On 8th September 1941 the siege of Leningrad started. Some of us were immediately sent to dig trenches, some to be trained as nurses, and some were assigned to work as hospital nurses at the Military-Medical Academy. I was assigned to work at the academy. Later a hospital was arranged at the university and we were transferred there. It was very difficult, but I worked there for a year.
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Major events (political and historical)
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Displaying 47911 - 47940 of 50246 results
Chaya Sakhartova
I was really lucky, as our year was the last one, when Professor Karpichenko, one of the best Soviet geneticists, held lectures in genetics. He was repressed later in 1939, as his world outlook and especially the content of his lectures were contrary to the [Communist] Party’s and Stalin’s ideology. The year after that genetics was declared to be a pseudo-science. The Michurin genetics sub-faculty, which propagated Lysenko’s ideas, was established instead. This man [Lysenko] lacked even university education, thus, certainly, his ideas didn’t have any relation to the real genetics. The real genetics didn’t march in step with the ideology of the Soviet Union Party. The main dogma of the current genetics, as a science, is the statement that everything in an individual is founded initially in the genes and all individual potential, including physical, intellectual and moral, doesn’t really depend on the external environment, but rather on inherited qualities. Ideologically it means the following: not all people are equal and the slogan ‘If you cannot – we will teach you, if you don’t want to – we will force you’ doesn’t work. Certainly it didn’t match with the basic statements of Socialism and Communism. That’s why later the genetics in this country was limited to the selection and growing of best plant varieties, advocated by Lysenko. On the whole, we were taught by wonderful scientists and personalities: Dogel [14], Zavarzin [15], Takhtadzhyan [16] and others. After I finished three years of study, the war broke out.
When I came to the university for the first time, at the end of the university corridor there hung Lenin’s [13] portrait, depicting him during his external exams. I visited the university not long ago and was surprised very much, as everything has changed there. The corridor is beautifully done and the floor is nicely varnished. There are bookcases with scientific works and portraits of scientists on the walls. I had a very good impression. However, the lecture-rooms are still the same. The only difference is that there used to be a huge aquarium near the sub-faculty of biology, it was enormous, up to the ceiling, with exotic and very rare organisms, not only fish, but also jelly-fish, snakes and turtles; it was destroyed during the war.
I lived with my sister or at the university dormitory during that period. It was located in the university yard at that time and was called ‘Nauchka.’ The living conditions were horrible: 37 people lived in our room. Besides, there were rats there and they jumped on us from the wardrobes. The University Astronomical Time Service is located in that building now. Later I lived in a dormitory on Dobrolyubov Avenue, it was much better.
, Russia
The competition at the Faculty of Biology and Soils was seven persons per position, so it was not easy to enter. There were a lot of exams, not like nowadays. We took exams in political economy, various languages and many other difficult subjects. However, I passed all of them and entered.
I stayed with my elder sister Divora, who was already married to Abram Marshak by that time. They lived in the Petrogradsky District of Leningrad [today St. Petersburg]. Divora studied at the First Medical Institute to become a gynecologist. She simultaneously worked as a laboratory assistant at the State Institute of Chemical Industry. Later I lived with her during the siege [12]. We were evacuated to Vyatka together afterwards.
In 1938 I decided to enter Leningrad State University.
I remember only the trial over Kamenev [10] and Zinoviev [11] in 1935. I was grown up by that time and read newspapers. However, I certainly didn’t express my thoughts on it, as it wasn’t allowed. I remember very well the first elections to the Supreme Soviet. [The first elections to the Supreme Soviet took place in 1937.] Everybody went to school to listen to the radio, which no one had at home, as everyone wanted to hear the results of the elections. We also went to school to listen to the Second Constitution; I was already studying at that time. [The First Constitution of the USSR was adopted in 1924; the Second in 1936.
By the time I grew up, the Pioneer [9] House was organized in our town. We staged plays and performances in that Pioneer House, it was all very interesting. We became even closer friends there. I studied very diligently, so I hardly had any time for entertainment. I wasn’t the best pupil, though I had a very good command of Russian.
There was no anti-Semitism at all, either at school or in Roslavl in general. I had no friends outside of school; my best friends were Raya Shirman and Raya Ioffe. I had both Jews and Russians as friends; their nationality never mattered to me.
We had a very good teacher of Russian, Markelova, who taught us as follows: she liked to read and she read a lot to us during lessons. Later, when we were in the eighth grade, her husband had to continue our education. And we turned out to be completely illiterate, because Markelova hadn’t taught us how to spell the words. But we adored her! And from the eighth grade up until our graduation he tried very hard to make us literate [there were nine-year schools in the USSR at that time]. I loved reading most of all. Then we had this teacher, who I was really in love with, and because of whom I chose to study at the Faculty of Biology and Soils – Maria Grigoryevna Shtyrkina, an old and very intellectual Russian woman. She taught us biology. We all loved her very much, I did in particular. When I was later advised to enter the Faculty of Biology and Soils, I did so without any hesitation. After school almost all the kids from our grade entered some sort of university.
I studied at a common Russian high school. In my opinion the school was very good, we had wonderful teachers. Our teacher of mathematics, Aron Grigoryevich Karchmar, was a very good teacher. When I was finishing school, he told me that I would never pass the math exam, but I got an excellent mark. We also studied German, it was taught by an old woman. She was a bad teacher: she knew German poorly and she couldn’t establish discipline in the classroom, all pupils always yelled in her lessons. I remember her nickname – ‘Bobka.
When time came for me to go to school, I was tested on my knowledge of Yiddish and other languages, but I knew nothing except for Russian and that is why I wasn’t accepted in cheder.
The children, that is, us, were raised at home, though there was a kindergarten in town already. Mainly we were taught by the priest’s daughters. When I went to school, I could already read and write and I am very grateful to them for that. We lived in the outhouse of their house at that time.
We always had wonderful neighbors. Our parents were friends with the priest’s wife. Mother loved her very much. The girls, the priest’s daughters, taught us a lot. They arranged some chairs, sat us on the chairs and acted as teachers. The priest’s widow and her daughters had a very good attitude towards us.
Later, when we began to live better, we hired a woman who carried the water and did the washing. It was a Russian woman of middle age, her name was Frouza. She helped Mother, who worked very hard. We even had to hire a nanny for Milya, my youngest sister. She was an illiterate peasant woman from a village, who simply took care of the child.
When we bought the house, our parents couldn’t register it in their name for some reason [6], it was considered a ‘criminal’ thing to do; such was the situation at that time. I can’t remember why. They bought the house on behalf of our grandmother. The house was big, with three rooms, a kitchen, a pantry and a big terrace. However, there was no bathroom, and, as a matter of fact, no water supply system.
We brought water from the well that was located at the foot of the mountain. You had to go down that slippery mountain, pour some water in the bucket and walk back home. The water-pumps in the streets appeared much later.
We brought water from the well that was located at the foot of the mountain. You had to go down that slippery mountain, pour some water in the bucket and walk back home. The water-pumps in the streets appeared much later.
This military man tried to educate me. For example, when I read a book called ‘The Honeymoon,’ he came up to me, took the book and told me that it was too early for me to read such things. I was about ten. The funniest thing is that I can’t even vaguely remember the plot of the book; I think it was some romantic novel.
We rented an apartment from a priest’s family. Though he had passed away by then, his wife lived there with their three daughters. They lived very poorly. At first they occupied the whole house and our family rented an outhouse in the yard. I remember very well both the house and the sour cherry tree, under which later I sat and prepared for my entrance exams for university. Later, in 1929, the state moved us to a big house at a different address, where we occupied a large three-room apartment. After that, I cannot tell which year it was, some army officers were sent to live there with their families. The Sychyov family was the first one to live with us; the head of the family was of some low rank, maybe a lieutenant. He arrived with his wife and child, so we had to squeeze together and give them one room [4].
At first we didn’t live well financially.
Father wasn’t very religious, though he prayed sometimes and attended the synagogue. I even keep his prayer book. Father was a very kind and quiet man.
In 1912 my father married my mother. He returned from the army and their mutual friends introduced him to her. They had their wedding at the synagogue.
There was a very good synagogue in Roslavl, a big and beautiful one. It was destroyed by the Germans later. The community wasn’t big: there weren’t many Jews, approximately seven percent of the total population. There was also a cheder in town. Though the attitude to the Jews was good and there was no anti-Semitism, still it wasn’t easy to live there. Almost no one had their own place: everybody had to rent apartments, as there were almost no native Jews in Roslavl, only those who came from neighboring villages. It was very expensive to buy a house, that is why everybody rented apartments. The money was mainly earned through carters’ trade and agriculture. We had a very good market-place, because neighboring peasants were mostly engaged in agriculture and took all their goods to the market-place. The market place was working permanently and everything was very cheap.
There was a very good synagogue in Roslavl, a big and beautiful one. It was destroyed by the Germans later.
It had a very interesting location: to get here you had to descend the Butzev Mountain and the movie-theater was at the foot of it. But we needed money to go to the movies; we had to ask Mother for permission and Father for money. The drama group came to our town very rarely. Father liked theater very much and as soon as a show came to town, he immediately went there and took us with him.
The roads in Roslavl were paved with the most common stone, there were also old stairs, used for climbing up the mountains, for example, the Butzev Mountain; the stairs were very old and dangerous, they broke when people stepped on them. But we were children and of course we went there, as any kid would have done. I remember we had a movie-theater in town, it was called Milana. It had a very interesting location: to get here you had to descend the Butzev Mountain and the movie-theater was at the foot of it.
The town of Roslavl, where our family lived, is a big ancient Russian town founded in the times of the Rurik dynasty [the most ancient regents of Russia], famous for its artificial mounds. The town is very beautiful, green and hilly. At the time mostly merchants lived there. There were a lot of Russian Orthodox churches. Thus it was a native Russian Orthodox town. When we visited it for the last time – about ten years ago, in the 1990s – we went into a Russian Orthodox parish, where the municipal administration arranged an exhibition on the history of Roslavl. What was most interesting, those merchants, who had been deported from the town years ago [after the Russian Revolution], left their property to the town, a lot of china and crystal objects. We thought it unbelievable. We couldn’t understand how people, so much wronged by the Soviet power, could behave like that.
Father was a soldier in the Tsarist Army [1914-1918]. At first he served at the frontier post in Eastern Siberia and later participated in World War I. He was taken prisoner-of-war by the Germans during World War I. He was very satisfied with the way they treated them. He was in prison for a long time and worked for the Germans during that period.
Father praised the Soviet power in every way possible, since all his children were able to get university education. Though, in general, my parents were not interested in politics.
My father, Girsha Faivelovich Farbirovich, was born in 1885 in Roslavl. His mother-tongue was Russian. He went to cheder for six years. And right after that he started to work. He worked as a butcher. Actually all Farbirovich brothers were butchers, they had a stall where they chopped meat and sold it.