I went to a dressmaker Khone-Rukhl, a Jewish woman, to learn a profession. She was a widow and had two children. Her older daughter also helped her sewing. At the beginning I did minor sewing errands and looked after the dressmaker’s younger son. She gradually involved me into more important work and soon I learned to make aprons, skirts and blouses.
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Displaying 49861 - 49890 of 50513 results
Mina Smolianskaya Biography
In 1927 our family moved to Chorniavka, a Ukrainian village in 40 km from Pliskovo. I stayed in Pliskovo for some time while learning dressmaking before 1929. My mother and siblings had a vegetable garden and kept a cow and chickens. We lived in a small lop-sided house. The village authorities gave my mother a cow to help a widow with six children to feed her family. We all, even the youngest Fania, were helping our mother. We took the cow to the pasture, fed the chickens and weeded and watered the garden.
There were only two Jewish families in the village: our family - the poorest in the village, and the family of storeowner Shloime – the richest family in the village. Shloime was selling food, garments and soap in his store.
My mother worked at the collective farm storeroom patching bags.
I lived with my grandmother Hana, but later I moved to Chorniavka. When I was leaving my grandmother Hana gave me her sewing machine and I could take orders. I got my first clients. They were paying me with food products for my work. When I came to Chorniavka a collective farm was organized there. My mother joined the collective farm and their condition was to have me work at the collective farm, too.
There was no synagogue in the village. On Saturday my mother worked at the collective farm. On big holidays my mother didn’t go to work. We had a Jewish calendar at home and my mother always knew the dates of holidays. She said it was sinful to work on big holidays. We didn’t have any celebrations, though, just took a rest.
My mother embroidered blouses and towels for farmers at home and worked from morning till 6pm patching bags at the storeroom. She received flour or grain for this work.
I worked at the sugar factory not far from the village in autumn and went to the field to pick peas and weed sugar beets.
My older sister Rulia worked at the sugar factory in the village of Skomoroska in 7 km from Chorniavka. She stayed there during the week living in a barrack and came home at weekends.
Donia, Joseph and Fania went to a Ukrainian school in the village. Surah didn’t go to school. She had no education.
In Pliskovo I became a pioneer. In Chorniavka I became a Komsomol member. Komsomol members were called the leading unit of young people and I wanted to be part of this leading and advanced unit to be a part of builders of the happy communist society. I believed in it.
There was no anti-Semitism at that time. We attended Ukrainian weddings and christening parties. Once our Komsomol crew had to go to another village to help them with sugar beets planting. There were about 30 of Komsomol members in our crew. We went to the village of Molokhov where secretary of the district committee appointed me to be the leader of the crew. We went to the collective farm where Chairman asked us how many people were in the crew. One Komsomol member that was angry that I was appointed the leader of the crew rather than he (he believed he deserved it) replied “there are 29 of us and one “zhydovka”. He meant to say “crew leader”, but blabbed the wrong work in agitation. Such conduct was abusive and subject to punishment at that time. Chairman of the collective farm took this Komsomol member and me to the Komsomol district committee office where we were interrogated about the situation. The secretary asked my opinion about the incident and I replied that it was all right and I forgave this young man. I didn’t want this young man to respond for his thoughtlessness and we were released.
Once my mother told me to stay away from home because there was a man to come get acquainted with Rulia. I stayed away until I felt sleepy in the evening and went back home. I didn’t know that he was still there. They were sitting at the table discussing Rulia’s dowry. There was sugar, jam and tea on the table. My mother had always some sugar for visitors. That man saw me and liked me immediately. He left and we never saw him again. Later Rulia married my former admirer Joseph Shkolnik. We had terminated our relationships by that time. He was my date and Rulia didn’t like him at all. She married him after I moved to Odessa.
In 1928 collectivization(4) began in the village .A group of authorized officers came from the town to make the rounds of the houses in the village. I joined them and we went around to dispossess wealthy farmers. I believed that it was correct to make everything belong to everybody. Members of these families were threatening to kill me. They believed that “zhydovka” was equivalent to a communist. My mother heard somebody saying that I became a boss and that it would be better to kill me and throw my body under the bridge. My mother got scared and asked me to write a letter to her brother Ershl “Ershl, please take care of my daughter. I am afraid that people would kill her.” My uncle told me to come and I went to Odessa in 1932.
My uncle Ershl wanted me to do the housework while I was staying with him. I didn’t have any intention to become his housemaid. I was a Komsomol and trade union member and had my ambitions. My other uncle Shyka helped me to get employment at the “Red “Cross” factory. I worked at the condom and dummy shop. I was a very dedicated employee and was transferred to the soap pan shop. At the end of the year I became a painter working at the same plant. I participated actively in all public events at the factory. On 1 May my responsibility was to hold a red flag on a platform on a truck. It was a very honorable duty.
I didn’t observe any Jewish traditions and celebrated no holidays. I threw it off my life like vestige of the ignorant past and was inspired by communist ideas.
In 1932 famine(5). I was working and received bread coupons.
My brother Joseph had finished lower secondary school and worked as a stableman in Chorniavka. It was easier to survive in towns while the situation in villages was very bad. My mother made skilly from dried leaves to save her children from starving to death. Our family survived. My mother sent my brother to me.
I helped him to join the Jewish Komsomol organization of “Yermol” (Editors note: one of numerous educational institutions to educate poor and illiterate young people from villages) and entered a two-year school of mechanics. He studied and lived there. He got a bed in a hostel and a uniform. Students got one meal per day at the canteen and bread coupons. Joseph was growing and was constantly hungry. I gave him my bread coupons, because I was afraid that he could take to stealing if he starved. I had a piece of mamalyga (editor’s note: corn flour meal) from which I bit off small pieces to reduce the hunger.
My sister Surah became a nurse at the kindergarten in the collective farm.
I had many friends and admirers. I was cheerful and pretty. I went out with my friends. I had Ukrainian and Russian friends, but I tried to stick to my Jewish friends. I took an active part in public activities. I was Komsomol assistant leader and was responsible for Komsomol meetings, we propagated communist ideas and worked harder and harder dreaming about wonderful future, awaiting for us, arranged labor competition and amateur concerts on Soviet holidays.
My grandmother Hana told me that he studied at cheder and read a lot. He borrowed books from melamed, as my grandmother didn’t have money to buy books. My father wanted to become a lawyer. There were very few educated people at that time. My mother, for example, had no education. My father came from a very poor family that couldn’t afford to pay for his studies even though he was eager to study. Besides, he was a Jew and there was admission restriction of 5% for Jews willing to enter higher educational institutions. This 5% were boys from rich families. My father was advised to be baptized if he wanted to study, but he refused. He had to give up his dreams and became an apprentice of a carpenter.
He had to give up his dreams and became an apprentice of a carpenter. He became professional and earned good money.
My father was raised religious. My grandmother always celebrated Shabbat and Jewish holidays.
His family wasn’t fanatically religious, but they observed traditions and celebrated holidays.
He was much older than my mother and had a big family. They were very poor. My mother felt very uncomfortable in his family. She was not welcome and her brother’s wife called my mother a sponger and was very greedy. My mother didn’t get enough food and didn’t have a chance to study. My mother couldn’t wait to leave her brother’s family.
My mother told me how she met my father. Her sister Tzypa had married a baker and moved to live with him in the village of Pliskovo. Her husband’s last name was Bluvshtein. My grandmother Hana and her children lived near Tzypa’s husband’s bakery and so my mother met her future husband at the bakery. My mother was so eager to leave her brother’s family that she accepted my father’s proposal without any further considerations. They got married in 1912. They had a Jewish wedding in Pliskovo.
My mother moved to her husband’s small house near the house of my grandmother.
I don’t know whether my grandmother had gray hair – she always wore a kerchief. She wore log dark skirts and dark long-sleeved blouses.
We spoke Yiddish in the family and Ukrainian with our Ukrainian neighbors.