They were very poor, almost starving. The children wore each other’s clothing until they became worn out. I remember my grandmother’s small house with thatched roof and low ceilings. There was a very small vegetable garden near the house. My grandmother grew vegetables to support the family. She also earned her living by sewing. She made skirts, aprons, pillowcases and sheets for peasant women.
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Displaying 50221 - 50250 of 50826 results
Mina Smolianskaya Biography
In her family they spoke Yiddish and she spoke Ukrainian to her neighbors and customers.
My husband was a skilled tailor. He studied in Bucharest before the war. He made men’s and women’s clothes.
The only problem was that tailors did not receive money regularly. Only when an order was ready their clients paid them. Sometimes we didn’t have money at all. We leased a part of our dwelling to have additional income.
When our children went to school I went to work at the button factory. I was working with the button press that I had to pull. There were corns on my palms – it was hard work. I earned 360 rubles per month. I had to make 16 thousand buttons per shift. It was a challenging job. If an employee managed to produce a planned quantity or more he might receive a bonus and have his photo on the Board of Honor. Some employees completed a double quantity per shift. Sometimes I offered them some money in exchange for a number of buttons, if I felt that I wasn’t going to handle a required standard. I just didn’t want to produce fewer buttons per shift.
When we moved to Chernovtsy I found out what happened to my family. My mother and sisters Donia, Surkah and Fania stayed in Chorniavka during the war. Somebody told Germans that my mother’s son was in the Soviet army. The local population sometimes cooperated with fascists. Germans threatened to kill those that were trying to help Jews and their families and people were scared and often reported to Germans. The Germans took all Jews to Pliskov where they shot them in the woods. My mother and three sisters perished there. Surka was the prettiest of all sisters and Germans raped her before killing.
In 1947 I went to Odessa to find out what happened to Rulia. Rulia’s neighbor told me that Rulia was shot by Germans near her house. Rulia’s sons were in the park at that time and her neighbor, a teacher, took the boys to her home when she saw that Germans captured Rulia. They lived with her for a month before somebody reported on them. Fascists took Naum and Efim and the teacher to the yard. They asked the woman why she had given shelter to the Jewish children. She replied that she didn’t know that they were Jews. Their commanding officer told the children to take off their clothes. Of course, they both were circumcised. The Germans made a fire in the yard and threw the boys into the fire. The teacher began to scream and they shot her.
Stalin died in 1953. Many people mourned for him. I didn’t cry and didn’t grieve. I cried over all my tears for my family. Besides, I understood that Stalin had brought no good to his people. I knew he would be replaced by someone else. They say where there is a neck there would be a yoke.
My husband came from a religious family and was religious. After we moved to Chernovtsy we began to attend the synagogue. At the beginning I went there to please my husband but gradually I remembered what my mother had taught me. We only attended it on big holidays, we always knew the dates of Jewish holidays; there were calendars at the synagogue and our acquaintances had calendars. We didn’t celebrate any holidays at home. We didn’t have enough money to celebrate. Before I went to work we lived from hand to mouth and I took count of every kopek that we had. Later when I began to work in 1952 we began to celebrate holidays. We celebrated Pesach and I cooked gefilte fish and chicken. We had matzah and I made puddings. I mean, we had traditional food, but we didn’t pray or conduct other rituals. I can’t say that I had any urge to observe traditions. I was raised during the Soviet period and celebrating Jewish holidays I only gave tribute to the memory of my parents.
However, my children have always identified themselves as Jews. They know Yiddish. They were not circumcised.
My husband and I liked guests and parties. We celebrated Jewish and Soviet holidays. We took advantage of every opportunity to have guests and party. We had fun singing and dancing when getting together with friends.
I didn’t take any part in public activities after I got married and didn’t take any effort to restore my membership in the party. I didn’t obtain my party membership identity card and was not registered as a communist. So there was no registration information about me in Chernovtsy. I took no interest in politics, either. I was a married woman and had other things to care about.
Our sons were doing well at school. In 1963 Victor finished a Russian secondary school.
It was difficult for a Jew to enter a higher educational institution. All our friends’ children were leaving for other towns. Victor went to Tomsk in Russia and entered the faculty of Physics and Mathematic at the University.
Upon graduation he returned to Chernovtsy and became a teacher of mathematics at school.
Victor married a colleague of his. His wife Ludmila, nee Gotman, is a Jew.
His older son Jacob was born in 1972 and his daughter Yana was born in 1976. They both went to Study in Israel under the student exchange program “Sokhnut”. They stayed in Israel after school.
We supported our daughter-in-law after our son died. We had supported them before as well: we bought a piano for our granddaughter and helped our son to buy an apartment. My husband worked 16 years after he retired and I worked 6 years more.
After finishing school Efim got fond of orienteering. He was very successful and was a permanent member of the sport team of the USSR.
Efim married a Russian woman. My husband and I and her parents were against their marriage. Her father threatened to kill my son with an ax and said that they didn’t want a Jew in their family. Well, the young people didn’t listen to what they were told. They got married. Her father didn’t come to their wedding. Only her mother came.
I heard the word “zhydovka” for the first time after the war. It was said by my daughter-in-law, we had had an argument with her – I don’t remember for what reason. I do not try to say that there was no anti-Semitism. I guess, it always existed, but almost all of my colleagues were Jews and so were my neighbors. Not all Russian people are bad, but many of them hate Jews. My older daughter-in-law told me that Efim’s wife loves him and tolerates his relatives, but she hates other Jews.
Efim entered the Institute of Physical Culture in Lvov after he turned 40 to get a diploma of higher education. He graduated from the Institute and became an international referee. He often goes on tours to the US and Israel.
His older daughter Anna married a Jewish young man and they moved to Israel. Now I have three grandchildren in Israel.
I remember how we heard about beginning of the war at 11 am on Sunday, 22 June 1941. My husband and I were going to the market to buy me a sewing machine when all of a sudden we heard an announcement that Hitler attacked our country. We went out and there were crowds of people standing in lines to buy essential commodities.
My husband was summoned to the army. At the beginning of July he was already sent to the front. In August 1941 I received the only letter from him. I had no information about him whatsoever. I don’t even know where his grave is. Much later an acquaintance of mine that was in the same regiment with Volodia told me that Volodia was killed near Kiev back in August 1941.
I kept working at the plant and evacuated on 18 September. There were announcements in the streets: “Enemy is at the gate to Odessa! The last ship is leaving. You have to leave, as Hitler exterminates Jews”. I ran home, packed whatever little I could and rushed to the “Russia” boat. We boarded the ship, but its commandment announced that the ship was leaving during the night to avoid bombing. We left on this ship. When this ship was on the way back to Odessa fascists bombed it and it sank. I evacuated with Mirrah, the wife of Volodia’s brother Haim and her mother.
The ship took us to Novorossiysk and from there we moved on by train. We didn’t know where we were going. Our trip lasted 18 days. Once the train stopped at a small station and we went out to take a breath of fresh air. A woman came to us asking where we were going. We were dirty and hungry and the woman told us to come to their collective farm to stay there until the war was over. People thought that the war was not going to last long. So, we went to Abganerovo station near Stalingrad in 1300 km from Odessa.
Mirrah and her mother went to dig trenches. Mirrah had never seen a spade before. She grew up in Odessa and didn’t know a thing about working with farm tools.
I worked at a military unit in Abganerovo. My profession was a painter, but I did everything I was told to do: I was appointed to a medical unit and had to take patients out for a walk, give enemas or take out patients’ pots.
In winter 1942 Germans occupied Stalingrad and we evacuated again. We stopped at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, 700 km to the east.