My fellow students and I were working in a kolkhoz near Poltava for a month picking carrots, tomatoes, paprika and cucumbers whether they were ripe or not, just to leave nothing to the enemy since it was clear that Poltava was to be invaded. In August 1941 bombings began.
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Displaying 49861 - 49890 of 50826 results
Ilia Rozenfeld Biography
In early September, actually 10 days before the occupation of the town, my mother and I, aunt Vera and Ania evacuated from Poltava. We were going with my college to Uralsk town in the Northern Kazakhstan region. My father was staying in Poltava to transfer the pharmacy, money and material values to authorities. He went to Kharkov to submit the papers and money. We had left and had no information about my father.
Uralsk was a small town. A two-storied house in Sovietskaya Street was prepared for our college. There was no heating in the building. We studied in three shifts and had to sit in class in our winter coats. Our director Yuriy Damanskiy and our lecturers Marchenko, Korchakov, Topchiy came with us. They were too old to serve in the army. Senior students were released from the army service according to an order issued by the government and since the term of studies was reduced to three years, we, second-year students, became senior pre-graduate students and were released from the army service.
We were accommodated in an apartment and at first my aunts Vera and Ania lived with us. In late November my father joined us. He walked on crutches: on the way he got into a bombing and had a leg fracture. He stayed in hospital for over a month. Aunt Vera and Ania moved to another apartment not far from us. My father went to work in the pharmacy of the military hospital and my mother continued her work in college.
We were accommodated in an apartment and at first my aunts Vera and Ania lived with us. In late November my father joined us. He walked on crutches: on the way he got into a bombing and had a leg fracture. He stayed in hospital for over a month. Aunt Vera and Ania moved to another apartment not far from us. My father went to work in the pharmacy of the military hospital and my mother continued her work in college.
The town was populated with kazaks 23 – from the Ural and Ukraine. They had a saying. In which ‘zhydy’ were mentioned negatively. I asked our kind and hospitable landlady who were zhydy and she shrugged her shoulders and said that they were probably some devils with horns and tails and was infinitely surprised, when I said that we were zhydy.
In 1943, after finishing the advanced course of our studies, our graduates were sent to restore and rebuild buildings and houses in Kharkov according to the Order issued by the State Defense Committee. Kharkov had just been liberated. In Kharkov I received a job assignment to Zaporozhiye, I worked in the towns of miners: Volnovakha and Yelenovka. We were restoring the mines and plants. I sent my documents to the Kharkov Military Engineering Academy, but shortly afterward it was dismissed and I withdrew my documents from there. I worked in these towns until middle 1944, and then I moved back to Poltava knowing that my parents were to return from Uralsk.
In 1945 I obtained my diploma and a job assignment in Kiev. My father was very happy: he always wanted me to leave this provincial town for a big city. Kiev was ruined and at first it was a severe probation for me to live there. I was employed by a design construction office. I stayed with my companion from Poltava for about ten days, but then they let me know that it would be decent for me to move out. I moved to the design office where I worked and slept on desks there. Two months later my Polish friend from Poltava Yuzik Poznanskiy got a job assignment 26 to Kiev and we received a room on the 7th floor of a hostel in an old building in 9, Franko Street. We received bread cards for 400 grams of bread, egg powder and sometimes some meat. It was impossibly little to make a living. We took our cards to the canteen in Narkomzem (ministry of land resources) in exchange for a meal of some thin soup and boiled cereal. We exchanged whatever we could for food at the market. I made soup with canned meat in a meat can on a spirit lamp and it lasted for few days. We dressed in God knows what and had shoes with the soles tied with ropes: there was no money or place to buy new shoes.
The postgraduate school didn’t admit me: the processes against cosmopolitans 27 began and the state anti-Semitism was booming. Secretary of the admission commission was trying to warn me. She was a wise woman, but I didn’t even understand what she was trying to tell me and my failure was a serious blow on me.
Regardless all problems those were beautiful years of my youth, when I had many friends. We went to operetta and opera theaters, and to concerts of symphonic and classical music in the Pervomayskiy Garden. We often gathered in one apartment, and once my friends sent me to a girl living nearby to pick up a record player from her. I liked the girl and invited her to join us. So I met my future wife Yelena Mestechkina. Yelena was born to a common, traditional and I would say religious Jewish family in Kiev in 1924. Her grandfather Iosif Mestechkin and her grandmother and her father’s brothers perished in Babi Yar. Yelena, her father and mother were in the evacuation. In 1947, when we met, she was finishing the Kiev Medical College. We dated for few months and got married in the same year of 1947. We had a family dinner party and there was one guest: Yelena’s cousin brother from Moscow. Even my parents couldn’t come from Poltava – this was a hard time. They sent us a greeting telegram.
A happy event was the establishment of Israel that attracted Jews from all over the world. My father was particularly happy about this. Hew had professed the Zionist ideas since childhood. And those were sad years due to the merciless state anti-Semitism in the late 1940s - early 1950s, when Stalin died. It started from the defeat struggle against the rootless cosmopolites leading to the made up ‘doctors’ plot’ 29. In those years many Jews lost their jobs, were arrested and even executed as enemies of the people, like it happened in the late 1930s. They were fired from their leading or engineering positions from colleges, plants and factories. In early 1953, during the period of persecution of doctors, my wife was fired without any explanation of the reasons.
My father also suffered during this period. My father was ill since the early 1950s. He quit his job and could only walk with a stick. He used to walk in the park and once he gave candy to the children in the park. Trying to give up smoking he always carried sugar candy with him. Two young men approached him and saying: ‘Zhydovskaya morda, you are poisoning our children!’, they beat him brutally with a metal rod on his ill legs. They beat an old man believing in everything best. My father could never recover from this both physical and spiritual pain.
I remember Stalin’s death in March 1953, the mourning meeting in the central present Yevropeyskaya Square [Stalin’s Square then] on 9 March, where there was his funeral in Moscow. It was raining, there was the morning music playing and many people sobbed. I was a little infected with this general tragic atmosphere, when my colleague Sergey Vysotskiy bent over me saying: ‘But it is so great that he… died!’ Few days after Stalin died we had a call from the hospital where Yelena used to work. Again, without explaining any reasons they offered her to come back to work.
Our life was gradually improving. Since 1948 I worked in the Design Machine tool Institute ‘Giprostanok’, and in 1953 I was promoted to chief of sector. In 1954 my Institute gave us a small two-bedroom apartment with 16 and 9 square-meter rooms. However, this was our own apartment, and I think that our life improved significantly from then on. In 1960 I went to work in the Academic Institute and entered an extramural postgraduate course in Moscow. In 1963 I defended a dissertation 31. I didn’t face any prejudiced attitudes.
We also socialized with our relatives. Once a year we visited my mother and aunts in Poltava. Ania’s cousin sisters from Poltava and brother Yuriy from Moscow visited us. We also traveled to Moscow. We lived like all other Soviet intelligentsia families: from one pay day to another. We didn’t have a car or a dacha, but our family spent vacations at the seashore in the Crimea or Caucasus every year.
In 1965 Alexandr finished school brilliantly. That year schools were switching to 10-year secondary education, and school children of the 11th and 10th forms graduated from schools which increased competition to colleges. Alexandr decided to enter Mechanic Machine Building Faculty in Moscow State University. We were surprised that he managed to enter it without any acquaintances or help. Many Jewish students joined Moscow University that year: the authorities must have cancelled the quota of Jewish admission. Alexandr studied his first year in Moscow and then got a transfer to Kazan University for personal reasons. He studied well, but failed to enter a postgraduate course upon graduation from the University: this was another period of anti-Semitism. Alexandr obtained a job assignment free diploma, when he could find a job where he liked. He returned to Kiev, but he couldn’t find work for a long time. Though he was a brilliant mathematician, he failed to get employment in the Institute of Cybernetics or Institute of Mathematic. Our acquaintances helped him to get a job at the Institute of Town Planning.
In those years many Jews were moving to Israel and USA via Israel. Our acquaintances and distant relatives moved there as well. Of course, we were thinking of emigration, but we had heavy anchors: my wife’s parents and my mother, and secondly, I was raised on the Russian culture. Of course, I know Western literature and jazz, but the Russian language and Russian classical music arm up my heart and it seemed hard to tear myself away from the homeland and Russian culture. I have no regrets about it.
In any case I am grateful to Gorbachev 32 and perestroika 33 for the opportunity to write and publish what you think, with no censorship, and the opportunity to read any books and listen to any music, for the freedom of faith and for the opening of the Jewish University in Kiev, for opening of synagogues and the opportunity for people of any religion to attend their temples. My family and I are convinced atheists. We do not attend any public or charity organizations. Thank God, we have everything we need, but I know that there are many needy people. It is wonderful that they can have help.
Their oldest son, my grandfather Shymon was born in Kobelyaki in 1860. He finished cheder and an accounting course.
My grandmother’s distant relative Moldavskiy [editor’s note: Moldavskiy was a Jewish merchant, grain dealer. He contributed to the opening of a Jewish hospice house and it was named after him, and later he also built a hospice house for Orthodox believers], who owned a mill, employed my grandfather. The mill was located almost across the street from my grandfather’s house. He worked there as assistant accountant till his old age.
My grandfather’s family had a rather modest life. My grandmother was a housewife. She had a housemaid to help her with the children and about the house. There was a vegetable garden near the house. My grandparents kept livestock: poultry and a cow. My grandfather was a progressive man for his time. He was fond of reading preferring Russian classics to any other books. He was very fond of music: opera and symphonic music. He went to the opera House in Kharkov few times a year and dreamed that there would be a time, when he could watch operas staying at home. This was long before the invention of TV. My father’s family wasn’t quite religious. My grandmother and grandfather didn’t attend a synagogue or raise their children religious, but they tried to observe Jewish traditions.
I don’t know whether they celebrated Sabbath. My father never mentioned this to me. However, the family got together for a meal on Pesach and Rosh Hashanah.
My father, the first son in the family, had to help his father to support the family. Therefore, after finishing an elementary Jewish school at the age of 12 my grandfather took him to Kharkov (440 km from Kiev) to the Portugalov [editor’s note: Portugalov pharmacies were in all bigger towns of the czarist Russia] pharmacy where my father studied pharmacology working in this pharmacy. He finished a grammar school as an external student and entered the pharmaceutical Faculty of Kharkov University. Upon graduation my father went to Poltava and took up a job in the pharmacy.
My father was not religious and didn’t observe Jewish traditions, but in those years he got fond of Zionist ideas and read Zhabotinskiy 2, and attended Zionist clubs [editor’s note: Poltava was one of the Zionist centers in Russia. There was a club of young Zionists here].
The children got Jewish education: the boys finished cheder, and the girls studied with a melamed at home. Grandfather Iona knew the torah and Talmud and taught his children Hebrew, Jewish prayers, history and traditions. They followed kashrut and celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays in the family. My grandfather usually wore a long jacket and a kippah, and my grandmother also wore traditional Jewish clothes and a wig. Grandfather Iona was a contractor in the Russian troops in Poland.
It’s hard to explain grandfather Iona’s intentions: whether he wanted my mother, the youngest in the family, to be able to support herself, or he wanted her to know about the true life, but when she was about 9 years old, he sent her to a shoemaker to learn his trade. He trained my mother for about a year. I don’t know whether it helped my mother in her future life, but at least my mother could do everything with her hands. Then my mother finished a grammar school for girls in Zamost’ye.
I know very little about the life of my parents’ families during this uneasy period of the revolution 3, Civil War 4, gangs 5 and famine. I know that during pogroms the Anikeev family gave shelter to my mother’s family. My mother’s cousin brother, whose name I don’t know, who served in the czarist army during WWI, stayed in Poltava and the Bolsheviks who came into town shot him, when he was walking in the town wearing his military uniform.
My parents met during the Civil War. In 1919 they got married. They didn’t have a traditional wedding. They registered their marriage in a registry office and in the evening they had a dinner party with their relatives at my mother’s home.
The fate of my mother’s family was tragic. According to the archives grandfather Iona and grandmother were kept in the Warsaw ghetto where they perished. Her older brother Yakov also perished there. He was single and had no children. Gintsia Bialskaya, which was her family name, had three children. Her older son Elek Bialskiy, born in 1900, big, fair-haired, with nicely-groomed moustache, finished an Agricultural College in Poland before the occupation, defended his candidate’s dissertation and was a teacher. During the occupation he went to work for a landlord. Elek did not look like a Jew and besides, his landlord gave shelter to him rescuing him from deportation to the ghetto. He survived and lived and worked in Poland for many years. Another son Avraam Bialskiy perished in 1939, when Hitler troops invaded Poland. Gintsia’s daughter Tsyrtse was married. She gave birth to a girl few days before Poland was invaded in 1939.
Elek took this girl to a Catholic nunnery where he said that she was Polish and the nuns raised the girl calling her Carina. Tsyrtse and her husband and Gintsia perished in the ghetto. After the Great Patriotic War Elek began his search for this girl. He addressed the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee 8, Chairman of the Soviet Informbureau Lozovskiy, and either Lozovskiy or his associate Yuzefovich went to Poland, found Carina and brought her to Moscow. Yuzefovich or one of his assistants adopted Carina. What happened was that after the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was defeated Lozovskiy and Yuzefovich were executed, and some distant relatives gave shelter to the girl and raised her.
Elek took this girl to a Catholic nunnery where he said that she was Polish and the nuns raised the girl calling her Carina. Tsyrtse and her husband and Gintsia perished in the ghetto. After the Great Patriotic War Elek began his search for this girl. He addressed the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee 8, Chairman of the Soviet Informbureau Lozovskiy, and either Lozovskiy or his associate Yuzefovich went to Poland, found Carina and brought her to Moscow. Yuzefovich or one of his assistants adopted Carina. What happened was that after the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was defeated Lozovskiy and Yuzefovich were executed, and some distant relatives gave shelter to the girl and raised her.
My father worked in the pharmacy and later he became director of a pharmaceutical school in Poltava. My mother worked and studied in college. The family lived in the same house where their parents had lived. The new regime renamed the street to Komsomolskaya. My parents were allowed to keep two rooms, though they were really big, about 30 square meters each. My mother went to work as an accountant in prison. She had a kind heart and began to take messages and parcels to prisoners and my father insisted that she quit her job, or she would have been arrested. My mother went to work as a German lecturer in Poltava Construction College where she later became chief of department.
Our apartment became a communal apartment 11. My father’s sisters, their husbands and children often got together in our apartment to celebrate birthdays and Soviet holidays. We didn’t observe any Jewish traditions or celebrate holidays. I don’t remember any Jewish celebrations in my childhood.
Lubov Rozenfeld Biography
My great grandfather on my father’s side Mordko Bulkin was born in Zvenigorodka village of Byshev district Kiev province in the 1850s. This was a small village of about 100 houses. Jews constituted about one third of the total population. There was a synagogue and cheder and a shochet in the village. According to the family history he owned a mill and that was how his surname derived from the Russian word ‘bulka’ – ‘a bun’. The village lay in a picturesque area near the wood and Chasov Yar. Mordko built a saw mill near the forest and became a timber manufacturer. His wife Hanna was a housewife.