My husband had a big pension of a retired military. We could afford good food, clothes and had enough to pay our monthly bills for the apartment.
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Major events (political and historical)
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Holocaust
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Displaying 49081 - 49110 of 50382 results
Sarra Nikiforenko
Vitaliy loved our girls and spent a lot of time with them. He wanted them to have Jewish husbands. I said ‘What’s the difference? You are not a Jew’ but he laughed ‘well, I am an exception’. My daughters never kept it a secret that their mother is a Jew and were not ashamed of it. However, when it was time for them to get their passports I insisted that they had their nationality written down as ‘Ukrainian’. It was important at that time to avoid any difficulties with getting a higher education or a job. Ludmila, my older daughter, married Misha Lishytz, a Jewish man.
Ludmila and her husband worked as engineer at a scientific research institute in Lvov.
Tamara married her teacher Edward Finkler, a Jewish man. He was nine years older than she. He was a very talented man. He had two sons: Vadim and Yuri.
Tamara worked as an editor and then corrector at a scientific publishing house in Lvov University.
The situation in our family changed after my husband died. My grandson Sasha that lived with us demanded that I gave the ownership for the apartment to him. We had to exchange our big apartment in the center for two smaller ones. We live in a small two-room apartment now. But this didn’t bring peace into our family. My daughters had a conflict associated with inheritance. Ludmila, my older daughter, and her family moved to Israel without my permission. I don’t even know where they live. They don’t call or write me. It’s hard to talk about it. This is such a tragedy – no, I won’t talk about it.
When perestroika began in 1980s my children had hopes for a better life. I told them that perestroika wouldn’t change the situation. My husband received a pension and we raised our children, but nowadays pensions are too small to make ends meet. I am happy Tamara has a good job. She is a good corrector.
Hesed provides assistance. They are so good and caring. They came to greet me on 93rd birthday: I am so grateful, they give us what has a high value – care.
Her son Vitaliy is a nice boy. He has a Russian wife. They are very much in love. Tamara and I had no objections to their marriage. Vitaliy works, but they have a hard life since employers do not always have money to pay their employees.
I’ve always remembered Jewish holidays. I celebrate them, only we do not follow all rules. We make traditional food and fast at Yom Kippur.
This was the problem of our generation that we grew up as atheists and forgot traditions and language of our ancestors and that we didn’t raise our children with this knowledge. It is not just a Jewish problem, it’s a problem of almost all nations in the USSR. My husband’s ancestors were Christian, but he never went to a church. However, we had a lot of good in our life. We had our belief and ideals. I have no regrets.
Elena Orlikova
I had a very happy childhood. I had young and happy parents. My father loved me very much. He also loved my mother very much. He always tried to make his family happy. He used to send Mommy flowers with little notes that said “To the best performer of Liszt [a Hungarian composer]” or “To the most beautiful woman in Mikhailovskaya street”, etc.
She worked at a shop that manufactured signboards and decorated shop windows. Nowadays her position could be called an advertising agent. She went out to various companies and executed contracts for this kind of work. She was successful in her work. At least, she earned good money at that time.
My father was Commercial director in various shops or smaller companies. He would be called a businessman now. He was a good entrepreneur and could develop and start a production process very well. He was good at making contacts with people. And he was successful in his work.
My father never became a member of the Communist Party. He was far from politics, although he read a lot and was a very intelligent man. I don’t remember my mother or my father reading newspapers.
, Ukraine
We often had guests. We got together on any holidays: Soviet, Jewish, or on birthdays. A holiday was just a good reason to have a good time and have fun. My mother sat at the piano to play and sing. She sang very well. Their friends danced. This was a very merry company. They liked to play cards.
However, there were books at home – classical literature, books by Russian and foreign classical writers. My father loved poetry and could recite many poems by heart.
He could discuss any subject. He loved humorous literature. I remember him reading Sholem Aleichem8 to me and my mother. The book was written in Yiddish but he translated it into Russian. It means that he knew Yiddish well. I remember that we laughed a lot and my father enjoyed such pastime tremendously.
He could discuss any subject. He loved humorous literature. I remember him reading Sholem Aleichem8 to me and my mother. The book was written in Yiddish but he translated it into Russian. It means that he knew Yiddish well. I remember that we laughed a lot and my father enjoyed such pastime tremendously.
When I was 10 or 11 years old we went to visit my father’s relatives in Elisavetgrad -it was renamed to Kirovograd already. I remember we were staying in a big house near the synagogue. I also remember one of the relatives that served in the synagogue. He couldn’t carry his thales to the synagogue on Saturday and it was my responsibility. But I was not allowed to go inside the synagogue, so I stayed outside peeping into the slot. I saw him praying. I have no other Jewish traditions related memories from my childhood.
My parents wanted to give me a good education. When I was 5 or 6 years old I joined a group of about 10 children. We had a tutor, a Jewish woman that had fluent German and she took us for walks. I also remember that each child could hold her by a finger when we were to cross the street. She spoke German to us but it was not quite effective. My German is very poor. When the weather was bad we went to somebody’s home and spent some time there. Every child had his breakfast. We ate our breakfast and played. Now when I look back I understand that these were mostly Jewish children. They must have come from families that were acquainted with each other. And although it was considered to be the time when there was no anti-Semitism, Jewish people still tried to keep together.
My parents and I went to the beach in summer. My mother sometimes invited my friends to join us to keep me company. Few times we rented a country house in Vorzel near Kiev where our family stayed in summer. We went to the woods to pick berries, swam in the lake and lay in the sun.
I went to an ordinary Russian school. I had no problems with my studies. I liked mathematics and physics. My favorite teacher was Elena Ivanovna Kolotushko, a Ukrainian. She was a teacher of Russian language and literature. Now I understand that there were quite a few Jews in our class and at school: Lyusia Epshtein, Ania Greenberg, Raya Zaltzberg – they were all my friends. However, I had Russian and Ukrainian friends, too: Tania Ivanova, Tolia Morkachov and other children. We became young Octobrists9, then pioneers: we were Soviet schoolchildren. We didn’t feel our Jewish identity at school. Nobody paid any attention to such things. The information about the nationality was written down in personal files that were stored in the archives. However, teachers could identify the nationality of any pupil by his last name or appearance, but still nobody segregated people by nationality at that time, all people were equal. I don’t think we realized that we belonged to different nationalities then. We went to all kinds of performances at the Palace of pioneers located not far from our house. I went to the singing club and my sister went to the dancing class and we were enjoying ourselves. We lived our own life and we didn’t listen to what adults were talking about. We celebrate Soviet holidays at school, but it was just a holiday, a game, a party for me rather than a political event.
We didn’t feel the approach of the war. On 22 June 194110 my friends and I were supposed to go to the theater. Of course, it was out of the question on this day. My parents did understand how threatening it was that German troops were so close to Kiev. I believe my parents heard some rumors about their ruthless brutality in Western Europe and wanted to take us out of Kiev. My father had a close friend Lubman. He worked at the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine. He was responsible for the financial sector. He obtained a permit to leave Kiev. One couldn’t leave Kiev on their own these days. This could have been interpreted as spreading panic and could be subject to punishment. Another acquaintance got a truck somewhere. There were so many people on this truck that we had to stand a long while, but we left Kiev.
My father stayed in Kiev. He was summoned to the so-called labor front. He was to clean up blockages after bombings. Besides, my father was involved in evacuation of his enterprise. He had the right to leave Kiev upon completion of all these tasks. My father removed all equipment and materials to Dnepropetrovsk. He was supposed to deliver the above mentioned and obtain the certificate confirming acceptance by state authorities.
My father caught up with us in Kharkov and we headed to Stalingrad, which is now called Volgograd. My mother’s sister Zhenia lived there. She was married to a military and lived at the military residential area. Our family hoped to be able to stay there for some time. There were quite a few of us: my father, my mother and I, my mother’s older sister Rosa, her daughter Gusta and her husband Osip Semyonovich and Aunt Polia, my father’s aunt. She was single and lived with us before the war. Aunt Zhenia had a two-room apartment. Her husband spent almost all his time at the military unit. So our whole family moved in with Zhenia. She had two children: daughter Mila and son Ilyusha.
I went to school in Stalingrad. It was in September. I remember all children looking at me feeling sorry for the situation I was in. I was the only girl in the class that was in the evacuation.
Zhenia received the last letter from my mother’s Aunt Manya. It was her detailed financial report for all payments for everybody’s apartment, etc. She also wrote that she was often teased and called “zhydovka” in the neighborhood of the children’s home. She wrote she wouldn’t go there any more. And also “these bandits, these hooligans keep pestering me”. She was a typical Jew. I guess this anti-Semite hysteria must have burst out in Kiev even before Germans occupied it.
My parents couldn’t find a job in Stalingrad. The fascists were approaching and we had to move on. In November when it was already cold we sailed on the last boat down the Volga to Kuibyshev. Now this is the town of Samara.
There was an evacuation office at the railway station in Kuibyshev. There were crowds of people there. Trains were going in all directions. We got on the train to Alma-Ata. We were travelling in the railcar for cattle transportation. There were plank beds and hay in this carriage. There were too many people in it. We all turned at the order to turn; this was the only possible way. We got off at the stops to go to the toilet. The trip to Alma-Ata took us several weeks.
We settled down in the village of Malaya Alma-Atynka near the town. We received half of the room that was divided by a curtain.
My father went to work. The front required lots of clothing and there were quite a few tailor shops in Alma-Ata.