Biography topics

When Hesed was established in independent Ukraine I became chairman of the Board of Hesed. This organization supports older people and helps them to communicate and satisfy their spiritual needs. I'm the chief editor of Hesed News, the newspaper published by Hesed. I do this work for free. My wife and I receive a pension given to former inmates of ghettos. We can manage with what we receive, and when somebody needs help we are always happy to provide assistance. I go to the synagogue on Jewish holidays and on the death anniversaries [Jahrzeit] of members of my family. My wife and I celebrate Jewish holidays and Sabbath at home. We have lived a difficult, but interesting life. I'm grateful that we've found each other in this big world.

I was rather skeptical about perestroika, which began in 1986. I thought it was another 'activity' of the Communist Party. After some time I saw that things began to change for the better. Newspapers became more interesting, and books, which had been banned in the past, were published. The first steps of the restoration of the Jewish spirituality and culture were made at that time, and I became actively involved in this movement. I was chairman of the Jewish charity committee that was established during the Soviet regime in 1988. Many problems that had made our life difficult before perestroika were eliminated. Religion, although it wasn't officially acknowledged by the state, wasn't forbidden any more. The attitude towards Jews changed for the better. Jewish writers began to have their books published, which hadn't happened before. A Jewish association of culture and a public cultural fund were established in that period. I participated in both organizations. Jewish life began to revive even before Ukraine declared its independence in 1991. Jewish organizations, theaters and art collectives were established. People visited Jewish exhibitions. A Jewish library and school were opened in Chernovtsy.

My father died in 1975. We buried him in accordance with Jewish traditions in the Jewish cemetery. There were two rabbis at his funeral - I invited one, and the other one came when he heard about my father's death. My father was buried wrapped in a shroud. I recited the required prayers [the Kaddish]. He was a respected man among Jews in Chernovtsy and many of them came to his funeral. After the funeral my wife and I couldn't observe all Jewish traditions: we worked and couldn't even leave work for a week. My mother died in 1983. Since I had worked at school for a long time my colleagues were supposed to come to the funeral. It wasn't safe to have a traditional religious funeral with teachers involved because they were responsible for the education of the young generation. There were no colleagues and pupils of ours at my father's funeral, but they came to my mother's funeral. A religious teacher would have lost his job in an instant. The funeral was to be in the afternoon, and we had a religious ritual completed in the morning. We buried her without a prayer, but in a shroud as required, in the Jewish cemetery beside my father's grave.

. My wife and I had long summer vacations, which lasted for two months. We usually visited our parents. Sometimes we spent our vacations elsewhere; at the seashore or traveling to other towns. We visited Moscow, Kiev and Leningrad.

My wife and I spoke Yiddish at home. We didn't celebrate holidays at home because teachers were referred to as 'ideological workers'. We weren't allowed to discuss religious issues with our pupils, or be religious ourselves. The practice of religion was outlawed in the USSR. However, we visited my parents to celebrate with them. We always took part when my father conducted the seder on Pesach. The only thing my wife and I could observe was fasting. We celebrated Soviet holidays at work - teachers and pupils just had to take part in the parades, and then there were concerts at school where schoolchildren performed. Afterwards teachers got together at a table to celebrate.

Two years later, when our assignment was over, we decided to return to Chernovtsy, but we couldn't find any vacancies at schools. There were vacancies for teachers of physics and mathematics in a Moldavian school on the outskirts of Chernovtsy. My wife and I spoke fluent Moldavian and got employed at that school. It took us several years to find a job in Chernovtsy. I finally got a job at a secondary school in Chernovtsy in 1971 and worked there until I retired in 1992.

I didn't face any anti-Semitism at work. I still keep in touch with my former colleagues, Jewish and non-Jewish. I value people for their human qualities. I did suffer from state anti-Semitism. When I was awarded a title for my achievements in education, my documents were submitted to the Ministry of Education four times before they gave their approval. At school I was head of the school trade union committee for 24 years and people brought their issues and problems forward to me.

After the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party 18, where Khrushchev 19 made a speech denouncing the cult of Stalin, I was full of hope about a happier life. I believed that the truth had finally won and that we would have a decent life, but things continued like before.

We got married in 1954 when we were in our final year at university. We had a civil ceremony in the district registry office. We didn't have a Jewish wedding because it was a hard and complicated time and authorities might have punished us if we had had a Jewish religious ceremony. My mother cooked a wedding dinner for members of the family and our closest friends. Upon graduation my wife and I got mandatory job assignments 17 and went to a small village in Chernovtsy region to work as teachers of mathematics.

In January 1953 the Doctors' Plot 15 began. Students at the Faculty of Mathematics didn't believe the official explanation, which was that Jewish doctors intended to poison comrade Stalin. We didn't share our thoughts though because there was a KGB informer in each group. We knew who it was in our group, and he knew that we knew. This student was involved with the KGB somehow, but we knew that he didn't report on us because he understood it was dirty business. I don't remember how we found out that he was working for the KGB; students just told each other to be quiet in his presence. We treated him loyally. The Doctors' Plot had no impact on my family. There were rumors that all Jews were to be deported to Birobidzhan 16. It might have happened, if Stalin hadn't died in 1953. He was announced to be ill on 1st March and died on 5th March. Jews used to say, 'See, it's God's will that he died on that day'. I was one of the few who were glad that he passed away.

Fenia was born in the Bessarabian town of Brinceni in 1931. She was the only child in a religious Jewish family. Her father, Aron Trachtenbroit, was an accountant and her mother, Mina Trachtenbroit [nee Zilberman], a housewife. Fenia had a happy childhood until the Germans occupied Brinceni at the beginning of the war. All Jews of the town were taken to Transnistria. Fenia and her parents stayed in the ghetto of Kopaigorod, Vinnitsa region, until 1944. It was a miracle that they survived. They had typhoid in the ghetto. They lost about 15 close relatives to the war. After they were liberated in March 1944, Fenia and her parents returned to Brinceni where Fenia finished a secondary school. We met at the entrance exams for Chernovtsy University and have been together ever since.

I finished school in 1949. I knew there were restrictions for the admission of Jews to higher educational institutions, but I submitted my documents to the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at Chernovtsy University anyway, passed my entrance exams and was admitted. I was lucky, though. My future wife, Fenia Trachtenbroit, also took exams at Chernovtsy University. She passed them with the highest grades. Yet she was not admitted, just like so many other Jews. If any of them went to complain that Ukrainian nationals were admitted even though they only had satisfactory grades, they were offered to attend lectures as candidates to students - with the possibility to be enrolled if another student was expelled. This was no guarantee of admission, but it was a chance.

I was in the 10th grade in 1948, during the period of the campaign against cosmopolitans. Actually it was a veiled struggle against Jews and people realized it. Newspaper publications blamed 'rootless cosmopolitans' and disclosed the Jewish names of scientists and art activists that had taken on Russian pseudonyms [in fact common names]. Many Jewish artists and poets took Russian names as pseudonyms because those who had Jewish names had fewer chances to become known: Jewish actors didn't get parts in theater productions, writers didn't get their work published. They didn't change their actual name; it was still used in their passports.

State anti-Semitism was openly expressed. My family didn't face any anti- Semitism, but we heard stories from our friends and acquaintances. I drew back from religion. I was a pioneer and a Komsomol member and used to a somewhat critical attitude towards God.

I went to the 6th grade in Chernovtsy, although I had only studied three years before the war, but pupils were admitted to the classes that corresponded to their age. There were many Jewish children at school and in my class. There were also Jewish teachers. I was fond of physics and mathematics. I became a pioneer and took an active part in pioneer activities: I was the pioneer leader of a group of Young Octobrists 13 and took part in the collection of scrap. In the 8th grade I became a Komsomol 14 member.

Matzah was sold in bakeries and synagogues before 1948, but then the Jewish school and theater were closed. There was only one synagogue left, and it became difficult to get matzah. I remember that there was an underground bakery. If the Soviet authorities had found it, they would have closed it for sure. My parents picked up matzah at night as well. We always had matzah on Pesach and ate no bread. My mother was ill in the last years of her life and couldn't eat matzah - she had mamaliga instead.

There were at least five synagogues in Chernovtsy before 1948. My father was very happy about it. He prayed at home every day and went to the synagogue after work on Saturdays. My mother joined him on Jewish holidays. We celebrated all Jewish holidays but my father didn't make a sukkah in the yard of our crowded house. On Purim my mother made hamantashen and sent shelakhmones to our relatives and acquaintances. My parents fasted on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and celebrated Pesach. My father conducted the seder according to all rules. My parents and I liked going to the Jewish theater. When I was 13 I had my bar mitzvah.

We felt at home in Chernovtsy. Before the war Jews constituted 60% of its population. After the war the number dropped dramatically, but one could still hear Yiddish in the streets. There was a Jewish school, a Jewish theater and synagogues in town. Of course, there were no charity organizations during the Soviet period. Jews knew and supported each other. If somebody was having a difficult time people collected money and helped their neighbors as much as they could. Local people told us that there were demonstrations of anti-Semitism after the war that hadn't been there before the war. A person could be abused or humiliated just because he was a Jew. To be frank, this was mostly done by those who came to Chernovtsy from the USSR. But I think that in a way anti-Semitism has always existed. State anti-Semitism started with the campaign against 'cosmopolitans' 12 in 1948.

We moved to Chernovtsy and got a two-bedroom apartment after a little while. There were many vacant apartments in Chernovtsy from the locals who had left for Romania. I went to school, my father worked in a store and my mother was a housewife.

In March 1944 Soviet tanks came to the territory of the ghetto in Peschana. The Gendarmes and the policemen had run away the day before. We were free! We hugged and kissed our rescuers. Of all the 14 people of our family, who had left Vad-Rashkov for Kodyma in July 1941, only three of us survived: my parents and I. We decided to go home. We were actually following the frontline. We walked and sometimes villagers gave us a lift on their coaches. When we reached Vad-Rashkov we didn't recognize it. In 1941 Romanians, Soviets and locals had burned down our neighborhood. We couldn't even find the location where our house used to be. Grandfather Shaya's house had also been burned down. The locals told us that the Germans had killed all rabbis.

They advised us to go to the ghetto in Peschana village, Odessa region, where the situation was not as tense as in other ghettos. When it got warmer in spring they wrapped us in winter coats and took us to Peschana on a coach.

We stayed in the ghetto several days and then we got into a group of Jews that were to be taken to Dzhurin village. Fortunately we were taken back to Peschana. There were no mass shootings in Peschana, and locals were sympathetic. We were also given food. We settled down in an abandoned shed. The inmates of the ghetto were taken to work, but we were given meals, which was different from other ghettos. My mother and father did miscellaneous work, helped local people in their kitchen gardens or did housework. They got food for their work. We weren't starving, but of course the inmates of the ghetto suffered from hunger, diseases and unsanitary conditions. But at least there were no mass shootings in this ghetto in Peschana. My father observed Jewish traditions in the ghetto. He prayed every day. My parents celebrated Pesach even then. There was no food, but my father conducted the seder according to the rules.

On 7th November all Jews in Kamenka were ordered to leave their houses and taken in the direction of Rashkov. They were convoyed by gendarmes, who shot those that couldn't catch up with the others. Later this road was called death march. We walked in the daytime and stayed wherever we were during the night. We passed Kodyma, Sloboda, Abomelnikov and Borschi. On the way we were joined by other Jews from the locations we passed, but there were fewer and fewer of us and dead bodies were left on the road. One day Aunt Maika and her two daughters perished. Our convoy kept it no secret that we were being taken away to be shot.

Once we stayed in a cowshed in Gvozdovka village overnight, which was full of dead bodies from a previous death march. Policemen told us that we were going to be shot in the village of Kriva, which we reached at the end of December. My parents, another family of four people and two men decided to escape. We managed to escape when the policemen weren't around and headed to a village across a forest. The winter of 1942 was very cold. We stayed close to villages and went to houses begging for something to eat. It also happened that people invited us to come into their houses for a rest. Many people let us into their houses, gave us food and let us stay until we got warm. We stayed overnight in fields, haystacks or half-ruined houses. Once we stayed in an abandoned house with broken windows and doors in the vicinity of Kruchinov village. Villagers brought us food and fixed the windows and doors. They offered us that we could stay there and brought us food and wood for a month.

After her sons were shot Aunt Taibl decided to get out of Kodyma with her daughters and went to a village on the bank of the river where she had an acquaintance. She did so, but soon afterwards we heard that the locals drowned all Jews of the village in the river. I don't remember the name of this village.

On the first days of the war the Germans ordered to keep houses unlocked. They robbed people who came to the houses at any time of the day. They only took valuables. They took away my father's gold watch and his raccoon fur coat. Jews were ordered to have a Star of David attached to their chest and back. Later they were ordered to replace them with yellow stars.

After a few days a unit of German militaries in black uniforms broke into the Jewish neighborhood. They ordered men and 14-15 year-old boys to come out of their houses. They took them to the vicinity of Kodyma. My father was still in Vad-Rashkov, and his absence saved his life. On that day more than a hundred men were shot. Maika's husband, Iosif Naumovich, her son Moisey and Taibl's sons, Leo and David, were among them. The rest of the men were kept hostages. The Germans tortured them for a few days before they shot them, too.

Air raids began in our town at the end of July, although there were no military faculties in town. We heard the roar of the approaching frontline. Evacuation began. A ferry, pulled by a motorboat, came to the bank of the Dnestr at night. People boarded it to be taken to the opposite bank to Rashkov village. We evacuated as well: my father, my mother and I, my father's sister Maika and her four children and Taibl, the wife of my father's stepbrother, and her four children. From Rashkov we headed to Kodyma, Odessa region, where we hoped to catch a train. My father went back to Vad-Rashkov to pick up our belongings. We were to wait for him in Kodyma. When we arrived in Kodyma the railway station was on fire, and there were no trains. We got accommodation in the house of a local woman. On the next day the Germans arrived in the village.

Mariam came to see us in July 1941 and told us that we had to leave as soon as possible. She suggested that she would take Beila and that we should all meet in Odessa where she had acquaintances. The official information claimed that the situation was stable and that the Soviet troops were advancing to the West. We believed it. Mariam and my sister left. They got to Rostov, where Mariam got a job in a school and Beila went to the 2nd grade. We heard about their fate after the war from survivors. They told us that Mariam wanted to leave when the Germans approached Rostov in 1942, but the school management told her that she had no right to leave the school until the official evacuation was announced. The management left, and she stayed behind. She and my sister were captured by the Germans. That's all we know. They must have been shot along with many other Jews in Rostov.

On 22nd June 1941 the Great Patriotic War began. My sister Beila, who had finished the 1st grade, was spending her vacation with Grandmother Sarah- Khona in Chinisheutsi. Aunt Mariam also went there on vacation. We didn't have any information about the situation in Europe. Very few people had radios, and newspapers published false information for the most part. During the first days of the war newspapers wrote that the Soviet troops had advanced as far as Bucharest. We believed that the Soviet army was undefeatable, and it never occurred to us that they would be leaving town after town with little resistance. We also heard the sounds of bombardment and explosions.

My father wasn't considered rich. He didn't have any employees in his store, but did all work himself and the Soviet authorities didn't consider him an 'exploiter'. Rich people owned a lot more than my father, who just worked to provide for his family. The exchange rate was 1 ruble for 40 lei. The income of locals dropped dramatically, but the newcomers bought everything they saw in stores. We were surprised when they asked, 'Have you got more of it?' We couldn't understand. My parents were surprised that goods that hadn't been in demand in the past couple of years were sold out in an instant. Within two weeks the store and the storehouses were empty. My father used to purchase goods in Budapest and Bucharest, but he didn't have this opportunity any longer. My father and many other owners of stores went bankrupt. Every now and then the military announced a training alarm including the evacuation of the public. They took away goods from stores and never returned them. There were lines in stores - something that we had never seen before.

On 28th June 1940 Soviet troops entered Bessarabia. People came into the streets to greet them. Many went to the bank of the river. Many of them had relatives in the Soviet Union they hadn't seen for 22 years. People on the opposite bank were shouting and asking for clothes, shoes and fabrics. We couldn't understand what it might mean, but when we saw the poverty of the Soviet reality we understood. How ignorant we were thinking that justice ruled the Soviet country!

The wealthiest families were arrested on the first days of the Soviet regime. My great-uncle Mayer Uchitel, who lived in Chinisheutsi, was a very wealthy man. He was deprived of his property and sent into exile in Siberia for six years. His wife and son, who was an engineer, stayed in Chinisheutsi. His daughter lived in Kishinev. Regretfully, I don't remember their names. She managed to evacuate at the beginning of the war, but Mayer's wife and son were killed by the Germans at the very beginning of the war. My grandmother's brother was a skilled businessman and even in exile he was responsible for accounting in prison. He returned after his term of exile was over.

In 1940 the Soviet Union declared an ultimatum to Romania demanding that Moldavia and Bessarabia be returned to the Soviet Union. Our town was located at the border of Romania with the USSR. We were separated by the Dnestr River. The majority of the population spoke good Russian since it was only 22 years before when this area belonged to Russia. They remembered the language well. People believed the Soviet propaganda and thought that the USSR was the country where people were equal, regardless of their nationality, and that there was no anti-Semitism. Even wealthier people thought that life would be good once the Soviet regime was established. My parents also believed it.

My mother took me and my sister to our grandparents' for our summer vacations. We went there in a horse-driven coach. My father stayed in Vad- Rashkov because he couldn't leave his store. My mother stayed with her parents a few days and left for home afterwards. My sister and I sometimes spent the whole summer with our grandparents. There was a forest near their house. We went there with our local friends. We also went to swim in the river and played games.

There were many Jewish children in the Romanian school. I studied successfully and had no problems at school. There was no anti-Semitism. Sometimes other children jokingly touched the lips of a Jewish child with a slice of pork fat because they knew that Jews didn't eat pork, but these were just harmless shenanigans. I had Romanian and Jewish friends at school. We didn't care about nationality then. After school I used to play with Jewish children who lived in my neighborhood. We visited one another and did our homework together.