elisaveta and her husband decided to move to Israel, when they became pensioners. They moved to Jerusalem in 1986.
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Displaying 49351 - 49380 of 50191 results
Nikolay Schwartz Biography
Yelisaveta told me the good news that our brother Earnest was alive. It turned out that Yelisaveta kept in touch with Earnest for a long time. When World War II began, Earnest studied in a vocational school in Budapest. The Hungarian fascists were more loyal to Hungarian Jews than to Subcarpathian Jews. Many Jews could stay in their houses in Hungary and were not taken to concentration camps. The only mandatory thing that fascists did was painting yellow hexagonal stars on Jewish houses [Yellow star houses] [21], though I guess, I know little about it, or what I know is what I heard from others. [He refers to the fact that deportations from Budapest were not finished as opposed to the Hungarian countryside.] When Germans invaded Budapest [March 19th 1944], Earnest and 50 other students of their vocational school found refuge in the Swiss Embassy. They were hiding there until the end of the war.
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During WW2
See text in interview
From Budapest they moved to Romania where they tried to take a boat to Palestine. [illegally] Their boat was arrested by British soldiers and sent to Crete in Greece. They kept them for a long time there, but then Greek fishermen secretly took them to Palestine in their boats. Earnest joined a kibbutz. Then he finished a construction vocational school and returned to his kibbutz where he married Ioheved, a girl who was born in Palestine. She was a teacher. Earnest took part in the Six-Day War [22] After the war he continued his work in the kibbutz. Earnest and Ioheved didn’t have children. I met with my brother once. He arrived in Budapest like Yelisaveta since he couldn’t get a visa to the USSR. We spent a week together and then my brother returned to Israel.
I believed Soviet invasion in Hungary in 1956 [23] and Czechoslovakia in 1968 [Prague Spring] [24] as an effort of the USSR to keep all countries of the ‘socialist camp’ behind the barbed wire. Of course, the USSR couldn’t allow a single country to refuse from socialism since it might result in many followers. The USSR took every effort, even aggression, to keep all of them under control. This was like in prison: they stopped any attempt of escape so that the others stopped even considering it.
When in the late 1980s perestroika [25] began in the USSR, I was indifferent to it at first, like I was to anything related to the Soviet power. I didn’t care about their promises of a better life. I had heard them since I returned from the camp in 1947. Later I realized that many things were changing to the better. Gorbachev [26] allowed private entrepreneurship that had been forbidden for many years in the USSR. Many people started their businesses working for themselves. Many of my co-prisoners imprisoned for private entrepreneurship became successful entrepreneurs and respected people during perestroika. The freedom of speech that Gorbachev promised became a reality. There was no need to listen to western radios to hear the truth about the situation in the USSR. Newspapers began to publish articles describing our present and past life. The ban on religion was gone. People could go to church and celebrate religious holidays. However, in the course of Soviet rule people got so much out of this habit that at first there were not enough attendants for a minyan at the synagogue. Only few knew prayers and how to pray. Then chairman of the Jewish community of Uzhgorod suggested that I attended the synagogue. At first I went there to socialize and of course, to enable them to gather a minyan, but then it became a habit with me that developed into a need. In my childhood religion was a significant part of my life. When praying I recalled my parents, my childhood, my sisters and my brother. Every year I recited the Kaddish for my dear ones who had perished in the camp and for my deceased brother.
In 1987 I visited my sister in Israel for the first time. Of course, I liked Israel very much, but I didn’t consider staying there. I felt out of place, missed my home and friends and I wouldn’t manage to learn Ivrit. I can still remember a little Hebrew that we studied in cheder, the language of the torah, but it’s hard for me to understand contemporary Ivrit spoken in Israel. I haven’t visited my sister again: I didn’t get along with her husband. We didn’t like each other, and I didn’t want to cause conflicts between Yelizaveta and her husband. There was an incident in Israel that strained our relationships. My sister and her husband observed Jewish traditions and followed kashrut. Chaim Klein always had his head covered. As for me, I didn’t think it was necessary and didn’t have a kippah or a hat. Once Chaim and I took a bus. I was sitting on a seat in the middle part and he was near the driver. A rabbi came into the bus. He happened to be Chaim’s acquaintance from New York. They used to go to the synagogue together and discuss the Torah. In Israel they also met regularly to read and discuss what they had read. The rabbi saw Chaim and nodded to him, and Chaim yelled at me from where he was sitting: ‘Put on a kippah immediately!’ I didn’t have a kippah and felt very ill at ease. Even the rabbi felt uncomfortable. He turned his head away pretending that he didn’t hear. When we got off the bus, Chaim began to shout at me reproaching me for not observing Jewish traditions. I objected that not everybody in Israel wore a kippah and that if he thought it necessary he should have warned me about it. This made our relationships worse than ever and I hurried to find an excuse for going back home. I saw Yelizaveta for the last time in July 1996, when she visited Uzhgorod. In October 1996 my sister died. 3 years later her husband died too.
After Ukraine gained independence the Jewish life had a rebirth. The Jewish community became stronger. People stopped hiding their Jewish identity. However, this refers to those Jews who had moved to Subcarpathia from other areas of the USSR since local Subcarpathian Jews have been open about their identity. More people began to attend the synagogue. Frankly, I don’t believe them to be real Jews. There can be no Jew without cheder. As for those who had moved here, only Ukrainians called them ‘zhydy’, Jews. They have never been Jews for me. They don’t know Hebrew or even Yiddish, they cannot recite a prayer and they don’t know that before entering the synagogue they have to put on a hat, which is different from Christian traditions. Christians take off their hats before entering a temple. It’s good that they teach young people in the Jewish school and in Hesed. At least our grandchildren will know what the Soviet power deprived our children of. In Hesed there are classes in Hebrew, Jewish traditions and history. Many young men and girls attend them. Regretfully, my son or grandchildren do not identify themselves as Jews and do not take part in those activities. Hesed works a lot for the restoration of the Jewry in Ukraine. It also helps old people to survive. I do not leave my home. I live alone and need help constantly. My son cannot spend much time with me. He brings me food before going to work in the morning and then he leaves. If it were not for the Hesed assistance, I would not survive. A nurse visits me every day and a doctor comes to see me once a week. They deliver meals to my home and buy medications. They also bring me Jewish newspapers and magazines. I am very grateful to all those who help me.
Clara Shalenko
A common engineer could afford to travel in the Soviet Union in 1960s – 1970s I traveled a lot when I worked I dropped by a synagogue in every town I went to for pure interest.
In 1969 I was in Budapest. Since I didn’t speak Hungarian the guide explained to me how to get to a synagogue. When I came there a shames opened the door for me. It was evening and a redhead boy was saying a prayer standing in a kippah. Other Jews surrounding him were listening. Then the shames showed me a big hall of the synagogue (he and I spoke Yiddish). When we entered there I was stupefied: there was white marble and oak wood all around. The shames showed me where the Torah was kept. Then he took me into the backyard of the synagogue to show graves of tsadiks that were buried there. At the end of our meeting he said he was very pleased that a Jewish woman from Odessa showed interest in Hungarian Jews.
My mother died of heart problems in December 1977. My father died in January 1978 – in a month after my mother passed away. My parents were buried at the town cemetery since the Jewish cemetery was closed for burials due to its ‘overpopulation’. Only those whose closest relatives were buried at this cemetery were allowed to be buried there.
I went to the synagogue when I was in Tbilissi in 1979 and ordered a memorial prayer for my parents.
In 1989 I visited my friend Sopha Lutza in the US. She lives in New York. Sopha took me to the Jewish cemetery of Yablochkov in New York where her little granddaughter was buried. I traveled to other towns in the US. I particularly remember Boston where many of my acquaintances from Odessa reside. We got together to go to synagogue.
Since 1985 I’ve attended the synagogue regularly. I went to the synagogue at Yom Kippur, Pesach and Simkhat-Torah.
The Jewish life has revived in Odessa after perestroika. I am very interested in the Jewish history. I feel very much a Jew and I am proud to be a Jew. The attitude towards Jews has changed – we have a higher status now. Things have undoubtedly become easier for us.
There were Representative offices of Sokhnut and Joint established in Odessa, the Cultural Center of Israel opened and there are two Jewish newspapers published and Jewish TV programs broadcast. I receive Jewish newspapers and read Jewish books. I borrow books from a Jewish library in Odessa. I gave books by Jewish writers that I had to the library of ‘Gmilus-Hesed’, but I keep my favorite book of Joseph Utkin, a poet that wrote in Russian.
I live alone. I get assistance from Gmilus Hesed. Once a month I receive food packages. A volunteer from there spends with me 3 hours per week. She is a very nice woman. She even stays longer than 3 hours. She cleans my apartment, washes me and buys potatoes and bread.
Before I fell ill sometimes curator from Gmilus Hesed called me to invite to the theater or to a tour with groups of Jews. There were 15 of us on that tour. We went to the places related to the Jewish history in our town. We took pictures. I remember going to the synagogue in Evreyskaya Street that was returned to the Jewish community few years ago. I lost my breath so strong the spirit of the Jewish atmosphere was there. It was refurbished in such a wonderful way. Jews leave their books of prayers on their seats and they remain there until they come next time. Jews are alive and will live.
Our house was ruined. Our former janitor told us that there was a vacant apartment in the same neighborhood where we moved in. It was a dark two-room apartment on the first floor – no kitchen or toilet. My father, being a construction man, built a verandah, toilet and a bathroom.
My mother continued to work as a medical nurse in the municipal vegetation trust.
There were no Jewish schools or Jewish theater in Odessa after the war. Jewish culture was in decay and suppressed.
I think there was a synagogue in Pushkinskaya Street before 1953.
In 1945 I went to work as a medical nurse at the vitamin manufacture factory.
In 1946 I entered the construction college. There were many Jewish students there. In 1947 I became a Komsomol member. There was anti-Semitism after the war. However, our acquaintances treated us well. Quite a few lecturers in our college were anti-Semites. One of them Vlad Maximovich Shakhiev, an Azerbaidjan man, called me Finegold-Minegold [Fine gold means ‘fine gold’ and Minegold means ‘my gold’ – he was probably joking in his own manner.
There was famine in 1946. There were plenty of food products in the Privoz [main market of Odessa], but who could afford to buy them? I remember that our food was corn pudding or frozen potatoes. We bought a small piece of meat just to make soup once a week. There were coupons to receive bread. Bread was weighed in small slices and there were even smaller pieces of it added to make up the standard weight. We used to eat those pieces on our way home. When at home we divided or rationed slices of bread to last for a day. Students received food coupons to get meals at the canteen. We didn’t have enough clothes either. Americans sent humanitarian aid. I remember I was given a dress. It was checked one with the white collar. I can’t recall now who and how distributed such things.
I finished the Construction College in 1949.
In 1949 I went to work in Sevastopol upon finishing College [there was a system of mandatory employment of graduates from higher and secondary special educational institutions in the USSR and they were obliged to work a certain period].
I met a young Russian Navy officer. We met at a dancing party at the Navy Officers’ House. I introduced him to my parents before we got married. He made a good impression on them and they had no objections to my marrying a Russian man. . His name was Vladimir Georgievich Shalenko. We got married in 1950.
I was a construction technician in a military unit in Sevastopol – we built houses for officers.
My husband was a lieutenant.
We had a big 3-room apartment with all comforts in Sevastopol where my mother-in-law lived I got along well with her.