After I recovered Alia’s tenant helped me to get employment at the radio plant evacuated from Moscow. I turned 16 and had a passport. I walked to work and back home. When it rained the road was washed out and there was a narrow and slippery path along a precipice. There was clay sticking to holes. There were kilograms of clay. Our shop manufactured radios and special radios in soft cases for wounded so that they could listen to the radio in bed. I coiled transformers with a little engine. I worked 12 hours a day. There was a meter. I had to strain my eyes to see numbers on it in the dim electric lighting. Our shop was in a former department store storage facility. There was a window very high from the floor and we actually didn’t get any daylight. There was a bulb over each workplace. We worked in shifts: one week from 8 am till 8 pm and another week a night shift: from 8 pm till 8 am. When I worked day shifts in winter I stayed overnight at the plant since it was dark already at 8 pm. The shift switch day was our only day off. I was a Stakhanovite and an active Komsomol member. My monthly salary was 600-700 and sometimes 800 rubles. This money was just enough to buy bread in stores sold per coupons. Our family was starving: we ate zatirukha [a kind of porridge] and made borsch from vine leaves.
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Displaying 50191 - 50220 of 50561 results
Malea Veselnitskaya Biography
My father was released from the army, but in 1943 he was recruited to the so-called labor army. Its units were involved the construction of defense facilities. Father had duodenal ulcer and might have been released had he insisted, but he said ‘I want to go to the front’. He left holding his hands on his stomach. He exchanged everything he had for food on the way, but it was not enough. He was on the train 12 days and ad one meal per day – his ulcer opened. In Moscow he got off the train and was sent to work as receptionist in the institute named after Molotov. However, his condition got worse and he had to go to hospital. My older brother Semyon whose unit was moving from Leningrad to Stalingrad Front was going via Moscow. He obtained a permit for few hours’ leave from his commanding officers to visit our father. When he came to see him he found our father exhausted: he weighed 42 kg. His diagnosis was: general tuberculosis. My brother left some money with an attendant to buy food for my father. He almost missed his train. We were notified that father died in hospital in 1943 and his body was incinerated.
The local population in Tashkent was friendly. We got along well with Uzbeks, Tajiks, Russians and Ukrainians. Nationality didn’t matter. Only once I faced open hatred to Jews. One weekend my cousin sister Etia, Yuda’s daughter invited me to visit them in Chirchik. There were crowds of people at the railway station and we had actually to push into the train when someone pushed me away and said ‘Yours are here, too!’ ‘Who are yours? We are all in the same boat!’ – I didn’t quite catch what he meant at first.
We lived in terrible conditions in the summer kitchen of aunt Chaya. When it rained the water poured down the walls that were not fixed properly. I wrote my older brother about it. Semyon wrote a letter to the Central Committee of the Communist party of Uzbekistan. Officials from the district Party committee came with inspection and they gave us a room. Well, it was at the world’s end, anyway. We heated it with kazanchik: a cone-shaped iron cast cauldron with an opening on the side where coal or wood were loaded. We bought chips or mother rarely bought a bunch of wood. When it rained the water poured down through the roof. Every summer the locals mixed clay with airbricks to install them on the roof. The owner of our lodging didn’t do it and we had leakage again and again. I wrote my brother another letter and he complained. We received another lodging in a summer kitchen in the yard of a house that belonged to wealthy owners. It was small, but it had wooden floors, metal roof and a stove. There was a table by the wall and a wooden couch. I came from work, washed myself and went to sleep.
At the end of the war I worked 8-hour shifts. I went to the cinema, theater and discotheques. We went to the musical comedy and Russian theater in Tashkent. We often went to the cinema. I bought tickets for all girls in our shop and later they paid me back. Tickets to the cinema cost 7 rubles. We saw Soviet films: ‘At 6 pm after the war’, ‘A pig-tender and a shepherd’ and a ‘Slow flier’. There were parties at our plant at the end of the war. My mother received a sateen robe as her cleaning uniform and she altered it into a dress with red rimming for me. One evening a Korean musician played the piano and sang the romance ‘Oh, these black eyes’. I was standing in front of the piano and he kept looking at me. He went to accompany me back home, so I had these fleeting dates, but nothing serious. I was very humble.
My brothers wrote us from the front. Ruvim wrote that he was a private in an artillery unit. He was wounded and was in hospital. He met with Semyon near Stalingrad. My older brother was trying to have Ruvim transferred to his unit, but it didn’t work. Then Ruvim sent us nice cards from Budapest. Ruvim perished in Sarbogard in Hungary on 6 March 1945. He was 25 years old.
My older brother Semyon fought near Moscow, Stalingrad. Got in encirclement near Smolensk and took part in the break-through of the blockade of Leningrad [12].
My brother came for us in Tashkent in 1945. He said ‘There are few of us left. Let’s stick together’. We moved to Neman. My brother and his wife lived in two small rooms. There is no need to say that his wife was not very happy to see us. Officers’ wives came from villages and were only interested to talk about their kitchen gardens. I had nothing in common with them. I asked my brother to help me obtain permission to borrow books from the library. Life was so dull there! There was no Russian population in Neman, only Germans. The town was ruined and we were afraid to walk when it got dark. My mother and I always went out together.
Once I attended a party where young people got together to dance to a record player and a young officer paid attention to me. His name was Michael Veselnitski. Shortly afterward Michael proposed to me. I liked him. He was shy and didn’t drink. We got married in 1947. We lived in the two-bedroom apartment with my husband’s parents in Neman.
My husband was chief of the topographic department of the military unit in Neman.
In 1949 at the height of the campaign against cosmopolitans [14] military doctor Zinovi Braslavski, husband of my mother cousin brother Yakov’s sister Maria Braslavskaya was arrested in Lvov. Maria and I were in evacuation in Tashkent together and we corresponded later on. She wrote us that Zinovi was arrested when they were going back home after the cinema. He only managed to tell his wife: ‘Write Stalin’. There was no court and he was sent to a camp in the north. Zinovi was kept there 4 years and a half.
My husband became a surveyor in Meliovodstroy Company. Ida and I joined him in 1951. We rented a lodging in Zaslavskogo Street. It used to be a cowshed in the past. The owner installed new floors and whitewashed the walls. We lived there two years. My daughter went to a boarding kindergarten. Later we rented a 16-square-meter room in Novaya Street and I took my mother to live with us. When the owner of the room demanded that we moved out immediately we sued her. A judge promised to help us for 1 000 rubles. We collected this amount, had a favorable decision and received the ownership documents for this room. My husband often went on business trips. I read a lot and tried to interest Ida with reading. My mother and I often sat by the stove and I told her the stories I read. Ida also listened reclining on her folding bed.
I was doing the laundry when I heard that Stalin died, in 1953. Bending over the tub I began to sob and mother also burst into tears. We both kept saying ‘What will happen now and what do we do?’ We believed Stalin unconventionally. Of course, my attitude changed after I got and read more information.
However, I faced anti-Semitism. I couldn’t find a job due to my Item 5 [16] in my passport. My acquaintance Polina Yakovlevna Zhadan, a Jew, helped me to get a job of a cashier in Odessa Machine Building College. I replaced her while she was on her maternity leave. I learned my duties fast and director and chief accountant were happy with my performance. I had a good handwriting and our accountant often asked me to write reports. When the cashier came back from her maternity leave they wanted to make me a lab assistant, but deputy director refused for some over made reason. It was clear that the reason was my Jewish identity. Then I heard about a vacancy of cashier in the College of Credits and Economics. Their human resources manager, a retired military, confirmed that they had a vacancy, but when he looked into my passport he lost interest in me and said that he would send me a card with his reply. Needless to say that I never received any card. I still remember how abusing his spiteful manner was. I couldn’t understand what my fault was. I had an acquaintance that was in good relationships with chief accountant of the medical equipment plant and I went to work there in 1960.
My husband went to work as a topographer in Ukryuzhgiprovodkhoz Company in 1961. He had been on the lists for receiving a lodging for 10 years being a veteran of the war, but only when their organization began housing construction we gained a hope. In 1962 we received a 3-bedroom apartment.
My children Ida and Yakov studied in school #56. They never complained about any anti-Semitic demonstration in their school. They went along well with heir schoolmates. After finishing school in 1965 Ida entered the College of Industrial Automatics. When she finished it I helped her to get employment as design engineer at the medical equipment plant.
My younger son Yakov finished school in 1969. He had concerns about entering a college in Odessa due to his Jewish identity and went to Saratov. My husband’s uncle lived there and worked as logistics supervisor at the College of Public Economy. He promised to put in a word for my son. At the entrance exam Yakov was asked why he came to enter this college in Saratov when there was a similar college in his hometown in Odessa. He replied that there was no that specific faculty in the college. When I received a telegram that Yakov was admitted I went hysterical from joy.
When in the late 1980s our acquaintances and relatives began moving to Israel my husband felt like moving there, too. He even went to the visa office (OVIR) and paid our last savings from the pension for application forms. But I told him flatly that I didn’t want to move anywhere, that I did want to travel to see the world, but I wouldn’t be able to live in another country and I want to live in Odessa. A number of my relatives moved to Israel from Tashkent. I always listen to news from Israel. I sympathize with Israel because there are our people living there. Why do they have to suffer from hatred of the Arabs? I feel sorry for them.
When I retired in 1886 my pension wasn't enough to make a living and I went to work as a vendor at the newspaper stand near our house. This was hard work: it was cold in winter and stuffy in summer. I often heard people saying ‘zhydoskaya morda’ [abusive and rude expression] about me. I worked there a little longer than a year and a half and quit after they gave me 10-ruble raise to my pension. I received 117 rubles.
I had different attitudes toward Perestroika [17] and the fall down of the USSR. On the one hand, there is more freedom and on the other hand, it’s a sorry situation. We were equal in the Soviet country and now there are rich and poor. I don’t like this national segregation whatsoever. I never cared about national identities. My cousin brother Semyon, uncle Abram son’s friend often visited us in Odessa. He was Uzbek. They called each other brothers. My brother helped him to put his seriously ill son in hospital in Odessa. When this Uzbek friend of his died my brother supported his wife and son. They were staying in my apartment when visiting and I always had guests from various parts of the Soviet Union. Even those whom I knew little got an opportunity to stay with me. Sometimes we had to sleep on the floor when there were more people than could fit.
Perestroika made life much worse than before. My children lost their permanent job. The Avtoagregat plant where my daughter Ida worked was closed. The plant where my son Yakov worked in Lipetsk was also closed. He couldn’t find a job for a long time until he got employed as an accountant in a cooperative that manufactured furniture for dachas. This company was closed, too. My son divorced his wife Inna. She became a drunkard. Yakov has cancer. He’s had a surgery and then chemical therapy. Yakov and his third wife Tamara visited me recently. Our acquaintances wanted to find him a job in a company in Odessa, but failed. They returned to Lipetsk. He works as an accountant in a cafe and two other jobs since he needs money for another surgery.
Perestroika made life much worse than before. My children lost their permanent job. The Avtoagregat plant where my daughter Ida worked was closed. The plant where my son Yakov worked in Lipetsk was also closed. He couldn’t find a job for a long time until he got employed as an accountant in a cooperative that manufactured furniture for dachas. This company was closed, too. My son divorced his wife Inna. She became a drunkard. Yakov has cancer. He’s had a surgery and then chemical therapy. Yakov and his third wife Tamara visited me recently. Our acquaintances wanted to find him a job in a company in Odessa, but failed. They returned to Lipetsk. He works as an accountant in a cafe and two other jobs since he needs money for another surgery.
After my husband died Ida and I could hardly make ends meet. We were literally starving and my friends advised me to address Gmilus Hesed. I called them in autumn 1996. They sent a representative. She visited us and put down all necessary information. Shortly afterward I began to receive food packages once a month. Three years ago they offered me free meals that they delivered home. When Ida had her second infarction they began to deliver a meal for her as well.
I identify myself as a Russian Jew. I understand Yiddish, but I cannot speak it. I know little about Jewish traditions. My husband and I never talked about them. I am 77 and I have never been at a synagogue, but I respect religious Jews and I am glad that with this rebirth of the Jewish life in Odessa people have freedom of faith. My children identify themselves as Jews, but they do not pay much attention to Jewish traditions. They are not religious. We do not celebrate neither Soviet nor observe Jewish holidays. I cannot read due to my poor sight, although Ida brings interesting books. I watch films on TV and am interested in politics and events in the world. I am often sleepless at night and then I recall my life. It’s a pity I’ve had more bad than good in it.
My grandfather was a beer dealer. He purchased beer at the brewery and sold it riding his wagon to different districts of the town.
My mother Dina Mogilevskaya was born in Kremenchug in 1897. After her mother died and the children’s stepmother chased them out of their home my mother went to work. She was 5 years old. Their neighbors sent her to work at the tobacco factory. My mother worked at the cigarette loading shop. She had to load tobacco into cigarettes standing on a box to reach the table. When a foreman came into the shop other employees hid my mother. Later she earned by babysitting. My mother didn’t go to school. At the age of 14 my mother and her sister Chaya became apprentices in a stocking shop. Chaya learned the profession, but my mother failed. A year later my mother returned to the tobacco factory where she worked in shifts.
My father Isaac Ostrovski was born in Alexandria in 1893. He could read and write in Russian. I guess he finished an elementary school.
In 1914, when World War I began, he was mobilized to the tsarist army. He was captured by Germans. He was in Memel, [Klaipeda since 1923]. Germans treated prisoners-of-war well and my father even had a photograph where prisoners were photographed with chief and guards of the camp.
In 1914, when World War I began, he was mobilized to the tsarist army. He was captured by Germans. He was in Memel, [Klaipeda since 1923]. Germans treated prisoners-of-war well and my father even had a photograph where prisoners were photographed with chief and guards of the camp.
My parents got married in 1919. I don’t know any details of their wedding.
Doctors said they had to change the climate and they returned to Romny, Sumy region in Ukraine. We lived in two rooms there. We had beds and a wardrobe in one room and a table, chairs and a stove in another. Mother cooked on the stove in winter and on a primus stove in summer. Father worked in a shop manufacturing shoe polish. Mother was a housewife. In the late 1920s, when NEP [3] was over, my father’s shop closed and he lost his job.
In 1931 my parents heard about the Jewish Republic that Stalin was establishing in Far East and decided to go there. We sold our furniture and moved to Birobidzhan [4]. Actually, there was no town built yet and we were accommodated in a wooden barrack in the taiga. My father became a cashier. He went to the bank to receive salary for all employees on a tractor with a tractor driver. My mother was very concerned that he might be killed for money. There were many convicts in the area. My mother worked as a milkmaid. Life was very hard. The hardships were beyond our parents’ expectations.
Neither father nor mother could find a job and our father decided that we had to go back to Romny. He went there alone to find a lodging and a job and later we joined him. We moved to Romny in 1933, but our situation did not improve. There was terrible famine in Ukraine [5]. We gathered potato peels in dump pits, fried and ate them. There came agents from a neighboring sovkhoz offering work in the field and payment with bread. My brothers, being 13 and 9 years old went to work there. At the end of their first week Semyon and Ruvim received one eighth of a loaf of brown bread with addition of straw. My mother’s brother Aron sent Yuda few dollars from America. Mother bought me a brown sateen dress, cotton pants for brothers, a shirt for father and something for herself in Torgsin stores [6]. Our father had a job where his salary was 360 rubles per month, but it wasn’t paid in timely manner. There were lines to buy bread and at times we had to stand all night through to get bread. 20 loaves were supplied to a store for the whole district and sometimes we had to stand in lines few days to get some bread.
In late 1933 our family moved to Kremenchug. It was easier to get a job in an industrial town. My mother’s cousin brother on her mother’s side Yakov worked at the tobacco factory. He was a member of the Party and chairman of a housing cooperative. He helped us to receive a 14 square meter room where we lived: my father, mother, Ruvim, Semyon and I. We stoked the oven with wood: there was no coal. We stored wood in the corridor. My father and brothers fetched water from a pump 4 houses away from our house. They paid 4 kopecks to the owner of the pump and he turned on the tap. We fetched water for washing the floors from a neighbor living across the street from us. She had a pump that took a long while to pump water. Our mother liked to have the room clean. She brushed the floor with a brush until it gained a color of an egg, washed with water and then dried it. There were white rugs on the floor. We had white starched gauze curtains on the windows. Our bed lien was always clean. We had quilted blankets and pillows and mattresses stuffed with down.