In 1933 he wrote me that he got an invitation to the military Academy in Kharkov. This was a good offer and he moved to Kharkov. He became head of the laboratory involved in scientific research of strategic food storage conditions. Vitaliy was also invited to teach politics and some technical subjects at the Military Academy.
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Displaying 49081 - 49110 of 50453 results
Sarra Nikiforenko
Kharkov was the capital of Ukraine before 1934. It was a big industrial center.
He received a nice two-room apartment in the apartment building for military officials and lecturers of the military Academy. I arrived from Baku with our little daughter. I liked the apartment and our neighbors. It was a new house with a bathroom, toilet and electricity. In 1938 we got gas in the house. Wives of commanders of the Red army treated me nicely.
My husband provided well for us and I didn’t have to go to work. My husband worked a lot preparing for lectures and writing a textbook in chemistry.
I was involved in public activities. Wives of military officials didn’t work, but attended sport and amateur art clubs. I took part in sport competitions. I took the first place in shooting. I also took part in concerts singing Ukrainian and Russian songs. Once I was invited to study in Odessa Conservatory, a teacher heard me singing, but Vitaliy was against it. He didn’t want to part with me.
The prewar period can be determined with one word – ‘enthusiasm’. We sang, laughed and believed in the wonderful future. We had little free time, but when we had some we went to the cinema. We got together with friends, had tea and sang Soviet songs from the movies we saw.
Thank God none of our relatives suffered from repression in 1930s 16. We were aware of the ongoing arrests and exiling people, but we believed that things were going right and the Soviet power was just. We had Jewish friends and neighbors and they didn’t face any mistreats.
Military officers realized that the war was inevitable, but even then, the day of 22 June 1941 when the war began came as a big surprise. Vitaliy was recruited to the front right away and I kept listening to the radio that kept announcing that the Soviet troops were leaving towns to Germans.
The front was approaching Kharkov. All big shots and officials in our house sent their families away. There were only few of us left: wives whose husbands were at the front and their children. I wrote my husband that all other officials evacuated their families and there were enough of us left to make cutlets for Hitler. I was aware of the brutality of Germans since mass media published this information [editor’s note: it is known that no Soviet mass media published anything about extermination of Jews by Nazi, but this is what Sarra said]. In few days a general called me to his office: he even sent a car to take me there. I thought that something was wrong with my husband. When I came to his office he asked ‘Where is your husband?’ I said ‘At the front’. ‘Do you correspond with him?’ I said ‘Yes, I do’. ‘Why is he there?’ ‘What do you mean – why? He’s struggling’. – ‘Then why do you make him feel bad?’ What happened was that they intercepted my letter . I said ‘Then why did all other families leave? Look, there are only few of us left’. ‘A bus will pick you up tonight. Go get ready’. In the evening a bus arrived and took us – 5 families that were left – to the station where we got on a freight train for transportation of horses and taken to Saratov region, one of the biggest regions in Povolzhiye, on the Volga. [The eastern part of Saratov region is located in Zavolzhiye steppe areas with continental climate in about 2000 km from Kiev] Pirpilovo village in 40 kms from railway.
We were accommodated in local houses. I met a woman on the train. She had two girls and we decided to keep together. Our landlady had three children. We called her by her patronymic – Stepanovna. She let us stay in her biggest room. She treated us as if we were her family.
Zhenia, the woman I met, and I worked at the collective farm. I was strong and took to any work to earn sufficient food for my children. I had never done any farm work before, but at this collective farm I did mowing and stacking working with scythe and pitchfork and singing. I sang beautiful songs like ‘Katyusha’, a song about a ‘blue kerchief’, ‘four steps to death’. They were very popular at that time. These were Russian songs, but they were close to my patriotic spirit. Once I fell from haystack and got injured by a pitchfork. Other women dressed the wound with some rags and I got back to work. I still have a scar. I also worked with grass cutter. I was the only Jew in the village and people respected me.
God helped me: I had work to do and my children had sufficient food. Zhenia and I went to cut sunflower stems in winter. There was waist-high snow in the steppe. We cut stems to stoke them in the oven. Winters were severe. I had a pair of my husband’s boots and his trousers that rescued me from frost. We earned coupons for grain or flour and cereals. In towns people received bread coupons for work. As an officer’s wife I had a certificate for money allowances that I could receive at a registry office, but the nearest one was located in 40 km and there was no transportation there. I received the total amount after the war.
Ludmila went to school in the village. Although she was a spoiled town girl in Kharkov, there, in the village she was like all other village children, wearing her winter coat and wrapped in a big shawl. I gave all my clothes to villagers: I would have done anything to make them like us. Tamara was small. She and other children waited for us to come home from work sitting on the stove in winter or playing in the yard in summer. The children were used to being on their own.
The most important events for me were letters from my husband and relatives from Baku. Vitaliy was a major in logistics services – he was responsible for soldiers’ meals. Although he was not at the frontline he was shell-shocked twice and rescued from a pile that fell on him. He had an injury of his back, but he remained in service.
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During WW2
See text in interview
My younger brother Boris, his son and my sister Polia’s husband Boris perished at the front. Polia couldn’t bear that he died .
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During WW2
See text in interview
In 1945 Vitaliy got a job assignment to Prikarpatiye regiment. He was a colonel. In Lvov he received a big apartment in the house for high-rank officers. His messenger arrived to pick us up in Saratov region. We didn’t even have clothes to put on. I made a pinafore dress from a rucksack for me and wore it over my husband’s shirt. We didn’t have any luggage with us and traveled light. I was very excited about seeing my husband: we hadn’t seen each other for four years. Vitaliy didn’t change: he was handsome and kind and loved me much. He would have done anything for me.
He continued his service in logistics units. He was responsible for keeping food stocks in the army.
I liked Lvov a lot – a very nice European town with narrow streets, nice buildings that were not destroyed during the war. The local population was a bit suspicious about those that came to live there from the Soviet country.
We settled down in a 3-room apartment with high ceilings. There was Polish furniture that remained from former tenants that left for Poland.
My husband got a good salary and big food packages and we had plenty of everything we needed. I was a housewife raising my daughters.
I got along well with our neighbors. My husband was never ashamed of having a Jewish wife. It never even occurred to me to change my Jewish name of Sarra to a different one.
I celebrated only the biggest Jewish holidays, even though my husband or children never joined me, but I didn’t insist on that. I didn’t go to synagogue, but I fasted on Judgment Day and Vitaliy and the girls knew that I was not to be disturbed on that day. We had matzah at Pesach and my husband went to buy the best wine kosher at Pesach. On his way home he showed it to neighbors ‘It’s my wife’s holiday today’. I made traditional Jewish food that my mother taught me to cook: Gefilte fish, chicken broth and stuffed chicken necks. My husband didn’t eat pork and neither did the daughters.
In 1948-50s newspapers began to publish horrible articles about rootless cosmopolites 17. It was clear that those articles were against Jews. Similar abuse happened in 1951-52. This period was called the ‘doctors’ plot’ 18. I was afraid that something terrible was about to happen. I showed newspaper articles to my husband when he came home from work, but he believed it was all stupid and indecent and just said to me ‘Take it easy’. He tried to comfort me saying that this could not last long. He avoided any discussions. He didn’t want to upset me: he was a very sympathetic and kind man. Like all of us he believed that Stalin didn’t know anything about what was happening and when he found out he would straighten it up. We believed in the wisdom of Stalin. On 5 March 1953 when we heard the announcement that the leader had died we grieved a lot. Children and adults were crying. We didn’t think we were going to survive when he was not there any longer.
I was a housewife and dedicated my life to my family. I didn’t join the Party. I wasn’t interested in it.
Vitaliy got the rank of colonel, but his illnesses aggravated: he had injured his back and had to wear a special corset, but the disease was progressing regardless. He was offered to be promoted to a higher rank, but I said to him ‘God damn this general’s rank. You are ill and this will be too much for you’. In 1954 he was demobilized. I had to look after him helping him to dress and undress. His back didn’t move and he couldn’t turn his head. He was such a beautiful man - and an invalid. Vitaliy had to get busy, though, and he worked as freelance member of the public control committee at the town council. He also took part in other activities. He had a vehicle to take him to work and when he couldn’t go there even in a car he managed work by the phone staying at home.
My father got a profession of cabinetmaker when he was very young. He was a very skilled master and became popular. They say he was a jeweler of a cabinetmaker. He made expensive carved and incrusted furniture. He took orders from important people that had seen foreign furniture, but complimented my father’s furniture. He did all work at home.
My father got married at 19. He was a desirable fiancé that could read in Yiddish and Hebrew, knew Torah by heart and had a profession.
When my mother turned 16 and it was necessary to find a match for her my grandfather made the rounds of surrounding towns looking for a suitable match. My future father, a young man from a well-to-do family, having a profession, happened to be the most appropriate suitor. My grandfather came to an agreement with my father’s parents and returned home to make all wedding arrangements. It was also quite customary for Jewish families that young people never saw each other before wedding. It was also traditional to lay tables for poor Jews before the ritual of the wedding and before the bridegroom arrived. The bride was sitting on a ‘dizhka’ [Ukrainian for a bowl for kneading paste] that was turned over. She sat on fluffy pillows. When the bridegroom arrived the bride was covered with a white veil. Four boys were holding posts with a chuppah stretched on them. The rabbi took them around the chuppah, said a prayer and gave them some wine and then the veil was taken off the bride and the husband and wife saw one another for the first time then. They liked each other and made a beautiful couple for the rest of their life.
My mother and father settled down in Smela. They rented a room from a Jewish family until my father bought a house.
He studied at cheder like all other boys in Smela but he was fond of technical things since childhood. There was a sugar factory in Smela and a technical school for boys at it. Anisim finished this school and became a mechanic.