Grandfather Meyer owned two stores: drapery and grocery stores.
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Tatiana Tilipman Biography
My grandmother followed kashrut, went to the synagogue on holidays and wore a kerchief.
I don’t know what kind of education my father had, but he could write in Russian and Yiddish. My father inherited grandfather Meyer’s business: he owned a drapery and grocery stores in a two-storied building at the market square. The drapery store was on the second floor and the grocery store was on the first floor.
My parents got married in 1905. Their marriage was arranged by matchmakers. They had a traditional wedding with a chuppah according to all rules. I remember my parents’ photograph after their wedding where my mother had a wig. They settled down in my father’s home.
The house was in the center of the town. There were flowers and acacia growing near the house. There were four rooms: two bedrooms – one of grandmother Rieva and another one of my father and mother. We, children, lived in a big room. The fourth room with a back door and a door to the big room was a storeroom for keeping corn, sunflowers and wheat. The house was heated with stoves. One stove heated the rooms and there was a Russian stove in the kitchen where my mother cooked and baked bread. We ate plain food: chicken broth, fish, stewed meat and boiled cereals.
The house was in the center of the town. There were flowers and acacia growing near the house. There were four rooms: two bedrooms – one of grandmother Rieva and another one of my father and mother. We, children, lived in a big room. The fourth room with a back door and a door to the big room was a storeroom for keeping corn, sunflowers and wheat. The house was heated with stoves. One stove heated the rooms and there was a Russian stove in the kitchen where my mother cooked and baked bread. We ate plain food: chicken broth, fish, stewed meat and boiled cereals.
We followed kashrut rules. We only bought kosher meat from the Jewish butchers we knew. We took chickens to a shochet to slaughter them. There are particular slaughter rules: mentally ill people cannot do it and it cannot be slaughtered with a blunt razor. The razor had to be so sharp that it could cut a hair. Also, if a chicken didn’t die immediately one wasn’t allowed to eat it. On Thursday before Sabbath I took a chicken to the shochet. I waited outside. The shochet kept me behind his door since he didn’t want me to have bad feelings afterward. We never mixed meat and dairy products at home. Utensils and crockery for meat and dairy products were washed in different basins.
We only spoke Yiddish at home.
My mother dressed modestly wearing a black skirt and a dark blouse or a dress, but she always looked nice. She turned gray young. I remember her coloring her hair before the Great Patriotic War. My sister Rosa made a coloring mixture for her. My mother wore a kerchief. I still have her shawl and kerchiefs.
When I was small my family already owned a grocery store on the first floor. My father went to purchase goods in Kishinev (today Moldova), Mogilev and Odessa. He and my mother worked in the shop.
On Saturday my father didn’t work. My father was a very religious man. He always wore a yarmulka or a hat. When going to the synagogue he wore a nice black coat with a velvet collar. Father went to the synagogue on Saturday and on holidays. On weekdays he prayed at home in the morning and in the evening. He had a beautiful black tallit trimmed with silver.
Our family liked books. My father always brought books from Mogilev and Kishinev when we went to make his purchases there. He mainly brought books in Russian. I remember my first book in Russian. There were poems, fables and fairy tales. The book was entitles ‘Russian writers’. My mother darned or knitted socks while I read to her. When my brothers were at home my father played dominoes with them. We also dried sunflower seeds in the oven and enjoyed eating them. Sometimes we had guests: aunt Tsyrl, my mother older brother Shlomo’s wife, and her cousins who loved my mother’s cookies. In summer my mother sent me to bring some water from a stream. The guests had cherry jam, water and cookies.
We celebrated Sabbath. On Thursday evening my mother sieved some flour and made dough. On Friday morning before dawn my mother started baking. She baked bread for a week and it never got stale. When my sister Rosa and I woke up my mother brought us delicious doughnuts. My older sister Ida was doing the house at this time. Rosa and I joined her after getting up. Everything was clean before lunch. My mother made dinner for Friday and Sabbath. She left her cooking in the oven. My father came from the store, changed and went to the synagogue. My mother went to the synagogue on holidays. Mother lit candles and there was no more work done at home. We, children, dressed up and went to walk in the market square that was also cleaned for a fair. In summer on Sabbath we went to an orchard near our school. It was a private orchard. There was an entrance fee to be paid and separate payment for fruit. My friends and I used to stay there all day long. We paid 5 kopeck each to pay a violinist that we invited and one of the boys played drums and we danced.
We started preparations for Pesach in advance. We made matzah in special pans. My mother wore a white outfit. We stored matzah in a special pillowcase with the word ‘Pesach’ written on it. Long before the holiday my mother started feeding two geese for goose fat for keyzele, matzah and potato puddings. The geese were slaughtered and since two geese were too much for us we gave one to aunt Tsyrl. Aunt Tsyrl also gave us one goose when she slaughtered hers. There was a general cleanup done in the house. We took down a barrel with Pesach crockery from the attic and stored our everyday crockery back. It was only allowed to use a mortar and water barrel. My brothers were working in Vinnitsa region, but they came for Pesach. On Pesach eve my father walked the rooms reciting a prayer placing chametz, pieces of bread, and at about 12 o’clock he picked chametz with a wooden spoon and burnt it. We never had any bread left in the house. After 12 we were given matzah to eat. My mother made potato pancakes. She cooked for the coming evening. The first seder was in the evening. My father was at the synagogue. I guess my mother didn’t go to the synagogue. My mother lit candles. When my father came from the synagogue the family sat down to dinner. My father sat in an armchair with a white cover and my mother sat beside him and I reckon they were even called a czar and czarina. My brothers sat on the right and then my grandmother Rivka sat across the table from my father. My sisters and I were sitting on the left side. Well, it was required to drink four glasses of wine eating food. There was a boiled egg, potatoes, and a boiled chicken neck put on a plate, but the neck was supposed to be there through eight days. There was also horseradish, khoroises (ground apples with nuts and cinnamon) served. My father gave each of us a piece of matzah, then another piece with salt, and another one with horseradish, egg, apple and potatoes. While handing this to us he recited a prayer. My brother Iosif posed four questions. This lasted till about 12 o’clock. There were glasses with wine on the table. During the prayer it was required to let prophet Elijah in. I think, my mother went to open the door as if for Elijah to come in and we were sitting there gazing at the door until late evening. This is how I remember seder. We didn’t have guests, but I remember mother always giving matzah to the poor.
At Yom Kippur we fasted and my mother and father spent a day at the synagogue. At the end of service they blew a horn [shofar]. I always stayed near the synagogue and when I heard a shofar I ran back to tell Ida to start a samovar. When my parents returned we had tea and jam. My father blessed bread and honey, dipped a piece of bread in honey and gave us to eat it.
At Sukkoth we used our storeroom for sukkah. My mother covered our food stocks with a tablecloth, there was a table brought in and covered with a fancy tablecloth. There was a folding ceiling and roof. We had meals in this room for a week. We always celebrated Chanukkah. Every day another candle was lit. My uncle Shlomo always gave me some money on this holiday.
I remember Jewish weddings where we were invited. My father wasn’t quite fond of attending such events, but my mother and I enjoyed them. People usually rented a hall and invited a music band to their wedding parties. It was a lot of fun. I remember how a chuppah was installed. The bride and bridegroom went around it. I don’t remember any other details. I liked dancing. They usually danced ‘sher’, a long up-tempo dance that lasted about 20 minutes. We also danced a Hungarian polka and waltz.
My sister Rosa went to a Jewish school in 1925. I was only 5, but I also went to school because I always followed what my sister did. However, I only attended school for few days until it rained. I actually went to school the following year when I turned 6. The school was in a brick one-storied building across the street from the cathedral. It was customary to study at school by guilds.
In the late 1920s religious repressions began. For example, at Pesach they began to give children of the Jewish school breakfast. We never got any during an academic year, but at Pesach all of a sudden. I remember it brightly: fried sausage, mashed potatoes and bread. Authorities forced our director Boruch Morgulis, a Jew, to do it. At home there was mamaliga [boiled corn flour] on the table and matzah was taken away. My parents closed the door so that nobody saw that we had matzah, but anyway, everybody made matzah. Before my departure from Dzygovka in 1935 there was still a synagogue and a rabbi there.
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.
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.