paternal great grandfather, my grandmother Zisel’s father. His surname was Grinker, but I’ve forgotten his first name, unfortunately. My great grandfather was born in 1829 some place in Vinnitsa region [250 km from Kiev] and his family moved to the colony when he was just a boy. He was not tall, stout and had strong heavy fists. I knew him when he was a 100-year old man. He used to visit us on his way to or from the synagogue. He had a glass of wine groaning with pleasure; my father’s wine was the best in the village and my great grandfather was quite an expert being a farmer and winemaker like the majority of residents of Novopoltavka. My great grandfather always wore a cap, even sitting at table, and had his religious accessories in his bag: tallit, tefillin and books of prayers. My great grandfather was never ill and lived to the age of 105. He would have lived longer if it hadn’t been for the famine 3 in Ukraine in the early 1930s that destroyed his really athletic health.  He died in 1934. 

My great grandfather had many children, but I only know the family of my father mother Zisel’s older sister living in Nikolaev, but I don’t know her name or anything about her life. Grandmother Zisel, born in the 1870s, had no education and was a housewife that was customary for Jewish families.  Zisel married Zelman Leikind, my grandfather, a Jewish man from the colony who was a little older than my grandmother.  Zelman who was called ‘Alter’ (‘old, wise’ in Yiddish) in the village was a shoemaker, and he was a very poor shoemaker. He worked at home and I remember everything in my grandparents’ home smelling of glue and paints. There were two or three rooms in their house with wooden floors, and a kitchen with the ground floor. Before Jewish holidays my grandmother thoroughly washed this floor and applied light clay onto it. There were two stoves in the house: one heating the rooms, they started fire with straw and then added wood, and a Russian stove 4, that occupied probably one third of the kitchen. My grandmother cooked and kept food for Sabbath in it. The food was kept warm until Saturday. I spent my childhood years in my grandmother’s home and have vague childish memories about their life, therefore. However, I remember well that my grandfather Zelman always wore a kippah, and put on a cap or a straw hat to go out. Grandmother Zisel always had a kerchief covering her head. The family was poor, but they always baked fresh challah bread and made delicious dinner for Sabbath. Grandmother lit candles and the family celebrated Saturday.  They also celebrated all Jewish holidays. I remember that my grandmother washed and boiled her utensils and crockery in a big basin: she didn’t have special crockery for Pesach.  They bought matzah at the synagogue and had all required food on the table: bitter greeneries, potatoes, eggs, chicken leg, etc. Besides, there was sure to be gefilte fish and sweet pastries. My grandmother always baked little ‘Haman ear-shaped’ pies: hamantashen. They also celebrated Chanukkah and had doughnuts with jam made for it and lit candles in the chanukkiyah every day of eight days.  Unfortunately, I have fragmentary memories about Jewish traditions in my grandmother’s home since later my father, who was a village activist and communist, forbade me to attend religious holidays. 

My father Shoilik Leikind was the oldest of the children. The next after him was Arkadiy, born in 1900. Arkadiy perished during the Civil War 5 – Makhno bandits 6  killed him during a pogrom 7. At that time 120 people perished in Novopoltavka. They were buried in a common grave and later a monument was installed on the grave. People called this grave ‘120’.

My father’s sister Freida was about 4 years younger than my father. Freida was married to Yosif Minot, a local Jew. He was a loader. Freida and Yosif had two sons: Arkadiy, named after his uncle and another son whose name I don’t remember. Freida, Yosif and their younger son who was to turn 16 in the first year of the Great Patriotic War 8 perished along with other Jews of Novopoltavka. Fascists killed them. Their older son Arkadiy was taken to the army and this saved his life. He was at the front and was wounded. After the war he married Sopha, a Jewish girl, and they moved to Nikolaev. They didn’t have children. He still lives there.  

My father Shoilik Leikind, born in 1898, studied in cheder. Then he finished three or four grades of a Jewish school. Like many other residents of Novopoltavka he took to farming and winemaking.  They said my father was very strong and so was Arkadiy. They used to haul a wagon full of grain to the mill.  In 1915 my father and his friend Solomon Levi were taken to the czarist army.  They were to serve in cavalry and my father’s horse was also assigned to the army. During World War I my father was wounded in his shoulder. He returned a different person from the war: like many other representatives of poor Jewish families he got fond of revolutionary ideas and dreams about a better life and construction of a communist society.  I cannot say what particularly had this effect on my father: it might have been the communist propaganda thrust on soldiers. My father stopped going to the synagogue, joined Komsomol 9, and became the leader of the village poor.

My father was also thinking of marriage. He knew my mother since childhood and before going to the czarist army he got her acceptance of his proposal to get married. However, their parents didn’t give their consent to this marriage. My mother was not the oldest daughter in the family and had to wait until her older sister got married.

My mother’s father Solomon Levit, born in the 1870s, was a farmer. I hardly know anything about my grandmother Zelda. I didn’t know her. She died of cholera in 1921. Since them my grandfather Solomon lived in one of his children’s families. My grandfather was religious. He went to the synagogue in Novopoltavka every day, observed the fast, prayed every day and celebrated Jewish holidays. He moved to Lugansk [650 km from Kiev] with his daughters and living there he also tried to observe kashrut and celebrate Saturday.  

Besides my mother, there were 6 daughters and one son in the family. The oldest was my mother’s brother Abram Levit, born in 1895. He also grew grain and grapes. He married Etl, a Jewish girl from the neighboring town of Novy Bug. The first babies in the family were two boys: Tulia and Ruvim, and there was another boy, whose name I don’t remember. In the late 1920s two twin girls were born. Only one of them grew to her adulthood. Her name was Anna. Another girl died in an accident when she was a baby.  Father Etl was smoking near the baby and dropped ash onto the baby’s diapers. When he understood what happened and rushed to put down the flames the baby got burnt and died. It was a terrible trauma for Abram and his wife, but father Etl suffered most of all. Two years later the family moved to Moscow escaping from famine. Father Etl was a breadwinner of the family at first: he worked as a janitor and was selling some little things until Abram got a job at a plant. During the Great Patriotic War Abram served in the Territorial Army [editor’s note: People’s volunteer corps during World War II; its soldiers patrolled towns, dug trenches and kept an eye on buildings during night bombing raids. Students often volunteered for these fighting battalions] near Moscow and Abram’s sons were at the front, but the rest of the family stayed in Moscow. Only Ruvim survived in the war. He lives in Moscow now. Anna died in a tram accident in the early 1950s. Abram and Etl died in Moscow in the 1990s and were buried in a town cemetery, on the Jewish part. 

The next child in my mother’s family was her older sister Rokhel-Leika, born in 1896. She was ugly and squint-eyed and nobody wanted to marry her and this delayed my mother’s marriage. My father convinced his distant maternal relative Abram Grinker, who was a shoemaker, to propose a marriage to Rokhel-Leika, who was going to have a sufficient dowry. They got married and their marriage worked well, but regretfully, it didn’t last long. Rokhel-Leika died of cancer in the late 1920s. They had two daughters. Abram remarried. His second wife also had two children. Abram died in Kirov [today Russia] where he and his daughter Zelda were in evacuation during the Great Patriotic War. His second daughter died during a bombing raid on the way to Kirov. Zelda married a Russian man. She lives in Lvov. We hardly ever communicate. We only occasionally greet each other on holidays.

The rest of my mother’s sisters were younger than her. In 1900 Maria was born, then came Feiga, born in 1903, then Etah (she was called Katia for some reason) was born, and in 1910 Zisl (called Zhenia in the family). Maria and Feiga married Jewish brothers Sakhnins from Novy Bug. Grigoriy, an older brother, married Maria, and Leonid, the younger one, married Feiga. They lived in Novopoltavka before 1932. When famine began in 1932, they went to work in the mines and settled down in Lugansk.  In 1933 Zisl married her sisters’ friend, Grisha Lein from Lugansk, and moved to Lugansk like her sisters. Etah married Yosif Berman,. A Jewish man from Novopoltavka, and they also moved to Lugansk. All my aunts had traditional weddings, but I only remember Etah and Yosif’s wedding.  The bride and bridegroom were taken to the synagogue separately and I was amazed that the bride was crying. Somebody explained to me that it was a ritual. The bride and bridegroom were standing under a chuppah at the synagogue where a marriage contract was executed. Then there was a party with wine and sweet dishes on the table. On the second day the party continued, and there was gefilte fish, meat and chicken on the table. Everybody enjoyed the party and it was a lot of fun. We, children, danced in a common circle. After the wedding Etah and Yosif registered their marriage in the registry office. I think my other aunts’ weddings were alike. My aunts and their families lived in Lugansk until the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. Maria, Feiga and Etah worked  in a printing house, and Zisl became a hairdresser. Maria had three children: Rosa, Arkadiy and another son, whose name I don’t remember. Feiga had two children: Raya and another girl, Etah had daughter Maya, born shortly before the war, and Zisl had son Pavlik, born in 1937, and a girl, born in 1940.  During the Great Patriotic War my mother sisters’ husbands were at the front. Leonid perished during the defense of Kiev, and Etah’s husband Yosif also perished. Grigoriy Sakhnin and Grigoriy Lein became invalids during the war. They died in the 1950s. The sisters were in evacuation in Karaganda [today Kazakhstan] and then in Tashkent [today Uzbekistan].  Maria’s son didn’t return from the war, and Zisl and Feiga’s daughters died in evacuation.  Maria and her children Rosa and Arkadiy emigrated to Israel in the 1970s where Maria died at the age of 95. Maya lives in Lugansk now. She finished a college after the war and worked as a teacher till she retired.  She was single. Etah died in the 1980s, and Feiga died in the 1990s. Zisl died in the early 1960s. She never recovered after her son Pavlik died tragically.  Pavlik perished in 1954, during a training flight in an aviation military school.

My mother Ethel Levit was born in 1898. She was raised religious and studied at home with a melamed. She also finished three years in a Jewish school. My mother’s family was wealthier than my father’s. Her father bought her a Singer sewing machine, and my mother learned to sew well. She was born a beauty and had a talent of modeling and making beautiful outfits. She was a success with her clients.  In due time my mother began to make clothes for Nikolaev actors. She made special and unique clothes. She went to Nikolaev for a few weeks to do her job once in three-four months. 

My parents got married in 1918, shortly after Rokhel-Leika’s wedding. Although my father wasn’t religious any longer and spoke against any religious traditions, to be able to marry his beloved girl he had to observe all Jewish religious wedding traditions. They had a chuppah at the synagogue according to the rules. However, there was no big wedding party since it was a hard period of life shortly after the revolution 10, the power shuffled from one group to another resulting in destitution, pogroms and  hunger.

Growing up

I was born in March 1919. I was named Asia for the first letter in my name was the same as in the name of my father’s brother Arkadiy who had perished during a pogrom. Two years later my younger brother Tulia was born. In 1924 my mother got pregnant again, but she had an abortion made in the Red Cross hospital in Nikolaev. The abortion didn’t go well and my mother got some infection. She was brought home severely ill and having a brain inflammation. I remember her crying of pain, and everybody around crying of sympathy and sorrow. This happened in January 1924. I remember somebody baking a few apples for my mother. Our neighbor brought them. I remember how I burst into tears because they gave those apples to my mother and I didn’t quite understand what was going on around. My mother was taken to a hospital in Nikolaev where she died. My father gave some money to an attendant in the morgue to take my mother away from there without autopsy that was not allowed by Jewish laws. Our relatives blamed my father that he allowed my mother to have this abortion forbidden by the Jewish religion. Grandfather Solomon didn’t even want to talk to my father for many years. My brother and I stayed with my paternal grandfather and grandmother during the funeral. All I know is that my mother died approximately at the same time as Lenin 11, and there were no funerals allowed due to the mourning period after Lenin. My family had to wait a few days to bury my mother’s body.

My brother and I lived with grandmother Zisel and grandfather Zelman for a whole year. They were very kind people and loved us a lot. I liked Friday most of all, when my grandmother prepared the house for Sabbath washing and polishing the floors, covering the tables with clean tablecloths, and we were washed and dressed up. On Saturday my grandmother and grandfather went to the synagogue and took me with them. The synagogue was big and beautiful and seemed like a palace to me.  I was sitting with my grandmother on the gallery of the second floor with all other women and watching around. My father didn’t like it that my grandmother took me to the synagogue and often argued with her. A year later my father married my grandmother’s niece Freida. Her father Ruvim Grinker was grandmother Zisel’s stepbrother. Freida’s first husband Abram Girshel’ died. She had a son named Samuel. He was the same age with me. My father and Freida registered their marriage in 1925. They didn’t have a Jewish wedding. We moved in with Freida with our father. Freida’s father Ruvim was a tailor and earned well. Freida’s mother Mindel was a very kind and nice woman. Freida had two brothers: Boris and his wife Ida and Mendel and his wife Khasia. I only saw them once, when we went to be photographed in Nikolaev. The brothers perished during the Great Patriotic War. I have no more information about their wives. The big stone house had five rooms and a big kitchen. Later they leased a part of the house and we stayed in two rooms. There was no electricity and food was cooked in a Russian stove.

In 1927 Freida gave birth to a girl named Braina after Freida’s deceased mother. Freida was a kind and nice woman and never distinguished between her own children and her stepchildren and I began to call her ‘mama’. Freida was raised in a religious family, but my father forbade her to observe Jewish traditions or celebrate holidays. He became particularly strict about it after he became a communist in 1927. There was no celebration of Sabbath in our family, and I used to run to grandmother Zisel’s secretly to meet Saturday. If my father got to know about it, there was sure to be a scandal with me, Freida and grandmother. Once my father was almost expelled from the party because my grandmother and grandfather attended the synagogue. He ordered them to stop doing that, but my grandmother continued lighting candles on Friday and praying, though authorities declared a ruthless war to any religion 12. In the early 1930s this issue was resolved. The synagogue was closed and the building housed a 10-year school.

I went to the Jewish 7-year school in 1926. Actually, it was a merge of the Jewish and Ukrainian 7-year schools: we had many common classes since there were not so many children in the town and Ukrainian and Jewish children spoke two languages fluently. We spoke Yiddish at home and Ukrainian and Yiddish to our friends. There was no anti-Semitism. We liked strolling in the Jewish, Ukrainian and German parts of our village. I had Jewish, Ukrainian and German friends. My friend Martha taught me German. I became a pioneer and then joined Komsomol at school. We liked parades on Soviet holidays. There were parties and meetings at school. We celebrated 7 November 13 and 1 May at home.

In the early 1930s collectivization 14 took place in our village under my father’s supervision. There was a Jewish kolkhoz 15 established. It was named ‘120’ after 120 Jews who perished during the Civil War. My father became chairman of the village council. People liked my father and called him with the Russian name of Sasha converted from his Jewish name of Shoilik. My father was a charming, handsome and very strong man. There were strolling circus wrestlers at the time traveling from one town to another and when they came to Novopoltavka, the villagers asked my father to wrestle with them. I remember a famous wrestler, huge, with his boots unpicked in the seams on his fat legs, came to the village. My father looked thin and short compared to him. My father grabbed him by his belt and threw him to the ground. The wrestler rose to his feet and shook my father’s hand acknowledging his victory. Then some circus representatives came trying to convince my father to become a professional wrestler, but Freida was whining begging my father to refuse and never again take part in wrestling.

In the early 1930s an accident happened. My brother Tulia was a very advanced boy for his age. He was even a genius. He solved mathematic problems for senior boys and old men were even saying that a boy with such talents hardly had many years of life ahead of him. There was this prejudice in the old times. Tulia, besides his passion to sciences, had another passion: horses. Tulia adored horseback riding. In August 1931 during harvesting Tulia and his friend were helping my father hauling grain to the elevator. Tulia gave the reigns to his friend who failed and the horses dashed off. They were crossing a bridge and Tulia fell from the wagon and hit his temple. My father drove him to the hospital, but my brother died in his arms on the way there.

My father couldn’t recover for a long time. Then another accident happened to our family. In 1932 authorities were taking away grains from farmers and denouncing the kulaks 16. My father was kind to people and couldn’t take away what they had earned working so hard. One summer night in 1932 NKVD 17 officer came for him. They turned the house upside down: there was a search and they found a bag of grain that they had put there themselves.  My father was arrested and taken to prison in Nikolaev. 36 people were arrested in Novopoltavka then. My father was charged of sabotage and wreckage of the plan of state grain procurement plan and he was to be sentenced to a long-term imprisonment. In autumn the famine broke out. People were swollen from hunger and were dying in the streets. We were also starving: my great grandfather, grandmother Zisel’s father, and my grandmother Zelman starved to death. We were picking herbs and spikes in the field and my mother made some kind of flat cookies from them. My father got some bread in prison. He dried it and sent us a bag of dried bread from prison. My father was imprisoned for almost a year and a half. Mother Freida, a common Jewish woman, realized that she had to rescue him. She took whatever miserable savings she had and went to Kharkov that was the capital of Ukraine at the time. She was away for almost a month. She told us that she had an appointment in the Party Central Committee. I don’t know whether it was for this reason or because Yezhov 18 was appointed Minister of the state security, my father’s case was reviewed and he was released. He resumed all his rights and his Party membership. He became chairman of the village council again.

He returned in spring 1934. In summer I finished school and my parents sent me to my mother’s sisters in Lugansk to continue my education. I was drawn to medicine since childhood and I could watch pharmacists making medications in the pharmacy across the street from our house for hours. I entered a Medical School in Lugansk. I lived in a hostel. My aunts’ husbands, particularly, the Sakhnin men, were very mean and didn’t allow my aunts to support me. I tried to visit my aunts when their husbands were away from home. I often visited aunt Maria with whom grandfather Solomon lived. My grandfather saved some change to my visits: he saved the change when they sent him to buy bread and gave this money to me in secret in the hallway so that nobody saw him. Aunt Zisl also came to see me bringing something to eat. My aunt Etah supported me most of all.  However, regardless of this help or a meal with my relatives once a week I was starving and got very thin by the summer of 1935 and fell ill. At that time I was having training in Debaltsevo, a miners’ town. There was an accident in a mine and seeing many dead bodies and blood I had a nervous breakdown. My father came there and took me back to Novopoltavka.

The famine was over and life was improving in our village. The people were joyful and the village looked revived. There was a new club building constructed in the center of the village where young people from the whole colony got together in the evening to dance and socialize. Many young people from our colony were studying in colleges in Odessa, Nikolaev and Kherson. They came to the village on vacation that summer. We danced, listened to the radio and watched movies. I spent in Novopoltavka almost a whole year till my health condition improved. When I returned to Lugansk, I went to study at the Pharmaceutical Faculty remembering my hobby when a child. Of all children, only Braina was at home. Freida’s son Samuel was recruited to the army.

After finishing my school I got a job assignment 19 to Nikolaev. I left Lugansk and never saw my grandfather Solomon again. In 1940 he left home and got lost. He had severe old age sclerosis. He was never found. Most likely he died somewhere on the road. 

I went to work as a pharmacist and also worked part-as an attendant in the hospital to earn more money. I lived with my distant relatives on my grandmother’s side. I dwelled behind a curtain in the kitchen and was dreaming of getting a room of my own. To stay away from this corner I often worked night shifts in the pharmacy and studied. In 1939 I entered the extramural department of Pharmaceutical College and became subject to military service like all other medical employees. I had exams twice a year and received all excellent marks for my studies. Here in Nikolaev I met my first love Mikhail Kantor, a Jew. He studied in the Shipbuilding College. We met, went for walks in the town and visited my family in Novopoltavka dreaming about our future. In 1939 I was appointed director of the pharmacy in Peresadovka village of Nikolaev region. I rented a room from a local Jewish family.  In summer 1940 Mikhail finished his college and got a job assignment to a military shipbuilding plant in the Far East in Vladivostok, in 7000 km from home. He proposed to me. When I told my father about it he forbade me to get married. He said I had to finish my college first. I couldn’t argue with my father. I understood that he was right. Mikhail left for his work and wrote letters full of love to me. In 1940 I was mobilized to the army during the Finnish War 20. We received uniforms: sheepskin jackets and valenki [warm Russian felt boots] and went to Leningrad by train. When we arrived it was announced that the war was over. It lasted 6 months. We gave back our uniforms and returned home.

During the war

In April 1941 Mikhail came on vacation. He brought me a luxurious wedding gown and we began to prepare to the wedding. Peresadovka was not far from Novopoltavka. I often went home and Mikhail came to see me there. Our wedding was appointed for 22 June 1941. We were to have a civil ceremony and go to my family in Novopoltavka where everything was ready for the wedding. On 22 June we heard that the Great Patriotic War began. I went to my father in Novopoltavka immediately. My Dad again forbade me to get married. He thought that this war was going to be no longer than the Finnish campaign and said it was not convenient time for getting married and that I had to wait until the war was over, particularly that there was not much of waiting whatsoever: no longer than 6 months.  And I missed my love for the second time. Mikhail left. I packed my wedding gown into a box and returned to Peresadovka.

I went on working. I received lots of medications in the pharmacy department. My father volunteered to the army in early July 1941. On 7 August retreating Red army troops were moving through Peresadovka.  I was enlisted into a field engineering brigade. I came to Nikolaev with this brigade. I submitted the poisons and cash, about three thousand rubles that I had to the pharmacy department. They accepted the cash and disposed of the poisons in the toilet. From this day of 7 August 1941 my army service began. I didn’t have time to say good bye to my grandmother Zisel, mother Freida  and sister Braina.

In this engineering brigade I was chief of the so-called sanitary unit consisting of me, a sanitary bag, a gas mask, a small-caliber rifle and a sanitary cart. I also acted as a pharmacy supervisor. We were retreating and somewhere near Krivoy Rog Germans actually exterminated our field engineering brigade. The remaining part of the brigade with slightly and severely wounded soldiers was retreating across the burning steppe. We covered about 70 km from Pervomaysk to Dnepropetrovsk hiding from the enemy’s aircraft in the fields of wheat. We often found burnt bodies after air raids. Where did this fear that I felt at the mine disappear? I dragged the wounded, applied bandages and helped them as much as I could. So we reached Dnepropetrovsk where the sanitary department of the 4th Ukrainian Front was located. I was burnt when I came to Dnepropetrovsk: even my skin was peeling off my face. We were sent to take the wounded into a sanitary train heading to Pavlograd. As soon as we loaded them in the train it was bombed down. We went to make rafts for the wounded on the Dnieper and the enemy’s aircraft were firing at us. God was just guarding me. I was sent to Lugansk from Dnepropetrovsk. My aunts were still in Lugansk. They were to evacuate. I helped them to board a train taking advantage of my officer’s status. I was appointed chief of the chemical department of the pharmacy headquarters. It evacuated to Kuibyshev [present Samara, Russia, 1400 km from Kiev]. Sanitary headquarters of the Red Army was in Kuibyshev. 

Some time in late September 1941 we arrived in Kuibyshev. Chief of the sanitary headquarters offered me to enter the Medical Academy in Kuibyshev, but, being raised as a patriot, I was eager to go to the front. I knew that my division was in the process of remanning in Novosibirsk and I managed to obtain permission to go there. This process of remanning of our Red Banner Division #235 lasted from November 1941 till March 1942. On my birthday on 20 March 1942 we moved on to the North-Western front by train. Our division deployed near Kulotino village holding defense from an SS division. We were there about 10 months and there was combat action through this whole period. I served in the sanitary unit and was chief of the pharmacy of the regiment.  I slept in an earth hut, under one overcoat with Anechka Shulginova. I was young, slim and even pretty. Few times I received unequivocal proposals from officers to share their bed and become their combat girlfriend, as it was called then, but I took an oath to preserve my virginity and youth for Mikhail. They backed off gradually, but they treated me with respect and care and called me a ‘fiancée’. Only one sergeant said with an ironical smile once: ‘Don’t touch Asia, she is keeping herself safe for Abram’ [Jewish names were targets of mockery, vulgar jokes and often exclusion at the time], and I slept him on the face instantly. This was the only demonstration of anti-Semitism that I faced. I need to mention here that this guy got a good telling off from other officers and never offended me again.  

I corresponded with my father. He was commanding officer of a mine firing company and was severely wounded in combat action near Stalingrad [present Volgograd, today Russia]. He had gangrene of his leg, but his doctors managed to save his leg. My father spent in hospital six months and then he left for Begovat town in Tashkent region where many residents of Novopoltavka were in evacuation. Mikhail found me via my father and we began to correspond. He wrote me about his love and our wonderful future and begged me to take care of myself. Mikhail was a military representative at his shipyard. He was a very good specialist and they didn’t let him go to the front. My father sent me his photograph in the hospital.

We had sufficient food at the front. It was plain food: a bowl of soup and boiled cereals, but there was enough of it in a meal. Before combat actions soldiers received 100 grams of vodka and every day in winter for keeping warm. 

We shared duties at the front: I went with assistant doctors and sanitary attendants to pick the wounded at the front line. Our regiment got an important task to capture a prisoner for interrogation. The regiment often went to get combat intelligence and my task was to prepare everything necessary for 400 wounded.  I loaded everything necessary on a horseback and rode the horse to haul the load to its destination. I mobilized a field hospital and received the wounded, cleaned their wounds and applied bandages and sometimes I closed their eyes and heard their final sighs.

I was elected secretary of the Komsomol unit of the company. I was preparing to join the Party and got a Party task: I became an agitator for German troops. Here I could make a good use of those German lessons that my friend Martha gave me. I was in a vehicle with a loudspeaker where I was reading my announcements in German calling soldiers to drop their weapons and voluntarily come to our side. I spoke about their wives and children waiting for them in Germany. However, I did not usually manage to pronounce this part of my speech: there was a squall of firing falling onto the vehicle and I had to retreat. Once I was too late to retreat and a stray bullet wounded my leg. I had this bullet removed and my wound bandaged and continued my performance on my combat post.  When our interpreter perished I took up his functions. Once our intelligence group managed to capture a prisoner for interrogation. They were dragging him in the snow for several hours and his legs were frost bitten that resulted in the gangrene. This German was big and strong and he didn’t allow anybody to approach him, and there was no question of interrogating him, but saving his life to be able to get some information from him. My fellow comrades addressed me: ‘Asia, only you can help!’ I came to the earth hut where the prisoner was. He was surprised to see me: a girl, lieutenant! His legs were black already. I sat beside him and started talking: that I liked Germans, that they were wonderful and cultured people, that they were not to blame and that soon Hitler would be done with. This German screamed: ‘Nein kaputt!’ I talked to him for a long time asking about his wife and children. He finally allowed me to treat his wounds, I made an injection of morphine and he calmed down and kissed my hand. I managed to get valuable information from him necessary for our further advance.  Then the German was taken away, my headquarters sent a truck to drive me to the office where I reported what this German told me. They praised and greeted me on my success and made an entry in my officer’s record book about an award ‘For valor!’

The conditions in our area of the frontline were very bad. It happened so that soldiers didn’t get washed through a whole winter being in trenches all the time. One of our routinely tasks was fighting lice. Ania and I went to examine our soldiers in trenches.  We took soldiers’ overcoats and underwear throwing them into the snow: it became black with lice. We shook them out till they were clean.  We treated soldiers with special soap. Once in late November 1942 Ania and I were busy with our inspection. At that time General Gorokhov, member of the Military Council arrived to do inspection and saw us shaking out the overcoats. I reported to him according to the procedure: how many patients we had and how many were sent to hospital. I told him my name and military rank. He asked me more questions and when he heard that I had been taken to the front from the second year of Pharmaceutical College, he got angry: ‘We need specialists, and she is fighting lice here’. He said this in a joking manner, but he was angry. A month later I was sent to the 28th Guard Division that had recently escaped from encirclement. Chief of medical logistics of the division had perished and I replaced him. This was a major’s position and I was promoted to senior lieutenant.  

I went across Ukraine with this division. We liberated a number of towns in the south and east, Moldavia, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. Our unit was a rear unit of the frontline following the regiment. We got under firing and bombings, but the Lord guarded me. I might have perished many times, and I remained safe just by chance. I remember one incident. I was going to the medical unit to get medications and, as usual, there were a few wounded put into my cart.  Once I was riding holding the head of a severely wounded soldier, when another air raid began. Somebody screamed calling for me and I rushed from where I heard the call. When I returned, there was no cart or my wounded patient: a bomb had hit my cart.

In early March 1943 our division liberated Krivoy Rog. There was to be a big concert on 8 March, International Women’s Day, and I, being a member of the Party, was to speak in front of our women to raise their spirits telling them about our victories and the nearing victory over fascism. But the most important event that I was looking forward to, was award of a medal ‘For valor’ [Established October 17, 1938. The medal was awarded for personal courage and valor in the defense of the Homeland and the execution of military duty involving a risk to life]. The meeting had just started, when all medical staff was urgently called to leave. It turned out that our officers decided to celebrate 8 March with our laundry girls and drank liquor from the container with the inscription ‘Alcohol’ on it that Germans had left behind.  It turned out that it contained waste braking fluid. They were delivered to the sanitary unit for severe poisoning. We kept fighting to save their lives, but they all died except one girl, who drank a little. Regretfully, there were many such cases during the war: fascists used to leave food and alcohol on tables, and our soldiers and officers couldn’t resist the temptation to eat and drink, though there were numerous warnings against it. There were many deaths caused by poisoning, and they were particularly frequent in Poland and Germany. My cousin brother Tulia from Moscow, my uncle Abram’s son, died the same death. On 9 May he came to a basement with his intelligence company in a town near Berlin. There were tables set there and they sat at a table. None of them left the tables: the whole company died. And their parents received letters that the cause of their sons’ deaths was their lack of discipline. This accident in Krivoy Rog was my first and last case of this kind. Of course, I received my medal, but it wasn’t as ceremonious as I expected.  There were other cases when our soldiers and officers fell victims of their own lack of discipline and laxity.  They were young and often had affairs with women in the towns they liberated.  Those women were often ill and our guys contracted infections. When we were liberating Bessarabia 21, they had contacts with nuns who had venereal diseases, all of them. Our warriors also fell ill and it took us a long time to bring them to recovery.

In spring 1944 our division was moving across the south of Ukraine, near the area where I lived. When we came to Novy Bug I asked commander of the division to let me go to Novopoltavka. Of course, I knew about thousands of Jews who perished on the occupied territory, but I still had hoped that my dear ones managed to survive. It was pouring with rain and the ground roads were muddy. I had a motorbike with a soldier to drive it and an officer to accompany me. When we arrived at Novopoltavka and its residents heard that Sasha’s daughter was there and she was a military they rushed to see me. The Ukrainian residents of our colony, who witnessed this horrific tragedy, told me the terrible news: all of my dear ones, 16 of them, had perished and their death was terrible. The wife of my stepmother’s cousin brother Anna Sabryuk, Ukrainian, told me the story, sobbing. She was hiding her husband underneath the floor for over a year before Germans found and executed him.  My family failed to evacuate. They departed on a cart, but it was too late. Fascists ordered them to go back home.  Mother Freida broke her leg getting under a wheel. When fascists came to the village somebody spread a rumor that they had seen my father. Fascists captured 356 hostages telling people to find my father. Grandmother Zisel came to tell them that her son, my father, was in the army. She begged fascists to let go of the hostages. They released the hostages, but they buried my grandmother alive right there. Fascists raped all young girls who came to the village on vacation: Manya Yankelevich, Nastia. They taunted them and made them walk across the village. They raped my sister Braina who had just finished the 8th form in 1941 before mother Freida’s eyes. They beat the girls to death.  My stepmother lost her mind. Fascists locked her in the basement of the village shop where she died. They tied ropes around her dead body and dragged her across the village. The rest of Jews were taken to the outskirt of the village where they were ordered to dig two pits. They shot and threw children into one pit and adults – into another. My father’s sister Freida and her family, grandmother Mindel and grandfather Ruvim perished there. My co-villagers took spades and rakes and went to these graves. There were still hands or heads exposed sticking out of the pits. They backfilled the graves under the command of an officer. I also heard about my friends. One of them Emma, German, followed her Jewish husband when he was captured. They fell into a grave holding hands. Martha, who taught me German, worked in the German commandant office. She left the village with Germans.   

When I returned to my unit, they understood that something terrible had happened. They told me later that I looked black from grief. Later my father wrote me that he had known about what happened, but kept it a secret from me.  Samuel who was in the army since 1938 and was on the same front as I, also knew about it.  

After the war

The war was over, when I was in the Bulgarian town of Yambol near Sophia. We came there in the end of 1944. We were accommodated in the houses and I must say that Bulgarians greeted us happily and sincerely. I made friends with my landlady. I even have a photo where I was photographed wearing her suit that I borrowed. I was so tired of wearing my boots and soldier’s shirt, but I had to wear them for a year after the victory. Our division stayed in Bulgaria until January 1946. I was responsible for medical supplies, and they didn’t demobilize me.

At that time Vasiliy Matveyuk, a military doctor, began to court me. Vasiliy is Ukrainian, but nationality didn’t matter to me. Vasiliy was born in Chernorutka village of Fastov district Kiev region in 1914. Before the war he finished a Medical College and became a military doctor in the army.  Vasiliy was single and was very kind and nice to me. He was telling me to marry him, but I was going to marry Mikhail. I liked Vasiliy, too, but I made no promises to him. In summer 1945 I got a leave and went to visit my father in Ukraine who resumed his position of chairman of the village council in Novopoltavka. I was going through Kiev and Vasiliy asked me to take a parcel to his mother and sister. In Kiev I left my luggage in a military registry office and took a local train to deliver the parcel to Vasiliy’s family.  I was to get to the station and then walk to the village across the forest. I was wearing my fancy officer uniform with the straps of senior lieutenant.  My co-passenger, a Ukrainian woman, was looking at me and then she started a conversation. When I told her where I was going, she began telling me to go back. She said there was a Ukrainian nationalistic gang in the forest and they were killing Soviet officers.  The woman said that a few days ago they had killed a village teacher and that I wasn’t going to make it safe when they saw my uniform and medal on my chest. Then another woman joined her and they literally pushed me out of the train. I returned to Kiev and from there I went to visit my father. Is stayed with him for about a month. We mourned after our dear ones. My father asked my advice about Zhenia, our neighbor, whose husband perished during the Great Patriotic War. He wanted to marry her. I understood that my father would have a hard life alone and encouraged his intentions. Then Freida’s son Samuel Girshel returned to Novopoltavka. He stayed to serve in the army. During his leave he married Dora Kogan, a local Jewish girl.  My father often went to the grave and in 1947 he installed a monument there on contributions of the villagers. The former villagers came to visit the grave in Novopoltavka from Odessa 22, Kiev, Moscow, Israel and America, but it happened later.

When I returned to my unit with the parcel, Vasiliy felt hurt that I hadn’t delivered it to his family and stopped talking to me. I even sighed with relief. Some time later he received a letter from his sister where she warned him to send nobody to them since there was a gang in the village. Vasiliy fell to his knees before me asking my pardon. Again I had to choose between Mikhail and Vasiliy.  In January 1946 our unit relocated to Odessa. My service continued for some time. Vasiliy insisted on marrying me and Mikhail kept writing that he was dreaming about our wedding. I don’t know what affected my choice: whether it was a saying ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’, or my subconscious desire to rid my children from what the Jewish people and my family had to live through, but I married Vasiliy. I wrote Mikhail that his friend told me that he had an affair in Vladivostok.  Of course, it was mere lying, but it was easier for me to refuse in this manner. 

I introduced my father to Vasiliy and he liked him instantly. On 21 January we went to the district registry office in Odessa, but they didn’t register us since it was a day of the mourning: an anniversary of Lenin’s death. We had a civil ceremony on 23 January  and arranged a small wedding party at Galina Filatova, my landlady’s apartment.  Vasiliy was a very kind and caring man. He loved me dearly and called ‘mummy, my little sun and kitten’.  My husband’s mother and his sister Yevdokia treated me like their own kind, and Vasiliy’s father, a farmer, found much in common with my father.  

I demobilized and Vasiliy continued his service. And… like all military we began to move from one harrison to another. We didn’t have a place of our own, we didn’t even have a kettle, everything we had was military property with inventory numbers.  In 1947 our first daughter Galina was born in Odessa. In 1948 Vasiliy went on service to Germany and I stayed in the USSR with my baby. Vasiliy served there for two years and I rented a room in Nikolaev. I was director of a pharmacy. Vasiliy came on vacation every 6 months and two years later after he returned he entered the Military Medical Academy in Leningrad. We lived there for few years and Vasiliy got a rare and sensitive profession of a microbiologist. This period was one of the very sad periods in the Jewish history: struggle against cosmopolitism 23, anti-Semitic campaigns, the ‘doctors’ plot’ 24. I must say, we hardly ever discussed this subject in our family and I didn’t face any prejudiced attitudes at work. Only when we mentioned doctors poisoners, my husband said he thought it was anti-Semitic propaganda and he didn’t believe what newspapers wrote. The death of Stalin in 1953 was for us like for many other Soviet people. We were crying and thinking what was going to be ahead of us!

Later we lived in Riga [today Latvia], Kaliningrad [today Russia] where in 1954 my daughter Natalia was born. In 1957 my husband got an assignment to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy in the Far East, in 7500 km from Kiev and we arrived in Vladivostok where we were supposed to stay few days to obtain documents.  I knew that Mikhail was still working there and remembered his address. And I said: ‘Vasiliy, let me find Mikhail: he used to be my best friend and my fellow countryman!’ And my husband replied: ‘Of course, go ahead!’ I went to see Mikhail who had been married for three years. His mother-in-law opened the door and suspected something. Mikhail lost his breath when he saw me. Lydia, his wife, understood instantly who I was. She kissed me and invited me to come with Vasiliy and the children. She began cooking a dinner and Mikhail and I sat in his car to go pick my husband and children. His mother-in-law, though, came along with us and didn’t take her eyes off me, but Mikhail left her near a store. And then… He told me to sit beside him kissing me and crying. And I was sobbing in his arms. But…We were grown up and responsible people! I calmed down and Vasiliy, the children and I moved to Vasiliy’s home to stay a few days with them. Once I overheard their discussion when Mikhail was telling Vasiliy how much he loved me and how good I was and asked him to care for me.  And my husband told him about his love for me and they became friends. We left for Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy and corresponded with Mikhail and Lydia for several years. Then our correspondence gradually ended: I decided for it since I still loved Mikhail, but I couldn’t leave Vasiliy or destroy Mikhail’s family. In Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy I also worked in a pharmacy. We were given a one-bedroom apartment. Our children went to a nursery school and kindergarten. We often got together with other officers’ families. We celebrated 1 May and 7 November. We stayed in Kamchatka for four years. Then there was an order of the Party to demobilize one million and two hundred Soviet officers and my husband was one of them. In 1961 we were offered to choose a town to live in: Kiev, Moscow or Leningrad. I was eager to go back to my countryside. I liked Kherson: a warm a hospitable town where the Dnieper flows into the Black Sea, where there is a lot of greenery and flowers, where there are gorgeous markets with plenty of fish, fruit, watermelons and melons.  So we decided for Kherson. Since then I’ve lived here. I never saw Mikhail again. He died in 1965.

My stepbrother Samuel served in Semipalatinsk where the Soviet atomic and hydrogen bombs were developed. In 1955 there was a huge accident when a bomb exploded and many people, including Samuel, were killed.  His wife Dora became a widow. They didn’t have children.

Shortly after we moved to Kherson, my father sold his house in Novopoltavka and we helped him to buy half a house in Kherson near where we lived. In 1972 my father died. I worked as director of a pharmacy in Kherson for many years. I was secretary of the pharmacy department Party organization. My husband was director of a bacteriological laboratory. We were rather well off, but we couldn’t afford any luxuries: a car or a dacha. My husband, my girls and I spent vacations on resorts in the Crimea and Caucasus and traveled to Moscow, Kiev and Leningrad. In bigger towns we liked going to theaters, exhibitions and concerts. We had a mixed marriage and never celebrated Jewish or Christian holidays, besides, we were both sincere communists. We never discussed any subjects related to Israel or the 6-day war 25, war of the Judgment Day 26, or this whole propaganda of the USSR against Israel. I think, my husband understood that I could not be impartial in these issues and tried to avoid the subjects that were painful for me as a Jew.  Of course, in my heart I was always on the side of the Jewish state.  

We raised our children to be internationalists. My daughters decided to choose their father’s nationality. They are Ukrainian. After finishing school Galina studied in a vocational school for a year and became a specialist in optics.  She met Anatoliy, a handsome Russian man in her school and they got married. They have two children: Anna, born in 1970, and Andrey, born in 1980. Unfortunately, my daughter’s family life with her handsome husband failed: he began to drink and abuse Galina and me calling us ‘zhydovka’ [kike]. When my husband and I heard that he beat Galina we took her and our grandchildren here. Galina was alone for a few years before she married a nice Jewish man whose name was also Anatoliy by coincidence. In the late 1990s they moved to Germany. Anna, my dear granddaughter, died from brain aneurism at the age of 25. Andrey went to study in Israel and stayed to live there.

Natalia, my second daughter, finished the Conservatory in Kharkov. She married her Jewish fellow student Valeriy Gorskiy. Natalia and Valeriy live in Zaporozhiye [350 km from Kiev], where they have jobs. Natalia and Valeriy have two children: Maria, born in 1982, a student of the Theatrical College, and Yuri, who studies in the 8th form. My daughter and grandchildren visit me on summer vacations and stay a few weeks and we also call each other once a week. It is unfortunate that we cannot see each other more frequently. 

Perestroika 27 was a strong blow for my family, and it is not a deficit of material character that I mean, but it is of moral value. I have a rather good pension as a veteran of the war. My husband Vasiliy died in 1995, so little before our ‘golden wedding’. It was so very hard for me. I continue to be a Soviet person. During the Soviet regime I felt that people needed me: I was secretary of the Party organization of pensioners and often met with veterans of the Great Patriotic War.  Now I don’t think anybody needs me. My activities and ideals don’t mean anything and I’ve lost a lot. Most importantly, I’ve lost my idea and faith. I always attended meetings of veterans of our division in Odessa and also went to a meeting in Leningrad, but now I am hard up and cannot afford it. Besides, nobody wants this to happen. All of my fellow comrades happen to live abroad: in Russia, Baltic republics and Moldova and even to correspond with them is far too expensive, to say nothing of arranging meetings.  Besides, not many of us are living. I am a client of Hesed and attend the Day Center, but I do not observe Jewish traditions or celebrate holidays at home. It’s too far from me and I take no interest in them, but my daughter Natalia is close to the Jewish way of life. Her father-in-law Mikhail Gorskiy is head of the Jewish community in Kharkov and he gradually involves Natalia’s family to the observance of Jewish traditions. Victory Day 28, when we meet with my fellow comrades, has always been the biggest and most important holiday for me. On these days I feel a young and fearless girl again.

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