In the late 1920s - early 1930s the NEP [2] was over and many of our acquaintances began moving to Odessa. The father of Hana Krutianskaya, my brother Moisey’s friend, owned a big store in Dzygovka. When suppression of Jews began he closed his store and moved to Odessa with his family. My friend Rachil’s brothers left. My brother Iosif also moved to Odessa where he worked at the Monti shipyard. My father’s stores worked until the late 1920s. First his drapery store was liquidated and he assigned his grocery store to my mother, but later it was closed as well. In 1929 SOZ (farming association) was established in the town and my father got an offer to work there as an accountant. A few families that had horses joined this cooperative to farm the land. Later this became a kolkhoz [3] named after Kirov [4] in 1934, when Kirov was murdered. We all worked in this SOZ. My family and I and my cousin brothers and sisters also worked in this kolkhoz.
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Displaying 49921 - 49950 of 50353 results
Tatiana Tilipman Biography
My older sister Ida married Petia Mostovoy, а Jew, a carpenter, in 1930. His family escaped from pogroms in Kazatin in the early 1900s. Petia’s family was poor. There were about 10 children. He was the fifth or the fourth child. I remember their wedding well. I was 10 in 1930. Ida made me a white cambric dress with a rose shaped pink ribbon. I called it a wedding dress. Ida had a traditional wedding with a chuppah. However, it wasn’t appropriate time to celebrate wedding as before and we arranged a party at home. An old Jewish man was invited. I don’t know whether he was a rabbi, but he conducted the ceremony and recited a prayer. I was so delighted by my dress and my sister’s gown that missed any other details. Ida seemed fabulously beautiful to me.
In 1933, during famine [5], my father worked at the granite quarry in Dzygovka to receive a bread card. I don’t remember any details about the period of famine since my parents tried to protect me as much as they could from it.
In 1935 I went to Odessa again and entered a rabfak [6] in the Medical College. After two years of studies I was admitted to the College. I enjoyed my studies very much. There was no anti-Semitism and we were friends. I joined Komsomol [7], like the majority of my peers. I believed that everybody else around me had as much fun and found life as interesting as I did. Arrests in 1937 [Great Terror] [8] had no impact on my relatives and passed unnoticed for me.
I always liked my work. There was a good staff in our polyclinic. I never faced any anti-Semitism. We celebrated all holidays together. We celebrated 23 February (Soviet Army Day) [16] and 8 March (International Women’s Day). I took advanced teachers’ training twice: in Kiev and Dnepropetrovsk. My husband Semyon retired in 1988, but continued working part-time for some time. I retired in 1990, when I turned 70.
In 1992 my sister Ida’s daughter Raya and her family moved to Israel. I went to Tashkent to say good bye to them. About half year later Ida’s son Marcus moved there.
In 1994 Raya sent me money for a ticket to Israel. I went to visit her. When I got off my plane and breathed in the smell of oranges it felt like smelling acacia trees in Odessa. I couldn’t breathe in enough of this air. It was a sunny day and my relatives came to meet me at the airport. I have many impressions about Israel. Once I heard somebody singing at 2 in the morning: “Mazl tov, mazl tov” [in Ivrit ‘Wish you happiness!’]. They were greeting somebody in a neighboring house dancing and singing. We do not have such late celebrations. At 10 in the evening there are many people shopping in Lod. I admired it. However, every morning there were announcements about explosions on bus stops and people dead. I traveled to Jerusalem once and then I never went on tours again. I thought I had to return home alive. I met with my childhood friend Rachil in Israel. She married Mr. Koch, a Polish Jews, in evacuation. After the Great Patriotic War they lived in Lvov, then they moved to Poland and from there they came to Israel. Rachil has two sons. Her older son is a violinist. He lives in Holland. Her younger son is a programmer and lives in Israel. We’ve kept in touch through the recent years. Rachil and I spoke until 4 o’clock in the morning. We laughed a lot recalling our childhood in Dzygovka and our friends.
The rebirth of Jewish life in Odessa began in the 1990s. Gemilut Hesed, this Jewish charity center, began its activities. My husband and I receive food packages from this center. There is a club ‘The front brotherhood’ of veterans of the war in Gemilut Hesed.
We have gatherings twice a week. There are over 100 members in this club. Most of them are invalids of the war. There are very interesting people among them. I also received a status of veteran of the war: so many of my patients returned to the front line. It means I also made my contribution during the war. The Maodon club operates in Gemilut Hesed on Sundays. Interesting people get together at this club. They invite actors, writers and poets.
There is also a library where I borrow books. I try to celebrate Sabbath and do no work on Saturday. On some holidays my husband and I go to the synagogue. I light memorial candles for our deceased and lost dear ones.
We have gatherings twice a week. There are over 100 members in this club. Most of them are invalids of the war. There are very interesting people among them. I also received a status of veteran of the war: so many of my patients returned to the front line. It means I also made my contribution during the war. The Maodon club operates in Gemilut Hesed on Sundays. Interesting people get together at this club. They invite actors, writers and poets.
There is also a library where I borrow books. I try to celebrate Sabbath and do no work on Saturday. On some holidays my husband and I go to the synagogue. I light memorial candles for our deceased and lost dear ones.
My father worked as an accountant in a store in Chernovtsy.
My father came to Odessa to meet Semyon and his parents. My father liked Semyon. In spring 1939 he and mother came to Odessa bringing everything that needs to be at a Jewish wedding with them: fried geese, chicken, sweets and my dowry. We had a wedding party in Semyon’s apartment. There were only our families at our wedding. My father invited a rabbi he knew. This rabbi conducted the ceremony, but there was no chuppah. We settled down with my husband’s parents.
In 1939 my husband finished his college and received a job assignment in the headquarters of Byelorussian regiment in Smolensk. I got a transfer to the third year of Smolensk Medical College.
In autumn 1939 after the Western Byelorussia was annexed to the Soviet Union we moved to Minsk. We got an apartment with all comforts in the military housing district in Minsk. There was another tenant in the apartment. There was heating, hot water and telephone: it was gorgeous. It took me 20 minutes by tram to get to the center of the town. We had a nickel-plated bed and a wardrobe that I received as dowry and a record player that my sister Ida gave us as a wedding gift. Our neighbors often came to listen to records. I studied in the Medical College in Minsk and particularly enjoyed lectures in neurology read by professor Makarov.
My brother Moisey Krupnik was mobilized to marine troops in Odessa on 23 June. He only managed to pick his newly born daughter Tamara from a maternity hospital to take her home and left for the front. He didn’t even have time to unwrap her to take a look at his baby. In summer 1942 we received Moisey’s first letter that he wrote in Sevastopol on 28 July. It happened to be the last one. Moisey perished in Sevastopol. We don’t know any details.
In early July institutions began to leave the town. Chairman of the kolkhoz gave Iosif a wagon and horses and said; ‘take your family out of the town. The Germans are approaching’. My parents and I and my brother with his wife Polina left the town. We went as far as the Dnieper on the wagon. We left the horses on the bank and crossed the river. My brother was to go back to take the horses, but there were Germans already on that bank. So we had lost our horses. Some drivers going in that direction gave us rides to Poltava. From there we went to Kharkov and then to Rostov. After Rostov we came to Stalingrad. In Stalingrad we stayed at the stadium for a few days. I met my school friend Rachil there. Then air raids began. We were put on a train. Rachil and I were in different trains. Ours was a freight train. They were stuffed with people. Some slept on the floor. We got some bread or some other food in evacuation offices at stations. The train stayed two or three days at each station. German troops followed hard on our heels. In Alexikovo station near Stalingrad my father sold his fancy coat that he used to wear to the synagogue. We bought some mutton. My mother fried it and put it in a jar with fat to keep longer. I remember that this was Yom Kippur.
So we got to Turkestan station in Northern Kazakhstan. My father was smart and said: ‘Well, since we don’t have enough money to get to Tashkent, we need to get off this train some place before’. So we got off in Turkestan. We didn’t know anything about the town. We stayed in a garden at the station for almost 24 hours until the ‘Berlik’ kolkhoz sent a camel-driven wagon to pick us.
So we got to Turkestan station in Northern Kazakhstan. My father was smart and said: ‘Well, since we don’t have enough money to get to Tashkent, we need to get off this train some place before’. So we got off in Turkestan. We didn’t know anything about the town. We stayed in a garden at the station for almost 24 hours until the ‘Berlik’ kolkhoz sent a camel-driven wagon to pick us.
Since I finished 4 years of the Medical College I went to the district health care department. Its chief Isaac Markovich, a Jew, asked me what I wanted to do. I replied: ‘You know, I was a 4-year student, but actually, perhaps a practicing nurse would know more than I do’. He sent me to work as a doctor in ‘Urtak’ kolkhoz. The kolkhoz accommodated us in one big room that occupied half of a house. My monthly payment consisted of 300 rubles and 24 kg flour. The kolkhoz employed my father as a storekeeper.
I didn’t know where my husband was for a whole year. They told me in a registry office how I could get some information about him. The first letter to my husband that I sent to the front returned to me. Later I found out that I put a wrong address. I sent a request to his headquarters and received my husband’s reply to my next letter. My husband Semyon Tilipman was mobilized on the first day of the war. He served in a communication regiment, at first in the 29th army and then in first tank army. He took part in combat action near Moscow and then in Kursk battle [10], with this Tank army he took part in the liberation of Kiev and Warsaw. At the end of the war he was in Berlin. Semyon was awarded a Red Star Order and four medals. After the war he stayed to serve in Radebeul, Germany.
In 1942 Ida, her husband and their two children moved in with us. We all lived in one room. Our Uzbek hosts gave us two wide trestle beds. There were eight of us sleeping on them, but we didn’t mind it since we knew that other people lived in even worse conditions. Petia worked in the kolkhoz at first, but then he went to work in a state insurance agency as an invalid of the war.
In 1943 I was sent to work in an outpatient clinic in Turkestan. I received an apartment near the clinic. I was involved in liquidation of epidemics such as typhus and dysentery. In 1944 to Turkestan were brought some deported Chechens [11]. They were accommodated in the Hantanga mine where they were working. There was an infectious department opened there and I became its chief. I treated them well. The state punished them and I was a doctor and it was my duty to provide proper medical services to them. Our main task was their sanitary treatment since there was lack of medications. As soon as I managed to handle typhoid my patients fell ill with dysentery.
My father prayed every day. Buchara Jews and one Polish Jews were his friends.
We made a shower cabin made from branches with a barrel on top of it in Turkestan. During Sukkoth we removed the barrel and we had dinners there through 8 days of the holiday. During Chanukkah my father made us makeshift lamps from potatoes, cotton oil and a wick.
We made a shower cabin made from branches with a barrel on top of it in Turkestan. During Sukkoth we removed the barrel and we had dinners there through 8 days of the holiday. During Chanukkah my father made us makeshift lamps from potatoes, cotton oil and a wick.
I worked in Turkestan until 1945. When Minsk was liberated I wrote a letter to my college. I wrote that I was a 4-year student and requested a permit to continue my studies. They sent me such permit. In September my husband came on a short leave to Turkestan. In late September we took a train from Turkestan to Minsk.
After finishing my college in 1946 I moved to my husband in Germany. I couldn’t get a job. There were 40 doctors there. All officers’ wives were doctors. I worked in the women’s council of the army with other officers’ wives. We arranged celebrations for officers and soldiers.
When Israel was established I lived with my husband in Germany and I was more concerned about talks that Jews avoided struggling at the front. Therefore, when a woman said in my presence that she had been at the front, but she didn’t meet any Jews I felt like beating her, but I just said: ‘You know what, I wish that you have as many pimples on your tongue as many members of my family perished’.
My husband’s parents and sister Ghenia perished in Domanevka camp [12], and his brother Yefim perished at the front.
We moved from one room to another after their owners returned home. I began to apply to military headquarters to get back our apartment. I didn’t go to work and had sufficient time to spend on it. I went to see commanding officer and we received a nice big room in a communal apartment [13] for three families in a house in Pirogovskaya Street. Our co-tenants were decent people and we got along well.
In 1953, when Stalin died, I cried. His full height portrait was installed in Kulikovo Pole [a town square near the railway station]. I saw this portrait and burst into tears. It seemed to me then that this was the end of our life.
Almost every summer we spent vacations with our parents. My children enjoyed spending time with their grandfather and grandmother.
In 1962 my older son Mikhail went to school 116. This was a popular school of physics and mathematic in Odessa. Mikhail had all excellent grades and successfully passed an interview and was admitted to this school. My younger son Yevgeni studied in school #90 that taught subjects in Ukrainian and German. In 1965 Mikhail finished school #116 with a gold medal [with honors] and went to Moscow. He entered the Mathematic Faculty of Moscow State University.
My mother died on 22 June 1973. My mother was buried according to Jewish customs. A Russian woman, married to a Jewish man, made a cerement for my mother. I brought a black cover from the synagogue. When my mother died my father recited the Kaddish. I also hired a Jewish man from the synagogue. Ten months later, at the same time, hour and minute, at 4 o’clock 20 minutes, on 22 April 1974 my father Srul Krupnik died. I heard him saying in Jewish; ‘God bless the children, blessed be my children’. I called my husband. My father said: ‘Don’t give me any medications. I already want to die’. He turned his face away and died. My father lived 93 years and one week. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery according to Jewish traditions. I brought a special cloth from the synagogue. A Jewish old man came from the synagogue and we also invited our close friend’s father, a Jew. My father had two tallits, one was trimmed with silver. Another one was an old tallit where my father wrote ‘Funeral tallit’. We put both tallits in his cerement.
When our children grew older we traveled a lot with them. My husband and our son Zhenia [nickname of Yevgenii] went to Kaliningrad (today Russia), Riga (today Latvia) and Yalta. My husband spent his vacations in a military recreation center in Riga while he was on military service. I also went there alone and with my son Zhenia. I traveled to Minsk (today Byelarus), Brest (today Byelarus), Leningrad (today Russia). We liked going to the theaters: Opera Theater and Russian and Ukrainian Drama Theaters. There were interesting performances. We often visited friends. There were two-three families living in our neighborhood: the Goldshteins and Chizhyks, but on holidays I had gatherings of about 20 people at home. We celebrated New Year with our children at my old friend Yuzef Chizhyk’s home. We were very good friends. We went to the cinema together. Mr. Goldshtein had a car. We went to the cinema and out of the town together. We particularly liked the house of culture of the Polytechnic College, they always showed new movies there.
After graduation from the University my older son Mikhail stayed in Moscow. He got a job offer to work in a scientific research institute. He defended his candidate’s dissertation [15].