We always had wonderful neighbors. Our parents were friends with the priest’s wife. Mother loved her very much. The girls, the priest’s daughters, taught us a lot. They arranged some chairs, sat us on the chairs and acted as teachers. The priest’s widow and her daughters had a very good attitude towards us.
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Major events (political and historical)
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Displaying 48061 - 48090 of 50382 results
Chaya Sakhartova
Later, when we began to live better, we hired a woman who carried the water and did the washing. It was a Russian woman of middle age, her name was Frouza. She helped Mother, who worked very hard. We even had to hire a nanny for Milya, my youngest sister. She was an illiterate peasant woman from a village, who simply took care of the child.
When we bought the house, our parents couldn’t register it in their name for some reason [6], it was considered a ‘criminal’ thing to do; such was the situation at that time. I can’t remember why. They bought the house on behalf of our grandmother. The house was big, with three rooms, a kitchen, a pantry and a big terrace. However, there was no bathroom, and, as a matter of fact, no water supply system.
We brought water from the well that was located at the foot of the mountain. You had to go down that slippery mountain, pour some water in the bucket and walk back home. The water-pumps in the streets appeared much later.
We brought water from the well that was located at the foot of the mountain. You had to go down that slippery mountain, pour some water in the bucket and walk back home. The water-pumps in the streets appeared much later.
This military man tried to educate me. For example, when I read a book called ‘The Honeymoon,’ he came up to me, took the book and told me that it was too early for me to read such things. I was about ten. The funniest thing is that I can’t even vaguely remember the plot of the book; I think it was some romantic novel.
We rented an apartment from a priest’s family. Though he had passed away by then, his wife lived there with their three daughters. They lived very poorly. At first they occupied the whole house and our family rented an outhouse in the yard. I remember very well both the house and the sour cherry tree, under which later I sat and prepared for my entrance exams for university. Later, in 1929, the state moved us to a big house at a different address, where we occupied a large three-room apartment. After that, I cannot tell which year it was, some army officers were sent to live there with their families. The Sychyov family was the first one to live with us; the head of the family was of some low rank, maybe a lieutenant. He arrived with his wife and child, so we had to squeeze together and give them one room [4].
At first we didn’t live well financially.
Father wasn’t very religious, though he prayed sometimes and attended the synagogue. I even keep his prayer book. Father was a very kind and quiet man.
In 1912 my father married my mother. He returned from the army and their mutual friends introduced him to her. They had their wedding at the synagogue.
There was a very good synagogue in Roslavl, a big and beautiful one. It was destroyed by the Germans later. The community wasn’t big: there weren’t many Jews, approximately seven percent of the total population. There was also a cheder in town. Though the attitude to the Jews was good and there was no anti-Semitism, still it wasn’t easy to live there. Almost no one had their own place: everybody had to rent apartments, as there were almost no native Jews in Roslavl, only those who came from neighboring villages. It was very expensive to buy a house, that is why everybody rented apartments. The money was mainly earned through carters’ trade and agriculture. We had a very good market-place, because neighboring peasants were mostly engaged in agriculture and took all their goods to the market-place. The market place was working permanently and everything was very cheap.
There was a very good synagogue in Roslavl, a big and beautiful one. It was destroyed by the Germans later.
It had a very interesting location: to get here you had to descend the Butzev Mountain and the movie-theater was at the foot of it. But we needed money to go to the movies; we had to ask Mother for permission and Father for money. The drama group came to our town very rarely. Father liked theater very much and as soon as a show came to town, he immediately went there and took us with him.
The roads in Roslavl were paved with the most common stone, there were also old stairs, used for climbing up the mountains, for example, the Butzev Mountain; the stairs were very old and dangerous, they broke when people stepped on them. But we were children and of course we went there, as any kid would have done. I remember we had a movie-theater in town, it was called Milana. It had a very interesting location: to get here you had to descend the Butzev Mountain and the movie-theater was at the foot of it.
The town of Roslavl, where our family lived, is a big ancient Russian town founded in the times of the Rurik dynasty [the most ancient regents of Russia], famous for its artificial mounds. The town is very beautiful, green and hilly. At the time mostly merchants lived there. There were a lot of Russian Orthodox churches. Thus it was a native Russian Orthodox town. When we visited it for the last time – about ten years ago, in the 1990s – we went into a Russian Orthodox parish, where the municipal administration arranged an exhibition on the history of Roslavl. What was most interesting, those merchants, who had been deported from the town years ago [after the Russian Revolution], left their property to the town, a lot of china and crystal objects. We thought it unbelievable. We couldn’t understand how people, so much wronged by the Soviet power, could behave like that.
Father was a soldier in the Tsarist Army [1914-1918]. At first he served at the frontier post in Eastern Siberia and later participated in World War I. He was taken prisoner-of-war by the Germans during World War I. He was very satisfied with the way they treated them. He was in prison for a long time and worked for the Germans during that period.
Father praised the Soviet power in every way possible, since all his children were able to get university education. Though, in general, my parents were not interested in politics.
My father, Girsha Faivelovich Farbirovich, was born in 1885 in Roslavl. His mother-tongue was Russian. He went to cheder for six years. And right after that he started to work. He worked as a butcher. Actually all Farbirovich brothers were butchers, they had a stall where they chopped meat and sold it.
I don’t know anything about my father’s parents; I only know that Grandfather Faivel Farbirovich, my father’s father, was a soldier in Nikolai’s army [2]. Because of that he was allowed to settle in a Russian town [3].
My mother, Libe Simonovna Farbirovich [nee Lebyan], was the eldest child in her family. She was born in 1897 in Sukhinichi. She must have had some education, because she could read and write in Russian, it was her mother tongue; though she didn’t have any special education. Maybe she studied at home, with a private tutor. Mother was a very beautiful woman with wonderful long hair. She wasn’t religious at all; she didn’t attend the synagogue and didn’t teach us to do so.
They lived rather poorly: Grandfather earned little money, he even worked as a carter for some time, and Grandmother had to bake pies and sell them at the market-place. They rented a room in a wooden one-storey house from a Russian family. There was certainly no water supply system, no heating or electricity there. They had to go to the water-pump at the end of the road. They had a Russian stove [1] in their room with a stove-bench. They also had a small vegetable garden, where they grew vegetables; and a small husbandry, hens and a cow that Grandfather milked. No one helped them; that’s why they worked hard. Their children were busy with their own households and lived separately.
My grandmother observed traditions, but in a rather limited way. On Pesach she changed dishes from the common to Pesach ones and Grandfather tinned the samovar, so that everything would be like new for Pesach. To tin means to clean, polish the dishes. They were not Orthodox Jews. They dressed like petty bourgeois, as did everyone else in town. However, they attended the synagogue and I visited them there. Before his death, my grandfather became a very pious man, began to attend the synagogue regularly and read religious books, though in Russian translation. Unfortunately, neither my grandfather, nor my grandmother knew Yiddish and spoke Russian at home all the time.
I should mention that my grandparents observed the kashrut. However, I suddenly craved for some sausage. I was about eight and I was very stubborn. I yelled until Grandfather went to buy sausage for me. But since it wasn’t kosher, he had to chop the sausage with an axe in the corridor and feed us there, in order not to spoil the dishes, since everything was kept kosher.
My maternal grandfather’s name was Simon Leibovich Lebyan. He was born in 1862 somewhere in Smolensk region. Grandfather sewed hats, he was a hatter.
My grandparents lived very poorly there, that was the reason for their moving to Roslavl. Unfortunately I can’t remember any more details about this town. They had a knitting shop there, they knitted stockings. Later they moved from Sukhinichi to Roslavl. Grandmother was very business-like. She set up a business there.
My grandparents lived very poorly there, that was the reason for their moving to Roslavl.
A lot of Jews lived in our town and there was quite a Jewish community there [it was not a shtetl, or a town with a big Jewish community that played a prominent role in the life of the city: the population was multinational].
Boris Lesman
To tell the truth, I attend the day time centre in the Hesed Avraham Welfare Center [30]: they bring us there; we have breakfast, listen to a lecture or watch a performance. Then we have lunch, and they take us home. But lately I stoped visiting it: I disliked it.
A visiting nurse regularly comes to my place from the Hesed Center: she does my flat, cooks, goes shopping, because, you see, I am almost not able to walk, I live alone (I am divorced).
A visiting nurse regularly comes to my place from the Hesed Center: she does my flat, cooks, goes shopping, because, you see, I am almost not able to walk, I live alone (I am divorced).
And notwithstanding the fact that my grandson lives in Israel, I was and I am Russian of Jewish origin: I still know nothing about Jewish holidays and I do not observe traditions. So things came round this way.
At present my grandson Mikhail lives in Israel, in Haifa. [Haifa is a city-port in Israel.] He is 15; his mother took him there in an underhand way. We searched for him for half a year through Moscow, through embassy, through our acquaintances. It was a tragedy. He does not love Israel, he does not love Hebrew, though he speaks it perfectly (he studies there at school). Now we call each other every month: I call him, my wife calls him, and my son (his father) calls him. We expected him to come to us in summer, but his mother did not allow him. He tells me ‘Grandfather, don’t worry, at the age of 16 I’ll get my passport and start to take decisions myself.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
Eltsin destroyed the great country and the reason was only one: his personal hostility to Gorbachev. But of course, it was impossible to go on living that way. Those years were hungry: shops were empty, people stood in line to buy bread or a piece of sausage – that was the result of our communists’ policy. When I was young, I certainly believed in ‘the bright communist future’, but later I understood that Communist Party members were (first of all) careerists and they gave a damn about people. We are different… We were brought up by Pioneer [27] and Komsomol organizations, by the Communist ideas: necessity to defend our native land, necessity to bear with difficulties for the sake of our native land guided our steps.
Gorbachev [28] understood that the country went in wrong direction, that reforms were necessary. His natural style was reorganizing, but his activities lost its urgency and he disappeared from political arena. But in the beginning of his reforms I welcomed them, because communists led the country into a dead end.
We were the only country in the whole world, which lived according to its own rules. At present we live according to the global rules, but it is difficult: it happened that our people are not initiative, we are accustomed to live under oppression. We need time: Moses took Hebrew slaves to the desert for 40 years to free them, and I guess we need 80 years.
Among the postwar events that one was the impressive. Besides, I remember Gagarin’s flight [29]. At that time I was sitting in the dental surgery having my cavities filled. Someone entered the surgery and said ‘A fellow called Gagarin started the first flight into space, he is flying now!’ So I remember Gagarin’s flight!
Gorbachev [28] understood that the country went in wrong direction, that reforms were necessary. His natural style was reorganizing, but his activities lost its urgency and he disappeared from political arena. But in the beginning of his reforms I welcomed them, because communists led the country into a dead end.
We were the only country in the whole world, which lived according to its own rules. At present we live according to the global rules, but it is difficult: it happened that our people are not initiative, we are accustomed to live under oppression. We need time: Moses took Hebrew slaves to the desert for 40 years to free them, and I guess we need 80 years.
Among the postwar events that one was the impressive. Besides, I remember Gagarin’s flight [29]. At that time I was sitting in the dental surgery having my cavities filled. Someone entered the surgery and said ‘A fellow called Gagarin started the first flight into space, he is flying now!’ So I remember Gagarin’s flight!
,
After WW2
See text in interview
I was demobilized and worked in the Ministry of Navy and Inland Water Transport. I was the chief of Kherson Technical department of Azov Transport Shipping Routes. It was in Kherson in 1954-1955.
And since 1955 we have been living in Leningrad: I was transfered to the Leningrad seaport as a chief of the surveying party.
Later I got tired of hanging about seas and I left for military hydrography department, but as a civilian. I started working at the Navy Central Cartographic Department as a chief editor. Later I became a chief of publishing department. I have been working there for 11 years.
After that I left for machine-building factory (the regional Communist Party Committee appointed me). I worked there as a deputy director, responsible for civil defence actions. And until I retired at the age of 60, I worked there.
And since 1955 we have been living in Leningrad: I was transfered to the Leningrad seaport as a chief of the surveying party.
Later I got tired of hanging about seas and I left for military hydrography department, but as a civilian. I started working at the Navy Central Cartographic Department as a chief editor. Later I became a chief of publishing department. I have been working there for 11 years.
After that I left for machine-building factory (the regional Communist Party Committee appointed me). I worked there as a deputy director, responsible for civil defence actions. And until I retired at the age of 60, I worked there.