My mother didn’t tell me much about her childhood. I only know that she lived in the family of her father’s sister Perl’s since she turned 12. She worked as a housemaid cleaning the apartment and doing the washing and laundry. I don’t know where her sisters and brothers were at that time, but my mother told me that she was supporting them as much as she could. During the period of famine she gave them food leftovers. She had to do it in secret since Perl’s husband was greedy and had no intention to help his wife’s relatives.
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Displaying 50071 - 50100 of 50826 results
Clara Shalenko
I don’t know where my mother studied, but she could read and write in Russian and Yiddish.
At 18 she went to work as a nurse at the town mental hospital in Slobodka in 1923. My mother was a pretty girl – she had thick beautiful hair.
My father met my mother there and they fell in love with one another. They got married in 1923, but they didn’t have a wedding party since life was hard and they couldn’t afford it. My father and mother were ‘kaptsans’ [very poor in Yiddish] they just had a civil ceremony. They got a room with a kitchen and toilet for medical personnel in the hospital where they worked.
My father met my mother there and they fell in love with one another. They got married in 1923, but they didn’t have a wedding party since life was hard and they couldn’t afford it. My father and mother were ‘kaptsans’ [very poor in Yiddish] they just had a civil ceremony. They got a room with a kitchen and toilet for medical personnel in the hospital where they worked.
After the wedding my father insisted that my mother got some medical education and she finished a school of medical nurses at the mental hospital in Odessa in 1924. She began to work as a medical nurse at this hospital.
I remember well two of my mother’s friends: Gitia and Katia. They were Jewish and worked as doctors at the mental hospital. They often visited us and we got together to celebrate birthdays and soviet holidays: the October Revolution Day and the 1st of May. On these days we went on march with the red banners and Communist slogans, there played music people sang songs everybody was happy. Afterwards the families with the friends got together at the dinner table.
Gitia stayed in Odessa during the Great Patriotic War and was killed in the ghetto.
In 1930 my mother went to work as surgical nurse in the clinic of Professor Nalivkin in Slobodka. She worked there until 1934. My mother had good working relationships with her colleagues and she didn’t face any anti-Semitism. In 1934 she went to work at the military hospital in Yasnaya Street.
My father was a secretary of Party unit at the plant named after Khvorostin in 1932-1933 [secretaries of Party units were responsible for implementation of the policy of the Communist Party, Party meetings and collection of monthly fees].
He got an apartment in Bazarnaya Street in the center of the town. It was a communal apartment and there was another tenant in it. We all were good neighbors. We had two rooms, and a common kitchen and a toilet. The apartment was heated with wood. I had a desk, a bed and many Russian fiction books in my room. My parents had a wardrobe with a mirror, a big bed and a chest of drawers.
My mother cooked delicious food and also, made traditional Jewish food. She made tsymes, gefilte fish and baked strudels.
We went to parades on Soviet holidays and had guests.
My father and mother were communists – therefore, we didn’t celebrate Jewish holidays. However, we always had matzah at Pesach since my mother’s brother Abram worked as baker at a Jewish bakery before holidays.
We had many Jewish neighbors before the war. Adults spoke Yiddish and children communicated in Russian. My mother and father also spoke Yiddish in our family. I can understand Yiddish, but I cannot speak it well.
There was a Jewish theater in Troitskaya Street in Odessa. Yudia, a daughter of our acquaintances, was an actress in this theater, she was very pretty. My parents and I often went to this theater. My father sang me songs in Yiddish. I don’t remember my parents to speak about Jewry or Judaism at home though.
In 1933 my father became secretary of the Party unit in the children’s recreation center of general type in Kholodnaya Balka, a smaller town in 10 km from Odessa. He commuted to work every day I spent my summer vacations at the recreation center. There was a big park in the recreation center and children were well fed: I enjoyed my time there. My father and I stayed there through a summer and my mother visited us at weekends. I made friends with children of my father’s colleagues. I remember children of my father’s colleagues Mark Krieger and Luba Voitushka. Mark was a Jew and Luba was Russian. We played a ball, hide-and-seek, and climbed tress and walked.
I remember 1933, (I was 8 years old) when I saw many people swollen from starvation in the streets – they scared me and I ran away. Our family was in a better condition since my father was a Party activist. Party officials received food packages – I remember how delicious was khalva [oriental sweet mix of nuts, seeds and sugar]. There was a so-called old market in Bazarnaya Street. We, children, went to see people selling slices of bread and meat. We could only afford staring at it since it was way too expensive for our parents to buy. There were many such traders that took advantage of other people’s misfortunes.
In 1933 I went to a Russian school where we also studied Polish. There were Jewish and Russian children at school, but I don’t remember any Polish children. I remember Nora Kuzmenko, a Russian girl. She was an anti-Semite. She used to say ‘Jew, you should die!’ Few Polish teachers were also anti-Semites. They treated us with disdain.
I became a young Octobrist at school. In 1935 I became a pioneer. We had pioneer meetings and helped other pupils with their classes and did some chores for older people. We had weekly meetings when our pioneer tutor told us about pioneers and about Pavlik Morozov.
I attended an embroidery and sewing class at school.
I had a friend – Raya Khomskaya that was my neighbor. Her father was a plumber. I don’t remember whether her parents observed Jewish traditions, but she knew more about them than I. She and I used to go to the synagogue in Meschanskaya Street not far from our house just of pure interest. In 1930s the town authorities began to close synagogues. There were few synagogues in Odessa before the Great Patriotic War. I remember a synagogue in Pushkinskaya Street and the synagogue in Ekaterininskaya Street. It was forbidden for the members of pioneer organisation to visit churches or synagogues and I ceased to.
Raya’s father had nothing to do with politics, but he was arrested and executed in 1937 [Great Terror]. I don’t know what was he accused of. Raya, her sister and mother lost their breadwinner. Their Jewish neighbors supported them continuously.
I also remember my father’s friend Shymon Barskiy arrested in Moscow in 1937. My father and Shymon were in the same Party unit in Odessa. Later Shymon moved to Moscow.
My father in 1937 got a subpoena to the NKVD office, where he was interrogated about where he was in 1921 – 1922. He was suspected of espionage due to his short-term stay in Romania during the Civil War. We were concerned about what might happen to my father, but he managed all right.
On Sunday 22 June 1941 I was cleaning the house when I heard on the radio that the war began. I didn’t know what a war was like and didn’t listen to details.
On 23 July Odessa began to be bombed. I saw splinters of shells falling on the pavement. Children used to collect them.
We evacuated at the end of July 1941. My father was responsible for evacuation of children from the recreation center where he was secretary of the Party organization. There were children from many towns. My father also took his brother Abram and his family and me to evacuation. My mother was working at a military hospital and she couldn’t go with us. We boarded railroad platforms for transportation of cattle. We didn’t go far from Odessa when German planes began to drop bombs on our train. The children ran to hide in surrounding bushes and my father was trying to keep them together. My father was wearing white pants and other adults yelled at him ‘White pants, you decamouflage us – they will start bombing again’. My father didn’t have any clothing to change, though. The train and the rails were not damaged, we moved on. Uncle Abram and his family and I stayed with some relatives in Artymosvsk [570 km to the northwest of Odessa]. My father and children went to the next station of Debaltsevo – to take children to the children’s home there. We stayed few weeks in Artyomovsk having no information about my father. Since the frontline was getting closer we left Artyomovsk to go further to the east. We went by freight train and it was a hard trip. We came to Buguruslan [1 700 km from Odessa] of Orenburg region from where we were taken to Bolshoye Kuroedovo village on horse-driven carts.
He graduated from the Communist University in 1923 and was sent to do Party work in Odessa. The Party town committee of Odessa appointed my father a leader of the Party unit of the town mental hospital.
My grandfather had a sister – Perl, born in 1876. She was very religious.
Perl got married and lived a wealthy life. I don’t know her husband’s name or what he did for a living. They lived in Spiridonovskaya Street in the center of the town.
She wore kerchief. They followed the kashrut.