Anti-Semitism was strong in Kiev. There was a Jewish pogrom in 1946. The reason for it was a conflict between a Jewish man who had returned from the front and the Ukrainians who settled down in his apartment. They were abusing the man and he shot his offenders. He was arrested and sentenced to death. The funeral of those whom he killed grew into a march and its participants began to beat Jews. However, there was equestrian police watching the funeral and they held the march in check. The attitude toward Jews was getting worse and often during routinely conflicts one could hear regrets that not all Jews were killed in Babi Yar. Fortunately I was not alone at this hard time.
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Displaying 48931 - 48960 of 50453 results
Sarrah Muller
Wolf and I had much I common: our hometown, and that we both lost our dear ones. Wolf was a beautiful, caring and kind man. About two months after we met I went to visit my only surviving relative – my father’s cousin brother lawyer Lev Muller in Chernovtsy. Wolf followed me there soon and asked me to become his wife. We had our small wedding there as well.
In Kiev we settled down in the apartment that my husband lived in before the war – the one in Komintern Street. This was a communal apartment 25. We had a 16-square meter room and a corridor where we had a stove and a door to a neighbor’s room. There was also exit to the yard. We had a big polished wardrobe that our daughters and their friends used to look at themselves as if in the mirror, a big table, a white plywood cupboard and a very beautiful nickel plated bed. Later, when we had children, my husband bought an old piano for the girls to study music. There was a carpet on the wall, which was posh for the time, and embroidered napkins on the bookshelves.
I worked as an accountant in the voentorg [Editor’s note: department responsible for food and commodity supplies to military units and organizations of the town], Wolf worked as a production engineer at the food preserve factory and in the early 1950s – at the town bakery factory. His was the period of state anti-Semitic campaigns and struggle against cosmopolites 26, and, unfortunately, our family didn’t avoid them. During the period of the ‘poisoning doctors’ case 27, my husband replaced his colleague – pie shop superintendent at the factory. On this day the pies were not as good as usual. Some buyers began to shout against poisoning people (the fear of being poisoned was overwhelming then) and called the police. This ended in my husband’s arrest, though he had nothing to do with this shop whatsoever. They puffed up a gigantic, so-called ‘pie-related case’ from this whole incident. My husband’s friend, superintendent of this shop, a Jewish man, was arrested. My husband was a witness for this trial. He was fired from work immediately and we became desperately poor. We gradually pawned our belongings and began to borrow money from friends and relatives. We feared each coming day. The trial lasted long. Though all pies were tested for poisoning substances that were not detected in any of them the shop superintendent and others were pleaded guilty and the formulation of the guilt was as follows: ‘as of the date of testing the poison was not detected due to little quantity that they put’. The shop superintendent was sentenced to death. Fortunately it all ended in March 1953 after Stalin’s death. All prisoners were released.
This was the horrifying period, when we also learned who was or who was not a friend. My deceased sister Ena’s husband Gershl Shuster often came to see us. He returned from the front and remarried, but he could not forget Ena and their children. He talked about them and about our hard Jewish fate. He was the one to tell us about the plan to deport Jews to Birobidzhan and there were rumors about it in the town, but only in the 1990s we learned that Stalin actually had this plan in truth and only the death of the chief prevented this from happening. Then my friend Yelizaveta Levit, an obstetrician – she was my doctor, when Inna was born, visited us. Her husband Vasiliy Ivanov, Russian, a field surgeon, a wonderful doctor and person, said once during the period of the doctors’ plot that he knew doctor Vovsi (editor’s note: a talented Jewish doctor, one of the accused in the doctors’ case), and other accused and didn’t believe this slander. All at once the ‘organs’ took to Vasiliy. He was made to prove his Slavic origin in presence of all members of the bureau of the district party committee showing his uncircumcised genital. After this humiliation Vasiliy fell ill. His wife came to see us and said that Jews were going to be sent to the Far East and that her husband was going with us. We were horrified; I was yelling that I would rather burn my house and myself than leave home. I was expecting a baby. My second daughter Alla was born on 7 February 1953. And then miracles began all at once. Stalin died, accused doctors were released, the ‘pie case’ was closed and all accused, including Mishnayevskiy, sentenced to death was released. My husband was employed by the refrigeration factory reimbursing him for the time he was away from work. Yelizaveta’s husband Vasiliy, though, died almost at the same time as Stalin.
This was the horrifying period, when we also learned who was or who was not a friend. My deceased sister Ena’s husband Gershl Shuster often came to see us. He returned from the front and remarried, but he could not forget Ena and their children. He talked about them and about our hard Jewish fate. He was the one to tell us about the plan to deport Jews to Birobidzhan and there were rumors about it in the town, but only in the 1990s we learned that Stalin actually had this plan in truth and only the death of the chief prevented this from happening. Then my friend Yelizaveta Levit, an obstetrician – she was my doctor, when Inna was born, visited us. Her husband Vasiliy Ivanov, Russian, a field surgeon, a wonderful doctor and person, said once during the period of the doctors’ plot that he knew doctor Vovsi (editor’s note: a talented Jewish doctor, one of the accused in the doctors’ case), and other accused and didn’t believe this slander. All at once the ‘organs’ took to Vasiliy. He was made to prove his Slavic origin in presence of all members of the bureau of the district party committee showing his uncircumcised genital. After this humiliation Vasiliy fell ill. His wife came to see us and said that Jews were going to be sent to the Far East and that her husband was going with us. We were horrified; I was yelling that I would rather burn my house and myself than leave home. I was expecting a baby. My second daughter Alla was born on 7 February 1953. And then miracles began all at once. Stalin died, accused doctors were released, the ‘pie case’ was closed and all accused, including Mishnayevskiy, sentenced to death was released. My husband was employed by the refrigeration factory reimbursing him for the time he was away from work. Yelizaveta’s husband Vasiliy, though, died almost at the same time as Stalin.
We spent a lot of time together, went out of town, and liked spending our vacations at the seashore whenever we could afford it. My husband and I read a lot, loved theater and attended all premier performances. We spent a lot of time with our daughters teaching them to like good literature, theater, listen to music, talked a lot in the evenings to raise harmonious and spiritual people of them.
Inna, the older one, showed talents since childhood. She played the piano beautifully, drew and wrote poems. She knew about Babi Yar and death of her relatives in Kamenets-Podolskiy. She heard Gershl’s story about his family. Inna knew all details of the ‘pie case’. She identified herself as a Jew since early childhood, felt responsible for her people and shared their sorrow. Inna has faced everyday anti-Semitism since she was a child, but what is amazing is that Inna tried to find explanation when other children called her ‘zhydovka’ – in their hard postwar childhood, poverty and lack of education.
Inna attended an art studio and submitted her documents to the Art College and failed, naturally. It was next to impossible for a Jewish girl to enter this kind of a higher educational institution in Kiev. After her second effort that failed Inna’s friends advised her to send her works to Moscow Polygraphist College. She did and soon she entered the Faculty of Book Design. She studied by correspondence, and I always accompanied her to Moscow, when she went to take her exams. Inna finished the college very successfully. At that time she already had an interesting job. She made dolls since childhood and this became her profession. She made sketches and sample dolls for several toy factories. Inna received a decent reward for her work. She also drew pictures just for herself. In recent years Inna’s talent in literature has shown up. She had a few books published and her works published in magazines in Kiev, Israel and USA. Inna writes about Jews – the ones she knew or heard about in her childhood.
In 1976 Inna’s son Maxim was born. Maxim got fond of Judaism after he went to a Jewish camp in his teens. This became the essence of his life. Maxim is a religious Orthodox Jew, one of the leaders of the religious community in Kiev. His Jewish name given to him at the brit milah ritual conducted in his adulthood is Moshe Elizeer. Maxim is married and has a daughter. His family follow kashrut strictly, celebrates Sabbath and observes all Jewish religious traditions.
I live with my daughter and son-in-law. We celebrate all Jewish holidays and try to observe Sabbath.
My second daughter Alla dedicated herself to music. She failed to enter the Conservatory in Kiev and went to Gorkiy where there are no prejudiced attitudes to Jews. She finished the conservatory there and became a pianist.
Alla has two sons: Yuriy, born in 1979, and Vladimir, born in 1986. In the early 1990s they moved to Israel where they live in Ashdod. Alla’s sons had a circumcision ritual in Israel. Now their names are Uri (Yuriy) and Zeev (Vladimir).
We’ve often discussed the subject of emigration in our family. We’ve always been interested in Israel, particularly during the 6-Day War 28 and the War of Judgment Day 29. We’ve always been concerned about this country that we believe to be ours. However, we didn’t venture to emigrate. First my husband was ill and now it is my daughter. Besides, she cannot part with her pictures – there are about 100 of them and we won’t be allowed to take them with us. But what is most important is that Inna cannot imagine leaving Ukraine and Russia. She has grown up in this culture and became an artist and a writer. As for me, I wouldn’t mind moving to Israel despite my old age. I think that my grandson Maxim and his family will take this decision and will finally become citizens of Israel, though his cause of revival the Jewish religion and traditions in Ukraine is also very important.
Our family was very enthusiastic about perestroika 30. Finally all bans disappeared and people got to know the truth about the totalitarian regime and these infinite lies in which we had to live our lives. All borders were opened, the literature that was under a ban before came up and religious life was reborn. Of course, the material part of life has become more difficult, but I hope these are temporary hardships and Ukraine will become a free and prosperous country.
My daughter and I have not become religious. We do not observe traditions or celebrate holidays, but I order a memorial prayer for my dear ones at the synagogue every year on Yom Kippur. I took this vow back in 1944, when I got to know that my family perished.
My family came from Western Ukraine, the town of Kamenets-Podolskiy [about 400km from Kiev], an old town near the Romanian border. It’s a small town that has developed at the interfaces between different cultures. It has been a multinational town and absorbed all these cultures. There was a Christian church, a Catholic church, a Greek and an Armenian churches in the Old Town near the building of the Town Hall with an old clock on it. There were also two synagogues in this spot – located across the street from one another: the synagogue of tailors and the synagogue of shoemakers.
My maternal grandfather Avraam Melzer went to the big, beautiful, and decorated with old stained glass patterns, located on the steep bank of the Smotrich River, since his childhood. He was born to the family of a tailor in the 1860s and became a popular tailor in the town. His wife, my grandmother Sarrah, whose maiden name I don’t know, was also born in Kamenets-Podolskiy around the same period as my grandfather. My grandmother was a housewife that was common for Jewish families. The Melzer house was in the lower town. This neighborhood was called Karavassary, the district of merchants, craftsmen and balagula cabmen. My grandfather was working from morning till night. My mother told me that he started his day from a morning prayer with his tallit and tefillin on and went to the synagogue. On Saturday and on holidays my grandmother and the children went with him.
hey called my mother Tsina. Including her, there were six children in the family. The boys were given primary education and the girls had no education at all: my grandfather probably believed that the girls didn’t need any education and that they only had to learn to be a good mother and housewife.
In June 1941 she came to Kamenets on vacation with her little son, when the Great Patriotic War began. Ita and her husband and Tuba and her son perished in the shooting of Jews in 1941. Ita’s sons Isaac and Heva perished at the front. Only Ita’s son Gershl returned from the war and lived in Voronezh.
My mother’s younger sister Huva married a Romanian Jew in the early 1900s and moved to Romania. Her husband was a baker and owned a bakery. Before the Revolution of 1917 4 my mother visited her sister in Romania several times. After the Civil War 5 Huva’s family happened to be living abroad. This is all information we had about Huva. Most likely, they all perished during the Holocaust.
I don’t know how my parents met, but there was no shadkhan involved. The Halfin’s family was not happy with Avrum’s choice. Of course, they were not: a rich son married a poor tailor’s daughter. Their wedding took place in Kamenets-Podolskiy in 1904.
All I know about my father’s brothers and sisters is that four of them and their families perished during the Holocaust. Moisey, one of them, moved to Mexico in 1928 and also got lost.
My father went to work in the bakery and soon became one of the best bakers in the town making the most delicious and puffy rolls. My father grew up in a religious family. He and my mother went to the synagogue of tailors, observed Jewish traditions and celebrated holidays.
When WWI began, my father was recruited to Czarist army. He served for a shot while before he was captured by Austrians. My father enjoyed telling about how kind the Austrians, whom he worked for, were. My father returned home in 1917.
This was the hard period of the civil war and pogroms 6. My grandfather and grandmother Avraam and Sarrah Melzer perished in one of the biggest pogroms in early 1921. I don’t know any details – it was hard for my mother to talk about it.
My first childhood memories go back to our small two-bedroom apartment in the center of the town that we rented. Our family was very poor. One room was bigger, but the second one was dark and had no windows. The corridor served as a kitchen: there was a stove and a kerosene stove in it. In 1932 my sister Ena got married and her husband moved in with us. They lived in the dark room and we all plus their kids, who were born one after another, were gadding about in the bigger room. We slept on big iron beds. My father slept on a narrow couch in the corridor. Besides the beds, there was a big dinner table and a wardrobe in the room. The room was decorated with paper napkins – there were particularly many of them on the bookstand with textbooks. There were also old Jewish books on the bookstand: Siddur, Talmud and maybe Tannakh that grandfather Avraam left. My father liked reading books in Hebrew in the evenings. We must have been very poor since only the older children had more or less decent clothes. As for the others, the only places where we were dressed decently were school and the synagogue. We went to the synagogue with our parents on holidays.
My favorite holidays in my childhood were Pesach and Chanukkah, when it was very beautiful at the synagogue. There was a cantor singing, and I always associated attending the synagogue with a holiday. However, we stopped going to the synagogue in 1927, when my father was admitted to the party as a representative of the poor proletariat and we could not go to the synagogue. However, our life did not improve. I remember being often hungry, though we always had enough bread to eat. Our family consisted of ten of us at that time. My mother put just a quarter of a chicken to make soup for the whole family and not a bit more.
I remember how struck I was, when I visited my friend Elka and her parents gave her a quarter of a chicken and she didn’t want it, and her parents gave her money to make her eat it. Elka’s father Josef Lak wasn’t a communist. He made work robes selling them in Kamenets-Podolskiy and neighboring towns, but they were much better off than we. However, at the end of NEP 7, in 1928, Josef had to give away everything he had and he himself was sent away from the town nobody knew where.
My father, being a young communist and a promoted worker, was appointed director of a dining room for workers. My father was very honest and even during famine in 1932-33 8 he never ever brought anything home from his work. My mother begged him to bring at least soup leftovers, but he said that he wanted to sleep quietly and that he could not do any ‘machinations’. His honesty was not appreciated at its true value. An audit discovered extra stocks and accused my father of theft and off-records of stocks. My father felt very hurt, threw his party membership card on their table and quit work. His party management came several times offering their apologies and asking him to resume his work, but he refused. My father became a baker and this probably rescued us during the famine. We always had bread and also helped my older sister Basia, aunt Ita and even any person, who came in to beg for food. I remember my mother giving bread to a man from the street, who cried and kissed her hands. I saw the man again that night – only he was dead lying not far from our house. Early in the morning a special crew picked the dead and drove them to the cemetery where they were buried in common graves – Jews and Christians.
After my father gave up his communist career, the family resumed observation of Jewish traditions. We went to the synagogue on holidays, celebrated Sabbath at home and my father read his religious books again. However, I never saw him praying at home. We didn’t follow kashrut strictly either, though my mother or father never ate pork. As for the kids, we ate pork that our father’s Christian colleagues treated us to since we rarely had meat at home. As for the Sabbath celebration, it went like this: we went to school on Friday and Saturday, but when we came home, we entered a different world. There were challit, kicheleh and many other delicious things on the table that we never had on weekdays. For Pesach we had special kosher crockery and ate many dishes from matzah. We didn’t eat any bread through 8 days of the holiday. My father made ordinary and special egg matzah for the holiday and my mother made our favorite white cake. We particularly liked Kicheleh with matzah and potatoes.
Ita and Gershl’s family was even poorer than ours. Gershl was a harness maker. He also made leather sandals and his older children were assisting him. At first he obtained a license for this work, but when it turned out that he didn’t make enough money to pay for the license, he decided to work without a license. One of their neighbors reported on them and a financial inspector [state officer responsible for identification of illegal businesses] fined Gershl, but since they ha no money to pay the fine, they took away their belongings, which were few: all they had were iron beds with no bed sheets on them, a table and a bench and many pot plants. So they took these away. Gershl kept complaining saying that it was the Soviet power to blame and aunt Ita was calming him down pointing at their kids, who studied well, danced in a choreographic ensemble, and sang in the choir. She said it wasn’t possible during the old regime, and by the way, she was right.