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Grigoriy Sirotta
Lvov
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Orlikova
Date of interview: July 2002

The families of my father and mother lived in the Pale of Settlement 1, not far from the town of Nova-Ushytsya. Regretfully, I don't remember my grandmothers or grandfathers. They died before I was born. I know that my grandfather on my father's side, Moisey Sirotta, was a pretty poor craftsman. He was very religious, observed all Jewish traditions and always wore a kippah a small cap. My father told me that my grandfather was a very hardworking man. He was a great hat maker. He only spoke Yiddish and communicated with other Jews of his circle. My father remembered that the house was full of hat stands with a large number of hats on them. My grandfather didn't know his parents, that's why our family name was Sirotta [Russian for 'orphan']. My grandfather died in 1909 at the age of 63.

Nobody in my family ever talked about my grandfather's wife. She died a long time ago, at the end of the 19th century. I have no idea what her name was and what she did. My grandfather and grandmother had five or six children. Apart from my father, David Sirotta, I only knew one of them, Moishe Sirotta, who was born in 1872. He became a wine-grower. I saw him once in my life. We visited him in Dunayevtsy when I was 3 years old. I was immensely impressed by the barrels of wine in his cellar. I know that he died of some disease in the 1920s. He didn't have a family of his own.

My father was born in Shcherbakovtsy village near Nova-Ushytsya in 1874. He went to cheder every morning like all other Jewish boys. He was just a little boy, and an assistant from cheder often had to carry him there from his home, especially in winter because my father and his brother Moishe only had one pair of shoes, which they had to share. There were children of 4 to 13 years at cheder. They were all doing their tasks in one classroom, reading or reciting, and it was very noisy. The rabbi, who was also the teacher at cheder, slapped naughty boys on their hands. My father was an industrious pupil.

I don't know much about my mother's parents. My mother's father, Yankel Frishman, was born in 1855. He was a small merchant in Nova-Ushytsya. He sold haberdashery. Once he even owned a fish store but he went bankrupt. He was a very respectable man in Nova-Ushytsya. He went to the synagogue every Saturday and invited poor Jews to his house on holidays. He always tried to help them and treat them to a meal. My grandfather prayed a lot at the synagogue and at home. He generally spoke Yiddish, but he spoke Ukrainian to his Ukrainian customers. He died in 1912.

My grandmother, Riva Frishman, born in 1857, was a wonderful housewife. She always kept the house very clean. She always baked challah and made stuffed fish on Saturday. She was educated at home, but she loved Yiddish books and taught my mother to read. I know that she was a religious woman. She celebrated Sabbath. She was a very nice and kind woman. She died of spotted fever in the fall of 1914, at the beginning of World War I. I don't know how many children my grandmother had, apart from my mother.

My mother, Sarrah Sirotta [nee Frishman], was born in 1879. She was a very smart girl and, although she was only educated at home, she liked to read in Yiddish and always dreamed of seeing the world. She found the routinely life of a Jewish neighborhood a burden, but she was an obedient daughter and helped her mother with the house chores and her father in the store, when necessary. She found it a pleasant chore to light candles on Friday night.

My mother met my father in 1900. They were introduced to one another by a shadkhan, which was customary at that time. They got married the same year. They had a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah and klezmer musicians. After the wedding my parents moved to Shcherbakovtsy village. I remember that I had some 'aunts' in Nova-Ushytsya, but I don't know whether they were my mother's sisters or cousins. I don't remember any close relatives of my mother's.

My father worked as a miller for the landlord in the beginning, and later he rented the mill in Shcherbakovtsy. He was a very hardworking man. He went to work when we were still asleep and came back home when we were already going to bed. The mill mainly provided services to Ukrainian farmers. They treated my father nicely and with respect. Nobody ever abused him at work for his nationality. We were the only Jewish family in this village. My parents rented a house near the mill. My sister, my two brothers and I were all born in Shcherbakovtsy. Etl was born in 1902. She finished the Russian grammar school for girls in Nova-Ushytsya before the Revolution of 1917 2. She didn't tell me anything about her studies. She was very beautiful. My older brother, Misha, was born in 1909. He was a very active and lively boy. He went to cheder in the neighboring Jewish village. My mother took the boys there every morning. One couldn't call Misha an industrious pupil. The rabbi complained to our mother about Misha's behavior, which left much to be desired. Misha always helped my father at the mill. My second brother, Yasha, born in 1913, was a very industrious and exemplary pupil.

I was born in 1916 and the youngest in the family. I have almost no memories of our life in Shcherbakovtsy because we left in 1920. During the Civil War 3 there were many gangs 4 in our neighborhood.1. They robbed houses and killed people, especially Jews. The local Ukrainians were hiding us. I remember that we were hiding, but I didn't understand why back then. we were hiding at that time. Later my father told me that Petliura 5 soldiers broke into our house, pointed the gun at his face and said, 'Give us the gold and money'. But we didn't have money or gold, except for my parent's rings and my mother's earrings. They took those away and knocked out my father's teeth. It became scary to live there any longer, and we had to move out.

We moved to Zemikhovo, two kilometers from Shcherbakovtsy. There are many villages in that area, but Zemikhovo was a big one, and it soon became a town. Its population consisted of Ukrainians, Jews, Poles, Russians and even two gypsy families. There was no hostility among the inhabitants. People celebrated religious and Soviet holidays quietly and calmly with a benevolent attitude towards the representatives of the various nations. However, there were drunk people on holidays, and they had fights, but I believe it was more because there was no other entertainment than anything else. They tried to make amends for it and apologize the next day, and the peace lasted until the next holidays when everything repeated itself.

The Jews lived in the center of the village. There were about 50 Jewish families. They earned their living with crafts. There was a synagogue in the center, an Orthodox Christian church and a Catholic cathedral. All these religious edifices were kept in absolute order and very clean.> People of all nationalities treated them with care and respect.

My parents were very religious. They only spoke Yiddish, although my mother knew Ukrainian well, and a little Russian and Polish. My father also knew Ukrainian because he had to communicate with Ukrainian farmers. We strictly observed all Jewish traditions. The only thing where my mother took liberties was that she didn't wear a shawl. She had thick and very beautiful hair. My father always wore a cap in the summer and a hat in the winter. On Fridays my mother changed her clothes and lit two candles in silver candlesticks. Of course she covered her head during the prayers. She said a prayer quietly and sort of embraced the flames of the candles with her hands. My father usually returned late from work, but on Fridays he came back earlier to go to the synagogue. After he returned my mother served our dinner. My father said a prayer, praising the Lord, blessing the Holy Saturday and the food, and afterwards we all had dinner. My mother cooked food for Saturday and put it in the oven to keep it warm. On Saturday my parents rested or went to see relatives and friends. We, children, played in the yard.

On Pesach my mother cooked kneydlakh, little balls from matzah flour. They were very delicious. I've tried to make them but I failed. We began to make matzah a month before Pesach. My father brought a few bags of flour, and my mother baked matzah in the oven. I loved to help her. Freshly made matzah is ever so delicious. We had no bread at home throughout the 8 days of Pesach. My mother also bought red wine for Pesach. The whole family got together for seder on the first night of Pesach. My father read the Haggadah. I remember my older brother asking my father the traditional question [the mah nishtanah] in Hebrew four times, 'Why is this night different from all other nights?'. My father replied with quotations. I also went to the synagogue when I was a boy.

When I was 13 I went to the synagogue with my father to have my bar mitzvah. (coming of age of a Jewish boy).I can't remember well what was going on. It wasn't such a big event for me. It was more like a tribute to the ancient tradition, which was necessary to observe. I had to say the prayers that I had learned by heart. I had a teacher teaching me religion and traditions, and my brother and my father often read the Torah to me.

The mill that my father leased gave some profit, and we bought a house in Zemikhovo. It was a very nice house, and I can still picture it in my dreams. There were three rooms and a kitchen in the house. There was a dinner table, a carved cupboard, a sofa, silver candlesticks, bent-back chairs, which were called 'Viennese', and a big rubber plant next to the wall. The house had wooden floors and a tiled roof. We had a Russian stove 6 and kerosene lamps. In the other room there were two beds, my father's and mother's, and a big box. We had a small kitchen garden, in which my mother grew vegetables: onions, radish, parsley, dill. We had one, sometimes two, cows as well as chickens and geese. So we always had meat, eggs, sour cream, butter and milk. All this was kosher food. We never mixed dairy and meat products, and my mother always went to the shochet to have the poultry slaughtered.

Most of the Jewish houses were poor and required repairs. They had clay floors that were covered with a special mixture of clay, hay and manure. Each Jewish house had a store or a workshop inside it, such as a sewing workshop, a tinsmith's shop or a bakery.

The brightest memory of my childhood is my sister Etl's wedding. She got married in 1922. Her fiancé's name was Pynia. He worked as a tobacco cutter at the tobacco factory in the town of Kahles [28 kilometers from Zemikhovo]. This factory still exists. It manufactures the Podoliye cigarettes. The wedding took place in our house in Zemikhovo. It was a traditional Jewish wedding. There were tables in our big room with wine, cherry liqueur and vodka on them. There were strudels with sugar, honey and nuts. It was the food of the Gods! Of course, there was also stuffed fish. There was a klezmer brass orchestra from Nova-Ushytsya and people danced. I remember the sher, a beautiful Jewish dance. «I don't remember all the dances, but I remember a waltz that my brother Yasha and I danced together. He wanted to lead and so did I. In this regard we hit each other on the face. There were guests of honor, the rabbi and the shochet shoihet (he slaughtered poultry and made it kosher meat in accordance with the Jewish rules). The bride and bridegroom were married next to the synagogue. There were four posts and a beautiful cover on them [a chuppah]. The rabbi read a prayer. The procession went there with music, and the music was also playing on their way back. Many people came to watch.

After the wedding my sister moved to Pynia's parents' in Kahles. She gave birth to two boys: Yasha in 1924 and Misha in 1928. Yasha was a very musical boy. He played string instruments wonderfully. He could have become a great musician, I'm sure. As for the second boy, he liked reading and making things. Yasha and Misha treated both old and young people with great respect. They were handsome and good-mannered boys. Etl, her husband and their sons were killed in the ghetto in Nova-Ushytsya.

Our family was enthusiastic when the Soviets came to power in 1917. The new regime seemed to bring a fair and educated life to the people. We believed that there would be no oppression of the Jews, that people would be equal and that problems we faced were temporary. My mother liked to read the newspapers Der Emes [Truth] and Der Shtern [Star]. They were Soviet communist newspapers published in Yiddish. My mother also read many classic books in Yiddish. She was very proud that she was the same age as Stalin. My father read much less, but he also respected the Soviet Union, although, as a kulak 7, he was deprived of the right to vote and actually repressed.

Our house was sold at an auction because of we couldn't pay the high tax, which was levied on us by a visiting financial official. We didn't have the money to pay for it. This happened in the early 1930s when the process of the dispossession of the kulaks began. We moved into a one-bedroom facility with a kitchen. The conditions there were terrible. Two or three years later, when the parents of my sister's husband died, we moved into their apartment. It was a two-bedroom apartment with a kitchen. There was a clay floor in one room, and a plank floor in the other room. The kitchen was between the two rooms.

The authorities expropriated my father's mill [at the end of the 1920s] and he became a stableman. There were two collective farms 8: a Ukrainian and a Jewish one. The chairman of the Jewish farm was named Sholom. He was a very industrious and honest man. We went to the collective farm hoping to get something there. The horses in the stables were starving. My father guarded them at night. One night I had to replace him, as he had to go to the village. It was a terrible night. The stables were located between the Ukrainian and the Jewish cemetery. I couldn't help thinking of anything but the dead in white clothes. I was terrified whenever I heard a sound. I was 13 at the time, and I was alone. I wouldn't have done anything if somebody had come with evil intentions. But there were other times when boys from the Ukrainian collective farm and I took horses to the pasture at night. That was wonderful. What beautiful nights they were!

My friends were Jewish, Ukrainian, Russian and Polish boys. We spoke Russian. We went swimming in a pond. We were friends. Sometimes we had fights but no nationality conflicts. We didn't differentiate between Jewish and non-Jewish friends. I went to the Jewish 4-year school in Zemikhovo. We studied in Yiddish, but we didn't study any special Jewish subjects. All schools in the USSR had to comply with the standard and mandatory program. We also had Russian and Ukrainian classes. I shared a desk with Liza, a beautiful girl. Later her family moved to Russia.

I was a pioneer like everybody else. Once there was a relay race with a baton in our school. I didn't have any idea what it was like to run with a baton, but I was a good runner. There were many people on the route, which went uphill. When a boy gave me the baton he injured my hand, and I ran without the baton. Then I had to return to pick up the baton. Because of this delay another boy outran me, but he pushed me and I fell and tore my pants. I felt hurt that I had lost, and hit that boy in the face so hard that his nose started bleeding. There was a tailor at the competition, and he wanted to mend my pants. I went to his home. I had never seen such poverty before. He had a plank table and a sewing machine. That was all. I felt so sorry for him. I wrote a little poem in Yiddish about the poverty and misery of this man. He was a small man. Since I was the editor of the school newspaper, I placed my poem where it would be seen best. The director of the school, Smotritskiy, a Jew, called me into his office, said that I was talented and asked me if I wanted to write poems. I said that I did. My poetic activities ended where they began though. I had to move to Nova-Ushytsya to continue my studies in the 5th grade because there was only a primary school in our village.

After 1917 the lives of many people in Zemikhovo became much worse, and they wanted to move somewhere else. It was at that time that my older brother, Misha, got into trouble. He was the secretary of the village council, which was an official position. He was the second most important man in the village, after the chairman of the village council, and he issued two certificates to his Ukrainian friends. They wanted to continue their studies in town. During this period people weren't allowed to move from villages to towns, and the village authorities weren't allowed to issue such certificates. Misha was taken to court for issuing these two certificates and sentenced to imprisonment in jail in Dnepropetrovsk. He worked at the Petrovskiy plant. I visited him once in 1934. I spent three days with him and that was the last time that I saw him. Later he went to work in Ulan-Ude, Kazakhstan, as my brother Yasha told me. Yasha also found out that Misha perished in 1943. I have no idea whether he had a family or not.

My younger brother, Yasha, finished a secondary school in Nova-Ushytsya in 1930 and entered the Pedagogical College in Kamenets-Podolsk. Later he worked as a teacher in a village school in Varyninskiy district in the former Kamenets-Podolsk Region. He married a Jewish woman. Her name was Fira. He rarely visited us. In 1933 he joined the Red Army and served in the Pacific Navy. He was even awarded the Red Flag order. Yasha remained in Liepaya, in Latvia, where he had served in the Navy. He was a history teacher at the Pedagogical Institute. In 1963 he lived through a terrible tragedy. He had two daughters, Larissa and Mirrah. They both studied in Riga. On New Year's Eve they were victims of a plane crash, which occurred when the plane was landing. My nieces died along with many other people. Yasha moved to Israel in 1990. He lived there for four years. He died of a heart disease in 1994. I received a letter, which said that he had been buried in accordance with all Jewish traditions. His son, Misha, who is a colonel and engineer, lives in Israel.

I rented an apartment in Nova-Ushytsya in 1928. My landlord, a Jew, owned a hardware store. His family wasn't religious. They didn't go to the synagogue or pray, but they spoke Yiddish. I don't remember his name, but he was a nice man. However, once they caught me stealing their food. My bed was beside the table, where they had meals. I ate the food that I got from home. That was during the early 1930s, the famine in Ukraine 9.2. So, every evening my landlords had potatoes, either mashed potatoes or just boiled potatoes, with butter, a glass of sour milk and two eggs for supper. I had very little food. I was 12 years old, and I was always hungry. There was a basket with my landlord's potatoes beside my bed. So I decided to take two or three potatoes every day and hide them in my pockets. I told my landlord that I got them from my relatives. The landlady boiled these potatoes for me, and I had them for supper. But then she found out the truth. She began to scream, 'You, liar! You steal my potatoes and tell us that you got them from somebody else!?' She took away my plate. I got very cross with her and swore at her in Ukrainian.

The editor of a district newspaper lived in the same house. We were on good terms with him. He took me to his room, and I told him my story. He put a jar of honey and bagels on the table and invited me to join him for tea and tell him more about myself. When I finished he said, 'So, you are learning to be a thief? How can you? Okay, I'll speak to the landlady'. And so he did. My landlords changed their attitude towards me. They were afraid of the editor. He was a member of the Communist Party and embodied power to them. .

Nova-Ushytsya was a small Jewish district town. Jews had lived there from ancient times. There were no separate Jewish organizations, but there was the town council, in which Jews held leading positions. There were many Jewish families in this town. There were Jewish schools and a Ukrainian one, and a Jewish technical school preparing wood and metal turners. There was a synagogue in the town center. I went there sometimes, although I was a Komsomol 10 member. Komsomol members weren't allowed to go to religious institutions. There were visiting cantors, who sang at the synagogue at that time. They had beautiful voices. It was very ceremonious. I have very beautiful memories of this time. I really recall it with tears in my eyes.

I began to study at the Jewish school in the early 1930s, and we studied all subjects in Yiddish. The pupils were Jewish. My school friends were the butcher's son, Izia Roitman, Yasha and Dora. We spent a lot of time together. We went swimming in summer, or we went to a dance or to the cinema. Later Yasha left to study in Odessa, and Dora moved to Moscow. I met Yasha after the war. He was a deputy director in a technical school in Odessa. Dora visited me here in 1962. I didn't recognize her. When she knocked on the door, I opened it and called my wife telling her that she had a visitor. And then Dora said, 'No, Grisha, I've come to see you.' She was an aircraft mechanic and lived in Moscow. She was married and had two children.

I studied very well and finished school in 1932. I had the highest marks in all subjects except for physics, where I had a '4'. However, I couldn't afford to study in the nearest town with a higher educational institution, Kamenets-Podolsk, because we were very poor. My mother began to color clothes to earn some money. She knew all the processes and knew how to mix the colors. She was paid miserable money for her work.

I remember the famine in Ukraine in 1933. I saw people in our village who ate grass. In the spring we picked green apples, pears and cherries. We boiled and ate them. We survived thanks to the villagers that year. All people were starving. We literally ate sawdust: we made bread from 2-3 handfuls of flour and added the same quantity of sawdust. We had all kinds of stomach problems after eating this 'food'.

There was nobody to support me, so I had to work. There weren't many educated employees at that time, and I was offered a job as a controller in the bank department. The director of this bank department was a Jew. His last name was Shwarzman. He had a girl friend in another district. He often went to see her and borrowed money from the bank. I was young and immature. He often gave me some papers and told me to sign them, which I did. Once he took a huge amount of money from the bank and left. He didn't show up the following day, and neither the next day. I called the bank management in the district town, and they came to audit our department. They found the documents that I had signed, and they stated that I had taken the money. It was a total of 383 rubles, which was a huge amount for that time. I was summoned to the village council and arrested.

Nobody ever saw Shwarzman again. They probably never looked for him. I was thrown into a prison cell. There were two or three other prisoners. There was a stinking barrel that served as a toilet, and I was told to sit beside it because it was the place for newcomers. On my second day in prison a young investigation officer called me to his office. He told me that the investigation was over, and that I was to be sent to jail in Kamenets-Podolsk for embezzlement of state property. I stayed in that jail for a month. Then there was a court sitting. I was given the floor. I began to talk, but I never got a chance to finish. I was sentenced to three years of imprisonment and was sent to Zaporozhe-Kamenskoye. This happened at the end of 1933. There was a huge jail there. The state needed a workforce for its huge construction sites. All big socialist construction facilities were built by prisoners. We worked at the construction site of the metallurgical plant named after Dzerzhynskiy, and the chemical recovery plant. There were thousands of prisoners, both men and women. Most of them were in prison for hiding bread from the state and for picking up spikelets in the field. [Editor's note: In the 1930s the farmers were required to give all their crops to the state. They were not allowed to leave anything for themselves. People were starving in villages. Those who tried to hide some food were sent to prison.] Those were innocent prisoners, but there were also criminals in this jail.

I worked unloading iron ore. It was all frozen on railcars, and we had to break it with crowbars, etc. It was very hard work. In the evening we had to divide our rationed food. There were about 100 people in one barrack. There were crews, and foremen cut the bread for the crew members, and divided sugar and anchovy or salted fish into portions. When it was all divided into individual rations the foreman told one of us to turn his back to the food. Then he pointed onto a portion with his finger and asked, 'Whose?'. The answer was, 'Ivanov's, etc'. That way everybody got his share in the most democratic and honest manner. It was a common procedure. It was an expression of camp brotherhood. People lived in unbearable conditions, but they always tried to help and support each other. If somebody ignored these rules he was subject to severe punishment.

During the unloading I hurt my legs. My calves were literally putrefying, and there was no medication to stop it. Because of this illness I was transferred to work as a clerk. I issued work orders for all crews. It wasn't an easy task either to sit down the whole day and issue orders to prisoners for every single work activity. My illness was progressing, and I was released before time. So, instead of three years imprisonment I only spent one and a half years in jail. There were representatives of different nationalities in the camps from different parts of the USSR. There were no national conflicts or anti-Semitism.

There were no jobs available in Nnova-Ushytsya, my parents, who still lived there, had told me so in their letters. I stayed to work as a clerk for coal loading-unloading operations in Dneprodzerzhinsk. There was no anti-Semitism then, but there were people, who openly demonstrated their dislike of Jews, teasing them on their funny pronunciation of words or infringing upon their interests. I never faced it in this form.

People participated in the first socialist constructions with great enthusiasm. There were socialist contests, and so on. We often went to work after the meetings carrying flags and singing songs. I didn't become a Komsomol member at school. I didn't want to become a Komsomol member, and at that time it was not a mandatory requirement. I became a member in 1937, when I worked as a clerk at the construction site. My brothers were far away, and I tried to support my parents by sending them food parcels. I earned well and could afford to send parcels and buy clothes for my mother and father. I was the youngest son in the family and had to be close to my family.

I returned from Dneprodzerzhinsk to Nova-Ushytsya in 1937. I began to look for a job, and it took me a while before I met the manager of the district department of the bank. He hired me. I was trained for about a month and a half before I became a bank employee. I worked at the bank until I went to serve in the army in 1939. While working at the bank I was elected chairman of the banking and finance trade union committee and attended meetings and conferences in Kamenets-Podolsk. I was even a delegate to the Ukrainian trade union conference.

I became a bank employee and began to take better care of my appearance. I was 22 and I met a girl, the manager of a pharmacy. Her name was Antonina, and she wasn't a Jew. In the middle of the 1930s the issue of Jewish men only marrying Jewish women wasn't so strict. Besides, my parents were in Zemikhovo, and I didn't quite take their opinions into consideration. They didn't need to know anything if I didn't want them to. I joined the army in 1939. Antonina and I promised one another to love each other and never part. One year passed, and I received a letter from her saying that she had got married. I couldn't believe it and lost my faith in women.

I went into the army when I was 23. I served in Tank Brigade #22, deployed in Grodno, Belarus. Our training school was training tank men for the war with Finland [the Soviet-Finnish War] 11. I studied there for about a month and a half. There was no typist in the brigade headquarters. I typed very well and became a typist. I served there, typing and drawing maps. I read a lot. There was a very rich collection of books, and I improved my Russian, but I forgot Yiddish, the language of my childhood.

In 1940 we 'provided assistance' to the Lithuanian people by liberating them from the oppression of world capitalism. [Editor's note: In 1942 the Baltic countries were occupied by the Soviet troops and forced to join the USSR.] I'm saying this with a bit of irony because nobody was waiting for us there. Our army entered the town of Kaunas. There were many Jewish families there, and I became friends with a Jewish family. They were very nice people. I visited them on weekends, and they treated me to Jewish food. We spoke Yiddish, although their pronunciation was a little different. Their intonations and accent were different, influenced by a different language environment. We played cards and enjoyed ourselves.

The war began on 22nd June 1941. At that time I was at the Air Force headquarters of the 11th Army. My commanding officer was on duty on 22nd June. At some point somebody called him, and he said, 'Well, son, it has begun'. This was the beginning of the war. Our headquarter stuff was hiding in the woods and towns. The only weapons we had were pistols. We also had a manual Degtiaryov machine-gun. I was a sergeant, a communications operator of the headquarters. I was a courier and had to deliver documents and orders on the bike. Once I fell into a ditch.

Another time, on 29th July 1941, during the shooting in the town of Staraya Russa, I was wounded. I had 16 splinters in my back. I couldn't speak and could hardly breath. My comrades put me on the sanitary vehicle to take me to hospital. There were ever so many wounded people, both military and civil casualties. I was covered with sheets in the hospital. The doctors only approached those who screamed with pain. I couldn't produce a sound, but I had to give them a sign that I was alive. I started moving my leg. A nurse with a flashlight noticed my movements and told the doctor that I was alive. I was taken to a ward on the stretcher. There was an officer of the Red Army, swearing and cursing in such strong language; I could hardly believe my ears. I had never heard such cursing before. He was begging for help, but nobody approached him.

In the morning I was taken to the railway station and put on the train. The carriage was full of wounded people; the wounds were stinking and it was hard to breathe. The nurse helped me to get to the door of the carriage where I could take a breath of fresh air through a chink. She put my head on her knees, and I felt her tears falling on my head. She couldn't do anything to help. Everybody was begging for water. The carriage was closed, and it was impossible to get off. We reached Valday where the evacuation hospital was located. The doctors removed some splinters from my back, and I was taken to the hospital in the rear in Gorky region. I was strong, and after I got better I was sent to a reserve regiment in Gorky. I was appointed commanding officer of a rifle platoon. In May 1942 I was to go to the front, but I was sent to Rybinsk instead to take some retraining.

I met a wonderful Russian girl there, my future wife. Her name was Sophia Orlova. She was born in Rybinsk in 1921. She was the director of the civil acts registration office. We met at the cinema. I went to watch The Pig- Tender Girl and The Shepherd, and then I saw her. I asked for her ticket and took it to the box-office to exchange it for a seat next to mine. We didn't talk during the movie. I took her home and promised to meet her again. That happened on 7th May. I met her a few times after that, and on 11th August we got married. We had a civil ceremony at the registration office where she worked. We didn't have a wedding party. It was wartime, and everyone felt far from celebrating. Sophia's mother welcomed me heartily and treated me very nicely. There was no antipathy towards Jews in the family, and my wife always came to protect Jews whenever there was a hint of anti-Semitism. My parents wouldn't have been happy about having a Russian daughter-in-law, but I realized that there was only a slight chance of them being still alive. We already heard about the mass extermination of Jews in Belarus in July 1941, and I suspected that the same had happened in Ukraine.

On the day after I got married I went to the division headquarters at the front. I talked with my commander about hiring Sophia as a typist. They sent a clerk to pick her up in Rybinsk and an interesting incident happened then. The clerk went to Rybinsk via Moscow. He was going downstairs to the metro and saw my older brother, Yasha, going upstairs. We were so much alike that the clerk ran after him and addressed him as, 'Comrade senior lieutenant!' My brother turned to him and said, 'I don't know you'. Only at that moment did the clerk understand that he was wrong and said, 'I'm a clerk and work for your brother'. My brother was en route from the Pacific to the North Sea Navy, so along with my wife the clerk brought me news about my brother. My wife was at the front with me. In 1943 she got pregnant and was sent to hospital. They prescribed her some pills that led to a miscarriage. Besides, she got sepsis. She had a surgery and it took her a whole month to recover. We continued our service. Our army crossed the border with Prussia, and I was ordered to go to Alma-Ata to study military discipline and become a professional military.

Ukraine had been liberated by that time. I sent a request about my family to Nova-Ushytsya. I received a handwritten note from the chief of police. It was a piece of wrapping paper. It said that my parents, my sister and her family had perished in Nova-Ushytsya. My mother was 63 and my father 67 when they were shot. The Germans had organized a ghetto in Nova-Ushytsya. They kept all Jews, young and old, healthy and sick from all surrounding villages there. After the war they showed us the place where they were shot. It was a scary sight. There were common graves in the forest. My brother Yasha and I went there in 1959 and then again in 1961. We should have gone there again to honor their memory.

At the end of 1944 I was sent to Alma-Ata to study at the Kharkov higher flying training school, which was in evacuation in Kazakhstan. Sophia worked as a typist at the Kazakhstan telegraph agency. Later we were transferred to Lipetsk. That was an officer flying school with a two-year training school. We heard the news about the victory on 9th May 1945 en route from Alma-Ata to Lipetsk.

After the war I stayed in the army, but I couldn't make a great career there. In 1948 open anti-Semitism began in the army. They didn't promote Jews, and their favorite subject of conversation was that Jews hadn't fought [during WWII] but were hiding in Tashkent instead. After the Doctors' Plot 12 they said that Jews had killed Stalin. I had been a member of the Communist Party since December 1941, and I felt distrust towards me, although no one said anything publicly. There was no anti- Semitism in our everyday life, but the state policy was anti-Semitic.

In 1947 my daughter Tatiana was born in Lipetsk and my son, Misha, named after my older brother, followed in 1948. I served in Sakhalin, in the Far North, from 1949-1957. It was a hard and hungry time, but we were happy. We were young and far away from the commandment and enjoyed it. We lived in a huge barrack, in one of 30 rooms on the ground floor, with one common toilet. There were people of all nationalities. There were Georgians, Latvians and Ukrainians. There were two or three Jewish families, but nobody paid any attention to nationality. We shared everything we had. We had meals together, helped each other, celebrated holidays together, sang songs, went to the cinema and dancing. Of course, there was nothing Jewish left in me, we were all Soviet people.

In 1958 I was transferred to Lvov in Western Ukraine. We went there, and I received a small apartment. I got to like this town. However, this was a place with anti-Semitic and anti-Russian demonstrations. Nonetheless we made friends with people of different nationalities; all honest and nice people. My children grew up in this town. My son became a geologist, and my daughter a teacher. My children didn't care about my Jewish nationality. They know that their father is a Jew, but it doesn't matter to them. They don't judge people by their nationality and don't identify themselves as Jews. They have children. My daughter moved to Yalta in 1983. So, my grandson, Sasha, born in 1970, lives there. He is a construction engineer.

I retired in 1960. I worked as a drawer at a design institute called Ukrgiproavia Project for about ten years. We developed new designs for aircrafts. My wife worked as a typist in various institutions. Our pension is too small. My wife and I are both very ill, and we stay at home most of the time. Our son's daughter, Katia, often visits us. She was born in 1987. She listens to my stories and is always very interested. Perhaps, she will continue the Jewish line of our family. We went to a Jewish organization recently to ask them about the possibility for her to go to Israel, at least as a tourist. Perhaps, she would like to study there and perhaps stay to live there. I hope she will take her chances. I'm too old to go, I can hardly walk as far as the market, but maybe my grandchildren will be lucky enough to see this beautiful country. We have discussions about the political situation in Israel. We are very interested in everything that happens in this country.

We've never discussed the subject of emigration in our family. My wife and I always sympathized with the people that left, but we never wanted to move there and neither did our children.

In my thoughts I return to my childhood and begin to feel like a Jew again. There are a few Jewish organizations in our town. We get together to listen to Jewish music, recall Yiddish, the language of our childhood, and recollect our Jewish traditions. We have discussions about the political situation in Israel. We are very interested in everything that happens in this country. My wife enjoys going there with me.

Glossary

Apolonia Starzec
Warsaw
Poland
Interviewer: Marta Cobel-Tokarska
Date of interview: June 2006

Mrs. Starzec lives alone in downtown Warsaw. She is friendly, talkative and charming, although at times our conversation wasn't easy. My interlocutor doesn't feel attached to Jewry, perceives her pre-war family as assimilated, though her story reveals a somewhat different picture. Some subjects proved impossible to discuss at all, and sometimes Mrs. Starzec made the impression of deliberately avoiding certain questions. Despite that, the many disconnected and incomplete strands wove themselves into an interesting story.

My family history
Growing up
During the war
After the war

My family history

Here's my, let's call it, résumé. We lived in Radomsko [town in central Poland, some 150 km south-west of Warsaw]. It was my father's patrimony. My sister's name was Irena... I mean, she had a different name once. She changed her name to Irena during the war and it stayed that way. Before the war her name was Ruta. She was Ruta and I was Pola [short for Apolonia]. We were the only children. In terms of looks, I was more like my father, he was dark, and my mother was a blue-eyed light blond, typical Aryan, as they say. My sister had her looks. My childhood was good, indeed. Cheerful, without inferiority complexes of any kind; I had no idea of anti-Semitism whatsoever. The material conditions were good, at least until the crisis [Great Depression] 1.

My father's name was Mordchaj Dawid Bugajski. He had four brothers and three sisters. One of the brothers was called Salomon. They lived in Lodz, and then [during WWII] they moved in with us [in Radomsko]. The second brother was called Juda, the third one was my father, and the fourth one was Jakub. My father's sisters adopted their husbands' surnames. One had the married name of Lorie; she was a kind of liberated woman, and the other sister had the married name of Hercberg.

My father ran a large family business called Bracia Bugajscy [Bugajski Brothers]. They traded in flour, sugar, salt, things like that. I remember they leased a siding at the train station. I visited the place as a child and saw the wares being unloaded. There was also a wholesale store in the market square. Also a road-building business, and something else, I don't know what. In any case, they didn't make it. The whole thing went bust when the Great Depression came. My father's brother, Juda, committed suicide. He had a large family, a large house, and he was the head of all that business. His children were all grown up; he was much older than my father.

Was my father's family traditional? Yes. They spoke Yiddish. But neither did we visit them nor did they visit us. We didn't keep in touch. I felt more attached to my mother's family. I think they [my father's family] were all murdered in Radomsko. There is a cemetery there, a monument.

The most important person in our home was my mother, whom we loved very much, because she was a friend rather than a parent. She agreed to many things, but also required many things from us. She brought us up well. Her maiden name was Zelinger, Zofia Zelinger. She had an inferiority complex, she was obese; before getting married she strove for her parents to send her to Marienbad 2. They did send her there, but I don't know whether it helped anything. She was very beautiful, a typical Aryan. She was 16 when they married her: to a man from Radomsko. And so she married a Bugajski. How did she meet him? I don't know whether matchmaking was involved, I can't remember those things. She was less than 17 years old when she gave birth to me. And she died young, also [in 1940]. I was the first child, born 1st October 1914; they got married on New Year's Eve... I even had her ring, with the dates engraved.

My mother also came from a large family. And, unlike the Bugajski family, it was an assimilated one. I kept in touch with my mother's family. My mother comes from Sosnowiec [city in Silesia region in southern Poland, some 300 km south of Warsaw]. My grandmother - they say I had her looks. Zelinger. I don't remember her first name. I have a very vague recollection of her. I know they lived in their own house, a large one, because there were nine of them. Grandmother died when I was little. Did she wear a wig? I think so. That was the custom then. And my grandfather I don't remember at all.

In the house in Sosnowiec my [maternal] grandparents lived on the second floor. Lubomirski Park and the river Przemsza were nearby. The address was 2 Ludwiki Street. There were two balconies; you could spend Sukkot there, under the roof. There were quite a lot of rooms, and in the living room stood toys for us. I liked to go there because my grandparents really doted on me. Katowice was not far away, it wasn't part of Poland yet [Katowice was incorporated into Poland only in 1922]. I remember them taking me there [to Katowice], buying me nice clothes. Sosnowiec was poor, and Katowice was different, German style; I returned all elegant.

I don't remember all uncles and aunts. Zygmunt, my mother's youngest brother, lived in France. I remember him coming to our town before the war. When in Poland, he visited us very often. I was in my last year of gymnasium [eighth grade] when he took me to Warsaw for a sightseeing tour. I was 16, just a teenager. I didn't like to dress up, I liked my school uniform. He showed me everything there was to see in Warsaw. I remember me passing through all those revolving doors. Everything was amazing. He showed me the cabaret, the Qui Pro Quo [famous Warsaw cabaret, operating from 1919-1931] and the Morskie Oko [cabaret, operating from 1929-1933]. And if that weren't enough, he took me to an ordinary revue. I'm sitting at the table, dim lights, a dance floor. I was very embarrassed; he had to go to the toilet, left me alone. A young man comes up to me and asks me to dance. And I was so frightened. 'I'm not dancing, I can't!' and I yelled at Uncle for bringing me there. That was my first encounter with Warsaw.

Uncle Zygmunt was very handsome. He was a man who enjoyed life. Elegant and handsome, he long persisted in bachelorhood. His first wife was Aunt Yvonne, as we called her. She left her husband to be with him. She wasn't Jewish. She kept him in hiding somewhere with her relatives in the [French] countryside. She worked as an editor. Uncle Zygmunt came to Poland once, quite accidentally at the very time when I was giving birth to my elder son. It was 1947; they were taking me from the delivery room to the maternity ward. I look, here comes my husband with some gentleman. The first visitor I had after delivery. He died of a heart attack, in 1971. At the table in his bridge club. Had himself cremated. His ashes rest at the Père-Lachaise cemetery [French: Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, Paris's largest and most famous cemetery].

My mother had a sister named Sala. She married a certain Sandomierski, also from Radomsko. Her other sister, Cesia, lived in Bedzin [town in Silesia, near Katowice and Sosnowiec]. She married some Hasid 3, named Zeligier, a similar name. They had a son Zygmunt, he came to us for the summer holidays, and I also spent my vacations there sometimes. There, in Bedzin, I saw the Jewish ghetto [quarter] for the first time. My aunt wore a wig, her husband a beard. Zygmunt had been through the cheder. It was a very religious Jewish family, very different than ours. The boy felt a bit like a bird in a cage. I remember he liked to come to us because at least he could taste some freedom. And get a taste of a different world. And I went there because, you know, it was right to visit Auntie from time to time. Zygmunt had a sister, her name was Pola, too, I think. He was the eldest grandson, I was the eldest granddaughter. We were roughly of the same age. He craved for all that he lacked, the contact with Polish culture, and I ran away from the culture he was raised in. Everything irritated me there.

There was also Uncle Bernard. He was very handsome, blond, like all of them, one of the eldest sons, the most intelligent one. He married Zosia [diminutive for Zofia] from Lodz, a beautiful girl. They eventually took over the [grandparents'] house in Sosnowiec. The other brothers and sisters moved out elsewhere. And reportedly they were taken from that house [by the Germans during the war]. They were a very loving couple. I actually attended their wedding in Lodz. My mother sewed special dresses for us. It was a wedding under the chuppah. And they had two sons: Mietek [from Mieczyslaw] and Henio [from Henryk]. Mietek was born with a harelip. And he was so terribly mean. His younger brother was such a cherub, talented, cheerful, joyful... and then he with the harelip.

Growing up

I was born and raised in Sosnowiec under my grandmother's supervision, because my mother was emotionally very strongly attached to her family home. I spent more time in Sosnowiec each year than at our home. The other grandchildren came, too, had their toys there, I had a beautiful talking doll, Zygmunt Zeligier had a rocking horse in the living room... He was the eldest of all the cousins; he died recently. He had a wife named Adela and a boy. They lived in the States, in Washington, DC.

Now let me tell you about my town. Our street in Radomsko was originally called Strzalkowska. It led to a village called Strzalkow, but later it was renamed to Legionow. The house we lived in was very large. It was owned by some Jew. From the World War I period I remember those massive samovars standing in the large courtyard. There was no sewage system, a waterman supplied water. Later a sewage system was installed. The house was very big. One wing was occupied by an elementary school, and above it were apartments. And in our wing the whole second floor was occupied by a private gymnasium that I later attended.

We lived on the third floor, in a suite of four connecting rooms. From my balcony I could see a mill in the distance, rye fields where we played truant. I was very angry [to be living so close to school] because if I did anything bad, they would immediately send me home to bring my mother for a warning talk. And I envied those who lived farther away. The house is still there. When I came after the war to see how things were, it had already been turned into a hospital.

The town had 30,000 inhabitants. It was surrounded by predominantly German settlements. There was little industry. If anything, it was foreign-owned, the metal industry, for instance, was Belgian. Besides that, there were some private-owned steel mills.

There was also the Witte Wunsche factory. [Ksawery Wunsche i S-ka: a furniture manufacturer, founded in Radomsko in the early 20th century, operated until the end of WWII. Nationalized in 1945, operated afterwards as an independent enterprise under the name of Fabryka Mebli Gietych Nr 2 (formerly Wunsche).] Wunsche's son was my friend and peer. He went to the boys' gymnasium. It was a public school. He was a bit my elder, went to the parallel grade, the so-called German school. But we were members of the same youth organization, MOPR 4. He was also a factory owner's child. During the war, he did a lot for Jews. His father was a Volksdeutscher 5 or a Reichsdeutscher. The young Wunsche also helped the organization, which had a left-wing profile, during the war. He married a Jewish girl. A beautiful girl, he fell in love with her even as a student. And they live abroad.

Politically, the town was under the sway of the PPS 6. All those [left- wing] organizations ruled supreme, and even in the town council the PPS had a majority. The fire brigade was the town's most important organization. On the national holidays, 3rd May or 11th November, we marched in our school uniforms and sang songs. There was this square, called the 'calf pen', young people had dates there [Editor's note: A meeting point for young people, called that because young boys and girls stared at each other 'like calves' - a Polish expression]. And there was the market square. In the market square stood a beautiful old church and next to it the town hall.

The pre-war Radomsko has been very beautifully described by my schoolmate Lola Szlamkiewicz [actually Lea], married name Grebler; she's dead now. She was in Russia when the war broke out, not, like myself, in a ghetto [in Warsaw]. She survived, and I have all those school photos from her. There [in Russia] she met her husband, Grebler, who came from Stanislawow [town in south-eastern Poland, today Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine, some 500 km south-east of Warsaw]. And she became his wife. She lived a beautiful life at her beloved husband's side. I have her book about the Jewish community [of Radomsko], a community I had few affiliations with. [Szlamkiewicz-Grebler Lea (1991): Ryby z nieba. Przedswiateczny cud. Opowiadania i humoreski z zycia Zydow w malych miasteczkach w Polsce w latach 1925-1938. (Fishes from Heaven: The Holiday Miracle. Stories and Humoresques about Jewish Life in Small Towns in Poland 1925-1938), Haifa]

Lola came from a very poor family. My elder, she completed an elementary school. She taught herself. She was an orphan and she was brought up by her elder sister, whose husband was a shoemaker. They lived at the market square, and on warm days the shoemaker would work in front of the shop. They lived in terrible poverty; there was a lot of Jewish poverty around. She left town and went to Warsaw to study biology, which she completed. Later, when the war broke out, we lost contact whatsoever.

After the war we looked for each other. I no longer remember the details, but, in the end, we [Mrs. Starzec and her husband] brought her from Stanislawow to Warsaw. We secured an apartment for her, and even a job. But they didn't want to stay in Poland. Even though they had good conditions here. They immigrated to Israel. Their children were born there, two wonderful children. I'm in touch with the daughter, her name is Ania. She lives in the United States. The parents were already of age, needed care; they brought them to the States to live with them. They both had cancer.

There was a movie theater, the town's only one, alongside it a park, where dancing parties and all kinds of events were held. There were also balls at the town hall; I didn't go because I was too young, but my cousin, who worked as an accountant for us, went, and so did my mother. In the cinema they screened silent films, but there was a band downstairs, like in a philharmonic, providing wonderful musical illustration to the movies. There were the stalls and the balcony, and that was a great thing. Those movies we were allowed to see we did go to see. The first sound movie I saw was in Czestochowa [a city close to Radomsko], with Al Jolson, a black singer [Editor's note: a white actor wearing blackface]. I remember he sang beautifully. [Al Jolson, real name Asa Yoelson, (1886-1950): American singer and movie actor. Played in the first full-length sound movie, the 1927 Jazz Singer, dir. Alan Crosland, a sentimental story about the son of a synagogue cantor who against his father's will, becomes a jazz singer.] Mother took us under her arm, me and my sister, and we went to Czestochowa. It was 50 kilometers, you went by train. I was proud because express trains stopped in Radomsko! They don't these days.

The market day in Radomsko was Thursday. The farmers brought their produce, the prices were low. It was the so called 'price scissors' period: farm produce was very cheap whereas industrial goods were very expensive. During the Great Depression, peasants would split a match into two to save. Matches were expensive; there was a [state] monopoly. Salt, sugar, were expensive. And an egg cost very little, a few pennies. You couldn't buy a box of matches for one egg. You had to sell many eggs or a lot of butter or cheese to buy salt, for instance.

There were many stores and cake shops in Radomsko. There was a cake shop where they sold good cream cakes. Or chocolates. There were stores with plenty of food products to choose from. They were cheap. The stores offered all kinds of exotic fruit. I remember a holiday when you eat a lot of dried fruit, New Year or something. [The interviewee probably means Purim]. You bought pineapple and dates - fruit that in People's Poland 7 were impossible to buy for a long, long time. Stores selling dried fruit and exotic fruit. The domestic ones you didn't buy at the market, of course, but went to an orchard and bought directly from the tree or shrub [i.e. from the farmer]. There was a hospital on our street; the director was Doctor Stanislawski. His wife had a beautiful garden; we went there to buy strawberries.

We didn't go to the market for shopping but had it brought to us by [a woman] from the countryside, from Kobiele [village near Radomsko]. She became friends with my mother, and one day she says, 'I'd like you to hire my daughter.' Jania was 16 when she came to us. To apprentice as a housekeeper, in the kitchen. She was a maid, a 'servant,' you called it those days. Janina Koper. She stayed with us until the war. She came from Kobiele Wielkie, the home town [rather village] of the writer Reymont, and she was a very good student [Reymont, Wladyslaw Stanislaw (1868-1925): Polish author, best known for his novel 'Chlopi' (The Peasants), awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1924]. She was our friend. I had already flown out of home and she stayed with my parents until the war.

A washerwoman came to do the washing. The whole thing lasted for three days, and then you hung the laundry in the attic to dry. Then an ironing lady came, so, put shortly, it was a major operation, the big washing every two months. And then everything had to be starched, it was all cotton, no artificial fabrics, those were unknown.

I didn't know hunger but rather affluence. Well brought-up, learning to play the piano. At first, [my parents] insisted on me playing the violin. It didn't work too well, so I switched to the piano. A pharmacist's wife lived next to us. My sister and I went to her for lessons. We were both brought up as girls from a good home.

The first radio I remember was when I was in the final year of gymnasium. It was a large apparatus, with massive batteries at the back, you listened through headphones. There were lectures for final-year students. Friends would come to me, girls and boys, and we would listen. I know that at the time, I was 16, we were one of the first to have a radio.

What can I say about religion? We observed the holidays for the sake of my father's parents. They lived on the same street. People talked that we didn't observe the kashrut... and my father never ignored what his parents said. I knew them as very, very old people. They didn't visit us often. I remember the food aspect of the holidays. On Purim, my mother would bake beautiful things... My father observed the food regulations, taught us certain things. That is, for instance, you eat only matzah during the holidays. I remember how a friend tempted me to eat a piece of bread on Easter, and my father saw it. It was the first and only time that he gave me a spanking for publicly disobeying [his orders].

For Pesach, my father recited something, and I, as the eldest child, in the absence of a boy, asked him the questions [the mah nishtanah]. He answered me, and so on. I was little, I barely remember those things. I remember the Easter table, covered with horseradish roots [maror]. But, at the same time, there was ham. When I visited a [Christian] friend of mine, I saw the Christmas tree and found I liked it very much. And so there was also a tree at [our] home. But it stood in the last room, ours, in the mezzanine behind the door, hidden in case someone paid us a visit.

My father felt attracted to Jewishness. He read a lot. And he spoke Yiddish. Yiddish, or Hebrew, I don't know. And my mother - not at all, she was completely liberated, and it was her who ran the house, which is why I never learned many of the things [connected with the Jewish religion and tradition]. If my father went to the synagogue, it was on Judgment Day. My mother - never! And he fasted. My mother did not, nor did we. My birth certificate stated my religion as Jewish but my nationality as Polish. That's how I identified myself, that how I was brought up, in Polishness. I didn't know the [Jewish] language because we didn't speak Yiddish at home.

We had this favorite holiday place called Kamiensk, near Radomsko, where we regularly spent the summer holidays. And one Friday I was cycling back from there to Radomsko, it wasn't far, ten kilometers. I'm passing the synagogue and I see small boys starting to throw stones at me, that I'm offending their feelings. And I didn't realize, didn't know it was forbidden to cycle on Friday night. I don't remember my mother lighting the candles, ever.

I went to kindergarten in Radomsko. And then I went to gymnasium. I was always the youngest in the class. I never went to elementary school. There were several gymnasia in our town. Two for boys, one for girls, and the coeducational private one, ran by Mrs. Weintraub. Ludwika Weintraub came from Piotrkow [Piotrkow Trybunalski, town some 120 km south-west of Warsaw], I think. She was the school's owner and headmaster, a Jewess. Mrs. Mittleman, our craft and design teacher, a doctor's wife, mother of two daughters. A wonderful woman, she taught us many things, the useful ones. A professor named Brumberg. He taught biology, if I'm not mistaken. And Mrs. Palusikowa. I think she taught us math. There were also religion classes, in Polish.

Of my schoolmates I remember, for instance, Blumsztajn senior, Sewek's father [Sewek - short for Seweryn; Seweryn Blumsztajn, one of the founders of the underground KOR Workers Defence Committee, since 1989 editor at the 'Gazeta Wyborcza' daily]. We lived in the same house, us on the floor above them, and we completed the gymnasium together. Other schoolmates: Sznajder, a very talented boy, Plawner, he reportedly survived in the Czestochowa ghetto 8. When we grew up a bit, we became involved in other matters, not only our private ones. Community work. Some were Zionists, members of the so-called Shomr [see Hashomer Hatzair in Poland] 9. Brumberg was the leader of the Hashomer Hatzair guys. I didn't belong anywhere because I wasn't interested in the Jewish movement.

When the time came to take the school-leaving exams, I, being the youngest in the class, had to write to the board of education to be entered. The exam was very difficult. A humanistic-profile gymnasium, with Latin, with German. And I went to Cracow to study. I studied in the years 1930-1934. I studied chemistry. I originally wanted medicine but I didn't get in. The numerus nullus had already been introduced [see Numerus clausus in Poland] 10. Only doctors' children could take some kind of competition exam. Well, I had no chance of passing that, of course. So I took chemistry because in the first year the subjects were the same as in medicine, and I thought I'd eventually move. But I didn't. I stayed, studying the so-called physical university-level chemistry. I enjoyed the life in Cracow and I endured until the third year.

The chemistry department educated future school teachers. The industry was very underdeveloped; there were virtually no chemical plants, only the Moscicki factory [Moscicki, Ignacy (1867-1945): president of Poland from 1926-1939, chemist, founder of the State Nitrogen Compound Plant in Tarnow]. Many students studied forever, the so-called 'iron' ones; there was no requirement to complete your studies within any specific time. You could prolong forever. Unemployment was rampant, so students preferred to stay in the university for as long as possible, enjoy the reduced public transit fares, other discounts. School teachers weren't paid well either. In public schools they were paid better, but in private ones - poorly.

I tasted those big cities like the bumpkin I was. The studies were free of charge, we paid only the lodgings. I rented a room together with two other girls. There was antagonism between the [former] Congress Kingdom 11 and Malopolska [see Galicia] 12. The latter believed people from Congress Kingdom to be slobs, and we often had conversations like: 'Where you from? 'From there and there.' 'Oh, we can't rent to you because you're slobs.' And the place was dirtier than anything I had ever seen...

On the same street, Dunajewskiego, the PPS had its office. I remember a wonderful PPS rally and a fantastic speech delivered by Drobner [Boleslaw Drobner (1883-1968): socialist activist, Member of Parliament in communist Poland]. A face emanating with spirituality, dark hair, dressed in a Mao style uniform [Mao Zedong (1893-1976): Chinese communist leader, first president of the PRC, wore a characteristic uniform imitated by leftwing activists all over the world]. And when he spoke, it was very convincing. That was my first demonstration, May Day.

I experienced the bench ghetto 13. That was what attracted me to the socialist movement. Young people had strongly leftist views then. At university [Jagiellonian University] 14, there was an organization called Zycie Akademickie 15, and a socialist organization, the ZNMS 16. We had discussion meetings, because, apart from your own courses, you attended all other interesting lectures. The fellow students would gather, we had our own premises. The University had exterritorial status; the police wasn't allowed to enter. Nor did they ever arrest anyone. And various speakers came to deliver lectures. Meetings were organized once a week together by Zycie and the ZNMS, on subjects literary, political, whatever we found interesting.

One of the first speakers I remember was Cyrankiewicz 17. Wonderful, marvelous, handsome, lean, blond [Editor's note: everyone remembers him bald from the photographs]. He spoke beautiful Polish. He was from the ZNMS. We also invited writers, men of letters. One day, for instance, we were visited by Kruczkowski [Leon Kruczkowski (1900-1962): chemist, left- leaning writer and essayist]. But then there would come the endeks 18, the kind of boys that you'll also find in Poland these days [see Mlodziez Wszechpolska] 19... the ZPND and the Youth Legion [far-right youth organizations]... and they would start the 'Zwischenrufe' [German for 'interrupting shouts'], trying to break up the meeting, prevent the debate. They would also throw rotten eggs at the speaker to force him to leave. That's what they did with Kruczkowski. The meeting had to be aborted. They were a militia, members of the fraternities, student corporations 20.

There's this rhyme by Szenwald [Lucjan Szenwald (1909-1944): poet, communist activist], it goes like, 'czapeczka, laseczka, akselbancik, bydle wlane korporancik,' ['a cap, a cane, an aiguillette, here's the frat boy, a drunken lout']. The 'aiguillette' because they tied sashes on their shoulders. The cap and the cane, the cap often properly trimmed. They staged anti-Semitic riots, organized the bench ghetto and disrupted our meetings. We also had a militia of our own so they fought. And so much for a discussion, for a meeting.

And we did prison time for socialist activism. The university year was divided into trimesters; there was more vacation than normal life. After each trimester we went home for three weeks. And we changed the lodgings every time to save on rent. We didn't live in a dorm because there were few dorms, and chiefly for low-income students. Friends came to us to say goodbye because we were going home for three weeks. And suddenly the police arranged a frisk and, in 1934, in the apartment where I lived on Starowislna, I was arrested for alleged subversive activity. For being anti- state... And we landed in jail. To serve time was called 'kiblowac,' from the 'kibel,' the bucket that stood in the corner where you relieved yourself.

My mother attended every day of my trial. It was a great blow for my parents, but that's how we paid back for all the goodness that we had received. Two years in prison. And my husband, who was tried alongside me, received six years. I was expelled from the university, stripped of my civil rights. I was released in 1936 and started living on my own. You had to work, and unemployment was very high. It was the Great Depression period.

Radomsko ceased to be my home, it was only out of sentiment I went there. I remembered my childhood with great fondness. But in fact I no longer lived in Radomsko. It was a great embarrassment for the family that the daughter did time in prison, ruined her own life. In Radomsko, they viewed everything from a different angle. My parents were neither communists nor socialists. They weren't even Zionists.

Upon being released I first spent some time in Sosnowiec. Then I went to Warsaw. I lived at 56 Nowolipie Street, in a very beautiful, large house, as a subtenant, with Mr. and Mrs. Berger. Those were young, but religious people. I wasn't familiar at all with all those Jewish regulations and restrictions. I was surprised to see a young man scrubbing his face instead of shaving, because Jews weren't allowed to shave. Or, for instance, he calls me from his room, 'Mrs. Pola, Mrs. Pola, can you come here for a moment?' I enter, it was Friday night. 'Where are you?' I ask and I turn on the lights. And he says, 'Thank you.' I didn't even know that [on Sabbath] you aren't allowed to turn on the lights [i.e. perform any work].

I worked in the Alfa confectionery plant, on Mlynarska Street. Some relatives of Samsonowicz [paternal cousin], who were accountants, recommended me. The factory was owned by Jews named Wajdenfeld. They were two brothers who started with two bags of sugar, and eventually worked it up into a business with 400 employees. I worked as a bookkeeper, in the office, clattering away on the typewriter, learned some basic bookkeeping and that's how I made my living.

During the war

In 1939 I went on leave for the first time, to a summer resort, for two weeks. To Zielona near Jaremcze. Areas that are now part of Russia. [Jaremcze, summer resort near Kolomyja, today western Ukraine]. We went hiking in the mountain; it was the so-called Eastern Beskid Mountains, very beautiful. And then, towards the end of my leave, the unrest started in the border areas, in the north. And you felt war in the air. Everyone was packing up and I left, too.

On my way back to Warsaw I dropped in on my mother and sister who were on vacation in Kamiensk [near Radomsko]. And my sister asks me, 'Tell me, if there's war, will it be possible to buy things? Will the shops remain open?' 'I have no idea,' I said, 'like you don't.' 'Perhaps you'll stay with us?' she asked. 'No,' I said. By then I had become almost the sole provider for the family, their finances were poor. I was helping them and I didn't want to lose my job, no one had any idea what war meant. I said farewell to my parents and returned to Warsaw. I left them, and the next time I saw my sister was when she came to visit me after our mother's death.

Before the war actually began, there were preparations, fake alarms, that kind of thing. There was a nurse in every house, with a first-aid kit, to help if need be. I also received first-aid training. To prevent the Germans from entering Warsaw, we dug trenches in the Smocza Street area. I later saw what use those trenches turned out to be... when the motorized [German] army rolled into Warsaw [on 30th September 1939]. They didn't have a single horse... first came the motorcycles, then the tanks.

The first air raid. I was downtown, on Marszalkowska. Doing some business, and suddenly - the alert. We knew what to do. Jump into the nearest gate, because in every house there was a civil defense committee, there was a basement to hide, gas masks... So we're crowding into the gate. Suddenly we hear - the swish of falling bombs. This isn't an alert, this is for real. 'Here we are!' they demonstrated. [The first German bombs fell on Warsaw at 6am on 1st September 1939. They hit working-class apartment blocks in the Kolo and Rakowiec neighborhoods. Ms. Starzec must have remembered the bombing on some other day].

In the meantime, they seized the whole of Poland. Warsaw defended itself until the very end. I was still able to call my parents but soon the telephones were cut off. When the war started, I demonstrated with others in front of the French and British embassies - come help us! Starzynski, the president of Warsaw, a decent, wonderful man, ran the defense effort 21. He gave instructions until the last moment, ordered the men to evacuate from the city. We received all that because we had a radio at the factory. But when the daily air raids began, they didn't let me go anymore.

As long as the [Warsaw] ghetto 22 was open, I went to work, because it wasn't far, in Wola. They no longer paid us in money but still they paid us in kind. Chocolate products, couverture, that sort of thing. The factory had its own water intake, own power plant, and its employees formed a superb team. The owners had a brother-in-law, Kostrzewa, who wasn't a Jew. He later became the plant's Treuhänder 23. They both emigrated to America later. The factory had huge basements with big stocks of sugar, condensed milk, and all kinds of ready products. And when the war started, they didn't lock that away. There was a wide entry gate, they opened it, and people queued up for those products. They sold everything out to the last piece of candy. I slept at the factory in case of an intense air raid. There was terrible hunger. People cut [dead] horses in pieces. The stores were empty, water had been cut off; you took water from the Vistula. There was no electricity, everyone used carbide lamps.

In September 1939 [3rd September], the Germans entered Radomsko. And on 13th April 1940, my mother died. She had angina pectoris. There was no talk of any ghetto at that time, of no armbands... [Editor's note: the Radomsko Ghetto was closed on 20th December 1939; see Armbands] 24. The Wehrmacht 25 soldiers commandeered brass door knobs for cannonballs. My mother saw those Germans and fainted. And they never roused her back. They were worried themselves what to do with the problem. I was in Warsaw at the time and they [the family] hid it from me. My father got a job at the post office and he sent me packages. Those packages were brought to me by Kierocinski, a neighbor, every week. And there was always a letter from my mother. The last time he came, there was cake in the package, everything as usual. 'And where is the letter?' I asked. And he blurted out, 'You know, your mother felt a bit ill, she fainted.' 'But she's alright now?' She was dead by then, but they just prohibited him from saying anything, because it was no longer allowed to travel by train [and the family was afraid Ms. Starzec would try to get by train back to Radomsko].

I had a bad feeling, why has my mother not written me, what is he saying, she fainted? The cake is there, but no letter... I said, 'I'll go with you, when do you go back to Radomsko?' 'Tomorrow, perhaps the day after tomorrow.' It was just an intuition, a nasty feeling that nagged me. I went to the office at Teatralny Square that issued travel permits, and, surprise, I got it. I must have appeared truthful, that something had happened to my mother, I was anxious, needed to go and check.

I arrived in the town, took a droshky to the house, no one went out to the balcony. Well, something's wrong. And at this point my sister and the others run out of the house, all in tears. 'What's up with Mama?' 'She's dead.' She had already been buried. With Jews the dead are buried immediately. My mother is buried at the Jewish cemetery. My sister and I put up a gravestone after the war, not knowing anything about our father, how he died. I think he went with one of the transports, so he rests there symbolically with our mother's ashes. April 13 is the anniversary of our mother's death, a date we have always remembered.

And so I returned to Warsaw. My sister came to me. I still lived with the Bergers, they had two little babies. There was a basement in the house, and [during the relocation action carried out daily between July and September 1942] you could go down there. The Germans entered the ghetto and told everyone to gather in the courtyards, assisted by the police. They didn't go up the stairs because they were afraid of typhus which at the time was rampant in the ghetto. We, acting on intuition, either went down to the basement or not. Grandmother Berger, for instance, climbed into the mezzanine with the children. The entrance to the basement was hidden, children were the first to go. You had to crawl into the shelter which, until the alert was called off, remained bolted shut. And I remember to this day what gave me the horrors then: that I'm in a dungeon and I cannot leave it through that small exit. And the conditions in that basement were horrible. The crying children...

My sister and I went through many such alerts. And the transports kept going until the very end [the ghetto's liquidation]. The last transport during our stay in the ghetto took place when few people had been left [see Great Action] 26. We had realized by then that no one would stay in the ghetto. We had to leave. It was high time. My sister hesitated, she was afraid [to go], was all nervous, her face reflected fear and anxiety.

We worked in the so-called shop 27, a furrier's shop on Nowolipie. We made fur coats for the military, for the German army in Russia. The so called Schultz shop [probably Schultz & Co. at 80 Nowolipie Street, or the Fritz Schultz shop at 44/46 Nowolipie]. We had the 'Ausweise' 28; that was supposed to help us survive. And, indeed, it did. [During yet another action] they told us to take food for three days and clothing. And so we went. A procession, like in the movie, it was terrible, people had taken whatever they could with themselves, now they fell under the burden of all those bundles. We didn't have much, just a change of underwear and that's all. People left everything along the road until they got to the Umschlagplatz 29. And there was a whole campsite. With fires, tents...

And so the selection and segregation began. We had to go into the line, with those 'Ausweise' of ours. You showed your papers and you went either this way or that way. We saw some friends, acquaintances. There was a girl we knew, with her parents, relatively young ones, and her husband. Our friends, neighbors. And, before our very eyes, the parents were taken to the side, i.e. to the transport, and the young ones were let through, because they had 'Ausweise,' like us, so they were still useful, fit to work.

In front of me there was a woman with a little baby. That's cruel, but I'll never forget it either. Because they let her through, but only without the baby. And she left the baby because she wanted to go through. Humans ceased to be humans. All ethical principles and human feelings had been suspended. It was a traumatic experience for me. That was the kind of scenes I saw. I was together with my sister, but we were young, had the papers, and they let us through. And so we returned to the apartment at Nowolipie. We met Grandmother Berger there, she had hidden with the children... the whole family had stayed.

By then, the Russians had started responding, the 'Stalin Organs' [slang military term for katyusha rockets; in August and September 1942, Soviet long-distance bombers carried out air raids on numerous Polish cities, including, several times, on Warsaw]. A German in a Wehrmacht uniform sat next to me in the shop. 'Why do you go obediently like that, why don't you rebel against what's going on?' he asks me. He was our ally! Not all Germans were the same. That I also remember. And the role of the [Jewish] police 30? They weren't nice. They weren't good [people]. The Germans kept them until the last moment, but in the end they also went to the transports.

One time there was an alert and we went down to the basement. In the apartment we had some food products - some flour, groats, things like that. We had an iron stove in the room, because it was terribly cold. And on that stove we cooked soup, [so thick] the spoon stood in it. We come back [after the alert] and the food's all gone, stolen. Because the Germans had the policemen go and check whether anyone had stayed back in the apartments. And on top of that those policemen stole from Jews. That was nasty. Poor guys, they thought they would save themselves that way. They didn't. Which doesn't mean that all of them were like that. Such situations can occur in any community. Those are difficult things. Unfortunately. I remember the actions undertaken by the head of the Judenrat 31.

Donations were organized to help the refugees because the ghetto was hugely overpopulated; people were being brought from everywhere. [The inhabitants of areas around Warsaw, so-called 'refugees,' were being brought to the Warsaw ghetto, and their material situation was extremely poor]. They placed them in all the synagogues, they lived in terrible conditions. You couldn't cross the street, not to rub against one and catch a typhus louse. The poor ones no longer cared about life. Even though it was after curfew, they went out into the street and cried, 'Drop us some bread!' It's the first time I'm telling anyone about it, I'm not sure I should be.

But we had friends [Poles outside the ghetto] who cared for us and at the right moment pulled us out. They told us to leave the ghetto, we obeyed. A lady came with messages from them. Her name was Rozalia Solecka. Much older than myself, she knew me. And she knew I was from Radomsko, like her, only she wasn't [in the ghetto] because she was married to a non-Jew and lived in Zoliborz [a Warsaw neighborhood].

In January I went out [to the Aryan side] and in April [1943] they started burning down the ghetto 32. I knew I had to place my sister somewhere. Myself, I often didn't know in the evening where I'd spend the night, who'd offer me shelter. Though I had the papers, I didn't have a place of my own; I didn't want to expose anyone to danger. But I had some experience in underground activities and I was calmer inside. My sister couldn't hide the fact [she was Jewish], had to be pulled out of the ghetto almost by force, she kept saying, 'I want to die with the others.'

My sister was placed with a family named Skalski. Together with thirteen other Jews, all in a single concealed room. In Praga [a neighborhood in right-bank Warsaw], on Zabkowska Street, near the Rozyckiego market. Placed with a janitor who had been relocated from the ghetto [before the ghetto was closed, all non-Jews had been relocated elsewhere] and given an apartment in Praga [instead]. Three janitors were supposed to live in that apartment, each in a different room. But the other two had relatives in the countryside and didn't use those rooms, so Skalski had the whole apartment at his disposal. They allotted one room for a hiding place. And when a tenant [from the same house] came, it was clear he knew [about the hiding place], but if someone came from outside, the gendarmes, the Germans, they didn't know because the entrance to the room was properly concealed. And they slept in that room, lived there, kept guard in case of anything. They had straw pallets to sleep on.

They were placed there by a man we knew named Hert, a German name, perhaps he had signed the 'Volksliste,' I don't know. [Volksliste (German People's List): a Nazi institution whose purpose was the classification of inhabitants of Nazi occupied territories into categories of desirability according to criteria systematized by Heinrich Himmler. The institution was first established in occupied western Poland. Similar institutions were subsequently created in Occupied France and in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksliste] In any case, he was a public notary in Radomsko and later in Minsk Mazowiecki and my father did business with him and contacted him in business matters. He took care of us by securing genuine birth certificates of people who were dead, thanks to which I had a genuine kenkarta 33, which my sister didn't need because she never left her hiding place. [People in hiding didn't need fake papers]. And my name during the occupation was Zofia Dzioblowska.

My sister met her [future] husband when in the hiding place [in Skalski's apartment]. Chil Kirszenbaum. From Minsk Mazowiecki, young like her, born in 1920. A very handsome and very talented boy. In Minsk, he experienced the anti-Jewish riots in the 1930s, attacks on Jewish stores, was beaten up, he suffered a knee injury, something that has given him a hard time since then. They never left [the apartment they were hiding in]. They had the so-called bad looks [i.e. were easily recognizable as Jews] or had other reasons to stay put.

One important person from the war period was Aunt Niusia. What can I say about her? Aunt Niusia saved my cousin. His name was Ignacy Samsonowicz, he was a Bund 34 member and was in the ghetto at the same time as us. Had a teacher wife and a son, fled from the Piotrków ghetto to Warsaw. And I met him there for the first time. I had heard about him because we had many paternal cousins in Piotrków and Czestochowa. His wife, a beautiful woman, and a wonderful 12-year-old boy, were killed in a roundup [in Piotrkow]. And he was in a terrible depression. He had to be pulled out [of the ghetto]. And as he was a high-ranking Bund member, his fellow Bundists pulled him out of the Warsaw ghetto by force and placed him at 24 Zurawia Street. Where it wasn't allowed to hide anyone because it was a ZOB safe place. [Editor's note: it was a safe place for the Zegota - codename of the underground Council to Aid the Jews - the Polish government-in-exile organization to help Jews in occupied Poland.]

Aunt Niusia had the apartment from before the war. She wasn't Jewish. Her name was Eugenia Wasowska-Leszczynska. Wasowska was her maiden name. She was an editor by profession, ran an advertising business. She was a member of the Stronnictwo Demokratyczne and was very active on the Red Cross before the war. She wasn't married, even though she was many years my elder. A social activist. There were two entrances to the apartment - from the corridor in the front and from the back stairs. She made the apartment available for the ZOB [correctly: for the Zegota]. And the Bundists met there. For security reasons, it wasn't allowed to hide individual people there. But they brought Samsonowicz there and there he stayed. She cared for him. She hid him there until the end of the war and eventually married him.

He changed his name from Samsonowicz to Leszczynski, and hence her married name was Leszczynska. She died on 28th May 1987. We were very close, and to this day I take care of her grave. She was an everyday guest in our home, a wonderful person. The house on Zurawia wasn't destroyed in the [Warsaw] uprising. Bartoszewski [Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, born 1922, Polish politician and diplomat, historian, essayist, writer, during the war a member of the Home Army and a Zegota activist] uncovered a commemorative plaque there and people looked out their windows and said they never knew there had been a safe place there. We tried, my sister and I, to get her awarded with the Righteous Among the Nations medal 35, and we finally succeeded.

Another important person was Irena Solska [real name Karolina Flora Sosnowska (1875-1958): renowned Polish actress]. There was that action, a trap set up for Jews on the Aryan side, the so-called Hotel Polski 36. It was a provocation, they took money from people, promising them safe passage to the States or elsewhere [Editor's note: the travel documents were issued for neutral countries, chiefly in South America, as well as Palestine]. I was already visiting Samsonowicz, receiving money that we distributed as allowance among people [the money came from the Zegota]. I remember I had no job. I had already placed my sister in a safe place. Now, to be okay with my kenkarta, I needed an address.

I met an acquaintance from Nowolipie, she asks me what's up. 'I'm looking for a place, have you heard of something?' 'I'm vacating a room in Mokotow, because I've signed up for emigration, at the Hotel Polski, you know. It costs a lot but I hope it'll work.' I don't remember her name. I don't even remember her face anymore. She gave me Irena Solska's address. 'I have a place but the sofa there has been borrowed from Irena Solska. You have to sleep on something. Here's her address - tell her I sent you and ask whether you can continue using the sofa.'

It was then that I heard about the Hotel Polski. I hurried to Ignacy Samsonowicz and I tell him, 'Tell me, what's this Hotel Polski because I have no means of providing for myself on the Aryan side, and a sister to pay for...' We paid that janitor; he needed money to get by too. And I had no prospects for a job of any kind. I tell him, 'Perhaps I could sign up for the thing too, what do you think, are there any possibilities? I have no money.' And he says, 'Listen, darling, it'll be easier to jump into the Vistula from the Poniatowskiego bridge. Don't try that, it's a dirty business.'

And so I went to Irena Solska and I found a way [to survive]. I didn't know Solska before the war. I only knew she was a renowned theater actress. An artist. I went to her, there was a cosmetics store in the front, and she lived on the first floor at the back. I say 'A lady such-and-such has sent me and can I keep the borrowed sofa because I need a place to stay?' And she starts telling me, in an utterly theatrical voice, the old dramatic school, Nina Andrycz [born 1915, Polish theater and movie actress] style, 'I receive wool here that needs to be taken to the clients...' And she trembled, it was advanced Parkinson, she was already old. 'Your job is to take the material to the clients, pick up the money, the pay is so and so, breakfast and dinner included.' I'm waiting for an answer about the sofa and she's telling me all that in that theatrical voice of hers! I ask, 'But, madam... are you making this offer to me?' 'Yes, I am.' 'Do you know who you're talking to?' 'I do.' 'But I can be stopped with the material and the money and never return, because I'm a Jew.' 'I can tell. But I trust nothing bad will happen to you, I believe in what my intuition tells me.' And it was like being on cloud nine. I had a way to earn my living, to have a place to stay, money, and even to pay for my sister. 'Nothing bad will happen to you with me.'

And I worked for her right until the [Warsaw] uprising. I carried the wool, all day long in the streetcars, riding in the 'grape clusters' [vernacular for streetcars so full that people rode outside, clinging on to the car in an image of a cluster of grapes], my kenkarta was stolen, I had trouble. The clients I delivered the wool to were wives of pre-war officers now interned in POW camps. Officers' wives, in Ochota [a Warsaw neighborhood] and in the army houses in Aleje Niepodleglosci. They had looms and weaved on them. One time I crossed the Kierbedzia Bridge, going from Praga to Warsaw, and right in front of Miodowa there was a blockade. And I had a package with wool. I was going to clients in Ochota. I ask someone if it's a roundup again. Because sometimes they were stopping the streetcars, throwing everyone out, frisking. And me with that package, it was worth a lot of money. And someone answers me, 'Don't you see? They're burning the kikes in the ghetto.' I saw flames over the ghetto... [It was the beginning of the Ghetto Uprising].

And then I had my encounter with a szmalcownik 37. A navy-blue policeman 38. I was unable to keep a brave face. Terrible anxiety, and what to do? I arrive in Ochota, at Narutowicza Square a navy-blue policeman gets off with me and stops me, 'Your kenkarta, please.' He had been following me, must have [found out] from my reaction to the words about 'burning the kikes in the ghetto.' I say, 'I won't go with you, I have some business to do around here.' 'Okay, I'll go with you.' And he did.

I went to two clients with him. I didn't care, I knew he wanted money, but I didn't give him anything even though I had some on me. But, on the other hand - my sister... I called in an apartment at Filtrowa, left a package... but I won't call Solska because I would compromise her. I left him, I'm coming back, he sits and waits for me in the gateway. I say, 'There's one more person I have to visit.' And he obediently follows me, my kenkarta in his hand.

Finally, when I was to go to the third of my contacts, I tell him, 'Okay, I'll go with you now, what do you want to do?' 'I'll take you to the station here.' 'Why do you want to take me to the station? Do you think I'm Jewish?' And at those words he trembled. [The underground Polish organizations] had been issuing death sentences against the szmalcowniks, and he must have thought, 'She goes from one place to another, perhaps she's told them about me?' He was quite simply afraid. He actually kissed me on the hand, apologized. And went away, I didn't even know in which direction.

All trembling, I boarded a streetcar and went to Solska, told her the whole story. It was her who told me then that the Polish underground organizations had been passing death sentences on the blackmailers. 'And he got frightened,' she told me. 'Calm now. It's good it ended like that.' And that was my encounter with the burning ghetto. Solska soothed me then, she was a wonderful person.

The [Warsaw] Uprising 39 separated us because by chance I found myself in Praga... I didn't stay long in my first apartment because there arose some nasty suspicions [that the interviewee was Jewish], I had to keep changing my address. When the uprising broke out, I was living in Mariensztat [Warsaw neighborhood, near the Old Town]. Shortly before [the start of the uprising on 1st August 1944] I wanted to take my sister to my place, I was already a member of the AL 40, had more friends and contacts. I knew the uprising would break out any day now, the preparations had been under way, so in the morning, at dawn, I hurried to [the apartment at] Brzeska to take my sister to Warsaw. It was 1st of August. Ircia was already living with her husband. She didn't want to hear about leaving without him, he didn't want to move either. I decided to go back to Warsaw, all I had on myself was a summer dress. But the bridges had already been closed. I stayed with them. On Brzeska, with the thirteen of them. And there I spent the whole period [during the uprising and afterwards] until liberation.

I had to remain in hiding for some time because my official address was elsewhere. But later I was able to move. I helped the housekeeper, went shopping with her to a market in Grochow [today neighborhood, then suburb of Warsaw]. We had to bring supplies for thirteen. For two weeks the streetcars in Praga didn't work, but then the uprising in Praga was crushed and I was able to move freely. Where the Decennial Stadium is today [Warsaw's largest sports arena, disused now, built in 1955 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of People's Poland] were fruit-and-vegetable gardens. We went there for tomatoes, under fire, the 'cows' [called so because of the sound the heavy shell made when fired] swooshed past! That's how it was.

After the war:

And eventually I was able to welcome the military: the First Army 41. At the corner of Brzeska and Kijowska. There was a balcony on the third floor and a dog, Cacus, who always warned us beautifully if the gendarmes were coming. I went through Praga with the thirteen to get out of town, and as soon as we passed the tollbooths we heard, 'Just look at that, so many kikes have managed to survive.' You heard that around. And so I was liberated and I hitchhiked to Lublin. They [my sister and her husband] stayed in Minsk Mazowiecki, where he found his family house. The family wasn't there anymore. And that's where they lived right after the war.

Let me tell you now about a friend of mine. She's my friend from the student period in Cracow, she studied biology, I did chemistry. She came from Bedzin [town in Silesia, some 200 km south of Warsaw]. We bumped into each other accidentally after the war. We were applying for a job somewhere, she had been in the First Army. Married name Litoczewska, maiden name Perlmuter. Marysia. We called her Maniusia. She was so petit, so slim, always smartly dressed. And when I met her, right after the war, she approached me, in uniform, she looked like a bag with a piece of rope wrapped around her waist, so round she was. It wasn't the same Marysia, I didn't recognize her at first. And so, from word to word, we moved in together. A rented room, in Praga. We also got married on the same day: 1st October, my birthday. 1944. Soon afterwards she emigrated with her husband to Israel. They have two kids, the girl lives in England, the boy in Germany.

I found one more of my mother's cousins after the war - Mietek Zelinger [son of Uncle Bernard]. I was in Katowice, dropped by Sosnowiec, to see whether the house was still there. I arrived, it was. I climbed the stairs to the second floor. I knock at the first door, I ask whether they know anything about the Zelinger family, what happened with them during the war. 'You come at the right moment, Mietek has just returned from the camp. Come in, he's gone to town to look around; he'll see you when he gets back. He'll be very happy to.' How immensely happy I was...

Mietek told me then how it all looked: they [the Germans] came, took everyone, the parents [Bernard and Zosia] and them [Mietek and Henio]. The parents were sent to one camp, and the two of them to another. In the camp, Henio died of hunger right before liberation, and the parents - Mietek didn't know how they died because they were in a different camp. [Mrs. Starzec doesn't remember the names of the camps].

We took Mietek to Warsaw. He wasn't there long. From the very beginning, he was determined to go to Israel [then Palestine]. He made his mind up right away and told us that. We tried to convince him, 'Stay here, we'll set you up,' but he didn't want to hear about that. He started as a simple hand [in Israel], a boy that had lived in a lap of luxury at home. But there he worked hard and somehow, by his own effort, he eventually got settled.

He met a Yemenite girl, and that was his first great love. A beautiful, wonderful girl, slender, as if sculpted. That gave him an extra motivation. He fell in love and they are a wonderful family. He has many kids, they live in Israel. A wonderful marriage, and they live to this day. It was his happiness after all those hardships. He lived in tough conditions. But now he is a happy father and grandfather. He suffers from a heart condition. He's much younger than me, I was his tutor when I lived with them [for a brief period in 1936 in Sosnowiec]; I gave him some private lessons. In one word, a great boy today. He's changed completely. 'Mietek, I remember you were mean, bad...' 'Well, yes, I was mean.' He's grown a moustache [to cover the harelip]. And he wanted to die there, in Israel.

I didn't emigrate because I really feel Polish, I know the language, the literature. I visited Israel but didn't find it attractive. They [the Israelis] are very much like we, the Poles. In every respect. They've been through as much slavery as we have but they are as nationalistic and chauvinistic as many people here. I saw synagogues for whites and for blacks. Just as people don't like Jews here, so they don't like Poles there, I was shocked by all that. It wasn't for me.

I also saw a ghetto in Israel, completely separated... I was there about ten years ago [around 1996]. I went there to see my sister. I was walking through one of Tel Aviv's neighborhoods to visit my cousin [Mietek]. And suddenly a gate opens and the kaftans pull out, all with payes, big, small, pulling out in a large crowd. I arrive at my cousin's and ask him what it was. He tells me the neighborhood is inhabited by Hasidim who still wait for their Messiah to come. From the cheder, to the universities, they have everything they need here. They don't feel liberated yet.

Those who were leaving to Israel were doing so with highly bitter feelings. Some, those who experienced the pogroms, I understand. My brother-in-law, who did a lot for Poland, also met with injustice, was sacked from his job, virtually thrown on the street. And, following Gomulka's speech 42, they [he and his wife, Mrs. Starzec's sister] left. Many like them left then, people that had devoted their lives to Poland. Their elder son, Marek, was born in 1947, lives in France today. Marek Kirszenbaum. He has three wonderful kids, Bruno is the youngest, born in 1981.

My sister and her husband emigrated with their younger son who lives in Los Angeles now. And Marek stayed because he already had a career, in physics. And today he's retired. He's very talented, he worked at the equivalent of our Nuclear Research Institute. My sister and her husband have moved to Los Angeles. He's in a poor condition. The younger son brought them there. When they were leaving, they were still in good shape, but you shouldn't replant old trees. The second emigration, from Israel to the States, proved hard on them.

My husband, Adolf Starzec, isn't Jewish. He grew up in the country, in tough conditions. The parents scrimped and saved to educate their children, to pay for their studies. He was the youngest one, brought up by his aunt. An aunt with ten children. He came from the Cracow region, from a village near Tarnow [city some 200 km south-east of Warsaw], called Zukowice Stare. He was a good student, it was planned he would become a priest. But he changed his mind. He completed a high school in Tarnow, where he lived in lodgings, and then went to university in Cracow. Tarnow is like Cracow in miniature. Beautiful architecture.

It's the student period we know each other from. From the socialist movement. He thought it was it for him. He was also active on peasant organizations. Had contacts with Witos 43, he was many years my elder. He did manage to complete his studies. He defended himself beautifully [during the trial], got six years. Released eventually, he worked as a simple construction worker, carried bricks. And when the war broke out, all the [court] files, of course, fell into the Gestapo's hands. He fled to Russia. He was there all the time. And only after his return we did get to know each other again. And we got married.

He was a man who sincerely fought for freedom and truth and who believed that was the right way. A very noble man. He lived in Cracow for some time after the war. Our little son had already been born. I remember how I traveled to Cracow with the baby boy in a wrap, he didn't walk yet. We hiked a lot in the mountains with my husband. We didn't ski but hiked and that's how we spent any leisure time we had. Our younger son, Krzysio, was born in 1950. He had those beautiful curls, such lovely hair, and today he's bald... My elder son, Wlodek, was born in 1947. He's dead.

And finally a digression. I've never experienced hunger. I was shocked to learn that a friend of mine, with whom I was in prison together, died of hunger in Russia. That was inconceivable for me. A girl from Cracow, my cellmate. Pepcia Alszter [diminutive for Pepa]. It was the first time I met someone like that. We were young so we talked. 'Do you have a boyfriend?' 'I do.' 'And you?' 'I don't.' When we asked Pepcia whether she had a boyfriend, she blushed. So we press, 'Come on, spit it out. Is there someone you're in love with?' And she says, 'Lenin.' A young girl, thin as a rake, eyes big as saucers. She was so devoted to the idea and they let her die of hunger there, in that paradise...

Unfortunately, no idea works right in real life. Even religion, whether Christian or Jewish and so on. What is my criticism of the Jewish [religion] is that it hasn't reformed itself at all. I'm handicapped because I have no religion. I believed in the [socialist] ideology but it didn't work out the way it should. The kibbutzim in Israel were very much how I thought things should look like. But even they haven't managed to stay afloat. They're collapsing slowly because obviously people need some freedom.

Glossary:

Erzsebet Radvaner
Budapest
Hungary
Interviewer: Eszter Andor and Dora Sardi

Herman Rosenberg, my paternal grandfather, was born sometime in the 1830s,
in Gonc, I think, and died in 1908 in the Jewish hospital in Budapest. His
wife was Regina Feuerstein. I do not know when she was born, but the age
difference between them was small and she died in 1908 too. They had eight
children: six boys and two girls. Three out of the six boys "magyarized,"
or changed their German surname for a Hungarian one. At the turn of the
century my father magyarized his name as well; he became Gonczi. I knew my
paternal grandparents, but as far as I know they were not very religiously
observant.

Ignac was the eldest son, born in 1852, and he was the only one who could
get an education. He became a lawyer, a legal adviser to the coal mining
industry in Petrozseny and the deputy of the town. He had a six-room flat
in Budapest; he was the rich man of the family. He died in 1920. He had
five children. Julia was the eldest. I think she died when she was three.
Imre lived in Petrozseny and in 1944 he was beaten to death by Iron Guard
men.

Judith suffered from heart disease and died in her thirties. Janos was a
student at the time of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919 and he joined
an anti-revolutionary group. We never knew about anything it. He got
married, had a daughter, and in 1932 when she was eighteen she died of so-
called children's paralysis. There was an epidemic of it then. After the
war came the Rakosi era and the communists; Janos said that this was not
what they had fought for, and killed himself. Ivan was left. He became a
foreign trader, got married and they had a mentally handicapped son. I do
not know when he died.

The younger brother of Ignac was Lajos. He was born sometime at the turn of
the century. He emigrated to America and corresponded with the family while
his parents were still alive, then he lost touch. The next is Miksa. He
remained Rosenberg. He was the vendor of a textile factory. He travelled to
Paris and I don't know where else. He got married in Vienna. Izidor was a
furniture merchant. He had a factory, but he lost it playing cards. Then he
married a woman who brought a lot of money to the marriage and managed to
save his factory. He never saw his wife before the wedding. My aunt spoke
French. They had two daughters and two sons.

Then there was Ida, who married Bertalan Szilagyi. They emigrated to the
States at the turn of the century and they had a son there, who died when
he was six. My aunt became ill and the doctor advised my uncle to bring his
wife home, if he did not want to bury her there soon. They came home. The
second son was born here in 1905. Bertalan had a successful ladies' fashion
workshop. Aunt Ida died in 1919. The younger sister of my father, Malvin
was born in 1879 and she died in 1932. She had a bad marriage. She married
in order for my father to be able to get married himself, and she had two
daughters. Both daughters were deported in 1944 and died.

The younger daughter's husband was a leather merchant and they had two
sons. They were very observant: they went to synagogue on Friday and
Saturday, but to save the boys they converted to Christianity. On Friday
they went to the synagogue to say goodbye to the Jewish God and on Sunday,
with a prayer book with the cross on it, they went to the Catholic Church.
There was a sort of monastery on Maria Street: the boys were educated
there. The priests who taught the boys hid them during the war. Thus they
were saved. They live in Switzerland.

Jozsef Klein, my maternal grandfather, was born in 1847 or 1848 in Szilagy
County. I think it was Hadad. He was a stove-maker. He came to Pest, but I
do not know when. He met my grandmother here, who was a widow then. She
brought two daughters into the family. I do not know anything of them; they
died. I don't know where grandmother Regina Bloch came from. There were a
lot of sisters and brothers. I can remember an aunt whom we visited. I have
only a few memories of Grandmother Regina; I was very young when she died
in 1913. Grandfather died in 1920.

There were four siblings in my mother's family. The eldest was Mor Klein,
who became Mor Karman. He worked in the stock market and in 1932, when the
market collapsed, he killed himself. His wife worked in the clothing shop
his mother owned. It was an elegant shop. People didn't go there to buy a
shirt, they went there to order a trousseau. They had a son, Istvan Karman.
He was taken away to a forced labor corps and he died there in Koszeg in
1944.

There is one more daughter. She lives in America. She got married in 1936.
Her husband was quite observant. They had the wedding in the Rumbach Street
synagogue. That one was more orthodox than the one on Dohany Street; they
had no organ there. Klari was not too observant as a matter of fact, but
she kept all the observances with her husband. In 1938 when the Anti-Jewish
law was discussed in Parliament, her husband said that he did not want to
be a second rate citizen anywhere. They emigrated to America, to New York.
Here at home they had had a child, but it died; there in America they had a
daughter. Mor's wife was in my flat, which was in a protected house, and
she emigrated to America in 1947.

The next brother of my mother was Artur. He did not like studying, he
wanted to be an actor. My grandfather did not like that and so he had to
study to be a locksmith, though later he was a traveller. He wandered all
through Europe from Moscow to Madrid. In the end he lived in Hamburg. He
rented a room at the house of a Christian dancer, who was fourteen years
his senior and had two grown daughters. He married her. If there was ever a
good marriage, then it was that one. When my grandmother died he came home
for the burial with his wife and a common-law son of theirs, who was the
same age as I was. One more son, Ferenc, was born to them in Pest in 1914.
They were living in the house where my grandmother's siblings lived. When
the child was born, the neighbours went and registered him as Ferenc Jozsef
Klein, religion Jewish. Grandfather took him into the stove trade. He
needed a locksmith for work with ovens. My grandfather had a workshop in a
cellar, in fact it was a storeroom, as they did not work there. They went
to houses and were told everywhere that only uncle Klein would do. Only he
was called to work at the Lukacs Cafe.

Artur was a soldier in WWI. When Feri was born, he was not at home.
Grandfather gave his wife money and the money my grandfather gave was
always just too little. When her husband came home she complained to him.
In 1919 my uncle started saying that his wife was better than his sister
was and they had an argument with Grandfather. Without so much as a
goodbye, he left his father and everybody else and they went back to
Hamburg. He became a projectionist at a Jewish cinema and his wages were
not too bad. His elder son joined the SS and did not speak to his father.
In 1939 my aunt came to Pest to certify that their younger son was a
Christian. She had a birth certificate that the child was Jewish, but from
the Evangelical minister she got a certificate that the child had been
christened. Later in the court she swore that her husband was not the
father of the child.

The elder son died as an SS soldier in 1940, the younger became a Wehrmacht
soldier at an anti-aircraft unit and died in a bomb attack. My uncle
survived the war; while he was at work, in the projection room in the
cinema, a child was killed in the neighbourhood and he was arrested as the
killer. Everybody at the cinema testified for him. He was released, but
there were no apologies. Instead he was taken to an internment camp, which
he survived. In 1958 he came home for the first time since 1919 and I think
he died in 1964.

Then there was Berta, she died in 1905 when she was 23 and engaged to be
married. She had some sort of heart problem.

My mother was the youngest. She was born in 1884 in Budapest. She finished
four secondary classes and after that she learned sewing and then she
stayed at home. My mother did not study, nor did her sister. They learned
sewing from an acquaintance, but women had no profession.

My father was called Mano Mihaly. He was born in 1877 in Gonc. His parents,
the Rosenbergs, had their own house and a shop. Then another Jew moved
there, one who was cleverer and more skilled than my grandfather, and they
went bankrupt. They moved to Kassa (Kosice in Slovakia today). I do not
know what they did there. Maybe the eldest son was already helping them.
Then they moved to Pest. They lived on Garai Street. There they were not
working. There was a shop there too, but that one was their daughter's. I
don't know if they helped out in the shop or not. Then they died. At
school, my father finished four upper classes. Then he went to be a shop
assistant in an elegant furniture shop and he was also a designer there. He
could draw beautifully. They had a very big shop on Kecskemeti Street
which sold very elegant furniture. The customers used to come and ask him
to have a look at the furniture they wanted to have. Then my father would
draw the furniture. He would draw the bedroom, the dining room, the living
room and the parlour. If it was suitable, the joiner made it, they
delivered it and installed it, and then the customer could move in.
Everyone in the joinery trade knew him.

There was a ballroom where the Royal Hotel is now. There was some ball to
which my mother went to dance and there was my father, not dancing. They
met there and love and marriage followed. Getting married was not so very
simple. My father was the youngest son and he had a younger sister, Malvin.
The parents said: "You can't get married before Malvin." They married
Malvin off, but she had a very bad marriage and it was always blamed on my
father. They, my parents, got married at last in 1904 in Pest, in the
synagogue on Dohany Street. My father was in WWI for less than a year,
because his boss brought him back. The boss had inherited the shop from his
father, but did not know the trade. Someone in the WarMinistry ordered a
suite of leather chairs and new furniture for a whole room to help
discharge my father. He stayed in office work until the end of the war and
was behind the counter in the mornings. Then the shop closed because it
went bankrupt.

My father was unemployed. I do not know too much about this period. I
didn't ask and they never told me. Under the Hungarian Soviet Republic my
father was working in a furniture depot. Then he was fired from that job.
He did lots of different things, he changed his trade nearly every month
until 1928. Then he was working in a shop that sold kitchen furniture. It
closed due to the Great Recession. He was unemployed for many long years,
but then he became shop manager in the Zsigmond Nagy & Partner furniture
shop.

My elder brother, Laszlo, was born in 1905. I was born in 1908. I went to
the primary school on Nyar Street. I was the best pupil the whole time I
was there. Then there was the Maria Terezia higher school for girls, on
Andrassy Street, which lasted for six years. It was very difficult to get
in there, as it was just for the rich. The husband of the sister of one of
my aunts was the director of a publishing house and he had connections to
all of Pest. My mother went to him and told him that she would like to get
me into the Andrassy Street School. He said that he could get me into any
school in the town, but not there: "She would only learn to show off there.
Put her into the middle school," he suggested. That school was on Nagydiofa
Street. I was the best pupil there too. Going to the synagogue on Fridays
was compulsory. At the beginning my mother took us to school, but later we
went on our own. There was no public transport. Laci went to the Realschule
on Realtanoda Street. I used to go along with them as far as Nagydiofa
Street.

For three years I learned to play the piano, because we had a borrowed one
from my uncle. During the year the piano was at our house, but during the
summer they moved out of the town to Zugliget and they took the piano
along. Then they said that all the transportation was damaging the piano
and they would not bring it anymore. I practised all kinds of sports, but
wasn't good at anything except rowing, which I loved. I swam, but badly. I
skated, I played field hockey and tennis, but all these just a bit.

When my father had no job our grandparents took them in because my maternal
grandfather was earning good money. It was meant to be until my father got
a job. I don't know how long it took my father to get himself a job. What I
can remember was the time he was a shop manager at the Fodor Company. We
lived first on Kiraly Street, then on Kertesz Street in a three-room flat.
There were two rooms with a balcony facing the street. There was a dining
room and a bedroom. All of us, the parents and the children, slept there.
The room looking out onto the yard was my maternal grandparents' room. We
moved there in November 1912 and grandmother died in April 1913.

My mother had no job but tending to the home. We had the same helper for
thirty years, Erzsi. She was sixteen when she came to us and she was very
decent. She cleaned the house and cooked; she was an excellent cook. As
long as my grandfather was alive, the household was kosher. My grandfather
was observant, heart and soul. Each Friday he went to synagogue and each
Saturday the same. Each morning he put on the tallit and the tefillin and
he prayed.

My father had some stomach disease. My mother bought ham for my father's
dinner, he ate it from the paper, and he did not use cutlery or anything
else. But he wiped his mouth after it. Grandfather took the napkin used by
my father and after dinner he put it in the laundry. Grandfather really
took it seriously. As long as my grandfather was alive, he sent us, each
Friday from September till January, a big goose bought at the goose seller.
Erzsi opened it. She knew well by then how to cook kosher. She salted it,
put it to soak and she prepared it in the kosher way, but it was my mother
who shared it out. I used to wonder, how she could share a roast goose
among such a big family. Many times on Saturday there was cholent, but
that was reheated. There was no cooking on Saturday, just reheating. Then
in 1919 there came the Hungarian Soviet Republic and there was nothing to
eat.

My father was working in the furniture depot. Under the Hungarian Soviet
Republic those who presented a wedding certificate saying that they were
newlyweds got free bedroom furniture. The peasants used to bring 5 kilos of
pork bacon and smoked ham; they believed that they would get better
furniture like that. So we ate it. Grandfather ate it too.

There were great Seders at Pesach led by my grandfather. There were lots of
us at the Seder Eve dinner: my mother's siblings were there , but none of
my father's relations. We had separate dishes for the Seder, we kept them
in the attic until Pesach. Before Pesach we used to give the whole house a
big clean. On the last morning, Grandfather gathered the last crumbs with a
candle onto a wooden spoon and burnt them and prayed. I stood at his side
because I immensely loved everything linked to a festival.

On the Eve of Rosh Hashanah we had dinner in the evening, went to the
synagogue, and then my father took us to his brother Izidor's place, who
had four children. That was all we did. That was where my father's family
was. We would always go there.

Laci (Lazslo) was Bar Mitzvahed and he prayed every morning for months,
because Grandfather wanted it that way. Then he said that he had no time
for it. My mother wanted us to fast on Yom Kippur. I did it in earnest; I
was religious. But Laci was not. I think he hid on Yom Kippur.

We were at Siofok down by Lake Balaton every summer until the beginning of
World War I. We rented a flat with a servant, and we packed up everything,
including all the kitchen stuff, and went there. When Laci went to school,
then we were there from the end of the school year until it started again.
On Saturday evenings the husbands came to visit. Then in 1914 my parents
went to Abbazia. The whole family went to Nagymaros together in 1918. There
was no holiday in 1919. Then we did not have holiday for quite a few years,
because my father was unemployed. Then the family holidays were over.

My social circle was mostly Jewish. I had very many boys around because
anybody could come to our house, boys and girls. My mother was the most
wonderful person in this world. We would go to the zoo every evening during
the summer, because there were classical music concerts on the Gundel
Terrace next to the zoo. Two brothers, who were our friends, had entrance
passes for the zoo and we all got in with that one pair of passes. All of
us got in separately at different gates, giving the passes to each other
through the rails of the fence. There were ten or fifteen of us. From the
age of fifteen I always went to concerts. Before that, Laci and I and two
cousins of ours went to the town theater every Sunday afternoon. You can
not name a singer or a conductor whom I did not hear. My father was not
interested in classical music. My mother liked it, but never went to
concerts. It was the hobby of my brother. My brother was a very cultivated
child. He was only interested in classical music. And he read and read.
There were not too many books at home, but we read books from the library
all the time. And we read everything: Gardonyi, Mikszath, Jokai, and so on,
all the greats of Hungarian literature.

Laci went to the Realschule. There he had his bachelors' exam, but he was
not accepted to the university because of the Numerus Clausus, a legal
limit on the numbers of Jews allowed into certain institutions and
professions. First he worked at my uncle's, in the office, then he had a
workshop for small furniture. He wasn't very successful. In the end he had
a good job. He was a manager on an estate somewhere in Szilagy County in
the territory Hungary took back in 1938. This was already during the war.
He earned good money there and he and his wife had two sons. My brother
converted to the Protestant faith. When his wife became pregnant he changed
his religion for her sake. Their son Adam was born as a Protestant.

My younger sister, Anna, was born in 1917. She attended the Jewish school.
She studied well, and had trouble only with Latin. In the fourth form her
teacher said that if my mother did not withdraw her from the school, he
would make her fail her year. My mother withdrew her. She went to
bookkeeping school for a year. Later she learned pottery and languages and
she was a shop assistant in a tea and coffee shop. She had to leave it
because of the Anti-Jewish law.

I would have liked to have gone to medical school to be a pediatrician, but
the Numerus Clausus was already in effect. So then first I learned hat-
making in a private shop. Then we were told that I should learn sewing, and
that there was always demand for that kind of work. I got into Julia
Fisher, which was one of the biggest fashion salons in Pest. I was sixteen
when I got there. Once, at the end of the workday, one of the seamstresses
told me to take some letter to some place. I told her that I could not. The
next day the lady in charge came and said that because I hadn't gone, I was
fired.

My uncle sent word that I should go to the Korstner sisters. I had a nice
time there and I learned the trade there. I got my certificate there one
and a half years later, and worked there for two more years, because I
needed two years' practice to get a permit to open my own workshop. Then I
quit. This was in 1929. For thirty years after that I worked and I had a
ladies' fashion shop.

At first I worked in my mother's flat. My mother had a sewing machine which
she had received from her family. My clientele was mostly Jewish and I had
a well to do ladies' fashion shop. Sometimes I had 8-10, sometimes only two
employees, it depended on the amount of work. I had no time during the week
because in the morning I had to distribute the work among the girls, and
then the clients started arriving to buy or to try on. I had this ladies'
fashion shop until 1949.

My first husband was Tibor Grosz. He was fourteen years my senior. We had
no wedding at the synagogue. He was not non-religious, but he said that it
was nobody's business what two people did. Once we went to the synagogue on
Dohany Street at Yom Kippur. Even then I was disturbed by all the talking
going on. I go there either to pray or to discuss things. I never felt like
going.

He was a chemical engineer. First he was in the leather factory. It went
bankrupt. Then for a year he was unemployed and then he became the head of
the laboratory of the Leipziger Spirit factory. We lived in Obuda. We had
no phone, and after 11 at night there were no trams. Our guests had to walk
to Budapest from there and everybody left at one or two o'clock in the
morning, because they felt so good. In our flat we didn't talk about
politics. Then came that particular Friday evening. We were leaving my
mother-in-law's place and people were shouting that Vienna was under
attack. With that, politics came. We moved to Katona Jozsef Street in 1938.

During the war, 32 people lived in my three-room flat. Our house became a
protected house. In October 1944, all the Jewish women between the ages of
16 and 40 were called up to the Kisosz stadium. We went from there to
Mogyorod, and from Mogyorod to Isaszeg. We were told that we were being
taken to work. We were in Isaszeg for two days. There was a French break-
through and we were herded backwards. We were brought back to the brick
factory on Becsi Street, where we spent the night. In the morning we
started walking towards Hegyeshalom. From there we went on towards
Zurendorf, Austria. There the SS took over. They were mere boys of 14-15,
at least they looked that way to me.

They made us get into railway carts and in the evening the train set off.
We looked out in the morning to see where we were. It was some town.
Suddenly I shouted that we were in Hungary. The train stopped in Harka-
Kophaza, where we got off. We got to Kophaza on foot, where we had to dig
ditches. There were no SS around, as they were trying to run away by then.
Usually we were guarded by self-trained peasants, but there were still some
SS, of course. There were four of us together. My younger sister, a girl
from the house and an acquaintance of my sister.

At the end of March the Russians were already coming and they started
herding us away, but we went back to Kophaza. We went to the Jewish
canteen. There the Jews who were in forced labour gangs got some sort of a
soup that had some beans in it, and in the morning some black liquid that
was at least wet and warm. There was not even water and we suffered from
thirst all the time. Anna was very clever and resourceful. She went to the
local authorities and told them that we were left there at the Jewish
kitchen, but we had nothing to cook. It was announced in the village that
food was needed at the Jewish canteen. Suddenly the boys saw that on the
other side of the road, the German soldiers were loading food on cars. They
were stealing bread and artificial honey and artificial butter. Then we
heard sounds of the cars. I said that I thought the Germans were leaving
and there were no Germans at all in the village. Then the shooting and the
cannon fire started. We set out for home all the same: by train, by cart,
on foot. We got home on the 11th of April. My husband died in Bozsok in
February 1945. He was above the age limit, which was why he was not taken
to forced labour earlier. In 1944 on the 20th of October, the Nyilas men
(Hungarian fascists) came at five in the morning, they gathered all the
middle aged men who could still walk and deported them. I never saw him
again. We were taken on the 23rd of October.

My mother and my father were hiding, holding Christian papers. Those were
real papers, not fakes. A teacher couple, Lajos Kovacs and his wife, had
run away from Hajduszoboszlo. It was not difficult to learn the name of the
man, but the woman was called Julianna Oblidalovics. My father was not
deported. The housekeepers were decent people, because when the Nyilas men
came, they hid him in a wardrobe or in the lichthof (a shaft in the middle
of certain buildings that lets in light and air). There was a mezzanine
with a door to the lichthof. The key to that was in the pocket of the lady
caretaker. The Nyilas men walked around the flat, he was nowhere. "And this
door?" they asked. "This is just the lichthof," she replied.

My father went back to work right after the war, to the Zsigmond Nagy and
Partner furniture shop. He had to furnish a guesthouse in Matrahaza in July
1945. (Matrahaza was a fashionable mountain holiday village and still is
today.) They came to take him there, though he was he felt unwell.
Something was wrong with his stomach, but he went all the same. This
happened on a Saturday. On Tuesday he became ill and was immediately taken
to Gyongyos Hospital. His diagnoses was what they called Ukrainian
Diarrhoea, and there was nothing to be done. They sent us a telegram, and
my mother and I went there immediately. Four hours after our arrival he was
dead.

When he died I went with my mother to the community. The community had no
gravedigger, no rabbi, they had nothing. We wanted to take him to Pest.
They did not want to do it. It was the summer of 1945, there was no car and
they could not transport him by horse cart. If they took a bad horse, the
journey would have lasted for too long. If they took a good one, the
Russians would have taken it away. It was a really big deal, but I managed
to get a community member to organize the funeral the same day. He
succeeded in getting ten Jewish men who could pray together. Though it was
difficult during the summer of 1945, he succeeded. My father was buried in
accordance with the orthodox rites the very day after his death in
Gyongyos.

My brother was at death's door. He was in a forced labour corps in the
summer of 1944 when the carpet bombing of the Ferihegy airport happened.
One friend of his died on his right, another died on his left. Laci had his
trousers full of holes, like a sieve, but nothing happened to him. Laci ran
away. They lived in the Szilagyi alley with fake papers. My brother lived
as Sandor Vajk, my sister-in-law as Laszlone Gonczi. Her husband was
deported and she did not know where he was. On the 1st of January, 1945,
Laci's father-in-law had been wounded and he was taking bandages to him. He
had some notes in his pocket on which he had written several Russian words.
What probably happened is that he was reaching in his pocket for the notes,
and they did not know why was he doing so, and shot him. My sister-in-law
knew where her father was. She went there and he found Laci dead in the
snow. My sister-in-law buried him there in the Szilagyi Erzsebet alley.
After the war, My sister-in-law, together with her two sons, emigrated to
Sweden.

I worked at an ambassador's place for half of a year in 1949, but could not
earn anything there. Anna was in the Communist Party school and she had to
attend evening school too. She became a foreign trader. She made business
deals, and learned German and English. I was taken into the Communist
Party, though I did not want it. Then I worked at the Agricultural Ministry
in the Filaxia, a veterinary pharmacy. I got to the personnel department in
1950. The Filaxia was the most anti-Semitic company ever. I was told that
in the 1940s a friend of the director brought a christianised Jewish woman
there. Her colleagues found out that she was of Jewish origin and they said
that it was either one way or the other: either the woman was sent away or
they would not come to work anymore. They did not dare to tell it to my
face; they were all nice to me. There is nothing more base than the work I
was doing, where one has to build up a system of informants to spy on
others. Whenever I entered a room there was dead silence there. I never
knew a thing. I could never have asked for any kind of information. I did
not want to really. Each day I had to write an atmosphere report. I was
proud of the fact that nobody was fired while I did this work.

I married my second husband in 1948. He was a private merchant, and he
could trade with state companies. Then at the end he was a chief supervisor
in a cooperative. He went around to supervise the branches, but he came
home when he wanted. I was left in the flat in the Katona Jozsef Street and
we lived there. My daughter, Julia, was born in 1949.

When my father was on his deathbed I promised him that my mother would live
with me. In fact it was much easier for me like that, because Juli was six
months old when I had to give up my fashion shop and had to go to work.
They kept my baby for me. For twenty-one years, my work was such that I was
at home in the flat. So if my child cried, I could go to her in the other
room. My mother reared her from her age of six months. I had a domestic
helper. When I had my fashion shop it was cheaper to have one, than to do
the cooking and the cleaning in my own time. I got my job during the summer
and Emi, the domestic helper, said she would take Juli in. They went away
for two weeks that was the holiday due to Emi. I gave her an addressed card
for her to write each day. I could not have provided such things for her in
Pest in 1950; she got the first milk from the morning milking and every day
they killed a chicken to get the fresh liver into her soup.

Juli was head of the class in the gymnasium. She was accepted at her first
application to the Theater Academy. The next day I went to work very happy
and met our legal adviser, who told me, "You shouldn't be so happy. It is a
bumpy career, someone either is very successful in it, or not." I've
thought so many times. I am very sorry for Juli's actual life. She got her
diploma in 1971, and she was in the provinces. She got a contract in
Debrecen first. From there she went to other provincial towns. I retired
when Juli got her diploma.

We did not speak about religion at home after the war. My mother was
observant and Vili her husband was too. But I said that we could not
educate the child in two different ways. If she was told something at
school, we could not tell her any different. She didn't notice that the
dinner was different and at a different time. And in 1956, during the
revolution, the order came that beginning in September 1957, religious
education classes would be started. The ones who wanted their children to
attend had to sign for it. I did not want to, but Vili signed that she
should attend the Jewish religion classes. Juli accepted it without
knowing what it was.

Her next meeting with Jewish life was when a classmate of hers came to our
place to play. At that time biscuits were sent in colourful boxes by Jewish
organisations and the other girl liked them very much. My mother told her
that she could take them home if she wanted to. The girl replied that she
could not take them home, because then her parents would know that she had
been to a Jewish girl's house. My mother told her: "Forget about the boxes
then. Look, you can lie however you want at home, but don't come here
anymore." From then on, Juli knew that she was a Jew. We never spoke of it.
Then she noticed that there were matzoh dumplings. We did not keep Pesach,
but there were matzoh dumplings. There was the dinner after Yom Kippur, and
before that Vili fasted and prayed. I did not fast. I couldn't. My work
mates never asked me "Are you coming to have lunch?" except on Yom Kippur.
I worked on every Yom Kippur. Juli knew several things by then, but not too
much, and she didn't ask. Emotionally, she became a Jew at that time.

There was a great festival in the Erkel Theatre in 1948 when Israel came
into existence. I was there and I was very happy. But it never occurred to
me to emigrate . We wanted very much to go to Israel with Anna, but we
could not get passports from here. Towards the end of the 1970s, Anna found
out that visas were being issued in Vienna. The visa was not put into the
passport, but given on a separate sheet, which could be thrown away so that
the authorities wouldn't find out if someone went to Israel. We were making
preparations, but Anna was very ill. I said that we should wait until she
got better, but I knew she wouldn't. So we never made it there.

Bluma Lepiku
Tallinn
Estonia
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya
Date of interview: March 2006

I conducted this interview with Bluma Lepiku at her home. Bluma lives in a one-room apartment in a new residential compound in Tallinn. Her apartment is very clean, cozy, and full of light. Bluma is short and plump. Her black wavy hair with gray streaks is cut short. She has bright and young eyes. After her husband died, Bluma has lived alone. Her relatives passed away a long time ago, and Bluma is very lonely. Her forced loneliness is a hard burden on her. Due to severely ill joints she spends most of her time at home, and this causes a lot of suffering to her. She even complained to me that she begins to forget words having nobody to talk to. Bluma is sociable, very spontaneous and lively. She finds everything in the world interesting. She was very interested in hearing about Ukraine. Bluma reads and thinks about what she has read a lot.

My family history 
Growing up
Going to school 
During the War 
After the War
Glossary

My mother and her family did not come from Estonia. My maternal grandmother, Dora Gore, and my grandfather Gore were born in the Russian Empire, but I don't know the exact place of their birth. My mother Luba, nee Gore, her sister Fanny and her brothers Samuel and Lev were born in the Russian town of Yekaterinoslav [in 1926 Yekaterinoslav was given the name of Dnipropetrovsk, which is currently one of the largest administrative centers in Ukraine. It's located 400 km east of Kiev]. My mother's Jewish name was Liebe. My mother was born in 1897.

I don't know when my mother's brothers and her sister were born. I can't even say for sure, whether they were younger or older than my mother. I would think that Samuel and Fanny were older, but there is nothing I can say about Lev. I never met him. All I know about him is what my mother and grandmother told me. Regretfully, I've forgotten a lot. I am 80 years old already and my memory often fails me now.

My mother's family lived in Yekaterinoslav before the 1900s. When Jewish pogroms 1 started in Russia, they decided to move to where it was quieter. I have no information about my grandfather. I don't know what he did or how he died. He might have become a victim of pogroms. At least, my mother's family moved to Estonia without him. It was my grandmother and her four children. Though Estonia also belonged to the Russian Empire, but Jews lived a very different life in Estonia than in other areas of the Russian Empire. The Pale of Settlement 2 was not applicable in Estonia. Jews were not restricted as to the area of residence and were treated as equal members of the community.

There were no Jewish pogroms in Estonia. There were no restrictions with regard to education or career applied to Jews. Jewish young people from all over Russia came to study at Tartu University. There was not only no quota 3, but there were even Jewish students' corporations. [Editor's note: Students of Jewish origin studied in Tartu University since the end of the 19th century, and they had their associations and corporations. The student's money box was established in 1874, and in 1884 the academic society with the name of Akademischer Verein für jüdische Geschichte und Literatur (Jewish Academic Society of History and Literature). Jewish students formed the 'Hacfiro' society. There were two corporations: 'Limuvia' and 'Hasmonea.' The 'Limuvia' was a secular organization, and the 'Hasmonea' was Zionist oriented. Since there were relatively few numbers of Jewish students at the university, their organizations were small. In 1934 the Academic Society listed 10 members, the 'Hacfiro' - 20, 'Limuvia' - 43, and the 'Hasmonea' - 30 members. The societies owned large libraries: the 'Limuvia' had about 3,500, the 'Hasmonea' - 1,000, the Academic society 2,000, and the 'Hacfiro' had 300 volumes. Jewish students also had a cash box. This was the first Jewish students' organization in Estonia. The purpose of the cash box was to support Jewish students from poor families. Wealthy Jewish families made annual contributions to the fund, and the board distributed the amounts among needy students].

There were many wealthy Jewish families in Estonia, and they made contributions to the cash box to give talented students from poor families an opportunity to pay for their studies. This was not the case in any other areas of the Russian Empire. Jews have always been treated nicely in Estonia. Perhaps, this was why my mother's family decided for Estonia. They settled down in Tartu, the second largest city in Estonia.

My mother hardly told me anything about her childhood. I don't know how they managed without their breadwinner, but my grandmother managed to raise her children all right. They managed to get some education. At least, my mother, her sister and brothers could read and write. My mother's older brother Solomon was a sales agent. He supplied popular Czech imitation jewelry to local stores. My mother's older sister Fanny moved to America at 17. My mother attended hat making trainings and one year later she became a skilled hat maker. All I know about my mother's bother Lev is that he was regimented to the army at the beginning of World War I and disappeared at the front. His family kept hoping that he was captured or wounded and was in hospital, but he never came back.

My mother's family was religious. My grandmother was a believer. She observed Jewish traditions and raised her children to respect them. The whole family went to the synagogue 4 in Tartu on Jewish holidays. They also celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays at home and followed the kashrut. Each family member spoke fluent Russian since they had arrived in Estonia from Russia. However, the language they spoke at home was Yiddish. In Estonia all of them learned Estonian, including my grandmother. Though Russian was an official language in Estonia like everywhere else in the Russian Empire, the majority spoke Estonian, their mother tongue.

When my mother and her brother Solomon began to earn their own living, my grandmother moved to her older daughter Fanny in America. My grandmother corresponded with my mother and Solomon telling them about life in America. She was telling my mother that she should visit them in America. My mother finally decided to take the trip. This happened during the First Estonian Republic 5, after the war for independence was over 6, i.e., in 1920. My mother decided she would visit her folks and see whether she would be interested to move to America for good.

She had to get to Tallinn from Tartu to go on from there. Her brother traveled a lot, and he told my mother there was a little Jewish restaurant and an inn in Tallinn where my mother could stay overnight, if necessary. Solomon had stayed there himself on his numerous trips. He told Mama she should stay there as well. This was how my parents met. My mother came to the inn and told the owner her name, Gore. The owner of the inn and the restaurant, my future grandmother, Dora Reichmann, asked my mother if Solomon Gore was related to her. My mother told her that Solomon was her brother. The owner liked my mother a lot.

My mother heard someone playing the violin at the restaurant. It was beautiful. She asked who was playing so beautifully. The owner replied that it was her older son Yankl. She showed my mother into the restaurant where she introduced her to her son. They fell in love at first sight and there's no need to say that my mother cancelled her trip. She stayed in Tallinn and then went back to Tartu. Shortly afterward my mother and father got married. They had their wedding party in my grandmother's restaurant. It was a traditional Jewish wedding with a rabbi and a chuppah. After they got married my mother moved to Tallinn.

My father's parents came from Tallinn. My grandmother's sister, Martha Fridlander, also lived in Tallinn. She divorced her husband before I was born. I didn't know him. Martha had a son. His name was Hermann. He was tall and handsome. Marta was worried that he was single. I didn't know my father's father, Mendl Shumiacher. My father was born in 1897. His younger brother Michail was born in 1900. Their father died, when they were still very young.

My grandmother remarried. I don't remember her second husband's first name. His surname was Reichmannn. My grandmother had his portrait. He was a handsome man with moustache. They didn't live long together. Reichmannn died in a tragic accident. He was an electrician. One day he was killed by an electric shock. My grandmother never remarried again. She rented a house and opened a kosher Jewish restaurant and a small inn for traders and sales agents. When her business developed and she could afford it, she bought the building from its owner. The family resided in a rental apartment.

My grandmother was a terrific cook. I don't know a better one. Her inn and restaurant were always full, and a number of men proposed to my grandmother, but she refused all of them, since none of them wanted her children. They were talking about getting married and as for the children, they wanted to discuss this issue later. However, my grandmother did not agree to leave her sons on their own even for the time being. So, she never remarried again. She dedicated herself to the restaurant and her sons.

My father and his younger brother were very good at music. They studied at a gymnasium, but my grandmother could not afford to pay additionally to teach them music. It was too expensive. However, both of them wanted to learn music. Somehow, though I don't know how they managed it, they learned to play the violin. My father started earning money, when he was still very young. There were musicians playing the music during silent film screenings. My father played the violin at the movie theater. This was his good luck. A teacher of music took notice of him and offered him free classes. He lived in Tartu and convinced my grandmother to let her son move to Tartu to take music classes. His teacher taught my father diligently, and when my father improved enough to continue on his own, he came back home.

Perhaps, it's not proper to say this about one's own father, but there was no other violinist like my father in Tallinn. Who didn't know Shumiacher! My father could not afford to study at the conservatory, but he became a skilled musician. He put his whole heart into music. My father played in the largest restaurants in Tallinn: Astoria and Linden. Many visitors went to the restaurant just to listen to Shumiacher playing. My father's brother Michail also became a good violinist.

After the wedding my parents rented an apartment from Penkovskiy, a Jewish owner. We had a three-room apartment with stove heating. It was nice and warm. I remember piled stoves in our rooms. The piles were polished so thoroughly that one could look in them like in a mirror. There was one stove to heat two rooms: my parents' bedroom and the children's room. There was another stove in the kitchen, and it also heated the dining-room.

My father earned all right and could provide well for his family. My mother didn't work after her wedding. My older sister Mena, their first child, was born in January 1922. After my baby sister was born, my mother's mother came from America. She lived with my parents helping them to take care of the baby. I was born in October 1926. I was given the name of Bluma.

Growing up

My grandmother stayed with us a little longer before moving to Tartu where her son Solomon and his family lived. Solomon married Yida, an Estonian Jewish girl. In 1922 their son Michail was born. My grandmother died in Tartu in early 1940. She was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Tartu according to Jewish traditions.

We spoke several languages at home. My grandmothers and my parents communicated in Yiddish. Besides, my parents taught my sister and me German and Estonian. Actually, we learned Estonian playing with other children, and our governess Jenny was teaching us German. We also spoke Russian at home. Young girls from Pechory, a Russian town located on the border of Estonia and Russia, used to take up housekeeping jobs in Estonia. We also had one such housemaid. We heard our mother speaking Russian to her. My sister picked some Russian, but I couldn't speak any Russian.

Our father was not involved in raising the children or any household duties. My mother was responsible for raising the children and keeping the house. My father brought money home, and it was my mother's part to take good care of it. My mother was always alone at home at night. My father played at night-time. My mother and my grandmother became good friends. They went to theaters and concerts together. My grandmother liked my mother dearly. However, my two grandmothers did not get along. This is the case, when they say they were at daggers drawn with one another.

My mother was raised to strictly observe Jewish traditions. My father was not particularly religious, though his mother was a very religious woman. We followed the kashrut at home. My mother did the cooking herself, and all food was kosher. As for my father, he did not follow the kashrut. He had meals at restaurants and told us he commonly ordered pork carbonade or chops with fried potatoes and a shot of vodka. He believed having a delicious meal was more important than kashrut. As for my mother, she followed the kashrut strictly. We never had pork at home: we only ate beef, veal and poultry.

My father ate this kind of food at home. My mother was religious. My mother and my grandmother went to the synagogue on Sabbath and Jewish holidays. There was a large choral synagogue 7 in Tallinn. Men were on the lower floor, and women sat on the balcony. Mama always celebrated Sabbath at home. She made a festive dinner, lit candles and prayed.

On Saturday afternoon my grandmother invited us to a festive lunch. My grandmother was a terrific cook, and I still cook what I liked eating at my grandmother's. She always made Jewish kugel with ground potatoes, onions, pepper and spices, all mixed and baked in the stove. I remember how my grandmother's kugel was rolling in fat, and when taken out of the stove, it was 'shedding' the drops of goose fat like tears. Kugel and chicken broth - this was so delicious! I think Jewish cuisine is the most delicious. My grandmother also made potato latkes, fried pancakes. My grandmother served them with bilberry jam. It goes without saying that there was gefilte fish, stuffed goose neck and the herring forshmak.

There were sweets, too. My grandmother made teyglakh, rolls from stiff dough with raisins. Alcohol was also added into the dough. They are cooked in honey with spices. They taste delicious. We also liked aingemakht from black radish. Ground black radish was also cooked in honey with spices. This was a festive dish, and we liked it as well. As for common meals, my father used to make ground black radish with goose fat.

We visited my grandmother to celebrate Jewish holidays. The whole family got together. My mother's younger brother Michail, my grandmother's sister Martha Fridlander and her son Hermann, my grandmother's friends also joined us. There were at least 15 people sitting at the table. All traditional Jewish food was on the table.

We always had matzah on Pesach. My father conducted the seder. He broke the matzah into three pieces hiding the middle part, the afikoman, under a cushion. One of the children, whoever managed first, was to find the afikoman and give it back for a ransom. I remember once finding the afikoman. I received a bag of walnuts in return. We celebrated all Jewish holidays. On Purim my grandmother made very delicious hamantashen pies filled with poppy seeds with raisins, honey and walnuts.

On Yom Kippur my grandmother and my mother observed the fast. They spent a whole day at the synagogue. When they returned, they could have the first meal of the day. They usually had some fruit for a start and then had a meal about two hours later. I remember this. We also celebrated birthdays. My grandmother used to make a bagel for each birthday member of the family. They were beautiful bagels! They were decorated with oak-tree leaves made from dough, sprinkled with sugar powder and ground almonds. Bagels of this kind remained fresh for a week. My grandmother made her last bagel shortly before she died in 1948.

My father did not take part in raising his children, but we obeyed him implicitly. He could shush us just frowning or looking at us with a definite expression. We were never beaten or told out. The most severe punishment for me and my sister was when our father told us to stand in the corner. Our parents treated us with strictness. I remember that I liked dangling my legs, when sitting at the table. When my father noticed this, he made me go to stand in the corner. When everybody else had finished eating, I was allowed to sit at the table to eat.

It would have never occurred to my sister or me to disobey our parents, snarl at them or demonstrate disrespect. Things like that never happened. When we went out, Mama always told us at what time we had to be back at home. If we were ever two or three minutes late, we were not allowed to go out next time. My mother and father wanted to know our friends and where we went. However, we were never restricted in our choice of friends. I was never told to only make Jewish friends. I had Jewish, Estonian and Russian friends. What mattered for our parents was that my friends came from decent families and behaved properly.

There were wonderful winters in Tallinn before the war. There was a lot of snow in winter. The snow was white and clean. There were few cars, and the air was clean. My friends and I liked sleighing from the hill in the Old Town on the side of the Liberty Square. We liked walking in the park and along the narrow streets of the Old Town. Our family spent the summer months in Piarnu, a resort town. My father played in the orchestra in Piarnu, and my mother, my sister and I enjoyed our vacation there. I have beautiful memories of our stay there.

Jews had a very good life at the time of the First Estonian Republic. There was no anti-Semitism. Jews suffered from no restrictions in Estonia. The only restriction, as far as I can remember, was that Jews could not hold senior officer's positions in the army. However, I don't think this was so very bad, since they were free to engage themselves in any other sphere of activity. They were free to receive higher education and become teachers, lawyers and doctors. Lots of Jews were engaged in businesses. They enjoyed the same employment rights as Estonians. What was important was how skilled one was and how well one could perform, but one's origin was of no significance, really.

In 1926 Jews were granted the cultural autonomy 8 unlocking even more opportunities. There was no everyday anti-Semitism either. Routinely anti- Semitism can only evolve, when the government shows connivance. It can only develop, when it is not terminated, and there was no such ground in Estonia.

Going to school

My sister studied in a Jewish gymnasium in Tallinn. There were two gymnasiums sharing one building on Karu Street, though they both had the same staff and director, Samuel Gurin. In one gymnasium subjects were taught in Hebrew, and in the other one in Yiddish, while Hebrew was just another subject. My sister studied in the Yiddish gymnasium. When my time came to go to the gymnasium, I went to the Yiddish one. It was quite a distance from our house and my mother took me there in the morning and met me after classes.

We had very good teachers, indeed. Gurevich taught us music and religion. He was a wonderful teacher and a chazzan at the choral synagogue in Tallinn. Gurevich told us interesting tales from the Bible, the Torah. He brought a concertina to our classes to accompany us, when we sang.

Unfortunately, I only studied one year at the gymnasium. I fell ill with diphtheria and missed a number of days. I was to go to the second grade the following year. I went to the Estonian general education school near our house. Boys and girls studied together at the Jewish gymnasium, but this school was for girls. There were wealthier and poorer pupils at school. I also had friends from wealthy or poor families. This was of no significance for my parents. We retained our friendship. Unfortunately, many of my friends have passed away. And I keep in touch with those, who are here, we call each other and see each other occasionally.

My father insisted that my sister studied music. We both attended piano classes, but it was impossible to practice at home, when our father was there. God forbid, you play a false note. Father made a real blow-up yelling that no good musicians will come out of us. This was the worst oath he could think of. Therefore, Mama was always watchful that we did not sit at the piano, when Father was at home.

My father's younger brother Michail Shumiacher was also a violin player. He had no family. Regretfully, this was my grandmother's fault. Michail lived together with Ilze, an Estonian woman of German origin, for 13 years. Ilze was a very beautiful and intelligent woman. She knew 15 languages and worked as an interpreter in an embassy. She had a son from her first marriage. His name was Otty.

Michail and Ilze loved each other and wanted to get married, but my grandmother was strictly against this marriage. She had no complaints against Ilze, but one: Ilze wasn't of the Jewish origin. My grandmother believed that Michail had to marry a Jewish woman. My father and his brother respected their mother so much that it never occurred to Michail to disobey his mother and do what he believed was right. My grandmother kept introducing him to Jewish girls, but Michail only wanted Ilze. Otty hated Michail. When a child I thought Otty felt so because he was a fascist, but when I grew up, I understood that Otty believed Michail to be the source of his mother's suffering. I don't know what this was about.

In 1939, when Estonian residents of German origin started moving to Germany at Hitler's call-up, Ilze and Otto left, too. I remember how Michail came to see us then. He was very upset and told my mother that all he needed to say was, 'Ilze, stay,' and Otty would have left for Germany alone. However, he couldn't have said this, because my grandmother would not have recognized Ilze. He never saw her again, and Michail never got married. He dated women, but never stayed long with one.

We recalled Ilze and her son again in 1944, when we returned to Tallinn from the evacuation. The owner of the apartment where my uncle had lived before the evacuation told him that when the Germans occupied Tallinn, a German officer wearing an SS uniform visited her looking for my uncle. This was Otty. If my uncle had stayed in Tallinn, he would have killed him for sure.

In the mid 1930s my grandmother's condition grew weaker. The podagra disfigured her hands, and her joints were aching. She could work no loner, so she sold her restaurant. She spent all her time reading the Torah and praying. We often visited her.

During the War

I cannot remember what my parents thought about the Soviet military bases in 1939 9. The adults must have discussed this issue, but there was a solid rule in our family: the children were not to be present, when adults were having their discussions. They did not touch upon policy in our presence. Even when we had guests, we had to leave their company at 9 in the evening. Without any reminder we had to stand up, say 'good bye' to everyone politely and depart into our room. This was the rule. Therefore, we never knew what they were discussing.

In summer 1939 we were on vacation in the country, the town of Algvida. There was a railroad nearby, and a train with Soviet navy men arrived there. They were entertaining, sociable and even arranged impromptu concerts for the locals. My mother found them enchanting, and when she discovered Jews among them, she was delighted. My mother spoke fluent Russian and she could easily talk to the Soviet officers. She met a few of them and was very much interested in what they were telling her about life in the Soviet Union. I remember my mother saying to a Soviet officer, 'How come you've never traveled here before?' At that time we did not know yet what the Soviet regime was bringing to Estonia. In 1940 the Soviet rule was established in Estonia 10. Soviet Armed Forces came to the country. A few months later my mother was saying with horror, 'Why are they here?'

Estonian residents knew about the Soviet Union what they could read in newspapers or hear on the radio. This information stated that the USSR was the country where people were equal, all roads were open to all, healthcare and education were free and all nations lived as one fraternal family. Actually, these were the slogans that we were going to hear every day. In general, Estonians had a friendly attitude towards the Soviet newcomers. I don't know whether they were sincere or just realized that there was nothing they could do about having them in their own country. Anyway, the accession of Estonia to the USSR was undisturbed. The Soviet newcomers were even greeted with flowers.

Oppressions followed soon. They kept arresting politicians and the ones that failed to demonstrate their loyalty to the Soviet regime. The next step was the nationalization. They took away houses, stores and businesses, which became the property of the government. We were happy that Grandmother no longer owned the restaurant. Actually, our family had no other property. My father's 'production tools' were his hands and the violin. Therefore, our family suffered no implications then. Since we had no property we did not belong to the wealthy class of exploiters, according to the understanding of the Soviet authorities. The only change for me personally was that my classmate and I became pioneers 11. However, this was a mere formality for me and the girls. We hardly knew anything about pioneers.

The population of Tallinn grew all of a sudden. The military were the first to come, and then their families followed. They were initially accommodated in local apartments. This was when we experienced living in shared apartments 12. Nobody was accommodated in our apartment, though. Perhaps, they would have been, had there been more time. I don't think my parents were concerned about those on-going arrests. They probably believed there was nothing we should have been afraid of: we were decent people, we did not lie and our father was not involved in any politics. At that time my father was playing in the symphony orchestra at the drama theater.

On 22nd June 1941 Germany attacked the Soviet Union 13 without declaring a war. We had to decide whether we were going to stay or leave. We did not feel like leaving our home. My mother and grandmother were positive that we should stay, but my father said we should leave as far as possible from the place and there should be no doubt about that. His theater was to evacuate and we could go with it.

My mother packed a suitcase for each of us, just in case we happened to travel in different train carriages. Mother packed our best clothes and shoes. She also added our valuables and silverware into or Father's suitcase: a sugar bowl, a coffee pot and the tableware. My mother was hoping that we would be able to trade our silverware for food products, if necessary. However, this was the suitcase that was stolen at the railway station even before we got on the train.

My grandmother, my father's brother Michail and my grandmother's sister Martha went with us. Martha's son Hermann was mobilized to the Soviet army. The theater was to evacuate to Kuibyshev, they were told, but on the way the route changed. The Soviet government was evacuated to Kuibyshev and, of course, we were not allowed to go there as well. We arrived at the Kanash station, Chuvashia [about 700 km north-east of Moscow]. At the evacuation office we were told that our destination point was the village of Shemursha. The musicians of the orchestra and their families were distributed to various locations. In Shemursha we were the only family of an orchestra player, though there were many other people evacuated from their homes. They came mostly from Belarus. There was one family from Estonia and we became friends almost immediately.

We were accommodated in a small house located in the yard of the owner's house. We were the only tenants. There was a big room and kitchen with a Russian stove 14 in it. The stove heated the kitchen and the room. We cleaned the house. I washed the floors using a brush and some alkali solution. We made frilled gauze curtains for the windows. There was no other house with curtains in the village. The locals, when visiting us, admired how clean and cozy our house was.

There were actually many things we didn't know about living in the village. We didn't know how to cut wood, and my mother didn't know how to stoke the Russian stove. It took us some time to get used to doing things of this kind. My mother was trading whatever belongings we had with us for potatoes and flour. We baked potatoes in the Russian stove, and my mother baked our own bread. My sister and I picked brushwood, bringing it home in bundles. Someone delivered a few logs to us, and we cut them for wood for the stove. My mother or my sister never learned to cut wood. My father and I did this job. We had to learn it all. Misfortunes can teach anything.

There was a sauna in the backyard. This was new to us. We had never seen a sauna before. There are no such saunas in Estonia. You undress in the fore room with some straw on the clay floor. Coming out of the sauna, you get dressed standing bare footed on this cold straw. What is surprising is that nobody fell ill once there. I was very ill, when a child. I had probably all children's diseases in Estonia: scarlet fever, diphtheria, chicken pox, etc. And catching a cold was a common thing me, but I never had even a running nose in Russia, even though we came out of the sauna, when it was minus 40 degrees Celsius outside. When we returned to Tallinn, I started catching a cold often again. The climate in Chuvashia was very healthy with bright and hot summers, when it only rained occasionally, and frosty and dry winters.

The locals treated us kindly. We did not starve even during the first year of the evacuation. We have to thank our mother for managing to provide food for us. My mother started making sheepskin hats for the locals from the sheepskin they supplied. They paid with food products: potatoes, cereals, sauerkraut and pickles. At the start of the second year we received a land plot where we planted potatoes, carrots, cabbage, onions and garlic. Tatiana, our landlady, had a cow. She brought us a mug of milk every evening. My mother had cuts of fabric with her, and she traded them for butter, poultry and even honey. So, we had everything we needed in the evacuation, and our situation was very different from what others had to go through.

My mother and sister knew the Russian language, while my father and I could speak only a few words at the most. It was hard at the beginning. Mama taught me the Russian alphabet. I tried to read signs in the village. I made a few friends. They were local girls and the ones like me. They spoke Russian to me and before long I picked up some Russian. For a long time I spoke with a terrible accent and put all the wrong accents on words, but in due time I learned to speak.

Back in Estonia I had finished four grades at school, and in the village I went to the local school. It was hard at first, but I improved eventually. Schoolchildren used to write letters to the front. My friend helped me with writing letters. I drafted a letter, she checked and corrected the mistakes and I put together the final version. So, I learned to write without mistakes, eventually. I finished seven grades of a general education school in Chuvashia. I didn't join the Komsomol 15 at my school. They didn't pay much attention to such things there.

My grandmother's sister's son Hermann was regimented to the army before we left Tallinn. He was enlisted to the Estonian Corps 16, which was formed in early 1942. It was deployed in the Yelansk camps near Kamyshov in the Ural, which was not that far from our location. Hermann managed to visit us in our village. He fell ill with diphtheria, and when he was released from hospital, he was allowed a leave. Hermann stayed with us for a short time before he went back to his unit. This was the last time we saw him.

He died a tragic death at the very end of the war. This happened on Saaremaa Island. Herman was captured by Germans. He did not look like a Jew having fair hair and a straight nose. He was tall and spoke native German. Besides, his surname was Fridlander. The Germans thought he was an Estonian German. They did not kill him. When the Estonian Corps advanced to Saaremaa, he managed to escape. When Hermann joined with his unit, they met him with suspicion. They did not believe he was not working for the Germans. They couldn't believe the Germans had not killed the Jewish man. Nobody listened to what he had to say, and he was regimented to a penal unit where he perished. He must have been destined to die, and there is no escaping fate. After the war Hermann's fellow soldier told Aunt Martha about what had happened to her son after the war.

In 1943 my father was summoned to Yarsoslavl where an Estonian state orchestra was formed. My father's brother Michail was also summoned there. My father and Michail went to Yaroslavl. Before leaving they made stocks of wood for the stove. Even when we were leaving there was still a lot of it left. Some time later my father picked us from Shemursha and we headed to Yaroslavl [about 250 km north of Moscow].

My father worked a lot in Yaroslavl. He attended rehearsals, and the orchestra also went on tours to the front line. There was also a ballet and a drama troop. There was even a jazz band in which Uncle Michail was playing. They all gave concerts at the front.

My mother did not go to work in Yaroslavl, but my sister did, though I can't remember where. I finished a course of medical nurses at the medical school in Yaroslavl. I went to work as a medical nurse at the ophthalmologic department at the hospital in Yaroslavl. In November 1944 the Estonian Corps liberated Tallinn. We started preparations to go home. My father was offered a job in the symphony orchestra in Yaroslavl, a nice apartment and salary, but my sister and I insisted on going back to our homeland. We wanted to go back whatever there was in store for us! We could not imagine living anywhere else, but Estonia. So, our family headed to Tallinn.

After the War

We looked forward to getting to our apartment. We already knew that it was not damaged or ruined. Uncle Solomon's son got to Tallinn some time before we did. He served in the Estonian Corps that liberated Tallinn. Michail came by our house and wrote my mother that our apartment was all right. However, when we got there, it turned out there were other tenants living in there. Our Estonian janitor had moved in there. When we opened the door using our own key, he met us with the words: 'Jews, what are you looking for here? Why did you come back in the first place and how come they didn't kill you in Russia? My father asked him what he was doing in our apartment, but he only cursed us in response. To cut a long story short, he didn't let us in our own home. We had to back off.

My mother's friend, whose husband hadn't returned from the front yet, gave us shelter. My father addressed the court to have our apartment back. However, it turned out that there was no way we could force the janitor to move out. He presented the form stating that his son was in the Red Army to the court. As it turned out afterward this form was falsified, but we only found this out many years later. Well, at that point of time we were homeless. After numerous visits to the executive committee 17 and the Central Committee of the Party Mama obtained an authorization for us to move into two rooms in a shared apartment. We lived there a few years. Our co-tenants in this apartment were three other families. We had never resided in a shared apartment before and had to get used to the new way of living.

After the war my mother's sister Fanny found us. She lived in the USA with her family. She was so happy to learn that we survived! We had hardly any luggage, when we arrived in Tallinn. Mama only retained one decent outfit for each of us, so that we had a pair of shoes and a dress each to dress properly to go out. She didn't want people to say that we were a bunch of ragamuffins having come back from Russia. The rest of our clothing was sold or traded for food products. Actually, this was all we had at all. Our apartment and whatever belongings we had left therein were gone. Aunt Fanny started sending us parcels. She sent us sufficient clothes to dress for any occasion. We corresponded until my father was told that this was not safe 18 and our communication faded.

Uncle Solomon's wife returned from the evacuation. Ida and Solomon were evacuated to Uzbekistan. Solomon had poor sight and was not subject to army service. Solomon was a rather credulous man, and this played a wicked trick on him. One day in the evacuation a Polish Jew, an acquaintance of Solomon dropped by asking Solomon whether he might leave a bag full of clothes at his place. It goes without saying that Solomon did not mind. Later it turned out that this bag contained stolen things. The thief had been captured and confessed that Solomon had the bag. My uncle's place was searched. They found the bag and arrested my uncle. Solomon died in prison. Ida worked at a weaving mill in Uzbekistan. She was even noted for her performance. Their son Michail was at the front and survived. They lived in Tartu after the war.

After returning to Tallinn our family observed Jewish traditions. There was no possible way to follow the kashrut, though. Well, we did not buy any pork or pork sausages, but there was no place selling kosher meat. We bought beef, veal and poultry, then. Actually, we did that, when meat became available in stores some time after the war, of course. We celebrated Jewish holidays at home. My mother made matzah for Pesach. We did what was possible. The synagogue in Tallinn burned down in 1944. My grandmother and mother went to a small prayer house on major Jewish holidays. My sister or I didn't go there.

In Tallinn I went to work as a medical nurse in the navy hospital. My sister Mena was a manicurist at a hairdresser's. Our father played the violin in a popular café in Tallinn. Before 1940 it bore the name of Fleishner after its owner, and after the war it was renamed to the Tallinn café. Many people visited the café to listen to my father playing the violin. He played with a small orchestra. People applauded, when he stepped onto the stage.

My father liked Russian romances and musical comedies. He put his whole heart into playing the violin. He had four infarctions because of working so hard. When he died, so many people came to his funeral, as if he had been some celebrity. And my father was a celebrity in Tallinn, indeed. When renowned violin players from the USSR or other countries visited Tallinn, they always came to see my father. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Tallinn.

My grandmother returned to Tallinn all right, but her health condition grew worse. She had an infarction and died in 1948. In 1952 my father's younger brother Michail died. He had leukemia and died at the age of 52.

In 1948 Israel was officially acknowledged 19. My father was no Zionist 20, but he was as happy as a child would be. We also felt happy and proud acquiring our own country. The fact that the Soviet Union supported Israel was some reconciliation for making Estonia one of the Soviet Republics. The relationships between the Soviet Union and Israel were quite friendly at the start. Golda Meir 21, the Prime Minister of Israel visited Moscow, and this event was widely covered in the mass media.

We followed what was happening in Israel. We are Jews, aren't we? And every nation sympathizes with its own people. We were proud of the successes of Israel. Who wouldn't be proud? Then the attitude of the USSR toward Israel changed dramatically. The Soviet press kept calling Israel an aggressor. We listened to news from Israel on the Finnish and other Western radios. We were worried about the Six-Day War 22, the Judgment Day War 23. And we were proud, when the little country of Israel won the victory over its offenders.

However, my mother had no intention of moving to Israel. My mother used to say, 'East or West, home is best. Why go to another country? Our home is here and so are our dear ones and friends. Why give up all and go to where we don't know? It might be the case, if we were oppressed to persecuted, and otherwise there's no reason to leave your home.' When in the 1970s large numbers of Jewish people were moving to Israel, I particularly didn't feel like going there.

Poor people of Israel! I don't think they knew they were going to have their hands full with all of them, who were used to commanding and demanding what they believed was due to them. For some reason Soviet Jews thought that Israel owed to them and they kept demanding the benefits, which were granted to the native residents of the country that they had built in the middle of the stony desert. It never occurred to them that they had to contribute something before they were entitled to receive things. They aren't even willing to study the language. They want people to talk Russian in Israel.

Nowadays Israelites, perhaps, understand that they should have constrained their generosity, but can they change anything? Immigrants from the Soviet Union may cause a social upheaval soon... So, for this very reason I was reluctant to move to Israel. I sympathize with Israel a lot. Poor country. They are surrounded with the Muslims thinking of how to destroy them, and on the other hand, there are immigrants from Russia, unwilling to accept the rules of the country and trying to introduce their own rules.

I got married in 1950. I met my first husband, Victor Vatis, at a dancing party at the Palace of Officers. We started seeing each other and got married shortly afterward. Victor came from Odessa 24. His family moved to Tallinn after the war. His mother, Zinaida Vatis, was born into a family of district doctors in Kherson. Zinaida became a medical nurse. She got a very good education. She knew few foreign languages. She spoke fluent French and often spoke French to my father's brother Michail. Her husband, Yuri Vatis, was an accountant. They had two children. Victor, the older one, was born in 1927. His sister Tamara was one year younger.

Victor graduated from a College of Finance and Economics and studied at the Department of Journalism of Tartu University, the extramural department. Though Victor was a Jewish man, my mother did not quite like the fact that he wasn't a local man. However, my parents had no objections to our marriage. We had no traditional Jewish wedding. This was hard to arrange after the war, and besides, Victor was an atheist. We registered our marriage in a registry office and had a wedding dinner with our friends and relatives. Victor had a room in a shared apartment where I moved after the wedding.

Victor was a jealous husband, and insisted that I quit working at the hospital, because many of the patients were young men. I went to work as a medical nurse in the railroad children's recreation center. I got pregnant, and my pregnancy took a complicated course. The labor didn't go normal and the baby was stillborn. After that we started keeping aloof. We were no longer a family. We were just two people sharing a room for some vague reason. We divorced in 1953. However, I retained friendly relationships with his mother and sister. Tamara died young. She had the flu, and it affected her heart. She died in 1980.

I worked in the recreation center for three years. The Doctors' Plot 25 had no implications for me. This period was quite unnoticed in our part of the country. I remember the day, when Stalin died in March 1953. Many employees of the recreation center were not just crying: they were grieving and sobbing, as if they had lost their own father. They were lamenting and sobbing. I did not cry and had no feeling of grief. I could not understand why they were grieving. I was telling them that we are all mortal and one day we will go, too. I though to myself: are they so dumb? Don't they know that Stalin was an evildoer? As it happened, they didn't.

Stalin was mean in his treatment of doctors. It was a good thing he died and they were rehabilitated 26. However, even now many people believe that Stalin was a great person and chief. Well, let everybody believe what one wants to believe. For some people Stalin was an evildoer, for others he was an idol, and this won't change.

In the children's recreation center I contracted dysentery bacillus from children. I could not go to work with the children before I fully recovered, and I quit working at the center. I went to work as a typist at the railroad office. I issued train and load tickets. I thought it was going to be my temporary job, but when I fully recovered, I did not feel like going back to the center. My work there involved night shifts and continuous nervous tension... So I stayed at my new job.

There I met Ilmar Lepiku, my second husband. He was Estonian. He was a loader. We got married in 1962. My mother was no longer with us. She died in 1956. We buried Mama in the Jewish cemetery in Tallinn. In 1962 we buried my father next to her.

My second husband, Ilmar Lepiku, was born in the village of Aniya, Kharoyusk district, in 1932. His father and mother Ilmara were farmers. Ilmar had a younger brother. His name was Rein. Ilmar finished seven grades at the general education school in the village. He was not fond of farming and went to study at the vocational school at the shoe factory in Tallinn. After finishing it he worked as a shoemaker at the factory and lived in a dormitory, which saved him from the resettlement [see Deportations from the Baltics] 27.

His mother Maria Lepiku and his father were exiled. When the officers came to arrest Maria, her younger son was in bed. Maria had sufficient self- control to cover him with heaps of clothes, and the NKVD 28 officers did not notice the boy. Maria and her husband were arrested, and their son stayed at home alone. His neighbors found him and he stayed with them. They were kind people. Maria was exiled to the Krasnoyaskiy Krai and her husband was taken to the Gulag 29 where he died. Maria returned from exile in 1956. She came back an invalid. Estonians are very hard-working people. Maria worked at an elevator sparing no effort. She had her spine injured. It hurt her to walk. However, she lived to turn 91.

Ilmar worked at the factory until the late 1940s, when he went to work as a loader at the railroad. He earned a lot more as a loader. Ilmar was a sportsman and a very strong man, and hard work did not bother him much. He was very honest. He told me other loaders were stealing, when unloading trains. It was common for Soviet people to steal at work. I saw that, when I was in the railroad staff. I thought then: 'It's none of my business. Let them do what they want.' Ilmar did not even think about stealing things. When he quit his job, his supervisor said he was so sorry that he was leaving. There are few people like Ilmar.

When we got married, I quit my job and went to work as a controller at the Salva toy factory manufacturing dolls with Estonian folk costumes. The factory was located in the yard of our house, which was very convenient. Shortly before I was to retire I went to work at a toy shop. They paid a higher salary to the staff of shops, which was better from the point of view of my future pension. When my retirement time came, I was assigned the highest pension rate in the country, which was 120 rubles.

My husband and I got along very well. They say mixed families face the risk of confrontations due to their national differences, but I believe this all depends on the spouses themselves. Behave decently, respect your spouse's national identity, respect his/her people's traditions, and there are going to be no problems. This is how we believed it was proper. I never heard a mean word spoken by my husband against Jews.

However, Estonian people had no anti-Semitic convictions. There was no anti- Semitism in pre-Soviet Estonia in the past. It was imported to Estonia by immigrants from Soviet Russia. I wouldn't say that all Soviet people are bad. No. Like Germans, for example, besides fascists, there were also German people rescuing Jews during the war. I believe there is no evil nation, there are evil people. This is also true about Jews. Somehow, evil people draw more attention than decent ones.

My dear ones left this world early. My sister died of cancer in 1982, when she was 59. Mena was single and lived alone. My husband Ilmar died in 1992. He turned 74. 14 years ago my dearest person died. I don't know when it is my turn...

In 1985 the Jewish community of Estonia 30 was established. It provides great assistance to all of us. The community supports me. I keep to a strict diet and cannot eat the food they deliver. Therefore, they deliver food rations, and I can cook myself. I try to do everything about the house. The social community staff tell me off for cleaning the windows myself, when I can order this service. What I think is that as long as I can do things myself, why bother people?

I used to visit the community frequently in the past. I attended their events and celebration of holidays. Now walking is difficult for me, and I stay at home most of the time. The community covers some medication costs for me, though I have to spend a lot on medications.

In summer 2005 the government increased pensions of the people, who had been in the evacuation. We were equaled with those, who had been subject to repression, and provided some similar benefits. However, our utility bills are very high. After paying all bills I have 800 crones [about USD70,-] left, and this is far from sufficient. I don't know how I would manage, were it not for the community support.

It's hard to give a simple answer to the question about the breakup of the Soviet Union. In general the life of Jews in independent Estonia 31 has improved. There is no anti-Semitism now, or there's hardly any, I'd say. Nowadays they have job-related age and qualifications restrictions, but no nationality-based limitations. There are hooligans, but they exist in every country. However, they are just a few individuals, but it is not the policy of the country. Our President shows respect to Jews and highly values our community. He visited the community at the Chanukkah celebration recently. This kind of visit was out of the questions in the past.

I would say this happened to be beneficial to some people and failure for the others. The breakup of the Soviet Union is good for young people, undoubtedly. They have free choices. They can study in any country and they can travel all over the world. They have got more opportunities in Estonia, too. There was no entrepreneurship in the Soviet Union. People could only get jobs at the state-owned enterprises. Nowadays any individual can start his/her own business. This is good for the country.

However, pensioners have surely lost a lot. There were low prices and free healthcare in the Soviet Union. This is very important for the people of my age. Now we have to pay for healthcare services and medications. The members of the parliament responsible for lawmaking studied in free Soviet universities. And now they establish prices for higher education. Is this fair?

I know that I have already lived my life, and I'm not the one to have my word in what is going to become of Estonia. This is up to younger people. They are to live in their country and raise their children. What I know for sure is that to have a good life, one has to think about one's country and helping the needy besides taking care of oneself and his/her own family.

Glossary:

Roza Anzhel
Sofia
Bulgaria
Interviewer: Svetlana Avdala
Date of interview: January 2006

Roza resembles a heroine from a novel written in the 1940s - a lofty mien, a peculiar sense of dignity, tenacity of character, which can be spotted in her eyes and the corners of her lips. She speaks slowly and at the same time claims that she is extremely impatient which in practice means that she is able to control her emotions perfectly. She is always ready to help and to take on responsibility, which usually means a serious burden for her. Her husband Larry - Leon Anzhel - is joking that this is the reason for her hump (the slight bending of the spine which appeared because of her advancing age). In fact, although Roza is very sensible and keeps everything in order, and her house is immaculately clean, she is very emotional. This can be seen in the repetitions she makes, in the peculiar structure of her speech, which I have left in its authentic forms in certain parts. And this was most pronounced in her intonation patterns - slowly flowing speech resembling the sweetness of a fairytale, which gradates in certain repetition of words and in some phrases.

Family background
Growing up
During the war
Post-war
Glossary

Family background

My name is Roza Bitush Anzhel [nee Varsano]. I was born on 13th November 1924 in Sofia. I have one brother, Isak, and two sisters, Ester [Stela], born in 1926, and Rebeka [Beka], born in 1932. My husband's name is Leon Anzhel. We call him Larry and he was born in the town of Yambol [in Southeast Bulgaria, 261 km from Sofia] in 1921. We have two children, Yafa and Zhak. We are Ladino [Sephardi] Jews 1 2 both on the father's and on the mother's side.

Grandpa Yonto Almozino, a saddler by profession, my mother Olga's father, who loved us very much, told me that his kin had come from Spain 3 and settled down directly in Sofia 500 years ago. I have no memory of Granny Roza, his wife.

Grandpa Isak Varsano I don't remember and have no information about. Granny Ester I do remember - she was a woman of soft personality and was always wearing a kerchief on her head, she lived in the town of Samokov. I know more of my distant relatives on the mother's side.

My maternal grandmother's name was Roza Almozino and I was named after her. My mother, Olga, is the second oldest daughter. When my mother was about to be born, Grandpa threatened Granny that he would kill her if the baby were a girl. And sure enough, it turned out to be a daughter. All the neighbors gathered and went down by the river, on the bridge of Positano Street to wait for my grandpa Yonto in order to prepare him and calm him down because he was very temperamental. All was well but they struck a bad patch because that day Grandpa, who was a saddler, was commissioned a big order by the Tsar's 4 court for which he received a big amount of money. With the money he bought a lot of goods and full of joy he was returning home. When they met him on the bridge and saw that he was in a cheerful mood, they decided to tell him: 'Yonto, do you know that Roza gave birth?' 'So what she gave birth to had brought me luck,' my grandpa replied. And he was very happy and he accepted with a lot of joy his second daughter, Olga, no matter it wasn't the long awaited son.

As a saddler in the Tsar's court he started earning a lot of money. When my mother was born they used to live in a tiny house. The conditions there were basic; the well was outside the house. They used to draw water from there and they used to bathe in a tub, both in winter and in summer, or they went to the river. My granny Roza gave birth to her five children in those conditions: Soffie, my mother Olga, Izrael, Benyamin, Manoakh.

Grandpa was commissioned orders, earned a lot of money and after some time he bought a two-story house on Positano Street. He settled down there with his family but, unfortunately, Granny Roza was already incurably ill at the time.

How did Granny get ill? The women gathered every Friday to go for a bath. They used to usually bathe in tubs but that day they decided to go the river although it was quite chilly. They broke the ice in order to wash themselves. My granny was quite a fastidious person. And when she came back home Grandpa was furious because she dared do something so silly, he took her by the hair and pushed her into the well... So at the age of 45 she got ill and started suffering from asthma because of the stress. In fact, no one was sure about the reason for her illness and no matter whether due to fear or to stress the illness was a fact. Afterwards he took her to Vienna, and to Bucharest, and to Istanbul, for treatment because he had money, but at the age of 45 she departed from this life.

Afterwards Grandpa decided to marry for the second time, Buka, a Jew, too, who was 25 and had a child, Isak. Later she had two more children from Grandpa, Roza and Zhak. So mother had seven brothers and sisters in total.

Buka gradually led him to bankruptcy because she made him take her to bars, she traveled by carriage, spent his money on entertainment with a dash. She also usurped the dowry which Granny Roza had prepared for my mother, as she had bought things from the different places where she had undergone medical treatment - Vienna, Bucharest, Istanbul. Little by little Grandpa went broke, sold the house on Positano Street and they again moved to the tiny house in Dor Bunar on Pernik Street. In Turkish Dor Bunar means four wells and Iuchbunar 5 means three wells. Dor Bunar is the today's quarter of Konyovitsa which is next to Iuchbunar. The Vladayska River which crosses Positano Street and Klementina Street, today's 'Stamboliiski' Boulevard, separates Iuchbunar from Dor Bunar.

My grandpa used to be very religious, and my mother Olga was religious as well. He attended the synagogue and my mother went to the synagogue with him on high holiday.

My mother had a very hard life with her stepmother because she was the oldest in the family - her older sister Soffie had already got married - and had to look after all the other children. Buka often maltreated her in such a way that her brothers usually came to her rescue. One day she beat her in such a way that my mother lost her front teeth. Of course, her brother didn't let their stepmother get away with that and took his vengeance on her, but the fact was that my mother didn't have front teeth until she got artificial teeth.

My paternal grandfather's name was Isak Varsano. He married my granny Ester and they had two children, Bitush and Asher. After that Grandpa died. They arranged marriage for Granny Ester to a white-haired old man with a long beard and she had two more children from him, Yahiel and Rashel. But my grandfather's sister Matilda, who didn't have her own children, adopted my father and his brother - Bitush and Asher - and brought them up in her own home in Sofia, on Positano Street.

Before my mother moved to the old, ramshackle house with her whole family, which means before my grandpa Yonto's complete bankruptcy, she saw my father in the garden next door, as he used to live with his aunt in the same street. They saw each other there, through the window, she looking from one window, he from another one opposite, and they liked each other. Afterwards, by a coincidence, they sang together in the Tsadikov choir 6. I can't say anything about how they started singing there. I only know that later when they came back from rehearsals, and I don't know where those took place, they were learning the songs from the choir together with us, the children. Bit by bit, after attending the rehearsals and meeting there, they fell in love.

Then my father went to war 7 and he used to send letters then, too. I even have a photo which shows him standing in front of the gun in Tulcha, which I donated to the Synagogue museum. They even gave me a receipt that I had donated it. Let the people see that the Jews went to war and fought as well. I have dim memories of his stories about the war. It was a hard time for them, their clothes were torn to pieces, their shoes, too, their feet were freezing.

My mother and father had a poor wedding, without dowry, they married in the synagogue in Iuchbunar, on the corner of Osogovo and Bregalnitsa Street, in 1919 [the rabbi in that tiny synagogue was Haribi Daniel Zion] and immediately after that started living in rented lodgings.

Growing up

My father, Bitush Isak Varsano, had elementary education, but as a young man he started acquiring the tinsmith and the plumbing craft with some craftsman, a Jew, too, whose name I don't know. Afterwards he started working alone with some entrepreneurs on building sites. But at that time building was a seasonal job only during the summer. The winter days were ones of hunger.

My father was a very nice person, so good, with such a soft personality, he wouldn't harm a fly. He didn't know how to tell us off, he never cursed; I never heard him say such words, never. Not to say that he wouldn't ever slap us across the face. He was very hard-working - of medium height, let's say his complexion was fair, he wasn't dark, and his hair wasn't auburn. He was well-preserved; one couldn't say how old he was. He was religious; he spoke Ladino and Bulgarian and used to sing very well.

My mother, Olga Almozino, had taken the responsibility for our bringing up at home. She was quite strict but very amiable at the same time. She was telling us off, shouting, even beating us at times. She was very fastidious and wanted everything in the house to be immaculate. She gave all kinds of orders, about everything. And don't forget that she was illiterate and not because they didn't send her to school, but because she didn't want to study. But she used to test us to see if we had learned our lessons. She made us read the lessons aloud; she memorized everything and then she would open the book and pretend she was reading in order not to lose face, but in fact she didn't know the alphabet.

When her first grandson, my son Zhak, was born and started school, she decided to examine him in the same way. A good idea that was, but he was in the habit of, just like that, with no good reason, walking around while he was telling the lesson aloud. And he started walking around her in circles like that until one day he noticed that she was holding the book upside down.

My mother was taught to read by my sister Rebeka's daughter, Albena. Later she was able to read the newspapers. She was very exuberant, a person of very cheerful and soft personality. Energetic, very energetic, very sociable, very easy-going, very outgoing she was. There wasn't a single person in the neighborhood who didn't know her, not a single person. 'Granny Olga!' 'Granny Olga!' Not a single person. They all cherished good feelings towards her.

I had one brother, Isak, and three sisters. I was the second oldest. My brother was three years older than me. I am only a year and a half older than Stela, Rebeka is eight years younger than me.

My brother Isak was born in 1921 in Sofia. Not only was he the oldest of all the children but he was also the only man. He was the one in charge, the ringleader, so to say. All of us more or less conformed with him. He helped my father to make our living by working after school and during the holidays as an apprentice at a barber's. He used to help with the tinsmith work, too, and after finishing the third grade at the Jewish school 8, he became a salesman.

In addition, Isak was very ambitious. After 9th September 9 he attended evening-classes and afterwards graduated from the Institute of Economics and became the director of 'Stalin' Vocational School. During our difficult childhood years he was not only responsible for us, but he also made sure we were in a good mood and thought of different games. While with people he would always attract and be in the center of attention, no matter whether he was with men or with women. He was a handsome, charming man. He got married at an early age, in 1942 or 1943, to Tsivi Nusan, who had actually come to our house to live with him a year before their marriage. She was so much in love. While he was a student my brother used to sing in the Synagogue choir. He was religious. My parents had arranged his bar mitzvah. He had two children with Tsivi, Subby and Rout. Isak died in Sofia in 1981.

My sister Ester or Stela Galvy, nee Varsano, was born in 1926 in Sofia. The fact that we were almost the same age made us very close because of the common problems we used to have. She was my first confidante who would often defend me in front of our mother. Stela finished the preliminary classes and the first, second and third grade at the Jewish school and the Jewish elementary school as well. After 9th September she started going to evening classes, but then she got married, the children came and she didn't complete her education. She worked as a seamstress. She got married in 1948 to my husband Leon Anzhel's friend, Aron Galvy. They have two daughters, Olga and Galya. At present Stela lives in Israel. She left twelve years ago, in 1994.

Rebeka or Beka Varsano was the youngest and she had the most independent way of development irrespectively of the fact that we have always been united. She finished the first, second and third grades at the Jewish school, which was in one and the same yard with the synagogue in the framework formed by the streets Osogovo, Bregalnitsa and Positano. After that we were interned to Vratsa 10. The classes in the school were discontinued. On returning to Sofia, she finished the Jewish school but after 9th September there was a completely new curriculum and in practice it resembled a Bulgarian school. After the Jewish elementary school she finished the Third High School for Girls and after that studied medicine.

My sister worked as a doctor in the medical center ISUL. She married the Bulgarian Vladimir Naydenov despite the resistance from our parents - they opposed this marriage not because he was Bulgarian, but because he was an actor. Later she divorced him. They have one daughter, Albena. In 1994 Rebeka left for Israel and lived there for ten years but then came back to Bulgaria and now she lives with her daughter Albena.

We had a difficult childhood. There we were - six mouths to feed - and the experience, especially during the winter, was quite hard. Our suffering during the winter was so severe that we, the children, would go to buy coal, one bucket at a time, from the warehouse, to warm ourselves. The skin on our hands would chap due to work and cold, our feet, too, they would itch, hurt. Poverty, great poverty we lived in. So bad was our hunger, but we didn't have a choice.

When my mother had Beka, there was this family, a man and his wife in our yard, tailors. They didn't have children and the woman was crying so much to give Beka to them, to raise her, to adopt her - Beka. But my father would always say: 'We may have nothing, but these are our children!' The woman who wanted to adopt Beka used to come often out of curiosity to see what my mother was cooking and, as Mom didn't have anything to cook, she would put water in a pot, place the lid on top and put it on the cooker. And when this woman came, led by curiosity, she would always ask: 'What meal have you prepared today? And Mom would reply: 'You are always asking, you want to know too much, I won't tell you, come on - go home!'

Sometimes we received aid from the Jewish school. Sometimes in winter they gave us a pair of shoes, an apron for school and a coat, but that wasn't much and, after all, there were four of us, they gave to one, to the others - not. And do you know what we did - my brother went to school in the morning, I went in the afternoon. I used to put on his shoes and go to school, and in the morning he would put them on again and go out, and I remained home.

Our poverty lasted till my brother finished the third grade at the Jewish school. Then he started work as a salesman. Whereas before that he used to work only during the holidays, he was going to a barber's shop, to assist, got tips and brought the money home. The meal we would buy with that money was the only one we got per day.

We were helped with medical treatment at a medical center on Osogovo Street, between Positano and Tri Ushi Street. That was something like a dispensary in which we were mainly examined by medical auxiliaries. The Jewish hospital 11 was on the corner of Hristo Mihaylov and Positano Street and it was a very elegant building. Women from our kin had given birth there and they told us that there was a room in which the brit ritual was performed.

When we were ill we turned to our family doctor, Doctor Burla, who had his private practice on Paisii Street. He would come home whenever one of the children got ill. My parents must have paid him, but I know that the fee was symbolic, for the poor families. I remember that when I was a child I got scarlet fever, the doctor came, made the diagnosis and after that I was sent to the regional hospital, to the isolation ward there in order not to infect my brother and sisters. I never went to the Jewish hospital.

There was also a Jewish soup kitchen. Our wealthy people, the wealthy Jewish people, wanted to show, to demonstrate how merciful they were on holidays and because of that they would give something to the school. But poverty remains poverty. In the summer life was good. My father was working and we could put some money aside for the winter but the saved was never enough. He didn't earn so much money; after all there were four children, six mouths to feed.

We usually lived in rented lodgings. We changed several houses. We usually had a room and a kitchen. We couldn't afford more. My mother and father used to have a bedroom suite that consisted of two panel beds whose boards we used to clean and polish. They used to sleep on the suite while we, the children, slept on the floor. Our parents would prepare a bed for us on the floor; they would lay mattresses that were removed during the day and put back again in the evening.

When we were on Morava Street, in Iuchbunar - we lived there for nine years, but where we had lived before that I don't remember because we were too young - we lived with Bulgarians. The owners of our place were Bulgarian. They had a son and a daughter and there wasn't much difference between them and us, the Jews. They spoke Ladino as well as we did. There were other Bulgarian families in the same compound and they also spoke Ladino, maybe because the majority of the tenants were Jews. So, everybody in the compound was speaking Ladino, we were living together.

In winter my brother would take a big board, put all kind of gadgets on it and turn it into a sledge, and on letting us, all the girls, get on the sledge, we would slid back and for, and all the children, we were all sliding in that sledge. They were all playing football together. We used to fight together, all of us from Iuchbunar, against Dor Bunar, down by the river. [There are several rivers that flow through Sofia. They are tributaries of the Iskur River. The biggest ones are the Perlovska and the Vladayska Rivers. The Iuchbunar neighborhood was divided into two parts by the Vladayska River.] They would throw stones at us, we, the girls, used to gather stones and give them to the boys to throw at the other side. A war was taking place.

After that we moved to Odrin Street. There we lived with one more family, only a man and his wife. While we lived there, there was one tiny living room that we shared with the other family, with a kitchen and two rooms. There were two chimneys in the kitchen - the other family cooked on one of them, ours - on the other. We, the children, were sleeping in the room, on those beds, and our parents bought a bed - the ordinary size and a half and were sleeping in the living room with our neighbors' permission because we were living together with them. There was electricity and my father, as a plumber, always ensured there was running water in the house.

The yards in Iuchbunar were brimming with life. When it was time for coffee, one or another of the women living there would take the brazier outside and would start the fire, and everybody would go there and put their coffee pot there. The most important thing was that they sat together to talk, to chat. They were all chatting - Bulgarians, Jews - everybody. In that respect the poor were living much more in harmony, they were more united, there was a feeling of togetherness, they got on with each other much better and they quarreled, quarreled, but there were no anti-Semitic attitudes. The children quarreled, the families quarreled with one another, for example if a husband returned home drunk, in the yard there would invariably be a real spectacular scandal - very Italian-like. There wasn't a distinctive line between wealthy Bulgarians and wealthy Jews, but there was a distinction between poor and wealthy Jews.

The majority of the wealthy Jews were merchants and bankers whereas the poor were porters, carters, house-painters, masons, workers on the pipeline, construction workers, cobblers, tailors...That version, that story, what people say that all Jews are merchants is not entirely true. Few of the Jews were bankers and wealthy people, only a few, a small percentage, relatively small. There was a serious gap between wealthy and poor Jews and we felt different. The wealthy Jews used to live in Sofia, in the center, let's say from Sveta Nedelya Church, from Halite shop onward, from Vazrazhdane Square onward, to beyond where the ISUL medical center is today, down Iskar Street, down Ekzarh Yosif Street, down Tsar Simeon Street, opposite the building of the fire brigade. Even now you can see the beautiful houses from those times, and that's where the wealthy Jews used to live.

During the war

Most of the Jews were hired laborers in the factories. My father, for example, before the internment had found a job in the Platno factory, in Hadzhi Dimitar quarter. [The interviewee is referring to the English- Bulgarian textile company which was registered in Bulgaria in 1921. That company also owned the textile mill Platno (Linen).] He was making ventilation systems there. When he started working there, poverty stopped being so severe but, on the other hand, we had already grown up, had started making our own living, as the saying goes, and life started being better. But at that time the camps appeared, he was sent to Somovit 12 and my brother to labor camps 13 and only we, the women, remained at home and we had to support ourselves, had to cope on our own.

I studied at the Jewish school; I had been to elementary school and to junior high school there - until the third grade. There were 35 to 40 students in class at that time. We studied all the subjects, which were taught in the Bulgarian schools, and Hebrew. At the end of each school year there would come a commission to test us - something like matriculation - in order to be allowed to move to a higher grade.

After that I started work, like my brother, as an apprentice to a seamstress in an atelier on 4, Denkoglu Street which later moved to Aksakov Street. I used to work in the day and go to school in the evening - to the Jewish school on Kaloyan Street. In that school they had organized, after the end of the workday, a school for vocational education. It was called ORT 14. Fintsi was our principal. I remember some of our teachers' names - Ilich Rafailov, or Todorova, who was our class teacher and so on.

After work, at 6 o'clock, we went to school and used to attend the vocational school for four hours - we studied how to draw designs, to embroider, to sew, all the different kinds of embroidery, of knitting. We had all kinds of subjects separately from the vocational subjects; we used to have Geography, History, Bulgarian, Arithmetic, Bookkeeping by Double Entry. In general we had all the subjects that were taught at both the vocational and the general high schools. They taught us everything.

The course of education lasted four years. That's why, when we went there in the evening, they gave us snacks after two hours had elapsed. They used to give us boza 15, or halva 16 on bread, gave us all sorts of sandwiches at eight o'clock and then we continued until ten o'clock and then we got back home. On completing the first two academic years we were examined by a commission. Some people came from the labor chamber, from the Ministry of Education and there were exams to prove we had successfully finished the first two years of education. After two more years we sat an exam again. We passed that exam as well and were ready to become masters.

The synagogue was wonderful, big, spacious. We always went there on holidays. And on Friday. We used to live nearby. We lived right next to the synagogue. While walking about, to some place or another, we would go round to the synagogue. I feel so sad that it was demolished. It used to be in Iuchbunar, on Positano Street like the Jewish school, somehow they shared one and the same yard. It remained in my memories as quite a big synagogue. The synagogue was in the middle, with its own yard - a big, beautiful synagogue. That's how it remained in my memories. When a ritual or some kind of holiday took place the men took their places on the floor below, and on the upper floor - the women, there was an upper floor. [The services were conducted by Rabbi Daniel, the most respected rabbi in the neighborhood]

As the neighborhood was rather big and the synagogue wasn't enough, right on the corner of Opalchenska and Positano Street there was a tiny midrash, as it is called, and prayers were read there. It was actually on Bregalnitsa Street. Between Stamboliiski and Positano there was one more tiny midrash, and there, too, prayers were read and on the corner of Dimitar Petkov and Positano there was a big yard and there was another midrash, where prayers were read, too. A lot of Jews, there were a lot of us, Jews, really a lot. There were sacred books in one of the midrashim, like in the synagogue, prayers were read there, there was also a rabbi to read the prayers [cf. Sofia Synagogues] 17.

My mother and father used to sing in the Tsadikov choir. I neither know where the rehearsals were taking place, nor did they take us to any concerts of the choir. [Apart from the fact that the choir was an establishment at the synagogue, the literature doesn't mention where the rehearsals were taking place. According to a bulletin of the Sofia Jewish Municipality, on 3rd August 1937 the first foundation stone of the Jewish Cultural Center was laid - in the place of the former and until then existing Cultural Center that had been built in 1892 on the corner of 4 Maria Luiza Boulevard and 3 St. Nikola Passage. As the edifice belonged to the Sofia Jewish Municipality and it subsidized the two elementary schools and the two junior high schools, the rehearsals of the choir probably took place there.] Usually in the evening, after coming back home from work, they would sit down and sing at home and we were around them. All the songs I know I've learned from them. Through the singing we used to forget about the poverty and the cold.

We used to go on excursions a lot. We frequently went to Vitosha Mountain, at that time there were no rucksacks and my mother would put all the things in a hamper, my father would carry it. And how were we setting off? By tram? A ticket was 5 leva, there were six of us - how could we find so much money! From Sofia to Zlatnite Mostove [The Golden Bridges - a site on Vitosha Mountain, which is not far from Sofia] we walked on foot. We first went to Knyazhevo and from Knyazhevo we climbed the mountain.

We used to play a lot of games - Jewish and Bulgarian children together. We would take walnuts and put them in a straight line but one of the walnuts we would leave aside. It was the captain. And the child who managed to hit that walnut took everything. Or until another child hit - he took everything. Or the boys would make a hole in the ground and started throwing whole handfuls of walnuts and if the whole handful entered the whole, the boy who threw it won whereas if a walnut went out, the other boy won.

We used to play the balls, too. The boys used to play the balls a lot. There was even a game with little lamb bones. The boys would scrape them and played with them. The game was called 'chilik' and it was extremely popular. A little rod was used, a little one, with its two ends sharpened and it was put in a hole and then thrown in a certain way. A lot of games there were.

I do remember Yom Kippur and this is how I remember it: we would take a quince and stick clove seeds into it so that we could smell it all day long, without any desire to eat. In fact, at home we had Yom Kippur quite often, that's what we used to say jokingly because we were often starving. And you know, the seamstress whose apprentice I was at first, was a Jew as well. Once I saw Tanti [auntie] Rebeka was preparing cookies and I wanted to taste them so much, while baking the aroma could be smelled from far away. She came and told me: 'Roza, have a cookie, eat it.' 'Oh, Tanti Rebeka, it is Yom Kippur today, I shouldn't eat.' The poor woman was flabbergasted and said: 'What are you saying, girl, what Yom Kippur, come on, have a bite. God won't punish you, it will be my sin.' You can imagine how terrible it was to be hungry.

At Purim and Rosh Hashanah there were amazing carnivals and not only at school. In Positano Street, in Morava Street, all the people went out in disguise, we were singing, laughing. 'Mavlacheta' were sold in the streets - those were made of sugar, colored shapes, like hearts, roosters, little red roosters, different circles. We used to buy those, there was such fun in the street and in the yard. The celebration was mainly around Positano Street, around the school, around the synagogue. We used to get together a lot, to play a lot. We used to make masks, put on different shirts. We found a way to disguise ourselves despite the hunger.

Rosh Hashanah was a big holiday for us. Very stately. No matter whether we had money or not, Rosh Hashanah was stately celebrated at home. And for Pesach they used to again give alms from the Jewish school. My father and brother would go there and load themselves with those round loaves, there were round loaves, very hard round loaves, called 'boyo,' which were kneaded not with yeast but the dough only and they were baked. They also gave us matzah and because we were a big family they gave us three kilos of matzah and a bag of boyo loaves. We took them home and had Pesach with the whole family. We had neighbors who didn't have children but were in a good financial situation. And they invited us to their home. For Pesach we didn't eat bread for eight days.

For the celebration of Chanukkah we used to light our candles, took turns to light them, we sang - we did all this at home.

Usually for all the holidays - for Rosh Hashanah, and for Sukkot, and for all the holidays - we were supposed to eat chicken. One would buy from the market a hen, a chicken, a rooster, and would go to the synagogue. There was a separate hall in the yard. On entering the synagogue yard, there was a little house, like a shed, where the cheese and other things were stored, there were some fountains nearby, before that some troughs were there and there was a Jew with a special task, the so-called shochet, who used to slaughter the hens and put them there to let their blood pour out; we took the slaughtered hen and ran home while it was still warm so that our mother could pluck it because the Jews didn't use to scald to pluck the hen's feathers, but plucked them immediately after slaughtering it. After plucking the animal they would take newspapers, set them on fire so that everything that remained after plucking would be burned, then they would wash what was left well, dry it and that was the way they cooked.

For Sabbath we would also slaughter an animal. At Sabbath we usually gathered, my mother would put on her kerchief, light a candle and start reading a prayer. And before laying the table, she cooked during the day and before she laid the table for Sabbath, we all went to the tub so that she could bathe us, give us a clean shirt, dress us. Everything had to be shining with cleanliness on the table. At Sabbath it was obligatory for us to have pastel [traditional Jewish dish made of flour and veal mince], obligatory. It was also obligatory to have a boiled dish - soup, boiled beef or some other soup. And this soup wasn't for eating. Then the meat would be taken out and roasted with a little pepper or some other seasoning, potatoes or rice would be added, and there you had a wonderful meal. We used to put noodles and a bit of parsley.

The people from Ruse [city in Northeastern Bulgaria 251 km from Sofia] who lived in Sofia were the best in preparing the soups I am talking about. They cooked the soups with hen meat because there was more fat in it - they used to boil the fat, to cook it with some seasonings - carrots, parsnip, other vegetables and on top of the pot they put other things to cook on the steam. We sometimes visited some families from Ruse. And that Ruse-style soup was the greatest deli for us because apart from the sauce there were veggies prepared on steam, which were extremely delicious. Apart from the pastel there were pasties with leeks, different kinds of scones and 'tishpishtil,' which was obligatorily prepared for the holidays. My mother used to cook kosher. When we bought meat, which wasn't often, my mother would always salt it so that the blood would go out.

The Jewish chitalishte 18, which didn't have a name, was located on the corner of Stamboliiski and Opalchenska Street, next to the Mako hosiery factory. [Mako Hosiery was founded in 1931. In the following year the Bulgarian Textile - Industrial Joint Venture 'Mako' was registered as well.] The things that were happening there took up most of my spare time. My brother and sister went to the chitalishte often, too, but I don't know if they were members of any Jewish organizations. My brother used to sing in the Synagogue choir. We used to borrow books from the library, there were lectures, discussions on different topics - we clarified Darwin's laws, there were history lectures or we made ourselves familiar with some topics from physics. The most important thing was that there we met other people with whom we organized some parties and we created a whole organization to raise money and to gather clothes and food for the poor. In fact the main activities of the chitalishte were educational, but while meeting we were actually performing some illegal activities, too.

In the chitalishte I also met Leon Anzhel - my future husband. He was a cheerful, natural and pleasant - a nice person to talk to. With him we often discussed the topics presented in the lectures or the books we were reading at the time. One day he told me: 'Do you want us to become comrades?' and that was how our relationship started. At that time I was 15.

My mother Olga would always find suitors for me. Some marriage arrangers used to come home. And on finding out they were home, I would run away. My sister, Stela, often covered up for me but after that got a licking for defending me. My mother could serve as an example even to the strictest tutors. And after finding out that I had a boyfriend she didn't allow me to go out and always found some work for me to complete. She wanted to marry me to a man of good stock - learned, gentlemanlike. She was looking for a different cultural milieu although she was illiterate. She was doing her research by interrogating my friends. One day I couldn't take all that any more and I told her I had a boyfriend.

'Well, then,' she insisted, 'I expect him to come and tell us, the parents, that he has serious intentions and one day you will get married. I want him to promise - it wouldn't be an engagement - but I want him to promise that his serious intentions will remain and one day you will get married.' And one day I told him - I was feeling too tormented that they wouldn't let me go anywhere; I wasn't allowed to go out at all. And I made him come with his mother, but he took some friends along to encourage him. He came home, talked to my mother. They liked each other and I was free to go out again. But the men were already being sent to the camps and we didn't see each other for a year. The year was 1942.

I became a member of the UYW 19 in 1939. My father had already joined the BCP 20 in 1937 or 1938. The poverty around us had given him a reason to join the Party and he believed that everything would change for the better some day. In general our family had leftist political orientation. In our houses we talked about justice that had to be fought for. My mother and father kept contact with the entire Jewish community because the quarter we lived in was Jewish but I don't know whether they had been members of any Jewish organization. At that time anti-Semitic incidents had started - window shops were being broken, signatures were collected against the Jews, the Jews were fired from work, we were wearing badges [yellow stars] 21.

When the men left for the camps I became the sub-group person in charge in UYW. I was supposed to lead four UYW groups, which were independent, which meant that they didn't know about the existence of the others and I had to monitor and coordinate their activities. I was supposed to give them instructions, to tell them to sell stamps, to write appeals and so on. But, quite unexpectedly, there was a failure in one of the groups. At a meeting there were two boys, somebody had drawn them to the group but they turned out to be provocateurs. They betrayed the whole group and all the members were arrested. They were taken to the Police Directorate. It was great that the work was organized in that way - that the people from the different groups didn't know each other. So, when the leader of the group was captured he didn't know the others and, thank God, betrayed me only.

While I was at work one day my future sister-in-law, Tsivi, who was living at home at that time, together with the agents and the policemen, came to the atelier where I was working. They couldn't find me at home and she took them to my workplace because the policemen didn't know where the place was and she couldn't explain it to them, so finally she decided to take them to the place. And then I saw the policemen, the agents and the leader of the group - he was with them but he could hardly walk because they had beaten him black and blue. On seeing them I went inside; the previous evening I had received stamps for seven thousand leva. I went inside and I was lucky - when they rang at the door it was me who went to answer the door, and, fortunately, on answering the door they asked for Mrs. Zvuncharova. That was my boss's name. I told them that I would tell her they were looking for her.

I went inside and said 'Mrs. Zvuncharova, somebody is looking for you.' And when she went out to see who was looking for her I managed to thrust my hand into the bag and to throw the packet with the stamps behind the radiator so that they wouldn't have any evidence against me. Then Zvuncharova came back and said: 'Well, actually, Roza, they are looking for you.' And they arrested me right there and took me to the Police Directorate. In my pocket there was a letter from Larry from the labor camp - I had forgotten it in my pocket. On the way to the police department we were on a crowded tram and with the policemen around me I managed to, little by little, tear it carefully to pieces and nothing could be heard as the tram was whirring and then I threw the little shreds of paper in the tram. We got off the tram but I had got rid of the letter.

I had to hide that letter - because I had received the letter from the labor camp - so that they wouldn't arrest him. And I don't want to tell you about the police department - the way I was beaten there, it's indescribable, even now... can you hear it? My jaw is still cracked. Electricity. My hair moved down to here. They used electricity - on the joints, on the hands, on the feet, here - on the face, my whole body was shaking - because they wanted to make me speak.

The leader of the group had told them that I had instructed him, had given him stamps, had gathered aids, that he had given me money from the aids the group had been gathering for me. What had I done with that money? Who had I given the money to? Those stamps, where had I taken them from to give them out for distribution? Literature, had I given out any appeals to the people to read? Where had I taken all that from? He had told them everything - he wasn't a provocateur but simply gave in because of the beating. He told them everything at the very first beating. And after that they were all... the police couldn't get any more information from them; they all turned their attention to me. And you can imagine what the next month was, a whole month of inquisition, what torture...

My stay there was very long because they wanted to find out everything no matter by what means. And they asked 'Who is involved? Who is involved? Who is involved?' 'Well', I say, 'It is Mr. Münchhausen...' I used Baron Münchhausen's name [a character from 'The Surprising Adventures of Baron Münchhausen' by Rudolf Erich Raspe, a collection of stories published in 1785, based on the German adventurer Karl Friedrich von Münchhausen]. 'Münchhausen. Who's that Münchhausen?' 'I don't know.' I said. 'We arrange to meet in Borisova Gradina [Boris's Garden].' 'Have you arranged a meeting with him for now?' 'We don't have a meeting.' 'Do you have any arrangement?' 'We don't have an arrangement.' And they were looking for that Münchhausen, they were looking but there wasn't such a person, he didn't exist. So they beat me almost to death and I had to tell them the names but I didn't tell them to the end and then it was over.

There was a trial I had to stand with the charges that I had been the leader of our activities but there was no evidence; there was no Münchhausen, no money, no stamps. I hadn't betrayed anyone so I had to be acquitted. But they couldn't just let me go so I was given a one-year suspended sentence. Afterwards I was interned to Vratsa [a town in Northwestern Bulgaria, 112 km north of Sofia] with my sisters... During the arrest and after that I received full moral support from both my father and my mother.

After the arrest I was forced to change my name by the police. In their opinion Roza was a Bulgarian name so I had to choose a Jewish one, for it to be obvious that I was Jewish. I was given a list and I chose the name Rout. And, as I got married before 9th September, my name in the marriage certificate is Rout. I restored my name after 9th September 22.

At first we had an invitation from the town of Kazanlak [in South Central Bulgaria, 170 km from Sofia] as there used to be an aviation factory, but there wasn't a single Jew to remain in the town. The Jews from Kazanlak were also interned to Vratsa. What can I tell you? The train was overcrowded - cattle trucks, we were carrying clothes, we had even taken the sewing machine, mattresses to sleep on. Can you imagine how much luggage we, the women, were carrying and were dragging to the railway station in order to move to Vratsa? We traveled all night long. That was the first time I had been on a train.

At the very station we were awaited by policemen and military officers and we were accommodated in the building of the school which was on the way to Vratsata [the 'Vratsata' site, which is not far from the town of Vratsa and the name literally means 'doors'], they called it 'kiumiura' [the charcoal]. We were accommodated in a classroom, how shall I put it, do you know what packed like sardines means - we were sleeping man to man. There wasn't enough room.

After a while we started looking for lodgings because we were given permission to do so. So we went to live on Tsar Krum Street. We were living in a cellar there - in a basement. There lived a lot of people - my mother and Tsivi and Stela and Beka. My father was in Somovit. Before the internment they had arrested him and sent him to Somovit. Opposite our place there was a Turkish bath house, which wasn't working, and there were rooms for rent. There we rented a room for my future mother-in-law who had been interned to Lom [in North-West Bulgaria, 128 km from Sofia] alone and we took her from Lom to Vratsa. So we helped her to settle down there, so that when her son came back from the camp he would have somewhere to live together with her.

We had to pay rent but in order to pay this rent we had to work, we didn't have money. There were work restrictions for us 23. But Granny Olga was woman of strong character [The interviewee is referring to her mother here]. She called one of our neighbors, who lived just opposite us and offered her to sew a dress for her because I was very skillful, and asked to tell her relatives and acquaintances about my skills if she liked the result. Then this woman brought some striped fabric and I sewed a dress for her to wear when visiting friends. The ends of the stripes met the so- called herringbone cloth. She was extremely pleased with the result. She was the wife of a lawyer and after that all her friends started calling on us. They came to bring the cloth and we only worked.

All the girls helped, Stela, and Tsivi, we used to even sew at the light of the gas lamp. We used to sew until we stopped seeing anything. We didn't have a mirror for the women to look at themselves. We used the window for those purposes. And we were making our living that way. It doesn't mean that we had a lot of work but at least we got some money to pay the rent.

As for the food, in the school there was a soup kitchen. And during the time in which we were allowed to walk outside, we took food from the school and then returned home. We had the right to be outside for two hours a day - between 8 and 10 o'clock. The rest of the time we didn't even have the right to show our faces at the windows because in Vratsa was the headquarters of the gendarmerie and there were blockades all the time, there were gendarmes in the streets. We couldn't go anywhere, even to buy bread. A bit later, I can't say exactly when, there started a UYW movement in Vratsa, but I couldn't join as I was too busy sewing.

We knew what was happening to the Jews around the world. When the men came back they told us about the trains full of Jews they had seen. It was rumored that we were supposed to be moved gradually closer to the Danube so that we could be loaded on barges and then sent, like all the rest, to the concentration camps.

While we were in Vratsa, Larry was working in the labor camps. They demobilized them from time to time, to spend the winter at home, and then mobilized them again. In the winter of 1943 he had come back to Vratsa. He came back and started living opposite us. We had decided to get married. We had made an arrangement with the rabbi in Vratsa, decided on the day. The wedding was between 8 and 10 o'clock because we could move about freely in this period. A lot of young people came. Granny Olga had prepared cookies with jam and had cooked some modest dishes, she had done all she could do and the wedding was fine. They had freed Grandpa Bitush from the camp [The interviewee is referring to her father]. He had returned. Otherwise what wedding would it have been? The date was 16th March 1944.

Before our wedding, there had been a big air-raid over Vratsa, a very big air-raid. The central part of the town was completely destroyed and burned to the ground by the Englishmen. Larry was mobilized in Vratsa to clear off the debris; they even made the women clear off, particularly those of us who were living in the center. The men were also digging the graves because there were a lot of victims from the raids. After we got married the air- raids continued. The raid alarm sounded twice that night, during our nuptial night. The first time we ran away because there were raids after all but we stayed after the second one - three of us in the bed as my mother-in-law remained on one side of the bed. The woman was very scared. We all survived after 9th September.

Post-war

We came back to Sofia in November 1945 - we had no place to live or any furniture because we had always lived in rented lodgings before that... A first cousin of mine who had the same name as me - Roza, a daughter of my mother's sister, told me: 'Come here, there's a little apartment on the ground floor - two rooms and a kitchen. It belongs to a relative of mine. His family won't return soon. They are in the town of Tolbuhin 24.'

The owner of the apartment, which she offered us, was the mayor in that town. My husband and I agreed to live there. My mother-in-law was with us. Thus started the ordeal of going to different commissariats because there wasn't a single window glass that had remained in the apartment, we had to repaint it, to clean it in order to make it decent to live in. The apartment was on Rakovski Street. We managed to clean the place and in 1945 I gave birth to our first child, Zhani [Yafa]. And then the wonderful owners of the apartment appeared and told us they wanted their apartment back despite the fact we had a signed contract. That was quite a situation for us. But being rather compassionate my husband and I decided to give them back the apartment, after all it was their property. And the four of us - Zhani, my mother-in-law, my husband and I - settled down in a single room until we'd find a proper place to live in.

It was a real hell when the owners returned. The husband was an alcoholic. He came back in the middle of the night although there was a curfew. There weren't restrictions for him and on coming back home he started knocking on our door, shouting: 'How long are you going to stay here? When are you leaving?' That was the situation. And as we were living on the ground floor and my husband had a shift job for the police, they made him ask a chair from me when he returned home from work. I gave him the chair through the window, he stepped on it, jumped and entered the apartment in that way.

At that time we knew about these apartments here, in the Zaharna Fabrika quarter. We had been told that there were apartments that were still being built and we submitted a request for such an apartment. When we told the people about the torture we had to go through, we were included in a list to receive an apartment here, which at that time wasn't ready. Nonetheless, without even knowing where the quarter was or which one the apartment building was, I asked the management of the Ministry of Interior to lend us a truck, we packed our luggage and came here. And on arriving here we saw our apartment for the first time.

Can you imagine how awful our life had been? We had let the people use their apartment despite having a contract with the owner. We were supposed to live there at least two years but he didn't wait even a year. We came to 'Zaharna Fabrika' quarter and settled down in the new apartment. And around us there was only mud, there were no shops, no place to buy milk from and we had a little baby.

At that time I started work as a telephone operator in the Ministry of Interior and I worked there for six years. Larry was a policeman. There was a lot of work in the police. My mother-in-law, who used to live with us, gave me a hand in the raising of the children. I worked in the Ministry of the Interior until 1951 and then I was dismissed for having connections in foreign countries, as was stated in the order for dismissal. I want to declare that wasn't true. All my relatives - my brother and sisters - at that time were here in Bulgaria. In fact, I was dismissed due to my Jewish origin. I started work in 'Voroshilov' works [in Sofia, situated in the region of 'Zaharna Fabrika' quarter, its scope of production included electricity technology and electronics] as a chief controller. I had already become a member of the BCP in 1944, immediately after 9th September.

The works was new, it was near our apartment and that was good for me because of the children. I knew that I would have spare time. I started work there and they appointed me a secretary of the Party despite my dismissal because I had been a member of UYW before 9th September. And things were going very well, they called upon from the Party and cited us a model because we were working very well.

One day Todor Zhivkov 25 came to attend a big meeting and they seated me next to him, on the platform and I was so grieved at what had happened in the police that I told him all about it. I sat next to him and told him everything: 'Before 9th September we were victimized for being Jewish. We were in disgrace and I was working here for seven years, my work was excellent and still I was dismissed for being a Jew.' 'Such were the times,' he started explaining. 'Those were the events, there was no other way...' Because a lot of Jews were dismissed. There were no consequences after that conversation, but at least I told him everything and felt much better.

There were 7,000 employees in the works and I was a chief controller there. Everybody knew me. They all knew I was a Jew, I still meet some of them, but they had never minded that - had nothing against my Jewish origin or me. The dismissal from the Ministry of the Interior was the only such case.

My first child Yafa, who was named after my mother-in-law, was born on 2nd June 1945 in Sofia. She goes by Zhani. She finished high school and got a degree in engineering. She used to work as a designer-engineer. Now she is retired. She got married to Yozhi Beraha in 1968. She has two children, Isak and Roza. My son Zhak was born on 23rd April 1949 in Sofia. He has a secondary vocational education and works as an electricity technician in the trade system. He is married to Emilia Dimtirova, a Bulgarian. He has a son, Leon.

We brought up our children in Jewish self-awareness. We kept the Jewish high holidays Rosh Hashanah, Pesach, Purim, but we didn't stick to all the rituals. For example, we didn't disguise ourselves at Purim; we weren't fasting for Yom Kippur. We went to the synagogue but rarely. The most important thing for us was that the whole family got together for the holidays. And we always had a great time.

There are no Bulgarians in the family with the exception of my daughter-in- law, Emilia Dimitrova, and that's why we are indifferent to Christmas and Easter. After my son got married I started visiting my daughter-in-law. For Christmas and Christmas Eve. She was working a lot and didn't have time to prepare for the holidays so I went to their place in the morning and prepared everything necessary for Christmas Eve. I don't go there anymore because I have grown old but she still uses my recipe for the hors d'oeuvre with walnuts. It is a very delicious dish.

We were all talking about the state of Israel. Not only with Larry and my mother-in-law, not with the children because they were too young at the time to discuss it with them, but I also talked to my mother, father and brother. We all discussed this issue but we all felt so tired of the ordeals we had been through and, additionally, we had already found jobs, had set up homes and we had simply got used to the things we had achieved with so much work... So we decided that we wouldn't go, at least for the time being, and at that time there was a big emigration wave 26, journeys, letters were coming - things not arranged, ordeals again. The people who left for Israel deserve admiration for all the things they went through but we felt so exhausted - from the camps, from all the ordeals we had survived - and the whole family decided not to leave. My two sisters, Stela and Beka, went there much later. Stela is still there, but Beka came back and now she is living with her daughter in Bulgaria.

I think about Israel with a lot of love and a lot of grief because there are a lot of incidents there, assassinations, other terrible things... And because of the fact that they continue although they have returned the Gaza Strip...We are deeply worried after each incident.

We left to visit our relatives in Israel during the period in which the relations between Bulgaria and Israel weren't very good 27. For us the official state policy wasn't a personal opinion. All the things that happened there made our hearts ache because it's true that my kin were here but my husband's brothers were there, the nephews, too, cousins - you can see how big our family is. We accepted all the incidents there with great pain.

It was very hard for us. I can't say that we overcame easily everything that happened after the change of the regime. Yes, I saw the mistakes that the Party and the state were making. Both my husband and I saw them well. We weren't blind. Regardless of all the plenums that were held all the decisions were formal, just on paper, nothing was put into practice. Nothing actually happened in reality. There was no food in the shops, there was no milk even. But there were good things before 10th November 28, too. Life was safer, there wasn't such a crime rate, but things weren't going well and we could see that. And there wasn't a single meeting without criticism, without us wanting the criticism to be included in the minutes. We sent out all the minutes but up to no effect.

My life changed after 1989. They put a limit to the size of our pensions, and that is normal, but, after all, one can live with a lot or with little. Thank God, we are not as poor as beggars, we have survived to the present day. I can't say what will happen in the future. My husband has been receiving some money for compensation for two years. [These are the compensations from Claims Conference given to all Jewish men from Bulgaria who had been in labor camps during World War II.] But why did he have to wait for so long - he worked in the labor camps for four years. There were cases when he got back home as thin as a skeleton, without clothes. The state didn't give them money and they worked dressed in their own clothes, with lice, sick, with malaria. Not to mention what condition we, the women, were in. We were interned, we suffered so much, we had to travel with so many bundles and all that without our husbands. And after so much suffering to be able to adapt to a normal way of living! We weren't compensated in any way. There is no justice.

Frankly speaking, we have been quite active in the Jewish Cultural Center [Bet Am] 29 for seven years. If there hadn't been the things done by the rehabilitation center, maybe we wouldn't have been among the living now because there are only the two of us at home - Larry and me. Our children don't live with us and they are very busy, they go to work. It has never been so quiet in this house before and we were simply looking for something to fight over, to quarrel about little things. We were rather irritable. Our big walk was to go to the market place and back. Well, we attended the synagogue, too, but only on holidays. It's great that this rehabilitation center was created and we started going there - not because of the food, we don't even eat there now, but because of the people we meet and spend time with.

In 'Zdrave' [Health] club we do exercises, sing in the choir, you saw the photos, didn't you? We dance traditional dances in the dance classes. There is more diversity in our lives now. [The interviewee is referring to all the activities and events of the Jewish organization in Sofia. There are similar activities in all the towns throughout the country where the life of the Jews is more organized and there are more Jews.] And no matter what the weather is - it may be freezing or boiling, we are always there.

Glossary

Anna Mrazkova
Prague
Czech Republic
Interviewer: Dagmar Greslova
Date of interview: December 2006

Anna Mrazkova is a nurse by occupation. She comes from Luze, near Vysoke Myto, an important center of the Jewish community, where her grandfather and father were presidents of the Jewish religious community. Thanks to this fact, she was raised in an Orthodox spirit, and her family observed all Jewish religious holidays. The family, however, also devoted itself to Czechoslovak activities, such as attending Sokol 1 - even now, Anna Mrazkova poignantly recalls the atmosphere of the last pre-war all-Sokol Slet [Rally] in Prague in 1938, and to this day has kept piously stored away the garland she as a teenager wore on her head during the exercises. Her adolescence was significantly marked by the proclamation of the Protectorate of Böhmen und Mähren 2; at first she was prevented from going to high school 3, and later the entire family was fundamentally affected by the anti-Jewish laws 4, when gradually almost their entire property was confiscated, they were denied access to public places, forbidden to associate with their friends, and ordered to wear a six- pointed star 5. In December 1942 deportation to Terezin 6 followed, where Anna worked as an assistant in a hospital. From there, in 1943, she was transported along with her parents and sister to Auschwitz-Brezinka. After the selection in Auschwitz, Anna was separated from her family, ended up in Block B VI, and worked in the so-called 'Weberei' [German for 'weaving mill']. Towards the end of the war she did forced labor, cleaning up the aftermath of air-raids on Hamburg, from where she was transported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp 7. There she experienced the liberation, and from there she returned home in July 1945, after finding out by chance that her mother and sister had survived the war. During the Holocaust, she lost 27 members of her family. After the war she worked at a research institute, and later helped out at the Jewish religious community in Prague. She married twice. She is childless due to the consequences the Holocaust had on her health. Talking to Anna Mrazkova was exceptionally pleasant - despite all the tribulations that fate has bestowed upon her, she is an utter optimist, a woman full of life, who always manages to look at life with detachment and with her characteristic ironic humor.

Family background">Family background

My grandfather on my father's side, Hynek Polak, was born in 1860 in Jicin. He graduated from business academy and devoted his entire life to business; he and Grandma owned a shop where they sold liquor. His son, Bedrich Polak, and his wife Greta also had a store in the same building in Jicin. His other son, my uncle Josef, had a daughter Hana, who died in the Holocaust, and Vera, who survived the war. We used to go to Jicin to visit my grandparents, but I don't remember it that much, I was still very small.

My grandparents were believers, but observed Jewish holidays more out of tradition, as some sort of folklore. They practiced, but we never really talked about it much. I do know that my father used to go to the synagogue, because it was necessary for ten adult men to meet, meaning men that had had their bar mitzvah, so that they could have a minyan for prayer.

My grandmother, Helena Polakova, née Alterova, died in 1934. Grandpa Hynek spent the whole war in Terezin, luckily he had cataracts, and so always when he was supposed to go into the transport, he went for an operation and thus avoided deportation. This was because the Germans didn't deport sick people eastward, because they were still claiming that there were work camps in the east, and it would thus have been suspicious if they would've been sending the disabled and ill to work. It seems that the Germans were counting on him dying of disease in Terezin, as he was 85! But Grandpa survived all his children, most of his grandchildren, and died long after the war, at the age of 96.

My father, Emil Polak, was born in 1895 in Jicin. He had two brothers, Bedrich and Josef, and a sister, Hedvika, who died as a sixteen-year-old girl. When as a child I asked how she'd died, they told me that she'd fallen out of a window, but under what circumstances, that I never found out.

My father and mother were cousins. Because my father's mother [Helena Alterova, née Polakova] and my mother's father [Max Alter] were siblings. As if that wasn't enough, my mother had the same name as her future mother- in-law - Helena Polakova, and both had the maiden name Alterova. So if I'm a little meshuga, it's my family's fault! In genetics class, one professor told us that unions like that are very dangerous, but if good qualities combine, a genius can actually be born! Could that be my case? But I've got to say that though they were cousins, they didn't know each other as children or youngsters. It was only when my father's brother Bedrich got married in Prosec, that they went to visit Luze, where my father saw my mother for the first time. And that was that!

My mother's parents were named Max Alter [1860 - 1930] and Kamila Alterova [1865 - 1938]. Grandpa Max loved me a lot. That nice relationship was mutual, I also loved him a lot, we used to go out hiking together and for walks in the forest, we'd pick mushrooms and blueberries. I got a lot of mileage out of my grandpa during my childhood, because my parents were very busy with the store, and so I spent a lot of time with Grandpa and Grandma. Grandpa Max died in 1930, and is buried at the Jewish cemetery in Luze. Grandma Kamila died in 1938, after Munich 8, when Hitler annexed the Sudetenland 9, but she didn't live to see Hitler occupy us. Grandma was the last person to be buried at the Jewish cemetery in Luze during the war.

I remember that when Grandpa died I was six, I probably missed going on the walks that I used to take with him, so once I went off on my own. I met some ladies, and they asked me where I was going, alone like that and far from home. I said that I was going for a walk. They took me with them and led me back home, where they told my parents that they'd run into me by the river, alone. My mother was terribly distraught, her head was full of the things that could have happened to me, that I could have gotten lost, or drowned in the river. She told Father that he had to teach me a lesson so that I'd remember that I'm not allowed anywhere by myself; at that time Father had to give me a whopping, but I think that it hurt the poor guy much more than it did me.

My mother, Helena Polakova [née Alterova] was born in 1901. My mother was one of five children, her siblings were named: Jiri, Karel, Bedrich and Marie. My mother's oldest brother, Jiri Alter, was an astronomer. When Hitler came to Czechoslovakia, Uncle Jiri got an offer to go work at an observatory in England. He took the offer, and left with his family for safety. In England Uncle Jiri's daughter, my cousin Erika, wanted to join the Czechoslovak army, but as they didn't take women she joined the English one. She learned perfect English, so even native Englishmen couldn't understand why it said in her passport that she was a Czechoslovak citizen, they couldn't believe that she wasn't a native Englishwoman. Jiri's son, my cousin Bedrich, left for Palestine. Uncle Jiri's youngest son, Arnost, was arrested for illegal activities back when the transports weren't on yet, he was the first of the family to perish, even before we were deported.

My mother's second brother, Karel Alter, was president of the Czech Council of Jewish Communities during the Protectorate, was a doctor of law and had two sons - Bedrich and Pavel. Another of my mother's brothers, Bedrich Alter, fell during World War I. My mother's sister, Marie, married Karel Kraus from Caslav, and they had two children together, Milena and Frantisek.

Growing up">Growing up

I was born on 6th June 1924 in Luze in the Vysoke Myto district. I've got a sister, Eva Liskova [née Polakova], who's five years younger than I am, born in 1929. Today my sister lives in Losina, out in the country near Pilsen, and belongs to the Pilsen Jewish religious community.

I attended Sokol from the age of three, my father used to attend it as well, and when my sister Eva was born, they also had her registered at about the age of three. I liked Sokol a lot, but later we stopped going there, so as not to endanger the rest of the Sokol members by associating with them. I exercised together with my father at the last pre-war all- Sokol Slet [Rally] at the Strahov Stadium in 1938. To this day, I've still got the garland that I had on my head back then! The last rally was very nice, I've got beautiful memories of it. The atmosphere was pleasant, and none of us back then wanted to admit that things would soon so drastically change for the worse, that Munich and the war would come.

I remember that Uncle Jiri used to know one piano virtuoso from Vienna, Steurmann, for whom he used to help arrange concerts in Prague. He had a daughter, Mausi Steurmannova, who played the piano beautifully. During one visit to our place they asked her to play, it was magnificent. I was supposed to play after her, but I hid in a corner, as I would've been embarrassed to play after her. My parents paid for piano lessons for me, but soon realized that I'd never be a virtuoso!

I attended public school in Luze, and then my parents decided that I had to go to high school, and because there wasn't one in Luze, they sent me to attend high school in Prague. I attended first and second year, so two years, of high school in Prague, and during that time lived with Uncle Jiri. I did third year of high school in Vysoke Myto, I then managed to make fourth year, but then Hitler arrived, and apparently was afraid that I was too smart, so forbade me from studying. But I have to admit that I was actually glad, because I didn't like studying too much. School was my number one enemy!

So then for a year I studied to be a seamstress, but then even that wasn't possible, I could only be there on the sly, the lady in charge became afraid that she could have problems if she kept me on as a student. So a friend of my father's who was a tailor took me on. However it then began to be dangerous for him too, he was afraid, so I left. So then I was at home, and sewed various bags, and then when the transports began I sewed various bedcovers, embroidered blankets, everything that could come in handy for us. But it was only for us or for friends, so for free, as I was no longer allowed to be employed anywhere.

My parents ran a prosperous business, a general store with fabrics as well as some groceries like coffee, but they didn't sell bread for example, because there were three bakers in the area. The store was right in our building, made a decent amount of money and was fairly prosperous; my mother and father worked in it. But when Hitler came, my father had to close the store, and the only work they allowed him to do as a Jew was shoveling snow and similar menial activities. Our neighbor, who had a bakery next door to us, told my father at the time: 'Mr. Polak, if what happened to you happened to me, if they took my store away, I'd probably hang myself!' and back then my father said to him: 'As long as I'm with my family, nothing else can affect me.'

In Luze our family had been living for generations in an old family home at 202 Jeronymova Street; alas today our house is no longer there. We had five rooms and two kitchens - one large and one smaller one. The street was named Jeronymova, but people used to call it Zidovna [from 'Zid' the Czech word for Jew], as earlier there had been a Jewish ghetto there. At the time I lived there, Luze was a relatively small town - there were only about 1360 people living there. But located in Luze was the center of the Jewish religious community for surrounding towns as well. All Jews from the area belonged to the Jewish religious community in Luze.

My grandpa, Max Alter, was the president of the Jewish religious community. After my grandpa's death some Mr. Cervinka was president, and after he died my father, Emil Polak, became president of the Community. My father became president when the war hadn't started yet, and remained so up until the transport, so all organization of handing over of property was done by my father.

First was the decree that Jews had to hand over animals. For me, as a young girl, that was terribly sad. I took it very hard, because I loved our animals very much, we had these clever and very good dogs. To me they were friends, I believe that animals have intelligence, and that they're capable of experiencing, when they feel something, they're able to express it. For example, when my mother was angry with me and wanted to punish me, all it took was for her to raise her hand at me, and those dogs would jump at her hand and thus show that they didn't want her to punish me. I loved our animals very much, and took it very hard when they were taking them away.

Religious life was, understandably, practiced in our family, if for no other reason, than because Grandpa, and later after him my father, were presidents of the Jewish religious community in Luze. I've got to say that it was tradition, that we lived in a religious fashion, but our family never went overboard with it.

We observed all the Jewish holidays, at least until Grandpa died. On Friday evening we'd light candles and pray, though I never understood the prayers at all, I had them memorized and always recited them exactly. But I wouldn't say that observance of holidays was done in some affected fashion, to me it's more this traditionalism than some sort of religiousness. During the Sabbath the men would leave for the synagogue, they dressed up in traditional clothing, carried prayer straps - tefillin, and Grandpa covered his head 10. During the Sabbath my mother and I baked barkhes. The table had to be set festively. We cooked various puddings, which later however, when poverty and the war came, we had to stop making, because they used up lots of eggs and butter.

My mother also baked excellent little cakes with blancmange. To make blancmange, my mother always mixed eggs and wine in a water bath, and mixed for so long until she'd whipped up an awfully good froth, which would then be poured over the cakes. While Grandma and Grandpa were still alive, we used to use kosher dishes 11.

My father had a sense of humor; I remember when the we were observing the Long Day [Yom Kippur], an all-day fast, they'd be praying in the synagogue, and as a joke my father says to the rabbi: 'Forget about all this here, come over to our place, we've got roast goose at home!' and the poor rabbi had to stay there and all day his mouth would water.

At our place the tradition of Jewish holidays was strictly observed. While my grandfather was alive, we observed only Jewish holidays, celebrating Christmas was out of the question! But I remember that once this peculiar thing happened in the family - when my cousin Franta Kraus was born in Caslav, as a baby he was seriously ill, he got an ugly case of pneumonia and was apathetic and breathing laboriously. Back then it occurred to my aunt that she had to think of something to break through my cousin's apathy, something to get his attention. She decorated a Christmas tree with lots of candles and lights - and it really worked, and the lights got my cousin's attention, so in the end he got well. Thanks to a Christmas tree he survived a serious case of pneumonia, but of course later the poor guy ended up in the gas because of Hitler anyways.

In Luze we normally associated not only with Jews, but everyone else, too. My best friend wasn't Jewish. We knew each other from nursery school, her father was a basket-maker. We got along very well, but then I left for high school in Prague, and she for Pardubice. We had a gentile servant, then later we just had a helper that used to come over, and during the war we understandably had no one. One servant was named Baruska, our dolls were named after her, she was very nice. Another was Andula, she was also awfully nice and loved us a lot. During the war, when we weren't allowed to associate with so-called Aryans, Andula used to do so proudly, so much that my mother was afraid for her, and told her that she shouldn't come over, for her own safety.

The Jewish community in Luze was quite large, as it was the center of Jewish life in the region. During the war the shammash's apartment was occupied by some person that cured rabbit hides, and he dried them right in the synagogue! This basically had one advantage, that during the war the synagogue wasn't dank and didn't go moldy, as because of the drying of rabbit skins it had to be ventilated a lot. After the war the Luze synagogue fell into disrepair. Today it belongs to the Prague Jewish community, and was renovated several years ago; it's no longer used for religious purposes, but concerts and exhibitions are held there.

During the synagogue's reconstruction they found some hidden baby shawls that had been hidden there for ritual purposes. The Jewish cemetery in Luze also fell into disrepair after the war, and was partially pillaged, as tombstones were very valuable. Our family's tombstone was also pushed over, but because it was very heavy the thieves didn't steal it. The cemetery was also renovated a few years ago.

During the war">During the war

Forty-one Jews left Luze for the transport. Before we left for the transport, my mother's sister, Marie Krausova [née Alterova] moved from Caslav with her husband and children to stay with us. This was because there were a lot of anti-Semites living in Caslav, life there was difficult for my aunt, and so my mother told her to return along with her family to her old family home. They lived with us for some time, it was nice for the family to be together, but soon my uncle received a summons from the Gestapo, and the transports began.

My aunt's family was sent to Lodz 12; my aunt died before we were even deported. The way we found out about it was that we got a correspondence card from my uncle. Of course nothing specific could have been written in it, they wouldn't have allowed my uncle to send it then. That's why my uncle used this secret code - in the space for the sender, together with his name [JuDr. Karel Kraus] by the address he wrote the year of my aunt's birth and the year of her death, and underlined the whole thing, so we realized that this was his way of secretly telling us that my aunt had died. After that we never had the opportunity to find out from anyone what had happened, but she had most likely died of some infectious disease, because many people in the ghettoes died of infections.

Uncle Karel died in Auschwitz. As I found out later, my cousin Milena Krausova could have saved herself. However, during the war some unpleasant aunt who Milena didn't like was constantly with her, and so she said to herself that she didn't care where she goes, the main thing would be for it not to be with this person. Alas, Milena went into the gas.

I remember realizing that the situation was bad when they annexed the Sudetenland. People who up to then had been closet Fascists suddenly showed their true colors, and that was quite a big shock for us. But I've also got to say that at home in Luze the situation was a little different, in that Jews, as a quite strong community, had lived there for generations, and there weren't any problems. We'd always associated with non-Jews as well, no one differentiated there.

For example, when Jews were ordered to turn in animals and other things, the Czech police chief, some Mr. Burian, came to notify us ahead of time. Mr. Burian came ahead of time and warned us that they had a confiscation order, so that we'd have time to hide valuables with friends where they'd be safe. Almost everything was being confiscated: valuables, jewels, gold, furs, dishes, carpets, cars, bicycles, radios, dogs, cats, household animals.

So thanks to the warning, we were for example able to hide our furs with friends, and turned in these horrible old ratty moth-eaten furs - when you touched them, clouds of vermin would rise from them. Or we for example turned in our bicycles, but this policeman, Burian, came after the war and brought our bicycles back. He was an awfully decent and honorable man.

What's ironical is that they somehow forgot to confiscate our car. Because we had a four-seater Praga-Picollo convertible. It was a very beautiful car, a light coffee color with black fenders. Riding around in a car like that as a little girl was a huge experience for me! The roof was taken down for the summer, for the winter it was put back up, the windows were of mica, so you couldn't see much through them, we could see only forward. When my father used to go on vacation to Slovakia with friends, he always took our Pragovka. To make up for the fact that we'd stayed at home, our father would send us one or even two postcards a day from various towns in Slovakia!

For some reason the Germans forgot to confiscate our car, and as we later found out, our car was taken by partisans during the war. After the war someone advised my mother that she should ask for compensation, but she refused, with the words that if our Pragovka served a good cause, for partisans, there's no way she'd ask for any compensation. What's more, she herself didn't know how to drive, my father was no longer alive, and we were moving to Prague. To this day I still occasionally run into similar Praga Picollo cars on the streets of Prague, now they drive tourists around in them on sightseeing tours, and I always say: 'Hello Picollino!'

When they forbade my parents to run their store any longer, my mother told their former customers to come, that we'd sell them various things. People were thrilled, because already at that time things were bad, and lots of things weren't available. We for example had a little coffee roaster that had belonged to Grandpa, and in the store there was a bale of green coffee beans left. We were roasting the coffee, and suddenly my mother realized that you could smell it everywhere, as coffee has a beautiful and penetrating aroma.

Another time, we'd bought a half a pig from some friends, someone brought it to us through the back door, as right across from our house, they'd moved the head of the NSDAP [Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, National Socialist German Workers' Party or Nazi party] into a house that had belonged to some Jews. This head of the NSDAP, a German, had been a non-commissioned officer in Vysoke Myto during the First Republic, and had a wife who was a former 'Bordelmutter' [Madam of a bordello]. But she was kind-hearted, actually she was a very decent woman, because she had no problems talking to us from her window across the way. Even though everyone was already forbidden from talking to us. And so it happened that when we were baking the pig, and she must have smelled the aroma, she leaned out of her window and asked if someone had brought us meat. I told her that after all, everyone wants to eat. She didn't inform on us, although she must have often seen that we were doing something forbidden.

I remember that we got a large yellow sheet, from which we had to cut out and trim six-pointed stars, and we had to sew them onto our clothes, there where your heart is. I've got my star hidden away to this day, it's this reminder of wartime. I didn't feel that wearing the star was something I should be ashamed of. We were Jews, everyone knew that, so I didn't perceive it as an insult. Once my cousin Milena Krausova received a summons, and was walking along the street in Prague with a star on her lapel, and two young workers she didn't know came up to her, each of them took her by one arm, and proudly walked along with her. It was this nice gesture, they showed demonstratively that although no one was allowed to talk to her, they were proudly walking around with her. Because my cousin was also a very pretty girl!

My sister, mother, father, Grandpa Hynek Polak and I all went into the transport together. We got a summons, packed our rucksacks with the allowed 20 kilos. We took practical things - some dishes, a pan, mess tins, I think a cooker, too. It made no difference, because they confiscated a bunch of things, and also stole all sorts of things along the way.

I must admit that I took it all fairly optimistically, I was even looking forward to Terezin, because there were no young people in Luze, and I was hoping that I'd meet someone there I could talk to. So, on 2nd December 1942 we got on some trucks, and they drove us to Pardubice. Just from Luze there were 41 of us, they took us there together with the rest of the Jews in the Pardubice district. There, we slept a couple of nights just like that on the bare wood floor of the Pardubice Sokol Hall.

Around the 5th or 6th of December, we got on the transport to Terezin. We went by train, it wasn't in cattle wagons, but a normal passenger train. The whole time in the train, I had this tendency to keep by my family. I met some young people there, and they told me to come sit with them, but I didn't want to leave my parents. So much so that my father had to tell me that everything was fine, that I should go ahead and go chat with them. The Deutsch brothers from Policka were there, these nice guys, there were about five of them. The entire way, we told jokes and stories, it was great fun - we laughed all the way from Pardubice to Terezin.

Back then there wasn't a spur line to Terezin yet, so we walked from Bohusovice to Terezin with our rucksacks on our backs. It was cold, our bags were so heavy, we were wearing two coats, we looked like we were pregnant...

In Terezin they were registering us, we were standing in line, and they asked Jirka Deutsch and me if we were husband and wife. So I said: 'Jesus Christ, no!' - 'So you're engaged?' - to this Jirka answered 'Yes,' so I had to say 'He's full of it,' and he was terribly insulted, that I hadn't said that we were together. If I would've said that we were engaged, they would have given us a place to live together, and who knows how I would've ended up, because the Deutsches went right on the next transport to the East, in January. I would probably have died along with them. Back then, everything was a question of coincidences like that!

We didn't know much about life in Terezin, it was more of a hunch. For example, we knew that we'd be living separately - men and women and children separately. But we didn't have much information, as it was forbidden to write and associate with other people in the region. The first prisoners, the men from the AK1 transport, who'd been summoned to prepare the ghetto for the future camp, weren't allowed to write anything home. Some of them broke the prohibition and managed to smuggle out information. They were sentenced to death for it, and what's more in such a fashion that they had to shoot each other, so that the Germans didn't dirty their hands. Later, Fischer the executioner took care of executions in Terezin. He was a person who was a former executioner, and applied for this job in Terezin on his own accord.

My father lived separately, with the men. My mother, my sister Eva, my cousin Vera, her sister and mother and I lived in this smaller room. We were six relatives living together, we were extremely lucky that Vera's husband was from the AK [short for 'Arbeitskolonne' - 'Work Column'], so he arranged this room for us. The room was relatively puny, on top of our suitcases we laid the straw mattresses that we slept on at night, and during the day we shoved them against the wall.

The room was full of bedbugs, it was terribly unpleasant. One night my cousin and I could no longer bear it, and took our mattresses outside, where we laid them down on these small stools. We thought that we'd sleep better outside, and that the bedbugs wouldn't torment us. We didn't improve our lot very much, however, because someone poured a bedpan out the window above us right onto where we were sleeping... As I say, there was no shortage of excitement in Terezin!

My cousin Vera survived the war, but her husband died during a death march. After the war Vera remarried and had three children - Jana, Hanka and Petr. Jan Munk, her oldest son, is the director of the Terezin Memorial.

In Terezin I worked at the outpatient clinic, I worked as a sort of auxiliary nurse, although at that time I hadn't yet taken nursing. I helped wherever it was needed, I sterilized equipment and so on. The head physician at the clinic was Dr. Leichstag, who was a Hungarian who'd studied medicine in Czechoslovakia, got married here, and before had been a doctor right in Terezin. So he went from Terezin to Terezin! Doctor König, with whom I later worked in Prague, also worked there. The nurses at the clinic were always changing, because they were leaving for the transports. That's why they gave a quick nursing course there, which I registered for.

One day a nurse came to the clinic to apply, and during the interview we found out that before the war she'd worked in a ward where my uncle Karel Alter had been a doctor. This nurse ran off, told me to close my eyes and open my mouth, and placed a chocolate-covered date in my mouth. A chocolate- covered date was an immense rarity in Terezin! I asked her what I had done to deserve such a gift. She said because I was a relative of Dr. Alter's.

Cultural life in Terezin was of a very high standard, concerts took place, plays were put on. I remember the plays of Karel Svenk, 'At zije zivot!' [Long Live Life!], another was named 'Posledni cyklista' [The Last Cyclist], that one played in Prague after the war as well. The play of course had a political subtext, but that's not why it was popular, the play was mainly really very well written.

As a young girl I was hungry for culture, I attended all the various cultural events I could. For example, the conductor Karel Ancerl rehearsed 'Eine kleine Nachtmusik' in the ghetto. [Editor's note: Serenade No. 13 for strings in G major, K 525, more commonly known as 'Eine kleine Nachtmusik' ('A little night music'), one of the most famous compositions by Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791).] The pianist Alice Hertzova also played in Terezin. Those were beautiful experiences! However, when a transport left, lots of these people left and the concerts and plays had to be rehearsed anew, with different members. I remember 'The Bartered Bride' put on as a concert, where a children's choir sang beautifully, back then that touched me greatly.

You had to get tickets to the concert, I never had one, so I used to go listen from behind the doors, and whenever the custodian by the doors wasn't watching, I'd secretly sneak inside. Everyone thought it was very funny. My boss noticed me too, and was a bit astonished that such a young girl, I was 18 at the time, was interested in classical music.

Then when I got the summons for the transport to Auschwitz, my boss offered to get me an exception. But I said that even if he managed to get me an exception, my family would have to leave anyways, and I didn't want to remain alone in Terezin, knowing that my family was far away in the East. When I went to the clinic to say goodbye before departure, Dr. König and the playwright Karel Senk were lying there as patients. I told them: 'Guys, you be good here, I'm being promoted,' I remember that Svenk's eyes were full of tears, he probably suspected what was waiting for me, and probably said to himself it was a shame, such a young girl. In the end I survived the war, while Karel Svenk died in Auschwitz in 1944.

We boarded the transport to Auschwitz-Brezinka on 18th or 19th December 1943. We went in cattle cars, we didn't know where they were actually taking us. Suddenly we saw the sign 'Auschwitz,' we froze a bit, but the train kept going, so we were still living with the hope that they'd take us elsewhere. We had no idea that the camp was so big. We stopped in Birkenau, which was of course part of the camp. Then everything went lickety-split - the men here, mothers with children here, old people here. My mother and I ended up amongst the women, because though my mother was already 40, she looked very good for her age.

Right upon arrival they tattooed us, which hurt, they were tattooing with a needle, point after point, absolutely amateurishly, crooked and ugly. We were terribly tired from lack of sleep and hungry, they led us into some buildings where it was terribly cold, and instead of a floor there was only packed dirt, on which we slept.

I got into a building together with my future friend Ruth Blochova and her brother, whom I met the first day in Auschwitz. The two of them had been working in the children's kitchen in Terezin, so they'd been relatively well off. Their mother had gone on the previous transport to Auschwitz, and they'd been afraid for her and wanted to be together with her, so they got onto our transport on the sly, in the hopes that they'd meet up with their mother. But in Auschwitz they soon found out that their mother had ended up in the gas. The boy was a born organizer, so he came up with the idea that at night we'd lie down in this circle, always one head on another's legs, who had someone else sleeping on his legs, so we at least warmed ourselves up a bit, and could get some sleep.

Right after we arrived, they took our things and our clothes. We were issued clothes made of burlap that hung off us, darned socks, and wooden shoes carved from one piece of wood, so you couldn't bend your feet properly in them. Sewn on the clothes were two triangles of various colors, forming a six-pointed star. Various groups had differently colored triangles, murderers for example had green, political prisoners red, homosexuals purple, I think. Then we got coats from people that had gone into the gas. But so that we wouldn't have normal clothing, we had to exchange various parts of clothing amongst ourselves.

I got a light gray coat, and along with it the sleeves of my girlfriend's green coat - this was so that if we by chance succeeded in escaping, we'd be conspicuous at first sight. As my friend Lala had the same red hair as I did, and we had basically the same coats - I a gray one with green sleeves, and she a green one with gray sleeves - they would mistake us for each other. Back then that was a great compliment for me, because Lala was an awfully pretty girl, so I was glad that they were mistaking me for such a beauty!

Soon came another selection, where the men had to go separately, the women separately, the children separately. From that moment on, we were completely separated as a family, because Eva went among the children, my mother among the women, my father among the men, and they ordered me to go to Block B VI. They were selecting young girls, and my father was terribly afraid of what they were going to do with me there. I was calming him down, and saying that I was lucky that I was a Jew, that because of that no Nazi would dare do anything with me, because he'd be afraid of 'Rassenschande,' so-called 'racial defilement.'

For Block B VI they wanted young and more or less good-looking girls, no emaciated ones, due to the fact that in Block B VI, jazz was played for the entertainment of the SS. For us it was like a miracle, because in the Protectorate of Böhmen und Mähren, jazz wasn't allowed to be played, due to its being American music. In Auschwitz they didn't care that it was actually black music, they somehow forgot about that, or perhaps they didn't even know it! In any case, a band played there to entertain the SS soldiers, and we were allowed to be there, so that when Nazi visitors came to have a look at us, it looked like we were content and not lacking anything.

Our daily food ration was a quarter brick of bread, melta [a coffee substitute] without milk or sugar, and at noon something they called soup. Often not even that though, because those that portioned the bread often managed to steal some, so our rations were shortened. The conditions were especially horrific during the winter. On one side of the camp were latrines. On the other side was a building where we had the only washing facilities, which were two troughs in the middle of which were taps with cold water. We were issued one dirty, small and smelly bar of soap, which was supposed to last us for the entire time in the concentration camp.

When you wanted to wash your clothes, it was only in cold water, there was of course no other kind, and as everyone had only what they were wearing - nothing spare existed - you had to put on wet clothing that then dried on you. In the winter that was especially unpleasant!

Each morning was a roll-call, then another two or three during the day, I don't remember exactly anymore. Lots of times we had to stand for even several hours before they came to count us. Once during a roll-call, when we'd been standing a long time, I fainted. They dragged me off a ways and were trying to revive me. I remember that I was already coming to a bit, and I heard a girl standing above me saying: 'Uh oh, she's not going to see another day!' As I was coming to my senses and heard her words, I was suddenly filled with this amazing strength, and to myself I said: 'You know what, you stupid goose, I will, too!'

Surviving the concentration camp was among other things also a question of willpower and attitude towards life. I was always an optimist, I felt in myself strength and resolution to survive it all. I do though remember one girl who was terribly pessimistic. She was constantly repeating that we were all going into the gas, she wasn't capable of thinking of anything else, and saw everything from the worst perspective. She survived, but after she returned home, she remained a pessimist. She soon died, and I think that her pessimism and negativism was to a large degree at fault. Such a useless death.

We lived in wooden barracks, in the middle of which was a so-called chimney. They heated in the winter, but one can't talk about any sort of warmth, because you could easily lay your hand on the stove, it was completely lukewarm. Both sides of the barracks had three-story bunks - lower, middle and upper. Lying diagonally above me was one girl that was pregnant, her stomach was already large, she was in an advanced stage of pregnancy. I still remember her when we were leaving for Hamburg, we girls hid her stomach so that no one would notice she was pregnant. She was still with us during the clean-up work in Hamburg, but then they sent her away somewhere, and I didn't know anything about her after that.

Post-war">Post-war

After the war I found out that she'd survived and written a book. In her memoirs she writes that she survived, but for the price of having to strangle her own child. She was forced to, they gave her a choice - either they'd kill her along with the child, or she'd survive, but would have to kill her own child... Even terrible things such as these happened during the war. A person that didn't live through it can never comprehend what a concentration camp was. Years later I met her, luckily she'd managed to start anew after the war, she moved to Israel. She's got children and grandchildren, and looks great. She published a book, her autobiography.

In Brezinka I worked in the so-called 'Weberei,' a weaving mill, where we wove belt substitutes. There was a leather shortage, so we were weaving belt substitutes from plastic string, which then soldiers had attached to their machine guns. Or other times they forced us to carry rocks from one place to another, just like that, for no purpose. They were thinking up absolutely senseless work, so that they could harass us. We had to do it, but on the other hand we didn't mind so much, because we at least had something to do. Being in Brezinka and doing nothing would perhaps have been even more depressing.

In Auschwitz we met the September transport that had gone from Terezin before us. On the birthday of President Masaryk 13, 7th March 1944, the entire September transport went into the gas, which was a bad omen for us. We did the math, that the next time it would be our turn, that likely in June we'd go into the gas. However, one day they herded me and some other women prisoners, amongst whom there were, however, no members of my family, onto a train. We had no idea what they were planning to do with us. We rode along for a relatively long time, and the entire way were thinking about where and why they were transporting us. Until we arrived in Hamburg, which was horribly bombed-out, and there we found out we'd be doing clean-up work.

After an air-raid we'd always clean up the rubble and then moved somewhere else where a bomb had fallen, and that's how it went time and again. We lived in various barracks and similar buildings.

After the war we were contacted by a man who lived in Hamburg, and in one of the locations where we'd lived in Hamburg, he had a memorial plaque installed; every year on the anniversary of the liberation he went to Israel and visited Czech Jewish women that had survived the Holocaust.

The conditions in Hamburg were hard, many of us died there. We lived through many air raids, which were mainly at night, sometimes even twice or thrice. However, they weren't normal air raids, but so-called phosphorus ones, which was horrible filth, because when phosphorus fell on asphalt roads, people got fried. It may have been horrible, but it was reciprocity. The Germans also did filthy things!

Our work was to then clean up the debris, they'd take us there, as they didn't worry themselves over us dying there during an air raid. They couldn't afford to risk the lives of Aryans, because there were unexploded bombs lying around everywhere, but our lives were, of course, of no interest to them. I've got to admit that we were praying for there to be still more and more of those air raids, 'Dear God, more heavily and bigger drops!' Of course, we wanted them to miss us, but for there to be as many of them, and for the war to finally be over. In Hamburg, as we'd been selected for hard work, on top of our ration, which in Brezinka had been one piece of bread a day and black melta without milk, we also got somewhat thicker soup, so that we could withstand the physical stress.

From Hamburg they transported us for a time to Bergen-Belsen. Compared to Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz, even with all its gas chambers, was still paradise! Bergen-Belsen was the worst concentration camp, hell on earth, the conditions there were truly catastrophic. We slept on a packed dirt floor, it was incredibly cold, we laid packed one against the other. We warmed each other, until we'd suddenly realize that the person beside you is no longer warming you, because they're dead. At night you couldn't even turn around, as we were lying right on top of each other. When you wanted to go to the toilet, you had to step on the others. There were no latrines there, and there was dirt and excrement everywhere. The conditions were unspeakable! From that filth and overall deficiency, we got typhus. All of us fell ill, without exception, and if there was one, it confirmed the rule.

This was the miserable state we were in when the English liberated us on 15th April 1945. I remember that I saw my first Englishman, and then I don't remember anything more, because I had typhus and for a long time was out of it. I was bedridden for a long time, and quite a long period has been erased from my mind. I got into a hospital, and thanks to that I was able to survive. Lying there with me was Ruth Bloch, who I'd made friends with right the first day in Terezin.

Ruthie stuck to me like glue the whole war, she went everywhere with me, because she was a pessimist, and I was on the contrary an incorrigible optimist. She even stood beside me during the selection in Auschwitz, and was nodding towards me, that she had to come with me. I was afraid, I told her that I didn't want to draw attention to myself in any way, that it was enough that I had red hair, which already made me quite conspicuous. Despite that, during the selection Ruthie ran over to me, she would perhaps rather let herself be shot than leave me. And so in Bergen-Belsen she didn't leave me in the hospital either, and laid beside me.

Later she told me that when I was out of it, I'd been looking for something under my pillow. She asked me what I was looking for, and I answered her: 'Lemon juice. My Mom brought it for me.' You see, typhus affects the brain as well. I was hallucinating and looking under my pillow for lemon juice from my mother! I, of course, didn't know anything about my mother, I was just babbling, I was completely out of it. Ruthie was then telling me about it, and said: 'Yeah, well, that's you all right.' Ruthie survived the war, and after the war she got married to a man in Israel.

When I felt a bit better, I would go outside to look around, there was a Czechoslovak committee there, where they were making lists of who'd survived, who'd died, who was looking for whom. These notices hung behind a window. Once I went there, and noticed that there was a letter there, and by the sender you could still see a stamp saying 'Vysoke Myto' and the addressee 'Mrs. Eva Schwarzova.' I looked for and found Eva Schwarzova. I told myself that I must know the person that sent her that letter. The letter to Eva was from Eva Koudelova, her brother's fiancée, and among other things, the letter said that a bus from Luze had arrived in the Vysoke Myto town square, and out of it had stepped Mr. Schwarz, Eva's husband, and Mrs. Polakova with little Eva. So that's how I found out that my mother and sister were alive, and that they were home.

They didn't know about me, they'd even read somewhere that I was dead. I also had no idea what had happened with my family. I was overjoyed when I found out that I at least knew for sure about Mother and Eva, that they'd survived. As I later found out from them, they both went from Auschwitz- Brezinka on a death march 14, it was during the winter, they were walking barefoot, and slept in barns. They managed to escape from the death march, and while on the run ran into the Red Army, which was advancing from Slovakia. My mother worked for the Russians as a cook, and got to Bohemia with the army. My father died on a death march from the Auschwitz-Brezinka concentration camp sometime in January 1945. We never found out the exact details of his last moments, I'm assuming that he was already weak, and couldn't handle the journey in those terrible conditions.

If back then in Bergen-Belsen I wouldn't have learned that someone from my family had survived, I would have probably gone to Sweden, which was offering those concentration camp prisoners who didn't have anyone good conditions for starting a new life. If I wouldn't have found out that my mother and sister had survived the war, I really would have gone to Sweden, because I was afraid to return home, where there was no one. I was afraid that it would be a terrible shock, and I didn't know if I could have handled returning alone. But in the situation where I knew that I had something to return to, I couldn't wait to see my family again.

It wasn't easy to get to Czechoslovakia, the train tracks had been bombed, but somehow I finally got to Prague by train. The irony of fate is that I still didn't have anything proper to wear - I'd thrown out my lice-ridden clothes, and in Bergen-Belsen I'd found some SS tunic, which I put on. The whole way home in the train, I was saying to myself: 'Dear God, just don't let anyone think that I'm from the SS!' Life is full of paradoxes!

I arrived in Vysoke Myto around 15th July 1945 I think, and as it was Sunday, there was no longer a connection to Luze. Eva Koudelova's family offered that I could sleep over at their place in Vysoke Myto, and then go to Luze on Monday. To welcome and treat me, her family made roast pork with dumplings and sauerkraut and a roast goose. I didn't want to insult them by not eating it, and so I ate all that food after that long period of starvation. But I couldn't wait till the next day to see my mother and sister, so I decided to go home on foot. It was about sixteen kilometers from Vysoke Myto to Luze. Eva offered to accompany me, and because it was far, we decided to go on a bicycle.

However, along the way I began to feel terrible, my organism had gotten unused to food after that terrible hunger and illnesses, and I got horrible digestive problems. I was feeling really horrible, so I told Eva that she should go back home, that I'd manage somehow, and would rather go the rest of the way on my own. So Eva left me the bike, so that I could lean against it on the way, because I probably wouldn't have managed to make it there without some support.

Finally, even with those problems I arrived in Luze towards evening, I was walking along the street, leaning against the bike, and suddenly a group of young girls came walking by me. Suddenly one of the girls said: 'Hey, Eva, that's your sister!' My sister Eva stared and didn't even dare believe it, she was afraid that it didn't have to be the truth. We walked home together, and my mother almost fainted. They no longer believed that I was alive, they had even already read somewhere that I was dead. So that's what our reunion was like!

My mother and sister and I lived in Luze for some time longer, and everyone from the vicinity was sending us fresh cow's milk from the sheer joy of our being alive. So it happened that I got foot-and-mouth disease from that milk! On the other hand, maybe it was lucky for me, as because of the foot- and-mouth disease I couldn't eat anything, so what happened to many people after starving - that they overate and their stomach burst and they died - didn't happen to me. As it was, I couldn't eat anything at all, everything hurt, even swallowing saliva was extremely painful.

My mother had brought home with her several girls who'd managed to escape from the concentration camp. These girls had lost their families, and had no one. At the end of the war they were barely sixteen, so it's actually a miracle that they survived the war, as in most cases children were sent straight into the gas. One girl was named Rezka, she later went to Israel. Another girl was named Gita. On the way home my mother had been taking care of one more girl, but one Jewish doctor, a general of the Red Army, upon finding out what had happened to her, took her home with him to the Soviet Union, where this girl married his son.

After the war, my mother had an 'In Memoriam' plaque installed at the Jewish cemetery in Luze, for my father and the rest of our relatives who had perished during the war. My mother decided that we'd move to Prague, as our house in Luze was dilapidated, and there was nothing to keep us there. We still didn't know what had happened to Dad, and were hoping he'd survived. But we said to ourselves that Luze is a small town, so if he returned, the neighbors would tell him where to look for us. My sister had to finish public school, and I had only four years of high school, and my mother thought it would be best for us to finish school in Prague. So we moved to Prague, to my cousin Vera's, who'd gotten an apartment after her first husband.

The first year after the war, I worked in Prague in a Jewish old-age home as a night nurse. I attended typing and shorthand courses, but I didn't like it too much, I told myself that that wasn't anything for me. I decided to become a nurse, and took a two-year course at a nursing school in Jecna Street. Later, while working, I took an extension in that two-year specialization, and after taking night courses got my diploma. I worked at the Research Institute in the clinical department in nutritional research, later I transferred to the experimental department, where we did experiments on animals.

I was supposed to retire at 52, but I continued working part-time for another two years. Right when I was retiring, the Jewish religious community was looking for someone to help out, so in 1978 I went as a retiree to do some office work and help out at the Jewish religious community in Prague.

Right after the war I joined the Communist Party 15, my reason was that the Communists had fought against Hitler. However, when the trials 16 started, I saw the light. It was quite a major shock for me. I went to see the party chairman, who was by coincidence a doctor, also a Jew, and told him that I could no longer be in the Party, if he didn't see it that way [too]. Then at one meeting someone proclaimed that Jews are evil, and that they didn't deserve anything else anyways, and it was then that I decided that that was the last drop. I wrote a letter that I was leaving the Party, and also took the luxury of saying why. It bothered me how they were behaving towards Jews, and what they were saying about them.

The leadership sent this young guy to come see me, to find out why I had left, and he tried to change my decision. I didn't feel like talking to him at all. He came to see me at work at the research institute, and I told him that it was a dangerous environment for him, isotopes, radiation everywhere, that he'd better leave. He apparently thought that if I could be there, that nothing would happen to him either, and wouldn't let himself be brushed off. He says to me, whether I didn't think it was a shame to leave the Party after so many years, whether I wouldn't still change my mind. I stood fast, and again gave him the same reasons, that the officials' anti-Semitic statements were insulting to me. That young guy says: 'And you're going to leave the Party over a trifle like that?' I lost my patience, and forcefully told him that if he feels it's a trifle, then I certainly do not. Twenty-seven of my relatives had perished in the concentration camps, I'm Jewish, I never denied it, it's neither something virtuous nor shameful, and I'll always stand by it. There was nothing he could say to that, he didn't have any arguments against it, and he left.

I wasn't worried about problems at work, the most they could have done was transfer me to some village hospital, but that wouldn't even have mattered to me. There was a shortage of nurses, and they themselves would have had a big scandal if they would have persecuted me, a nurse. After all, I hadn't done anything bad. At work they understood my decision, as there were reasonable people working in health care, I think that they though the same, just didn't have the courage to say it out loud. I think that they understood me, and didn't have any problems with it, because they knew me and knew what I thought.

I met my first husband, Karel Capek, at the faculty hospital in internal medicine. At the time I was working at a clinic, and he was there as a medic, doing a thesis in rehabilitation. Back then they wanted to transfer me to the countryside, to be a head nurse somewhere far outside of Prague. But I didn't want to be a head nurse, because that work is more about arguing with employees and cleaning ladies. While I'd gone to study nursing mainly because I wanted to work with the ill. Alas, back then they told me that because I was single, they weren't going to discuss it with me at all, and would simply transfer me to the country. I was complaining about it to the medics, and at that time Karel said: 'All right, I'll marry you!' We were married in 1950, but as I say, just the circumstances of the wedding were a sign that the marriage wouldn't last long. After a year we were divorced. My second husband, Karel Mrazek, was an academic painter.

The first years after the war, I didn't have the desire to tell anyone about what I'd lived through. Shortly after the war, one doctor from Luze who'd moved away to America approached me, whether I wouldn't write down my reminiscences for him. He was interested in my history, what I'd gone through in the concentration camps. But back then I had to refuse, I apologized to him, that it wasn't the right time yet. I needed to forget those horrors, not bring them to life.

I've also never gone to Auschwitz to have a look, I was afraid of that, today I probably don't have to be afraid anymore, but visiting Auschwitz doesn't entice me in the least. On the other hand, we girls who'd been in the camp together used to meet regularly in Prague. I remember that the son of one of them was terribly surprised at how it was possible that we always laugh so much together, that he'd never heard so much guffawing as when we meet and recall the concentration camp. But we used to have fun like this in the camp, too! To this day, I attend various memorial events, and my friends and I always have a laugh.

When I realize that at our age we're all so optimistic and full of humor, I have the feeling that that Hitler fellow conserved us, whether he didn't on the one hand benefit us in the end. Sometimes I say to myself, that I've lived through so many illnesses, a heart attack, two cancer operations, a war, that maybe I'll never die, illnesses are afraid of people like that! I'm lucky to be an optimist.

Glossary">Glossary

Lea Beraha
Sofia
Bulgaria
Interviewer: Maiya Nikolova
Date of interview: August 2002

Mrs. Lea Beraha lives in an apartment of an apartment block situated in a nice quarter of Sofia. Her home is very well kept, clean and tidy. Mrs. Beraha is an extremely energetic person and very active both physically and mentally. She shows  natural inclination for dominating the conversation, as well as for a concrete statement of her ideas. In spite of her age, she continues to keep her body and mind fit. She is full of life, well informed and interested in everything happening around her.

Family background
Growing up
During the war
Post-war
Glossary

Family background

My ancestors, both on my mother's and my father's side, are Sephardi Jews. After the persecutions of the Jews in Spain, they spread all over Europe [see Expulsion of the Jews from Spain] 1. I didn't know my grandparents as they died early. I only have vague memories of my paternal grandfather, Betzalel Delareya, and of my maternal one, Benjamin Mamon. I don't remember anything specific about their looks or their surroundings.

My father, Yako Delareya, born in 1885, was orphaned very young. My grandfather's second wife, Rashel Delareya, chased away all his children from his first marriage. She gave birth to three kids. My father told us that he used to clean the ships in Ruse for which he got a salary. One of his brothers was a peddler and the other one was a cutter-tailor in an underwear studio. One of his sisters was a worker and the other one a seller. I don't remember anything particular about them. They all left for Israel. We had hardly any contact with them. Now they are all gone. My father's kin is from Lom and Vidin, whereas my mother's is from Sofia.

I don't remember anything about my maternal grandparents. My mother, Rebecca Delareya, nee Mamon, was born in 1904. She had four sisters and four brothers. They all took care of each other. One of my mother's brothers owned a café and the other one was a clothes' seller. I only remember that one of them was called Solomon, but I don't know which one. Her sisters were housewives. They spoke mostly Ladino and Bulgarian. My mother's kin had a house on Slivnitsa Blvd. My mother's eldest brother inherited the property from his father and compensated his siblings financially.

Unfortunately I don't know how my father and my mother actually met. After the events of 1923 2, in which my father took part, he returned to Lom - I don't know where from - with my mother, whom he was already married to. They settled in the village of Vodniantsi. With his little savings my father bought a small shop - a grocery-haberdashery. My mother told me that they were quite well off at that time. Because of his active participation in the events of 1923, my father was arrested. Then some villagers robbed both the household and the grocery. All that my mother could save was an apron, which I inherited after she and my sister, Eliza Eshkenazi, nee Delareya, moved to Israel. This apron became a real treasure for our family.

When my father was arrested, my mother was eight months pregnant and my brother, Betzalel Delareya, born in 1921, was two years old. My father was sent from Vodniantsi to Lom, Belogradchik and Mihailovgrad. There the prisoners were forced to dig their own graves. The witnesses said that after the execution the grave 'boiled' like a dunghill piled up with half- dead bodies. Luckily my father was late for the execution. Some of the Vodniantsi villagers helped my mother with some food and alcohol. My mother took my brother and accompanied her husband, shackled in chains, and the two horsemen convoying him. They stopped quite often on the road using my mother's pregnancy as an excuse, though, actually, while having a rest, the two guards ate the food and drank the alcohol. Thus my mother helped them to be delayed and instead of arriving in Mihailovgrad in the evening - the grave was dug the whole night and the prisoners were shot and buried in the morning - they only arrived around 11am the next morning.

The policemen swore at my father and sent him to Vidin to put him on trial there. I have no idea how many years he was given but because of different amnesties he was released after two years from Baba Vida Fortress 3. When my mother went to visit him there, she passed my brother over the fence. The other prisoners held him and took from his clothes letters especially hidden there for them. At that time, while my father was in prison, my mother had a stillborn child. Then she began working as a servant cleaning other people's houses. She survived thanks to food charity and the little money she was given for the housework. Thus she was able to provide for my brother and bring food to my father in prison.

When my father was freed, the family first tried to stay at my grandfather's, as he had some kind of property and could shelter them, but my father's stepmother chased them away. Then they came to Sofia and settled on the grounds of the Arat tobacco factory. My father started working there as a courier, while my mother worked as a cleaner. By destiny's whim I later worked as a doctor in the very same tobacco factory for 14-15 years. While my mother was pregnant with me, she once fell down when carrying buckets full of coals. Therefore I was born with a trauma, moreover we both had a scar on the hip.

Growing up

Before the internment we used to live in Odrin Street where we had two rooms with a small kitchen. The conditions were still extremely miserable. Because of the constant arrests my father's status got worse and worse, and therefore every house we used to rent was poorer than the previous one. I have lived in places full of sweat and mould. We never had our own property. My father's income was very insufficient and every time we had to change our lodging to a poorer one at a lower rent. All these living estates were in the third region - the Jewish quarter in Slivnitsa Blvd., Odrin Street, Tri ushi Street, Morava Street. [What is called the third region today was the poorest quarter in Sofia when Lea was a child.]

My mother's family was more bound up with Jewish traditions than my father's. My mother and her elder brother valued the traditions very much. They were religious. My mother wasn't a fanatic, yet we observed Rosh Hashanah, Pesach and other holidays and traditions. When we had to keep the fast [on Yom Kippur], my mother did it for real, while my father only pretended to. We accompanied my mother to the synagogue and then my father brought us back telling us, 'Let's eat cakes now before your mother returns.' At that time we used to sell ice cream, which was prepared with egg-whites. My mother used to make the cakes from the yolks.

It was a tradition for the Mamons, my mother's family, to gather every Saturday evening at their eldest brother's place. There were only two rooms. Every Saturday evening they used to take the beds out, arranged the tables next to each other and gathered the whole kin. My uncle, as far as I remember that was Solomon, was the wealthiest of them. He was good-hearted and generous, though his wife controlled and restricted him. Once on Fruitas 4 he lied to his wife saying that he had had a dream in which God told him to give everyone 20 leva. So he lined us, the children, up in a queue. Each family had two to three children, so we were around 25 kids. We opened our bags and he gave each of us fruits and a 20 leva silver coin. It was such great joy for us, as we were very poor. I still have that coin, while my sister spent hers immediately. I was very angry with her for doing so.

The children of our family were on friendly terms with each other. We never quarreled. It's a pity that these traditions are gradually falling into oblivion in the Jewish community nowadays. Every Friday came Topuz Bozadjiata, the quarter's boza carrier, who was Armenian, and poured boza 5 into large vessels. He used to give the adults shots of mastika 6 as a bonus.

After the internment, when we came back impoverished and hungry, my mother's brother Solomon sheltered us in a building, next to the house he had inherited from our grandfather. A Bulgarian woman, a prostitute, lived next-door at that time. Only a small corridor separated us from the room where she used to accept men. We were just kids and that was my mother's worst nightmare.

There were five of us inhabiting one room. We slept in a plank-bed. There was a soldier's stretcher, in which my father was bedridden, lying sick after the labor camp, and where he actually died. The rest of us slept on the plank-bed. The toilet and the running water were in the yard. Our room was two meters long and three meters wide. We had a case, which served both as a kitchen cupboard and a wardrobe. I found a small table in the yard, left by some other family, and I fixed it so that I could study there.

I have a very embarrassing memory of that house. I attended evening classes at the time and my parents' work was extremely exhausting. Once I was studying mathematics by the light of a bedside lamp as I was going to have my term exams. My father warned me several times that no one could go asleep because of me. Finally he got so angry that he broke the lamp. I sheltered myself in the corridor, continuing my work by candlelight. Anyway, I managed. I was very ambitious.

My brother was six years older than me, whereas my sister Eliza was four years younger. They were both very clever, good-hearted and intelligent, yet they didn't show any particular desire to continue their education. My father practically beat my brother to make him study. My sister wasn't very inspired with the idea of a further education either. After our father's death in 1947 I begged her to stay in Bulgaria and take a degree. I was already working and I could provide for her. She didn't want to. She got married and went to Israel.

I was a lousy student till the 4th grade of elementary school. I almost failed. It was thanks to the birth of Simeon II [see Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Simeon] 7 that I was able to pass from the 3rd to the 4th grade. [Editor's note: On the occasion of the birth of Simeon II, son of the tsar, heir to the crown, all students in Bulgaria got excellent marks at the end of the school year.] I studied in the Jewish junior high school till the 3rd grade. We studied the usual subjects plus Jewish history. We studied everything in Bulgarian. Only the Torah did we read and write in Hebrew, and we also had Hebrew as a separate school subject.

All teachers loved us very much. There was only one teacher, who hated the poor children. She used to call us 'lousy kids'. Her daughter was in our class. That teacher used to tell us, 'My daughter will become somebody, whereas you will always be nothing but servants.' Years passed, I had already become a doctor, when I met her daughter in Israel and she complained that she was very badly off.

The education in this school was excellent; I took a turn for the better and became an advanced student very quickly. I didn't have any special talents, yet I achieved everything through enormous efforts, constant visits to the library and sleepless nights. I don't remember anything special about my classmates. I was quite ambitious and the informal leader of the class, so to speak.

When I finished the 3rd grade, I cried a lot that I couldn't go any further. In order to calm me, my brother, who was already working as an apprentice in a shoe shop, bought me a watch on the occasion of my successful graduation. I still remember the trademark - 'Novolis'. I held it in my hand and stared at it all night long. On the third day of my vacation my mother took me to the atelier of the tailor Zvancharova. She and Pelagia Vidinska were popular tailors in Sofia with big private studios. Zvancharova hired me as an apprentice at a very low wage. I was begging to be allowed to deliver clothes to houses because of the tips. I decided that I would be able to provide for myself and enrolled in the Maria Louisa secondary school for tailors. It was right opposite the Law Courts. I was expelled already in the second week, as I couldn't pay my tuition. I remained a simple tailor.

In the 1st grade of the Jewish junior high school I became a member of Hashomer Hatzair 8. Hashomer Hatzair aimed at the establishment of socialism in Israel. It was a 'progressive' organization with a strong national aspect. I organized a very big company there. We often visited the Aura community center on Opalchenska and Klementina Streets, which was regularly attended by Jews and 'progressive' Bulgarians. [Lea tends to call people with left-wing political convictions progressive. This expression was quite common in socialist times.] Mois Autiel noticed us there. We didn't know then that he was the UYW 9 responsible for our sector. Mois was making propaganda for this organization, which was different from Hashomer Hatzair but which had the same goal, the establishment of the socialist order. Our class was divided into two groups, 15 people each, both supporters of the UYW. Anyway, only two or three people - including me - were selected to become UYW members. Mois was the person in charge of our group. I became a member of the UYW on 5th May 1942, right after I finished the 3rd grade of the Jewish junior high school.

During the war

My future husband, Leon Beraha, was redirected to our group as a more experienced UYW member. At the age of 15 I carried out my first action with him, and at 16 we decided to be a couple. For three or four years we were only holding hands. In Iuchbunar 10 there was a conspiracy, a traitor within our organization and a lot of members were imprisoned. My future husband was also arrested. He simulated that he was an imbecile, he was released as an underdeveloped person and was acquitted for lack of evidence.

His second arrest was a more serious one. In fascist times [in the late 1930s - early 1940s] he worked as an electrician. At that time the newspapers wrote about the Totleben conspiracy. The gang of Totleben bandits was raging, etc. My husband and his brother electrified a hospital. In an outhouse behind that hospital they hid two outlaws. Actually the conspiracy was called this way because the hospital was on Totleben Street in Sofia. During a police action a shooting started. Anyway, the authorities never proved that it was my husband who had shot. Yet, all this resulted in his internment to the forced labor camp 11 in Dupnitsa. They dug trenches there. By a 'happy' coincidence my family was also interned to Dupnitsa.

I took part in the protest on 24th May 1943 12 against the internment of Jews. Now they don't admit that the protest was under the leadership of the Communist Party, but we took part in it and we did and do know who led us. Heading the group were the communist leaders of Hashomer Hatzair - Vulka Goranova, Beti Danon - and our rabbi who wasn't a communist but he was a 'progressive' and conscientious man. The smallest children were also walking in front. We, the older ones, were carrying posters and chanting slogans. We had almost reached the Geshev pharmacy between Strandja and Father Paissiy Streets, where horsemen and legionaries [see Bulgarian Legions] 13 were waiting for us, when a big fight started.

They beat us up badly. We hid in the yards like ants. I lost my father and my little sister. I hid in the yard of an aunt of mine, though I held my peace because I didn't want her to be harmed in case of an eventual arrest. My father and my sister went home. When my father saw that I hadn't come home, he went out to search for me. I was two crossings away from home and I saw how they arrested him. I didn't dare to shout out because if they had arrested me too, there wouldn't have been anyone left to take care of my mother and the family. From the police station they took him straight to Somovit labor camp. They interned him without clothes, without food...

When he came back, he told us horrible things. Their daily food ration was 50 grams of bread only. A compatriot of ours, a Zionist and very hostile to 'progressive' people, slandered my father on being a communist. As a result the portions of my father and some other people were shortened to the minimum. My father used to dig in the garbage for scraps of food. He ate potato peels. He was set free at the time of the Bagrianov government. [This government was in office between 1 June - 2 September 1944.] He looked like death warmed up. He didn't even have enough energy to climb the stairs and was shouting from below. My mother and I carried him to the first floor. That was already in Sofia, after the internment.

When I was interned to Dupnitsa with my mother and sister, my brother was already in a labor camp. We had no contact with him whatsoever. We only knew that he was somewhere around Simitli. We didn't receive any letters. We were worried because he had a duodenal ulcer. He told us later that trains carrying Jews from Aegean Thrace and Macedonia to the concentration camps passed by them. Once they heard from a horse wagon people begging for water. My brother and some others jumped up with their cups, but the warders beat them up badly. Finally they poured cold water on him, in order to bring him back to consciousness. Nevertheless, they made him work after that. He was set free on 9th September 1944 14, like all the others.

Although the state policy was pro-fascist, generally there wasn't an anti- Semitic mood among the Bulgarian people. On the contrary, I have a very positive memory. When the internment announcement came, we immediately took out everything for sale because we didn't have any money. My father was in Somovit, my brother was in a labor camp. I was alone, only with my mother and my sister. At that time I had already started working. With my first salary I had bought a wallet as a present for my brother and a beautiful water pitcher for the whole family. We sold those as well. People gathered. A man liked the pitcher and bought it. When I handed it to him, I began to cry. When he realized that it had been bought with my first salary, he told me to keep both the money and the pitcher. Naturally I gave it to him, as we couldn't take it with us during the internment. Yet his gesture moved me deeply. The money we succeeded to collect only lasted us a very short time.

In Dupnitsa they took us in a convoy from the railway station to the school gym. We were more than a hundred people, and they separated us in families. I found a job in the candy factory. I stole sweets for my friends in the labor camps. Then we moved to some rich Jews, who accepted us under the condition that I worked as a maid for them. They had three boys aged one to two, three to four, and five to six years. I used to work there so much that my child-like hands became completely rough. My mother was already advanced in years, she was constantly ill and wasn't able to work. I was the breadwinner.

My sister was crying for food all the time. The landlords were well-to-do traders in Dupnitsa. They imported curds, butter, etc. as black marketers. My sister cried because she also wanted such things. My mother and I used to 'gag' her and hid her in the little square behind the door, which the rich Jewess had given to us. In this one square meter space we put the sack, the blankets and the clothes that we had brought from Sofia. We used to lie down crosswise like in a sty. The mattress was too short and our bare feet touched the floor.

Post-war

We returned from Dupnitsa to Sofia after the fall of fascism [after the communist takeover on 9th September 1944]. From 9th September 1944 till 1945-46 we lived in the house my mother's brother had on Slivnitsa Blvd.

After 9th September 1944 everything changed. First, there was a great tragedy - my father was ill. The misery was beyond description. Yet, the Jewish community established a tailor's cooperative named Liberation. I began to work there. I attached sleeves using a sewing machine. I also attended high school evening classes. I studied from 6 to 10 in the evening. From 10pm to 7am I worked - I only took night shifts. The cooperative was in the bazaar opposite the Law Courts and I used to walk to Odrin and Positano Streets, where we lived. We often changed our address and everywhere we lived under terrible conditions; the whole family in one room.

By 1947 I was alone. My future husband was a student in the USSR. My father died in my arms. My sister Eliza got married and left for Israel. In the beginning their family was quite badly off. Her husband used to work in a garage. Later the owner, who was childless, adopted him. Now my nephew, their son, owns the garage. My sister was a housewife all her life. My brother Betzalel and his family followed my sister at my mother's request. She wanted him to go there and help my sister. He was a stevedore in Jaffa. His work was physically very hard - he pulled boats to the riverside. As a result of this he fell seriously ill and died in 1966.

In 1949 my mother also left for Israel. It was very hard for me. In order to escape from loneliness, I took part in two consecutive brigades 15. There I fell and broke my hand. I was falsely diagnosed with bone tuberculosis. Later it turned out that I had simple sciatica. From one sanatorium to another I finally reached the Workers' Academy 16 in Varna, where I finished my high school education. There I was put into a plaster cast and during the whole year they took me to exams on a stretcher. I gained a lot of weight and weighed some 90 kilos as a result of total immobilization. I was lucky that my husband visited me. I told him that I didn't intend to marry him because of my illness. Upon his return to Moscow my husband took my tests to the Institute for Bone and Joint Tuberculosis. The professor there concluded that I have no tuberculosis whatsoever. According to him it was more likely to be rheumatism or something of that kind. And above all he recommended that I should start moving. I stood up and fell immediately.

My wonderful, loving mother-in-law realized that I was suffering and came to see me. I lived with her for two years, before marring my husband. We lived in one room - my father-in-law, my mother-in-law, my husband's brother and his wife. We lived very well. My mother-in-law was an extraordinary woman. She still wouldn't believe that I had tuberculosis. She used to hide good food from the others. She took me out into the yard behind the house and made a huge effort to persuade me that I had to eat for the sake of my husband, who was so good-hearted and whom I loved. I loved her very much and later took care of her. She also died in my arms.

I graduated in medicine and worked for five years in the hospital in Pernik. I became a chief of the professional diseases' sector. I traveled around the mines. In 1964 I came to Sofia with my husband. First I worked in the hospital at the Ministry of the Interior. Then I applied for a job in the 4th city hospital. Out of 35 requests, only mine was accepted. I worked under the hardest system. I was in charge of seven beds in the hospital till 11am, then I was in the polyclinics until 1pm, in the tobacco factory until 2pm and finally I had house-calls. In addition I was working on my specialty degree and meanwhile I had already given birth to a child, my daughter Irina [Santurdjiyan, nee Beraha, born in 1966]. In Pernik and in Sofia we lived in lodgings. In Sofia we first lived in a small room in Lozenets quarter. Later we moved to our current apartment.

My husband came back from the USSR in 1952, after graduating in mine engineering. We married on a Sunday. On Monday he 'disappeared' - he was appointed at the mine in Pernik and got very busy. My husband was extremely modest, industrious and honest. He climbed the career ladder all by himself, without any intercessions. The newspapers wrote about him. I have a large file of press clippings. First he worked as a mining engineer in Pernik, then he was advanced to the post of mine director. Then he was in charge of the industry in Pernik - the Crystal Plant, the mines, the Lenin State Metallurgy Plant, the Cement Plant, etc. As a next step, he was promoted to a job at the Council of Ministers because they needed someone who was simultaneously a mining engineer and an economist.

In 1966 Stanko Todorov 17 decided to send him to Italy because meanwhile my husband had graduated from the diplomats' school in the USSR. He also worked for the Council for Mutual Economical Support [the economic organization of the former socialist countries] as well as for UNESCO. He was regularly sent to its head office in Geneva. My husband was the ideal example that in communist times there wasn't any anti-Semitism in Bulgaria. As he was a diplomat for 28 years and traveled a lot, I used to accompany him. In Italy he was the Bulgarian embassy's first secretary. In Angola he was a minister plenipotentiary, and in Cambodia ambassador. Finally, when he got very ill, he was sent to Geneva to defend Bulgaria with regard to the Revival Process 18.

At that time Bulgaria still wasn't a UNO member. It was only a candidate. In Geneva there were moods for excluding the country from the group of the UNO candidates for membership because of the forced name change of the Bulgarian Turks, which was carried out at that time. My husband gave a speech on this topic that was loudly applauded and Bulgaria wasn't excluded from the group. When my husband came home, he told me that he had held a very strong trump in his hands - his passport, where it was written that he was a Jew. He was ready to take it out of his pocket at any moment and ask them how could the non-Bulgarians possibly be oppressed, if there was written proof in the official documents of a Bulgarian diplomat that his nationality was Jewish. Principally my husband didn't approve with the name change of the Bulgarian Turks, but in that case he had to defend Bulgaria before the whole world. The nation wasn't supposed to suffer because of the mistakes of a few people. My husband died of cancer shortly after the Geneva conference.

I have visited my relatives in Israel more than ten times. It was only difficult in the first years because then even letters weren't allowed. [Editor's note: Visiting Israel was not a problem for Lea's family, as they were quite high-standing in the hierarchy of the Bulgarian society of the time.] I was among the first people who visited Israel. I wasn't able to 'warn' my relatives about my arrival. They were at the cinema when it was announced that Jews from Bulgaria had arrived at the airport. They heard my name and immediately rushed to meet me. My mother hadn't seen me for seven years and she fainted at the airport.

Regarding the Israeli wars, I am definitely on Israel's side. At first I was more inclined to understand the Arabs, but it is no longer like that. I think they are intolerant in terms of politics and reaching of agreements. Maybe it's simply that a new leader should come and replace Arafat. It's a pity that young people from both sides die or become disabled for life.

My daughter Lora graduated from the College for Dental Mechanics. She is married to an Armenian and has a little daughter, Lora Edmond. She doesn't identify herself as a Jew and doesn't observe the traditions. She isn't affiliated with the Jewish community. I myself am a complete atheist, yet I buy matzah for Pesach and prepare burlikus 19. I visit the synagogue on Yom Kippur, but just to join our community. I don't pray there, I'm just very sensitive when it comes to the Jewish community.

I was the person in charge of the Health club at the Jewish community in the 1990s. I receive a monthly financial support of 20 leva. In winter they also give us some money for heating. If it wasn't for Joint 20, I would have become a beggar-doctor.

Glossary

Vladimir Olgart
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya
Date of Interview: October 2002


My father, Mordko Olgart, was born in a small town near Warsaw in 1870. At that time this area was part of the Russian Empire. I know very little about my father's family. His father, Leizer Olgart, and his mother died before I was born. I don't remember my grandmother's name. My grandfather was paralyzed and confined to bed for a long time. My father had two older sisters. At the end of the 19th century they moved to the US, and we had no contact with them. Some time after 1905 my father's family moved to Skvira [about 150 km from Kiev]. I don't know why they decided to move. My father told me that he finished cheder and received religious education.

Unfortunately, I know even less about my mother's family. I have no information about her parents. They both died before my mother, Neha Olgart, turned 15. My mother was the youngest daughter. My mother's parents lived in Volodarka, a small town in Kiev province. My mother was born in 1887. She remained alone in her parents' house after they died. Her older sisters and brothers had moved out by that time. I don't know how many brothers and sisters she had. I knew her older brother Dudik. He was a shoemaker and lived in Skvira with his family. Later he moved to Kiev.

My mother got married to my father when she was 17. My father was much older than my mother. He was over 30 when they got married. I think my father didn't get married at an earlier age because he had to take care of his father. My mother was an orphan and had no dowry. She and my father were married by matchmakers. They had a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah and a rabbi in Skvira.

My parents rented a two-bedroom apartment. It was part of a two-storied house. Their landlords also had tenants on the second floor. The rooms were always shaded by lilac bushes growing near the house. My mother cooked on a big stove in the kitchen. They didn't have running water or a well in the yard. Water was delivered to the houses by a water-carrier in big barrels loaded on a horse-driven carriage. He was driving slowly along the streets shouting 'Water! Water!' The water-carrier delivered water twice a day: in the morning and in the evening.

My father was a barber. I don't know where he learned his profession. He was very skilled and had quite a few clients. He owned a barber's shop, but he was the only one working there. My mother was a housewife. My parents didn't have children for some time. They went to see a very wise rabbi who was well known in Skvira and beyond the town. It was the custom to seek advice from a rabbi. People asked him all kinds of questions related to everyday life or business. I don't think he took money for giving advice. People made contributions to the synagogue anyway. He told them that in four year's time they would have their first baby, and from then on they would have a child every second year. It was true. My parents got married in 1904 and in 1908 my older brother Mikhail was born. He was named Moshe at birth. In 1910 my sister Riva was born and I followed on 15th December 1912. I was named Velvel at birth, but later my family began to call me Vladimir. My younger sister Sonia was born in 1914.

Jews constituted 90% of the population in Skvira. They got along well with the Ukrainian population. Jews were mainly craftsmen: shoemakers, tailors, barbers, and traders. There was a big two-storied synagogue in Skvira and a Jewish lower secondary school. When we were 6 my brother and I went to cheder. An old melamed with a gray beard taught us Hebrew, religion and the history of the Jewish people. My sisters studied there, too. It was closed in 1919. My brother and I then studied in a Russian secondary school; the majority of pupils were Jews, but there were Ukrainians as well. It used to be a grammar school before the revolution, and after the revolution it became a Russian lower secondary school. We had wonderful teachers. And the school building was very beautiful, with sculptures on the façade.

My parents were religious people and raised us accordingly. We spoke Yiddish at home, but we also spoke fluent Ukrainian and Russian. Every Friday my mother cooked for Sabbath. She baked challah in the Russian oven, made stuffed fish and boiled chicken. It wasn't allowed to cook or heat food on Saturday. On Friday evening our family got together for a prayer. My mother lit candles and we sat down at the table for a Saturday meal. Our Ukrainian neighbor used to light our kerosene lamps and make fire in the stove on Saturdays in the winter. My father prayed at home on Sabbath and he read a chapter from the Torah to us, and then we had guests over. My father's cousins lived in Skvira and so did my mother's brother Dudik before he moved to Kiev in the 1920s. They visited us with their wives and children. They all had big families. We had a lot of fun. We had tea, cookies and sponge cakes that my mother made. We sang Jewish songs, recited poems and danced. My parents had a record player and records with Jewish songs and dance music. We used to dance Jewish folk dances: sher, freilakhs and skotchna. We also got together at birthdays. My parents went to the synagogue on holidays. There was also a choral synagogue in Skvira. Men prayed downstairs and woman were on the 2nd floor. There was a cantor in the synagogue and often other cantors came on tours. I remember cantor Pinch from Odessa. I went to the synagogue to listen to him when I was a small boy. Many people had tears in their eyes listening to him. He was majestic. Jewish theatrical groups often came to Skvira on tours. My older brother was very fond of theaters and attended every performance. Actors were poor people and often couldn't afford to pay for the hotel. Mikhail brought them home and they slept on the floor, on the tables and even on the stove in the kitchen. And we went to their performances for free. I can't remember what we watched, as I was too young. A group of Purimshpils came on tours at Purim. They performed in a big wedding hall. We all went to see Purimshpils. They often performed "Ahashverosh-shpil" and I also remember "Selling Joseph". At Purim my mother used to make gomentashy - triangle pies with poppy seeds and raisins. Parents bought their children wooden rattles. The melamed explained to us that their sound scared away the evildoer Aman, one of the main characters in Purimshpils and the evil would stay away from our homes.

I remember the celebration of Pesach at home. On the eve of Pesach we searched for chametz with a candle and a chicken feather. We had to sweep every breadcrumb onto a piece of paper with the feather to have them burnt later. There was a special bakery in Skvira where they made matzah. We bought enough matzah to last through Pesach. Every member of the family bought some new clothes before Pesach. The boys got new shirts, and the girls got new dresses. My mother bought a few chicken to have chicken and chicken broth on the table every day at Pesach. She bought the chickens and took them to the shochet. She also made delicious stuffed fish, strudels and cookies from matzah flour. We followed the kashruts in the family. My mother always cooked kosher food. She liked cooking and was very good at it. We kept special dishes that we only used at Pesach in the attic. On Pesach morning the family went to pray at the synagogue. In the evening we had the first seder. I asked my father questions [the four questions] in Hebrew, and he told us about Pesach. On other days of Pesach we often had guests. It was lots of fun. At Yom Kippur the whole family fasted, even children over 5 years old fasted the whole day. We also celebrated Rosh Hashanah. We didn't celebrate Sukkot but I don't know why not. I don't remember anybody in Skvira building a sukkah.

At Purim my mother used to make hamantashen - triangle pies with poppy seeds and raisins. Parents bought their children wooden rattles. The melamed explained to us that their sound scared away the evildoer Haman, one of the main characters in Purimshpils, and the evil would stay away from our homes.

Jewish theater groups often came to Skvira on tours. My older brother was very fond of theater and attended every performance. Actors were poor people and often couldn't afford to pay for the hotel. Mikhail brought them home to our place, and they slept on the floor, on the tables and even on the stove in the kitchen. In return we went to their performances for free. I can't remember what we watched; I was too young. Purimshpil groups came on tours at Purim. They performed in a big wedding hall. We all went to see Purimshpils. They often performed 'Ahasuerus-shpil', and I also remember 'Selling Joseph'.

There was also a choral synagogue in Skvira. Men prayed downstairs and woman were on the gallery. There was a cantor in the synagogue, and often other cantors came to visit. I remember cantor Pinch from Odessa. I went to the synagogue to listen to him when I was a small boy. Many people had tears in their eyes listening to him. He was majestic.


There was a big market in Skvira where local farmers used to sell their products. But there were only Jewish butchers at the market. They always sold kosher and non-kosher meat [for Ukrainian customers]. The majority of Jews were poor people. Sometimes they didn't have money to pay for the meat they were buying, and butchers allowed them to pay later. There was plenty of fruit and vegetables at the market. Farmers delivered milk and dairy products to the houses every day. They also brought eggs and chicken.

There was a special wedding hall in Skvira owned by a man named Tulchik, which was called 'At the Tulchik's'. All weddings in Skvira took place in this hall. My parents had their wedding in this hall, too. Tulchik's son was a musician, a klezmer, and had an orchestra that used to play at weddings. I went to watch wedding ceremonies. There was a chuppah covered with crimson brocade, and the bride and bridegroom were taken underneath it. Klezmer musicians were playing and a cantor sang 'Kalene, kalene, veyn, veyn' ['Cry, cry, you bride']. It meant that the bride had to cry for the life she was leaving behind and for leaving her parents' home. I remember brides crying.

Then the rabbi approached the bride and bridegroom. He was also the chazzan. He said the blessing, and the bride and bridegroom exchanged rings and drank a glass of wine. They broke the glass. Then the music played and klezmer musicians sang Jewish wedding songs. There was a tenor in Skvira - many people came to listen to him. Then all guests sat down at the tables. The food was cooked by special wedding cooks. They were called 'servieren'. Every cook had a special dish that she was best at cooking. It was convenient to have them cook all food especially considering the number of guests at a traditional Jewish wedding. There were always two crews: one to cook food and another one to make pastries. Guests danced Jewish dances. They all enjoyed freilakhs. Poor people were sitting next to rich people at weddings - they were all equal, enjoyed the wedding and had lots of fun.

Before and after the revolution of 1917 Denikin gangs [the White Guards] 1 often came to Skvira. A Russian landlord used to give us shelter in his house on such occasions. He was my father's client and had a lot of respect for my father. We used to hide in his closet. He put a big lock on the door to create the impression that there was nobody inside. Denikin officers often asked this landlord to send them a barber, and he recommended my father. My father went there, and they were all pleased with the job he did. Denikin troops didn't harm poorer people, as a rule. They forayed the houses of rich Jews demanding money and valuables from them. My father's cousin was killed during one of those raids. There were wooden shutters on the windows at that time. My father's cousin went out of the house one morning to close the shutters and was killed by a stray bullet. No gangs ever tried to break into the synagogue. These raids were robberies and didn't have any anti-Semitic character.

My father wasn't recruited to the army because of his hernia. He took no interest in politics. Jews were enthusiastic about the revolution and had hopes for a better life. During the fights between the Red 2 and White 3 armies almost all stores in Skvira were closed, and people were trying to stay in their houses. After the revolution the stores opened again, and people returned to their daily routine. This lasted until the end of the NEP 4 period in 1924 when the expropriation of people's property took place within a few weeks. The state took away all people's property: houses, stores, cattle, and so on. Jews from Skvira who had lost their property moved to bigger towns in search of jobs. There was a short period in 1924 when people were allowed to move to the US and Canada. My father's sister mailed an invitation to him from the US, but my father didn't want to leave his country. He loved his motherland.

When I was 13 I had bar mitzvah. A rabbi came to our house, a big celebration was arranged, and there were lots of guests and presents. I received a tefillinw and felt like an adult.

My older brother completed 5 years of Russian secondary school. He decided to learn a profession. He was apprenticed to a locksmith who repaired clocks, sewing machines and bicycles. In 1926, when he turned 16, Mikhail moved to Kiev and became a locksmith apprentice at the Arsenal Plant [biggest military plant in Ukraine]. My older sister Riva followed him shortly afterwards. She got a job as a cashier at the canteen of the Smirnov-Lastochkin garment factory. Riva rented a room in Podol 5, not far from the factory.

I completed 8 years of Russian secondary school in Skvira. During my studies I began to learn the barber's profession from my father. I assisted him after my classes.

I had a cousin in Moscow: the son of my mother's older brother Dudik. When I turned 16 and obtained a passport I decided to go to Moscow. My relatives invited me to come there. Besides, I found it exciting to go to the capital. In Moscow I got a job as a barber. I rented a room. There were three other tenants in this room: three Jewish guys from Belarus. We became friends. At work I became a Komsomol 6 member; I was fond of the idea of 'building communism', just like so many other young people. My friends and I often went to the Jewish theater. I watched several performances featuring a well-known Jewish actor, Solomon Mikhoels 7. Sometimes we attended Jewish concerts. Religion was no longer popular among young people. We didn't go to the synagogue and didn't celebrate Jewish holidays. However, I went to the synagogue on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, but I didn't fast on Yom Kippur any longer. After I became a Komsomol member I left religion behind.

Winters in Moscow were cold. We didn't have enough warm clothes, but we were young and we didn't really get cold. We had meals there during the day in a cheap café and in the evening went there to eat, dance and listen to music. We didn't drink alcoholic drinks. There were a few girls in our group. They were Russian girls from Moscow.

My friends and I celebrated Soviet holidays. We enjoyed watching parades. Entrance to the Red Square was restricted, therefore, we sneaked in before 5 o'clock in the morning. To avoid militiamen we hid in building entrances before we could come out to watch the parade. I saw Stalin quite a few times. Once I saw Kalinin 8 buying something at a kiosk. Leaders of the country went out without any guards. People loved them a lot.

From 1932-33 a famine 9 hit Ukraine in 1932-331. I was living in Moscow, and there was no famine there. My relatives in Skvira also survived, because my brother and sister were supporting them from Kiev. The situation was easier in bigger towns. Besides, my brother was working at a military plant where food supplies were regular. I also sent parcels with dried bread and cereals to my parents in Skvira. They didn't starve.

In 1933 Hitler came to power in Germany and newspapers wrote about this event. [Editor's note: In 1933 Hitler became chancellor, in 1934 president and supreme commander of the armed forces.] Ordinary people also discussed it. I went to the synagogue on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, and Jews there discussed these events, but they only discussed official information that was published in Soviet newspapers. We didn't know all the facts about the actual situation, but we realized that there was nothing good for Jews in Hitler's policies and his appeal to the purity of the Aryan racewere. By 1938 we were well aware of the German attitude towards Jews.

By that time my brother and sister were both married. Mikhail married a woman from Kiev. She was a Jewish girl named Dusia. They had a son and a daughter. Riva married a Jewish man named Bateiko. I don't remember his first name. He was a dressmaker and a very interesting man. He came from Chernigov. His parents had 13 sons. They all passed away. Riva and her husband had three daughters. Riva quit her job after their first baby was born and became a housewife. Sonia, their younger daughter, got married in Skvira. I don't remember her husband's last name. His Her husband's name was Efim; he was an accountant. They had a son and a daughter. Sonia and her husband bought a house in Skvira after they got married, and my parents moved in with them.

Mikhail and Riva were asking me to come to Kiev. I moved there in 1936. In the beginning I stayed with Riva and her husband. I met my future wife, Betia Chornaya, in Kiev. She was born in Skvira in 1912. Our families knew each other. Betia's father died at a young age, and her mother raised all the children; I believe there were eight of them. Betia finished lower secondary school in Skvira and decided to move to Kiev. She lived with Riva and worked as a secretary at the plant. We dated for a short time and then decided to get married. We didn't have a wedding party. We had a civil registration ceremony, and that was it. I got a job in a big barber's shop. We rented a room in Podol. We lived there for a short while until I bought a small house in Irpen, on the outskirts of Kiev. I had some savings from Moscow. We moved to Irpen in 1937. My wife worked as a secretary at the Irpen town council, and I continued working in Kiev. Commuting to Kiev and back home was a problem. There were no buses or local trains that made commuting very comfortable. I got to work via long-distance trains. I didn't want to lose a good job. We spoke Russian in our family. We identified ourselves as Soviet people.

In 1937 our daughter Mara was born. My wife quit her job and dedicated herself to raising our child. I wanted to move to Kiev so much and finally got the opportunity. My colleague and I obtained permission to build an annex to a small two-storied building in a suburban street in Kiev. Each family had two small rooms and a kitchen in this annex. Water and toilet were in the yard. This could hardly be called a dwelling at all, but many families lived that way at the time; it was the usual thing. We moved to this annex in 1938.

I took no interest in politics. Everything was fine and quiet in my small world: my beloved family was well, we had a place to live, and I had a good job in one of the best barbershops in Kiev. I knew about the arrests of people [during the so-called Great Terror] 10 and the war in Poland and Finland, but it was all so far away from my life.

In 1940 I got a job in the military residential neighborhood in Sviatoshyno. I had a higher salary, and it was easier to commute to work.

On 22nd June 1941 11 I was working. I was going to work by tram. It was early morning and I heard explosions all the time. Of course, I had no thoughts about a war. There were frequent military trainings at that time. When I came to work my colleagues told me that German planes were bombing the Post-Volynskiy railway station and a plant in Sviatoshyno. The commissar of the military unit offered me to join their military unit, but I refused and went to our district military office. I received a subpoena on 24th June. My daughter turned 4 that day. The following day I went to the recruitment office. I was sent to the 38th army of the South Western Front chief sanitary storage facility. We obtained medication in the hospital in Pechersk and began to form a sanitary train. I had enough time left to send my family into evacuation. It didn't matter much where they went to as long as the location was far from the war scene and out of reach of the fascists. I put my wife and daughter and my wife's mother, who came from Skvira, on a train. I didn't know where it went.

We moved our medication storage facility to Poltava [350 km from Kiev]. From there we went to Lyski station, Voronezh region, and then to Stalingrad. We were following the front line picking up the wounded and supplying medication to field hospitals. This lasted for two years. In 1943 we stopped at the town of Krasnaya Sloboda, near Stalingrad, only on the opposite bank of the river Volga. Stalingrad was already on fire. We had hardly any food. Several people had to share one piece of dry bread. We didn't have enough water. The river was covered with a thick layer of oil from oil storages blasted by the Germans. One evening the chief of headquarters told four of us to cross the Volga and bring bandaging material from the storage facility. The Volga was on fire. We crossed it and stayed overnight at the storage facility. We found a lot of bandaging material, loaded it on the boat and went back. I was awarded a 'medal for courage' for this mission. Stalingrad was a turning point in the course of the war. We proceeded to Konigsburg and further on. We were continuously on the front line. I used to take medication directly to the front line. On 9th May 1945 I was on a train heading to the Far East. It took us 30 days to get there.

I didn't have any information about my family. During the war with Japan 12 I was in Kharbin, Manchuria. In autumn 1945 the war was over and we got on our way back. We were stationed at Grodekovo station near Ussuriysk [about 3,500 km from Kiev]. From there my manager sent a letter to the evacuation agency in Buguruslan requesting information about my family. We got a response from them saying that my wife and daughter were in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. I wrote to my wife and got a response from her, in which she said that she had married another man. She probably thought that I had perished having had no information about me for almost six years. My wife and daughter didn't want to come back. It was a blow to me. My wife had a new husband and they had a good life together.

I once faced anti-Semitism in the Far East. I was supervisor at a storage facility. We were getting ready for mobilization and waited for soldiers that were to replace us. They were young people born around 1927. One of them didn't take notice of me and said to his comrades, 'These zhydy [kikes] stayed in the rear and didn't fight at the front. Hitler would have done better with them ...'. I hit him in the face before he could finish the sentence. This was the only time in my life when I faced anti-Semitism.

We returned to Kiev in autumn 1946. The storage facility was unloaded at the Kiev-Tovarny station and we returned to the city on a horse-driven cart. My relatives were already in Kiev. My brother Mikhail was at the front. His family returned from evacuation in Novosibirsk. They moved into their apartment. Mikhail found a job at the barber's shop. Riva and her family had been in evacuation in Novosibirsk. Her husband had been wounded at the front, but survived and returned home. My sister Sonia, her husband, her children and our parents were in the Ural. They returned from evacuation and settled down in their house in Skvira. Fortunately, the Babi Yar 13 tragedy didn't hit our family. Only the parents of Sonia's husband perished there.

My house hadn't been destroyed, but it was housing a kindergarten. I rented the same room in Podol where my wife and I used to live after we got married and got a job as a barber. However, everything in Kiev reminded me of my family life, and I decided to start my life anew. I moved to Leningrad in 1953 and lived there until 1956. I rented a room and got a job as a barber. But I didn't feel at home in Leningrad. I felt homesick and returned to Kiev.

After the war there was only one operating synagogue in Podol. I went there on Pesach, Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. There were so many people that many of them had to stay outside the synagogue, and the whole street was crowded on holidays. Going to the synagogue became a need to me.

Stalin died in 1953. I was in Leningrad at the time. People didn't go to work on the day of his death. Everyone was crying. They were saying that it was the end of the world and that they were lost and confused. I didn't feel anything like that. I felt slightly concerned about who was to become the new 'tsar'. It was Khruschev 14. I believe that he did a lot of good for the country beginning with his denunciation of the cult of Stalin at the Twentieth Party Congress 15. Khruschev released inmates of the camps, and people had more freedom during his rule. Many houses were built under his leadership.

My father died in 1956. We all got together in Skvira. My father was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Skvira, according to Jewish rituals. My sister Sonia and her husband sold their house in Skvira and moved to Kiev with their children and our mother. My mother fell very ill. She had problems with her vessels that were incurable at the time. Sonia inherited this disease from her as it turned out later. Sonia bought a small house in the outskirts of Kiev. She got a job at a department store. My mother brought Jewish traditions back into my life. We all got together at Sabbath. My mother always cooked for Jewish holidays. We couldn't get all the necessary products, and our dinners were much poorer than before the war. It wasn't kosher food, but there was always stuffed fish. My mother also got matzah for Pesach. Mikhail and Riva came with their families; I was on my own. I was introduced to Jewish women, but I didn't think of marriage. My wife's betrayal hurt me deeply, and I was afraid of being hurt again.

In the early 1960s my mother had her leg amputated. She had gangrene. My brother and I were helping Sonia to look after her. My mother died in 1967. We buried her in the Jewish section of Baikovoye cemetery according to Jewish tradition. There was also a rabbi from the synagogue at the funeral. The Jewish cemetery in Kiev had been destroyed by that time.

In the 1970s Jews began to move to Israel. Riva's husband died unexpectedly in 1970, and her daughters insisted on emigrating to Israel. My sister left with her daughters. She died in Jerusalem in 2000. I had no thoughts about leaving my country. I had a place to live, my friends and my job. I didn't feel like changing anything. I thought that it was for younger people to change their lives. I was about 60 at the time. I might have moved if I had had a wife and children. But I didn't. Unfortunately, I have never been to Israel. I wish I could go, but I'm far from being well enough to travel.

The 1970s were a time of loss to me. Soon after my mother died Sonia got the same illness that my mother had been diagnosed with. Within three years she had both legs amputated. She died in terrible pain in 1976. My sister remained religious until her last days. She always tried to celebrate Sabbath. She prayed and fasted according to the Jewish laws. Sonia's son and daughter live in Kiev. In 1977 my brother Mikhail died of a heart attack. His older son died in 1982. His daughter moved to Israel.

I often saw my daughter Mara. She graduated from the Energy Insitute at Kiev University and married a Russian man named Teslenko. Mara's husband is a very talented economist and professor. They have two daughters, born in 1976 and 1979. Mara used to lecture at the Energy College. Later her husband was offered a position as head of the Economics Department at Chernigov University, and they moved to Chernigov. Mara's older daughter moved to Israel and her younger daughter lives in Kiev. She has a 4-year- old daughter, my great-granddaughter. Regretfully, I rarely see her. Mara visits me once a year on her vacation.

I got married again in 1976. My second wife and I have been together for 26 years. We met by chance and never parted since that time. I believe I owe it to my wife Lubov [nee Bezrukova] for living such a long life. She is Russian and was born in the village of Novaya Khoperka, Tambov region in 1923. Her father was a convinced communist. He perished in one of the Gulag camps 16. There were no specific accusations against him, but he was sentenced to death and executed. His wife raised four children. Lubov's mother worked all the time and her grandmother looked after the children.

My wife was fond of sports. She was recruited to the army and studied at the flight training school. She studied there for a year and became a military pilot on a night reconnaissance plane. She was at the front in Regiment 346, 17th Air Force Army, 3rd Ukrainian Front, from 1942 until the end of the war. Their commander was a prominent Soviet pilot, Marina Chechneva. They flew at night. They had optical equipment in their planes enabling them to mark the location of German troops on thee map. On the front she met an artillery lieutenant, Joseph Goldberg, a Jewish man from Kiev. They fell in love with each other and got married. They didn't see each other for two years, but they wrote to each other.

After demobilization in 1945 Lubov came to Kiev. Her husband's aunt was living there. Joseph returned from the front. His right leg was amputated at the front. But Lubov was happy that he was alive. They stayed with Joseph's aunt, Clara. Lubov studied at the Pedagogical College. Their first daughter, Clara, was born in 1946, their second daughter Zhenia followed in 1949. Joseph's aunt liked Lubov a lot. She was like a mother to Lubov. Clara was a religious woman and told Lubov a lot about Jewish religion and traditions. She celebrated Sabbath and all Jewish holidays. Lubov always helped her to cook for festive dinners. She observed Jewish traditions, and they went to the synagogue together. At first she did this to make Joseph's aunt happier but gradually she felt the need to observe traditions.

After finishing college Lubov began to work as a drawing teacher. Joseph got a job as a designer. The city authorities gave him a car as he was a war invalid. Unfortunately he was hit by a truck in 1961 and died. The truck driver was drunk. Lubov dedicated herself to the children. Her daughters received higher education and got married. Joseph's aunt died in the late 1960s. It became difficult for Lubov to work at school, and she became a design artist at an art factory some time before we met.

Lubov brought warmth and care into my house. Besides, she is a deeply religious woman and observes all Jewish traditions. She helped me to return to my origin. We pray every evening. She says we have to thank God for this life and for the days that we have lived in love and peace. On Friday she cooks for Sabbath. On Friday evening she lights candles and we pray. We go to the synagogue on all Jewish holidays and celebrate them at home. Sometimes we go to celebrate holidays at Hesed.

Jewish life in Ukraine has revived within the last ten years. Hesed assists people and helps them to communicate with each other. We have many new friends. Twice a week we have lunch at Hesed - this is called 'warm house'. There are 14 old people in our group. They are all very nice people. We feel very comfortable at Hesed. It's very important for older people to feel support and communicate with one another. I feel terrible looking at miserable old Ukrainian and Russian people. Our old people receive assistance. We get food packages and medication. We are very grateful for it. Our children can't support us. They can hardly feed their own families. But they love us and care about us. We are fine, thank God. My wife and I ask for peace here and in Israel in our prayers. I also thank God for giving me Lubov. We are together and that means a lot to me.


Glossary

1 White Guards: A counter-revolutionary gang led by General Denikin, famous for their brigandry and anti-Semitic acts all over Russia; legends were told of their cruelty. Few survived their pogroms.

2 Reds: Red (Soviet) Army supporting the Soviet authorities.

3 Whites: Tsarist forces defending the monarchy in Russia.

4 NEP: The so-called New Economic Policy of the Soviet authorities was launched by Lenin in 1921. It meant that private business was allowed on a small scale in order to save the country ruined by the October Revolution and the Civil War. They allowed priority development of private capital and entrepreneurship. The NEP was gradually abandoned in the 1920s with the introduction of the planned economy.

5 Podol: The lower section of Kiev. It has always been viewed as the Jewish region of Kiev. In tsarist Russia Jews were only allowed to live in Podol, which was the poorest part of the city. Before World War II 90% of the Jews of Kiev lived there.

6 Komsomol: Communist youth political organization created in 1918. The task of the Komsomol was to spread of the ideas of communism and involve the worker and peasant youth in building the Soviet Union. The Komsomol also aimed at giving a communist upbringing by involving the worker youth in the political struggle, supplemented by theoretical education. The Komsomol was more popular than the Communist Party because with its aim of education people could accept uninitiated young proletarians, whereas party members had to have at least a minimal political qualification.

7 Mikhoels, Solomon (1890-1948) (real name Vovsi): Great Soviet actor, producer, pedagogue. He worked in the Moscow State Jewish Theater (and was its art director from 1929). He directed philosophical, vivid and monumental works. Mikhoels was murdered by order of the State Security Ministry.

8 Kalinin, Mikhail (1875-1946): Soviet politician, one of the editors of the party newspaper Pravda, chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets of the RSFSR (1919-1922), chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR (1922-1938), chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (1938-1946). He was one of Stalin's closest political allies.

9 Famine in Ukraine: In 1920 a deliberate famine was introduced in the Ukraine causing the death of millions of people. It was arranged in order to suppress those protesting peasants who did not want to join the collective farms. There was another dreadful deliberate famine in 1930-1934 in the Ukraine. The authorities took away the last food products from the peasants. People were dying in the streets, whole villages became deserted. The authorities arranged this specifically to suppress the rebellious peasants who did not want to accept Soviet power and join collective farms.

10 Great Terror (1934-1938): During the Great Terror, or Great Purges, which included the notorious show trials of Stalin's former Bolshevik opponents in 1936-1938 and reached its peak in 1937 and 1938, millions of innocent Soviet citizens were sent off to labor camps or killed in prison. The major targets of the Great Terror were communists. Over half of the people who were arrested were members of the party at the time of their arrest. The armed forces, the Communist Party, and the government in general were purged of all allegedly dissident persons; the victims were generally sentenced to death or to long terms of hard labor. Much of the purge was carried out in secret, and only a few cases were tried in public 'show trials'. By the time the terror subsided in 1939, Stalin had managed to bring both the party and the public to a state of complete submission to his rule. Soviet society was so atomized and the people so fearful of reprisals that mass arrests were no longer necessary. Stalin ruled as absolute dictator of the Soviet Union until his death in March 1953.

11 Great Patriotic War: On 22 June 1941 at 5 o'clock in the morning Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union without declaring war. This was the beginning of the so-called Great Patriotic War.

12 War with Japan: In 1945 the war in Europe was over, but in the Far East Japan was still fighting against the anti-fascist coalition countries and China. The USSR declared war on Japan on 8 August 1945 and Japan signed the act of capitulation in September 1945.

13 Babi Yar: Babi Yar is the site of the first mass shooting of Jews that was carried out openly by fascists. On 29th and 30th September 1941 33,771 Jews were shot there by a special SS unit and Ukrainian militia men. During the Nazi occupation of Kiev between 1941 and 1943 over a 100,000 people were killed in Babi Yar, most of whom were Jewish. The Germans tried in vain to efface the traces of the mass grave in August 1943 and the Soviet public learnt about mass murder after World War II.

14 Khrushchev, Nikita (1894-1971): Soviet communist leader. After Stalin's death in 1953, he became first secretary of the Central Committee, in effect the head of the Communist Party of the USSR. In 1956, during the 20th Party Congress, Khrushchev took an unprecedented step and denounced Stalin and his methods. He was deposed as premier and party head in October 1964. In 1966 he was dropped from the Party's Central Committee.

15 Twentieth Party Congress: At the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956 Khrushchev publicly debunked the cult of Stalin and lifted the veil of secrecy from what had happened in the USSR during Stalin's leadership.

16 Gulag: The Soviet system of forced labor camps in the remote regions of Siberia and the Far North, which was first established in 1919. However, it was not until the early 1930s that there was a significant number of inmates in the camps. By 1934 the Gulag, or the Main Directorate for Corrective Labor Camps, then under the Cheka's successor organization the NKVD, had several million inmates. The prisoners included murderers, thieves, and other common criminals, along with political and religious dissenters. The Gulag camps made significant contributions to the Soviet economy during the rule of Stalin. Conditions in the camps were extremely harsh. After Stalin died in 1953, the population of the camps was reduced significantly, and conditions for the inmates improved somewhat.



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Elizaveta Valueva
St. Petersburg
Russia
Interviewer: Anna Nerush

I was born on January 25, 1936, in Mariupol, Ukraine. My mother, Anna Samuelovna Blinderman, was born in 1914 in the village of Buki, Cherkassia region, Ukraine. My father, Pavel Alekseevich Valuev, was born in Russia, in the village of Kashidra, Moscow region, in 1910. I studied in Moscow at the Institute of Energy from 1953 to 1958. After graduation I married Anatoly Pavlovich Nikolau. He was born in 1934, and died in 1987. With him I returned to Mariupol, where I lived until 2000. After the deaths of all my other relatives, I was alone, and I moved to St. Petersburg to live with my son. In Mariupol I worked as the head of a department of Ukrgypromez, the Ukrainian Institute of entrepreneurial planning for black metallurgy, from 1968 to 1974. From 1974 to 1990, I was the head of a department of the Central Scientific Research Laboratory of black metallurgy. I am now retired.

My family background

During the war

After the war

My family background

My son, Sergei Anatolievich Nikolau, was born on December 1, 1960. He is a neurologist and works at a hospital in St. Petersburg. I have three grandchildren: Pavel, who is 17; Yekaterina, 9; and Polina, 9 months.

My family, the Blinderman-Valuev family, without exaggeration, could be considered a model of unity between representatives of two nations, in this case Russian and Jewish. My father and my spouse not only respected, were devoted to and loved their Jewish wives, but also, through the course of their lives, took care of many of their wives' Jewish relatives. After World War II and because of the difficulty with housing, my mother's relatives lived in our apartment until they received lodging, and my mother's spinster sister, Klara Blinderman, lived with my mother's family for 23 years. When my mother had trouble getting over the death of her husband, my husband, Anatoly Nikolau, spent the most time with her. Every evening he took her out for a walk, obtained everything needed for her handiwork so that she could take her mind off painful memories, and so on.

The harmonious, respectful and warm atmosphere of the Blinderman-Valuev family is not only tolerance between nations, but more of a national compatibility, formed so that both I and my son - whose passport says his "nationality" is "Russian" - could feel close to the Jewish nation. Because I have Slavic features, I would not be associated with having a Jewish background. At every new place of work, I immediately mentioned my Jewish roots on my mother's side, to forestall any incidents of anti-Semitism in my presence.

Me and my son's feelings toward Judaism are worth mentioning because neither I nor my son received a religious upbringing. Rather, we lived, one could say, amid a Soviet upbringing. Thanks to the harmonious relationships between the older generations of both the Jewish and Russian sides of our family - for me the happy marriage of my parents, and for my son the wonderful relationship between me and my spouse - my son and I - especially me - having lived our adult lives in the second half of the 20th century, had a unique opportunity to create our own family barrier against anti-
Semitism, which had been growing in the Soviet Union over many decades, to the level of governmental politics and therefore was constantly at the everyday level.

We were able to form this barrier against the governmental and everyday anti-Semitism by talking with our older relatives. They shared their memories of the world before the war. My mother's parents were Brana Peisekhovna Shavulskaya, who lived from 1888 to 1975, and Shmul Josefovich Blinderman, who lived from 1888 to 1942. Grandmother was courageous, hardworking, kind, enduring, a soul strong, moderately commanding. Grandfather was quiet, taciturn, mild, indistinctive in the best sense of the word.

They lived in the Ukrainian village of Buki in the Umanskovo sector of the Cherkassia region in the Ukraine, and their way of life was dual to a certain extent: While remaining Jewish in their religious worldview, in outward appearance - clothing and the presence of some local dialect in their spoken language - they became to a certain degree like the Ukrainians. Grandmother, from her youth and until the end of her days, wore a long and broad skirt, a cardigan, and tied a shawl around her head. Outwardly, she didn't differ from the Ukrainian women of her village.
In the 1960s, my mother, Anna, gave her a wool jacket as a gift, and Grandmother wore this with unusual pride. I remember Grandfather in a dark jacket and always a dark shirt. He had neither a beard nor moustache.

Neither Grandmother nor Grandfather obtained any sort of education; a fact that was quite understandable given the position of Jews in a Ukrainian village at the turn of the century. They lived in chronic destitution.

They had six children. Grandfather sewed hats in the small Ukrainian town of Shpola; the family moved there from Buki. Grandmother did day labor as a field worker. She gave birth to one of her six children right in a field. There was only one svitka for the entire family; because of this, the children went to school during the cold time of year in turn.

Grandmother was more observant than Grandfather. She got together to pray with other inhabitants in Shpola. After the war, in Mariupol, she regularly attended the prayer house that took the place of a traditional synagogue in that city.

During the war

During the civil war, Grandmother lived through fires in her own clay house that were set twice by bandits. During one of the pogroms, the Makhno bandits killed three of her brothers before her very eyes, and the fourth - Moishe - was badly hurt. Grandmother was able to save Moishe and care for him. In 1919 Moishe left for the United States with other relatives - I don't know their names - and Grandmother's sister, Klara, emigrated to Palestine that same year.

Fleeing from the Makhno band during one of the numerous Jewish pogroms during the civil war, my pregnant grandmother ran barefooted with her children in her arms over a field to an acquaintance who was not Jewish and who hid her and her children in a bundle of hay. The bandits, with cries and threats, threw themselves at the homeowner, demanding to be told where the runaways were. The owner made the bandits believe there were no strangers on his property. After poking the bundles of hay with spikes and thankfully not piercing Grandmother or her children, the bandits disappeared. It seemed that the Almighty himself protected that exceptional woman and her children. The strength of soul and kindness of Brana Peisekhovna couldn't help but bring sympathy and respect from her non - Jewish neighbors who, as I have already said, came to her aid. In saving her and her children, these people regularly risked their own lives.

After the beginning of World War II, when she had not had any chance to make evacuation plans, Grandmother, in my opinion, did another heroic feat, although she herself thought that she was just doing her duty as a wife and grandmother. After loading her ill husband, suffering from a lacerated stomach ulcer, into a wheelbarrow, she and her 3-year-old granddaughter set out on foot on the many-kilometer path to the Dniper River. After crossing the river on a raft, she found her daughter Fira, the granddaughter's mother, in Kharkov and they were evacuated together. She received a pension after the war, because of her son's death at the front, and she regularly gave her portion to the Jewish prayer house to help those families who had also lost their provider.

From the stories of relatives and my conversations with her, I place Grandmother in the ranks of unique personalities in terms of soul, strength, self-sacrifice to the point of self-denial, relationships to her husband, children and comrades in faith. Unbelievable bravery and optimistic belief in a happy ending, it seems, gave her the strength to fight for the survival of her family, both during the evil years of the civil war in Russia and during the years of indigence and oppression that accompanied the anti-Semitism of the Soviet period. It gave her the strength to live through even the years of the Holocaust. The Russian part of our family - my father, spouse and their relatives - loved and respected our grandmother, admiring her as much as her close Jewish family.

The only Jewish holiday that was celebrated at home during my grandmother's life and after her death was Passover. Already living in Mariupol after the war, Grandmother would buy a chicken at the market long before Passover and feed it on the balcony. Then, not long before the holiday she would take the chicken to the butcher. There was no synagogue in Buki, in the settlement of Shpola, where my grandmother and her family lived before the war, or in Mariupol. Matzot were baked at home by practicing Jews. Brana Peisekhovna enlisted all the females of our family for this ritual - adults and girls. Two types of matzot were baked on two wooden benches, with eggs and without. On Passover, a celebratory dinner was held, to which not only Jews, but also Russian Orthodox relatives were invited, as well as neighboring non-Jews.

I have always had a feeling of deep gratitude to my parents for the atmosphere in our family of national harmony between Jews and Russians, for the patience and tolerance with which they lived through difficult times and the unavoidable problems connected with civil cataclysms. Great love was the solid foundation not only for their marriage, but also for our Jewish-Russian clan. In the post-war housing crisis, my parents had seven people living in our little, two-room apartment.

My father graduated from the Moscow Institute of Agricultural Electrification and worked his whole life at the Azovstal factory, first as an engineer and then as the assistant head power-engineering specialist and head of the central laboratory. He worked enthusiastically, giving his all to his beloved work. During the war he was released from the draft because he was sent to Siberia, to the city of Stalinsk, to organize the defense industry there.

After finishing diplomatic school in Kiev before the war, my father refused a prestigious post in New Zealand, explaining that he "couldn't stay for long without the guardianship of the many Jewish relatives of my wife." Father was an atheist, which didn't stop him, a Russian, from respecting the religious passion of his mother-in-law and the people that surrounded her. Father died in Mariupol in 1968, mourned by all of us, both his Russian and Jewish relatives.

My mother was born in Buki. She first got on a train when she was 15, in 1929. Mother graduated from a pharmaceutical institute in Dnipropetrovsk. She lived in a dormitory in very difficult conditions, up to 30 people in one room. The years of my mother's study coincided with the period of complete famine in the Ukraine, and students who couldn't be helped by their parents were hit particularly hard. Before the war, from 1935 to 1941, and after the war, until 1968, Mother worked in pharmacies in Mariupol. During the first post-war years, she traveled by cart to all nearby villages to put the village pharmacies in working order.

After the war

Those who lived in the Soviet Union in the beginning of the 1950s, and those who only heard or read about this frightening time can imagine the condition of my family during this time, when my mother - a pharmacist by profession - was discriminated against simply because her nationality was the same as the nationality of those high-ranking doctors who were part of the "Doctors affair." The suffering of my mother and all our family was intensified by the atmosphere of mistrust and unproven accusations against any doctor or pharmacist with Jewish traits as well as the slanderous verbal attacks that malicious residents directed toward them.

Remembering atheism - an intrinsic and unavoidable part of the ideology preached by the USSR - I recall with some sadness how my mother, not long before her death, came to realize her belief in God, openly lamenting that it occurred so late in her life.

The history of all generations of my family, both sides: Jewish and Ukrainian, is permanently connected with the city of Mariupol, where the older generation spent most of their lives, and my generation and our children spent our whole lives. Mariupol is a very unique city compared to other Ukrainian cities. This is because it was founded by emigrants from Greece. Even in the 20th century, a portion of the residents were Greeks.
I don't know the statistics; I can only say that Jews in the city, before and after the war, were numerous. Jews first came to Mariupol following the Greeks, drawn by the trade opportunities and the relative proximity to Odessa and other ports in the Black Sea.

Pre-war Mariupol was a typical provincial town. Residential buildings were mostly two stories. My parents said that before the war there were only two five-story buildings in Mariupol. Horses and carts were the usual mode of transportation, even in the post-war period, after the city was liberated from the fascists. In pre-war Mariupol, there was no electricity, no piped water or sewage system. Candles were used for lighting. During the period of famine, from 1932 to 1934 and after, people baked their bread themselves from poor quality grain. After the war, when there was both electricity and water, I, and members of my family who were my age, often complained about the difficulties, the constant deficit of foodstuffs. My wise Jewish grandmother would cut off our complaints and we fell silent. "Don't complain!" Grandmother would say, "You have piped water, and you don't need to carry a yoke with buckets. You have electricity and you don't live by candlelight. You buy bread in the store and don't have to bake it from discarded grain."

My closest relatives, including my mother, couldn't remember the appearance of anti-Semitism before the war. If they did encounter it, then it was only sporadically, and most often, the people around them sided with them.

In the post-war period, Mariupol transformed its look and status, becoming an industrial city, thanks to such giants as the Azovstal factory. All ofthis couldn't help but influence the spread of culture, education and changed in the relationships between the citizens of Mariupol.
Having been raised by my family in a spirit of tolerance of other nationalities, but at the same time being proud of my connection to the Jewish nation on my mother's side, when I was 15 I met a young Russian - Anatoly Nikolau. We became friends, and eventually, when, in the late 1950s we both finished the Moscow Institute of Energetics, we married and moved back to Mariupol. During the 29 years of our marriage, and after my husband passed away in 1987, I thanked fate for the fact that I, in my youth, had made the right choice. My spouse was devoted not only to me and our son,

but also to my parents whom he treated like his own closest relatives. He was diagnosed at the age of 37 with stomach ulcers; he suffered the chronic pain in silence, afraid to worry my mother and me. Mother was so grateful to my husband for the support that he gave her after the death of my father that she traveled with me to Donetsk, where Anatoly was facing difficult surgery. My Jewish mother kept watch at her Russian son-in-law's bedside for a month.

Because I formed my identity in a Jewish family, with acquaintances, colleagues and neighbors of other nationalities, observing Jewish traditions seemed to me to be an essential attribute of my international family. And when changes in our country's life began in the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s, connected with a greater openness and respect for the other faiths, except Russian Orthodox, we all - Jews and half-Jews, culturally Russian and Ukrainian residents of Mariupol - welcomed the opening a few years ago of the first synagogue in the city, not minding that it was in a mere two classrooms of one of the city schools. I regretted the fact that my religious grandmother hadn't lived to this blessed time, when she could have regularly and openly attended synagogue. It is possible that even my mother would have come to believe in God not at the end of her life, in 1998, but much earlier had a legally functioning synagogue existed in the city. And it goes without saying that her correspondence with her close relatives who had emigrated to the USA and Palestine in 1919 would have been carried out not only by Grandmother, hidden from us, but also by my mother and myself - the younger generations of the family. The correspondence would have eagerly opened for us, possibly, a completely new world.

In the last decade of the 20th century, the religious life of the Jews of Mariupol blossomed, although unfortunately there were noticeably fewer Jews in the city. The synagogue drew in both elderly Orthodox and young believers, and the organization of a local Hesed and the Sochnut created the possibility for educational and entertainment events for the Jews and non-Jews. Volunteer work has also been set up.

Jews emigrated to Israel, the USA and Germany. Many young people left Mariupol to study in Israel. Jews traveling from Mariupol to Israel to visit and Israelis to Mariupol played a specific and positive role - there was a rise in interest in life in Israel. Often one could even see how non- Jewish residents eagerly questioned those returning from visits to Israel, and didn't hide their admiration.

Herta Coufalova
Sumperk
Czech Republic
Interviewer: Barbora Pokreis
Date of interview: November 2004

Mrs. Coufalova is a sprightly, vital older lady, who despite her advanced age has a big interest in literature and travel. She lives in a small Czech town called Sumperk, not far from her three daughters. Her biggest joy in life is her great-grandson Davidek. Daily she visits her granddaughter Lenka, who is a single mother, to help her out. Mrs. Coufalova is a very affable, intelligent lady with a sense of humor. The interview was made on the premises of the Jewish community in Brno at 3 Kapitan Jaros Avenue. Mrs. Coufalova answered our questions obligingly and willingly. The interview took place during two sessions.

My family background
Growing up
During the war
Post-war
Glossary

My family background

All of my grandparents, except for Grandma Hermina Reich, my mother's mother, came from Trebic. Both grandfathers - my father's father Hermann Glasner, and my mother's father Hermann Reich - were businessmen. The Reichs had a 'white goods' shop. They sold everything to do with white cloth, for example towels and dishcloths. The Glasners, as their name indicates, were in the glass business. They had a glass and porcelain shop.

My grandmother, Hermina Reich, nee Mayer was born on 9th July 1875 in Pohorelice in Southern Moravia. She died on 15th July 1944 in Auschwitz. She left Terezin 1 on the last transport of old people. Her husband, Herman Reich, was born on 12th March 1869, and died on 19th February 1929. I don't remember my grandfather very much. I was only three years old when he died. He would always borrow a horse-drawn sleigh and drive us around the surrounding villages.

My grandparents' mother tongue was German, but they also spoke Yiddish. I assume that they had a basic education. Grandma Reich went to a Jewish school in Pohorelice when she was young, because in Moravia people used to be very religious. My grandmother was a born businesswoman. After her husband's death she ran his white goods store for some time, eventually though she sold it.

My mother's grandparents lived on Dolni Street in Trebic, in a neighborhood called 'v Zidech' [At the Jews] - today that part of town is a UNESCO cultural heritage site. There were always a lot of Jews in Trebic. Even today, when there are none left, the town retains certain Jewish characteristics. My mother's parents owned a house, which stands to this day, on the main square, opposite the synagogue. The house was comprised of two larger rooms, one smaller one and a 'black kitchen' with fireplace. They already had electricity, but running water wasn't brought to that part of town until 1936 or 1937; until then they carried it from public pumps.

Despite the fact that my grandmother came from a religious family, she didn't wear a wig. One couldn't say that my grandfather was religious. He didn't wear a beard, payes or a kippah. Trebic had a modern Jewish community. Not even the cantor and rabbi wore a beard. Men wore black hats. I rarely saw them without a hat. They felt Jewish and went to the synagogue on the major religious holidays. They had kosher households, ate kosher meat and never mixed meat and dairy products.

My grandmother on my father's side was named Pavla Glasner, nee Orchstein. She was born in 1845 in Trebic and died there in 1930. Grandpa was named Hermann Glasner. He was born in the same year, and even in the same town as his wife. He died in 1922, also in Trebic. If it hadn't been for Mr. Hitler none of us would have ever set foot outside of that town. In their home town they had a shop named Hermann Glasner. My grandmother had the reputation of a very capable businesswoman. In the summer she used to sit in front of the shop and would always knit socks that were so well made that my father and his brother could never wear them out. I remember those socks to this day, even their color, grey and black. In the winter she also sat by the doorway of the shop, but inside, and knitted. She called people that came in and didn't buy anything 'Indians'. Where she got that name and why she called them that, I don't know.

The Glasners lived on the town square, to be exact, in a place then called 'U Piku'. Later they moved, as they say, only a few steps further on. They bought a larger house, which stands to this day. There they built a crossing, where via a footbridge people could get directly into the Jewish Town [ghetto in Trebic]. It was a large apartment with a spacious circular hall. My grandparents' house consisted of two small, four larger and three beautiful large rooms. They had electricity and running water. The only disadvantage I could see was that it didn't have a yard. In the beginning they had two maids, when they got older they sufficed with one. Grandpa employed six people in the shop. None of them were of Jewish origin.

My grandparents on my father's side didn't have a kosher household. They went to the synagogue sporadically, usually only during major religious holidays and at maskir. Otherwise they didn't. Grandpa didn't wear a beard or payes and my grandmother never wore a wig. These things weren't worn in Trebic, ours wasn't a religious town.

I don't remember much about the siblings of my grandparents, the Glasners. Grandpa had three siblings. Uncle Kurt lived in Vienna. Then there were Uncle Leo and Aunt Frida. Other than their names I don't know anything about them. My grandmother's siblings I don't remember at all.

In the days of my youth [the 1930s] Trebic had approximately 22,000 inhabitants, of those around 250 to 270 were people of Jewish faith [according to the 1930 census Trebic had 17,555 inhabitants]. Jews didn't live in just the ghetto any more, but had spread out all over town. At the end of World War I Jews inhabited the upper and lower streets, which formed the ghetto. This part of town was called Zamosti [Behind the Bridge]. As the Jewish population increased, the ghetto couldn't accommodate them all. Jews began to flow over to those parts of Trebic where Catholics lived. Because most of them made their living as merchants, they moved to the town square, where there was the greatest population density, this being good for business. At the beginning of the 1930s all of Trebic already had electricity. However, running water still wasn't everywhere. Water wasn't brought to all households until 1936 to 1938. All of the streets in town were paved with stone and not dirt streets.

We weren't Orthodox; in fact there weren't any Orthodox Jews in town [see Orthodox communities] 2. None of the men wore payes, a tallit or kippah. Despite this there lived among us even quite deeply religious people. Our family also kept up traditions. We always felt ourselves to be Jews.

There was only one synagogue in town, which stood on Dolni Street in Zidech [part of the former Jewish ghetto in Trebic]. After the war it was bought by the Czechoslovak Church. The town also had a prayer hall, which we used to visit in winter, during which the synagogue wasn't heated. The prayer hall also served as a school after the anti-Jewish laws [in the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia] 3 came into force.

The rabbi in Trebic was named Ingber. He came from Ruthenia [see Subcarpathia] 4, from a poor family. He had many children. He promoted reformed Judaism. We used to study Ivrit with him. He didn't lead us toward tradition, but rather to a modern, conscious life. For example, even in pre- World War II Trebic would you have found a mikveh or cheder. Izidor Polnauer was the shochet and at the same time the shammash.

Most Jews in town made their living as merchants. A large number of them owned textile shops. A typical Jewish shop was for example that of the Fuersts. They sold textiles and wool. There were also landowners like Mr. Goldmann, who had a large estate. You could also find a few tradesmen, such as tailors and shoemakers. Besides the store, our family also had a glass workshop.

My father was born on 17th February 1885 in Trebic. His name was Emanuel Glasner. My father's mother tongue was German, but besides this he also spoke Czech and Yiddish. He completed his basic schooling in Trebic. He studied business in Vienna. There he also began his compulsory military service, which lasted three years. That was in the year 1911. After the end of his term of service in 1914, World War I broke out, so he once again had to join up. He served on the Russian front, where he was captured. He didn't get back home until 1922. After he returned, he and his brother Wilhelm took over the family store Hermann Glasner. They were successful, and built up a large glass and porcelain shop.

Growing up

My mother, Irma Glasnerova, nee Reich, was born on 18th January 1902. I don't remember her Jewish name. My mother's native tongue was German, so she did her basic schooling in a German school. After that she graduated from a business academy, but that was already in Czech. She also spoke Yiddish. She spoke German with her parents, but Czech with us. Before she married she worked as a secretary in the Zubak factory. It was a large tannery. After her wedding she no longer worked, but took care of the household and of us children. We never had a nanny. She used to go on walks with us, taught us how to swim. She made my life miserable with piano. Every day after lunch I had to practice. In the beginning she always stood above me like Damocles' sword.

My parents never told me about how they met. They were married on 15th February 1925 in Trebic. The wedding ceremony was of course Jewish. It's said that on the day of the wedding my father had such a bad case of the flu that their wedding night came to nothing. For a long time after, my mother kept her wedding bouquet, made of elder and lilacs. She had it stored away in a box printed with a flower pattern.

My parents dressed according to the times. We lived well, and never knew hunger. We weren't poor, we had everything. Quite often someone would play the piano and everyone read a lot. We didn't have a car or radio. Our father didn't like it. We lived in the upper street, 92 Husova. It was in Zamosti, in Zidech. We had a large five-room house. Always cold, we constantly had to heat it. We didn't have running water yet, but my grandparents who lived on the town square did. Our house had a large garden. We didn't grow anything in it besides chives and parsley. Mother had roses planted there. In the garden there was a small bower with climbing roses on each side. Another bower was covered in climbing vines, whose tendrils meandered down the terrace. In the fall they had beautifully colored leaves.

Up to when I was ten we always had a maid at home. When the last one got married, my mother proclaimed that she didn't want another. My grandmother Hermina Reich was an extremely energetic, relatively young woman. According to her no one else knew how to cook, wash, clean and properly shop, so she did all these things herself.

We had a kosher household. We never mixed meat and dairy products. We had special, dedicated kitchen utensils. We also had special utensils for Passover; we would exchange them so that there wouldn't be any chametz left over. We didn't eat pork. We would go with our mother to the synagogue every Friday evening. Our father would go only on the major holidays and at maskir. At home we observed all holidays. During Sabbath Grandma recited the Kiddush and blessed the barkhes. Before that two candles would be lit. Once in a while my uncles would come for Sabbath, but otherwise we didn't usually have guests.

As a child I liked all the holidays, because each one had its special magic. I was one of the few children that liked going to the synagogue. Passover, that was a beautiful holiday. Before the holiday started we would clean the entire house. The Passover dishes would be brought down from the attic. We would put the everyday dishes in a box and carry it upstairs. The whole house was always topsy turvy. For Chanukkah we usually sang. My job was to each day light a candle, each day one additional one. We got gifts from our parents, not with each candle, but we did get some. For Sukkot we didn't have a tent [sukkah]. A tent was set up in front of the synagogue. I don't remember any more exactly how many people would meet in the tent, but there were a lot, mainly we children. The rabbi would always gather us around and tell us many stories about the holidays. The Kiddush was recited, and everyone got small barkhes. During Simchat Torah we walked around the synagogue with blue and white flags and each of us got a box of pastries. As a child I also liked Yom Kippur. At a very young age I began to fast and I was always very glad when I held out until the end. We then had a celebratory supper and the whole family went to the synagogue. For the first food after Yom Kippur we would have sweet-filled buns with coffee.

Our house had an extensive library. As I child I loved to read. Someone was always bothering me, so I would lock myself in the bathroom and read. I didn't care if there was a queue in front of the door. I was curious and read everything, but newspapers were my favorite. I inherited this passion from my father. I would read every single page. Each day we bought Lidove Noviny 5, the Morgen Post for Grandma, on Sunday we always read the Prager Tagblatt 6, which came every two weeks, and we were also used to having an illustrated newsmagazine and Narodni Politika. [Editor's note: the publisher of the paper Narodni Politika or (National Political Post) was the printing and publishing house Politika. Its philosophy during the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918-1938) was close to the Czechoslovak National Democrats. The paper was popular for its multi-page classified insert Maly oznamovatel.] Mother and Grandma read all sorts of books. Besides regular books we also had prayer books for all holidays at home. Those I have until this day. During the war our neighbor hid them away. After the war ended he defended himself that he had to burn The History of the Czech Nation, because he was afraid of the Gestapo, but he didn't even touch the prayer books, because he was a deeply religious Catholic.

I don't remember my parents' political opinions, they didn't interest me. They weren't members of any political party or organization. My father always said: "Do what you like, you can go to Sokol 7, to the Scouts [see Czech Scout Movement] 8, but always remain a Jewess.' It was his credo. My father always identified his nationality as Jewish, which after the war they changed to Czech. No one from our family was a member of any political party.

We didn't have any immediate Jewish neighbors, only Christians. They were very decent people, who treated me very well after the war. Those, about whom I thought who knows what they're really like, helped me very much. Conversely, those I expected would help me, would even have denied the nose between their eyes. We never had any problems with our neighbors due to our being Jewish.

My parents didn't like to socialize. They met only with their siblings. Mother had three siblings, my father nine. They would all meet up in Trebic, but most of them lived in Vienna. Most frequently we saw my aunt [Jenny Beer, nee Glasner], who lived in Brno. My father was among people all day and didn't need any additional company. He was a passionate tarot player. Each Sunday he would go to the cafe U Ceplichalu. That was where the Jewish society met and where social life took place. During the week he was also used to taking off for an hour here and there, so he could play cards.

We weren't used to going anywhere on holidays. One could say that we had holidays all year round. Our mother was at home with us all day. She would take us on outings. We used to go swimming in local Trebic ponds. On Sunday we would manage to cajole Father into also coming along. Those were different times than now.

My father was one of nine children. He spent most of his time with his brother Wilhelm, with whom he took over grandpa's glass and porcelain store. Uncle Wilhelm had four children. All of them had a high-school education and two of them began studies at university. My cousins Mordecai and Leo [the sons of Wilhelm Glasner] were fervent Zionists. Mordecai, who they called Modsche, left in 1927 for Palestine. Cousin Leo followed him in 1938. Their sister, whose name I don't remember, met a man who came to Trebic from Palestine on vacation. They were married in 1935. Their wedding was the last big Jewish wedding in Trebic. To this day we wonder where the Glasners got top hats and a carriage. The young couple settled in Palestine. They were all chalutzim and lived in kibbutzim. Their youngest sister Helena stayed in Trebic. I visited her often, despite the fact that she was older than I. She didn't survive World War II. She died in Auschwitz.

Another of Father's brothers, Samuel, lived in Prague. Yet another, Michael, lived in Vienna. My father's sisters were named Lotte, Jenny, Erna, Klementina and Berta. They all married and belonged to the middle class, except for Aunt Erna, who was better off. Her husband, Max Durnheim was the director of the Danube Steamship Company in Vienna [Editor's note: the royally patented company was created in 1830 as a joint-stock company, on the basis of a patent registered by private individuals in 1828. The first steamship traveled in 1830 from Ebersdorf to Pest, but regular connections between Vienna and Pest weren't established until 1831. This route was soon expanded by a connection between Vienna and Bratislava and between Bratislava and the Lower Danube. The Danube Steamship Co. soon became the largest transport company and had a great influence on the development of transportation in Hungary. The company was headquartered in Vienna.] Almost all of my father's siblings died during the Holocaust. Only Uncle Samuel managed to survive.

My mother had three brothers, but I don't remember them much. Uncle Walter, along with his wife Hana and daughter Ruth, died in Poland during the Holocaust. The same fate met Uncle Fritz and his wife Feodora. Their daughter Emma however managed to survive. Today she lives in Montreal, in Canada. The last of my mother's brothers, Uncle Bertold, died in 1945 during a death march. His wife Franzi [Franciska Reichova, nee Kohoutovas] and son Peter didn't survive the war either.

We saw our relatives in Trebic on a daily basis. Every day I would run around and visit everyone to find out what was going on. We saw our relatives from Vienna only during summer vacation, because during that time they would always come to Trebic for a week. My father's sister Jenny and her husband used to come from Brno to visit us fairly often, as they had a car. They used to come, as one would say these days, 'for a cup of coffee'.

I was born on 23rd January 1926 in Trebic. During childhood I spent most of my time with my mother and grandmother Hermina. We never had a nanny. I would say that I was brought up by all of my relatives. I was an active child, and was always running around somewhere. My mother wanted me to take piano lessons, become a Scout, go to Sokol, and take German, English... I was always off at some lessons or activity. I loved to read, I read everything that came into my hands.

My school was close to home, on the same street. As soon as I ran down our steps, I was at municipal school. After municipal school 9 I went to council school 10 because my father wanted me to have a practical education. Today there is a medical school in the building of the former council school. In the third year of council school I was accepted at a business academy, but I didn't get the chance to start it. It was the year 1939 and regulations were passed that expelled Jewish children from schools [see Exclusion of Jews from schools in the Protectorate] 11.

I liked all subjects in school, except for math and physics, but my favorites were history, geography and literature. My favorite teachers were Mr. Vagner, who taught us geography and history, and my Czech teacher. They were excellent teachers. They knew how to attract the children's interest, and also had the appropriate literature for teaching. Until 1937 I never felt any anti-Semitism in school. At that time the school had a stupid catechism teacher, I don't remember his name, and at Easter told some girl, the types that sat only in church, that the preparation of matzot involves using the blood of Christian virgins and that we Jews crucified Jesus Christ. Those girls then began to bully me. They would dip my pigtails in ink, and constantly harassed me with various stupid comments. Truth be told, I didn't sit back and take it, I yelled at them but good. It ended up being a big to-do. My father had to come to school. After that things settled down.

As I child I had a busy schedule. I was always off somewhere: twice a week to piano lessons, twice weekly German, twice weekly English, twice weekly exercise at Sokol, and once a week to the Scouts. I loved scouting. Once a week we had a meeting where everyone wore a brown kerchief around their neck. We organized various trips, which every year culminated in summer camp. I went to three in all. We used to go on outings in the surrounding countryside, along the Jihlava River. Ski trips cost 50 halers and for another 50 halers we ordered tea with rum and felt like kings. The scout troop had only a few of Jewish members. Most Jews went to Sokol. Sokol was an athletic organization and similarly to the scouts organized various summer camps. A couple of years before the war my father forbade me from attending it. I never found out why, but the truth is that its management was quite chauvinistic.

I was the spitting image of my father and everywhere I went people recognized me and said: 'You must be Manka [a diminutive of Emanuela], Glasner's daughter.' Of course, when they came into my father's store, they would immediately tell him where they had met his daughter. I loved my father, even more than my mother. It's just that it really annoyed me that I was recognized everywhere I went.

I was a sociable child. I had many friends, both from school and from among my relatives. My friends were mostly non-Jews, because there weren't many Jews of my age in Trebic. We had this gang of school friends. We would go bicycling around the outskirts of town. I still see three of my former classmates, even now that we're all retired. They were nice girls, and never cared that I was Jewish.

My brother Harry Glasner was born on 20th September 1929. We had a good relationship, though it's true that I used to beat him to a pulp. I guess I was jealous of him, because I was a hulk and he was my exact opposite. To me they were always saying: 'You're eating again already!' and to him: 'Please, just one more bite...'. When hard times came, my parents would hide meat and roasts for him, because I didn't need it. Harry finished only four years of public school. He had his bar mitzvah in Terezin; it was a very simple ceremony. Only my grandmother Hermina Reich and I were there. The ceremony took place in a room that had been adapted as a prayer hall. He was for the first time summoned to the Torah and they accepted him into the society of men. I don't know who prepared him; we weren't together much. I had to go to work. He lived at L 417, a youth home. They deported him to Auschwitz on 16th October 1944. They sent him straight to the gas chamber.

We had religion lessons twice a week, where we studied Ivrit from textbooks by Dr. Feder. Later I got to know him personally in Terezin, where he did a lot for us. In Trebic we were led to be conscious of our Jewishness, but not to a religious lifestyle. At home I studied with my mother, or alone. My father was always in the store. The shop was open from 6am to 12pm and then from 12.30 to 6pm. After work I would always run to meet him. Every Friday evening and Saturday, before I started to attend school, my mother and I would go to the synagogue together.

During my childhood I never experienced any anti-Semitism. I'm sure it was there, just not that apparent. In the year 1939, when they threw all Jews out of school, they opened a so-called Alia school in the building where the prayer hall was. This school was open until 1941, when the Gestapo closed it. We were even taught by university professors who had been forbidden to teach otherwise. We also studied religion. We studied Hebrew from a book that had been published by Rabbi Feder, so that we would be able to read religious texts. They were preparing us for emigration to Israel. After the school in Trebic was closed I used to go to Brno, where a similar school had been opened, in the building of the Jewish community [on today's Kapitan Jaros Avenue]. There was even a Jewish high school in Hybesova Street, which had a large garden. There we studied agricultural methods. Our teacher was Mrs. Haas, the wife of composer Pavel Haas. [Haas, Pavel: (1899-1944): composer, born in Brno died in Auschwitz.] It was a good school, because they taught us practical subjects that were very useful to us in later life.

During the war

The anti-Jewish laws gradually changed our lives. We had to give up our jewelry, fur coats. We didn't have a radio, because my father didn't like it. I even had do give up my bicycle that I had gotten in 1938. The Gestapo arrested my father in 1941 and took him away to Jihlava. We never saw him again. We never found out the reason for his arrest. I think that our neighbor, who worked for the police, denounced him. He was at our place twice during house searches by the Gestapo. After my father was arrested they froze our bank accounts. We had no cash. Everything stayed in the store. In December 1941 we got a telegram in which was written: 'Ihr Ehemann ist im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz verstorben.' [German for 'Your husband died in the Auschwitz concentration camp']. In October of 1941 the Gestapo summoned my mother as well; it was on the second day of the Rosh Hashanah holiday. That was the last time that I saw her. From Jihlava they sent her straight to Ravensbruck 12. I and my grandma Hermina remained alone.

During this time Jews were being expelled from certain towns, for example Jihlava, which had to be judenfrei 13. Most of the Jews from Jihlava moved to Trebic, to the former Jewish ghetto in Zamosti. There were seven of us crammed into our house, I and my brother, Grandma, Uncle and Aunt Lang and their children Ludka and Petrik. Quite enough for one toilet and kitchen. Food was distributed via a system of coupons. We could only go shopping at a certain time, in only one store. We used to get a much smaller ration than Aryans. Despite the bad times there were people that risked their lives and helped us. Mr. Novacek, my father's friend from World War I, used to come visit us. He would bring cheese, milk and eggs. He also helped a lot after the war. A few years after the fall of the German Fascist regime the Communists sent him off to the Jeseniky Mountains where the poor man died.

We had no money, our bank accounts were blocked. We had to gradually sell our furniture, a beautiful Petrof piano... In May of 1942 an edict was passed that all Jews had to leave Trebic. Two transports set out from the region of Jihlava, to which Trebic belongs. In March or April a list of all Jews was drawn up and in May we gathered in the Trebic high school. We were there for only a short time. They sent us to Terezin via the AW transport. Each person was allowed a maximum of 50 kilos of luggage. At that time the trains didn't travel directly to Terezin. We got off in Bohusov and from there walked to Terezin. We younger ones managed the trip and the heavy load, but for older people it must have been very exhausting. We tried to help them with their luggage. After we arrived at the Terezin ghetto we each got a registration number and a mattress. They divided us up and put us into barracks. I went to the Hamburg barracks, while my grandmother went to the Dresden barracks. During the war years in Trebic living conditions hadn't been rosy, but a person could always bathe and have some sort of privacy, while in Terezin it was terrible. As time passed and we got to Auschwitz, Terezin seemed like Mecca.

We young ones were lucky in that we could work. At first they employed me in the laundry, where I worked with a friend of my father's, Mrs. Goldman. I worked there for about three quarters of a year. After that came work in the fields and gardening. While doing this work in Terezin I got into the Zionist association Irgun Dalet. Life was easier when you belonged to some sort of social circle. With the passage of time the association ceased to exist, because the transports that were constantly leaving Terezin completely wiped Irgun Dalet out. Most of the people that belonged to this association, naturally those that survived, emigrated to Palestine after the war.

My last job in the ghetto was helping out in the bakery. It was extremely hard physical work. On the other hand, I have to say, though it may sound stupid, that I always tried to work somewhere where it was possible to steal something. Though the fact that 'Thou shalt not steal' is one of God's commandments, stealing food was a question of life or death. In the ghetto my friend Janecek was in the function of staff captain. You could say that in his function he was practically on the same level as the Germans. Once he brought his mother five radishes. They found out about it and immediately punished him. In the ghetto a person did things that he would have condemned in normal daily life. The luckiest though were those that managed to get work outside of the Terezin ghetto gates.

In Terezin I also met my aunt Erna Durnheim, my father's sister with her husband, who unfortunately died there. Life in Terezin was very cruel for old people. Most of them didn't know how to get to anything, mainly to food, where to find it.

When we came to Terezin, we weren't allowed to move about freely, as there were still non-Jews living there. In the year 1943 there were no more Aryans in the ghetto, so we could then freely move about. After work I would always run to visit my grandma in the Dresden barracks, because I was in the Hamburg barracks and my brother in L 417. That was a youth home - Jugendheim, where there were only boys. After the original inhabitants left and there were free houses, we got into L 316 thanks to connections. There were 16 of us girls in one room. We had double bunk beds. There were a larger number of rooms. We were lucky, because there was also a bathroom in the house. In 1943 there were an awful lot of fleas and bedbugs in the ghetto. There were so many of them that we couldn't even sleep, we had to drag our mattresses out on the terrace, and slept there. A group of men, called Entwesung [German for 'disinfestation'], would gas the houses. It was done in stages, at that time we had to move out. The cause of the epidemic was overcrowding and insufficient hygiene. After all, they were old houses. There was also a large percentage of old people living there, those I felt the most sorry for. Their buildings were the most disease- ridden.

There were very dedicated doctors in the ghetto. They had a minimum of medicines at their disposal, but tried to do the best they could. Dr. Hans Schaffa was a very selfless person. He was born in Mikulov. Before the war he worked as a pediatrician in a Brno hospital. He was transported to Terezin on the first AW transport in May 1942. In Terezin, despite great obstacles and difficulties he established a children's hospital in one of the buildings, including a tuberculosis ward. It wasn't anything big, but in that time and place it was a miracle! He helped many children, unfortunately most of them, just like the hospital employees, died. Funerals in Terezin weren't carried out in any traditional way, there were carts drawn by people that would come along the street. The dead bodies would be placed on them. Later a crematorium was built. When a lot of ashes built up they would be dumped into the Odra River. Nowadays there is a large cemetery on that spot.

Terezin's self-government was a big plus. Cultural life in Terezin became an unforgettable experience for me. I remember the conductor Rafael Schaechter, who was from Brno. He managed to organize a beautiful concert. His concerts weren't officially allowed in the ghetto, but for people that loved music it was balsam for the soul. His last concert in Terezin was Mozart's Requiem. I will never forget this performance of Mozart's work, even though I've heard it several times since the end of the war. When the performance was near, and the compositions were learned, often the musicians were designated for transport. There were always talents to work with to be found. I heard the Requiem there, and the Bartered Bride [opera by Bedrich Smetana], sung by a world-famous soprano from Hamburg. The musicians had to interrupt their career while still young. I had the opportunity to hear Gideon Klein sing, and then Vava [Vlasta] Schonova, later she changed her name to Sanova. She used to live in Haifa. As an actress she had no success in any Israeli theater. So she started working in radio. After the war we met twice. The first time was in May 1965: we were on a beautiful trip in Bet She'an together. Towards the end of her life she suffered from cancer. From Haifa she moved to Jerusalem to be with her daughter, an Orthodox Jewess. She died a few years ago in Israel. That cultural life helped us. For the young there were various educational activities and lectures. A whole lot was done for us, the young people, in terms of education and various lectures.

Education wasn't formally taken care of. The little that was done for young people had to be done on the sly. We were taught by university professors. They did a great service; even so they put them on the transports. I remember Willy Groag, who came from Prostejov. [Groag, Willy (b. 1914): Czech painter, doctorate in Chemistry. He started drawing in Theresienstadt, where he taught the children. Groag emigrated to the Kibbutz Maanit in 1945. He worked in agriculture, art was his hobby. Later he worked in painting and silk-screen printing. He first exhibited at age 77.] In Terezin he founded a home for young girls. He was constantly fighting dissolution and illiteracy, despite having to do most things on the sly. He survived the war in Terezin together with his wife Madla. After the liberation they emigrated to Palestine. Madla was one of the first victims of polio that broke out in Israel in the 1950s. Groag married again. He had a daughter from his first marriage and a daughter and son from the second. He lived in the Maanit kibbutz, where he built a factory, what kind I don't remember. He was and still is a person respected everywhere where his former wards live. Later on he established a fund for university studies that bears his name.

I was in Terezin from 22nd May 1942 until 16th October 1944. I was in transport AW-546. We traveled under horrible conditions, I don't remember any more for how many days we traveled there. In Auschwitz they gave me the number JR 1143. Our transports, though we didn't know it at the time, were liquidation transports of 2,000. October transports weren't tattooed, because the Germans didn't have the time any more. On the ramp we met a Slovak transport. There I ran into my cousin from Bratislava. She had her son Petrik with her, who was about four or five. They sent them straight to the gas chamber; the same happened to my brother. There were soldiers standing on the ramp, and they were sending us either to the right or to the left. With the wave of a hand we were fated for either life or death. But even life wasn't worth a whole lot. There were masses of people there, there were 200 of us just from Trebic alone, but at the same time there were 1,000 and 2,000-person transports arriving. We mixed in with Slovak and Hungarian transports. Before we knew what was happening, our family was scattered among them. When mothers didn't want to give up their children, they went with them to the gas chamber.

Those of us that were sent to the other side had to strip naked. We stood in a large hall where they looked us over again to see what we looked like. I guess I was in such shock that it didn't seem at all strange to me to be standing there naked. They herded us into showers; at that time we didn't yet know that we could have been gassed, we didn't learn that until later. We received these awful rags and wooden shoes; they didn't care if they fit us or not. And so we became people with less value than your average dog. Then they shaved us all, one group shaved our heads, another our armpits, yet another our genitals. Then they herded us all into the showers again, and back out, wet. At that time it was already cold out, because it was October. I got a skirt so short that my butt stuck out of it. I tore the lining out of the skirt and three of us made headscarves out of it. It was a flowered skirt, and the wooden shoes on top of that, well, we looked like Gypsies.

I was in Auschwitz for six weeks, and then some of us were picked for work in Kurzbach. Kurzbach is in Silesia, I found that out later when I was in Israel, because there they've got everything precisely mapped out. It was a small village. There they herded us onto a farm. In the middle of the farmyard there was a pump: when we saw it we all immediately went over to it and washed ourselves. I didn't matter at all to us that it was cold out. Then they herded us into a hayloft, where there were three-story bunk beds. Each one of us got her own blanket. Two of us would always huddle together and cover ourselves with two blankets so we would be warmer. At that time I looked so horrible that the camp commander felt sorry for me. He got me stockings and socks, and so I was a bit more warmly dressed. He was a very decent man, and despite the bad conditions he would always try to make sure that in the evening we got hot soup, hot coffee with a piece of bread weighing about 20 - 25 grams, jam or margarine. The SS women in the camp were horrible beasts; the men were all right.

In Kurzbach we worked in the forest. Each time two women would get two tree trunks to carry. One was put on each shoulder, and we would then walk back. We would go twice a day. We also dug roads for tanks. It was work just for the sake of working, despite this it was extremely hard. We had no time to rest; they were always chasing us off somewhere. We dug up tree roots in the forest for the army, because they were laying underground telephone lines. At that time I was so exhausted that I fainted; my friends worked at reviving me until I was finally back on my feet. I was lucky that they didn't shoot me: we had a guard there that loved to shoot. That was the first and last time that I fainted. The work seemed to be endless, maybe it wasn't, maybe it just seemed that way, at that time we were basically useless.

On 23rd January 23, 1945, on the day of my 19th birthday, I got a wonderful gift. They sent us out of Kurzbach on a death march; of course we didn't know at the time that it would later be known by this name. What an unforgettable birthday gift! There was a lot of snow and it was very cold. The first night they herded us into a hayloft in a village named Wohlau. The Germans were driving us all the way to Gross-Rosen camp 14. They marched along with us, also on foot, but at least they could stop, have a bite to eat, and were warmly dressed. We got nothing. Well, there, amidst a lot of shouting they forced us to strip naked outside. They herded us into showers and then back out into the cold and gave us lice-ridden dresses. To this day I'm amazed how we managed to survive all of those horrors, but a person had that sporting spirit. And despite difficulties we managed to keep ourselves relatively clean.

The other girls' hair hadn't grown back yet. I always had a lot of hair which grew quickly. When they gave us those lice-ridden rags, that was the end. We saw boys that we knew from Terezin; they were driving those poor wretches further onwards. The next day they loaded us into open rail wagons. They were so crowded that we couldn't even stand on both feet. First they transported us to Weimar. They wanted to put us into Buchenwald 15, but it was already overflowing. We remained standing at the train station. It was a beautiful winter's day, the sun was shining. At noon they started to bomb Weimar. A few bombs also fell on the train station. The English didn't know that all those prisoners were standing there at the station. Our locomotive got hit. Pieces fell into our wagon as well, we had some casualties. We were so deadened that we laid the corpses in a pile and could finally sit down in that overcrowded wagon. I and my girlfriend Liza were lucky. We had met in Terezin; she had been a teacher at the youth home. She was talented, already then she could speak French and English perfectly. We put the dead into one pile and then could sit down. During the trip we got nothing to eat or drink.

Then we just continued on and on. We came to some sort of small station. There, amid a lot of shouting, we had to get off the train. Later we learned that it was Bergen-Belsen and that we were somewhere near Hanover. That camp was the worst of all, true hell. This was already in February 1945, and there they were all like beasts, mainly the SS women, they were horrible. There we had nothing: there was no water, no food. We were exhausted, we slept on just a bare concrete floor, and to top it all off one Polish woman stole my wooden shoes. There was no hygiene, diseases spread, and horrible runs. I also got infected. Thanks to the girls and mainly Liza I survived, because there was always someone worse off and someone better off. We dragged each other to roll calls, and when they counted us from the front, then they held me from the back, and conversely, when they counted us from the back, then they held me from the front. One day some girls from Hamburg arrived, they had been on cleanup details. When the front started to draw near they herded them off to Belsen. They weren't as badly off as we were, at that time they gave me a spoonful of sugar.

They liberated us at the last moment, it was 12th May 1945. The soldiers carried me out as one of the dead. I'll never forget how I frightened those young men when I piped up that I was alive. They carried me off to the field hospital. I always said to myself: 'My God, what are they going to do, we're so dirty and lice-ridden.' In those days there was the miracle of DDT powder, they covered us in it, and truly even deloused us. We got clean nightshirts. They put us up in German barracks. Those of us that were very badly off were actually lucky, because those who weren't quite so sick ate meat and canned food and that was the end of them. I know that it's rude, but it was said that they 'shat themselves to death'. I couldn't even walk; I weighed about 34 kilos. It was strange to see Germans, how they were suddenly submissive and small, and how they had to carry water. Many of them were also killed, as people who still had the strength to do it lynched them. I wasn't vindictive: I can't even kill a chicken, let alone a person.

Next there came a Red Cross program where each country took in prisoners for recuperation. About 10,000 Czechs were taken to Sweden. First a hospital train took us to Lubeck, and there they transferred us onto a Swedish Red Cross ship. It was a major act of bravery, as the whole sea was still mined. We went to Stockholm by ship, from there they took us to Sigtuna. During the school year Sigtuna was full of high-school students. In a large central building there was a gymnasium, we lived in small multi- story three-room houses. After reconvalescence they took us to Ritzbrunn- Ryd, which was between Malmo and Goteborg. It's a small spa in southern Sweden. There we got clothing and five Swedish crowns a week for pocket money. I spent all my money on lemons, because the first few days I ate only lemons. We had it very good there. In October 1945 the first repatriation transport arrived. I decided to go home, after all, what if my mother was alive? I had three cousins in Israel, two boys and a girl, who wanted me to come and stay with them. I actually wanted to, but first I returned to Trebic. About eighty of us went home on the first transport. We arrived in Lubeck. Of course our officers had nothing ready for us. They stuck us in a Serbian camp, everyone was drunk. The English declared that we couldn't stay there and took us in. They took very good care of us, we went to concerts and out dancing, that was the first time in my life that I had danced. After four or five days we were able to continue on to Prague. There I had an uncle, his wife was an Aryan. They lived in Smichov, so they were there waiting for me. I stayed with them for only a few days. Then I returned to Trebic.

I had different plans, reality was also different. I expected that I would get the house and store back and that I would sell it, or rent it out. I wanted to attend school and wanted to go to Israel. All of my friends were there, and my cousins. But it all ended up differently. I didn't get the house back. They gave me the store back in March or April. One morning about two months later I opened up an official gazette and there it was: 'The company Hermann Glaser has been nationalized retroactively to February 1948'. Soon after the property manager showed up as well, I think his name was Kadanka. Earlier he had been a big member of the People's Party and in February he had changed into a big communist. He was a capable person, but acted repugnantly. There were also those that managed to get their property back because they had loyal employees. Our Mrs. Krista was very capable and hard-working, but not loyal.

Post-war

There were a few people that helped me after the war. One lady came to see me and said: 'Herticka, come over, we've got your duvets'. It seems that my grandma had ordered new feather duvets - for my brother and for me. And so after the war I had two duvets and four pillows: in those days that was big property. Our neighbor was a pious Catholic. He had hidden away a lot of our things, among them also our prayer books The Five Books of Moses, Machzor, tallit and tefillin. As I told you earlier: After the war he defended the fact that he had to burn the History of the Czech Nation because he was afraid of the Gestapo. But he didn't touch the prayer books because he was such a deeply religious Catholic. There were decent people, but there were also hyenas among them.

Before I got married, I lived with our neighbor in Zamosti. I couldn't stay there long because they only had one room and a kitchen. At that time I got an offer from Mr. Neuman, who had also returned, to take care of his house while he was in Prague. It was a large house with a beautiful bathroom. I had a small room with a separate entrance. I took care of it, and when it was being painted, I also cleaned the whole place. When they returned to Trebic, his wife ungraciously threw me out. The reason she gave me was that she wanted to move her parents in. At that time I was already going out with Karl - my future husband - and he slept over there once in a while.

If it hadn't been for my friend Lucy we would have both ended up on the street. They had a beautiful tailor's workshop and let us use part of it. My husband divided the workshop with a partition. This created a large room. When Janka [Jana Kubikova, nee Coufalova] was born, she slept in a baby blanket. It was an adventure. The toilet was at the other end of the courtyard. We had to go down a spiral staircase, through a long hallway and across the courtyard to get to it. Today I would barely make it there. A person was young then, and told himself that he had to get through it. That was also one of the reasons we left Trebic. Karel couldn't find work, partly also because of me, because I was a 'capitalist', even though I had nothing. And so in 1949 we picked up and left for Sumperk.

When I returned after the war, no one cared that I had no place to stay. A clerk at the town hall told me that I should change my name, because Glasner sounds Jewish. I answered why should I change my name if Gottwald can be named Gottwald and Fierlinger be named Fierlinger? My parents never shamed our name, they always paid their taxes. I hope that I'll never do anything to cast our name into disrepute either. I think that after the war it was worse than before, because some people had property fall into their lap. Everyone managed to tear off a piece for himself. When you walk around Trebic today, just imagine that the entire main square, especially the lower square, those were all Jewish houses. No one talks about that today.

I very much wanted to leave for Israel, but I got married. My husband was a Catholic, and didn't have any interest in Israel. In 1947 our daughter Jana was born, and everything became complicated. During the aliyah in 1948, I also wanted very much to leave. He said I could go, but our child would stay. So I stayed.

In December 1945 I started working in our store. Four years later we moved to Sumperk. At first I devoted myself to bringing up my firstborn daughter, and later I found a job, for six months, in a furniture fabric factory. In the meantime I had two more daughters and I remained at home. After my maternity leave ended I went on to work for twelve years in television. I left my job after a change in management. I didn't like my new boss. Every apprentice had a higher salary than I did. My last employer was the Grand Hotel in Sumperk. At first I worked as a receptionist and eventually became the reception manager. I very much enjoyed my work. One had the chance to meet interesting people. We had many clients, because there was a lot of industry in the region - wood, paper and metallurgy. There were the Rapotin glass works, and a paper mill in Velke Glosiny where they manufacture handmade paper to this day.

I never joined any political party because I'm not a submissive person and I don't like only one line of thought and respect the opinions of others. I never held a person's political opinion against him. I don't understand people who in the name of ideology gave up their family, studies, even their life. Many people lost their lives in the name of ideology, for example Slansky 16 and Sverma 17. The Slansky trial 18 was manipulated, that was known even then. Only now do people talk about it openly, but that won't bring those people back to life. People are short- sighted and forgetful. Although today you can go to the store and find everything, first you have to look and see what you've got in your pocket. It's human nature to want to have everything, but we've all got different abilities.

During the events of 1968 [see Prague Spring] 19 we were at our cottage. At night I awoke to the sound of airplanes above us. My husband said to me that it was probably the Russians on maneuvers. Well, they weren't just maneuvering. Polish soldiers came to our region, they were everywhere. At that time there were about a thousand Russians there. Those boys were wretches; they lived in horrible conditions and were beaten. Their pay was seven crowns per day, when they couldn't stand it any longer they would of course run away. They left behind a devastated environment. Of course people were glad that they were gone, and now they reminisce about the good old days. They don't realize that we had to pay for all those advantages ourselves.

Neither I nor my husband were ever members of any socialist organization. We were only passive members of the ROH 20. We didn't go on recreation trips with them. My husband worked in the sawmills in Northern Moravia via which they used to be organized. I had to put up with them all year, and then on top of that to have to go on vacation with them, that was out of the question. When we didn't have money for a vacation, we would go camping on pastures by the reservoir.

At work I never hid the fact that I was Jewish. When I working at the Grand [Hotel Grand], that might have been the 1980s by then, we had this one trainee. One day she came to me and asked if she could ask me something. She had heard that supposedly I was Jewish. I answered that yes, I was. She looked at me and said: 'You're just like rest of us.' And what do you think, that we climb trees like monkeys, and that each one of us has to have some sort of nose? She was a pleasant, clever girl from Prague. People are prejudiced against foreign ethnicities. Today a similar problem exists with Gypsies. Those people can't help the fact that they live so poorly, there are some among them that are starting to make their way up. But that isn't only the first generation, because even their grandparents had to be civilized. When they come from Romania, from Slovakia, they don't know how to use the WC and that there's such a thing as running water. That's nature, when we don't know something, we destroy it. It's a mistake to leave it be, it's also a ghetto. First people fought to open the ghetto, then to close it.

My husband, Karel Coufal, was born in 1926. He was from Trebic. We had already known each other in public school. After the war, food coupons were given out once a month, and he was in charge of this. Because I'm very disorganized, it would regularly happen that I wouldn't pick up my coupons until I had no food left at home. However, it was necessary to also bring along your identification, which I had of course misplaced somewhere. So that's how we met, at the food coupon distribution window. Soon we started dating. We had common interests and friends. A person needed to have something in common with the other.

We were married on 30th August 1947 at the Trebic city hall. I had a light blue wedding dress with short sleeves. We were both absent-minded and so we forgot about the bouquet. At the last moment I had one made by Mr. Pavlik so that my mother's friends wouldn't say 'that Coufal didn't even give her a bouquet'. As a wedding gift we got a basketful of pastries. The wedding banquet menu was very simple - chicken with new potatoes and cucumber salad. In the end all of our friends and acquaintances showed up and what we had planned as a small wedding turned into a big feast. Before the wedding Karel had had a goodbye party and for a long time had the feeling that his 'yes' wasn't pure.

I've never had a good relationship with my mother-in-law Leopolda and my sister-in-law Slavka, because they didn't like the fact that I'm Jewish. When our oldest daughter Janka was born, she rather left for Slovakia. That's why our children didn't go visit them during summer vacation. We only met at Easter and during summer vacation. In those days we used to go to our cottage in Trebic for longer periods of time. Grandmother never babysat the children.

Karel attended an industrial technical high school in Sumperk. He was always ambitious. He studied to be a machine operator, electrician, auto- mechanic and projectionist. In his old age he finished a welding course at the Slovak Technical University in Bratislava. He worked his whole life in the Northern Moravian sawmills as chief of mechanization.

In Sumperk we used to live across from the city hall. I was an old three- bedroom apartment, so it had high 3.2 meter ceilings and the rooms were 7.5 x 5.5 meters. It was always quite lively, because during summer vacation we had up to eight children at our place. They used to ride their tricycles in our front hall; once in a while they broke something. There was no shortage of injuries, I remember how once my daughter Helena [Mikulova, nee Coufalova] flew through a glass door and smashed her knee. After my husband's death I moved into a small two-bedroom apartment in the center of town. The bus and train station were nearby, as well as a health clinic. My husband and I had never had any inclination towards amassing property. We had a car, a cottage in Kuty, children and grandchildren.

I didn't bring up my children in the Jewish faith. When they were small, they didn't even know that I was Jewish. They only knew that was going to Brno, or that I was going to Prague for a Terezin reunion. Now that they are older, they're quite interested in it, they read the magazine Rosh Chodesh and the Jewish almanac. I tried to bring them up in a tolerant fashion; they weren't brought up in any religion so that they could then freely choose on their own.

We didn't observe Jewish holidays at home, because I lost my desire for keeping traditions. At Christmas my husband would decorate the tree. We had a festive supper and the children got gifts. We would spend Easter by the river in Trebic. Of course we would paint Easter eggs and on Easter Monday our children's classmates would come over to visit.

Our friends weren't Jews, because there weren't any Jews of my age in Sumperk or its surroundings. My girlfriends aren't alive any more. Two of them were in Prague and one in Sumperk. We got to know each other through our children. They moved from Most when little Jana was about five. We used to go on walks, to the theatre, and to classical music concerts.

Our oldest daughter, Jana, was born in 1947 in Trebic. She went to elementary school in Sumperk. She studied photography at a secondary school in Brno. After graduation she got a job in a metallurgical research institute and worked there until her retirement. She married twice. The children were like real siblings. Lenka has her own apartment and lives there with her son David who was born in 2003. Martin lives in Zlin, his wife is named Renata. They have a seven year old son, Honzik [Honza, Jan - Honza is a less formal version of the name Jan. It comes from the German name Hans, short for the German equivalent to Jan, Johannes].

Jitka was born in the year 1951. She is twice happily divorced and childless. Jitka graduated from library science at secondary school. She has her own bookstore in Sumperk. Currently she also employs my youngest daughter Helen. Helen was born in 1952, and went to mechanical-technical secondary school. Her husband is named Jozef Mikula. They have two children together, Jitka and Jozef. She lives in a house with a garden and has a partial disability pension. Jozef is a carpenter and Jitka a student at police academy.

I was happy when the state of Israel was created in 1948 and was sad that I couldn't go there. People went there out of idealism. They went to work in the fields and there was always a shomer - a guard with a gun - with them. They lived in primitive houses; parents didn't sleep with their children, who lived in special homes. These days they live relatively well. People in kibbutzim don't want to work. Nowadays every kibbutz has affiliated production, because otherwise they wouldn't be able to support themselves. This is partly due to a serious lack of water.

The wars and conflicts in Israel always saddened me. I had relatives and friends there. Now there are already three generations of Glasners there.

I've been to Israel four times, each time I stayed for fourteen days. The first time I went was in the year 1956. I came to a town where they were opening the Terezin Memorial. Five of us from Brno had been invited. It was very difficult for me to get permission to travel. Permits were given out on Hradcanske Namesti [Hradcany Square, in Prague]. I had to go there three times. The civil servants acted like the Gestapo towards us. The man who gave out the permits yelled at everyone. When my turn came, before he could open his mouth to say anything, I piped up first: 'Look here, now tell me whether you do or don't have that permit, but you're not going to yell at me, I'm not being interrogated by the Gestapo here.' He just looked at me and threw me the permit. The flight was Prague - Sofia - Athens. From there we traveled on by boat, stopping at Cyprus and Crete. The memorial opening was on the 22nd and I didn't manage to fly out until the 22nd. I was there for two weeks, and liked it very much. It was beautiful, because in those days there weren't a lot of people going there yet. And when I returned there this year, I didn't even have time to stop and think a bit, because I was carried along by the crowd. I was there again in the year 1985 - 1986 and in 1989.

In Sumperk I didn't get to any underground literature. I had a girlfriend in Prague, Doris Grosdanavicova, whom I had met in Terezin, who always passed on books and magazines to me. I was partial to the Western broadcasts of BBC and our Radio Free Europe 21.

I maintained only written contact with friends and relatives living abroad. In Canada [Montreal] I have a cousin, Emma. When my husband died in 1985, I traveled to Canada for a visit. They [Emma and her husband] paid for my stay, and they would do it again today. I'm the only one in our family that won't let them. For example, Emma saves all year so she can spend the worst winter months in Florida. Once she took me there with her. Since I play neither tennis nor golf, I was terribly bored. The rest of my cousins have already died. But I still keep in touch with their children. There are 21 Glasners living in Israel. The last time, when we had a reunion in Trebic, I played tour guide for them. My feet hurt so much afterwards that I said to myself, 'never again'.

I welcomed the fall of the Communist regime with great joy, but I didn't go jingling my keys [during the Velvet Revolution 22 people symbolically expressed their dissatisfaction with the Communist regime by jingling their keys during demonstrations]. I sat and listened to the radio. In my opinion, it's going to take a few years until people get used to democracy. It's necessary for some generations to die out, mainly mine. Our lives didn't change and stayed in a rut. Jitka has her own bookstore. Right now the new supermarkets are big competition for her, because people need bread for life, not books. Luckily she manages to make a living and also employs her sister [Helena].

In Brno I would like to return to Orthodoxy, but that's not possible any more. My generation is dying out; the war destroyed everything for us, mainly the conservation of traditions and laws. Though one respects them, one is no longer able to follow them, because when 99 percent of people go through what we went through, faith simply disappears. Maybe from a certain perspective it's a positive thing, it's said that this is a way to preserve Jewry, but it seems to be somewhat forced to me. Most people that are inclined toward Orthodoxy, are like us, original Jews.

I've always been a member of the Jewish community in Brno, and have never been ashamed of it. Similarly I'm also a member of the Terezin Initiative [Foundation] 23, and I receive the Terezin Bulletin in German from Israel. According to my abilities I also contribute to various organizations.

After the year 1989 I got restitution from the state for my parents, which however didn't bring them back to life. I also got something from the Claims Conference. I'm not some sort of capitalist, and don't know how to manage money. I divided everything up among the girls. Lenka has David now, so I'm not worried about the currency dropping.

Glossary

Vera Burdenko
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: April 2002

My family background
Growing up
During the war
Post-war
Glossary

My family background

My father Ierahmil Korolik was born into a very rich family in Kiev in 1898. His father Morduh Korolik was a merchant of Guild I 1. He was born in Kiev around 1865. My grandmother's maiden name was Golda Gorodetskaya. She was born in 1872. I don't know her place of birth. My grandfather and grandmother lived in the center of Kiev. They were not subject to the residential restrictions that had an impact on other Jewish people in tsarist Russia [see Jewish Pale of Settlement] 2. I don't know what kind of business my great-grandfather was involved in. I believe that he was in the same business that his son was, and his son must have inherited this business from him.

Grandfather Morduh had many houses that were on lease. I don't know exactly how many he had or their location but I remember my father and I passing some big houses and my father telling me that those had been my grandfather's before the [Russian] Revolution of 1917 3. They were one-storied, but they seemed huge to me, perhaps because I was small then. The family lived in one of those houses before the Revolution. I don't know how many rooms they had, but from what my father told me they lived quite a luxurious life. They had expensive furniture in their apartment, a grand piano, crystal chandeliers, velvet curtains and cozy sofas. This was a rich home of a respected man.

My grandfather was a very religious man: he observed all Jewish traditions and said his prayers. They followed the kashrut and celebrated Sabbath - my grandfather came home early on Friday and my grandmother lit the candles. They weren't even allowed to strike a match on Saturday, therefore the festive dinner was cooked and served by housemaids. However, they had housemaids anyway, and my grandmother didn't bother herself with the cooking or cleaning of the house. Of course, she handled and supervised the housekeeping. My grandmother gave all necessary products to the cook herself.

They led a luxurious way of life. My grandmother went to fashionable shops; she dressed beautifully and was quite unlike the Orthodox matrons in their shawls and wigs. She had fashionable hats and capes, jewelry and fur coats. She wasn't as religious as my grandfather Morduh. She didn't pray every day, but all Jewish traditions were to be observed in the house. She wanted to support her husband in his belief. My grandfather had all religious accessories at home: tallit, tefillin and the Talmud. After my grandfather died in the early 1930s my father kept his tallit in a drawer of his desk. We, children, had no idea what it was and asked my father permission to borrow it for one of our games. My father, however kind and nice, strictly forbade us to take it.

My grandfather Morduh made a significant contribution to the development of the Jewish community in Kiev. He provided money for the building of a synagogue, which is located in the area that belongs to the Transsignal Plant today. During the Soviet power it became another facility at the plant, but it was returned to the Jewish community in 2001. That's the synagogue that was built by my grandfather and I'm pleased to know that.

My grandfather and grandmother Korolik had two children: my father and his younger sister Esphir, born around 1902. I only have one picture of her when she was a child. Esphir was married to a famous obstetrician in Kiev. His last name was Medovar. They had no children. When the war began her husband was recruited to the army. Esphir went into evacuation. She had a heart attack on the train and died in August 1941.

My father finished school and led a very secular way of life. He was a fashionable young man. He wrote poems and was fond of theater and music and free from any responsibilities or obligations.

The Revolution put an end to this luxurious way of life in 1917. The Bolsheviks expropriated all real estate of the family, leaving them to live in a small house. They took away all valuables: silver, jewelry, gold and their savings. After the Revolution my grandparents lived in a two-storied wooden house on Kerosinnaya Street. We often visited them when I was a child. I remember a small garden near the house where we used to play. My grandparents lived on the second floor of the house and when we went upstairs we could already smell the delicious food that my grandmother was cooking for us. I remember little triangle pies with poppy seeds that my grandmother made for Purim. I didn't know the name of this holiday back then but I remember how delicious and joyful it was. At Chanukkah we, kids, always got some money and sweets, and there were always doughnuts and potato pancakes on the table. Well, my grandfather's house is associated with the smell of doughnuts to me. There was stuffed fish, chicken broth and stuffed chicken and many other delicacies on the table.

I don't know how my grandparents made their living after the Revolution. I believe my grandfather managed to save some valuables from being expropriated. They led a modest but fairly good life. After my grandfather died in 1932 my grandmother Golda lived with us for some time and then she moved to her cousin. I don't know whether my grandmother followed any traditions at the end of her life, but she wasn't fanatically religious anyway. I guess she went to the synagogue, although I'm not sure about it. But she probably observed the high holidays, such as Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. She died in 1946 in evacuation in the Middle East.

My mother Evgenia Welkomirskaya was born in 1888. She was born in Poland, but where exactly I don't know.

My grandfather's name was Wazlav Welkomirskiy. He was born around 1860. He may have been given a Jewish name when he was born, but they lived in Poland and he probably changed it. I have no information about his education. It must have been some technical or some kind of higher education because he worked at the railcar shops as a skilled worker and then as an engineer in Kiev. They moved to Kiev long before World War I, some time around 1900. I don't know why they moved. My grandfather received an award from the Russian government. It was a beautiful red ribbon and the words 'Hero of Labor' were written on it. He was awarded it in the first years after the Revolution. My grandmother's name was Welkomirskaya. I don't know her first and maiden name. I know very little about my grandparents on my mother's side. They died before I was born. I guess, they died in the early 1920s. The Welkomirskiy family wasn't religious. At least, I can't remember my mother ever telling me about any religious traditions in their family.

My mother was their only daughter. Her parents weren't rich but she received a good education. She finished a grammar school in Kiev, located on Fundukleyevskaya Street in the center of Kiev. Later this street was called Lenin Street and now it is Bogdan Khmelnitskiy Street. My mother became a private teacher in rich families when she was young and worked as a governess in the summertime when the rich left the city for their country houses. I have a picture of my mother at the time when she was working for one of those families. At the same time my mother studied in a private music school.

After finishing school she went to St. Petersburg Conservatory, passed all the exams and received a diploma of the Petersburg Conservatory signed by Ilia Glazunov [a famous Russian pianist and composer]. This diploma gave my mother the right to teach music. She returned to Kiev and began to give private music classes. She was invited to the house of my father - to teach him and his sister music. My father was much younger than his music teacher but he fell in love with her immediately. He kept silent for several years, although my mother understood that her student wasn't indifferent to her. When he told her of his love she got scared and left, refusing to teach him music any more.

My father told his parents that he couldn't live without Evgenia and asked their permission to marry her. Of course, they were against it. Firstly, my mother was ten years older than my father; an age difference which wasn't quite typical in Jewish families. Secondly, she came from a lower class of society. My father had a big argument with his parents. The result was that he took his razor, underwear and a book of poems and came to my mother. They were living together, which was against any moral principles of society. Their first baby was a boy. He didn't even reach the age of one. He died approximately in 1920. Later my parents had a civil ceremony and only after that they were allowed to visit their parents. My father could never forgive his parents that they didn't accept my mother. They did accept her later, but my husband couldn't forget that they were dead against their marriage.

My father had no education besides school, and my mother insisted that he entered a higher educational institute. He entered the extramural department of Kiev Engineering and Construction Institute. He worked as a foreman and then engineer on a construction site even before he finished his studies at this institute. My father always came home late and was very tired. I remember my mother telling us not to bother him because he had to do his homework. But my father always found some time to spend with us. He was very fond of his children. Upon graduation my father went to work at a plant and then at the Ministry of Construction. My mother was teaching music privately and that was what our family lived on.

Growing up

I was born in Kiev in 1925 and was the oldest of the children. My sister Lilia was born in 1929. She was born a weak and sickly girl. She got ill with tuberculosis when she was three years old. It was lung and kidney and osseous tuberculosis. She couldn't walk for a few years. She was confined to bed. I loved her a lot and spent lots of time with her. I read books to her when my mother went to her classes. Lilia learned to read when she was very young and was reading too much. Reading had an impact on her sight. In 1932 my mother had twins - Anna and Tamara, but we called them Asia and Tasia at home. My mother was 45 and she wanted no more children. But abortions weren't allowed at that time and my mother had no option. Our life was very poor and miserable then. I remember we kept potatoes under the grand piano - it was the only dry spot in the apartment. My mother made potato soup and some second course dish - this was our main food. Once Lilia and I took out a couple of potatoes and ate them raw while waiting for our mother.

I started school in 1933. It was an ordinary Russian secondary school. There were children of many nationalities, including Jewish children, who studied there. There was no issue of nationality then - we were all Soviet children and we were all equal. I was a poor pupil. I mostly got grade '3' - out of the '5' grade system. I took no interest in mathematics or physics and these subjects were very difficult. However, I read a lot and knew Russian literature well.

My biggest hobby was music. My mother taught music to me and Lilia. Lilia recovered and went to the same school where I studied. Our family was rather poor. I remember my mother giving us jam sandwiches for lunch at school. I was ashamed of these sandwiches. Many other children had sandwiches with fish, sausage or cheese. I tried to eat my sandwiches when nobody could see me. If there were children around, I would suffer from hunger and never take my 'poor' sandwiches out of my bag, so that nobody would see them. Lilia took such things easy and enjoyed eating everything that my mother gave us. She managed to exchange her sandwich for something more delicious. In exchange she solved problems in mathematics or wrote compositions for other children.

We lived in a big four-bedroom apartment on Tarasovskaya Street in the center of Kiev. This was the apartment of my mother's parents. Later the authorities gave two rooms to two young workers that came from provincial areas. I remember them well - the two young girls in red shawls. The apartment was furnished with pre-revolutionary furniture that belonged to my mother's parents. There were two instruments: my mother's piano, which she had had since her childhood, and the grand piano, a gift of Morduh, my father's father.

We had a big kitchen and my mother cooked on the Primus stove. We didn't have a bathroom and the family went to the sauna twice a week. We had a housemaid because my mother couldn't handle the housekeeping just by herself. The housemaid was a common Ukrainian woman. She came to Kiev in 1933, during the famine 4, and stayed with us. She slept on the sofa in the living room and my parents and the four of us, children, slept in our bedroom.

In summer we often went to the village where Glasha - this was our nanny's name - lived. My mother spent a lot of time with us: she taught us music and French. We had a rule: we had to speak French on certain days and the one who broke this rule had to learn a poem or a fable by heart and recite it. We went for walks in the Botanical Gardens not far from our house or to the railway station. At that time it was a usual thing to go for a walk to the railway station.

My father was working a lot. He was a real Soviet man. He became a member of the Communist Party in the early 1930s. He believed in the five-year plan 5 and in socialism and communism and he used to convince us even in the most difficult years that those were temporary difficulties in our country and that everything would be fine some day. My parents' friends often came to our home. We celebrated 1st May and October Revolution Day 6. Everybody enjoyed these holidays, we danced and sang Soviet songs.

We spoke Russian at home. We didn't celebrated any traditional Jewish holidays. We only heard Yiddish when we visited our grandparents. They always celebrated Jewish holidays and my father used to take us to his parents especially for the holidays. I cannot say exactly what kind of holidays they celebrated, nobody told us anything about them, about their history. They must have been afraid that we might mention it at school and cause problems, of course, because in the 1930s religion was already persecuted by the authorities [see struggle against religion] 7. We started getting this information about the past only recently, in the 1990s. I believe the celebrations were at Chanukkah, Purim, Rosh Hashanah, and we, kids, always got money and sweets. My mother hardly ever visited my paternal grandparents. She always remembered that she had been rejected by her husband's parents. We had many books at home. My grandfather gave his collection of books to my father and my father added new books to it. There were books by Russian and Jewish writers and international classics, all in Russian. My parents led an ordinary life of the Soviet intelligentsia.

During the war

Everything went fine until unjustified arrests and repression began in the late 1930s [during the so-called Great Terror] 8. We, children, didn't quite understand what was happening. We saw that our parents were upset and depressed. My father often came home from work looking pale and lost. My parents went to the room and closed the door behind them. They used to talk for a long time. Later we got to know that one of my father's closest friends had been executed. My father was called to the NKVD 9. They forbade him to help his friend's family. But he did support them. And he did it openly. It was difficult because my father's salary was very small. And the money that my mother made was a modest support of our family budget. Often we had nothing left before the next pay day. This support that my father decided to provide was dangerous and also hard from a material point of view. But my father thought it was a question of honor and he openly visited his friend's wife and helped her as much as he could.

These people were our neighbors. Once we, children, started teasing the children of this man that was executed. We didn't quite understand what we were doing. My father hit me for the first time in my life. He said I was the oldest and was supposed to understand how mean it was on our part. We never did it again. Every day my father was saying goodbye to my mother before going to work, because he didn't know whether or not he would be back. It was especially frightening at nighttime. They used to arrest people at night. However, providence must have protected my father. My mother's cousin was arrested. He was an actor. His stage name was Kardiani and that was the only name that I knew him by. He probably said something politically incorrect and was arrested right on the stage. Nobody ever saw him again. In the middle of the 1950s his children received documents confirming his rehabilitation 10 and his death certificate. He died in one of Stalin's camps [see Gulag] 11.

The war was a complete surprise for us. I remember 22nd June 1941, the first day of the [Great Patriotic] War 12. We were wondering what a war was like and what was ahead of us. My father was sure that the war would be over within a few weeks and that Kiev wouldn't be left by our army and that there was nothing to worry about. Nobody in our family ever spoke about Hitler exterminating the Jewish population. I think my parents forgot that they were Jews. In the middle of July Jews from Western Ukraine appeared in the Botanical Gardens: children, old people and women. They lived in the open air, tents or on the ground. They presented a horrible sight. They were telling people the truth about the extermination of Jewish people by Germans. Then the Minister of Construction, my father's boss, called my father. He told him to get ready and leave with the family.

We went to the railway station on a horse-drawn cart. Asia and Tasia were enjoying themselves. They found everything interesting. But Lilia and I seemed to begin to understand that a war was no game and that we were to go through a hard time. Still, the reality turned out to be much more frightening than any of our childish concerns. We were going by train. We were in lack of food and water. My father got off the train when it stopped to look for some food. We were giving away anything we could in exchange for food.

At first we lived in the village of Korzovo, Kuibyshev region. It was a distant village and we lived in a house that had been deserted by its former tenants. My father went to work on a collective farm 13. My mother and I planted some vegetables in the garden. Although it was already summer we hoped that we would be able to do some harvesting. The collective farm gave my father a piglet to breed and slaughter afterwards. This piglet lived with us in the house. We called him Vaska. We gave him food and played with him. He was like a dog to us. He was very smart and nice. When the time came to slaughter him we all cried so hard that the adults had to take him to the neighbor's yard to slaughter. We cried for a long time remembering our Vaska. We refused to eat the meat and sausage and our parents had to sell these products or exchange them for other food products. I have horrible memories of the evacuation. It was destitution and starvation all along. This was life full of search for food and hard work.

Later, in 1943, my father was called to join the labor front and he left for Kuibyshev. We joined him some time later. We lived in a big house in Kuibyshev. My father worked at a military plant. My mother was constantly doing different work to earn a little. She gave music lessons or did the washing and cleaning for richer families. I finished school. My younger sisters also studied. But Lilia fell ill with osseous tuberculosis. She was confined to bed again. While staying in bed she learned to sew and made clothes for me and my little sisters. She was very good at it. She could make a nice dress or skirt from a little piece of fabric. She could even make beautiful hats. After the war we wore what Lilia was making us for a long time. Lilia had to stay in bed for almost two years, until the time when we had to return to Kiev.

Post-war

We returned to Kiev immediately after the war was over. It took my father some time to obtain a request from his workplace and permits for the members of his family. It was necessary to have the relevant documents and permits to be able to go back home from evacuation [see residence permit] 14. When we returned to Kiev Kreschatik [the main street of Kiev] was in ruins. Many buildings in Kiev were ruined. Our apartment on Tarasovskaya Street was occupied. Our furniture and what was even more important - our piano and grand piano - were in this apartment. My mother couldn't work without her instruments. We had to get them back. My parents had to appeal in court for what was theirs. In a few years' time my father received an apartment in a new building on Tverskaya Street, where I live to this day. My sisters and me continued to study in school.

I entered Kiev Music School. After finishing it I entered the flute department at the Conservatory. Lilia studied at the conducting/choir department of Kiev Music School. She met Igor Ivaschenko, a nice, young Ukrainian man, and married him in 1949. All of us lived in this three-bedroom apartment on Tverskaya Street: my parents, Lilia, her husband and their daughter Irina, born in 1951, Asia, Tasia and I. My bed was in the bathroom for quite some time - our bathroom was a big room - and we used to look at things with a sense of humor. We always had guests at home. My younger sisters' friends used to visit them right after their classes were over, conservatory students used to come by and we all enjoyed ourselves and felt comfortable, although our living conditions were always rather difficult. Later Tasia entered Kishinyov Conservatory. It became more and more difficult for a Jew to enter higher educational institutions or find a job.

I need to say that my family didn't face any problems associated with the anti-Semitism of the late 1940s - early 1950s. I remember my father having some problems at work but things must have come to a quite satisfactory solution. The persecution of Jewish lecturers began at the Conservatory. Many of them were dismissed and many had to move to Siberia, to the North or to smaller towns because they couldn't find a job in Kiev. However, students weren't involved somehow and these processes went past us.

I faced anti-Semitism only when I was obtaining my [mandatory] job assignment 15. I had a request from Kiev Opera House sent to the Conservatory asking them to issue a job assignment to me at the Opera House. But of course, because of my nationality the Conservatory assigned me to go to Donetsk. There were quite a few Jews in the Conservatory, talented violinists or pianists and they were all sent to smaller towns; not one of them could stay in Kiev. I was a 4th-year student when I married Yavorskiy, a music expert. He was a Jew and he was many years older than I. We didn't last a year together. His attitude towards me was fatherly and he patronized me even after we got divorced in 1950. He was very well-known in the Kiev musical circles but even he couldn't help me to stay in Kiev.

I worked at Donetsk Opera House for three years. In 1953 Stalin died. There was a meeting in the concert hall and the actors went onstage to hold a speech, and they cried and each of them said that we had lost 'our father', etc. My friend and I were sitting in the audience. And all of a sudden we burst out laughing. It must have been either out of nervousness or because we just couldn't bear the hypocrisy of it all. The master of ceremony came to reprimand us. He threatened that they would ask us to leave the ceremony. So we had to calm down. We were afraid that they might dismiss or arrest us afterwards.

In Donetsk I met Lekov, the choreographer of Donetsk Opera House. He was a handsome man and women adored him. I fell head over heels in love with him. We lived together and I came to Kiev when I was pregnant. Lekov came with me and we settled down at my father's place. Lekov got employed by Kiev Opera House and was chief choreographer there for some time. He treated me nicely for a while. Then he got loose and fell for another woman. It was all so scandalous. My family just told him to get lost.

Lilia was very sympathetic and stayed with me all this time. A few weeks later I gave birth to my son. This was in 1955. I was single - Lekov and I never got married - and we gave Zhenia my father's last name; and the patronymic accordingly: Evgeniy Mikhailovich Korolik. My mother died in 1956. (Photo 7) Our apartment was empty by then. Igor Ivaschenko was offered a job with the Virskiy Folk Dance Group. Igor was a very talented pianist and conductor and he was very popular with employers. All kinds of groups tried to employ him. But Virskiy gave him a room and then, in a year's time a good two-bedroom apartment.

Asia and Tasia got married in due time. My father, my son and I stayed in the apartment on Tverskaya Street. My father didn't remarry for ten years after my mother's death. He loved my mother and couldn't forget her. Besides, he felt responsible for me and my son. I didn't have a job and I was dependent on my father and Lilia. I must say that Lilia lived very well at that time. Her husband Igor went abroad on tours and they were very well-off. And she always remembered that her sister needed help. She always bought or made things double - one was always for Vera, me.

In order to cheer up a little I took to visiting the amateur Russian Folk Orchestra. I met a horn player there, Valeriy Burdenko, a Jew, and he fell in love with me. Valeriy was 14 years younger than me and grew up in a traditional Jewish family. His father was deeply religious. His whole family was religious. His parents were fasting at Yom Kippur. They cooked traditional food and observed Sabbath, went to the synagogue regularly and followed the kashrut. Valeriy was used to the Jewish way of life, but he wasn't religious himself.

Valeriy was an only son and his parents sincerely wished for him to be happy. And happiness suggested that all Jewish rules should be remembered: in religious Jewish families a wife had to be younger than her husband, hold a lower social position and education. She couldn't have been married before, or have a child. If she didn't meet all these requirements neither the parents nor a rabbi would have allowed such marriage. Of course, his parents were dead against our marriage. I, too, thought and told him that the differences made it impossible for us to be together. But Valeriy didn't give up. He visited me and he played with my son. He was so caring that I gave in. I also recalled that my mother was ten years younger than my father but that they loved each other so much and lived a long life with this love.

I married Valeriy and never once regretted it. He adopted my son and gave him his name. My son is called Evgeniy Valerievich Burdenko now. Our son Sasha was born in 1964. ???? We were an ordinary Soviet family and celebrated communist holidays and birthdays, visited relatives and friends. There was nothing related to the Jewish way of life in our life then. Sasha finished an ordinary Russian secondary school. There were no other schools in the Soviet Union then. Simultaneously he learned to play the piano at the music school. He was very gifted when it came to music. He tried to enter Leningrad Conservatory; we didn't even try to submit documents to Kiev Conservatory knowing its anti- Semitic atmosphere. It turned out to be no easier in Leningrad. My son successfully passed all his exams in his category, but got a '3' in the history of the Party. Sasha went to the army and then entered Kiev Conservatory and finished it.

Sasha and his Jewish wife - she too is a musician - moved to Germany. He lives in the vicinity of Munich, he is a recognized musician, he published records and CDs and he has students, too. His son Yuliy was born in 1998. My older son Evgeniy lives in Kiev. He and Valeriy opened a car company. His wife Zhenia and he have two children: their son Kirill, born in 1986 and their daughter Daria, born in 1989. So, I'm a happy wife, mother and grandmother.

My father got married for a second time in 1966 after I got my life under control. He went to live with his wife Maria Lvovna, a Jew. They lived together for six years until his death in 1972.

My sister Lilia divorced Igor Ivaschenko when their daughter Irina was ten years old. Later Lilia married a musician ten years her junior, and her daughter Irina is eight years older than her husband. Therefore, it is our family tradition. However, all women in our family have been loved and cared for by their husbands. Lilia worked as a singer at Kiev Ukrainian Drama Theater for many years. In 1998 she died after terrible pain of cancer. Her daughter Irina lives in Kiev. She is a TV producer.

My younger sisters Asia and Tasia live in Israel. Tasia finished Kiev Radio Engineering College. She married Misha Markov, a Jew. They met at the plant where she used to work. They have two daughters: Maria, born in 1960 and Elena, born in 1964. They all moved to Israel in 1989. They left for the sake of Misha. He had a weak heart and needed a surgery that wasn't possible in our country. Although they were leaving at the time of perestroika 16, the departure was still a humiliating process when it came to resigning from work, obtaining all necessary documents and especially - at the moment of departure. The train was available five minutes before departure. Adults and children were crying and yelling, throwing their luggage through the windows. There was a disdainful behavior by the service personnel - this whole scene could only be compared with evacuation. But Asia's family went through it. Misha had a surgery in Israel. He worked many years before he retired. They got to love Israel; its religion and culture has become theirs. Misha became an active member of a party, but which party exactly I don't know, and takes part in the political and cultural life of Israel. They live in Ashdod.

Asia got educated at Kishinyov Conservatory and worked as a music teacher for some time. She married Alexei Reshetnichenko, a Ukrainian man. He was a sailor and worked as an engineer after his retirement. Asia and Alexei have a daughter, Tatiana, born in 1959. Tatiana was married to Miroslav Vishnevetskiy. They were friends since school. Miroslav was a very intelligent and energetic man, but he put all his energy into criminal business. As a result Miroslav disappeared - he was most likely murdered - and Tatiana and her two children had to escape from the country urgently. The criminals never left her alone: they demanded huge amounts of money and threatened to kill her and kidnap her children. And the only prompt way to escape was emigration to Israel. Asia, Tatiana and the children left for Israel in 1997. Alexei stayed in Kiev to arrange the sale of the apartment. But he died shortly afterwards - it must have been all the tension and nerves. Tasia waited for Miroslav several years, but then she married an Israelite when she understood that Miroslav wasn't among the living. Asia lives near Tatiana in Ashdod. She gives private lessons. She rings up her grandchildren.

So, it was destiny that the members of our assimilated family who didn't know Yiddish, Jewish religion, tradition or culture moved to Israel. . As for me, I returned to Jewish traditions some time before. My husband Valeriy grew up in a family that observed all Jewish traditions. At the beginning of our life together I tried to follow this way of life to please him. But in due time I understood that I was really drawn to my roots - the Jewish culture, language and traditions. We don't know Yiddish and don't know the holidays or traditions. We don't remember or don't have any idea about how to go about them. It's too late to start things now. We were raised as atheists and we still celebrate all Soviet holidays, although there is no USSR any more. But it's our life and we can't change anything about it.

I believe this is the way many Jews in this country lived their lives. But I'm interested and I'm trying to learn more about the Jewish culture. When my husband and I went to visit my sisters in Israel I felt that I stepped onto my motherland. I like Israel very much and if the children wanted to go there we would emigrate to this country. But Sasha is all right in Germany and Zhenia likes it in Ukraine. My husband and I try to be with our children: we live in Kiev and travel to Germany to visit Sasha. My husband and I went to the synagogue, founded by my grandfather Morduh, several times. I'm not a religious person but I was excited to enter this synagogue. It is wonderful that Jewish life has been restored in Ukraine and that we have Jewish newspapers, synagogues and cultural centers. I hope that our grandchildren will be closer to the Jewish way of life than we, children of the Soviet country.

Glossary

Ida Goldshmidt
Riga
Latvia
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya
Date of interview: August 2005

This interview with Ida Goldshmidt was conducted in the Riga Jewish Charity Center. There is a Jewish choir in this center, and Ida sings in this choir. We met after a rehearsal. Ida is one of those ladies, when each next year of their life only adds to their charm. She is a tall, slender, shapely lady with good stature. Her black hair with gray streaks is cut short. One can hardly see any wrinkles on her face. Ida wore light trousers and a light flowered blouse. This outfit was very becoming. It's hard to believe that this 74-year-old lady has lived a very hard life. Ida is very friendly and kind. She told me willingly about her family and her life, however hard these memories are for her.

My family background
Growing up
The war begins
Post-war
Married life
Our son Boris
Glossary

My family background

My parents' families lived in Daugavpils [200 km from Riga], Latvia. I have no information about my father's family. My paternal grandfather and grandmother died long before I was born. My father had brothers, but I never met them. They must have been scattered around the world. My father, Isaac Zaks, was born in 1886. I only know one thing about my father for sure, and that is that he studied at cheder. This was mandatory for all Jewish boys, and this is pretty much all I know about my father's childhood or boyhood.

My mother's family also lived in Daugavpils. I never met my grandfather. I don't know his first name, but his last name was Liberzon. I remember Grandmother well. Her name was Hana. My grandfather didn't live long, and my grandmother had to raise six children alone. My mama Buna was born in 1890. She was the oldest of all the children, and helped her mother to raise the other children. After Mama her brother Hersh, who was usually addressed with Grigoriy, the Russian name [common name] 1 or, I'd rather say, Grisha, an affectionate of Grigoriy, and Borukh-Zelek, or Boris in the Russian manner, were born. I know that Boris was the youngest of the children. Mama also had three sisters, but they lived in different towns with their families, and I never met them.

Before Latvia gained independence in 1918 it belonged to the Russian Empire [see Latvian Independence] 2. Daugavpils was within the [Jewish] Pale of Settlement 3, and Jews constituted a big part of its population. Only Jewish people with higher education, traders and craftsmen with specialties in demand in the town, were allowed to settle down in Riga. A major part of the Jewish population settled down in Riga after the [Russian] Revolution of 1917 4, when the Pale of Settlement was cancelled. I believe the Jewish population constituted at least half of the total population in Daugavpils. There were several synagogues in the town. Each guild had its own synagogue: butchers, leather tanners, tinsmiths, etc. All Jewish people were religious, and it couldn't have been otherwise. All Jewish boys had to go to cheder. All weddings followed the Jewish traditions. If a rabbi didn't bless the marriage, the man and woman were considered to be living in sin.

When World War I began in 1914, Nicholas II 5, the Russian Emperor, ordered to deport all Jewish people to Russia from Latvia. The emperor had concerns that Jews were to support the German armies, if they came to Latvia. My parents' families were also deported. I think my mother and father got married in Russia. However, they both came from Daugavpils and must have known each other before their deportation. All I know is that their first baby was born in Russia and died shortly after his birth. After the revolution, when the tsar was overthrown, my parents could return to Latvia. They settled down in Riga. Mama's brothers also lived in Riga. It was difficult to find a job in Daugavpils, and many people were moving to bigger towns looking for a better life.

Poor Jewish people mainly settled down in Moscowskiy forstadt 6, a suburb of Riga. Most streets were named after Russian writers and poets such as Turgenev 7, Pushkin 8, Gogol 9, etc. They had been named so during the Russian Empire, and their names were not changed afterward. There were also Moskovskaya, Kievskaya and Katolicheskaya [Catholic] streets. Even Katolicheskaya Street was mostly populated by poor Jewish people. My parents rented an apartment on the 2nd floor of a two-storeyed wooden house. It was owned by a Jewish man, and its tenants were also Jews. They were poor Jewish families, and couldn't afford to pay higher fees, and the owner wasn't much wealthier than the tenants. Other houses in this street were as shabby as ours.

My father became a cab driver. He bought a cart and a horse. The horse stayed in our yard. My parents' horses often died since my father had no money to feed them properly. This was like a vicious circle. A horse died, and my father had to borrow money to buy another horse. Then he had to pay back his debt, and again he had no money to feed the horse. He also had to feed the family. Mama didn't have a job. She had to take care of four children. Jewish women didn't work at the time. They had many children and had to take care of their homes.

Growing up

My brother Todres, the oldest of the children, was born in 1921. The next was my sister Joha, born in 1926. My brother Haim-Shleime [Semyon] was born in 1929. I was born in 1931 and was the last child. I was given the name of Ida.

My maternal grandmother lived with us. Jewish mothers commonly stayed with older daughters. And there was another Jewish rule: brothers could only get married after all of their sisters were married. Mama's brothers also lived in Riga. Both were tinsmiths. Both brought Mama money every week in order for her to support Grandmother. Mothers were well-honored in Jewish families. I remember my grandmother well. She was short and wore her gray hair in a knot on the back of her head. My grandmother wore long, dark skirts and dark, long-sleeved blouses. My grandmother was kind and friendly. She always had a smile and a kind word for others. My grandmother loved her grandchildren dearly. She particularly spent much time with me. I was a sickly child. I was allergic, but I only know now that I was allergic. At my time the doctors couldn't identify the disease. Whatever food I ate I had red blisters on my skin. A doctor in the Jewish hospital [Bikkur Holim] 10 told Mama I would overgrow them, and this happened to be true.

Our family was a typical Jewish family. We lived a Jewish life. We lived in a Jewish environment, and the Jewish religion and Jewish traditions constituted a natural element of our life. We followed strictly all traditions, and it never occurred to anyone to skip any of them. Newly-born boys were circumcised. At the age of 13, boys had the bar mitzvah ritual. Of course, there were no big celebrations in our poor neighborhood, but there were mandatory rituals and treatments at the synagogue. I was just three, when my older brother Todres had his bar mitzvah, and don't remember any details, but I don't think there was a celebration. My parents couldn't afford it. However, I remember how proud he was, when he put on his tallit to go to the synagogue with our father. My husband also told me about his bar mitzvah, and it was about the same. There was a cheder in our neighborhood, and all boys attended it. My father also studied at cheder in Daugavpils in his time, and so did my brothers. Girls studied Hebrew and prayers when they studied at Jewish schools.

However poor we were, we celebrated all Jewish holidays in our family, following all rules. Mama saved money for holidays. When my father brought his salary, she put a few coins into a box. Mama cooked gefilte fish and chicken broth on holidays. We had that on Pesach, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. We also celebrated Sabbath. On Friday evening Mama lit candles and prayed over them. On the following day my father went to the synagogue. He never missed one Saturday. My brothers went to the synagogue with my father. Mama didn't attend all Saturday services at the synagogue, but she went there, and my older sister and I joined her. The synagogue was actually the only place of Jewish gatherings. Our poor neighbors couldn't afford to go to the theater or to a restaurant. The synagogue was the center, coordinating the Jewish life of our neighborhood.

There was a major clean up before Pesach. All belongings were taken outside to whitewash the walls and clean the windows. Mama and I cleaned the house from chametz. My father, holding a candle and a goose feather, swept off breadcrumbs that were purposely left in an open space. They were wrapped in a piece of cloth to be burnt. Mama baked matzah for Pesach in an oven. Mama added eggs to the dough, and it was yellow and crunchy like thin crunchy cookies. Now they make rectangular matzah, while Mama used to make it round. My sister and I assisted her. Mama made the dough and baked the matzah, my sister rolled the dough and I made little holes in it with a little wheel. We had to do everything very quick, because 18 minutes after the dough was made it was no longer good for matzah. Therefore there were smaller portions of dough made. There was plenty of matzah to be made to last through all days of the holiday. We had no bread at home throughout the holiday. Mama had special utensils for Pesach. During the year they were stored separately from our everyday utensils. Mama also used different utensils for meat and dairy products, though we hardly ever could afford meat.

On the first day of Pesach we got together for a festive dinner. For this dinner Mama made chicken broth, gefilte fish, matzah and potato puddings. In the evening we conducted the seder. Everything was according to the rules. There was special wine, and a big glass of wine for Elijah the Prophet. My father conducted the seder and read the Haggadah. He broke a piece of matzah into three and hid away one piece called the afikoman. One of the children was to find it and hide it away again to have Father pay the ransom. My brother Haim-Shleime was usually the one. There was also everything required for seder on the table: a piece of meat with a bone, a hard-boiled egg, greenery and a saucer with salty water. Our father told us what these stood for. The seder lasted long, but I didn't feel like sleeping. I kept staring at the glass meant for Elijah, and there seemed to be less wine in the glass, which meant to me that Elijah had visited our seder and blessed our home. After the Haggadah we sang Jewish songs. Jewish songs are usually sad, but we only sang merry songs at Pesach. My father couldn't afford to stay at home on all days of the holiday since we could hardly make ends meet. He only stayed away from work two days at the beginning and one day at the end of the holiday.

On Yom Kippur my parents, my older brother Todres and my sister fasted 24 hours. Haim-Shleime and I weren't allowed to fast, but we tried as hard as we could. On Yom Kippur everybody spent the day praying at the synagogue. We went to the synagogue with our parents. Children were allowed to play in the yard during the prayer. We also celebrated Rosh Hashanah and Chanukkah. Chanukkah was our favorite holiday. My mother's brothers visited us to greet grandmother and my parents. They gave us a few coins. We could buy lollies, which was a rare delicacy for us.

We only spoke Yiddish at home. This was the only language I knew, when a child. Later I learned Latvian. I don't remember how I managed to learn Latvian. We lived in the Jewish environment and went to a Jewish school. We even had the Yevreyskaya Street, Zidu Yela, in our neighborhood.

There were two Jewish schools in our neighborhood: 'Zidas skola' and 'Ebrais skola'. Zidas skola was a six-year general education Jewish school. All subjects were taught in Yiddish. We also had Hebrew and religious classes. Ebrais skola was a Hebrew school. All subjects were taught in Hebrew, and children studied the Torah and the Talmud. We went to Zidas skola. I liked studying, and my teachers praised me for my successes.

My older brother Todres tried to help our parents. Even when he was still at school, he tried to earn some money. My mother's brothers were tinsmiths. They rented a shop. Mama cooked lunch for them, and Todres delivered this food to the shop. Mama's brothers gave him some change for this, and he gave this money to Mama. After finishing school my brother went to work at the leather factory. He became an apprentice. When he started working, he brought home his wages, and life became easier, when two men were working. I was the youngest in the family, and my brother liked spoiling me. He gave me the most precious gift in my life. When he received his first wage, he bought me a purse. I can still remember it: red leather and a clasp with a shiny yellow lock. I believed it was made of gold. I had never had a beautiful thing like this before, and I put it on my pillow beside me, when I went to bed. When Todres started earning money, we moved to another apartment. It was also located in Moscow forstadt, but it was a better house and a better apartment. It was more spacious and comfortable. My grandmother moved in with us. In 1940 Todres went to learn the furrier's specialty. It didn't take him long to learn this vocation.

Mama's brother Girsh was single. Mama's younger brother Borukh-Zelek got married in 1928. His wife's name was Zhenia. She came from Riga. She also came from a traditional Jewish family. It goes without saying that they had a traditional Jewish wedding. They were very much in love, but they didn't have children for a long time. Their only daughter, whose name I can't remember, was born in 1935.

I have very dim memories about the establishment of the Soviet regime [see Annexation of Latvia to the USSR] 11. I was nine years old. I remember Soviet tanks decorated with flowers driving along the streets. Basically, our situation didn't change. The Soviet regime was loyal to poor people. Perhaps, our situation even improved. A pioneer unit [see All-Union pioneer organization] 12 was established in our school. Children joined the pioneer organization. My brother Haim-Shloime became a pioneer. I was too young, since the admissions started only in the 4th grade. My brother became a pioneer along with his other schoolmates. The children lined up and red neck-ties were tied round their necks. I wished I had been one of them. Actually, there were no changes in our life. Jewish schools were operating, though Jewish history and religious classes were cancelled. We studied the 'History of the USSR,' a new subject. We also observed Jewish traditions and celebrated Jewish holidays at home. The synagogue was open, and my parents attended it on Saturday. There were new Soviet holidays: 1st May and 7th November [October Revolution Day] 13. We didn't celebrate them at home, but there were celebrations and concerts at school. I sang in the school choir. We sang Jewish songs since we didn't study Russian at school.

In early June 1941 I finished the 2nd grade and my brother finished the 4th grade. We usually spent summer vacations at home. Our parents couldn't afford to arrange vacations elsewhere for us. We played with our neighbors' children and went to swim in the Daugava River. Wealthier Jewish families had summer houses at the seashore, but my brother and I had never seen the sea, though we lived just a few kilometers from the seashore. In June 1941 Soviet authorities established a pioneer camp for children in Ogre. Children from poor families could go there on summer vacation. My brother and I were also to spend the summer there. We were looking forward to going to the summer camp, and our parents were very happy that we would have decent vacations. I remember so well that when we were leaving, our parents gave us a whole bag of cheap candy. We had them in the bus and offered some to our friends. The trip started like a feast! Most children came from poor Jewish families. They were on the priority list of the camp.

There were small houses in the woods in the camp. There was a spot in the center where the children lined up in the mornings. The pioneer tutors reported to the camp director and then the flag was raised on the post. There was a flowerbed with flowers planted in the shape of a red star.

The war begins

We were busy in the camp. There were clubs, and also, we went to the woods or to bathe. My brother and I were in different pioneer groups, and didn't see each other often. Sunday was the day of parents' visits. Our parents visited us once. They brought us sweets and candy. The following Sunday was to be 22nd June [the beginning of the Great Patriotic War] 14. We heard distant explosions in the morning. We ignored them. There were frequent military trainings, and we were used to such noises. Later we noticed that adults looked concerned about something. In the late afternoon German planes attacked the camp. The red star in the flower bed suffered the most. Perhaps, it was seen best from the planes. We were hiding in the forest during this air raid. At night evacuation of the camp began. We headed to the railway station where we boarded freight carriages. Children were crying asking to be taken home. We knew nothing about the war. We associated it with boys' games. Only the children who were ill at the time stayed in the camp for fear of epidemic, and they all died, of course.

Our train left Ogre. Children were crying, and our tutors tried to comfort us. My brother and I stayed together. Our train stopped at a crossing. There was another train with recruits right there. My brother and I were looking through the window, when all of a sudden we saw our older brother Todres. He was standing near the military train. Later we got to know that he volunteered to the front on the first day of the war. His gaze was sliding along our train, when he suddenly saw us. When he told us about it later, he said that his heart almost stopped. He didn't know whether we were alive or how our parents were doing. He ran to our carriage. He wanted to get in and talk to us, but he wasn't allowed to come inside. My brother and I also ran to the door, begging our tutors to let us see him, but all in vain. Our train started. My brother and I kept looking at Todres standing on the track. We saw the tears running down his cheeks.

Only after the war we found out what happened to our family. Uncle Boris told us the story, and he heard it from his Latvian acquaintances. When my parents got to know about the war, they prepared for evacuation. They packed their luggage onto the cart and were ready to leave, but Mama didn't want to go without us. She tried to get to Ogre, but there were no trains available, and she failed to reach us. The others were telling her that we would be taken care of, and she had to think about the rest of the family, Joha, Grandmother. Mama made up her mind to go, but they couldn't get to the opposite bank of the Daugava River. German planes were bombing the bridge, and our family had to go back. They stayed in Riga. A few days later German forces came to Riga. The Moscowskiy forstadt area was fenced with barbed wire to make a Jewish ghetto [see Riga ghetto] 15. At first Jews from Riga were taken to the ghetto, and then Jews from other towns followed. The first prisoners were those families, who lived in this neighborhood. In late November 1941 the shootings of prisoners began. November in Latvia is frosty, and there is usually snow on the ground. Prisoners were convoyed to Rumbula [forest] 16, about 15 kilometers from the ghetto, where they were killed. My father, mother, grandmother and my older sister Joha perished in Rumbula. My grandmother was perhaps unable to walk as far as the forest. It didn't matter. The Germans killed the weak ones who stopped to take a rest. There were no survivors. It didn't matter whether a person lived one or two extra hours on his last road. Maybe those who died on the way were luckier to avoid the horror of mass shooting. I think at times whether these Jews going to Rumbula knew what to expect or whether they were hoping to be taken to another ghetto? Of course, I will never get an answer to this question. In 1944 the Germans opened these huge graves in Rumbula to burn the remains of the people who had been buried there. They also crushed the bones in bone crushing machines.

In early June 1941 my uncle Boris' wife Zhenia and their daughter went on vacation to Pliavinias where Boris rented a room for them from Latvian landlords. Boris and his wife were hoping that their daughter would gain more strength during the vacation. When the war began, Boris was mobilized to the front. After the war we got to know that the Latvian landlords killed Boris' daughter even before the Germans came to the town. Zhenia hanged herself after this happened. Boris didn't know what had happened to them until after the war. Recently the memory of Zhenia and her daughter came back to me. My husband, my friend Ella Perl and I went to the exhibition 'Jews of the Riga ghetto.' We heard on the radio about it and didn't hesitate to visit it. My family members perished in this ghetto. I was hoping to find a mention of them at the exhibition. There was a large book of victims of the ghetto. However, I didn't find the names of my family, though Katolicheskaya Street where we lived was within the ghetto territory. Thus, I found the name of Zhenia Liberzon and her home address. The book also mentioned that she hanged herself after the vicious murder of her daughter. Zhenia was very young.

In June 1941 our train, full of children, was moving to Russia. The train was camouflaged with tree branches, so that German pilots wouldn't be able to identify the train. Regretfully, I cannot remember the places where we stopped. There were many stops. I knew no Russian, and couldn't remember Russian names. When the train stopped in a village or town, we got off, if there was an opportunity for us to stay for some time in school buildings or in local houses. For some time we stayed in a distant village where people had never seen a plane before. They used to look into the sky asking, 'What is that flying thing?' Usually a few children and a tutor were accommodated in a room. We were provided meals. However poor the food was, nobody starved. We never had enough food, and before going to sleep we often thought about our mothers' dinners. We didn't go to school. There were mostly children from poor Jewish families in our train. None of us knew Russian. We spoke Yiddish to one another and Latvian to our tutors. We couldn't attend Russian schools. Our tutors tried to teach us things, but they were not teachers. When the front line advanced we moved farther into the rear. We had left our homes with summer clothes on, and on our way we were given warmer clothes. Local women at places where we stopped felt sorry for us and shared their warm clothes with us. Of course, these clothes were different sizes. Now I know that we looked like scarecrows, but we didn't care then. So we kept moving till early 1943. We were called a children's home from Riga, but there were also children from other Latvian towns in our group. I don't remember if there were any Latvian children among us.

During this journey across Russia we faced anti-Semitism for the first time. We found out we were different from others. Speaking no Russian we didn't play with local children. We usually stayed in smaller groups. Local children used to follow a group of us shouting, 'Zhid, running along the line' [in Russian, the lines rhyme]. We knew the word 'zhid,' of course. Zhid in Latvia meant 'Jew' and had no abusive underlying note. This was the only word we knew, and we didn't know what the locals were shouting. Later we asked our tutors and they told us what it meant. The translation sounded nothing but funny, but the intonation and conduct of these boys indicated abuse.

In 1943 our former pioneer camp and current children's home arrived at Ivanovo [300 km from Moscow]. There was an international children's home, known all over the Soviet Union, located there. It was established in 1936 or 1937, during the war in Spain [see Spanish Civil War] 17, when Spanish orphan children started arriving in the Soviet Union. Initially, these children were let for adoption, and those coming afterward were taken to the children's home. Then came Polish children, whose parents were killed, when Hitler attacked Poland in 1939 [see Invasion of Poland] 18. There were children from Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and when the Great Patriotic War began, Soviet children were also brought to the children's home. Also, there were many children from the countries annexed to the USSR in the late 1930s, early 1940s: the Baltic Republics, Western Ukraine and Moldova. They didn't know Russian, but there were also Russian children at the home.

My brother and I stayed together during our wanderings across Russia. In Ivanovo we were separated: my brother, being two years older than me, was assigned to a different group of children. In Ivanovo we attended Russian classes. Children learn fast, but what is surprising is that I forgot Yiddish, when I started speaking Russian. I remembered Latvian, though, and when I returned to Latvia, I could speak Russian and Latvian. I also spoke Russian to my friends from the Riga children's home. All children of different nationalities spoke Russian to one another in this international children's home. We faced no anti-Semitism in the children's home. There were so many different children at this home, that nobody looked foreign. Of course, life in the children's home was no idyll, and I would never believe those who say they were happy there. However good a children's home can be, it will never replace a family. However, we knew we had no alternative, and that we would have died, if it hadn't been for the children's home. Actually, we had sufficient food and clothes, studied, had clean beds and were treated all right. I was continuously ill in Ivanovo. The doctors really saved my life at the children's home.

I became a pioneer at the children's home, and I was very proud of it. I studied from the 3rd to the 5th grade at school at the children's home. I was doing all right at school. I had friends: three sisters from Latvia, their last name was Pesakhovich. They came from the eastern part of Latvia. Feiga, the middle daughter, was in my group and my class. Her older sister Fania and the younger Sonia were also my friends. My other friend was Sonia, a Polish Jewish girl, whose parents were killed by the Germans in 1939.

We knew the war was coming to an end. In 1944 Soviet forces advanced as far as Latvia. We looked forward to the day when Latvia would be free and we could go home. My brother and I often discussed how we would come home and our parents would be waiting for us. It never occurred to us that none of them had survived. We thought that they were in evacuation, but couldn't find us, considering that we were moving from one place to another.

In 1945 children from Latvia left Ivanovo for the Daugavpils children's home. In fall I went to the 6th grade. The majority of our tutors were Russian. They only spoke Russian. They treated us well, and there was no anti-Semitism in our boarding school. Our tutor, Tatiana, was a Russian Jew. I owe my life to her. In winter I fell ill with pneumonia. The doctor of the boarding school had no positive feelings about curing me. Our tutor's sister was a doctor in the municipal hospital of Daugavpils. One night I was taken to her hospital on sleighs. A bag with my dress, underwear and some food was beside me, but the cabman stole this bag. I was unconscious in the hospital for a long time. My tutor's sister brought me back to life. She felt sorry for the Jewish orphan girl and spent much time with me. When I recovered from pneumonia, I fell ill with measles. I don't know how I survived.

Post-war

Two months later I returned to the boarding school. My head was shaved, and I rather looked like a skeleton. Our tutor helped me a lot. I had missed many classes. Tatiana helped me to catch up with the other children. We had individual classes, and I managed to complete the curricula of the 5th and 6th grade. In fall 1946 I went to the 7th grade. After finishing the 7th grade well, I was awarded a trip to Moscow. Ten children and a tutor went on this trip. This was the first time we went to Moscow, and everything was interesting. Moscow was being reconstructed, but theaters and museums were open. We went on excursions and to the theater. This was the first time I went to the theater, and I loved it.

Our boarding school tutors took efforts to find our relatives. One Sunday children from Riga were taken to Riga hoping that we might find someone we knew. We had an appointed place to meet in the evening, and I went walking along the streets. I went to our neighborhood, walked along familiar streets recalling my childhood. An older woman looked at me closely and asked, 'Are you Buna's daughter?' Buna was my mother's name. Everybody said I looked like her. The woman recognized me. She told me that my family had perished, but that my uncle Boris was alive. He had returned from the front. The woman promised to find his address, and take me there the following Sunday. She gave me her address, and the following Sunday my brother and I went to see her. We went to our uncle together. The reunion was joyful.

After the war Uncle Boris got to know that our family had been killed, and that my brother and I were evacuated with the camp. Our older brother Todres also came back to Riga. He was at the front during the war. The commander of his regiment heard that he could speak German and my brother became an interpreter at the headquarters. Our uncle and brother were looking for us. They never lost hope that we had survived, and we finally reunited. Todres also came to my uncle. We told each other what we had been through, talked about our dear ones and made plans for the future. Our uncle worked as a tinsmith in Riga. He remarried. His new wife was a Jewish woman from Latvia. Her husband had perished during the war, and she and her son were in evacuation. When my uncle married her, they rented two small rooms in a shared [communal] apartment 19. Boris wife's sister and her son also lived with them.

Boris told us about our uncle Hirsh. He was a very good tinsmith. Germans gave him orders, but later sent him to Germany. My uncle died of consumption in Germany shortly before the liberation in 1945. We don't know where he was buried.

I could hardly remember my parents' faces. All I remember is that they were tall. My uncle said that all I had to do to recall my mama was look into the mirror, but I wished I had my parents' picture. Our family pictures were gone. There were different tenants in our house after the ghetto was eliminated. They didn't preserve any of our belongings. My uncle found some acquaintances. They had their wedding pictures, and in one picture my parents were among other guests. There was no opportunity to make copies of photos at the time, but I remembered the faces of my parents and they were engraved in my memory for the rest of my life.

My brother had finished school by then. In Ivanovo he was called by the Russian name of Semyon, and after the war he continued to be called by this name. However, when receiving a passport, my brother had his name of Shleime indicated in it. I called him Shlemike affectionately. My brother and I were very close. Boris trained him in his vocation as a tinsmith. Later my brother started working in his shop. He rented a bed from a Jewish family.

Our older brother Todres changed dramatically after the war. I remember how kind and caring he had been before the war, but the war made him cruel. After the war he went to work as a leather worker. Leather workers earned well. Todres was young and wanted a good life. My brother and I were a burden to him. He had a family and had to take care of it. He was married to Uncle Boris wife's sister for six months. Something went wrong and they divorced. Todres married Sima Taiz, a very beautiful Jewish girl from Riga. They had a traditional Jewish wedding. In 1949 their son Isaac, named after our father, and in 1959 their daughter Bella were born. The first letter of her name repeated the first letter of our mother Buna's name. Todres believed that it was his duty to take care of his family, and we were mature enough to take care of ourselves. Perhaps, he had some reason...

After finishing the 7th grade I came of age to leave the boarding school. I moved to Riga. I stayed with my uncle for six months. I became an apprentice at the sewing factory in Riga. I also went to the 8th grade of an evening school. When my uncle's daughter was born, I helped his wife to look after the baby. However, I couldn't stay with my uncle any longer. There were five of us living in two small rooms, and when the baby was born, there was no space for a baby bed. I rented a bed from a family. I didn't stay long with those families. When their situation changed, I had to look for another bed. I became friends with my distant relative, my uncle's first wife Zhenia's relative. We were the same age, and our situation was the same. She helped me with my luggage, when I had to move to another place, and I helped her, when she had to move. I was pressed for money. Apprentices received 30 rubles of allowance. I paid 15 rubles per month for the bed, and it was difficult to make a living on 15 rubles, particularly after the war, when there was a lack of food. When I started working, I didn't earn much either. I was just a beginner, and was paid based on a piece-rate basis. Life was hard, but I knew I could only rely on myself. I joined the Komsomol 20 at the factory. I was an active Komsomol member and participated in all events. After finishing the 8th grade I couldn't afford to continue my studies. I had to earn my living. There were many Jewish, Latvian and Russian employees at the factory, but there was no anti-Semitism.

In 1948 the cosmopolitan trials [see campaign against 'cosmopolitans'] 21 took place in the USSR. I remember this period, though it had no effect on me. I was a seamstress' apprentice and was far from politics. However, all of us knew that this was a struggle against Jews. According to our newspapers all cosmopolitans were Jews. The trial against cosmopolitans was followed by the Doctors' Plot 22. However, I had too many other problems to take care of: I had no place to live and at times no food. This was scary.

When Stalin died in 1953, I took it as a personal disaster, as if it were the end of the world. Actually, I grew up in children's homes where children were raised as patriots. Our tutors called Stalin the 'father of all people' and 'Stalin is our sun.' They must have been sincere having grown up in the USSR. This had been hammered into their heads, and they, in their turn, were hammering this into our heads without giving it much thought. I cried after Stalin, our chief and teacher like all others did. After the Twentieth Party Congress 23, where Khrushchev 24 denounced the cult of Stalin and disclosed his crimes, I cursed Stalin. How much grief this man had brought to people, and how much more he would have caused had he lived longer! People were returning from exile [see Deportations from the Baltics] 25, and their stories proved the truth of what Khrushchev had said. The processes against cosmopolitans and the Doctors' Plot meant to unleash anti-Semitism and nobody knows what it might have resulted in, maybe even in Jewish pogroms. After the Twentieth Congress we had hopes for some improvements. It was like taking a breath of fresh air, but some time later everything was back: the poverty and lack of human rights for common Soviet people, anti-Semitism. Only repression was in the past. I also understood that this open and aggressive anti-Semitism was brought to Latvia by those, who arrived in Latvia from the USSR after the war. They felt like they owned our country. They were used to anti- Semitism, which existed in Russia during the tsarist or the Soviet regime.

In 1957 fortune smiled on me. Uncle Boris' wife found a room in a shared apartment for me. There were no shared apartments in our country before the USSR. There were 8-10 square meter servants' rooms in all bigger rooms, and I was to get one such room. When I came to the executive office [Ispolkom] 26, where the housing commission was to decide whether I should have this room, I was so scared that I was shaking all over. However, they took a positive decision, and I lived in this room for 17 years. From the moment I moved into this apartment I faced Russian anti-Semitism. The tenants in this apartment were a Jewish family and a Russian woman and her son. They had arrived from Siberia. When I just came in there without my belongings this woman began to shout that zhidi were buying everything and that they believed that everything there was for them, but that I would never have this room. Anyway, there was nothing she could do about it. I had an order and I moved into this room. My uncle refurbished it and bought me some furniture. The Russian woman continuously made scandals with me and with the Jewish family. She even dared to fight with us.

I became a good dressmaker and was offered a job in a shop. They offered a bigger salary and I accepted the offer. There were Jewish employees in the shop. They spoke Yiddish to one another. I had forgotten the language when in the children's home, but when I came to this environment, it took me no time to restore my language skills.

My brother and I celebrated all Jewish holidays at my uncle's place. He observed Jewish traditions and celebrated Jewish holidays. His wife was very religious. There was a lack of food products after the war. At one time there was even the system of food cards [Card system] 27, but whatever the situation, Boris' wife followed the kashrut. She bought kosher meat and sausage from a shochet. She bought live chickens at the market and took them to the shochet. They celebrated Sabbath on Friday. Saturday was a working day in the USSR, and my uncle had to go to work, but his wife didn't work on Saturday. They also celebrated Jewish holidays according to all rules. She also baked matzah for Pesach. The synagogue in Riga was open in the postwar years. It was amazing that the Germans didn't ruin it. Perhaps, it was because it was hidden behind apartment houses. The Germans burnt a number of synagogues in Riga, and later the Soviet regime closed the remaining synagogues. They didn't remove the synagogues, but instead, they used them as storage facilities or even residential quarters. However, this one survived. Even on weekdays it was full, and on holidays, such as Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur or Pesach, there wasn't an inch of room inside. There were people crowding outside. My uncle's wife had a seat of her own, and she paid for it each year. There was a beautiful choir and a wonderful cantor. We went to the synagogue on all holidays.

Married life

I got married in 1961. I met my future husband, Samuel Goldshmidt, at work. He was a tailor and worked in the shop. I made women's overcoats, and Samuel made men's wear. Samuel came from Daugavpils. His father, Hirsh Goldshmidt, was the best shoemaker in Daugavpils, and his mother, Basia, was a housewife. Besides Samuel, they had a son, David, and two daughters, Paya and Frieda. All children looked like their father. They were tall and had fair hair. Paya, the oldest one, was born in 1923, and Samuel was born in 1924. Frieda was born in 1925, and David was the youngest child. They grew up in a traditional Jewish family. The children were raised to respect Jewish traditions. After finishing cheder Samuel went to the yeshivah in Liepaja. Samuel can read and write in Hebrew well. One day a hooligan threw a brick and hit Samuel on the head. Samuel survived miraculously, but he asked his father to take him home. He went to a general education Jewish school and after finishing it became an apprentice of a tailor. His brother David was also a tailor. They spoke Yiddish in the family. None of them knew any Russian.

When the war began, Samuel's father went to the front, and the family evacuated to Irkutsk. Samuel was regimented to the army in 1943. He was at the front and had several awards: an order and a few medals. Samuel's father perished at the front. His mother became a widow at the age of 48. She never remarried. Basia was a very energetic woman. She raised four children alone and managed to give them a start in life. After the war the family moved to Riga. Samuel's sisters got married. Paya's marital name was Zilber, and Frieda's marital name was Benhen. Paya had two daughters, and Frieda had a son, Hersh, named after the deceased father, and a daughter. Basia lived with her younger daughter. David was the first to move to Israel in the 1970s, during the mass emigration of Jews. He got married in Israel and had two daughters. David was very kind, cheerful and witty. He was well-loved by all. He died of cancer prematurely. Samuel's sister and his mother also lived in Israel. Basia lived a long life. She died at the age of 90. Samuel's older sister Paya died in 2003. Paya and her husband loved each other very much. She used to say that if he was the first to die, she wouldn't be able to live without him. Paya died first. Her husband had cancer, and refused from medical treatment. He didn't want to live without her. He died one year after Paya. Frieda and David and Paya's children still live in Israel.

We had a traditional Jewish wedding. My husband and I grew up in respect of Jewish traditions, and followed them even during the Soviet regime. I was an orphan, and my uncle told me he would arrange the wedding for me. It was a beautiful wedding. There were Jewish musicians and a rabbi. The wedding took place at his dacha 28 in Majori, at the seashore. There was a big party in the hall, and a chuppah in the yard. There were many guests at the wedding party. After the wedding my husband moved in with me.

In 1962 our son Boris was born. We named him after my mama, by the first letter of her name. His Jewish name is Boruch. He had his brit milah according to the rules. Following the Jewish tradition, we did not cut his hair before the age of three, and at the age of three we arranged the upsheren ritual, the first hair cut. He had long fair hair and was often mistaken for a girl. He didn't quite like it and was happy to have his hair cut short.

We spoke Yiddish at home, and my son knows Yiddish well. My husband taught him Jewish traditions, history and religion. We always celebrated Jewish holidays at home. I didn't have as much time as my uncle's wife to prepare for holidays, though. My husband and I worked, and I had no time to stand in long lines to buy food products, but I did my best. We always had matzah at Pesach and no bread. We went to the synagogue on holidays and took our son with us. My husband and I often recall beautiful services on holidays and how beautiful the choir was. When in the 1970s local Jews started moving to Israel, fewer people were coming to the synagogue. [Editor's note: according to the 1970 census, the Jewish population in Riga constituted 30,581 people. The population in Riga went down due to Jewish emigration to Israel and other countries: in 1979 to 23,583 people, and by 1st January 1989 to 18,814 people].

There were only newcomers left, and they didn't observe Jewish traditions. This wasn't their fault. They had grown up under the Soviet regime, when there was a ban on religion [see struggle against religion] 29, when everything of Jewish origin was extirpated from their life. An acquaintance of mine, who came to Riga from Russia, told me that they were even afraid of teaching their children Yiddish. Her grandmother spoke Yiddish, and her mother already didn't know it. Also, only older people, who had no fears left, went to the synagogue. Younger people didn't attend the synagogues for fear of losing their jobs. They were not to blame. The Jewish religion and traditions have always been a part of our life in independent Latvia before 1940 or even during the period of the Soviet regime. My son and I sat on the upper tier at the synagogue, and my husband sat on the ground floor. When our son grew older, he stayed with his father at the synagogue.

We didn't celebrate Soviet holidays at home. We were happy to have another day off, though. I liked parades on 1st May and 7th November, when people got together for the parade and for parties after the parade. We drank a little and then sang songs. We had lots of fun. Then we went for a walk with our son and visited our relatives on every other day off.

My brother Shleime, a tinsmith, married Ida, a Jewish girl, in 1954. He also had a traditional Jewish wedding. His wife was born in Liepaja in 1934. Her parents had nine children. During the Holocaust the family was in evacuation and they all survived. Ida's mother sent her children to the children's home fearing that she wouldn't be able to provide food for all of them. After the war they moved to Riga. Ida told me that during their evacuation, when they were running along the streets of Liepaja to the railway station, Latvian residents kept shooting at them. They had often killed Jews even before the Germans came to the country.

Their son Boris was born in 1955, and their daughter Hana, named after Grandmother, was born in 1960. Boris was named after our mama, by the first letter of her name Buna. In 1971 my brother and his family emigrated to Israel. It was very difficult to obtain a permit to leave the USSR, and Ida and other Jews from Riga, who were refused such a permit, went to Moscow to insist on getting the permit. They went on a hunger strike in front of the Supreme Soviet 30 of the USSR, and they finally managed to obtain this permit to move to Israel. However, they only stayed in Israel for three years. My brother could hardly cope with the climate in Israel. He and I have problems with joints resulting from our hard childhood in the children's home. The disease recrudesced in Israel, and my brother had problems walking.

Ida decided they should move to Germany. My brother hated the very idea, and they argued so hard that at times they were on the edge of divorce, but my brother couldn't leave his wife and children. They moved to Berlin. They have citizenship of Israel and Germany. My brother had a hard time at the beginning. It had to do with his work considering that there were different technologies and different materials, but also, he suffered from living in the country, whose citizens had been exterminating Jews. I know that this wasn't so hard on his wife: her family survived in the Holocaust and none of them was murdered or burnt. Besides, she is five years younger than my brother and she doesn't remember all of these horrors. It was hard for my brother. Later my brother made friends with a Jewish shoemaker from Latvia, who taught him his vocation. My brother went to work in his shop and began to earn well. He supported me since he went to Israel. He sent parcels via Joint 31, and also sent money occasionally, when someone traveled to Latvia. A few years later his partner decided to move to his daughter in Canada. He sold the shop to my brother just for peanuts. My brother has lived in Germany for 30 years. He adjusted to living there and it is easier now. Shleime and his family observe Jewish traditions. His daughter is married to a Jewish man, and his son has a Jewish wife. My brother has grandchildren. Shleime was very upset, when our niece Bella, Todres' daughter, married a Latvian man, and his son's second wife is Russian. Shleime loved our brothers' children. He didn't criticize them, but he suffered a lot. However, Bella and Isaac have very good families, and I'm very happy for them and wish them happiness.

We still lived in our small room. We suffered from continuous attacks of our Russian neighbor. She was really a sadist. We spent summers renting a summer house in the vicinity of Riga. For ten years we were on the lists of the executive committee for getting an apartment. We knew that a bribe given to those officials who were responsible for the distribution of apartments would have accelerated the process, and once somebody even gave my husband a hint in this regard. However, we didn't have any extra money, and secondly, my husband would have never done such a thing. So we waited patiently till it was our turn to receive an apartment, until there was a vacant apartment available in the suburb of Riga. It was rather shabby and had stove heating, but we gave our consent to have it. Our son was 13, when we moved in there. There were two rooms, and we were quite content about it.

During the mass departures of Jews to Israel in the 1970s my husband and I also decided to move there. His relatives and my brother were moving. My older brother Todres and Uncle Boris were also going to move to Israel, but none of them obtained a permit from the Soviet authorities. My uncle had two refusals before he was allowed to leave with his wife in 1991, when Latvia became independent [see Reestablishment of the Latvian Republic] 32. They've lived in Israel for almost twelve years. Todres was severely ill in 1991 and could not relocate. He died in 1992. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Riga. His wife lived five years longer. She was buried beside Todres' grave. His son and daughter live in Riga. They have grandchildren. We occasionally see each other or talk on the phone. However, at that moment we were hoping to leave with our relatives. We wanted to be near our dear ones, and we couldn't even imagine staying here. Unfortunately, this was not to be. I developed a severe heart disease. We had to call an ambulance several times, and once I was taken to hospital. Then I was appointed for a pension for disability and the doctors advised me not to change the climate. We could not relocate. Our son often rebuked us for staying, but what could we do...

Our son Boris

After finishing the 8th grade of his general education school my son entered the technical school of light industry. After finishing it he wanted to continue his studies at a higher educational institution, but he also wanted to learn a vocation and go to work. When a student of this technical school, my son fell in love with a Russian girl. There were no Jews in our neighborhood, and there was not much choice. The girl also loved him, and she was beautiful, but I couldn't even imagine letting her into our family. When Boris told me he wanted to marry her, I was outraged. We had a Jewish family and had our traditions and a non-Jewish woman coming into our family was out of the question. My husband was also flatly against it. We told Boris that if he married her, our family would be his no longer. I don't know what Boris told his girlfriend, but they broke up. Later she got married and left Riga with her husband. My son developed a terrible depression. He used to lie in his room staring onto the ceiling without talking to anybody in the evenings. It was hard for him, and I didn't know how to help. Later he recovered.

Boris met his future wife at the synagogue 20 years ago. We went there on Simchat Torah, and my husband's acquaintance suggested that we introduced Boris to a Jewish girl. We were positive about it, and she came back with a beautiful Jewish girl. We liked the girl. Our son also liked her. They started seeing each other. My daughter-in-law's name is Sophia. Her maiden name was Taiz. She came from the town of Rezekne, 300 kilometers from Riga. Sophia's mother died, when the girl was eight. Her father was a construction foreman. He was busy and couldn't spend much time with his daughter. She was raised by her aunt, a philologist, a teacher of upper secondary school. Now Rachel, my daughter-in-law's aunt, is the chairwoman of the Rezekne Jewish community. After finishing school Sophia came to Riga where she entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematic. She lived in a dormitory. When my son and Sophia got married, she moved in with us.

In 1986 our granddaughter Lubov was born. Sophia was in her last year, and I took responsibility for taking care of my granddaughter. I wanted Sophia to continue her studies and defend her diploma successfully. My son was a crew leader in a big woodwork shop. He also studied at the extramural department of the Riga Polytechnic College. I looked after my granddaughter, and when my husband came home in the evening, he took her out for a walk. Of course, it was difficult for us, but we wanted to help our children. When Sophia received her diploma, her father visited us and said that Sophia wouldn't have graduated from university if it hadn't been for our assistance. It was true. I get along well with my daughter-in-law, but I think children and parents shouldn't live together. It's hard for different generations to get along. However, we had no conflicts living three years together. My son worked hard, and they saved money to buy an apartment. My husband also earned well, and we supported them to help them to save more. During perestroika 33, when it was allowed to have one's own business, my son and his partner rented an office and opened their own woodwork company. There are five of them working there and they are doing well.

Perestroika enabled us to receive an apartment. According to a decree of Gorbachev 34, veterans of the war were allowed the privilege of building cooperative apartments. My husband submitted a request, and two years later we received a two-room apartment in our building. My son and his wife stayed in our old apartment. Our granddaughter stayed with us on weekdays. On Friday evening her parents picked her to take her home for the weekend. We have a wonderful granddaughter. Of course, we wanted them to have another child, but it didn't work out. My son said he had to provide for the daughter, and wanted her to have everything she needed, but that he didn't want to have anther child to live in poverty. There is a Jewish saying that each child comes into life with its own fortune. My granddaughter went to the Jewish elementary school. She only had the highest grades in all subjects. Her Hebrew teacher always complimented her. I was so happy to hear this! My granddaughter was also a kind child and got along with all children. She went to a good gymnasium after finishing elementary school. My son and his wife earned well to pay for her studies.

Lubov studied very well and took part in Olympiads. She even went to the all-Union Olympiad for schoolchildren in Moscow. When she finished school, my son received a letter of appreciation of his good care of the girl issued by the school management. That year [2005] my granddaughter entered the Faculty of Economics at the university. The competition was high, but she was successful. My son and his wife also pay for her studies. Sophia is chief accountant in a company. She earns well. My son is also doing well. There is a lot of competition, but thank God, my son can provide for his family and support us. My husband and I are pensioners, the poorest people in present-day Latvia, but our son helps us to feel more comfortable than other pensioners. My son has fewer orders these days, but we hope for the better. We have to hope that he will have new customers soon.

Our son and his wife often visit us. My son remembers Yiddish and speaks Yiddish with us. My daughter-in-law does not know Yiddish. Rezekne was a Jewish town before the war. There were 13,000 Jews in it. They were exterminated during the war. Now the Jewish community of Rezekne accounts to 35 people, and my daughter-in-law's aunt is the only native resident in the town. A few years ago there were still about 100 Jewish residents there, but some of them passed away and the others emigrated...

We celebrate Jewish holidays at home. My husband and I go to the synagogue, and then our children visit us and we have a festive dinner. Sophia has no time to cook a big meal, and I am so happy, when our big family gets together at the table.

Gorbachev's perestroika was not only good because we received an apartment. We felt the freedom, and that was important. We also were allowed to correspond with our relatives abroad, visit them and invite them to visit us. I haven't been to Israel due to my health, but my husband has visited his relatives several times. He will go there again soon. We wouldn't even dream about anything like this, if it hadn't been for perestroika.

I was positive about the breakup of the USSR [1991]. I think this was the right thing to happen. Each republic needs to live as it wants rather than being directed by Moscow. My husband is also happy about it. There has always been anti-Semitism in Russia. During the Soviet times we heard so many times from visitors from Russia that zhidi were to blame for everything. Even if Jews never did anything bad to them they would continue to blame Jews for all their misfortunes. Rude and uneducated people don't hesitate to blame others for their problems since it's much harder for them to recognize their own faults. Even visiting Jews dislike local Jews. Every now and then I asked them what was so bad about local Jews. One cannot say that all local Jews are no good. They are different. Same with visitors. There are bad and good people. My close friend moved to Riga from Zaporozhiye, and she is a wonderful person. One cannot judge all after having one bad experience.

I think anti-Semitism in Russia is getting stronger, but the most concerning fact is that it is not punished properly. If they beat a rabbi in the street or anybody looking like a Jew, if a Duma deputy can call people to do pogroms and remain a deputy, this is terrible, and I'm happy that our independent Latvia is so far from Russia now. Here, if a politician makes an anti-Semitic statement, his career would be over. One of the Seim deputies said once that Jews assisted the Russian occupational army in 1940. There was a huge response to his statement. The Jewish community of Latvia pronounced its protest. Latvians may feel apprehensive about the Jewish community. It's no secret that Latvians took an active part in the extermination of Jews. This deputy was dismissed from the Party and deprived of his deputy's mandate. So, if one fights against anti- Semitism, it can be destroyed. Of course, there is routinely anti-Semitism in Latvia. There have always been rascals. Once an igniting bottle was thrown into the synagogue. Then a police post was established near the synagogue, and also, cameras were installed. It was a good thing to do, but how come no church or cathedral need police to secure the people, and it's different with the synagogue? They also desecrated the Jewish cemetery. These boys were captured, and there were Russian and Latvian boys among them. I know that the community fights against such demonstrations and anti- Semitic rascals. I hope this struggle will be more successful now, that Latvia has become independent.

During perestroika the Jewish community, LSJC [Latvian Society of Jewish Culture] 35 was established in Riga. There was a Jewish choir organized at the charity center. I like singing and I joined the choir. There are native residents of Latvia and those who moved to Latvia later in this choir. We all love Jewish songs, and this unites us. We enjoy each rehearsal or performance. We often give concerts in Jewish communities of different Latvian towns. Sometimes it's hard. We are older people, and it's even difficult to stand for one and a half or two hours, but we forget about it, when we start singing. There are new people and new songs coming. We've become friends. We celebrate birthdays and Jewish holidays together. We need each other and those people, who come to our concerts to listen to Jewish songs.

Glossary

Henryk Prajs
Gora Kalwaria
Poland
Interviewer: Aleksandra Bankowska
Date of interview: January 2005

Mr. Henryk Prajs is a cheerful and friendly person. He participates in the activities of various veterans organizations and is also a member of the Social and Cultural Society of Polish Jews seniors club in Warsaw. We met at his house in Gora Kalwaria near Warsaw, where he lives by himself. He feels very closely bound up with his town. Mr. Prajs is a very talkative person, although often wandering off subject and into digressions. During our conversations he stressed his Polish identity and his liberal views time and again. He asked me to stop recording a couple of times, not wanting to disclose certain information publicly.

My family history
Growing up
In the army
During the war
In hiding
After the war
Recent years

My family history

My grandparents came to Gora Kalwaria 1 from the Kielce region [town ca. 180 km south of Warsaw]. I know for sure since 1850 my father's side of the family lived in Gora Kalwaria, on Pilsudskiego Street, and they had their own little house there. It's no longer there, the Germans pulled it down. My paternal grandfather was called Majer Bejer Prajs. He worked as a middleman, ordering dairy products - cream, milk - and delivering them to Warsaw, for Jews only, as it was all kosher. I remember him as a brisk elderly man with a short gray beard and a 'krymkowka,' a Crimean cap [a round black cap with a small visor]. I have his death certificate, he died in 1930. My grandmother was called Golda, but I never knew her, I think she died before I was born.

They had many children. My father's brothers were called Nusyn and Mojsze. Nusyn didn't have a proper job or profession. Sometimes he worked picking apples, give a hand somewhere, and so on. There were lots of people like him among the Jewish poor. Mojsze had a horse cab; he made his living driving people places. He used to drive the judge to the court for example, he had his regulars. He had two children, Josla and Golda. Every one of them had a daughter called Golda; they were given that name after Grandma. He lived with his family in Gora Kalwaria, in a wooden house, just like us, nothing fancy whatsoever, definitely in poverty.

Father's sisters were called Kaila, Malka, and Chana. Kaila's husband, Herszek Bogman, was a shoemaker. They had children, too, but I don't remember them all, it was a lot of people. There was Hudeska, Glika, and a boy called Mosze.

Father's younger sister was called Malka. Her husband was Dawid Szyniawer. He was a Torah scribe; it's called a soyfer [sofer]. You know, he wrote the Jewish [Hebrew] letters from right to left, on a parchment. It has to be officially approved calfskin, very thin; they only write on that, it's forbidden to use anything else. Malka had many children, that is: Mojsze, Szulim, Eta, Mendel, Josel, Ele, and Gedale. I do remember all of them because they lived nearby and were either my age or older.

Aunt Chana had a small notions shop. Her husband's last name was Szoskiel, but I don't remember his first name, Duwid perhaps? She had two children, a daughter called Golda and a son, Ele.

I didn't know my maternal grandparents. They were seldom spoken of at our home; it wasn't considered an important subject. Mom's family was called Frydman. They lived in the country not far from Gora Kalwaria, they had an estate [sic] in Coniew. Not a big one it was, a garden and a little house. They moved to Gora Kalwaria before the war, in 1937 or 1938, and didn't live there anymore. We didn't see each other much at the time, as I was in the army. I can tell you they were truly religious Jews.

Mom had many brothers and sisters as well. Her eldest sister was called Frajda, then came Mom, after her Szulim, after Szulim came Chana, after Chana came Glika, and after Glika Iciek, and after Iciek came Fajga, and after Fajga came Sura.

Frajda had a husband, she lived in Piaseczno [town 15 km north of Gora Kalwaria] and so I can't tell anything about her because I don't know. Szulim had a family in Gora Kalwaria. His wife was called Czarna, they had four children: Herszel, Josek, Gina, and Rachel. Szulim was a tailor, he used to make the so-called 'tandeta,' shoddy clothes. They were called 'tandeciarze,' second-rate tailors, you know, because they made the worst quality, the cheapest clothes. While in pre-war times you had to pay a tailor 25 zlotys for a suit, just for the tailoring, a 'tandeciarz' would bill you 23 for the whole suit: fabric, tailoring, the whole nine yards. The poor from the villages as well as the towns would buy it. He [Szulim] made those shoddy clothes and sold them at the market. The fair was held once a week, on Tuesdays I think.

Mom's sister Chana was a housewife, her husband's name was Mosze Warym. They had a restaurant in Gora Kalwaria at the main square, on the corner of Pilsudskiego and Pijarska streets. I think they had three children, Motek, Gedale, and yet another Gina.

Glika didn't have any children, she was a spinster. She worked as a seamstress. She only made underwear, men's and ladies' shirts. Iciek had a shop in Warsaw on 4 Sowia Street, with dairy products. He was doing very well. I don't remember his wife's name. He had three children. One of them was Gina, nicknamed Genia, but I don't remember the rest, they were little children.

Sura was a spinster as well, she never got married. She was a seamstress. There was also Fajga, a seamstress as well, she only made men's trousers. Fajga died two weeks before the expulsion of Jews [from Gora Kalwaria] in 1941. She was still buried in Gora Kalwaria. She passed away peacefully, so to speak. She was buried according to the Jewish rite. It's weird, we actually envied her that she died naturally and didn't live to witness the catastrophe. I know more or less where we buried her, but the tombstone is gone.

How is one buried according to the Jewish rite? A person dies, you have to bury his the very same day, you don't wait to check if it's some coma or not. Basically there's a regular grave you know, and the Jewish coffin consists of seven boards, two boards a side, 20-30 centimeters wide, joined without any nails, because the world is open, and the coffin must not be closed, or nailed. The corpse is put on the naked ground and it's all covered with three boards. That's the ritual burial. And you say prayers at a funeral.

My parents were born between 1890 and 1892. My father was called Jankiel and my mother Estera. They met each other, as it used to be back then, through a matchmaker. Mom was a very attractive woman, of medium height, with a round face and very pretty eyes. I have Mom's eyes. She didn't wear a wig, she had nice hair. And Father was tall, blond, very unlike a Jew. He had a finger missing. He had cut it off himself so that they wouldn't draft him to the tsarist army. He could only write in Yiddish and not in Polish. In Russian, he was just able to sign his name, just like Mom. [Editor's note: Prior to WWI that part of Poland was under the Russian rule, meaning the official language was Russian.]

Mom was a seamstress. Father traded orchards, I mean he leased them from the farmers, utilized them, watched over them, sprayed them, and sold the fruits. Often he would buy ripe fruits and sell them. Sometimes he traded chickens or geese. He was a small time merchant; he didn't have his own stall. We always lacked money. I come from a poor family, very honest people, very hard-working, but they were not rich.

We only spoke Yiddish at home. My parents dressed the European way, observed the [religious] rules, the food was kosher. My father didn't go to the synagogue very often, not on every Saturday, and Mom only once a year, on Yom Kippur. There were two synagogues in Gora Kalwaria. One belonged to the kahal, the Jewish community, a progressive one, and the other belonged to the tzaddik [Rabbi Avraham Mordechai Alter, or Imrei Emes, 4th rebbe of the Ger dynasty, the last of the dynasty to live in Poland]. My parents used to go to the progressive synagogue.

I was born on 30th December 1916 as Froim Fiszel. I had a sister and a brother. My sister's name was Golda, after Grandma. She was older than me, she was born in 1914. She was a pretty young girl, dark haired. She was a very good student, one of the best in her class. She finished seven grades of the Polish elementary school. When she was 16 or 17 she went to Warsaw and became a bookkeeper in a small soap factory on 12 Radzyminska Street in the Praga district. They paid her rather well, 120-130 zlotys per month. It was not too much, but you could get on. Bread was very cheap back then, 25, 35, 50 groszes [1 Polish zloty = 100 Polish groszes], a bun two groszes, five groszes.

It was a small workshop in the backyard plus a shop, six or seven people were employed there, they made and sold various soaps and washing articles. My sister lived with the factory's owners, the Hirszhorns, they were Jews. I was in Warsaw once or twice before the war, and stayed with my sister there, once as I was on furloughed from the army.

My brother Dawid was born in 1919. He completed six grades, he was a good student, too. He was a handsome, tall man, he had a slight squint though, he had good sight, but his left eye would always wander a bit to the side. After finishing school he learned saddle making. A saddler makes saddles, harnesses, horse-collars. We were both members of the youth organization 'Frayhayt' of the Right Poalei Zion 2 party. My brother hadn't been in the army, his year had not yet been drafted [when the war broke out].

We lived in Gora Kalwaria. The town was founded by the Poznan bishop Stefan Wierzbowski to symbolize Jerusalem. [Editor's note: the urban design and toponymy of Gora Kalwaria, or Calvary Hill, was intended by its founder to recall the Jerusalem of Jesus's times; it was even called New Jerusalem at first]. That's why dissenters [non-Catholics] couldn't live there. The ban wasn't canceled until Napoleonic times and the Congressional Kingdom [Editor's note: actually earlier, in 1797; the Congressional Kingdom, or the Kingdom of Poland, was created after Napoleon's fall, in 1815].

The Jews started to settle in Gora Kalwaria in 1802. In the 1930s there were already 3,000 Jews and 3,500 Poles. It was a very primitive town at the time. No waterworks whatsoever, just some wells far apart, you needed to walk some couple hundred meters to fetch water. It was only Mayor Dziejko [in the 1930s] who ordered pumps to be installed on every street and so you could take water from just next to your house. Electricity was introduced in Gora Kalwaria in the 1920s, but the poor households didn't have it until shortly before the war. Luckily, we had electric lighting, because Mom was a seamstress and needed it to work. Everyone has fond memories of Mayor Dziejko, as he was a good host. He did much for the town, and with some help of Jewish money, too. When Jews came to see the tzaddik, they had to pay the mayor a zloty each. The money was then used for the town's needs.

The tzaddiks came to Gora Kalwaria from Przysucha and Kock. [Yitzchak Meir (Icik Majer), the founder of the Alter dynasty, was a disciple of tzaddiks Simcha Binem (Bunim) of Przysucha and Menachem Mendel of Kock (Kotzker Rebbe).] Since their arrival the inflow of Jews increased, most of them Orthodox. The Gora tzaddik [Yiddish: Gerer Rebbe] didn't have many followers in Gora itself, though.

The Gora Jews recognized the tzaddik from Kozienice rather than the one from Gora Kalwaria. [Editor's note: there were no tzaddiks in Kozienice between the two world wars; Mr. Prajs refers to the tradition of the Maggid of Kozienice, or Israel Yitzchak Hofstein (Hapstein), 1733-1814.] His followers were mostly outsiders. They came from all over Poland, from every city except maybe for the Poznan district, from all of eastern and southern Poland: Cracow, Rzeszow, Lodz, Warsaw, Lublin, all the small towns [surrounding the big cities]. They came to him on High Holidays. On New Year - or Rosh Hashanah in Hebrew, on Yom Kippur, and on Shavuot - or Pentecost, I'd say 2,000 Jews would come to Gora Kalwaria. They rented rooms from the local Jews. My Mom, for example, used to rent them a room to earn an extra zloty or two.

The tzaddik was well-known. I saw him a few times. Just an ordinary bearded Jew. I've never been one of his followers. In my opinion he was no sage, just a man who knew the Torah really well. Surely, there had to be something about him, since he had so many followers and everyone thought of him as a miracle-worker. Even the Poles respected him. There was a telling moment, when Cardinal Kakowski [Aleksander Kakowski, 1862-1938, archbishop of Warsaw, cardinal, politician] came to Gora Kalwaria in 1933 or 1934. They built a triumphal arch and everyone welcomed him, including the Jews with the rabbi. But the tzaddik did not come to greet the cardinal, and received him in his house instead. They exchanged gifts.

Growing up

We lived by my grandfather Majer's at Pilsudskiego Street. The house was made of wood and quite poor. The whole family was squeezed into one room. It was a big room, perhaps ten by six meters. There was everything in it: Mom's workbench, and a place to sleep, and the eating table, and we also did our homework there, but only after Mom had finished her work. Beds stood in the corner, the sewing machine by the window; the window had four or six panes and was next to the door, and to the left stood a chest to store this and that. The beds were behind a screen. The kitchen stove was made of bricks and a pipe connected it to the chimney. It was always very tidy, Mom kept things in order. The clients complimented her, as they came to see her.

There were three Polish and three Jewish families in our yard. We got on with each other very well, like a family. There was no anti-Semitism, none at all. Our Polish neighbors were called Wozniak, Rytko, and Jarosz, and the Jewish ones Bielawski and Kielman. When Mrs. Wozniak baked the holiday cakes, she used to come to my Mom and share them with her: 'Here, Estera, it's for your kids.' When we, on the other hand, got our matzot, Mom would bring it to Mrs. Wozniak and Zosia Jarosz just the same: 'Na, Zosia, take the matzah, take it.' I used to come to Wozniak's as if it was my house. And Mom taught Zosia how to sew.

My friends were mostly Poles: Mietek and Wladek Zetek, Janek Bialek, Wojciechowski, Wozniak, Stasiek Rytko, Maniek Jarosz, we all grew up together. We spent time together in the yard, played soccer, dodge-ball, and so on. We pretended we were soldiers. I was a bit older and so I was in charge, we made sabers out of tin scraps 'aaand maaarch, hut two three four, hut two three four!'

We celebrated all the Jewish holidays: Pesach, Rosh Hashanah. During Pesach everything in the house had to be kosher, there could be nothing containing leavened bread. Father always went to the synagogue and Mom prepared the breakfast. When he returned, we ate. The breakfast was a bit better than usually, just as the holiday supper; we had fish, broth, and such.

We sang various religious songs, according to the psalms appropriate for the time of year. On Rosh Hashanah the prayers in the synagogue lasted till well after midnight, at which time someone blew the shofar, or horn. This is to remind of Moses addressing the Jewish tribes as he received the Ten Commandments. On Yom Kippur one fasts all day. And Chanukkah and Purim were no different from any ordinary day. In the poor families there was nothing at all, just the prayers. If one was a strong believer, he would go to the synagogue in the evening to listen to the Esther's prayer [The Book of Esther, or Megillat Esther, is read aloud during Purim], because it [Purim] was a celebration of Esther's miracle. But it was no holiday.

On Fridays we simply had a supper after work. Saturdays I either worked or went to the organization [Mr. Prajs was at first a member of the Bund's children organization, Skif, and after that - of Frayhayt]. I didn't observe Sabbath too rigorously, and later not at all. It made my Mom sad, but I was progressive, not a bit religious, I didn't even pray anymore. I didn't feel the need to. And I dined at Mrs. Wozniakowa's [the neighbor], oh yes. I didn't observe the kashrut even in my early youth. Mom never knew it, God forbid, never, no one knew, it was unthinkable! They would separate my dishes right away, wouldn't use them at all. That's the rule, the Jewish rite.

What did Mom use to cook? I like fish Jewish style above all. Nothing else, really. Mom prepared fish thus: she skinned it, chopped some onion, added an egg, some salt and pepper, and mixed it all. Then she stuffed the skin with it, and cooked it for two hours.

What other dishes did Jews eat? Well, chulent. Chulent is very heavy, stodgy, nothing interesting really. You had to have an earthen pot. You filled it with potatoes, barley, some fat - oil or such, and a fair bit of meat, a beef shoulder for example. It was then covered, wrapped, and put into the stove for the whole night. It roasted till morning, and then was brought home and eaten after the prayers.

Rich Jews would put another pot inside the bigger one, not necessarily earthenware but made for example of metal, and fill it with some fancy tidbits, some delicacies. It also had to be covered so that the dishes couldn't mix. It was called kugel. It was a sort of pudding, a dessert, something like that. You only eat kugel on Saturdays after the prayers. You mustn't eat before that.

I know Jewish religion and I'm proud I do. Our parents sent me and my brother to a cheder. There were no illiterates among the Jews, because children had to be sent to school as soon as they were five, no matter what. A cheder could be organized in any Jewish house. Any Jew could teach in it, if he knew anything of the Jewish religion, didn't have to be some pundit. A dozen or so boys would gather, aged five to 12-13.

My teacher was called Majer Mesyng. The cheder was in his house on Kilinskiego Street. The building does no longer exist, it was demolished after the war. He taught us the Jewish [Hebrew] alphabet, how to write the names Abraham, Jacob, Isaac, David, showed us the east, west, north, and south, told us that Israel was located in Asia, and what Africa was. I attended it for five years, from age five to ten. I know Mishnah, Gemara, and I can still speak Hebrew and Yiddish.

My parents were not rich enough to throw any bar mitzvah party. When I turned 13, I went to the synagogue with my father and had to read aloud some passages from the Torah. You have to say those prayers in a special way, putting accents in all the right places. I did great. Father was proud of me. We went home, Mom prepared a festive dinner, I got 5 zlotys for saying the prayers so well, and that was it. My brother's bar mitzvah was exactly the same. Well, only he didn't read from the Torah as well as I did.

I went to a Polish elementary school at the age of seven. From 7am to 1 or 2pm I was at school, and after that I went to the cheder. At school they taught us Polish, math, geography, music, and from fourth grade on we also had German classes. Jews and Poles studied together, but the Jews were fewer. There were I think 36 people in my class, and only three of them Jewish: me - they called me Heniek at school, not Froim - Uszer, and Josel Mesing. I already knew Polish, because there were Poles in my yard, but it was definitely the school that taught me the proper grammar and basically to speak correct Polish. I was very popular at the school, I liked the teachers, I liked to study and had good marks, except for math, but otherwise I had A's and B's.

From among the teachers I'd mention Mrs. Karniewska, who taught German. She was my Mom's client. She often asked me to fetch something, or do something for her. No other favors, though. I remember celebrating 3rd May 3 at the school. Students from all the schools would gather in the morning and sing 'Long live May, the 3rd of May, it's like the paradise for all the Poles.' We would have an assembly in the evening. The firemen, the soldiers, and the students would parade through the town. I always took part in those celebrations.

When I was 12 or 13 my friends and I joined the Skif 4. Skif stands for Sotsyalkinderfarband, or the Socialist Youth Union, a children's organization connected with the Bund party 5. Bund was a social democratic party, struggling for the emancipation and equality of Jews. While still a 'skifist' I was the Gora Kalwaria delegate at the funeral of Bejnysz Michalewicz [a.k.a. Jozef Izbicki, 1876-1928, a Bund activist since 1905, pedagogue, journalist, co-founder of TsIShO (Central Jewish School Organization)], a Bund leader, on Okopowa Street in Warsaw. It was a huge funeral. Naturally, there were Bund delegates there, giving speeches: [Wiktor] Alter, [Jakub] Pat, I guess [Henryk] Ehrlich 6 as well, to name a few. There were lots of people from all over Poland. At some point we all left Skif. They wanted Jewish emancipation [instead of building a Jewish state], and that's not possible. Only two of us stayed: Krupka and one more person.

I preferred to join a Jewish [here: Zionist] organization, because I believed it necessary to build our own state. That's why I joined the Right Poalei Zion as a scout. I was still a kid, I was 14. It was a social democratic labor party, they wanted to liberate Palestine to create our own state in which the social democratic parties would flourish. There were maybe 50 of us [Frayhayt members] in Gora Kalwaria. We rented a room on Pilsudskiego Street. It was about 10 meters long and 7 wide. There was a library and everything else was there. The room was paid for from the membership fees. All the pre-war organizations were funded from membership fees, unless someone rich from abroad donated 100 zlotys, it was an awful lot of money before the war.

We often had our meetings there, always on a Saturday or Sunday, on free days. There were talks, excursions. The talks were basically about the culture, the world, what was going on, how things in India or China were, in Warsaw, or in the rest of the world. Basically the economic life, wars, and so on. If I knew something, I prepared a short speech. Do I recall any such speech? We fought for freedom, democracy, or the unions in other words, for equal rights, and against exploitation. You had to quote a paper, Robotnik [The Worker, a Warsaw newspaper of the Polish Socialist Party] or some Jewish paper. There were many different of those, the Bund published Folks-Shtime [Editor's note: probably Folks-Tsaytung, People's Journal, a newspaper published by the Bund; Folks-Shtime, People's Voice was published after WW II], there was Haynt 7, and later the orthodox Jews started to publish their paper, and the Zionists published some, you quoted one of them and basically gave a speech.

We didn't go on excursions, where would we go, we didn't have the money. But we did take walks into the woods on Saturday mornings in May. It was called Kepa, nowadays a pasture a few kilometers from Gora Kalwaria. There was also the so-called Klajnowski Forest, or Karolin, or we would simply take a walk to the river Wisla, if the weather was nice. There was always a lecturer on such trips and he gave his speech.

The chairman of the Gora Kalwaria branch of Poalei Zion was Mojsze Skrzypek. He was also our lecturer. We had those, well in Yiddish it's called 'kestelgesprekh,' talks. Questions were posed anonymously and the speaker would answer them. He spoke about literature for instance. Everything in Yiddish of course, I don't know if maybe ten people in Gora Kalwaria spoke Hebrew. Mojsze Skrzypek was an intelligent guy. I don't remember what he did for a living, perhaps he worked in some office, there was the Zajdemans soap factory, a bank, maybe he was a bookkeeper there, I don't know. Chaskiel Goldsztajn, Mendel Cukier, Chane Gotlib were my friends from the organization. I remember them all, I can still see their faces.

I didn't have much free time. You went to pick currants or give someone a hand to earn some money. When it was warm, we would go swimming in our free time, usually Saturdays. But I also read a lot. Historical novels, most of all. I remember books about Lokietek [Wladislaus I the Elbow-high], Kazimierz Wielki [Casimir III the Great], Zygmunt Stary [Sigismund I the Old; all three were Polish kings]. I do also remember some Jewish authors: Peretz 8, Sholem Aleichem 9, An-ski 10, Asch 11, Bergelson 12. I seldom bought books, didn't have the money. I was sometimes given books as a school prize. Mostly I borrowed them from a library.

There were three libraries in Gora Kalwaria. There was the Peretz's library, where the Jewish youth would meet up, no matter, left- or right- wing. That was the first one. As for the other two, the Bundists had their own library, and so did the Zionists. They only had the writings in accordance with their programs, as each party believed in different things. The Bundists were generally freethinkers, so they didn't even consider religious books, only contemporary literature, that's what they supported. I used to go to the library at the Zionists' place, to Poalei Zion. They had some literature, but it was no big library.

I read various newspapers, both Jewish and Polish. The Polish would be 'Kurier Codzienny' [full name 'Kurier Codzienny 5 groszy,' The Daily Herald 5 groszes, a pro-government paper published from 1932 to 1936], Oblicze dnia [The Day's Visage, a socialist weekly published in 1936], sometimes I even leafed through ABC [a weekly published by the nationalist Oboz Wielkiej Polski, Camp of Great Poland, from 1926 to 1939], an anti-Semitic magazine. When did you actually buy a paper? On Saturdays. Newspapers were pretty expensive, Haynt cost 1.20 zlotys, Moment 13 - 1.50, while other papers 40, 50 groszes. We read Haynt at home. My father was a member of a Jewish craftsmen organization called Handverker [Central Union of the Jewish Craftsmen of the Republic of Poland] 14 and they all read Haynt. They even got elected to the Sejm [the Parliament; the union formed part of the National Minorities Bloc that won 17% of the votes in the 1928 election]. Generally my father was apolitical, though.

Ever since 1933, when Hitler came to power 15, people grew more and more certain a war was coming. Everyone who had the chance to do so, fled to Israel [Editor's note: until 1948 Palestine]. Apart from that, the ones who fled were patriots, they wanted to build their own country, and did the right thing; emancipation is one thing, but having your country goes a long way. Many of my friends left before the war, Mojszele Rawski was one of them. At first before leaving they were Hahalutzim 16. They formed teams and took up the toughest tasks, trying to prepare for Israel, to build their country. They knew beginnings are always tough, so they learned to farm, to work in a sawmill, they learned the trade of masonry, all the worst drudgeries.

There were two kibbutzim in Gora Kalwaria. One belonged to the right-wing Zionists [the General Zionists party] 17, or Grinbaum's 18 democratic Zionists in other words. It was located in a house on the corner of Polna and Dominikanska streets. The whole upper floor was theirs. They had many talented people among them - there was a painter for example, she painted landscapes. The other kibbutz was on Ksiedza Sajny Street, the one leading down to the river. I don't remember what group they were.

My organization, Right Poalei Zion, didn't have a kibbutz in Gora Kalwaria. If one of us wanted to join a kibbutz, he had to go to the eastern regions of the country. Lots of folks were preparing for that, but I doubt if all of them actually left. It was hard to just leave your father, your mother, your brother, and go. I didn't take part in kibbutzim activities. Neither did I think about leaving for Israel.

Immediately after finishing elementary school I started to learn tailoring. My first master was Izrael Cybula, and I worked for him in the workshop on 15 Pilsudskiego Street for two years without a pay, in exchange for training. After that I had an exam in Jaszeniec near Warka. They had sort of a crafts corporation there, the so-called guild. I passed my apprentice exam, received a certificate, and was allowed to practice as a tailor. An apprentice can make a suit or a pair of trousers by himself. A trainee is being trained, but an apprentice should be able to do it himself. And a master can train others, he should know all the tricks of his trade.

Later I worked for various tailors, both Jewish and Polish, I worked for Cybula a month or two, when he had a job for me, I worked for Ryszard Gorecki, Jasinski, Jaworski, Pelc, in many different workshops. I didn't make much, 15-20 zlotys a week, it varied, because sometimes there was no job for me.

I was a member of the Tailors' Union. There were both Jews and Poles in it. I was the secretary of the Gora Kalwaria branch, and the voivodship [district] secretary had his office in Warsaw, on Leszno Street. The union [branch] had its own place, the size of this room maybe. And that was it. A stool in the middle and nothing else. So what can I say about such a union. When necessary, we organized some lectures and such. We couldn't call a strike, there was unemployment, well not as high as nowadays. You were happy to get a job at some shoemaker's, tailor's, cobbler's.

The union was funded from membership fees as well, there was no state funding. The municipality wouldn't give us anything. They gave some support to the unemployed a couple of times a year, about 5 zlotys, and the Poles would get 90 per cent, while the Jews maybe 5 per cent.

Jews before the war were mainly craftsmen, tailors, shoemakers, cobblers, saddlers, hat makers, all such professions, mainly services. How many truly wealthy Jews were there in Gora Kalwaria? Poloniecki, Rapaport, Wajnsztok, Mardyks, Doctor Rozenberg, ten at most. They mainly traded in grain, had their own houses, could have as much as 2,000, 3,000, 10,000 zlotys. Around 40 per cent of the Jewish population were from the middle class, and 50 per cent were poor. [Editor's note: the ten wealthy Jews accounted for much less than the remaining 10%]. I was one of the, well, not the very poor, but the poor. Before I started to work as an apprentice, we were living pretty much hand to mouth.

It was the poor who suffered most during the anti-Semitic riots 19. Because each wealthy Jew had some Polish friends, who would say, 'You can beat up all the Jews you want, but stay away from my Moszek.' It was no different in Gora Kalwaria. At the St. Anthony Day's fair [13th June] people placed their stalls and began to sell. Those from Falanga 20 came by, smashed the stalls, beat up some Jewish men and women. A tumult began, the police came, but it was already done. That's how things were in 1936, 1937, I don't know about later as I was in the army. They often started such riots. They were not pogroms, but brawls, beatings.

The Falangists came from Warka, Karczew, Otwock [towns in the dozen or so kilometer radius from Gora Kalwaria]. There was an Endeks 21 organization in Gora Kalwaria as well, but they used to go rumble somewhere else, not in our town. Mayor Dziejko and Police Chief Boleslaw Janica wouldn't allow it. There were fewer of such unrests thanks to them. Once, as they came to rumble, Janica told the Jews, 'Listen, people, you defend yourselves, and I'll handle the rest.' And so a self-defense was formed, no matter, Zionists, Communists, or Bundists but simply the Jewish youth, particularly the workers, coachmen, all the tough ones. They formed the self-defense and stood up to the attackers.

Janica and Dziejko were objective people, they'd say: 'Alright, he's a Jew, and let him be one - that doesn't bother me.' While in other towns no Jews were allowed into the city council, he, Dziejko had two Jewish councilors. I remember the last Jewish councilors were Szyje Kaufman and Aron Poznanski.

In the army

I was drafted at the age of 21. It was a regular draft, all the boys born in 1916 were drafted in November 1937. I served in the Jan Hipolit Kozietulski 3rd Mazovian Chevaux-Leger [Light Cavalry] Regiment in Suwalki. There were only three regiments of elite cavalry [the Chevaux-Legers] in Poland, the other two were the Jozef Pilsudski Regiment, stationed in Warsaw, and the Dwernicki Regiment in Stargard Gdanski. I was assigned to the regiment because I was an absolutely unblemished and loyal citizen, and I was not a member of any anti-Pilsudski 22 organizations. My commander was Colonel Edward Milewski, and my officer in charge - Borys Zaryn.

How was the army? Well, I was a tailor suddenly turned cavalryman. And I had always been afraid of horses. Well, I had seen them, pulling a coach for example, but that's different. I mounted a horse for the first time then, but I did learn to ride, and how! A recruit was trained for a few months and then given a rifle. I managed to figure it all out somehow.

In 1938 I was assigned to a non-commissioned officer school, as I had completed seven years of school. It wasn't very common, many of the recruits were illiterate. I used to write letters for everyone. They began with 'Praised be Jesus Christ' and ended with 'Waiting for your reply, now and for ever, amen.' I ranked high in the [NCOs] school, because I was able. I ranked second out of 85 in the knowledge of Poland course, the first place was taken by a Mastalerz from Warsaw. I was promoted to corporal. I was doing well in the army, I can't say I was favored but they treated me fair, no complaints.

In the Polish army before the war every unit had a few Germans, some Jews, a couple of Belarussians and Ukrainians. [Poland between the world wars was a country with ethnic and national minorities accounting for 1/3 of the population] The Ukrainians - we called them Ruthenians - were very good soldiers, first of all very physically fit, and the best riders. At a Saturday or Sunday muster the officers would call, 'Of Jewish persuasion, step forward, of Lutheran persuasion, step forward, of Orthodox persuasion, step forward!' and if you wanted to pray, you went your way.

My friend in the army was Eliezer Geller [1918-1943, a Gordonia (a Zionist organization) activist, soldier of the Warsaw ZOB (see below), he fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and later went into hiding; he was probably killed in Auschwitz]. He came from Opoczno in the Mazovia region. He was my age. We often times went to the synagogue together, spoke with each other.

He was a very intelligent boy, very handsome, a blond. He was a left-wing Zionist, like me. I don't know what his profession was, but I think he'd finish a gymnasium, completed more than seven years of school. They didn't take him to the non-commissioned officer school, though, I don't know why, maybe he just didn't want to go. He was in the second squadron and I was in the forth, so I never saw him from September [1939] on. He was later in Warsaw, I don't know by what miracle he ended up there. I was certain all the time he died in the Warsaw Uprising 23.

Military service lasted two years and mine was to finish in 1939, so instead of going home I went to war. I fought in the September campaign 24. On 14th September I was wounded in a battle with the Germans at Olszewo [near Bransk and Lapy, in the Bialystok district]. There's still a memorial room there with a photo of me, among other things, and a description of the battle. I was messed up by a shrapnel, had a couple of wounds. I was unfit to fight on, so I was assigned to the regimental train [service column].

During the war

On 17th September the Russians marched in 25 and took us all prisoners. We were interned in a place called Negroloc, some 40 kilometers further east from Minsk, Belarus. They didn't treat us bad. We had to work and if we fulfilled the ordered quota, it was alright. The food was also acceptable. Every Saturday we had a bath, they called it 'bania.' We weren't given any clothes for change. In December [1939] there was a prisoners exchange, the Russians returned the Germans and the Poles. I was in that group and so got back to Gora Kalwaria. [Editor's note: An exchange of the prisoners-of-war - privates and NCOs. The Poles originating from the German-occupied parts of Poland were sent to the German authorities and later released; similarly with the ones from the Soviet-occupied regions.]

Everyone thought I'd been killed because there had been no news from me since September. And so it started, the occupation, the Gehenna [misery, hell]. I was told that when the Germans entered Gora Kalwaria the first Jew they saw was Pinio Rawski, leaving the synagogue at the very moment. And they shot him. I was also told about a Jewish boy called Mojsze Cybula - his father was the master Cybula I used to work for - who took a tiny crumble of bread when the Germans ordered the boys to work and they shot him for that, too. So I said to myself, 'My God, as a human being, not mentioning the nationality, I promise myself that if I survive the war, I'll put a symbol, so that the people will know what has happened here.' That was my obligation.

Right in the beginning the Germans confiscated all the front shops [with their display facing the street]. Jews were not allowed to trade at all. The ghetto in Gora Kalwaria was created in May 1940 26. Things were already very bad at the time. They evicted the Jews from the outskirts of Gora Kalwaria, the ghetto was right in the center of the town: the Pilsudskiego and Senatorska streets, and a short section of Pijarska Street. We all had to squeeze in somehow.

My family was not evicted, because it was already ghetto where we lived on Pilsudskiego Street. Leaving the ghetto was forbidden on the death penalty. Mom and I continued to sew, we had clients coming, some Poles, they commissioned clothes and we could make some money, just to get by. Plus we still had some supplies, we were always selling something. Yes, but what kind of life it was?! Vegetation, we couldn't afford anything, just the potatoes all the time, potato soup, there was nothing else.

When the relocation to the ghetto started [in May 1940], the head of the Jewish community in Gora, Josef Lubliner, came to my Polish neighbor Rytko, and left him the Torah and all the sacred books. Rytko, as the decent man that he was, kept them safe throughout the war. When I came back after the war, he gave the books to me as his neighbor. I later sent them to Israel, to my Uncle Mosze. I simply put them in a parcel, went to Professor Tyloch [Witold Tyloch, 1927-1990, Hebrew philologist and Bible scholar, a Warsaw University professor] to get a certificate they were not items of historical value, and sent them by post; legally, absolutely. I should think it was in the 1960s. The Torah is now in Israel, in Netanya.

In 1940 a group of ZOB 27 fighters came to Gora Kalwaria [Editor's note: ZOB did not yet exist at the time]: Lajbl Frydman, Horowic, and a woman. Frydman was a Bund member, Horowic was from Poalei Zion, and as for the woman, I don't know. They wanted to organize a combat team consisting of those who had served in the army to fight in self-defense. We only admitted the people we trusted. The 25 of us gathered at Aron Nusbaum's. We didn't have any weapons but the spirit was there, that we will defend ourselves. But nothing happened.

On 25th February 1941 they deported the Jews from Gora Kalwaria to the ghetto in Warsaw. My sister was already there, she hadn't come back to Gora Kalwaria with the outbreak of the war. Mom didn't even think of escaping, and me neither, I wanted to go to the ghetto with my family. The neighbors would come over and say, 'Listen, run away, go, you don't look like a Jew, maybe you'll make it.' I heard there were Jews in Magnuszew [town 25 km from Gora Kalwaria] - there was this sort of grapevine during the occupation - and that there are no deportations there. And so I basically ran away in the evening, after a talk with Mom. I don't know what happened to my family. I lost contact with them on that day. They were gone without a trace. Only my brother came to me later on. Lots of people left the ghetto then, everyone tried not to surrender.

It's twenty-something kilometers from Gora Kalwaria to Magnuszew, wintertime, so I stepped in a yard once in a while, knocked on the door, I asked, ' Hello sir, open, please, I'm a Jew, I ran away, please, help me.' If it was a good man - he'd let me in, if not - he'd say 'Go away, go away!' The Jews stayed in Magnuszew until May or June 1942. [The Magnuszew ghetto was liquidated in October 1942]. I didn't know anyone there. I basically worked as a tailor, people came in, gave me something to sew, I did it, and it was enough to get by.

Two months before the deportations they created a ghetto, put everyone in, and later moved them to Kozienice [town ca. 20 km from Gora Kalwaria, 80 km from Warsaw]. In Kozienice they selected young men and took them to Chmielew [village 5 km from Magnuszew] to dig irrigation ditches. There was a labor camp for Jews. I was one of those transported there.

We stayed there until December [1942], and later came the deportation and we went back to Magnuszew. I already had many friends there at the time, among those whom I tailored for. On our way back from Chmielew a Polish friend, Janek Cwyl, pulled me out of the column while the policemen weren't paying attention. He took me with him, he saved me.

In hiding

Somehow I managed to get through to Gora Kalwaria. I went to my neighbor, Mrs. Wasilewska. She immediately started to plan what to do. We went to Osieck [town 15 km of Gora Kalwaria] together, to a parish priest, Kuropek was his name I think. He issued a birth certificate for me. Later I got myself a kenkarta 28, in the name Feliks Zoladek. You had to do it with the help of friends and friends of friends. Because the priest gave me the certificate, but not the kenkarta, naturally. A friend took the certificate, went to one of those doing funny business [people who fabricated false IDs], and had them make me a kenkarta, that's how it was done. It wasn't legal.

I lived in the country, staying with different farmers and tailoring for them. One told some other he knew a tailor, and so I kept going from one person to another. Some of them knew I was a Jew, they figured it out, but well, I did survive. I stayed in one village, returned to another, kept in hiding for some time, had to run away on another occasion, one was always looking for a safe house.

I've been exceptionally lucky. They told me: 'Heniek, you don't look like a Jew at all.' I also spoke correct Polish, more or less, I mean I had the right accent, because as for the grammar a peasant wouldn't notice. I could quite safely assume I wouldn't be recognized by anyone. Plus I was a soldier, I was brave. That's why I took risks, I probably wouldn't otherwise, just like many others. You can't imagine, you could be killed any time, and not just you, but also the person harboring you. [Editor's note: On 15th October 1941 the death penalty for hiding a Jew was introduced in the General Government.]

I saw my brother [Dawid] in 1943, I don't remember if it was January or December. He came to see me in that village, Ostrowie [3 km from Magnuszew], he knew I stayed there with a farmer. I spoke with him but couldn't do anything, I couldn't! The farmer came to wake him up at 5am and told him he had to run. And so he did. He was hiding, too, he went from one farm to another, they gave him some work to do, he made horse-collars. Somewhere near Machcin some farmers gave him away, they brought him to the Germans. And the Germans killed him in the cemetery in Gora Kalwaria.

My longest single stay was in the village Podwierzbie near Zelechow [Podlez community, Garwolin district] with a Mrs. Pokorska. She was an acquaintance or a cousin of Mrs. Wasilewska [Mr. Prajs' neighbor]. Many decent people lived there generally, the Pyz family for example, the Polak family, the Marciniaks. Even the head of the village protected me. And as for the villagers, some did and some did not believe that I was a Pole. Not once did they later tell me, after the end of the war: 'It made us think, you lived here, it's a poor house, and nobody came to see you, you didn't leave for Christmas; we eyed you, a nice looking boy.' They didn't know what to think.

I went to the dances once, but later decided not to go anymore, because I was afraid. I went to the church once, too, but was afraid someone would recognize me as well. But nobody gave me away, simply Godsend. I went to that church after the war and ordered a thanksgiving mess for all the villagers.

I'm not surprised people didn't want to hide Jews. Everyone was afraid, who would risk his family's lives? You can accuse the ones who kept a Jew, exploited him financially, and later gave him away or killed him. They're murderers. But you absolutely can't blame an average Pole, I don't know if anyone would be more decent, if any Jew would be more decent.

Some Germans came to Mrs. Pokorska one day. I spoke with a Gestapo man face to face. He asked me, 'Weser das Mantel ist?' [incorrect German: 'whose coat is it?'], and I answered, 'It's not mine,' and he went, 'Du verstehst Deutsch?' [German: 'you understand German?'] It was getting bad, so I changed the subject and said, 'Sir, just take a look, everything's falling apart here, the roof, perhaps you could write a paper to the Kreishauptmann [German: district administrator]...'

That shocked the Gestapo man, he came from Silesia, he understood Polish. He saw my face didn't belong there. And she [Mrs. Pokorska] said I was her son, he asked her like a dozen times, and me as well, if I was her son. I said 'mom,' and she said 'son,' and again, 'mom, son.' I had a birth certificate in her son's name, Stanislaw Pokorski, so I said, 'I got the certificate, but I don't have the money to go to Garwolin and have me an ID made.' He didn't even want to take a look at the ID. And so I made it somehow.

He could have just said: 'Take off your pants,' and what, the whole family would have been doomed, all the children, the mother, everyone. She was very kind. But what cunning one's got to have, and what nerve, to stay calm and not to panic. These are terrible things, these are not the things to talk about, because a dog or a cat were worth more than a human being, just because the latter was of Jewish descent.

I had to hide once, and from whom, from ours [Poles]. The frontline was already near, it had almost reached the Wisla river. NSZ 29 or WiN 30, I don't even know, sentenced me to death. I had met them by chance, as a tailor. I'd sewn for them, they'd got to like me, we'd spent all the time together. I used to refashion what they'd stolen somewhere. One of them didn't agree with the sentence, hadn't said a word to them, but later told me: 'Heniek, be careful, hide, mister, 'cause it's so and so.' So NSZ's history has a not-so-exquisite [sic] chapter - their attitude towards the Jewish nation. When the Red Army took over the area, they [the NSZ soldiers] killed two or three Jews. They all came to me later and apologized, a couple of times. So I don't really want to get back to the subject, I've forgiven them and that's it.

After the war

That village, Podwierzbie, was on the right bank of the river, so they liberated it six months earlier than the left bank. It was in the summer, in July. [Editor's note: In the summer of 1944 the Red Army stopped on the east bank of the Wisla river. At that time the Warsaw Uprising was taking place, and its commanders counted on Soviet support. The uprising ended on 2nd October with Polish defeat. The Soviet army resumed its offensive only in January 1945.]

I took a walk and was standing on a levee as I saw the first 'razviedka' [Russian: reconnaissance patrol] of the Red Army. I was overwhelmed. They asked me, 'Who are you?', and I got scared, but soon enough answered, since I spoke Russian a bit, because I'd been interned in the Soviet Union in 1939: 'Ya Yevrey, ya Yevrey, zdes spratalsya, Yevrey' [Russian: 'I'm a Jew, I've been hiding here.']. And the one in charge was of Jewish descent. He immediately came over to me, overjoyed, and started to talk to me in Yiddish. He said, 'Listen, you'll go to the martial commandant and he'll take care of you.' And so I did, and they took me to work for them.

I was a hired hand, not in the army, but on their boarding. They reached Wisla in the summer and stopped, the offensive didn't start before January. I tailored for them, and later had no obligations, so I stayed in the village, another six months or so, as a free man at last. Everyone in the village knew about me, and they'd say, 'Well, Heniek, you've made it.' And the girls were crazy about me!

I fell in love with a girl there, but I'd already had an obligation. The story is characteristic and even a bit funny. During the war Mrs. Wasilewska told me, 'Heniek, listen, I'll help you out, but remember, when the war's over, you'll marry one of my daughters.' I said, 'Mrs. Wasilewska, if I only make it through the war, why not, I like them, they're all pretty girls after all.' So I came back to Gora Kalwaria and indeed married the youngest one before long.

I'm proud I was the first one to commemorate the fallen. I took out the wicket from the synagogue fence and put it in the Jewish cemetery. It still has the bullet marks made when the Germans shot Pinio Rawski. I hired a guy I knew named Cieplak to put a fence around the cemetery. There were four or five mazevot left. The Germans and the Poles took the rest. [The mazevot from the Jewish cemetery in Gora Kalwaria were used by the Germans as road pavement. Some of the tombstones were stolen by the Poles.]

It was a total mess. I started to put things in order at the cemetery. People reported some tombstones to me, so I collected them, transported to the cemetery and put them upright. These are pre-war mazevot, but they're not standing on their previous spots. Many of these people I knew personally, could be 80 per cent: Szternfeld, Rozenblum, Skrzypek, Mesing, I just didn't recall their burial places exactly, I hadn't attended every funeral.

The tzaddiks' tomb is real. Two of them are buried there, the founder of the dynasty, Chidusz ha-Rem, or Arie Lejb, and his grandson Sfas Emes [Chidushei ha-Rim, or Yitzchak Meir Alter, 1785-1866, the founder of the Ger dynasty; Sfas Emes, or Yehudah Arieh Leib Alter, 1847-1905, Yitzchak Meir's grandson, 3rd Rebbe of the dynasty]. The ohel was demolished during the war, but they didn't get inside, so it's the actual burial place. The new ohel was put up a few years ago by the Hasidim from Israel or America, from the Gora Kalwaria [Ger] communities. They visit the tzaddik's tomb very often.

Only one member of my family survived the war, Uncle Mosze. My calculations show I've lost 36 members of my immediate family, meaning the aunts and their children. Uncle Mosze miraculously survived somewhere in the Sandomierz region. He stayed with a farmer just like me, or so they say. I never asked him. His wife was killed. After the war he remarried in Lodz. He settled with his second wife in Gora Kalwaria. In 1950 they moved to Israel together. They had a son, Dawid. Uncle Mosze became a farmer in Israel, he had some land, an orchard, he kept geese. He died in May 1972.

After the war I lived in a state owned house on the corner of Dominikanska and Polna streets. It had been a German property and the owners were gone. I received an apartment there from the municipality. When I got married, I lived there with my wife. It wasn't until 1960 that I built my own house.

We got married in 1949. My wife was called Czeslawa Maria Wasilewska. She was eight years younger than me. We were an exemplary couple, we lived together for 41 years. She was Catholic and it didn't bother me one bit. We only have one daughter, Malgonia [from Malgorzata], my wife couldn't have any more children. I never kept it secret I was a Jew, but she didn't see that Jewishness in the house. We celebrated the Catholic holidays.

My wife's parents were called Jan and Helena. My father-in-law served in the tsarist army for five years. My wife had four siblings. They lived in Gora Kalwaria. They were farmers, had some land nearby.

Back before the marriage I changed my name to Henryk at the district administration in Grojec. Why shouldn't I have a Polish first name while I'm a Pole, well yes, of Jewish descent, but still a Pole. I never felt, however, the urge to erase my nationality. It's not a shame, and it's not a distinction either, that's who I was born, that's who I am, that's who I will be.

You mustn't forget your nationality, it's no shame. Every human being has a right to live, and it doesn't make any difference if someone is black, or a Gypsy [Roma], or a German. Even against the Germans I don't hold any grudge anymore. A German named Kulc harbored me for three months, could I have any grudge against him, could I refuse to shake hands with him? I would do anything to help that man, because he helped me knowing I was a Jew. There's no place for chauvinism, nationalism, or racism in my mind.

Immediately after the war I worked on my own, and later in a tailor's co- operative. I earned pathetically little there, 2,000 zlotys. After seven years of that I started my own tailoring business. Later I completed a technical high school and took up horticulture. My father used to sell orchards, so I knew something about it, my father-in-law and my brothers-in- law were farmers and gardeners, so I thought I'd learn, and so I did. I planted some trees, and they fruited wonderfully, I had beautiful fruits. I built a house. My wife worked in a shop at first and later in the community cooperative, selling coal, and finally as a deputy manager of a restaurant in Gora Kalwaria. She then retired. She died, my poor thing, in 1990.

We have three grandchildren, Mateusz, Ola [Aleksandra], and Jula. We've worked hard, we've made our way, I've been respected and still am. I had a good life. My house is cultured, open, if a Jew comes knocking, I'll let him in, if a priest, I'll let him in as well. Our parish priest is a great friend of mine, we speak like father and son, he respects me and vice versa.

I had the Pokorski family come to Gora Kalwaria and as my grandfather had a small patch of land in Coniew near Gora Kalwaria, I made it over to them. I arranged for them to receive the Righteous Medal 31 from Yad Vashem 32. They're dead now.

I think only about 30 Jews from Gora Kalwaria survived the war. They returned but fled soon. They moved mainly to Israel, but also to the Scandinavian countries: Sweden, Denmark, Holland. They welcomed Jews. The situation in Poland was not very good for the Jews at first, there was the Kielce pogrom 33 right in 1946, and later the events of 1968 34.

Why, it's horrible that a supposedly socialist country makes up some myths about a fifth column and so on [In his speech on 12th June 1968 Wladyslaw Gomulka, head of the Polish Communist party, accused the persons of Jewish descent of pro-Israeli bias and stigmatized that attitude as a betrayal of the state, using the phrase 'the fifth column'; the term 'fifth column,' coined during the Spanish Civil War, was also being used to refer to the German saboteurs during the Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia and Poland]. And yet everyone, Jews and non-Jews, was working, creating, helping to build. How could one order the people of Jewish descent to leave the country? Is that the way it should be? So one shouldn't blame those who left. I never had the intention to leave.

I do have a grudge against the ones I knew in the Gora Kalwaria municipality. They had me come over to the office and declare if I was objective, if I was a good Pole. I told them, 'What's that supposed to mean, what do I declare? You know me very well, I have fought in the Polish army, I've been wounded, I've paid with blood, what do you want from me?' I didn't even say good bye, turned my back on them and left. I think it was sheer stupidity, what is this 'good Pole,' I live here, I'm a citizen, they know me, if they have anything against me, there are penalties, judges. Are all the Poles good?

Recent years

As I've served in the army, after the war I was a member of the ZBoWiD, Union of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy 35. In the 1990s ZBoWiD was transformed into the Veterans Union and the Disabled Soldiers Union. I'm a member of the latter now, of the Piaseczno branch. I've recently received a medal, the Disabled Soldiers Union gold medal, for taking part in the Olszewo battle, where I was wounded.

I've been a member of the TSKZ 36 for 50 years now I think, ever since its creation. I go to the seniors club in Warsaw once or twice a week when the weather is fine. Very rarely in the wintertime. I have my friends there: Kawka, Janowski, Wajnryb, Mrs. Szymanska, Mrs. Kaczmarska, all of them elder people, some are even older than me. We tell each other tall tales, what comes, our life stories, we talk of our youth and the later years.

I've been to Israel twice, in 1965 and 1990. Nothing special about the trip, I asked for a visa and got it, they refused the first time but later changed their mind. Jerusalem was still divided in 1965, so I couldn't get to Bethlehem, to the tomb [Rachel's tomb just outside Bethlehem], the Wailing Wall was also on the other side, but you could more or less see it. I don't know if a million Jews lived there at the time, maybe a million and a half, not more. The immigration increased after the 1967 war 37.

What's with the anti-Semitism in Poland, against whom, as the Jews are gone?! They make up their own Jews. Whenever I talk to such people, I say, 'Okay, well, come on, show me a Jewish shop here, show me people speaking the Jewish language, well, let's go, I want to see, if you say Jews rule the country, show me those Jewish rulers. You idiot, they call everyone who's objective a Jew.' I have a friend, and because we like each other a lot, they say he's a Jew.

It's like that: there are those anti-Semitic hooligans on the one hand, you know - oh, a Jew! and that's it, and on the other hand there are the prewar intellectuals, the Endeks, whole families, the Giertychs, Dmowski, it's a strong group, anti-Semitic since always and that's the bottom-line, no way to persuade them. You have to be liberal and objective, you have to think reasonably. That's how I raised my daughter, that's how she raises my grandchildren.

The center of Gora Kalwaria, the streets Dominikanska, Pijarska, were inhabited by Jews. Poles lived mostly on the outskirts. There was a whole block of tzaddik houses on Pijarska Street. Nowadays there's a shop of the community cooperative in the tzaddik's house. There's also the Alter Synagogue. The Jews don't own it officially, but you can get inside. It stands empty. It's both Jewish and non-Jewish, half Jewish and half non- Jewish. The Hasidim 38 coming from Israel visit the cemetery, the synagogue, and the tzaddik's house.

A man called Karpman and I have the keys to the cemetery. If there's anything to be done in the cemetery, we hire a person and it's fixed. The fence was funded by the Nissenbaum Foundation. Excursion groups come here, plenty of them, to visit their grandparents, great-grandparents, because many Israelis have Polish origins. They often come over to see me, ask me to give them some information, and I speak with them with pleasure. But I don't take care about them that much anymore, I don't have the strength. It's great anyway, that my head still works, that I still have the memory.

Glossary

Alexander Gajdos
Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad)
Czech Republic
Interviewer: Martin Korcok
Date of interview: August 2005

Mr. Alexander Gajdos is currently the president of the Karlovy Vary Jewish community. The interview took place in his office at the community.

My family background
Growing up
During the war
Post-war
Glossary

My family background

My grandparents on my father's side lived in Nitra when my father was young. My grandfather was named Bernat Goldberger, and his wife was named Terezia Goldbergerova. Unfortunately, I don't remember anymore what my grandma's maiden name had been, and I don't even know where my grandparents were from. My grandfather died around 1935 to 1937, and my grandmother a few years before him. They're both buried in the Jewish cemetery in Nitra. I was at their funerals. Because they died while I was still small, I remember them only very faintly. My grandpa was taciturn. He always just sat with a pipe on a bench in front of the house, and just pondered. He had a dog, which always sat beside him.

In Nitra they lived in a neighborhood down below the castle. In those days there were small family bungalows there. But it wasn't the Jewish quarter. The Jewish quarter in Nitra was Parovce. My grandparents also lived in one of those bungalows. From the courtyard you walked directly into the kitchen. Besides the kitchen they had another three rooms. In one they had a bedroom, then there was one more little room and then a living room. They went into the living room, as they say, 'Once a year.' The house already had electricity and running water. They basically lived a normal life there.

None of my father's immediate family members were devout Jews. One of my father's [his father was named Heinrich Galik (changed from Goldberger)] brothers, Gyula [Julius Gal (changed from Goldberger)] owned a radio store and workshop. My father had four siblings, three brothers and one sister. His brothers were named Gyula, Rudi [Rudolf] and Jozko [Jozef], his sister Cecilia. Cecilia married a barber, Mr. Horn. But he died at the beginning of the 1930s. I don't even remember him.

I used to visit my father's parents every summer. I would basically spend the summer in Nitra. Most of the time I lived at my father's sister Cecilia's place. So I slept at my father's sister's place and for lunch I'd always go to one of the family members' place. Depending on who invited me over. Otherwise I spent most of my time with my cousin, Alexander. We called him Sanyi; he was Cecilia's son. We used to go swimming together and so on. I only stopped going to Nitra once the war began.

I don't know what my grandparents' mother tongue was, but with me they always spoke Slovak. Besides this they of course spoke Hungarian and German. They weren't religious, nor did they lead a kosher household. But our family observed holidays. Grandpa had a general store. He had one room that was full of all sorts of things. You walked into the store right from the kitchen. On the door there was a bell that rang when someone entered. Someone would then run out of the kitchen and serve them. Otherwise I don't remember any special anecdotes about my grandparents. As a child, there was a certain distance between us. I don't even know who was my grandparents' neighbor. Later, my father didn't tell me about them either.

My mother's parents were from Trstena, on the Orava River. My grandfather was named Markus Lubovic. I can't remember my grandmother, because she died before I was born. My grandfather then remarried, but I don't remember his second wife's name anymore either. Grandpa had a bakery in Trstena. But I don't know anything else about his bakery. When I was young my grandfather had serious diabetes. Back then insulin didn't exist yet, so the disease couldn't be treated. My grandfather went almost completely blind from it. He wasn't completely blind, but almost couldn't see a thing. He used to walk with a cane. Then my parents found him an apartment in Vrutky, where he moved together with his second wife. My mother and her sister Ruzena took care of them. Because back then old people didn't get a pension, so my parents supported them. I don't remember the name of my grandfather's second wife at all. But she spoke Hungarian, while in the Orava region people spoke mainly Slovak, even the Jewish population. My grandfather also spoke German, and I think Hungarian as well. During the war they were both deported and died.

My grandfather had three daughters with his first wife. My mother, Sidy, and her sisters were named Lina and Ruzena. From his second marriage he had a son, Zoli. Lina married a barber in the town of Nowy Targ in Poland. I think he was named Löwenberg. Ruzena never married. She stayed an old maid.

I spent more time with my grandfather in Vrutky than with the other one in Nitra. But we didn't have any type of special relationship. He lived in a two-room apartment full of old furniture. From my point of view at the time, nothing much. He of course already had running water. How many Jews lived in Vrutky, that I don't know. But on the whole it had a decent-sized community, with a nice synagogue. I even had a bar mitzvah in this town. My grandparents on both sides were Neolog Jews 1, which means that the High Holidays were observed in the family, but the Sabbath less, and the kashrut not at all.

My father was named Heinrich Goldberger. He was born on 17th July 1898 in Nitra. After the war he changed his name to Galik. That was in fashion back then. He died in 1978, he was exactly 80. My father had a basic education. He worked as a traveling salesman. He supported himself this way until he went into business for himself. Later he opened his own store in Zilina. I don't know when exactly my father moved to Zilina, but he did it because of work and my mother. Because she worked for the same company as my father. It was Mendl & Son, a wholesale business. That's where my parents met and later they married, as I was on the way. My mother was born in 1900 in Trstena. I don't know when she died. She was deported and after that we didn't find out any more about her.

Financially, I'd classify our family between poverty and the middle class. When they worked for that Mendl, they had a relatively decent salary. When my father went into business for himself, he opened a general store. He took out a bunch of loans, and then the Wall Street stock market crash came, and the depression 2 began. There wasn't any work, the executor came and that was the end. If I remember correctly, my father was the first in the region to have an electric slicer for ham and smoked meats. Unfortunately, after the stock market crash he didn't have anything to make payments with. Besides my father, my mother also worked in the store, plus another employee that did heavier work. For example he used to go get flour and worked in the warehouse.

As far as my father's political opinions go, it's hard to say. You know, when I was a child he didn't talk to me about things like that. I assume though, that he was a social democrat. I don't know it for sure, I only kind of deduced it. My father wasn't a member of any associations or anything similar that I know of. I also remember that as a young man he served as a soldier in World War I, but I don't know anything else about it. He always mentioned that he was in the war, but never told any specific stories. If we were to talk about what my father liked to do, he mainly devoted himself to business. Besides that, he was more or less a skirt- chaser, that was his hobby.

My parents spoke Hungarian amongst each other. With us children they spoke Slovak. Well, and as far as my father goes, I'd say he was a skirt-chaser. You know, he married my mother because she was expecting me. My mother was of a mild nature, you could say even introverted. She even wouldn't go out on the street by herself.

Growing up

We lived in several places in Zilina, depending on how our financial situation was declining. Every time we moved into a cheaper apartment. At first we lived downtown, near the main square; that's where I was born. Then we lived over towards the cellulose factory. Later we moved to the part of town where the power station was at the time. Finally we had to move to where the city apartments were, which is where the cheapest places to live were. From there we moved to Vrutky. I don't remember much from the first apartment. I know that there was one large room there, where I used to ride around on a tricycle. I don't remember the other rooms anymore. In the beginning we also had servants that cooked and cleaned. They lived with us until about 1937. Several of them came and went, so I don't even remember them very much. But when I was born, I even had a wet nurse. I didn't develop a close relationship with any of them. Did we have Jewish neighbors? Each time we had someone different. Because we were always moving. But they were mostly non-Jews. My parents didn't have many close friends. Well, my father had some friends, women, widows and whatnot, something like that. We'd sometimes go there, and otherwise some extra close friends, those they didn't have. I don't remember it that way.

We didn't observe holidays very strictly in our family. On Friday my mother lit candles and then most of the time we'd have roast chicken. Later, when my father already didn't have the store and he became a traveling salesman, he'd leave on Monday but would always return home on Friday. He traveled all over Slovakia. He sold flour for various mills. But he didn't go to synagogue very often, only for the High Holidays. We used to attend the big Neolog synagogue in Zilina. There were a lot of Jews living in Zilina before the war. During the High Holidays the synagogue was full, despite the fact that you had to pay for a place there, and it wasn't cheap. Everyone had to pay for his place. We for example observed Rosh Hashanah. On that day we'd eat supper at home, and then go pray at the synagogue. Other than that I don't remember anything in particular about that evening. For Yom Kippur we'd fast, but when I found something, I pinched off a bit for myself. But I liked Yom Kippur the best of all the holidays. But mainly because I'd meet up with all my friends in the synagogue courtyard. In the back, beside the synagogue, there was a Jewish school with a big schoolyard, and we'd fool around there. Our parents would still be sitting in the synagogue. Once in a while we'd make an appearance there, and then we'd disappear again. We also more or less observed Chanukkah, mainly we'd also go to the synagogue then, but for example we didn't observe Sukkot or Purim at all. We also still observed Passover. In the evening we'd read from the Haggadah and the holiday table would be set. But the other things, like not eating bread, we didn't practice. We had matzot, that's true, but we also ate bread.

There were also Orthodox Jews 3 in town, though there were a lot less of them, and they observed everything. I also used to come into contact with Orthodox Jews. My father even sent me to the yeshivah in Zilina. This nasty little man used to teach us. But I didn't study at this school for long. You see, my mother didn't care about traditions very much any more, and at home we didn't eat kosher 4. So it was normal for her to wrap me up a bun with ham for teatime. That little man saw it, ran over to me, took me out into the courtyard and 'gave me a licking.' He told me to not show my face there anymore. That was the end of my religious upbringing. Otherwise, at that time I didn't even know what I had committed with that ham.

As I've already mentioned, my father was from Nitra. He had four siblings, Julius, who everyone called Gyula. Then there was Rudolf, called Rudi, Jozef and their sister, Cecilia. My father's oldest brother was Jozef; he ran the store after Grandpa. He and his family lived in Grandpa's house. His wife was named Malvina. They had a son, Tibor, and a daughter, Magda. Both children survived the war. Tibor moved to Ecuador and Magda to Sweden.

Gyula was about two years older than my father, which means that he was probably born in 1896. He lived in Nitra with his family. He owned a radio store, where they also repaired radios. He had two sons, Michal and Pista [a nickname for the name Stefan]. We got along fairly well. When I was in Nitra during summer vacation, I'd often visit them. We used to go swimming together, or we'd go hiking to the top of Zobor [a peak by the city of Nitra (588m above sea level), in the Tribec mountain range]. In Nitra in those days, there used to be a swimming pool below the castle. I don't know if it's still there. Maybe they've already built over it. Gyula's wife was named Vilma, nee Braunova. She was very much a lady. She came from better circles. They lived on Spitalska Street. In the building they lived in, Gyula also had his store and workshop.

My father's third brother was named Rudolf, or Rudi. He was about five years older than Father. He graduated from construction school and worked as an architect, in those days it was Mr. Architect. Rudi had two sons, Walter and Babi. Besides them, he also had a daughter. I don't remember her name anymore. She was slightly physically handicapped, she was a bit hunchbacked. But she ended up studying medicine and became a pharmacist. I don't remember his wife's name anymore. During the war they ended up in Terezin. The entire family survived the Holocaust and after the war they ran away to what today is Israel.

My father's only sister was named Cecilia. She married Mr. Horn, who had a barbershop in Nitra on Hlavna [Main] Street. They lived in an apartment above the shop that had an addition into the courtyard. They had it on the whole nicely furnished. Unfortunately, her husband died very early on. They had one son, who was named Alexander, or Sanyi.

Only one of my father's siblings, Rudi, survived World War II. He then moved with his family to Palestine in 1946 or 1947. After several years they returned, they had a hard time dealing with the climate there. The rest of my father's siblings died during the war.

My mother had three siblings, two sisters and one half-brother. My mother's oldest sister was named Lina. She married a barber by the name of Löwenberg in the Polish town of Nowy Targ. I never even met the man. I know that they had two children that died along with Lina during the war. Only their father survived, someplace in Russia.

Another of my mother's sisters, Ruzena, also died during the war. Before the war she lived for some time with us in Zilina, and then also in Vrutky, where we'd moved. Aunt Ruzena and I got along fairly well. Which basically means that we didn't have some sort of heartfelt relationship, but neither did we quarrel. I can't say much about my mother's youngest brother, who was named Zoli. He was quite a bit older than I, so we didn't hang out together much. He died along with the others during the Holocaust.

I, Alexander Gajdos [born Goldberger], was born on 8th April 1924 in Zilina. I had my name changed at the beginning of the 1950s. Why did I pick the surname Gajdos? It really didn't even depend on me that much. I already had that name when I was in German captivity, which we'll get to. Well, and when I was changing it I had to list three names. I dictated three names, Gajdos, Gordon, and the third I don't remember, and the officials picked out Gajdos.

As a small child I attended nursery school. In our part of the country it was called 'ovoda.' I had a fairly good teacher. I even enjoyed going to that nursery school. I don't have any particular memories of the nursery school. I remember only how we were playing in the schoolyard. Then I transferred to the elementary Jewish school in Zilina. It had five grades - from Grade 1 to Grade 5. It was attended by both boys and girls, together. A fair number of Christian children went there, too, because it was a better school than the others. I particularly didn't like math and German. My favorite subject in school was gym. We had one excellent teacher that knew how to handle us. We really like him a lot. Of course, we exercised a lot, and mainly played handball. It was simple, and all we needed were two goals in the schoolyard. Banged-up hands and legs of course belonged to the game. Our gym teacher was named Braun. We also went on short trips in the region around the town, especially to Duben and to nearby castles.

In the Jewish school we of course also had to go to Judaism class. Not going, that was impossible. Our attitude to religious upbringing amounted to us always fooling around on the rabbi. I don't remember his name anymore. He was an old man, and we used to do terrible things to him. For example, I remember that we had a bell, and halfway through the class we rang it, and someone exclaimed: 'it rang.' To which he said, 'if it rang, it rang' and class was over. In the hallway we ran into the principal, who was a huge man with a cane, and he asked us where we were going. We told him that the rabbi had said that the bell had rung. He said: 'But it couldn't have rung yet.'

The principal also used physical punishment. For example, this one slower boy used to be in our class, and he'd always do something to the girls. For example when they were exercising, he'd steal their clothes from the changing room, and so on. Outside of school we had this group of Jewish boys, we went everywhere together and spent a lot of time together. There were about five of us. Besides us there was one more group of Jewish boys, and so we used to fight each other, throwing stones and so on. We were about ten or eleven years old.

In Vrutky I also prepared for my bar mitzvah ceremony. My father arranged tutoring for me with one rabbi. He was a young person of shorter stature. He was from Czechia, and belonged to the Neologs. He taught me. The main thing was for me to learn the text that I was to read during the ceremony. Nothing else was required of me there. Well, up to the bar mitzvah I somehow learned it. The bar mitzvah itself took place in the synagogue in Vrutky. They summoned me to the Torah, I read some text, and that was all. I don't remember there being a party at home, and neither do I remember whether I got some presents on that occasion.

When I was 14, I began feeling anti-Jewish moods. I attended five grades of Jewish elementary school, and then got into high school 5. They expelled me from high school in third year, after that I wasn't allowed to attend school in Zilina anymore. But otherwise nothing special was going on, I just couldn't go to school. We weren't discriminated against in some way. Just some snot-nosed kids in the street would yell: 'Poo, smelly Jew!' at us, but that wasn't anything new.

It was right at that time that we were moving from Zilina to Vrutky, where I entered the fourth year of council school. Actually, they didn't accept me into school right in Vrutky. I had to commute by train every day to the nearby town of Varin. I was the only Jew there. Basically no one paid any attention to me. All the teachers were in the Hlinka Guard 6, even the principal, for them it was like I didn't even exist. I used to sit in a desk in the first row, but they didn't call on me even once, despite this I got all C's on my report card. This was in 1939. I got along well with my classmates, that wasn't a problem. There were also a couple of Czechs among them, who hadn't been chased 7 out of Slovakia. I was friends particularly with those that commuted with me. There were four of us that used to take the train from Vrutky to Varin, and back in the evening.

During the war

Besides me, my parents also had my sister Viera. She was born in Zilina in 1927. We got along well, but not so much that we'd go about together outside of home. Each of us had his own friends. Unfortunately, my sister didn't survive the war. She went to the camp together with our mother, but we don't know at all where they disappeared. Despite us searching for them, their trail disappeared. During the war they interned our whole family in the collection camp in Zilina in 1942, and we were there up until the Slovak National Uprising 8 broke out in 1944. During that time, between 1942 and 1944, when no transports were going 9, we worked in that Zilina camp.

During that time, life in the camp was on the whole good. We used to go work on the construction of a sports stadium in Zilina. My father also worked there. The stadium was located near the Vah River. The work wasn't all that heavy. The guards, Guardists, would lead us there from the camp. They'd then go sit inside somewhere, or all go their separate ways to go drink beer. There was one person there that was in charge of us, and he was a decent guy. My mother worked in the camp kitchen, and my sister didn't do anything.

Life during that time was really quite bearable. I even used to go into town. I didn't even wear a star 10, I never ever had one. I never even heard of a case where someone would have ratted on someone for that. Those of us that were from the Zilina camp didn't wear stars. In the camp I lived with another five guys. Here and there someone ran away, but escapes weren't very common. We learned about what was happening in Poland from the railway employees that were accompanying the transports to the Polish border. The railroaders brought us the news of the crematoria in Auschwitz. I think that it was through them that the news spread.

During the uprising my father, mother and sister hid in the forests around Rajecke Teplice. They then caught them all there. They took my father somewhere else than my mother and sister, and so he managed to survive. My father got into Sachsenhausen 11 and then into Buchenwald 12. Well, and my mother and sister were sent to the women's camp in Ravensbrück 13, and that's where their trail disappeared. During the uprising I joined the army. In Zilina there was an army garrison, and that entire garrison retreated towards Martin, to Strecno. Before the war I'd been a member of the Hashomer Hatzair 14 youth movement, but that's not why I joined the army. A person went there, where there was a chance of survival.

We were part of some defenses in Strecno. We dug trenches, and had the task of holding the reserve line. Of course we weren't just passive observers. Once we got orders to attack on a railway line with a tunnel. When we were drawing near, suddenly a Tiger [a German tank, mass-produced from 1942] appeared and began firing at us. We retreated into some trenches. There were French partisans with us there, who'd been in captivity in Slovakia, and during the uprising had managed to escape. I don't know anything else about them; I didn't meet up with them very much. There were only two Jews in our unit, my distant cousin Elemer Diamant and I. Unfortunately, I don't know whether he survived the war, because afterwards our paths diverged.

One time we were attacking some Germans hidden in some woods. There, some German began firing at me. Unfortunately, he also hit me. He shot me in the shoulder, luckily the bullet passed through and exited out the other side. It was a relatively serious injury, but they got me through it. First they dragged me away from where the bullet had struck me. They were dragging me along the ground, and in a dangerous spot they ran onto the road with me. After some time an ambulance came for me, and took me to the hospital in Martin. I was there for one day, because the Germans had broken through the front, and shells were falling on the hospital. They quickly evacuated us to the town of Sliac.

The territory held by the rebels was by then already very small. Basically it was only around the towns of Banska Bystrica, Sliac and Brezno. Everything else was either occupied or surrounded. In Sliac they asked me if I was able to walk. Because I could walk, they discharged me from the hospital. I also met Elemer there, because he was also in the hospital. During fighting in the town of Vrutky he'd gotten into some skirmish and ended up with shellshock. They discharged the both of us at almost the same time. I set out for the partisan headquarters, and he said that he wouldn't go there, that he'd think of something else to do. So we parted ways, and since then we never met up again. From the hospital I went to Banska Bystrica, to the headquarters. There they accepted me into the guard detachment. I stood guard in front of the headquarters on the main square in Banska Bystrica.

The Germans were pushing on into Banska Bystrica as well. People were being evacuated into the mountains, Stare Hory [mountain town in the Starohorska Valley, Banska Bystrica district], Donovaly [mountain town located between the Velka Fatra and Starohorske Vrchy mountain ranges], Kozi Chrbat [today a forest reservation located on the northern side of the Low Tatras ] and so on all the way beyond Chabenec [Chabenec (1955 m): a monumental mountain massif in the Low Tatras]. Chabenec is where for example Sverma 15 froze to death. At that time many of us got dysentery. They put up all of us that got it separately in this one zemlyanka [an underground shelter, usually military]. But a local citizen sent us away from there with the words: 'You can't stay here, we can't feed you, we don't even have anything for ourselves!' They told us that they'd take us to the edge of the forest where there were villages, and that we'd have to scrounge something up from the locals. At that time I'd gotten to know this one Czech from Ostrava. I unfortunately don't remember his name anymore. From that time onwards he and I slugged it out together. They led us to the edge of the forest, and told us to disperse. There they announced to us that we were still on evidence as partisans in that detachment, whose name I don't remember anymore. They also told us that if we betrayed something, they'd come and find us.

This all took place at the end of November and beginning of December 1944. My Czech friend and I found a fairly decent place behind some hill, and dug us a bunker. The closest village was about three hours' walk away from there. So we said to ourselves that we'd stay there, and each evening we'd go to the village to beg for some food and supplies. So that if a lot of snow fell, we wouldn't starve to death. Luckily at that time it wasn't snowing yet, because we were somewhere in the Low Tatras [an 80 km long mountain range in Slovakia]. In one place they'd give us some beans, someplace else potatoes, and so on. Whenever possible, we also took some supplies. When we had enough supplies, we said, 'All right, and now we'll go have something to eat one last time!'

So we went for one last meal. We knocked on the door at one house, and a very decent farmwoman opened the door. She said, 'Oh, you poor boys!' Right away she gave us some supper. Then she noticed our clothes, and so with the words, 'Why, you're being eaten by lice, I'll wash them for you,' she had us undress and put us into bed, under feather duvets! We told her to wake us up once dawn started breaking. To which she replied, 'Of course, of course.' Well, and suddenly a hubbub in the village. Germans yelling. Our things were already washed and dried, and we quickly dressed. We said to her, 'Why didn't you wake us up?' - 'It seemed a shame, you were sleeping so soundly.'

We ran out of the house and right on the square, one sentry with a machine gun, at the other end another sentry with a machine gun. The Germans were already making the rounds from house to house. So we ran out the back. We skirted the square and got onto a path. We were already out of the village. Suddenly two Germans appeared in front of us. The idiots had to be walking right along that path, and we two ragged civilians were walking right towards them. We'd already passed them, we were already about ten steps apart, and suddenly they stopped. Something seemed suspicious to them, and one of them yelled out: 'Hey, partisan!' So they captured us. They gathered us all in the square in the middle of the village. So that we wouldn't be walking empty-handed, they loaded each one of us up with ammunition. So we had something to carry through the snow that had fallen in the meantime.

Eventually they put us on a train and took us to a prison in Banska Bystrica. We were there from the beginning of December until the end of February. And we vegetated there in that jail for those two, three months. Once in some hubbub, they'd chase someone out to Kremnicka 16. They would chase them out there with dogs, machine guns. Then for a week it would be quiet. Then they'd round them up again, and go shoot them all again. Well, and we were still vegetating in that room. There was one Ukrainian there, I, plus two more Jews. They didn't know for sure that we were Jews, but thought we were.

At the end of February, they suddenly led us out, and some high-ranking Slovak came over. They were Slovaks. We were guarded by Slovak prison guards. He was shaking his head, that how was it possible that we were still there. He told us, 'The ones that were here before you, they've all been killed in Kremnicka!' They had somehow forgotten about our room. So they opened the door and asked us, 'what are you doing here? You're not supposed to be here anymore!' Well, and we said, 'We're not supposed to be here?' According to the paperwork, the entire jail was supposed to be empty. The files were already being destroyed, as the liberation army was already conquering nearby Brezno, and they already wanted to also evacuate Banska Bystrica.

So they made a note of us and left, so we had another week's peace. Then someone different came, and again made a note of us. Well, about three or four days later, a member of the SS came, that he was going to take us to be interrogated. Across the street was the Banska Bystrica courthouse, and that's where they had their headquarters. So they led us there, into a hallway. Then another one came, and asked our names. I told him Gajdos, born in Zilina. He wrote it down and left.

In a little while some high-ranking officer came, a Sudeten German 17, and said in Czech, 'I'm going to give you your release papers now. Go home. Don't you dare go east! Because if our soldiers see you there in those rags, they'll shoot you.' So we got our papers and left. My Czech friend and I were wondering: 'What are we going to do?' Of course we headed east. Right in the first village outside of Banska Bystrica one man stopped us. We showed him our papers, that we'd just been set free, and that we needed to get to a partisan unit. 'All right,' he said, 'here's some supper, you'll get some sleep and early in the morning I'll take you to the main road and show you where you should go.'

Were those people to be trusted? What else could we do? He really did look very trustworthy. In the morning he took us to the road and showed us the way. We were supposed to go to the town of Priechod, where there were Hungarian units that had broken away from the Germans. So we went in that direction. After some time my friend needed to take a crap. So he went over onto some field, looked around and saw some figure in white, standing there and looking at us. We took off running. We were running through an open field. When we stopped, thinking we were far enough away, we saw a group of German soldiers in front of us. They saw us! We couldn't do anything else but walk towards them.

Of course, they took us prisoner and led us off to some village. They presented us to the commander, with the words that they'd caught us and that we're either partisans or bandits, and that we should be disposed of. The commander asked us if we spoke German. Because I remembered a bit from school, I told him that we'd just been released. I showed him our papers. He then began arguing with another soldier, whether they should kill us or not. The soldier was for killing us, the commander against. Finally the commander gave the order that that night we'd sleep in the same room with him. When we were alone with him, he said to us in German, 'You've got to sleep with me, because he's a Nazi, and I can't vouch for him.'

The next day he sent us with a soldier back to Banska Bystrica, to make sure that they'd actually released us. That person, the Sudeten German who'd issued us the papers, spotted us. He came over to us and began speaking Czech so that our escort wouldn't understand. 'You two, what did I tell you, that you're supposed to go straight west and that you're not supposed to wander around!' Of course, the German soldier didn't understand anything, and reported that we were bandits and that we had false papers. He said to him, 'You're saying that my signature is fake?' He gave him what for! We got it, too: 'What're you gawking at, get lost right now, if they bring you back once more, that's the end!' So we ran out again. The German solder ran out behind us, sat in the car and quickly 'ran' away.

We again set out in the same direction as the day before, eventually we more or less recognized it. The second time around, we managed to get to the village of Priechod. Right away sentries stopped us. They asked us what we wanted there. We said that we were going to the partisans. There some guy in civilian clothing took charge of us. He spoke both Slovak and Hungarian. We told him that we'd like to join some partisan unit. All right, but have some supper first. The Hungarians had it good, they had sweet poppy-seed buns. So we stuffed ourselves full there!

The territory we were on was free, because a Hungarian army unit had broken off from the Germans. Finally talk came around to where we'd sleep. They told us that up above the village there was a gamekeeper's lodge with a partisan unit. There were a few partisans and Hungarians there. We moved ourselves over to the lodge. There we got another supper, again some sweet cakes and goodies. We were each issued a green Czechoslovak uniform and a rifle. Finally we went off to sleep. There were about fifty, sixty of us there. In the morning, around 5am, we were woken up by yelling and shooting.

In the morning, the village of Priechod had been surrounded by the Germans. They'd used a ruse. As there were Hungarian soldiers there, the Germans sent ahead some other Hungarian soldiers that were on their side. Thus they managed to get to the sentries, because they replied to their challenge in Hungarian. So they disarmed the sentries and entered the village. As people ran out the houses, the Germans shot them straight off, like rabbits. They gathered up part of the men and led them off to the edge of the village under a steep hill. They ordered them to run. As they were running, they shot them all. Only one German boy managed to escape, he might have been about 16 or 17. Earlier, this boy had joined the partisans. He was the only man who managed to survive. Finally the Germans torched the village. Some of the women had survived, and they then remained and lived in that pillaged village.

Eventually we learned that the traitor had been the man who'd taken charge of us after our arrival in the village, and who'd fed us the cakes. If he wouldn't have sent us up to the gamekeeper's lodge to the partisans, I wouldn't be here today. He de facto saved us. His role had been to gather supplies and at the same time he worked as a German agent. In the end the Russians caught and executed him. We stayed in the lodge for some time. From there we used to go on patrols to the surrounding villages, for example to the village of Podkonice and so on. But the Germans were everywhere. We just heard snow crunching beside us. Because their patrols would go to the edge of the villages, to the forest, and would then return. Despite the fact that they were only a few steps away from us, we couldn't fight them. It would have been hopeless for us. We knew that it was hopeless.

The Germans' main road of retreat led through Podkonice, in the direction of Ruzomberok. We gradually moved from the gamekeeper's lodge to bunkers in the forest, where we posted sentries. At the end of February, beginning of March we continued through Chabenec and the Low Tatras to Brezno. Brezno had already been liberated. There were Romanian soldiers there. There they split us up. The Hungarian soldiers that had been with us went down south. Czechs and Slovaks marched in the direction of Poprad. On foot from Brezno to Poprad [the traveling distance between the towns of Brezno and Poprad is around 90 km]!

After arriving in Poprad I reported to the First Czechoslovak Army Corps. There I was accepted into junior officers' school. I got a nice uniform, a weapon and served there until June 1945. I graduated from junior officers' school in the army corps with the rank of lance corporal. Since then I've worked my way up to lieutenant colonel in the Czechoslovak Army. After finishing school I left with the other soldiers, as part of our training, on foot from Poprad to Martin [the traveling distance between the towns of Poprad and Martin is about 130 km]. We walked for three or four days. In Martin we met President Benes 18, who'd come from Kosice 19. There we boarded some vehicles and they sent us as reserves to Moravia, where there was still fighting going on. But the soldiers up ahead of us always managed to break through the front, and so we never participated in direct fighting. In this way we followed the front all the way to Prague.

In Prague, we as soldiers used to go on 'maneuvers.' We'd for example train for fighting in the streets of the city. It was up on Bila Hora [White Mountain]. Grannies were running out in gas masks and shrieking, 'Jesus Mary, the Germans are back.' They didn't know that they were just exercises, and that we were only using blanks. There was noise in the streets and the so the grannies wanted to get into the shelters. We told them: 'Granny, it's only make-believe, it's not real.' At the end of June they sent us back to Slovakia, to the army column in Nitra, from where they discharged me into civilian life.

During my stay in Prague I contacted the former mayor of Vrutky. He'd been the deputy of the Hlinka Guard commander in the town, but at the same time our protector and family friend. He told me that my father had returned and was living in Zilina. So that's how I knew about it. While I was in Nitra I stayed with my father's brother, Rudi. He survived the war in Terezin 20. I slept at his place on an ironing board. After several days I set out on a freight wagon from Nitra to Zilina.

In Zilina I met up with my father, who already had his own place rented. We used to go to his girlfriends' for dinners. One time to one's place, then to another one's... We didn't manage to get back absolutely any of our property. To make ends meet, I began working as a plumber. Despite my not having a trade certificate, I got a job with one company in Zilina. The owner was a Jew, too.

Post-war

In the postwar period, the functioning of the Jewish community in the town was renewed as well. But the Jewish community's numbers were continually declining. My father moved to Karlovy Vary 21 still in the year 1945. He decided to do so because of his friend, Mrs. Katzova. She had friends in Karlovy Vary, the Kleinman family. My father came here imagining that he'd rent a guesthouse. Basically everyone left for Karlovy Vary imagining that they'd do well. I joined them at the beginning of the spring of 1946. I lived with my father. After all, we got along well. My father got a job in a spa. First he was in the oxygen shop, where they filled oxygen tanks. Then he became an accommodation officer at the head office. He stayed there until retirement. As a pensioner he worked as an inspector in the colonnade. Basically he walked around there all day, from morning to evening, and watched over things.

During that time I met my first, today already deceased wife. Her maiden name was Irena Rothova. She was born in 1926 in the town of Kajdanove in Subcarpathian Ruthenia 22. Kajdanove belonged to the Mukacevo district. She was from a devout family, but after the war she wasn't that devout any more. After the war she returned to Subcarpathian Ruthenia. She found out that all of her girlfriends that had survived the war had dispersed all over the world. One of her mother's brothers lived in Karlovy Vary. As luck would have it, it was Mr. Kleinman that my future wife came to stay with. I met her at my father's friend's, Mrs. Katzova's. I came to her place for supper, and my future wife was there, too. Mrs. Katzova and Mrs. Kleinmannova were friends. So we met 'by chance.' We had a Jewish wedding, under the chuppah, in Karlovy Vary, in 1946. But the officials there didn't count that as an official wedding. We had a civil wedding in the fall of 1948. We celebrated our wedding, the Jewish one, at the Kleinmans'. About 20 people gathered there.

My wife survived the war in Auschwitz, from there she got to some factory and finally ended up in Terezin. Her parents died in Auschwitz. Besides her parents, she also had two brothers. Both survived the war, and moved away, to Israel. They were named Imre Roth and Bela Roth. I later met Imre in Karlovy Vary. He was here two or three times. I haven't met his brother. My wife met up with him someplace in Budapest. After my wife died I lost contact with them. But I think that they're not alive anymore either. My wife spoke Hungarian and Yiddish, and of course Czech. I speak Czech and Slovak, and can also get by in Hungarian and German. After the war we observed the high holidays. We didn't observe the Sabbath very much, only my wife in the beginning lit candles, later not even that. We also celebrated Passover. My wife would prepare Passover supper, soup with matzah balls.

After World War II, the activity of the Jewish community in Karlovy Vary was renewed as well. After all, there were enough Jews here. But in time many of them moved away. The left mainly for Israel and America. The ones that stayed here always quarreled amongst each other. In the end, just like in all communities. There was of course also a prayer hall here, which today no longer exists. The community also had a rabbi and a shammash. But the rabbi emigrated. We didn't participate very much in the town's Jewish life. A couple of times a year, my wife and I would go to the prayer hall, mainly for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The boys didn't go with us.

I personally viewed the creation of the state of Israel as a positive thing. I even wouldn't have objected if my wife and I had moved there. During totalitarian times, she was there to visit her brothers. The first time was in 1965, I think. I told her, 'We'll move.' Her answer was, 'Not for anything. I've seen it there, and I know what it's like. I'm not going there!' Her younger brother, Bela, who lived in Beer Sheva, was doing quite well. He had a company that transported sand to construction sites. Her older brother, Imre, lived in Natanya. He had a furniture store. Once in a while he'd go bankrupt, then he'd get it back together, again and again. Both her brothers had families. As far as religion goes, neither of them was religious.

Irenka worked as a seamstress. For long years she sewed uniforms as well as for friends at home. Basically she was always sewing. After I arrived in Karlovy Vary, I worked as a caretaker for the company Czechoslovak Hotels. I used to go around hotels fixing taps and similar things. Well, and then I got the position of district secretary for culture for the KSC 23. I was a member of the Party since 1945. Despite the fact that I entered it with my father, he used to say to me, 'You'll never be a Communist.' He used to say that to me because I never believed the Communists. Gradually the Slansky trials 24 began. But basically they didn't affect me at all.

I looked upon the events of 1968 25 as being positive. At that time I was working in a national enterprise, and was the chairman of the company union council. Basically, in 1968 in Karlovy Vary there was a conference held regarding the Party's direction. At this conference, certain members of the district that had a new way of thinking stood up and slammed the district Communist Party secretary. At that time I was in the electoral commission, and we managed to elect new people to Party functions, which later of course worked against me. But I believed that we were doing the right thing. In the end they criticized me for participating in that conference. Things went so far that in 1970 they kicked me out of the Party 26. Before that, the boys from the StB came to see me. They told me that they didn't want anything from me, only for me to... I told them that I wouldn't rat on anyone. As chairman of the company council I had always tried for everything to be fair, and I didn't stray from that. Later I got a job as a construction technician. I drove around to construction sites in the area, for example Prague, Chomutov, Cheb, As, basically the whole region. There wasn't a lot of free time.

In Karlovy Vary we initially lived in a small, cold and damp ground-floor apartment. That was at the beginning of the 1950s. Eventually our two sons were born. Milan in 1953, and Roman in 1956. We tried to raise our sons to be decent people. They weren't circumcised; my wife wouldn't allow it due to past experiences. She said that she didn't want to ruin their lives... We of course didn't keep their origin a secret from them, and they knew about everything.

In time we also got a new, beautiful and sunny apartment on Vitezna Street. We also used to go on vacations together. Back then you couldn't go to the West. You couldn't get a permit to go there. We used to go as a family to Bulgaria. My wife had a lot of girlfriends, and I also had one colleague from work with whom I got along well. We spent a lot of time together outside of work as well. We used to get together at our place, or at theirs. Unfortunately, he's also since died. My wife and I also used to go with the children on various camping trips. Irenka also used to visit spas. Mainly Frantiskove Lazne and around Pisek. I of course always took her there and then would come back for her, so that's about all I got from those spas.

After the war, my father also got married. He married a woman by the name of Eda Kleinova. She was from Subcarpathian Ruthenia. Edina's sister lived in Prague with her husband. The four of them decided to buy a house in Prague together. My father and his wife lived upstairs, and his brother-in- law and his wife lived downstairs. We of course used to visit them, about two or three times a year. My father died in Prague in 1978. His second wife died as well, about ten years after my father's death.

Irenka had a stroke at the beginning of the 1990s. Half her body was then paralyzed. As if that wasn't enough, she also got pneumonia. She died of it in 1994. We buried her at the Jewish cemetery in Karlovy Vary. In the meantime, our sons grew up. Milan lives in the town of Tachov. It's about 60 kilometers from Karlovy Vary. He's an electrician by trade. But initially he worked in Tachov feeding cattle, because they granted him an apartment on the condition that he works there. Roman graduated from civil engineering in Prague. After finishing his studies he stayed in Karlovy Vary. His office is right next door to the Jewish community. He designs buildings, and is doing quite well. But he's never gotten married. He spends entire weeks in his office, weekends, too, and goes home for supper around 10pm. Milan married a non-Jewish girl, who already had a son. Together they've had another boy. Both their children are already grown up, though.

About five years ago, I went to visit Israel. It was with a tour group. Life there was like I had imagined it. Busy streets, cafés. The roads there are top-notch. Outside of town they were all lit up, which you won't find here. I said to myself that it's quite good. As far as standard of living goes, that I don't know. I wasn't there that long to be able to judge. What surprised me? I happened to be in Natanya during Sabbath. I was expecting that on Saturday everything would be quiet. In the morning I got up, went to the window, and everywhere there were traffic jams. There were as many cars as during a weekday. The beaches were also full, and the streets were constantly busy.

At the turn of the millennium I met my second wife, Miluska. She was working in the grocery store where I used to go shopping. So we were always smiling at each other, until once she ran out after me, that she's got two tickets to the theater. She asked me whether I wouldn't go with her. At that moment I was shocked. I've got to say that I more or less liked her. I answered that I can't say right away, but that I'll check if I'm free at that time and get back to her. At that time I was already the head of the Jewish community in Karlovy Vary. I of course immediately ran to buy a suit, and then I returned to the store and said, 'Yes, let's go to the theater.' It ended up with us getting married. Miluska isn't Jewish. We had a civil wedding. With my son Roman, she became friends right away. In the beginning Milan was a little reserved, but then it was fine. Miluska has three sons and seven grandchildren from her first marriage. So now we're a fairly big family. As far as holidays go, now we don't observe anything, because she even abolished the Christmas tree that my previous wife and I used to have at home. In the beginning we used to go to the swimming pool together, and now mostly out in the garden.

For several years I was on the board of the Jewish community in Karlovy Vary. At one time I was vice president. The president of the community at that time didn't meet the expectations of the rest of the members. According to them, he was arrogant. For example, at Passover he didn't want to give matzot to someone because he didn't come to the community often enough, and so on. He locked up the cemetery, and people had to go to him for the key. But he didn't want to lend the key out to everyone. He was simply not liked. Finally, at one annual meeting Mr. Gubic spoke up, that the functions of religious leader of the community and that of the community president should be separated. Finally they voted that the former president would stay as the community's spiritual leader, and they elected me president. This was about seven years ago.

My role is to take care of the community's property. Religious matters are taken care of by Rabbi Koci and the shammash, Rubin. They take care of the sphere or religion. As time passes, the community has less and less active members. There's about ten of them. There are seven of us on the board; about those you can say that they're more or less active. There are about 98 members in total. Not all of them are right in Karlovy Vary. We also have members in surrounding towns, like for example Sokolov and Jachymov. The Jewish community has its own prayer hall, where people meet every Friday and Saturday to pray. Sometimes they don't have a minyan, there are only five or six. But Karlovy Vary is a spa town, with many guests, Jewish ones, too. So it's nothing exceptional for even twenty men to gather here. Some of the spa guests that have already been here several times automatically also come to the prayer hall. We also observe the high holidays. For Sukkot we also put up a sukkah in the courtyard of the community building.

Glossary

Rosa Gershenovich
Lvov
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Orlikova
Date of interview: July 2002

My family background
Growing up
My school years
Married life and the beginning of the war
My life in Lvov
My daughter Maya
Glossary

My family background

My father, Moisey Veltman, was born in 1887 in Bershad, in Vinnitsa region. Bershad was a Jewish town. The majority of its population was Jewish. The Jews were mostly tradesmen and craftsmen. The Ukrainians living in the town were mostly farmers. My father was born into a very religious Jewish family. His father, Aron-Shloime Veltman, born in the 1860s was a melamed in the cheder. . My grandfather was a very educated man for his time. He had excellent knowledge of the Talmud and the Torah, and taught children to read in Hebrew. He was a very well respected teacher in Bershad. My grandfather's family lived in a small house near the synagogue. There was a little porch up two or three stairs, and two rooms in the house. They had quite a few children. There was not enough space for them. My grandfather taught children from the whole town in one of the rooms. I visited my grandfather and grandmother in the 1920s. By that time, grandfather was an old man already. He didn't work any more. He showed me the room that had previously served as a cheder. There were long tables and benches in it. Later, I read in Sholem Aleichem's books 1 that teachers used to beat the children in cheder, but I just couldn't imagine my kind grandfather beating anyone.

When I knew him, grandfather was an old man with a gray beard and yarmulka. He spoke only Yiddish and prayed a lot. My grandmother asked us to be very quiet while he was praying. He went to synagogue almost every day. He had a seat by the Eastern wall - this was an place of honor. I remember him praying in his room with his face turned to the wall, with little cubes [tefillin] on his hands and forehead, and wrapped in a tallit.

He used to play with me and tell me jokes. He spoke Yiddish to me. My grandfather not only knew all the Jewish holidays, but could also explain the meaning of every holiday. I used to visit my grandparents in the summer. I remember a Jewish holiday called Shavuot. My grandfather didn't go to bed on the night of this holiday, but stayed up all night reading the tikkun Shavuot [the Book of Ruth], which contains the main ideas and provisions of both the Written and Oral TorahLaw. I was given scissors and colored paper to cut out patterns to decorate the windows. My grandmother cooked dairy meals on this day. I remember eating pancakes stuffed with cottage cheese dipped in honey. My grandfather was sitting at the table saying that the Ttorah was as sweet to us as honey.

My grandfather was a very kind man. He was 'loyal,' as would be proper to say nowadays. He understood that children had to go their own way and live their own lives. He never forced his children to practice religion. My grandfather had a large collection of religious books in Hebrew. His conduct of Hebrew was very good. I didn't understand what these books were about. I remember my mother showing me poems by Mandelshtam 2 and Ginsburg, one of the first enlightened Jews in Russia, and also the History of Peter the Great in Hebrew. I don't know whether my grandfather's children read those books, too. I also remember Russian books by Pushkin, Lermontov 3 and Gogol 4 in imprinted golden bindings.

My grandfather dearly loved his wife Tuba-Leya Veltman [nee Shnaiderman]. She was also born in Bershad in 1865. She also came from a religious family. On her wedding day she had her hair shaved according to the Jewish tradition and wore a wig for the rest of her life. I remember her wearing a wig and a white shawl. My grandmother was a very smart woman. She was fat and sickly. She had hypertension and a poor heart. She had a terrific sense of humor. My grandfather used to make her a cup of tea with sugar and would hand it to her. I believe it shows how nicely he treated her. She was always busy doing work around the house, cooking delicious Jewish food and pastries.

The Germans killed my grandmother and grandfather in 1942. When the war began their younger son Ershl came to Bershad to take them to evacuation. My grandfather said that because he and grandmother were old already and because grandmother was a very ill woman, they were going to stay. Ershl came to Bershad after the war and people told him that like many other Jews in the ghetto his parents were shot by the Germans.

My grandmother and grandfather had many children, but not all of them lived to old age. I know two of their daughters and two sons. All of them except my father followed my grandfather's footsteps and became teachers.

Their daughter Nesia, born in 1892, was married. She was a teacher of Yiddish in the Jewish school. In the 1930s the Jewish schools in Bershad were closed down and Nesia studied at the Pedagogical Institute in Kamenets- Podolsk. She became a teacher of Russian and worked in Russian schools. She was evacuated to the town of Kuznetsk in the Urals and returned to Lvov after the war. Nesia died in Lvov in 1980. Her daughter Nelia is a teacher and her son Leonid is an engineer. They are retired now and live in Lvov.

My father's other sister Dvoira, born in 1895, was also a teacher of Yiddish in a Jewish school. She lived in Odessa. She was in evacuation in Omsk region in Siberia. After the war she didn't work. She suffered from heart disease and died in Lvov in 1958. Her daughters Nina and Nyusia emigrated to Israel in 1986. Nyusia died there.

My father's brother Ershl, born in 1899, was a mathematics teacher in a secondary school. In the 1930s he moved to Donbass [Donetsk]. We rarely saw each other. I know that he died there in 1990. His son Mark lives in Israel and his daughter Rosa, also a teacher, lives in Donetsk.

My grandparents' other son Velv died when he was very young. I don't know anything about him.

My father was a worker and a painter. He finished cheder and didn't want to continue his studies. He participated in various revolutionary organizations. Unlike other Jewish boys he wasn't afraid to serve in the tsarist army. He was tall and strong. He served for six years in the cavalry, from 1906 to 1912. From what my mother told me, my father was proud of his service in the tsarist army. He didn't know Russian before he went into the army. While in the army, he learned to speak, read and write Russian. I believe my father brought his revolutionary ideas from the army. He came back a member of the Bund 5.

My mother, Elizaveta Veltman [nee Green], was born in 1879 in the town of Okny near Bershad. We called her by her Jewish name, Leya, in the family. Her father, Avrum-Yankel Green, born in the 1860s, had a beautiful voice and was a cantor. He got invitations from synagogues in different towns and was very popular wherever he sang. I don't know what family he came from, but he was a deeply religious man. He sang at the synagogue in Odessa in the last years of his life and died in Odessa in 1918. I was only 4 years old, but I can still remember my grandfather's voice. I never heard anything like that again.

His wife, Ruhl Green, was about the same age as he. She was born in the 1860s and was a quiet, modest Jewish woman. She always supported her children. After my father perished she moved in with us to give my mother an opportunity to go to work. She looked after me. She was a taciturn old woman. She wore long black gowns and covered her head with a shawl. Times were hard during the Civil War 6 and we didn't even have enough bread. My mother and grandmother exchanged our possessions for bread and milk for me. But even then my grandmother tried to observe Jewish traditions. She lit candles before on Saturdays, prayed, and went to synagogue. We only spoke Yiddish in the family. This was the only language I knew when as a child. My grandmother died in 1921 as quietly as she had lived. She went to bed and didn't wake up one morning. My mother buried her near my grandfather's grave in the Jewish cemetery in Odessa. I didn't go to the funeral, but stayed at our neighbor's. Regretfully, I was not able to find their graves after the war.

My mother told me that my grandmother and grandfather had many children, but only three of them lived: my mother's older sister, Surah, born in 1875, and her brother Ershl, born in 1880. Surah lived in Rybnitsa, a small town in Moldavia, and Ershl lived in Odessa. We were very close with both of them. Surah was married to Ershl Shnaiderman, my paternal grandmother's brother. Marriages between relatives often take place in Jewish families.

I don't know what kind of elementary education was given to girls in the Green family, but my mother and her sister were well-educated women. They could read and write in Russian and Yiddish. Yiddish was spoken in all the familys. My mother told me a little about her childhood. As my grandfather was a cantor, they often moved from one place to another. My mother saw many Jewish towns within the Jewish Pale of Settlement 7. My mother was a very beautiful woman. They say about women like her that their eyes have absorbed all the sorrows of the Jewish people. She had huge hazel eyes and thick black hair.

My mother and father met in Odessa. My father's sister Dvoira studied in Odessa. My mother was her friend. Dvoira introduced her to her brother Moisey when he came to visit his sister before going to serve in the army. They fell in love with each other, although my mother was few years older than my father. While my father was in the army matchmakers came to his father many times offering rich fiancées for my father. My grandfather always answered that Moisey loved Leya and that was it.

They had a traditional Jewish wedding in Bershad in 1912. There was a chuppah, a rabbi and klezmer musicians at the wedding. The party lasted for 3 days. My father wasn't religious any more, but he paid honors to his parents and the parents of his fiancée. My father believed that Jews had to struggle for a new life and to get education. He thought that religion was for backward, ignorant people. After their wedding my parents moved to Odessa. My father worked as a painter there, but he didn't work in that job for long. He was kept busy with revolutionary activities. He spread leaflets, took part in meetings, and participated in publishing revolutionary newspapers in Russian and in Yiddish. My father believed that the revolution would liberate poor Jews from national oppression. My mother said that he even had to hide from the police. He involved her in party activities as well.

Growing up

My name is Rosa Gershenovich [nee Veltman]. I was born in Rybnitsa in 1914. My father was hiding from the police at that time and was away from Odessa. My mother's sister Surah lived in Rybnitsa and my father took my mother to live with her. We lived there until I was about 6 months old, and then we returned to Odessa. We lived in a one-room apartment in the center of the city. There were many Jewish families, as well as Greek, Ukrainian and Russian families living there. All life went on in the yard; people were very close and sociable. They did their laundry, had discussions and arguments and educated their children in the yard. I was a little girl and didn't have friends in the yard, but I remember that all the women addressed each other as 'Madam'. My mother was 'Madam Veltman'. During the Civil War the neighbors supported each other.

We lived in a small room. I remember a chest of drawers, a bed, a table and chairs. We didn't have any decorations. Or, perhaps we had, but my mother had exchanged them for food. There was a richer Jewish family in the neighboring building. During the Civil War bandits came to them demanding money and valuables. They tore up their pillows looking for gold. They killed the whole family. My mother said the bandits were from the Petliura 8 units. Fortunately, these Petliura units didn't come to us. They probably knew which families were rich and which were poor.

I have dim memories of my father, but I remember the day when he went to defend Odessa from the White Army [the Whites] 9. I was only 5 years old then. I remember that three visitors came that night - my mother said that they were from the Bund - my father's comrades. My father left with them. He was wearing his casual trousers and a jacket. He was tall and wore a moustache. My nice, kind father kissed me and said to my mother: 'I must go with them so that our daughter can have a better life'. My mother was crying and didn't want to let him go. That was the last time when we saw him. We were told later that he had perished. My mother told me that he had loved her very much. She waited and waited for him to return, but when she realized that he was gone she grew old and gray. I don't remember the Civil War. I only remember when a neighbor came in saying 'Leya, Petliura units are leaving the town'. My mother said, 'Thank God!' 'What will happen now?' 'Now the Reds 10 will come.'

My mother tried to find a job in Odessa. In 1919 she took a medical course and completed it successfully. Unemployment in Odessa was high and it was next to impossible to get a job. My mother's sister Surah, who was living in Rybnitsa, invited my mother and me to come live with her there. My mother packed up and we left.

Rybnitsa was a town on the Dnestr River. The Dnestr was the border separating Soviet Moldavia from Romania. It was necessary to obtain a permit to go to Rybnitsa. Frontier guards checked everybody's documents on the train. Rybnitsa was a Jewish town surrounded by mountains. The Moldavians lived in the mountains and the Jews lived in town. Surah's husband owned a store that sold kerosene, candles, matches, soap, and other things. Their house was not very big. My mother and her sister Surah were very close. The family gave us a room to live in. My aunt had 3 children. The oldest, Gidal, was born in 1912 and perished during the war in 1943. Volodia, born in 1924, also went to the front, but survived. He married after the war; he worked at a plant in Odessa and was promoted to foreman. After retiring he still lives in Odessa. My aunt's daughter named Dora was born in 1916. She finished her studies at the Medical College in Odessa and married Naum Fridman, a military man who provided well for his family. Dora was a housewife. They now live in Israel.

In Rybnitsa my mother got a job as a nurse. She worked a lot. First, she worked at a hospital, and then she had some further training and began to work at the children's clinic. The doctor she worked with neglected her responsibilities and my mother did most of the work by herself. Patients respected my mother and knew her well in the small town where most people knew each other. Sometimes, in case of an emergency mother was called to a patient at night. The hospital in Rybnitsa had three or four wards. There were three doctors: Dr. Waister, Dr. Shmelianskiy and Dr. Kogan. All three were Jews. My mother was a trade union activist and was elected Chairman of the Medical Trade Union Unit. She wasn't a party member.

Surah's family observed all Jewish traditions and spoke Yiddish among themselves. I remember them asking me 'di fir kashes' [the four questions] on seder night, which goes like this: 'Why is this night different from any other night?'. I replied, something but I don't remember what. They asked me to open the door for the prophet Elijah to come in. They also set an extra place for him on the table. According to the Jewish legend the prophet Elijah visits every home on the first day of Pesach and drinks from the cup that has been poured for him. He is invisible but he can see everything in the house. The door is kept open for the prophet to come in and honor the holiday with his presence.

My uncle went to synagogue every Friday and Saturday. My Aunt Surah was responsible for collecting charity contributions for the poor in the town. My uncle owned Jewish religious books, but I don't remember him having any Russian books or newspapers. My mother and I went to synagogue only on major holidays. It was a small synagogue. We sat in the women's gallery and watched the men in their tallitim praying. There was very little we could see. We didn't know anything about the outer world. We didn't travel and didn't have any visitors. My mother didn't cook kosher food during the era of Soviet power. There were no conditions for this. However, we didn't eat pork. We ate chicken and beef. There was a river in the town and we had a lot of fish. My mother made stuffed fish. She cooked on a primus stove.

My school years

In 1922 I started going to the Russian lower secondary school, which I attended for seven years. There was also a Jewish school in Rybnitsa. But my mother told me that she and my aunt had discussed the subject of which school I should attend and they decided that it was better for me to study Russian in order to be able to continue my education later. My school was in a two-story building in the center of town. The majority of the children at the school were Jewish. I mastered my Russian at this school. There were Russian and Moldavian children, but we Jews stood separately. We stayed together - not on purpose, it just happened to be so. We communicated and played with the other children, but were not close friends with them. I can't say that there was any anti-Semitism. Only once, I remember, when we went out with other children and there were Russian girls there, one of them approached me and asked me to say the letter 'r'. It was a common belief that Jews couldn't pronounce this sound. I pronounced it perfectly and she said, 'Good'. They didn't want to play with any of the children who mispronounced this letter.

We lived in the embankment street where the wealthier families lived: store owners, doctors, etc. Poorer people, etcshoemakers, tailors, workers etc, etc., lived farther out. All my friends were Jews. After finishing school, my friend Polia Finegersh became an accountant. She and her mother perished in Tiraspol in 1941. My other friend, Polia Glozman, moved to Tiraspol with her husband who perished at the front in 1942. Polia had a daughter.

In 1924 when Lenin died I was 10 years old. We were lined up at school by the portrait of Lenin. Many of the children and teachers were crying. I don't remember whether I was crying or not. Soon afterwards we became pioneers. We wore red neckties and badges bearing a portrait of Lenin. I became a pioneer so that I would be no different from the others, but when it was time to become a member of the Komsomol 11 I didn't want to join. I don't know why, I just couldn't be bothered. Everyone accepted the reality of living in a communist state. They just understood that it was the only way possible. My mother tried to forget her past life with her wealthy parents. She never mentioned to anyone that she was a member of the Bund. This party was regarded as a bourgeois party and it was not safe to disclose that one had been a member of it.

My uncle, a storeowner, was expelled from Rybnitsa. He lived in a village and had no rights. He was classified as 'an owner' by the Soviet authorities, which didn't like such elements. My cousin Dora couldn't find a job. Their family moved to Odessa. My uncle got a job working at the Red Komintern Machine Building Plant. They left their house to my mother and me. My mother and I stayed in their house while mother continued to work and I went to school. We didn't observe any Jewish traditions at home but continued going to synagogue. Our life in Rybnitsa was rather plain. There was a dancing club, but it was closed in the 1930s. It was closed because there were only Jewish youngsters there. They danced Jewish dances like the 'Seven Forty' and the waltz. Life in Rybnitsa back then was like living in the Middle Ages. Electricity came to this town in the late 1930s only. There was no sewerage system or running water, and no central heating. There were only dirt roads. People had no education and the general level of culture was very low. Young people were always trying to leave Rybnitsa. There was Vizin, a Romanian town on the other side of Rybnitsa, but we were not allowed to cross the border. Sometimes we heard shooting at night. This meant that someone was trying to cross the border. Some were captured or killed and others managed to cross. We didn't travel. I remember visiting my father's parents in Bershad and going to the country once after I had pneumonia. My mother stayed a month there with me. We rented a room in a house. There was an orchard and our landlady had a cow. We had fruit and milk and my health improved.

I finished school in 1931. There was famine in Rybnitsa in the 1930s., We didn't have anything to eat and we were starving. My mother had two golden dental crowns. She took them to the Torgsin store 12 and exchanged them for some corn flour to make corn porridge.

I was admitted to the Financial College in Odessa. This was the largest city near Rybnitsa, and Surah's family lived there. It was good to have somebody to turn to. I lived at my aunt's. They lived in the center of the city in a big five-story building in a communal apartment 13 with many tenants, but I don't remember them. I studied accounting, Russian and Ukrainian and mathematics. There were many Jewish students and teachers at the college. Nationality was not an issue at that time. I didn't have any real friends, but there were companions for going to the cinema or for a walk. I like Odessa very much. I liked going to the port, Richelieu Street and the center of the city. Once, I saw Verdi's Aida at the Opera. I don't know whether there were Jewish theaters in Odessa then. My aunt had a small collection of books by Soviet writers like Gorky 14, Mayakovsky 15, Fadeyev 16, and others. My aunt's family observed the Jewish traditions and celebrated holidays, but I took no interest in them. I believed traditions and religiosity to be a vestige of the past. I couldn't stay in Odessa after finishing college. I didn't have a place to live and it was difficult to find a job.

In 1936 I returned to Rybnitsa where I worked as an accountant for the District Party Executive Committee. I didn't want to become a party member. Besides, I was too young for that. Life was very dull. I embroidered in the evening and went to the cultural center sometimes to watch old silent movies. In 1938 Moishe Shnaiderman, the brother of my Aunt Surah's husband, came from Moscow. He was a widower of over 60 years. His wife had died some time before and he proposed to my mother and invited her to go to Moscow with him. They didn't have a wedding party. Besides, all synagogues had been closed by then. The authorities pursued a serious struggle against religion 17. My mother moved to Moscow with pleasure. My mother didn't work in Moscow. Her husband was a pensioner. He was a very nice, decent man and they had a very good and quiet life together.

I stayed behind in Rybnitsa and moved to Tiraspol, the capital of the Moldavian Republic, in 1939. Tiraspol was a big, beautiful town compared to Rybnitsa. My friend Polia Finegersh lived there with her husband, and I stayed with them. I got a job as a cashier and then as an accountant in the Central Bank. There were many Jews in Tiraspol. The chief accountant at my workplace was Russian; all the other employees were Jewish. I rented a room from a Jewish family, the Roizmans. They were not religious. I believe they did observe some traditions, but I took little notice of anything of this kind. They were an old couple and they treated me very nicely.

Married life and the beginning of the war

I met my future husband, Ruvim Gershenovich in 1940. He came from Kiev to visit his relatives, the Roizmans, the couple from whom I was renting my room. Ruvim was born in Nezhin in the Chernigov region in Ukraine in 1905. He graduated from the Financial College in Kiev. He was an ordinary man, and very nice and caring. He worked as an accountant in Kiev. He stayed in Tiraspol for a few days and then returned to Kiev. Later, he sent me a letter, writing that he liked me very much. The letter was in Russian, but he spoke Yiddish. When we got married he used to speak Yiddish to me and I addressed him in Russian. We corresponded for a year. He came back at the end of 1940 and we registered our marriage in Tiraspol. After we got married he used to speak Yiddish to me and I addressed him in Russian. He was planning to rent an apartment in the summer of 1941 so I could move to Kiev. I couldn't move to Kiev before he rented an apartment because he was living in one room with his parents.

Our plans were thwarted by the events of June 22, 1941 [the day Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union]. The war began. I remember this day so clearly. I went to the market in the morning and heard loud roaring. I thought there was some kind of military training going on. Many people thought so, too. But then the bombing of the aerodrome near town began. We still didn't know anything about the war. Then at noon we heard Molotov 18 on the radio. The war began at 5am. Two days later my husband arrived from Kiev. He told me that I had to go to his parents and that he was to be recruited to the army. There were many Jewish refugees from Poland. From them we heard about the mass shootings of Jews by the fascists in Europe. We realized that we had to run away.

We took a train to Kiev on that same day. I met his parents. His father, Oshel Gershenovich, was a tailor. His mother Perl was a housewife. They were nice old people. They only spoke Yiddish. They lived in the central part of town. My husband went to the military registry office, but they let him go due to his poor eyesight. They summoned him at the end of July. He was at the front for four long years. Kiev was bombed.

Some acquaintances of my husband got a horse-driven cart and let us join them. This was in August 1941. On this cart were my husband's parents, another couple, the cart man and I. We went along the Dnieper River to the south. We passed Nikolayev and reached Kherson. Crowds of people were waiting for transportation at the Golaya Pristan station. It was the end of August and the heat was oppressive. We managed to get on a train. Somewhere in Donbass we changed the trains and were going now in railcars for cattle transportation. We were bombed on the way and had to get off the train to scatter around and come back later. We finally reached Tashkent. I was glad that my mother was in Moscow. My mother told me that she and Moishe had a bowl of feathers prepared. If the Germans occupied Moscow mother and Moishe were going to burn these feathers to suffocate in the smoke.

There was no room for us in Tashkent and we moved on to Namangan in Uzbekistan, about 50 km from Tashkent. At first, we got a small room in a clay house. Later, my husband's father fell ill. He died in hospital at the end of November 1941. We buried him at the cemetery in Namangan. There was no Jewish cemetery in this town. Ruvim's mother died a little later, in January 1942. She was buried in the same cemetery. I met somebody I knew in Rybnitsa and he employed me in his shoe shop. There were four shoemakers working there. One was a Polish Jew and the others were Russian, I think. I lived in this shop, working as an accountant during the day, and at night I slept on my desk. I had a pillow and a blanket for colder nights. I had very few clothes: a coat, a couple of dresses and some shoes. I kept them under my desk. There was an aryk [water channel] in the yard of our shop where I could wash and do the laundry. The water was very clean and potable.

I was desperately lonely. I didn't know where my husband was. He wrote my mother and I wrote my mother and we found each other in this way. He wrote me in Uzbekistan. He was at the front. In the beginning he was a soldier, and then a sergeant. He couldn't support me financially. Only officers could support their families by sending them special certificates on the basis of which military registration offices paid allowances to the families. Military men of lower ranks didn't have this possibility.

Namangan was a big Uzbek town. There were very rich and full markets there. I didn't have money to buy anything. I could only afford a bun that cost 10 rubles. I had to make this bun last for a whole day. I received 400 grams of brown bread and that was the only other food I had for a day. There were many Jews in evacuation in Namangan, but I didn't know any of them. I don't know whether there were any Jewish activities. I was happy to receive letters from my family and husband. My husband went across Russia, Ukraine, Poland and Czechoslovakia during the war. I was very happy that he survived. At the beginning of 1945 he was wounded and stayed in hospital. He got better there and was demobilized.

My life in Lvov

My husband knew that his house in Kiev had been destroyed. His commanding officer got an assignment in Lvov in the summer of 1945. He suggested that Ruvim should go to Lvov and said he would help him find a job. Lvov was forced to join the USSR in 1940. After the war Polish people were allowed to go to Poland and many of them left Lvov. There were many vacant apartments. Ruvim found an apartment for us and called me to come to Lvov. On my way from Namangan to Lvov I spent two weeks in Piatigorsk visiting my cousin Dora. We had a wonderful reunion. Her husband was still in Germany and she was living in Piatigorsk.

I liked Lvov. It was a beautiful European town with European architecture typical of the Middle Ages, beautiful churches and cathedrals, streets and buildings. The local population hated the Soviet power, but was scared of Stalin. They were afraid to open their mouths. Our janitor took off his hat when he came to us and kissed my hand. I felt very strange. Nobody had ever kissed my hand before. And he bowed endlessly. There were Jews coming to town from evacuation. At first the locals were afraid of the Jews, but then their anti-Semitism burst out. There were inscriptions everywhere on the walls: 'Zhyds [kikes], get out of Ukraine!' and 'Get out of Lvov!'

When I arrived in Lvov, my husband was working as an accountant at a tailor's shop. Later, it became a garment factory. my Our daughter Maya was born in 1949. She went to kindergarten when she turned 3 years old, and I got a job as an accountant at the garment factory where my husband was working.

In autumn of 1949 I went to Moscow and brought my mother to Lvov. Her husband, Moshe Shnaiderman, had died, and she was old and needed to be taken care of. In 1951 my mother died from a myocardial infarction. We buried her at the Jewish cemetery in Lvov.

In 1953 Stalin died and I cried like everybody else. We believed that anti- Semitism in Lvov was a local phenomenon and had hoped that Stalin would protect us. We didn't understand then that anti-Semitism in the USSR was a state policy, initiated by Stalin.

We lead a quiet life. My husband was a very decent, quiet, kind man. He loved our daughter dearly. He liked to speak Yiddish when there were no outsiders around. Anti-Semitism in Lvov was stronger than anywhere else. It always existed in this area regardless of the regime. It grew stronger after the war, because it was common knowledge that the majority of the communists who had established the Soviet power in Russia were Jews. People in Lvov hated the Soviet power and had much fear of it. They believed Jews to be supporters of the Soviet power. We were openly despised and we could often hear in the streets and in public transportation: 'Zhyds [kikes], go to Israel!' It was not advisable to show one's Jewish identity and we gave up our Jewish traditions. We had Jewish colleagues and we had friends among them, but we were not demonstrative about our friendships because we thought it might cause undesirable reactions.

In autumn 1949 I went to Moscow and brought my mother to Lvov. Her husband Moshe Shnaiderman died and she was old and needed to be taken care of. In 1951 my mother died from infarction. We buried her at the Jewish cemetery in LvovMy husband was wounded during the war and had a shell splinter in his chest. Doctors told him that they would suggest surgery if the splinter began to move. One evening he felt very ill on his way home. When he got home, he fainted. I called an ambulance. But he got worse and died. The splinter must have reached his heart. He died in 1957 when he was 52 years old. Maya lost her father when she was 9 years old.

My daughter Maya

I always told her to have Jewish friends, because they would always be supportive and never call one a 'zhyd'. It was one of the ways to feel more confident in a hostile environment. She studied at the Russian school. There were very few Jewish girls there. She had a friend named Maya Gleizer. They were very good friends. Maya Gleizer is in America now. She moved there 20 years ago. My daughter loves her Jewish it is enough that people. She says Jews are the most intelligent people in the world. She studied at school very successfully. After graduating she tried to gain admission to the Polytechnic Institute in Lvov several times, but failed. It was next to impossible for a Jewish girl who came from a low-income family to enter an institution of higher education.

In 1966 Maya got a job as a computer operator. She held this job for 30 years. She went to work at age 16, because the state of our finances was grave. Later, after 30 years, the factory where she worked was closed and she lost her job. It was difficult for a Jew to find a job in Lvov. Once, she was told about a vacancy. She went to the human resources department to inquire. A woman there confirmed that there was a vacancy and told her to come by the following day with her passport. On the following day the woman opened her passport and saw that Maya was a Jew. She said 'You know, we have already employed someone'. My daughter lost all hope of finding a job. She was feeling hurt and offended. She felt as if she had been shrugged off.

She had said a while before: 'We need to go away from here. We have to go to Israel. I want to be among our own people. I want to feel like a human being.' She always wanted to emigrate to Israel. I believe she would go there with or without me. We didn't have an opportunity to go in the past. And now she is very ill. She has stomach problems. And we are old. Does anybody need us there?

She wasn't happy in her personal life either. Her husband was a Jew. But I don't want to talk about him. It is enough that she divorced him. She wouldn't have married a Russian man. There have never been any mixed marriages in our family anyway. If she wanted to marry a Russian man she would have had a number of options. There were quite a few Russian men that wanted to marry her. But she says that she is not young any more and that she doesn't need anybody.

Now we are old and sick. Does anybody need us there? Unfortunately, my daughter's Yiddish is very poor. It is my fault, for I thought that Yiddish was going to be of no use to her, especially in this part of the country, in Galicia, so I didn't teach her Yiddish. She can understand it all right, but she can hardly speak the language. I don't remember anything about Jewish traditions or religion. I haven't taught my daughter any Jewish basics.

The situation in Lvov is acute now. There is a lot of anti-Semitism. There are inscriptions on the wall, 'Zhyds [kikes], get out of Ukraine!'. Once, a drunken man came to our building. He began to knock on the doors asking, 'Where do zhyds live here?' He was thrown out of the building because he was drunk. In general, the attitude towards Jews is terrible here. There is an anti-Semitic newspaper, the Idealist. They write that it is necessary to deport all Jews from Ukraine, that there is no place for them here, that Ukraine should be for Ukrainians. We often read this kind of thing in chauvinistic Ukrainian newspapers, hear it on the radio, and even in the streets.

I retired in 1986 when I was 72 years old. It was quite some time ago, and I was healthier then. Later, I got hypertension, arrhythmia and glaucoma. In 1986 I got cataracts. I had a hip injury that caused arthrosis. I can hardly walk. Twice a week representatives from Hesed come and take me to the daytime center. This is the only place where I can talk with people. We have beautiful receptions there. They tell us that we are still young and that we are wanted. They treat us very nicely. They tell us a lot of interesting things about Jewish culture and we sing in Hebrew. We get copies with the lyrics of these songs. Hesed also supports me. Hesed is a big help. They bring me butter, sugar, cereals, pasta, etc. It's a great assistance, you know. It is a huge support for me and my daughter.

Glossary

Miklos Braun
Budapest
Hungary
Interviewer: Dora Sardi and Eszter Andor

My father, Zsigmond Braun, was born in Regocze. Today it is called Rigyicza. but then in those days it was still the southern part of Greater Hungary. Now it is Slovakia. My father's father was called Ignac Braun.  But I didn' not know him. All I know about him is that he had two grocery stores. One of them was run by Julcsa, one of my father's older sisters, Julcsa.

My family background
Growing up
During the war
Post-war

My family background

My father, Zsigmond Braun, was born in Regocze. Today it is called Rigyicza. In those days it was still the southern part of Greater Hungary. Now it is Slovakia.

My father’s father was called Ignac Braun. I didn’t know him. All I know about him is that he had two grocery stores. One of them was run by Julcsa, one of my father’s older sisters. In the other, my grandfather and my father’s two other siblings, Karoly and Bella, worked. Karoly was quite a heavy drinker and people said that there was something wrong with him. He was a very warm-hearted man, and if someone came into the shop when he was alone, he would shower them with all kinds of things as presents. When my grandfather discovered what was happening to his stock while he was out buying goods, he beat Karoly soundly with a hoe and drove him away, and subsequently closed down one of his shops. He kept the one that was in the same building as their house. 

My father was six years old when some thieves dug their way in under the shop wall and took everything away on a cart. In the morning the shop was empty and that is when the family moved to Szeged.

My father’s mother married three times, each time to a widower, and she was left a widow herself each time. There were a lot of children from all her marriages. Once I tried to count them, but I gave up at fifty. I didn’t know any of my father’s family personally; they lived in Vienna, and half-siblings and step-siblings were dispersed throughout the world. My father was raised by a nurse because his mother was very ill. He had only one full sister. Her name was Janka Braun and she was crazy about films and theatre. She worked as the film star Pal Lukacs’ maid, among other things. She didn’t care what job she had—attendant, dresser, or whatever—she just wanted to be involved in the theater, near the stage.

My father graduated from secondary school in Szeged after the family moved there. He went to a trade school. He became a bookkeeper, then later a licensed auditor after he got his university degree at the age of fifty. Actually this major had just started then, and he went there in its very first year. He even had a patent. My father was a bookkeeper for various larger firms. He left several of them because he was not willing to do false bookkeeping, as the bosses requested, so he got involved in lawsuits. He always lost, of course, because he didn’t have the money, so he had a hard time maintaining the family.

My father had a great talent for drawing. At the age of fifteen he drew pictures that we have preserved to this day. He borrowed theatre tickets, copied them and used them to get into the theatre. Dad was a well-educated man. He spoke several languages: German, French, English, and some Italian. He spoke German fluently and English very well too. He made a lot of drawings at home, but I don’t really know about them because he gave them away. There were a few very nice pictures of his at my brothers’ place but they were lost. He painted a lot and wrote beautiful poems, he even published a book of poems. Beside these, his war diary has been preserved. And he also played chess and taught us to play. He was a very passionate player and he had permanent chess partners. My father got married in Szeged in 1903.

My mother was born in Torokkanizsa in 1882. Her name was Aranka Buchhalter. This name means bookkeeper in German, but the interesting thing is that her family didn’t have anything to do with bookkeeping up until her marriage with my father. She was from a family of craftsmen and her father was a tailor. My mother did not study any trade, but stayed at home and dealt with the household throughout her life, bringing up three children. 

Growing up

My maternal grandmother lived with us. I don’t know where she had come from or what she had done, I can recall only that she had lived with us for as long as I can remember and that she was a widow. She died in 1931, when I was just preparing for the final exam in secondary school. Grandmother used to make strudel with potato, if she wanted to get on well with me, or if she wanted me to do something for her. There were family suppers, birthdays, and holidays too. That’s all I know about, apart from the fact that she was quite religious. I think she also prayed on Fridays and lit candles.

My father was called up for the army in Transylvania in 1914. He was there for 53 months. He was a captain, the commander of the railway in Transylvania. So the whole family went together to Brasso, because at that time, officers were allowed to take their families with them. (Brasso is now Brasov, Romania.)

My mother managed to look after the three children practically alone throughout World War One. We went to Gyimesbukk afterwards – which was the former Romanian border – and from there, we escaped when the invasion came. It was a mess there, explosions and other things. I can remember only the trenches because I was quite young at the time. We came back to Budapest in 1917. My father had six war medals, and had been wounded twice. That is why he received thirty forints disability pension for a while, plus one forint as child support. That was my monthly pocket money.

When we came back to Budapest, we lived in a big apartment building in Lonyai Street up until 1935. The flat was a two-room apartment overlooking the courtyard. The building had two courtyards and we lived on the fourth floor of the second courtyard. The children were in one of the rooms and the adults in the other. For a while we had a servant. It is interesting that we lived in an apartment building where there was a mixed crowd. Jews who were at the same financial level as us had servants, while Christians didn’t. It’s interesting.

I got along well with my siblings despite the fact that there was a big age difference between us. I am ten years younger than they are and because of this, they were already going out and having fun when I was still learning to write. 

My sister Klari was born in Szeged in 1908. She got married when she was quite young, to a man from Fiume (also known as Rijeka), a Croatian city by the Adriatic Sea. Her husband, Francesco Nauman, was a merchant, descended from a rich merchant family. They had a large shop and I think they also owned the building it was in. They sold fancy leather goods, clothes and all kinds of accessories. They were quite religious. In 1943, when Germans occupied Italy, they were taken away along with their children. They were transported through Hungary in 1944, but we could not meet them. At the time I was not even at home anymore. We don’t know anything more about them. They were probably killed in Auschwitz, if they ever made it there at all.

My brother, Ferenc, was born in Budapest in 1906. At the time my parents were living here, in Pest. He was a textile agent. He got married but didn’t have any children. He married a woman older than he was, Vilma Goldner, who was born in 1900, but I think they got along well. He traveled quite a lot; he never liked to sit still. He continued to be a traveler even after the war so that he could be on the move all the time. He had chess partners in many parts of the country. He was a passionate chess player and had learned the various tactics from our father. He wrote poems too, and I think he also had a talent for that. After the war they lived in Zuglo. He often visited us, and he used to play with the children. He died at the ripe old age of 92, in 1998, after being a widower for a long time.

I went to the elementary school on Lonyai Street for four years, then I completed four years of Realschule (secondary school where emphasis is on the sciences and languages) on Horanszky Street. From there I transferred to the upper trade school on Vas Street. I graduated from there in 1931. 

Whether or not one was Jewish was not a consideration when making friends, nor was it important when choosing one’s wife. But the school and the times were such that one sensed who was Jewish and who wasn’t. As a result, one did not dare to make friends with just anybody, not to mention founding a family. If I remember correctly, there was nothing special on that subject at elementary school. There was only mild anti-Semitism, which I could put up with.

Passing the final exams was hard for me because a few of us received serious warnings from the director of the school and were almost expelled. About six or seven of us went to the Hungarian Socialists, or whatever they were called—illegal communists went to these meetings too. One of my classmates was the leader. His uncle was a Social Democrat representative, and his father worked for Nepszava, a leftist newspaper, so he was sympathetic to their cause and he got us to join. All of us in this group were Jews, I think, with one exception. Before elections we “lollipopped”—put up posters in prohibited places—and we had private seminars. Here we discussed literary questions, introduced books one at a time, and surveyed the works of writers. There were a couple of quite talented kids among us, most of whom died in the war. This whole thing somehow came to light in the school, and then the six or seven of us were taken to the director. 

And then there was Levente training (Levente was a right-wing quasi-military organization which gave compulsory military training to secondary school students). We were rebels, we threw our guns away. Somehow we managed to get off with just a warning from the director, so we were allowed to take the final exams.

I always did a lot of sports. I swam and I played table tennis, I was good at skating, and I also played water polo. I used to go to Uncle Komjadi, to whom Hungary owes a debt of thanks for all he did for the sport of swimming. He was always wet—always around the water. Uncle Komi was a very good soul. Then there was hiking, which we often did with our father. We’d get up at dawn, at two or three in the morning, and leave—we didn’t take the tram or anything like that—and by 9 or 10 o’clock we’d be in the mountains. We also used to go to the open-air pool in Csillaghegy in the summer.

We did not go on holidays very much. I was six years old when my father had a meeting with someone, somewhere around Lake Balaton, I can’t tell you whether it was in Boglar or in Lelle. I ran after him and asked him to take me along because I had never seen Balaton before. So I saw Balaton for the first time then. I used to row a lot; we had a shared second-hand boat and went rowing on the Danube in it. On some occasions, we took a tent and went for a longer period.

My father was not a very religious man but he showed us everything and observed everything. So Pesach was kept. There was Seder night, for example, which, my father conducted. We read the Haggadah and I asked the ma nishtanah, the Four Questions, and I looked for the afikomen (a matzo hidden for the children to find). I don’t remember having a set of dishes used only at Pesach; the house wasn’t kosher anyway. We didn’t go to the temple on Fridays. I don’t know whether my father went, but I went with the school. My religion teacher was the famous Hungarian rabbi Scheiber and I had my bar mitzva in the Nagyfuvaros Street Synagogue. (editor’s note: Sandor Scheiber is best known for having remained in Hungary after the Holocaust, where he convinced the Communist authorities to allow him to continue running a shrunken, but still active, conservative rabbinical seminary. He died in the mid-1980s).

My father was of the opinion that he would show and teach everything to his children, and allow them to decide for themselves. Well, none of us decided in favor of religion. I have special views on this because I believe one can pray anywhere, not only in the synagogue. I don’t visit the cemetery either because one can remember anybody anywhere.

After graduation, I worked in one of the branches of the Coffee Importation Company of Fiume. I must have been about twenty years old when it was arranged, with the help of a lawyer, to have me officially declared of age, so that I could become a shop manager and have a liquor license registered in my name. Of course it wasn’t that kind of a liquor shop, but they sold all kinds of drinks in corked bottles there, so the regulations required us to have a license and it had to be in the manager’s name.

Actually, now I come to think of it, it is interesting that Jews worked for Fiume and Christians for Meinl (editor’s note: Julius Meinl was and remains Vienna’s best known coffee importer). It was not a rule, but it happened that way, just like Jews always going to class “C.” It was like that in every school: it was just another unwritten rule. They always said it was necessary in order to allow for religion classes, so that Jews could go to the same class. Well, what sort of teachers were actually assigned to these classes, that’s another matter and really doesn’t belong here.

Vera Wexler, who later became my wife, worked in an office at the Electric Motor Factory on Csengeri Street. There, a girl sat in front of her who kept telling her that she herself had had a suitor who was handsome and was a gentleman and all. Although they had broken up, she always remembered him fondly. This gentleman happened to work in a branch of the Coffee Importation Company, a big corner building on Szent Istvan Boulevard. Well, that was me. 

Vera lived on Sziget Street and on her way to work she passed in front of the shop, so we took quite a good look at each other. And one time she came in to buy something. Then I asked her out, she agreed, and that’s how it began. This was in 1941. I had already been drafted into forced labor once and had been sent to Transylvania. 

During the war

On the 19th of March, 1944, the Germans came in, and on the 15th of April we got married, feeling that nothing mattered anymore. We went to the registry office between two air raids. We had only a civil wedding, and didn’t have one in the synagogue. (We are going to celebrate our sixtieth wedding anniversary in a synagogue. That’ll be in three years’ time.)

By that time I was working as an unskilled worker in the factory where Vera worked. I had been fired because of the anti-Jewish laws in 1944 and I entered the manual labor staff of the factory and became a semi-skilled worker. I balanced revolving engine parts on machines.

But let’s go chronologically. I was drafted in January 1942 and I got back home in November 1943. I had been at the Don River Curve (not far from Stalingrad in Russia) and all kinds of “good places”; my best friends died, and I survived by chance. For a year we were in Sianki, on the Northern side of Polish Carpathians, which was Polish territory. When we went there, we still had our uniforms. Then in October 1943 an order came that civilian clothes should be sent to us from home. We were not soldiers any more, we were simply prisoners, slaves, or whatever you want to call it. I was able to survive only because I was transferred from the work company to the motorized unit because I could drive trucks. When the front at the Don River Curve was broken through, we towed the truck away with a tractor, and after an adventurous journey in it we arrived in Kiev. 

Then, in May 1944, I was drafted again. There was a motorized-unit army post on Ezredes Street and I was sent there. I went home regularly from there to 40 Sziget Street, a yellow-star house that my whole family had been transferred into. Once I wanted to cross Margit Bridge and I was caught at the gate by a filthy sergeant major and he ordered me back. Ten minutes later the bridge blew up. When Governor Horthy came, we believed everything was going to be all right, but the Arrow Cross (Hungarian Fascist, or Nyilas) men came in the evening and the army post was closed. Then we were put in trains, crammed in wagons at the railroad station of Jozsefvaros. We had to get off at Pozsony Ligetfalu and we went to dig tank traps. From there I escaped with a friend of mine, and after a few days’ illegal loafing around we got into a printing shop called Ervin Metten. The pay-books for German soldiers were printed there in some twenty languages. We obtained illegal papers there but we were caught and imprisoned. From there I was taken to the Lichtenwort concentration camp and I was still there when the Soviet troops arrived. 

When there hadn’t been any news about me for months, my wife said to herself, “If he is alive, he’ll come back on our first wedding anniversary.” That was on the 15th of April. I had had typhus at the time and had just recovered, more or less, and it wasn’t until the 16th of April that I staggered into Sziget Street, frightfully thin.

During the war my mother and father were together in a yellow-star house in the ghetto. Then a few days before the liberation, my father went to fetch water, because there wasn’t any water in the house at all. When he was just in front of the gate, he was hit and killed by shrapnel from a grenade. So my mother was left a widow. She lived alone afterwards; I asked her a few times to live with us but she preferred to stay alone. I visited her quite often. I think my mother used to go to the temple, perhaps not every week but regularly, anyhow. She died in 1960. I can’t really remember any more.

My mother had a younger brother, named Jozsef Buchhalter. He was a textile merchant. He married the daughter of a provincial property-owner and they lived in Budapest. He was on the Italian front at Isonzo during World War One. Then after that he had a textile shop on Vilmos Csaszar Avenue in Budapest. During World War Two he was shot into the Danube but he swam away and then lived on for quite a long time. (Editor’s note: after the Arrow-Cross takeover in October 1944, their vigilantes ravaged Budapest and drove many Jews to the shore of the Danube, where they were shot so that their bodies fell into the river.) He wrote a book which begins with the phrase, “I was born twice.” 

Post-war

When we were liberated we moved back to the building we had lived in, not into our old apartment, but into another one we found empty. Forced laborers taken by the Germans had lived in this apartment and they had taken everything they could carry when they left. The apartment was empty and full of bedbugs, but we were happy we could go back. 

After the liberation I was asked back to my former firm, the Coffee Importation Company of Fiume, where I had previously worked for more than ten years. I didn’t go back because I felt that I didn’t want to be an employee any more, and so I set up my own shop. For a short time before that I became a partner in a stationary shop but I quarreled with my boss, so we set up our own business on Hold Street. There I got acquainted with a man whose father was at the National Bank. We obtained a space from them and we ran this small shop for about four years, dealing in stationary and office machines. Then we gave it up and found jobs. I worked at the official Schoolbook Publishing Company, then I went to various companies, one after the other. We dealt with the nationalization process. Every time I nationalized a private company, I handled the records and moved on, leaving somebody there to become the director. Finally I nationalized the goose market on Klauzal Square, and this is how I entered the food trade. I worked in food stores, in delis and for the FEKER (Food Trade Company of the Capital), which was a company that ran the markets.

Alexander Gajdoš
Karlovy Vary 
Česká republika
Rozhovor pořídil: Martin Korčok
Období vzniku rozhovoru: srpen 2005

Pán Alexander Gajdoš v súčasnosti pôsobí ako predseda Židovskej obce Karlovy Vary. Naše spoločné interview prebiehalo na obci v priestoroch jeho pracovne.

Rodina
Dětství
Za války
Po válce
Glosář

Rodina

Starí rodičia z otcovej strany žili v čase otcovej mladosti v Nitre. Starý otec sa volal Bernát Goldberger a jeho manželka sa volala Terézia Goldbergerová. Žial už si nepamätám ako sa volala babička za slobodna a neviem ani to, odkiaľ pochádzali starí rodičia. Starí otec zomrel približne v roku 1936 alebo 1937 a babička pár rokov pred ním. Obaja sú pochovaní na židovskom cintoríne v Nitre. Zúčastnil som sa aj ich pohrebov. Pretože zomreli, keď som bol ešte mladý, pamätám sa na nich len veľmi matne. Starý otec bol zamlklí. Vždy sedel pred domom na lavičke s fajkou a len dumal. Mal svojho psa a ten sedel stále vedľa neho.

V Nitre bývali v štvrti pod hradom. V tom čase sa tam nachádzali malé prízemné rodinné domčeky. Nebola to však židovská štvrť. Židovskou štvrťou v Nitre boli Párovce. Starí rodičia bývali tiež v takom prízemnom rodinnom dome. Z dvora sa vchádzalo priamo do kuchyne. Okrem kuchyne mali ďalši tri izby. V jednej mali spálňu, potom bola ešte jedna malá izbička a napokon obývačka. Do tej obývačky sa chodilo asi tak, ako sa povie: „Raz za rok“. Elektrina a voda už boli v dome zavedené. V podstate tam viedli normálny život.

Žiadny z najbližších členov otcovej rodiny nepatril k pobožným Židom. Jeden z otcových [otec sa volal Heinrich Galik (changed from Goldberger)] bratov, Gyula [Gál (changed from Goldberger)] vlastnil obchod a dieľňu s rádiami. Otec mal štyroch súrodencov. Troch bratov a jednu sestru. Bratia sa volali Gyula, Rudi a Jožko, sestra Cecília. Cecília sa vydala za holiča, pána Horna. On však zomrel ešte na začiatku tridsiatych rokov [20. stor.]. Ja si na neho ani nepamätám.

Otcových rodičov som navštevoval každé leto. V podstate leto som trávil v Nitre. Väčšinou som býval u otcovej sestry Cecílie. Takže spával som u otcovej sestry a na obec som chodil vždy k niektorému z rodinných príslušníkov. Podľa toho, kedy ma kto pozval. Inak som väčšinu času trávil so svojim bratrancom, Alexandrom. Volali sme ho Sanyi, bol Cecilkiným synom. Chodievali sme sa spolu kúpať a tak. Do Nitry som prestal chodiť, až ked začala vojna.

Neviem aký bol materinský jazyk mojich starých rodičov ale so mnou sa rozprávali vždy slovensky. Okrem toho samozrejme ovládali aj maďarký a nemecký jazyk. Neboli pobožní ani neviedli kóšer domácnosť, ale sviatky sa v rodine držali. Starký mal obchod so zmiešaným tovarom. Mal jednu miestnosť a tam bolo všetko možné. Do obchodu sa vchádzalo hneď z kuchyne. Na dverách sa nachádzal zvonček, ktorý zazvonil, keď niekto vošiel. Niekto k nim potom vybehol z kuchyne a obslúžil. Inak si zvlášť na nejaké príbehy so starými rodičmi nespomínam. Mal som k nim ako dieťa určitý odstup. Ba dokonca ani neviem, kto bol susedom starých rodičov. Otec mi o nih neskôr tiež nezvykol rozprávať.

Mamičkiny rodičia pochádzali z Trstenej na Orave. Starý otec sa volal Markus Lubovič. Babičku sipamätať nemôžem, lebo zomrela ešte pred mojim narodením. Starý otec sa potom opäť oženil, ale ani meno jeho druhej manželky si už nepamätám. V Trstenej mal starký pekáreň. Nevedel by som však už o jeho pekárni nič bližšie povedať. Starý otec mal v čase mojej mladosti silnú cukrovku. Vtom čase ešte nebol inzulín, tak sa choroba nedala liečiť. Starý otec z nej takmer úplne oslepol. Nebol úplne slepý, ale takmer nič nevidel. Chodieval o paličke. Potom mu naši zohnali vo Vrútkach byt, kde sa presťahval spolu s druhou manželkou. Starali sa o nich mama spolu so sestrou Ruženou. Keďže vtedy starí ľudia nedostávai dôchodok, podporovali ich moji rodičia. Na meno druhej manželky starého otca sa už vôbec nepamätám. Rozprávala však maďarsky, pričom na Orave sa rozprávalo hlavne slovensky, aj medzi židovským obyvateľstvom. Starý otec ešte ovládal nemčinu a myslím, že aj maďarčinu. Obaja boli počas vojny deportovaní a zahynuli.

Starý otec mal so svojou prvou manželkou tri dievčatá. Moju matku, Sidy. Jej sestry sa volali Lina a Ružena. Z jeho druhého manželstva sa narodil syn Zoli. Lina sa vydala do Poľska za holiča do mesta Nowy Targ. Myslím, že sa volal Löwenberg. Ružena sa nikdy nevydala. Ostala stará dievka.

So starým otcom vo Vrútkach som trávil viacej času, ako s tým druhým zo Žiliny. Ale žiadny zvláštny vzťah sme si nevybudovali. Býval v byte jedna plus jedna, torý bol zariadený starým nábytkom. Z môjho vtedajšieho pohľadu nič moc. Vodu už mal samozrejme zavedenú. To, že koľko Židov žilo vo Vrútkach, neviem. Bola tam však celkom slušná komunita, s peknou synagógou. V tomto meste som mal dokonca aj bar micva. Starí rodičia z oboch strán boli neologickí Židia 1, to znamená, že veľké sviatky sa v rodine držali, šábes už pomenej a kóšer vôbec nie.

Otec sa volal Heinrich Goldberger. Narodil sa 17. júla 1898 v Nitre. Po vojne sa premenoval na Galík. To bola vtedy taká móda. Zomrel v roku 1978, mal presne osemdesiat rokov. Otec získal základné vzdelanie. Pracoval ako obchodný cestujúci. Týmto zamestnaním sa živil dovtedy, kým sa neosamostatnil. Neskôr si založil vlastný obchod v Žiline. Neviem kedy presne sa sťahoval otec do Žiliny, ale učinil tak kvôli práci a mojej matke. Pracovala totiž pre tú istú firmu ako môj otec. Bol to veľkoobchod Mendl a syn. Tam sa rodičia spoznali a neskôr sa vzali, lebo čakali mňa. Matka sa narodila v roku 1900 v Trstenej na Orave. To, že kedy zomrela neviem. Bola deportovaná a už sme sa o nej nič nedozvedeli.

Finančné zabezpečenie našej rodiny by som zaradil, medzi chudobu a strednú vrstvu. Keď boli zamestnaní u toho Mendla, mali celkom slušný plat. Keď sa otec osamostatnil, založil obchod so zmiešaným tovarom. Vzal si hromadu pôžičiek a potom prišiel krach na burze Wall Street a nastala kríza 2. Nebolo práce, prišiel exekútor a bol koniec. Ak sa dobre pamätám, otec mal ako prvý na okolí elektrický krájač na šunku a údeniny. Žiaľ, už po krachu burzy to nemal z čoho splácať. Okrem otca pracovala v obchode moja matka a ďalší zamestnanec, ktorý vykonával hrubé práce. Napríklad jazdil pre múku a pracoval v sklade.

Čo sa otcových politických názorov týka, ťažko povedať. Viete on sa so mnou ako s dieťaťom o takých veciach nerozprával. Predpokladám však, že bol sociálnym demokratom. Neviem to s určitosťou, len som to tak vydedukoval. Neviem o tom, že by bol otec členom nejakých spolkov a niečoho podobného. Tiež si spomínam, že za mlada slúžil ako vojak v 1. svetovej vojne ale nič bližšie k tomu neviem povedať. Vždy spomínal, že bol na vojne ale k nejakým konkrétnym historkám sa nedostal. Ak by sme sa mali rozprávať o otcových záľubách, tak on sa hlavne venoval obchodu. Okrem toho bol viac-menej sukničkár, to bol jeho koníček.

Rodičia sa medzi sebou zhovárali maďarským jazykom. S nami deťmi rozprávali slovensky. No o otcovi by som povedal, že bol sukničkár. To viete, mamu si bral preto, lebo ma už spolu čakali. Mama bola miernej povahy, dalo by sa povedať až uzavretej. Sama sa dokonca neukázala ani na ulici.

V Žiline sme bývali na viacerých miestach, podľa toho ako upadala naša finančná situácia. Vždy sme menili byt za lacnejší. Najprv sme bývali v centre nedaleko námestia, tam som sa narodil. Potom sme bývali smerom na celulózku. Neskôr sme sa presťahovali do časti mesta, kde bola budova vtedajšej elektrárne. Napokon sme museli prejsť do časti s mestskými činžiakmi, kde bolo najlacnejšie bývanie. Odtiaľ sme sa sťahovali do Vrútok. Z prvého bytu si už veľa nepamätám. Viem, že tam bola jedna veľká izba a ja som po nej jazdil dookola na trojkolke. Na ostatné miestnosti si už nespomeniem. Zo začiatku sme mali aj slúžky, ktoré varili a upratovali. Bývali spolu s nami približne do roku 1937. Vystriedalo sa ich viacero, takže si ich ani veľmi nepamätám. Ale keď som sa narodil, mal som dokonca aj kojnú. K žiadnej som si nevybudoval bližší vzťah. Že či sme mali za susedov Židov? My sme mali zakaždým niekoho iného. Veď stále sme sa len sťahovali. Ale boli to väčšinou nežidia. Rodičia nemali veľa blízkych priateľov. No tak otec mal nejaké známe, ženské, vdovy a ja neviem, niečo také. Tam sme občas chodili a inak nejak extra kamarát, tak to nemali. Tak to si nepamätám.

Sviatky sa v našej rodine nedržali veľmi prísne. V piatok mamička zapálila svičky a potom sa podávalo hlavne pečené kura. Neskôr, keď už otec nemal obchod a stal sa z neho obchodný cestujúci, v pondelok odišiel ale na piatok sa vždy vrátil domov. Jazdil po celom Slovensku. Predával múku pre rôzne mlyny. Do synagógy však veľmi nechodieval, to len na veľké sviatky. My sme navštevovali veľkú neologickú synagógu v Žiline. V Žiline žilo pred vojnou veľa Židov. Na sviatky bola veľká synagóga plná, napriek tomu, že za miesto sa muselo platiť a nie málo. Každý si tam platil svoje miesto.

Dodržiavali sme napríklad Roš hašana [židovský Nový rok – pozn. red.]. V tento deň sme sa doma navečerali a potom sa išlo modliť do synagógy. Inak si z toho večera nič zláštne nepamätám. Na Jom kipur [Deň zmierenia. Najslávnostnejšia udalosš v židovskom kalendáry – pozn. red.] sme sa potom postili, ale keď som niečo našiel, tak som si z toho uštipol. Jom kipur som však mal najradšej zo všetkých sviatkov. Všetko bolo biela a pôsobilo to tak slávnostne. No ale hlavne to, že sme sa na dvore synagógy zišli so všetkými kamarátmi. Vzadu vedľa synagógy bola židovská škola s veľkým dvorom a tam sme vyvádzali. Rodičia zatiaľ sedeli v synagóge. Občas sme sa tam aj my objavili a potom sme opäť zmizli. Chanuku [Chanuka: sviatok svetiel, tiež pripomína povstanie Makabejcov a opätovné vysvätenie chrámu v Jeruzaleme – pozn. red.] sme tiež ešte ako tak držali, hlavne sme v tom čase šli aj do synagógy ale napríklad Sukot [Sviatok stanov. Po celý týždeň, kedy sviatok prebieha, panuje jedinečná sviatočná atmosféra, pričom najpodstatnejšie je prebývať v suke – pozn. red.] a Purim [Purim: sviatok radosti. Ako hovorí kniha Ester, sviatok ustanovil Mordechaj na pamiatku toho, ako Božia prozreteľnosť zachránila Židov v perzskej ríši pred úplným vyhladením – pozn. red.] už vôbec nie. Dodržiavali sme ešte aj Pesach [Pesach: pripomína odchod izraelcov z egyptského zajatia a vyznačuje sa mnohými predpismy a zvykmi. Hlavný je zákaz konzumácie všetkého kvaseného – pozn. red.]. Večer sa čítalo z Hagady [Hagada: kniha zaznamenávajúca postupnosť domácej bohoslužby pri sédery. Hagada je v podstate prerozprávaním príbehu o východe Židov z Egypta podľa biblického podania – pozn. red.] a bol prestretý sviatočný stôl. Ale to ostatné, že by sme nejedli chlieb, tak to nie. Macesy boli, to je pravda ale jedli sme aj chlieb.

V meste boli aj ortodoxní Židia 3, síce ich bolo oveľa menej, no a oni držali všetko. S ortodoxnými Židmi som sa stretával aj ja. Dokonca ma otec poslal do ješívy v Žiline. Vyučoval nás taký malý zlostný chlapík. Dlho som sa však v tejto škole nevzdelával. Totiž moja mama už na tradície veľa nedala a doma sme nejedli kóšer 4. Preto bolo pre ňu normálne, že mi na olovrant zabalila žemľu so šunkou. Ten malý chlapík to uvidel, priskočil ku mne, vyviedol na dvor na „nakopal mi na zadok“. Povedal, aby som sa tam už viac neukazoval. To bol koniec môjmu náboženskému vzdelávaniu. Inak mne to vtedy ani nenapadlo, že čo som s tou šunkou spáchal.

Ako som už spomínal. Otec pochádzal z Nitry. Mal štyroch súrodencov, Július, každý ho volal Gyula. Ďalším bol Rudolf, nazývaný Rudi, Jozef a sestra Cecília. Najstarším otcovým bratom bol Jozef, on viedol obchod po starom otcovi. S rodinou žili v dome starého otca. Jeho manželka sa volala Malvína. Mali syna Tibora a dcéru Magdu. Obe deti prežili vojnu. Tibor sa vysťahoval do Ekvádora a Magda do Švédska.

Gyula bol približne o dva roky starší ako otec, to znamená, že sa mohol narodiť v roku 1896. Býval v Nitre spolu so svojou rodinou. Vlastnil obchod s rádiami, kde tie rádiá aj opravovali. Mal dvoch synov, Michala a Pistu [Pista, prezývka od mena Štefan – pozn. red.]. Vychádzali sme spolu celkom dobre. Keď som bol na prázdninách v Nitre, často som ich navštevoval. Chodili sme sa spolu kúpať alebo sme robili túry na vrch Zobor [Zobor: vrch pri meste Nitra (nadmorská výška 588 m), v pohorí Tríbeč – pozn. red.]. V Nitre bolo v tom čase kúpalisko pod hradom. Neviem, či to tam ešte stále je. Možno to už zastavali. Gyulova manželka sa volala Vilma, rodená Braunová. Bola to veľká dáma. Pochádzala z lepších kruhov. Bývali spolu na takzvanej Špitálskej ulici. V dome kde bývali mal Gyula aj obchod a dieľňu.

Tretí otcov brat sa volal Rudolf, čiže Rudi. On je o nejakých päť rokov starší ako otec. Vyštudoval stavebnú školu a pracoval ako architekt, v tom čase pán architekt. Rudi mal dvoch synov, Walter a Babi. Okrem nich mal ešte dcéru. Jej meno si už nepamätám. Bola trošku telesne postihnutá, mala menší hrb. Napokon však vyštudovala medicínu a stala sa lekárkou. Meno jeho manželky si už nepamätám. Počas vojny sa dostali do Terezína. Celá rodina prežila holokaust a po vojne utiekli do terajšieho Izraela.

Jediná otcova sestra sa volala Cecília. Vydala sa za pána Horna, ktorý mal v Nitre na Hlavnej ulici holičský salón. Obývali byt nad tým salónom s prístavbou smerom na dvor. Mali to zariadené celkom slušne. Jej manžel žiaľ veľmi skoro umrel. Mali jedného syna, volal sa Alexander, čiže Sanyi.

Druhú svetoú vojnu prežil len jeden z otcových súrodencov, Rudi. Ten sa potom spolu s rodinou vysťahoval v roku 1946 alebo 1947 do Palestíny. Po niekoľkých rokoch sa vrátili, znášali dobre tie klimatické podmienky. Ostatní otcovi súrodenci počas vojny zahynuli.

Mamička mala troch súrodencov. Dve sestry a jedného nevlastného brata. Najstaršia mamina sestra sa volala Lina. Vydala sa do poľského mesta Nowy Targ za holiča menom Löwenberg. Ja som toho pána ani nepoznal. Viem, že sa im narodili dve deti, ktoré s Linou počas vojny zahynuli. Prežil len ich otec, zachránil sa kdesi v Rusku.

Ďalšia mamina sestra Ružena tiež umrela počas vojny. Pred vojnou žila istý čas s nami v Žiline a potom i vo Vrútkach, kam sme sa presťahovali. S tetou Ruženou sme celkom dobre vychádzali. Znamená to asi toľko, že žiadne srdečné vzťahy to neboli ale ani napriek sme si nikdy nerobili. O mamičkinom najmladšom bratovi, volal sa Zoli, veľa povedať neviem. Bol o dosť starší ako ja, tak sme sa veľmi nekamarátili. Zomrel spolu s ostatnými počas holokaustu.

Dětství

Ja, Alexander Gajdos [rodený Goldberger], som sa narodil 8. apríla 1924 v Žiline. Meno som si nechal zmeniť začiatkom päťdesiatych rokov. Že prečo som si vybral práve priezvisko Gajdoš? To ani tak nezáležalo na mne. Volal som sa tak ešte v nemeckom zajatí, k čomu sa ešte dostaneme. No a pri zmene som musel uviesť tri mená. Nadiktoval som Gajdoš, Gordon a to tretie si ani nepamätám a úrad mi vybral Gajdoš.

Ako malé dieťa som chodil do škôlky. U nás sa to volalo óvoda. Mal som celkom dobrú pani učiteľku. Dokonca do tej óvody som chodil rád. Nejaké extra spomienky na tú škôlku nemám. Pamätám sa len to, ako sme sa hrávli na dvore. Potom som prešiel na obecnú židovskú školu v Žiline. Bolo tam päť ročníkov – od prvej triedy po piatu. Chodili sme tam spolu chlapci a dievčatá. Chodilo tam pomerne dosť kresťanských detí, pretože to bola lepšia škola ako ostatné. Vyslovene som nemal rád matematiku a nemčinu. V škole som mal najradšej telocvik. Mali sme jedného vynikajúceho učiteľa, ktorý to s nami vedel. Toho sme mali naozaj veľmi radi. Samozrejme veľa sme cvičili a hrali hlavne hádzanú. Tá bola jednoduchá a na dvore stačili dve bránky. Dobité ruky i nohy samozrejme patrili k hre. Náš telocvikár sa volal Braun. Chodievali sme spolu aj na krátke výlety po okolí mesta. Hlavne na Dubeň a na okolité hrady. V židovskej škole sa samozrejme museli navštevovať aj hodiny judaizmu. To neexistovalo, aby sa na ne nechodilo. Náš vzťah k náboženskej výchove bol asi taký, že sme sa stále s rabínom hrali. Na jeho meno sa už nepamätám. Bol to starý pán a my sme mu vyvádzali strašné veci. Napríklad si pamätám, že sme mali zvonček a v polovici hodiny sme zazvonili, niekto vykríkol „zvonilo“. On na to „keď zvonilo, tak zvonilo“ a bol koniec hodiny. Na chodbe nás stretol riaditeľ, bol to obrovský chlap s trstenicou, ešte sa nás pýtal kam ideme. My sme mu povedali, že rabín povedal, že zvonilo. On povedal: „Veď ešte nemohlo zvoniť.“

Riaditeľ používal aj telesné tresty. Napríklad s nami chodil aj jeden zaostalejší chlapec a ten vždy niečo vyviedol dievčatám. Napríklad kým cvičili, tak im zobral šaty zo šatne a tak. Mimo školy sme boli partia židovských chlapcov, všade sme spolu chodili a trávili spolu veľa času. Boli sme tak piati. Okrem nás bola ešte jedna partia židovských chlapcov a tak sme proti sebe bojovali, hádzali kamene a tak. Mali sme asi desať, jedenásť rokov.

Vo Vrútkach som sa pripravoval aj na obrad bar micva [Bar micva: „syn prikázania“, židovský chlapec, ktorý dosiahol trinásť rokov. Obrad, pri ktorom je chlapec prehlásený bar micvou, od tejto chvíle musí plniť všetky prikázania predpísané Tórou – pozn. red.]. Otec mi zjednal vyučovanie u istého rabína. Bol to mladý človek nižšej postavy. Pochádzal z Čiech a patril k neológom. Ten ma učil. Išlo hlavne o to, aby som sa naučil text, ktorý mám prečítať počas obradu. Iné sa tam po mne ani nechcelo. No a do bar micva som sa to nejako naučil. Samotná bar micva prebiahala v synagóge vo Vrútkach. Predvolali ma k Tóre, prečítal som text a to bolo všetko. Na nejakú oslavu doma si ani nespomínam, a nespomínam si ani na to, čo som pri tejto príležitosti dostal nejaké darčeky.

Vo veku mojich štrnástich som začal pociťovať protižidovské nálady. Vychodil som päť tried obecnej židovskej školy a potom som sa dostal do gymnázia 5. Z gymnázia ma vylúčili v tretej triede, potom som už nesmel chodiť v Žiline do školy. Ale inak sa nič zvláštne nedialo, len že som nemohol chodiť do školy. Že by nás nejak inak diskriminovali, tak to nebolo. Akurát tí sopľoši na ulici vykrikovali: „Žid, smrad, kolovrat!“, ale tie nadávky sme poznali aj predtým.

Práve v tom období sme sa sťahovali zo Žiliny do Vrútok, kde som nastúpil do štvrtej meštianky. Tde priamo vo Vrútkach ma na školu nevzali. Musel som každý deň dochádzať vlakom do neďalekej obce Varín. Židom som tam bol iba ja. V podstate si ma nikto nevšímal. Všetci učitelia boli v Hlinkovej garde 6, dokonca aj riaditeľ, pre nich som ako keby ani neexistoval. Sedával so v prvej lavici, ale ani raz ma nevyvolali, napriek tomu som dostal na vysvedčenie samé trojky. Bolo to v roku 1939. So spolužiakmi som vychádzal dobre, tam nebol žiadny problém. Bolo medi nimi aj pár Čechov, ktorých nevyhnali 7 zo Slovenska. Priatelil som sa najmä s tými, ktorí spolu so mnou dochádzali. Boli sme štyria, ktorí sme jazli vlakom z Vrútok do Varína a večer naspäť.

Za války

Okrem mňa sa rodičom narodila moja sestra Viera. Narodila sa v Žiline v roku 1927.  Vychádzali sme spolu dobre, ale nie až natoľko aby sme chodili spolu von. Každý z nás mal svojich kamarátov. Sestra žiaľ vojnu neprežila. Do lágru išla spolu s mamou, ale vôbec nevieme, kde zmizli. Napriek tomu, že sme po nich pátrali, stopa sa stratila. V priebehu vojny nás celú rodinu internovali v zbernom tábore v Žiline v roku 1942 a boli sme tam do vypuknutia Slovenského národného povstania v roku 1944 8. V tom období, medzi rokom 1942 a 1944, keď nešli žiadne deportácie 9, pracovali sme v tom žilinskom tábore.

V tábore bol v tom období celkom dobrý život. Chodili sme pracovať na výstavbu športového štadióna v Žiline. Aj môj otec tam pracoval. Štadión sa nachádzal neďaleko rieky Váh. Nebola to až taká ťažká práca. Dozorcovia, gardisti, z tábora nás tam doviedli. Oni potom niekde zaliezli, alebo sa rozišli na pivo. Bol tam jeden človek, ktorý nás navygoval a to bol slušný chlap. Mama pracovala v tábore v kuchyni a sestra nerobila nič.

Život bol v tom čase naozaj znesiteľný. Dokonca som chodieval aj do mesta. Ani hviezdu som nenosil 10, v živote som ju nemal. Nikdy som sa ani nedopočul o prípade, že by bol za to niekto niekoho udal. My, ktorí sme boli zo žilinského lágra, sme hviezdu nenosili. V tábre som býval s ďalšími piatimi chlapmi. Sem tam niekto utiekol, ale veľmi sa neutekalo. O tom, čo sa deje v Poľsku sme sa dozvedali od železničiarov, ktorí sprevádzali transporty po hranice s Poľskom. Železničiari nám priniesli správu o krematóriách v Osvienčime. Myslím, že od nich sa to rozšírilo.

Počas povstania 8 sa otec, matka a sestra ukryli v lesoch v okolí Rajeckých Teplíc. Tam ich potom všetkých chytili. Otca previezli niekam inam, kde mamu a sestru a tak sa mu podarilo prežiť. Otec sa dostal do Sachsenhausenu a potom do Buchenwaldu. No a matku so sestrou vzali do ženského tábora v Ravensbrücku a tam sa ich stopa stratila. Ja som sa počas povstania pridal k armáde. V Žiline bola vojenská posádka, no a celá táto posádka sa stiahla k Martinu, do Strečna. Pred vojnou som bol členom mládežnického hnutia Hašomer Hacair 11, ale nie preto som sa pridal k armáde. Človek sa pridával tam, kde bola nádej na prežitie.

Na Strečne sme boli v nejakej obrane. Kopali sme zákopy a mali za úlohu podržať záložnú líniu. Samozrejme neboli sme len pasívnymi pozorovateľmi. Raz sme dostali rozkaz zaútočiť na železničnú trať s tunelom. Ako sme sa tam približovali, zrazu sa objavil Tiger [Tiger: nemecký tank, sériovo vyrábaný od roku 1942 – pozn. red.] a začal po nás páliť. Stiahli sme sa do zákopov. Boli tam s nami francúzski partizáni, ktorí boli na Slovensku v zajatí a počas povstania sa im podarilo utiecť. Viac o ich osude neviem, veľmi som sa s nimi nestretával. V našom odiely sme boli len dvaja Židia, ja a môj vzdialený bratranec Elemér Diamant. Žial neviem, či prežil vojnu, lebo potom sa naše cesty rozišli.

Časom sme útočili na nejakých Nemcov ukrytých v lesíku. Tam po mne začal nejaký Nemec strieľať. Žiaľ aj ma trafil. Prestrelil mi rameno, guľka našťastie vyšla druhou stranou. Zranenie bolo pomerne ťažké, ale dostali ma z neho. Najprv ma z miesta, kde ma zasiahla guľka odtiahli. Ťahali ma po zemi a na bezpečnom mieste so mnou vybehli na cestu. Po čase pre mňa prišla sanitka a vzala ma do nemocnice v Martine. Tam som bol jeden deň, pretože Nemci prerazili frontu a granáty dopadali až na nemocnicu. Rýchlo nás evakuovali do mesta Sliač.

Povstalecké územie bolo už úplne malé. V podstate len miesta v okolí obcí Banská Bystrica, Sliač a Brezno. Všetko ostatné už bolo buť obsadené alebo obkľúčené. V Sliači sa ma opýtali, či môžem chodiť. Keďže chodiť som vedel, prepustli ma z nemocnice. Ešte som sa tam stretol s Elemérom, pretože on bol tiež v nemocnici. Počas bojov pri meste Vrútky sa dostal do nejakej mely a utrpel z toho šok. Oboch nás prepustili takmer súčasne. Ja som si to namieril na hlavný stan partizánov a on povedal, že už tam nepôjde, radšej vymyslí niečo iné. Tak sme sa rozišli a od tej doby sme sa nestretli. Z nemocnice som odišiel do Banskej Bystrice, na hlavný štáb. Tam ma vzali k strážnemu oddielu. Držal som stráž pred hlavným štábom v Banskej Bystrici na hlavnom námestí.

Nemci sa tlačili aj do Banskej Bystrice. Evakuovalo sa do hôr, Staré Hory [Staré Hory: horská obec v Starohorskej doline, okres Banská Bystrica – pozn. red.], Donovaly [Donovaly: horská obec situovaná medzi pohoriami Veľká Fatra a Starohorské Vrchy, okres Banská Bystrica – pozn. red.], Kozí Chrbát [Kozí Chrbát: v súčasnosti lesná rezervácia ležiaca na severnej strane Nízkych Tatier – pozn. red.] a tak ďalej až cez Chabenec [Chabenec (1955 m): je mohutný horský masív v Nízkych Tatrách – pozn. red.]. Na tom Chabenci napríklad zmrzol Šverma 12. Mnoho z nás tam vtedy dostalo dyzentériu [dyzentéria: vážna infekčná črevná choroba. Prejavuje sa ťažkou hnačkou s prímesou krvi a horúčkou, ktorú sprevádzajú bolesti brucha – pozn. red.]. Všetkých, ktorí sme ju dostali nás ubytovali zvlášť v jednej zemľanke [zemľanka: podzemný úkryt, obyčajne vojenský – pozn. red.]. Odtiaľ nás však poslal preč jeden miestny občan so slovami: „Tu nemôžete byť, my vás nemôžeme živiť, sami nemáme čo žrať!“ Oznámili nám, že nás vezmú na kraj lesa, kde sú dediny a sami si budeme musieť niečo zohnať od miestnych ľudí. V tom čase som sa zoznámil s jedným Čechom z Ostravy. Na jeho meno sa už žiaľ nepamätám. S ním sme to odvtedy spolu „ťahali“. Odviedli nás na kraj lesa a povedali rozchod. Tam nám oznámili, že sme stále vedení ako partizáni z odielu, ktorého meno si už tiež nepamätám. Povedali nám aj, že  keď niečo prezradíme, tak si nás nájdu.

Celé sa to udialo na prelome novembra a decembra 1944. S mojim českým kamarátom sme si našli celkom slušné miesto a jedným kopcom a vykopali si buker. Najbližšia dedina bola z toho miesta vzdialená na tri hodiny chôdze. Tak sme si povedali, že tu ostaneme a každý večer sa vyberieme do dediny, vyžobrať si nejaké jedlo a zásoby. Pretože, ak by napadlo veľa snehu, aby sme neumreli hladom. Našťastie v tom období ešte nemol sneh, pretože sme sa nachádzali kdesi v Nízkych Tatrách [Nízke Tatry: 80 km dlhé pohorie nachádzajúce sa na Slovensku – pozn. red.]. Takto sme denne chodili do dediny. Vždy sme sanajedli. Niekde nám dali fazuľu, inde zemiaky a tak. Pokiaľ to bolo možné, vzali sme si aj zásoby. Keď sme už mali dostatok zásob, povedali sme si: „No, teraz sa pôjdeme najesť naposledy!“

Tak sme sa išli naposledy najesť. Zabúchali sme u jedných na dvere a otvorila veľmi slušná selka. Povedala: „Ó vy chudáci!“ Hneď nám dala večeru. Potom si všimla naše oblečenie a so slovami: „Veď vás žerú vši, ja vám to vyperem“, nás nechala vyzliecť a uložila do postele, do perín! My sme jej povedali nech nás zobudí akonáhle sa začne rozodnievať. Na čo odvetila: „Samozrejme, samozrejme“. No a naraz buchoty v dedine. Nemci hulákali. Veci sme už mali vyprané, suché a rýchlo sme sa obliekli. Ešte sme jej hovorili „Prečo ste nás nevzbudila?“ „Mne vás bolo tak ľúto, vy ste tak krásne spali.“ Vylietli sme z baráku a hneď na námestí jedna hliadka s guľometom, na druhom konci ďalšia hliadka s guľometom. Nemci už chodili z baráku do baráku. Tak sme vyleteli zadom. Obišli sme námestie a dostali sa do úhozu. Už sme boli vonku z dediny. Naraz sa oproti nám objavili dvaja Nemci. Debili tam museli ísť práve tým úhozom a my dvaja dotrhaní civili im rovno naproti. Už sme sa minuli, už sme boli asi desať krokov od seba a naraz nás zastavili. Niečo sa im nezdalo a jeden z nich zakričal: „Hej partizán!“ Tak nás zobrali. Zhromaždili nás na námestí v strede dediny. Aby sme nešli len tak naprázdno, každému naložili s nábojmi. Takže sme mali čo niesť cez ten sneh, ktorý medzičasom napadal.

Napokon nás posadili do vlaku a odviezli do väzenia v Banskej Bystrici. Tam sme boli od začiatku decembra do konca februára. No a tam v tej väznici sme vegetovali tie dva, tri mesiace. Občas niekedy kravál, niekoho vyhnali na Kremničku 13. Vyháňali ich psami, gulometmi. Potom bolo týždeň ticho. Potom ich zase nahromaždili a zase ich potom išli vystrielať. No a my sme tam stále vegetovali v tej izbe. Bol tam jeden Ukrajinec, ja a ešte dvaja Židia. Nevedeli s určitosťou, že sme Židia ale mysleli si to. Naraz nás koncom februára vyviedli a prišiel nejaký Slovák, s vysokou šaržou. To boli Slováci. Strážila nás slovenská väzenská stráž. Krútil hlavou, že ako je možné, že sme stále tam. Oznámili nám: „Tí, čo tu boli pred vami, tak tých všetkých už pozabíjali v Kremničke!“ Na našu izbu akosi zabudli. Tak otvorili dvere a pýtali sa „čo tu robíte? Už tu nemáte byť!“ No my sme hovorili: „Nemáme tu byť?“ Podľa papierov malo byť celé väzenie prázdne. Kartotéky sa už ničili, lebo oslobodzovacia armáda už dobíjala blízke Brezno a oni už chceli evakuovať aj Banskú Bystricu.

Nás si teda zapísali a odišli, proste týždeň pokoj. Potom prišiel znovu iný a zase si nás zapísal. No a potom za tri, alebo štyri dni prišiel esesák s tým, že ideme na výsluch. Cez ulicu bol banskobystrický súd a tam mali sídlo. Tak tam nás odviedli na chodbu. Potom prišiel ďalší, pýtal si meno. Nadiktoval som Gajdoš, narodený v Žiline. Zapísal si to a odišiel.

Zachvíľku prišiel nejaký vysoký dôstojník, sudeťák 14, rozprával česky a hovorí: „Ja vám teraz dám prepúšťacie papiere. Bežte domov. Nie aby ste bežali na východ! Lebo, keď vás tam uvidia naši vojaci takto otrhane, tak vás postrielajú.“ Tak sme dostali papier a išli sme. S tým kamarátom z Čiech sme si povedali: „Čo budeme robiť? Samozrejme vybali sme sa na východ. Hneď v prvej dedine za Banskou Bystricou nás pristavil jeden chlap. My sme mu ukázali papiere, že nás práve prepustili a že sa potrebujeme dostať k partizánskej jednotke. Tak dobre, povedal. Tu máte večeru, vyspíte sa a skoro ráno vás prevediem k hlavnej ceste a ukážem vám, kadiaľ máte ísť.

Či sa tým ľuďom dalo dôverovať? Čo iného nám zostávalo? On vyzeral skutočne tak seriózne. Ráno nás previedol na cestu a ukázal smer. Mali sme sa dostať do obce Priechod, kde sa nachádzali maďarské jednotky, ktoré sa odtrhli od Nemcov. My sme teda šli tým smerom. Po čase sa kamarát potreboval vysrať. Tak si vyliezol na pole, poobzeral sa dookola a uvidel nejakú postavu v bielom ako tam stojí a pozerá sa na nás. Dali sme sa na útek. Bežali sme otvoreným poľom. Keď sme sa zastavili, že už sme dosť ďaleko, pred nami sme zbadali zástup nemeckých vojakov. Zbadali nás! Nemohli sme robiť nič iné, len im kráčať naproti. Samozrejme nás zajali a odiedli do nejakej dediny. Predviedli nás pred veliteľa so slovami, že nás chytili a buď budeme partizáni alebo banditi a treba nás zlikvidovať. Veliteľ sa nás pýtal, či rozprávame nemecky. Keďže som si niečo pamätal zo školy, tak som mu povedal, že nás práve pustili. Ukázali sme mu papiere. Potom sa začal hádať s ďalším vojakom, či nás zlikvidujú alebo nie. Vojak bol za likvidáciu, veliteľ proti. Napokon veliteľ rozkázal, že nasledujúcu noc budeme spať s ním v jednej izbe. Keď sme ostali sami, nám po nemecky hovorí: „Musíte spať so mnou, lebo on je nacista a ja za neho neručím.“

Na druhý deň nás poslal s vojakom späť do Banskej Bystrice, aby sa presvedčil, či nás skutočne pustili. Te človek, sudetský Nemec, ktorý nám vypísal papiere nás zbadal. Podišiel k nám a začal rozprávať česky, aby mu nás sprievodca nerozumel. „Vy dvaja, čo som vám povedal, že máte ísť rovno na západ a že sa nemáte motať!“ Nemecký vojak samozrejme ničomu nerozumel a hlásil, že sme banditi a máme falošné papiere. On mu hovorí „Vy hovoríte o mojom podpise, že je falošný?!“ On mu tak vynadal, že až! Ešte aj nám sa ušlo, že: „Čo čumíte, okamžite sa strate, ak vás ešte raz privezú, potom bude koniec!“ Tak sme zase vybehli von. Za nami vybehol ten nemecký vojak, sadol na voz a „utekal“ rýchlo preč.

My sme sa opäť vybrali tou istou cestou ako včera, napokon už sme ju ako tak poznali. Na druhý krát sa nám podarilo dostať do deniny Priechod. Hneď nás tam zadržala stráž. Pýtali sa, čo tu chceme. Povedali sme, že ideme za partizánmi. Tam sa nás ujal nejaký chlap v civile. Rozprával slovensky aj maďarsky. Povedali sme mu, že by sme sa radi pridali k nejakej partizánskej jednotke. No tak dobre ale najprv sa navečerajte. Tí Maďari sa ešte mali dobre, mali buchty s makom. Tak sme sa tam nažrali!

Územie, na ktorom sme sa ocitli bolo slobodné a to tým, že maďarská vojenská jednotka sa odtrhla od Nemcov. Nakoniec sa dostala reč k tomu, kde budeme spať. Oznámili nám, že nad dedinou je hájovňa s partizánskym oddielom. Bolo tam pár partizánov a Maďarov. Presunuli sme sa do tej hájovne. Tam sme dostali ďalšiu večeru, zase nejaké buchty a dobroty. Vyfasovali sme zelenú československú uniformu a flintu. Napokon sme sa pobrali spať. Mohlo nás tam byť asi päťdesiat, šesťdesiat ľudí. Ráno, mohlo byť tak päť hodín, nás zobudili výkriky a streľba. Dedinu Priechod ráno obkľúčili Nemci. Použili lesť. Keďže tam boli maďarskí vojaci, Nemci poslali napred iných maďarských vojakov, ktorí boli na ich strane. Tým sa podarilo dostať k strážam, pretože na ich výzvu odpoveali maďarským jazykom. Takto stráže odzbrojili a vošli do dediny. Ako ľudia vybiehali z domov, Nemci ich rovno strieľali, ako zajace. Časť mužov pozbierali a vyniesli na koniec dediny pod strmý kopec. Kázali im utekať. Ako utekali, všetkých postrieľali. Ujsť sa podarilo len jednému nemeckému chlapcovi, mohol mať tak šesťnásť, sedemnásť rokov. Tento chlapec sa ešte predtým pridal k partizánom. Bol jediným z mužov, komu sa podarilo prežiť. Nemci napokon dedinu vypálili. Niektorým ženám sa to podarilo prežiť a oni potom zostali žiť v tej vyplienenej dedine.

Odstupom času sme sa dozvedeli, že zradcom bol chlap, ktorý sa nás ujal po príchode do dediny a nakŕmil buchtami. Ak by nás večer nebol poslal hore do hájovne k partizánom, už by som tu nebol. Nás defakto zachránil. Jeho úlohou bolo zháňať zásoby a zároveň pracoval aj pre Nemcov ako agent. Nakoniec aj jeho chytli Rusi a popravili ho. My sme ostali istý čas v hájovni. Odtiaľ sme chodievali na hliadky k okolitým dedinám, napríklad k dedine Podkonice a tak. Všade už boli Nemci. Len sme počuli ako pri nás vŕzga sneh. Pretože ich hliadky prišli až na kraj dedín, k lesu a potom sa opäť stiahli. Napriek tomu, že od nás boli len na niekoľko krokov, nemohli sme s nimi ísť do boja. Bolo by to pre nás beznádejné. Vedeli sme, že by to bolo beznádejné. Cez Podkonice viedla aj hlavná ústupová cesta Nemcov smerom na Ružomberok. My sme sa z hájovne postupne presunuli do bunkrov v lese, kde sme držali hliadky. Odtiaľ sme koncom februára, začiatkom marca, pokračovali cez Chabenec a Nízke Tatry, do Brezna. Brezno už bolo oslobodené. Zdržiavali sa tam rumunskí vojaci. Tam nás rozdelili. Maďarskí vojaci, ktorí boli s nami, šli dole na juh. Česi a Slováci pochodovali smerom na Poprad. Pešo z Brezna do Popradu [priama cestná vzdialenosť medzi mestami Brezno a Poprad je približne  90 km – pozn. red.]!

Po príchode do Popradu som sa hlásil do Prvého československého armádneho zboru. Tam som bol ovedený do poddôsojníckej školy. Dostal som peknú uniformu, zbraň a tam som slúžil do júna 1945. Poddôstojníckuškolu v armádnom zbore som absolvoval s hodnosťou slobodník. Odvtedy som sa ešte prepracoval na podplukovníka československej armády. Po škole som odišiel s ostatnými vojakmi, v rámci výcviku, pešo z Popradu do Martina [priama cestná vzdialenosť medzi mestami Brezno a Poprad je približne 130 km – pozn. red.]. Kráčali sme tri, alebo štyri dni. V Martine sme sa stretli s prezidentom Benešom 15, ktorý prišiel z Košíc 16. Tam sme nastúpili na autá a poslali nás ako zálohu na Moravu, kde sa ešte bojovalo. Vojakom pred nami sa však vždy darilo frontu preraziť a tak sme sa my priamo bojov nezúčastnili. Takto sme šli za frontou, až do Prahy.

V Prahe sme ako vojaci chodili na „cvičák“. Nacvičovali sme napríkld boj v uliciach mesta. Bolo to na Bílej hore. Tam vybehovali babičky s maskami a pokrikovali: „Ježiš Mária, Nemci sa opäť vrátili.“ Oni nevedeli, že je to výcvik, a že používame len slepé náboje. V uliciach bol rachot a babičky sa preto chceli dostať do úkrytu. My sme im hovorili: „Babi, to je len tak, to nie je skutočné.“ Koncom júna nás poslali späť na Slovensko, do vojenského útvaru v Nitre, odkiaľ ma potom prepustili do civilu.

Počas môjho pôsobenia v Prahe som kontaktoval bývalého starostu Vrútok. Zároveň bol zástupcom veliteľa Hlinkovej gardy v meste, ale aj náš ochráca a rodinný priateľ. On mi povedal, že otec sa vrátil a žije v Žiline. Tak to som vedel. Počas môjho pobytu v Nitre som sa ubytoval u otcovho brata, Rudiho. Prežil vojnu v Terezíne 17. Spal som u neho na žehliacej doske. Po niekoľkých dňoch som sa vybral v nákladnom vagóne z Nitry do Žiliny.

V Žiline sme sa stretli s otcom, ktorý am už mal vlastný podnájom. Na obedy sme chodievali k jeho kamarátkam. Raz k jednej a potom zase k druhej... Z nášho majetku sa ná nepodarilo zachrániť absolútne nič. Aby som sa uživil, začal som pracovať ako inštalatér. Síce som nemal výučný list, no napriek tomu ma zamestnala jedna firma v Žiline. Majiteľom bol tiež Žid.

Po válce

V povojnovom období sa obnovil aj chod židovskej obce v meste. Počet členov židovskej komunity však neustále klesal. Otec sa odsťahoval ešte v roku 1945 do Karlových Varov 18. Rozhodol sa tak kvôli svojej kamarátke, pani Katzovej. Ona mala v Karlových Varoch známych, rodinu Kleinman. Otec sem prišiel v domnení, že si tu vezme do prenájmu penzión. V podstate všetci odchádzali do Karlových Varov v domnení, že sa uchytia. Ja som za nimi prišiel začiatkom jari v roku 1946. Býval som s otcom. Napokon vychádzali sme spolu dobre.
Otec sa zamestnal v kúpeľoch. No najprv bol v kyslikárni, kde sa plnili kyslíkové fľaše. Potom sa stal na riaditeľstve ubytovacím referentom. Odtiaľ odišiel aj do dôchodku. Ako dôchodca robil inšpektora na kolonáde. V podstate sa tam prechádzal celý deň od rána do večera a dohliadal na poriadok.

V tom období som sa zoznámil so svojou prvou, dnes už nebohou, manželkou. Za slobodna sa volala Irena Rothová. Narodila sa v roku 1926 v meste Kajdanove na Podkarpatskej Rusi. Kajdanove patrilo do okresu Mukačevo. Pochádzala z pobožnej rodiny, ale ona už nebola po vojne tak pobožná. Po vojne sa vrátila na Podkarpatskú Rus. Zistila, že všetky jej kamarátky, ktoré prežili vojnu, sa rozutekali po svete. Jeden z bratov jej mamičky žil v Karlových Varoch. Zhodou okolností to bol pán Kleinman, ku ktorému moja budúca manželka prišla. Zoznámil som sa s ňou u otcovej kamarátky, pani Katzovej. Prišiel som k nej na večeru a moja budúca manželka tam bola tiež. Pani Katzová a Kleinmanová boli kamarátky. Tak sme sa teda „náhodou“ spoznali. Svadbu sme mali židovskú, pod chupou [Chupa: baldachýn, pod ktorým stojí pár pri svadobnom obrade – pozn. red.], v Karlových Varoch, v roku 1946. To však vtedajšie úrady nepočítali za oficiálny sobáš. Civilný sobáš sme mali na jeseň v roku 1948. Svadbu, židovskú, sme oslavovali u Kleinmanových. Zišlo sa tam približne dvadsať ľudí.

Manželka prežila vojnu v Osvienčime, odtiaľ sa dostala do nejakej továrne a nakoniec vyviazla v Terezíne. Jej rodičia zahynuli v Osvienčime. Okrem rodičov mala ešte dvoch bratov. Obaja vojnu prežili a vysťahovali sa do Izraela. Volali sa Imre Roth a Béla Roth. S Imrem som sa stretol neskôr v Karlových Varoch. Bol tu dva alebo tri krát. Jeho brata som nvidel. Manželka sa s ním stretla niekde v Budapešti. Po smrti mojej manželky som s nimi stratil kontakt. Ale myslím, že už tiež nežijú. Manželka rozprávala maďarsky a jidiš, no a samozrejme česky. Ja hovorím česky a slovensky a dohovorím sa aj maďarsky a nemecky. V našej rodine sa držali po vojne väčšie sviatky. Šábes samotný sme veľmi nedržali, len manželka zo začiatku zapaľovala sviečky, neskôr už ani to nie. Taktiež sa oslavoval pésach. Manželka pripravila pésachovú večeru, polievku s macesovými knedlíčkami.

V Karlových Varoch sa po 2. svetovej vojne obnovil aj chod židovskej obce. Napokon, bolo tu dosť Židov. Časom sa však veľa z nich vysťahovalo. Odišli hlavne do Izraela a Ameriky. Tí, čo tu ostali, sa medzi sebou vždy „hrýzli“. Napokon, ako vo všetkých obciach. Samozrejme, bola tu aj modlitebňa, ktorá už dnes nestojí. Obec mala aj rabína a šamesa. Rabín však emigroval. My sme sa na židovskom živote v meste veľmi nepodieľali. Pár krát do roka sme šli so ženou do modlitebne. Hlavne na Roš hašana a Jom kipur. Chlapci s nami nechodili.

Osobne som vnímal vznik štátu Izrael pozitívne. Dokonca by som nenamietal, keby sme sa tam s manželkou boli vysťahovali. Ona tam bola za totality navštíviť svojich bratov. Myslím, že prvý krát v roku 1965. Hovoril som jej: „Vysťahujme sa.“ Jej odpoveď znela: „Ani za nič. Ja som to tam videla a viem, o čo ide. Ja tam nejdem!“ Jej mladšiemu bratovi, Bélovi, ktorý žil v Ber Sheve, sa celkom darilo. Mal firmu, ktorá vozila piesok na stavby. Starší brat, Imre, žil v Nathanyi. Prevádzkoval obchod s nábytkom. Občas skrachoval, potom sa postavil na nohy a zase dookola. Obaja jej bratia si založili vlastné rodiny. Čo sa náboženstva týka, ani jeden z nich nebol pobožný.

Irenka pracovala ako krajčírka. Dlhé roky šlila uniformy a medzitým aj doma známym. Proste šila stále. Po príchode do Karlových Varov som istý čas pracoval ako údržbár pre podnik Československé hotely. Chodil som po hoteloch spravovať batérie a podobné veci. No a potom som sa dostal,  do funkcie tajomníka okresu pre kultúru KSČ 19. Členom strany som bol od roku 1945. Napriek tomu, že som tam vstúpil s otcom, vravieval mi: „Ty nebudeš nikdy komunista.“ Hovoril mi to preto, lebo ja som komunistom nikdy neveril. Postupne začali Slánskeho procesy 20. Mňa sa však v podstate vôbec nedotkli.

Udalosti v roku 1968 21 som vnímal pozitívne. Pracoval som vtedy v národnom podniku a bol som predsedom odborovej závodnej rady. V podstate v roku 1968 sa v Karlových Varoch konala konferencia a smerovaní strany. Na tej konferenii vystúpili niektorí členovia okresu s novým spôsobom zmýšlania a sprdli okresného tajomníka komunistickej strany. Ja som bol vtedy vo volebnej komusii a na už sme stihli zvoliť nových ľudí do funkcií v strane, čo mi neskôr samozrejme priťažilo. Ja som však veril, že konám správne. Napokon mi vytkli, moju účasť na danej konferencii. Dospelo to až k tomu, že v roku 1970 ma vykopli zo strany 22. Predtým ma navštívili páni z ŠtB. Povedali mi, že nič odomňa nechcú, len aby som... Ja som im povedal, že nebudem nikoho udávať. Ako predseda závodnej ady som sa vždy snažil, aby bolo všetko spravodlivé a toho som sa aj držal. Neskôr som sa zamestnal ako technik u pozemných stavieb. Jazdil som po stavbách v okolí, napríklad Praha, Chomutov, Cheb, Aš, proste celý región. Veľa voľného času nebolo.

V Karlových Varoch sme zo začiatku bývali v malom studenom, vlhkom, prízemnom byte. Bolo to začiatkom 50. rokov 20. storočia. Napokon sa nám narodili dvaja synovia. Milan v roku 1953 a Roman v roku 1956. Synov sme sa snažili vychovať, ako slušných ľudí. Obriezku nemali, žena to po skúsenostiach z minulost nedovolila. Odvolávala sa na to, že im nechce pokaziť život... Samozrejme, že sme pred nimi ich pôvod netajili a vedeli o všetkom.

Časom sme dostali aj nový, krásny slnečný byt na Víťaznej ulici. Chodievali sme spolu aj na dovolenky. Na západ sa vtedy nedalo. Človek na to nedostal povolenie. Chodievali sme ako rodina do Bulharska. Manželka mala veľa kamarátok a ja som mal tiež jedného kolegu z práce, s ktorým som si rozumel. Trávili sme spolu veľa času aj mimo práce. Stretávali sme sa u nás, alebo u nich. Žiaľ, aj on už zomrel. Tiež sme s manželkou a deťmi jazdili na rôzne dovolenky pod stan. Irenka chodievala aj do kúpeľov. Hlavne do Františkových Lázní a do okolia Písku. Ja som ju tam samozrejme vždy odniesol a potom prišiel pre ňu, takže to som z tých kúpeľov akurát tak mal.

Môj otec sa po vojne ešte tiež oženil. Za manželku si vzal ženu menom Eda Kleinová. Pochádzala z Podkarpatskej Rusi. Edina sestra s manželom bývali v Prahe. Rozhodli sa, že v štvorici si kúpia v Prahe dom. Otec s manželkou obývali poschodie a jeho švagor s manželkou bývali dole. Samozrejme, zvykli sme ich navštevovať, tak dva-trikrát do roka. Otec zomrel v Prahe v roku 1978. Jeho druhá manželka tiež, približne desať rokov po otcovej smrti.

Irenka dostala začiatkom 90. rokov 20. storočia mŕtvicu. Ostala ochrnutá na pol tela. K tomu všetkému sa prieplietol zápaľ pľúc. Chorobe podľahla v roku 1994. Pochovali sme ju na židovskom cintoríne v Karlových Varoch. Medzitým dospeli aj naši synovia. Milan žije v obci Tachov. Je to približne šesťdesiat kilometrov od Karlových Varov. Vyučil sa ako elektromontér. V Tachove sa však v začiatkoch zamestnal ako krmič dobytka, pretože mu pridelili byt, za podmienok, že sa tam zamestná. Roman vyštudoval vysokú školu stavebnú v Prahe. Po štúdiách ostal žiť v Karlových Varoch. Kanceláriu má hneď vedľa židovskej obce. Projektuje stavby a vodí sa mu celkom dobre. Nikdy sa však neoženil. V kancelárii trávi celé týždne, aj víkendy a domov chodí večer o desiatej. Milan si vzal za manželku nežidovské dievča a vyženil si aj syna. Spolu sa im narodil ďalší chlapec. Obe ich deti sú už však dospelé.

Približne päť rokov dozadu som bol navštíviť Izrael. Bol som na poznávacom zájazde. Život tam bol taký, ako som si predstavoval. Ruch na uliciach, kaviarničky. Cesty sú tam prvotriedne. Mimo mesta boli všetky osvetlené, čo tu asi nenájdete. Hovoril som si, že je to celkom fajn. Čo sa životnej úrovne týka, to neviem. Nebol som tam až tak dlho, aby som to vedel posúdiť. Čo ma prekvapilo? Na šábes som bol akurát v Nathanyi. Čakal som, že v sobotu bude všade kľud. Ráno som vstal, vyšiel na okno a všade zástupy áut. Jazdilo ich toľko, ako vo všedný deň. Plné boli aj pláže a na uliciach neustal ruch.

Na prelome tisícročí som sa spoznal so svojou druhou manželkou, Miluškou. Pracovala v potravinách, kam som chodil nakupovať. Tak sme sa stále na seba usmievali, kým raz za mnou nevybehla, že má dva lístky do divadla. Pýtala sa ma, či by som s ňou nešiel. V tej chvíly som ostal v šoku. Musím povedať, že viac-menej sa mi samozrejme páčila. Odvetil som, že hneď neviem odpovedať, ale zistím, či na ten termín nemám program a ozvem sa. V tom čase som už pôsobil ako predseda židovskej obce v Karlových Varoch. Samozrejme, okamžite som si utekal kúpiť oblek a potom som sa vrátil do obchodu a povedal: „Áno, pôjdem do divadla.“ Dopadlo to tak, že sme sa vzali. Miluška nie je Židovka. Svadbu sme mali civilnú. S mojim synom Romanom sa hneď skamarátia. Milan bol zo začiatku trochu odmeraný, ale potom sa dalo všetko do poriadku. Miluška má z prvého manželstva troch synov a sedem vnúčat. Takže teraz sme celkom veľká rodina. Čo sa sviatkov týka, teraz doma nedržíme nič, pretože ona zrušila aj vianočný stromček, ktorý sme my s predošlou manželkou doma mali. Spočiatku sme spolu zvykli chodievať na kúpalisko, no a teraz väčšinou na záhradu.

Niekoľko rokov som pôsobil v predstavenstve židovskej obce v Karlových Varoch. Istý čas som bol miestopredsedom. Vtedajší predseda obce nespĺňal predstavy ostatných členov. Bol podľa nich arogantný. Napríklad niekomu nechcel dať macesy na Pésach, pretože sa neobjavil na obci dosť často a podobne. Zatvoril cintorín a pre kľúč sa muselo chodiť k nemu. Kľúč však nechcel každému požičať. Proste nebol obľúbený. Napokon na jednej výročnej schôdzi vystúpil pán Gubič, že by sa mala oddeliť náboženská funkcia vedúceho obce a funkcia predsedu obce. Napokon sa odhlasovalo, že bývalý predseda ostane ako duchovný vodca obce a mňa zvolili za predsedu. Bolo to približne pred siedmymi rokmi. Mojou úlohou je starať sa o majetok obce. Náboženské záležitosti majú na starosti rabín Kočí a šames Rubin. Tí majú na starosti náboženskú oblasť. Obec má čím ďalej, tým menej aktívnych členov. Môže ich byť asi tak desať. V predstavenstve je nás sedem, na tých sa dá povedať, že sú ako tak aktívny. Všetkých členov je približne 98. Nie všetci sú priamo z Karlových Varov. Máme členov aj v okolitých obciach a mestách, ako napríklad Sokolov a Jáchymov. Židovská obec má svoju modlitebňu, kde sa každý piatok a v sobotu schádzajú na modlenie. Niekedy nemajú minjan [minjan: modlitebné minimum desiatich mužov vo veku nad trinásť rokov – pozn. red.], sú len piati – šiesti. Ale Karlovy Vary sú lázenským mestom, s množstvom hostí, aj židovskými. Preto nie je ničím výnimočným, že sa tu zíde aj dvadsať chlapov. Niektorí z kúpeľných hostí, ktorí tu už boli viac-krát, automaticky prídu aj do modlitebne. Rovnako držíme aj väčšie sviatky. Na sukot sa na dvore budovy obce stavia aj suka.

Glosář:
1 Neolog Jewry: Following a Congress in 1868/69 in Budapest, where the Jewish community was supposed to discuss several issues on which the opinion of the traditionalists and the modernizers differed and which aimed at uniting Hungarian Jews, Hungarian Jewry was officially split into to (later three) communities, which all built up their own national community network. The Neologs were the modernizers, who opposed the Orthodox on various questions. The third group, the sop-called Status Quo Ante advocated that the Jewish community was maintained the same as before the 1868/69 Congress.

Galina Shkolnikova
Saint-Petersburg
Russia
Interviewer: Inna Gimila
Date of interview: June 2002

Galina Idelevna Shkolnikova is not a very tall woman. She is slim, has straight grayish hair and a high forehead and wears glasses. She lives alone in a three-bedroom apartment that is full of books. Her children have families of their own and live in Saint-Petersburg. She is active and mobile; in the summer she visited her husband's brother in Astrakhan. She is an engineer by occupation and is now retired. Her speech is correct and she very scrupulously corrected inaccuracies in her biography's text. She is a very calm and intelligent person.

My family background
Growing up in wartime
Post-war
My school years
Married life
Glossary

My family background

I was born in 1938 in the city of Leningrad. My paternal grandfather, Mordekhay Abramovich Farber, was born in 1868 in the town of Alushta, Tavricheskaya province. I only know that he had a sister and a brother. He had a serious quarrel with his brother early in life and didn't keep in touch with him after that. None of the relatives knew the reason for that quarrel. They assumed that it was about the difference in their material status. I don't know what education my grandfather had either. His job was related to forestry.

My paternal grandmother, Doba Yuliyevna Farber [nee Moina], was born in 1872. She became an orphan at an early age and was raised by her relatives. I don't know if she had brothers or sisters. She didn't have any education and took care of the household.

In the beginning my grandparents lived in the town of Berislav [150 km west of Kiev]. They had seven children and their first child, a girl, died as an infant. After that my father Idel was born, then Sarah, David, Isaac, Abram, Revekka and Rakhil. Grandfather Mordekhay worked in Nikopol, Southern Ukraine, as a log storage manager and had a house with a big garden on the bank of the Dnepr river. During the NEP 1 he organized a swimming pool and a boat-house in the garden, where his younger sons Isaac and Abram worked as boatmen.

Grandmother Doba and her daughters were keen on sewing and clothes- designing, besides keeping the household. They liked to wear beautiful and fashionable clothes. Aunt Rakhil and her daughter Eleonora still preserve this passion.

The Farber family was very close; the children subsequently left for various cities but always kept in touch with each other. My grandparents tried to provide education for their children. The two older sons graduated from the commercial school in Nikopol; the younger sons didn't manage to study there and finished Soviet schools, but all the seven boys got higher education.

My grandparents' mother tongue was Yiddish, but they spoke Russian in the family. They switched to Yiddish when they wanted to conceal something from the children or the maids. The boys studied Hebrew, probably in cheder. I don't know if the girls studied Hebrew. They all - grandfather, grandmother and their children - spoke very good Ukrainian.

My grandparents were religious people. All Jewish traditions were observed and all holidays were celebrated in the family. They attended the synagogue. Grandfather Mordekhay solemnly trampled on the New Testament on Sabbath, which was specially kept at home for that purpose, showing his belonging to Judaism and his denial of Russian Orthodoxy. However, all their children grew up as atheists. They left their home early in order to get education, and they lived their own life, which was common for Soviet intellectuals of that time. They never observed Jewish traditions.

My grandfather died in Nikopol in 1931, and, obviously, as a pious man, was buried according to the Jewish custom. After his death my grandmother moved to her older daughter Sarah and helped her to raise her little son, who was born in 1931. In 1934 a tragedy happened. The boy went for a walk with his grandmother, was hit by a car and killed. After that my grandmother moved to her son, my father Idel, who lived in Leningrad. She lived with our family and died in besieged Leningrad at the end of 1941. She didn't keep the Jewish tradition alive after she moved in with her children, because they were atheists. She was buried in the Volkov cemetery, but her grave doesn't exist any more because a bomb hit the place.

In my opinion, a lot of our relatives had successful lives. God was merciful to them: they survived repression, genocide and the war, though some of the relatives perished during the Holocaust. My father's older sister, Sarah Matveyevna Shevchenko [nee Farber], was born in 1898. She took the patronymic of her father's common name. She graduated from the Agricultural Institute in Dnepropetrovsk and worked as a veterinarian. Her Russian husband worked as an agronomist. They had three children: two daughters, Kima and Alvina, and a son, Leonid, who died at the age of 3, when he was hit by a car. Their family lived in Moscow. During the war they were in evacuation.

After the war public anti-Semitism started. [The interviewee refers to the campaign against 'cosmopolitans'.] 2 I think it's much more difficult for half-breds to endure it than for 'pure' Jews, especially if the mother is Jewish. They are torn between their natural love for their mother and the intention to conceal their identity of a 'despised' nation. My cousins found themselves in such a situation. Kima fell in love with her university mate. They studied at the Legal Faculty of the MGU [Moscow State University]. Kima was expecting a baby, and they planned to get married, but the fiancé's parents found out that the bride's mother was a Jew and flatly objected to the marriage. Their son was under their thumb. Kima now rests in the Promised Land. Her son, his Russian wife and their five children live in Israel.

Kima's sister Alvina concealed her marriage to a Russian from her mother for three months. They all lived together later on because Alvina's husband was from Moscow. Everything seemed quiet on the surface, but her husband was warped any time he heard the name of his mother-in-law. Sarah felt it and got very upset. She died in Moscow in 1968.

David Markovich Farber translated his father Mordekhay's name into Russian as Mark and so did his older brother, my father. All the other children used the name Matvey for their patronymic. David was an accountant, an economist. His wife was a Jew and worked as an accountant too. They were in evacuation in Siberia during the war. Their son Yuriy, born in 1927, was in the book trade. They lived and died in Moscow.

My father's other brother, Isaac Matveyevich Farber, got his education in Dnepropetrovsk. He was a talented engineer, worked in Baku and married Rimma Lvovna Chernyaeva, a Jew. They had no children. Isaac died young of cancer in Moscow and was buried there.

My father's younger brother, Abram Matveyevich Farber, also got his education in Dnepropetrovsk and was an engineer, too. His wife was a housewife. They lived in Moscow. Abram worked at Sovmin [Council of Ministers]. He was a very cheerful and witty man and liked to play tricks on everybody, including himself. He participated in the war, returned to Moscow after the war and worked at the Institute of Oil. He continued to work even when he was dying of cancer. His children, a son and a daughter, also became engineers.

Revekka Matveyevna Farber married a Russian, but didn't change her last name. Her husband was in the war, beginning with the Finnish war 3 and concluding with the war with Japan 4. He was a politruk [political official]. She was a doctor, an epidemiologist, and worked in besieged Leningrad during the war. Her daughter, Victoria, born in 1937, graduated from the Electro-Technical Institute named after Bonch-Bruyevich. Revekka died in Leningrad in 1970 and was buried in the 'Victims of 9th January' cemetery 5.

My father's younger sister, Rakhil Matveyevna Farber, born in 1909, graduated from the Dnepropetrovsk Agricultural Institute as an engineer- technologist in wine-making. She moved to Voronezh after graduation and married Abram Davidovich Gilevich, who worked as a commodity researcher in the book trade. During the war they were in evacuation in Siberia, and they lived in Lvov after the war. Aunt Rakhil's daughter graduated from the Lvov Medical Institute. It seems to me that anti-Semitism was felt less in Russia as compared to Ukraine, especially its western part. In any case, my cousin took a lot of efforts to move from Lvov to Moscow during the Soviet times, before the Soviet Union broke up. The reason for moving was anti- Semitism, both in everyday life and in state enterprises. At present she lives in Moscow with her mother and son and works as a radiologist. Aunt Rakhil is my only aunt who's still alive.

My maternal grandfather, Yankel-Movshe Yosel-Girshevich Yezersky, was born in 1860 in the town of Volkovysk, Grodno province [200 km from Minsk], which was part of the Russian Empire at that time. He was an Irregular Army warrior in 1878 [Editor's note: This was a form of draft to the Russian Army during the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878, which was aimed at the liberation of Bulgaria.] He probably obtained Jewish education because he worked as a melamed in his youth. My mother later wrote in all Soviet questionnaires that she was the daughter of a teacher.

My maternal grandmother, Riva Simkhovna Yezerskaya, was born in 1861. She didn't get any education and was a housewife. In the beginning my grandparents presumable lived in Brest-Litovsk, where their three older children were born: Froim-Peisakh, Iosif and Feiga. As the family grew bigger, my grandfather's salary as a melamed became insufficient to make a living for the family. With the help of a relative, he opened the 'Butter- Cheese-Yezersky' store in the town of Yekaterinoslav. Unfortunately, I don't know, how big the store was or how many employees worked there. At that time my grandfather changed his last name to Yezersky, probably for the advertisement to sound more euphonious. Before that the family name was Katzman or something the like. The change happened in the 1890s. Later all members of the family were called Yezersky.

After a ten-year period another three daughters were born in Yekaterinoslav: Shprintsa-Rochel, Lyuba and Sima, my mother. The three older children didn't get any education; the three younger ones had the opportunity to study. They went to a gymnasium and also learnt to play the piano.

Froim-Peisakh Yankel-Movshevich Yezersky had the common name of Yefrem Yakovlevich. He was a Ist Guild Merchant 6 in Kharkov before the Revolution of 1917. He owned a grocery store in the center of the town and worked as a seller after the store was nationalized. His wife, Fruma-Peisha Shlyome-Ziskelevna, was a housewife. They got evacuated to Alma-Ata during the war. We joined them and at first lived together. They had three children: Matvey, Feiga and Masha. They all got higher education. Matvey and Feiga were engineers, and Masha was a doctor. Matvey lived in Moscow, Feiga and Masha lived in Kharkov. They are not alive any more.

Iosif Yankel-Movshevich Yezersky was also a merchant before the war. He owned his father's store in Yekaterinoslav and was a commercial worker in Kharkov after the store was nationalized. His first wife died early, and he married again. He had a daughter, Pasha, and a son, Mikhail, from his first marriage and a son, Yakov, from his second marriage.

Pasha perished during the war in Dnepropetrovsk. She had a Russian husband. Her appearance was pretty international and she stayed on occupied territory. Their neighbors gave her away to the Germans. Her son, Vitya, was saved by her husband's parents. Pasha's husband perished in the war, his parents died and Vitya found himself in a children's home. The only person who tried to take care of him was Pasha's stepmother, Iosif's second wife. Iosif died before the war in 1937.

The children's home, where Vitya stayed, was very anti-Semitic. Teachers humiliated Jewish children in every possible way, and also his play-mates aimed at offending or even beating Jewish children. That's why he concealed his Jewishness as much as he could and was ashamed of his mother's Jewish stepmother, who was his only relative alive. Vitya was ashamed of her; he rudely cut short any assistance and care from her side when he was 14-16 years old and grew up a real anti-Semite.

Feiga Yankel-Movshevna Liberman [nee Yezerskaya] was born in 1886. She didn't have any education and was a housewife. Yiddish was her mother tongue; she spoke Russian poorly. She assisted in her brother Iosif's store in Yekaterinoslav and moved to Kharkov later. Her husband, Alter Liberman, died early in 1937. They had two sons, Abram and Zinoviy. Abram worked as a driver and Zinoviy got higher education and became a dentist. During the war Feiga was in evacuation. Both her sons were in the war and survived. Zinoviy was in a military hospital in Mongolia at the end of the war, where he continued to work for several years after the war. He got married there. His wife Nina had a daughter from her previous marriage. Their common daughter's name was Larisa, but we lost contact with her. Zinoviy died in 1976 in Kharkov, his mother Feiga also died there some time in the 1960s.

Shprintsa-Rokhel Yezerskaya didn't change her last name after she got married. She graduated from Lausanne University in Switzerland as a dentist. It seems that her brothers helped her financially so that she could study in Switzerland. Her husband was a real loafer; she earned the money and he spent it. The family lived in Brest-Litovsk and their fate was tragic. They didn't manage to evacuate during the war and all perished in the ghetto. Their two children, their son, Abram, a schoolboy, and their daughter Bella, perished with them. Bella had just finished school and already had a train ticket, dated 22nd June 1941, to Leningrad, where she wanted to enter the Pediatric Institute. Rumor has it that Bella didn't perish. She was a beauty and they said that a Polish officer was in love with her and saved her. Relatives were looking for Bella after the war but without success.

Lyuba Finkel [nee Yezerskaya] was born in Yekaterinoslav in 1897. She studied in a gymnasium like her sisters and ran away with a traveling theater actor when she was in the last grade. She married the actor and was cursed by her father. The marriage broke up very soon, Lyuba left for Kharkov in the 1920s and married Beinish Finkel, whose common name was Boris Aronovich. He was considered a rich fiancé in the NEP period. He owned a plant. When the authorities took away the plant, he worked in various cooperatives, and Aunt Lyuba worked with him. Later they moved to Leningrad and brought my parents there in 1931.

It was Boris's sister, Revekka Aronovna Finkel, a military doctor, who saved my father, when he was in hospital in Leningrad, heavily wounded. Lyuba and Boris evacuated from besieged Leningrad to the Ural in 1942. They came back in 1944 when the blockade 7 was lifted. They had a daughter, Irina, born in 1923. She graduated from the Construction Technical School in Leningrad and worked with a construction company. She reached the position of the head of the Planning Department. My parents kept in touch with the family and met often. It wasn't possible to observe Sabbath at that time because it was a working day and even religious Jews worked, if they were employed at public enterprises. So everybody gathered at Aunt Lyuba's place for lunch every Sunday. Aunt Lyuba was a very hospitable person. She died in Leningrad in 1963.

The family spoke Yiddish, Ukrainian and Russian, but the common language at home was Yiddish, my grandparents' mother tongue. Grandmother Riva didn't speak Russian well. When children quoted her in letters, they wrote her words in Yiddish using the Russian alphabet. Her older daughter, Feiga, also spoke Russian poorly.

My mother's parents were religious people. They observed all Jewish traditions: They had a kosher household, observed Sabbath, attended the synagogue and celebrated all Jewish holidays. Grandfather Yankel was an active member of the community and a synagogue warden; he donated a lot to it. He died in 1914 in Yekaterinoslav and was buried in the Jewish cemetery according to the Jewish tradition. A lot of debts were revealed after his death, since he took the debts of the synagogue upon himself.

After her husband's death grandmother Riva lived in Yekaterinoslav in her son Iosif's family, who inherited his father's store. In 1928, after the NEP was over, the store was nationalized. Iosif, his family and grandmother Riva moved to Kharkov, where Iosif's older brother, Froim, lived. My grandmother died there in 1938. I don't know if she was buried according to the Jewish tradition. My mother's parents had died before I was born, so I have never seen them and only heard about them from my mother.

My father, Idel Mordukhovich Farber, was born in 1897 in the town of Berislav. He spent his childhood and youth in the town of Nikopol, where the family moved to. Everybody in the family had a nickname. My father's nickname was 'Chief', as he was the older brother. The children made up a language of their own using various words from different languages, trying to hide what they were saying from adults. My father preserved words from this made-up language to his dying day. For example: child - 'wurf', or, something remarkable - 'wurfyak', something annoying - 'fortych', woman - 'yena', man correspondingly - 'yener' and so on. These are inexplicable words, as they contain no semantic roots of any words. They were just created by children as associative signals.

My father finished the commercial school in Nikopol. It was the year 1915, and he was drafted to the army. From that moment on and to his dying day he had the nickname 'Soldier', which he was very proud of. To tell you the truth, Grandfather Mordekhay took some appropriate efforts to enlist his son as self-determinative to the regiment. [Editor's note: a form of draft to the Russian Army during the years of World War I, which provided some privileges as compared to privates.]

I don't know if he managed to participate in World War I military operations. He was a soldier at the beginning of the Civil War [1918-1921], but soon returned home and later served in the Red Army as a corps man for four months. In 1920 he entered the Kharkov Technological Institute and graduated in 1924 as a chemical engineer. After graduation he was assigned to Donbass, the Donetsk coal fields in the south-east of Ukraine, where he worked at JSC Koksobenzol in the town of Artyom. There was a friendly team of young people, engineers and doctors, and he met my mother in that group.

My mother Sofia Yankel-Movshevna Yezerskaya was born in 1899 in the town of Yekaterinoslav. She finished the private Jewish secular gymnasium in that town and chose the medical walk of life. She entered the Medical Faculty of the Yekaterinoslav University in 1916. The Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War prevented her from graduating. She graduated from the Medical Institute in Kharkov in 1924 and left for Donbass to work as a 'traveling' doctor. She visited various villages on a cart; the hospital coachman led the horse.

When my parents met in 1925, my mother worked in a hospital at Pereyezdnaya station. They got married in 1927. They didn't have a religious wedding: my parents' friends, young Komsomol members 8 and some other people were present. My mother didn't change her maiden name after her marriage. It was written as Sofia Yakovlevna Yezerskaya in her passport, so her name and paternal name were already russified, though, in the record-book of 1917 of the Yekaterinoslav University, she wrote her name as Sima Yankelevna.

My parents lived in Donbass until 1931. They left under the following circumstances. One of the young engineers, who worked with my father, was fired. His friends decided that he had been treated unfairly and submitted resignation applications as a sign of protest. No one managed to find another job though, and everybody, except for my father, returned to their former workplace. My parents decided to leave Donbass for Leningrad, following the advice of Lyuba, my mother's sister, who lived in Leningrad at the time. It saved father because all his friends were later subject to repression on the basis of the notorious Mining Case 9. All in all, I have to point out that destiny was in my father's favor. More than once he found himself in situations where he could have perished, but God drew the blow of at the very last moment.

My father worked at the Institute of Applied Chemistry (GIPH) in Leningrad, and my mother worked as a district doctor in the Gavan Polyclinic. She wanted to work in a hospital though and as a result found herself in the Children's Hospital, located near the Volkov cemetery. The war caught them there in 1941.

Growing up in wartime

I was born in 1938, and by the beginning of the war I was two and a half years old. I had no brothers or sisters. When the war broke out, I was very small and obviously didn't understand what was happening. When Leningrad was besieged and the Germans began to bomb it, people had to go to the bomb- shelters during the bombings. I lived with my grandmother and, as my mother told me later, I liked the bomb-shelter very much because a lot of children gathered there. So when I heard the air-raid warning signal, I began to jump and run cheerfully around the table. By the time my 80-year-old grandmother managed to catch and dress me, the bombings were over. As a result we stopped going to the bomb-shelter.

My father was a very straightforward person and supported the ideas of the Communist Party. At the beginning of the Civil War he served in the army and became a non-party Bolshevik. My mother was indignant with him because, in her opinion, he couldn't 'read between the lines' and 'lived according to the Pravda editorial', that is, in compliance with the ideology of the Communist Party of the USSR. He didn't doubt its correctness. He was always distinguished by honesty, adherence to principles, and an acute feeling for justice. In addition to his main job he was occupied with trade-union activities. He was responsible for the distribution of tickets at the Mestkom 10 of his Institute, and didn't take summer-camp tickets for me, when I was a child, because he considered it a demonstration of nepotism.

During the first days of the war my father went to sign up for the People's Volunteer Corps, as he was not subject to the draft, but mother, being a doctor, was already transferred to the state of barracks. She insisted that he stay with my grandmother and me. He continued to work in GIPH, but was soon also enlisted to the state of barracks. I stayed at home with my grandmother. In August 1941 my mother made an effort to send us into evacuation, but the Germans had bombed a train with evacuated people near Mga, Leningrad region, so she decided against the idea. Thus we all found ourselves in the siege. My mother periodically visited us. In October and November 1941 a boarding school for employees' children was arranged at my mothers' hospital, which was by that time re-organized into an evacuation hospital, and my grandmother was left alone.

Twice a week, on the days when my mother was on duty and had to 'test the food' in the kitchen, my father walked more than 10 kilometers on foot from GIPH to mother's hospital, in order to have a bowl of soup. On his way back he walked almost the same distance in order to bring mother's bread portion to my grandmother. Once he came home and found my grandmother dead.

The three of us were evacuated in July 1942 across Ladoga Lake [The so- called Road of Life] 11 and found ourselves in Alma-Ata, the capital of Kazakhstan [2,200 km south-east of Moscow], where my mother worked as a doctor at the children's hospital. My father worked as an engineer at the Chemical and Metallurgical Institute. He was preparing for the defense of his doctor's thesis, but in January 1944 he was drafted to the army. Father was at the Leningrad frontline. He was an artillery-man, an ammunition carrier. In one of the battles a shell hit the ground and everybody, except for my father, perished.

My father was carried away from the battlefield, heavily wounded, and sent to the hospital in Leningrad. His left lung was shot and he had a lot of shell fragments in his arms and legs. It turned out, that the doctor in charge of his case was my mother's relative, Revekka Aronovna Finkel. She was a pulmonologist and held the rank of a major at the time. At the end of the war she was a colonel of medical service. She fixed my father up. After the treatment he continued his service in the army, but with the NKVD forces 12. He was in Bucharest, Romania, at the end of the war. After the war he returned to Leningrad and to GIPH and my mother returned to the Children's Hospital. Both worked at those places all their lives.

My most distinct recollections are connected with the time of our evacuation to Alma-Ata, when I was 4 years old. But I also remember our boarding school during the blockade. I recall my mother, being on duty, walking into our room, approaching each bed, bending over each child. And I was so jealous because she didn't come up to me immediately. I started crying bitterly. Even though she had explained to me that she was a doctor and had to treat me the same way she treated other children because some of them didn't have mothers. I understood it but didn't stop crying.

I also remember crossing the road across the Ladoga Lake on a motor boat and railroad bridges. In Alma-Ata we lived in a pise house with the family of my mother's older brother [Editor's note: A pise house was a house with walls built out of straw mixed with clay; the floor was also clay]. Later we got a room in the hotel, where the Lenfilm employees lived. I went to a kindergarten in Alma-Ata and learnt a song there. It went: 'A Jew slowly crossed the road' and so on. I was 5 years old and it was the time when mother commenced my Jewish upbringing. At that time and during my school years she kept telling me, 'Don't forget that you are a Jew and won't get away with something your Russian friends will be able to get away with'. My husband-to-be and many other Jews, with whom I spoke about it later, heard almost the same thing from their relatives. I was convinced that if I wanted to achieve something I had to work more and harder. It became my belief. I also said this to my children when the time came.

Post-war

The most striking thing in Alma-Ata was Victory Day [then end of WWII]. I heard about it when I was in the hotel entrance hall and on my way to the kindergarten. The kindergarten wasn't far away and I walked there on my own. I ran the whole way in order to tell the children about it, because almost no one had a radio at home. And still, when I recall that moment, I hear the happy screaming and see the cloud of dust, which was the result of our happy tramping and jumping around. There were a lot of other interesting things happening before that: the earthquake, our kindergarten's performance on the radio with the song 'My motherland is broad' and our trip to the Lysaya Mountain, where I tried to eat goat droppings, thinking they were berries.

I also remember a piece of a moth-ball, which I found on the hotel floor and put into my mouth, thinking it was sugar and incomparably delicious sweet beet, cooked in the drying oven, which my father brought sometimes from work. Once he came to the kindergarten in order to say good-bye before leaving for the frontline and gave me a paper bag of caramel and a book by Marshak 13. My friend and neighbor, a Kazakh girl named Tyulpana, taught me to read with the help of this book long before school.

I also remember Dzhambul's 14 funeral, upon which I incidentally came with Tyulpana, because we saw a crowd of people, passing by our hotel on their way to the theater, where the farewell took place; I also recall the departure to Leningrad and the view of the Aral sea, which we passed, and the first destroyed building in Leningrad, the Oktyabrskaya Hotel near Moscow railroad station; and the first salute on November holidays in 1945.

My father was very proud of his rank of a soldier. He stuck to a Spartan mode of life and walked a lot. Both in winter and summer he walked on foot from and to his work, approximately three kilometers. In winter he crossed the Neva river, which was covered with ice. Father loved his city very much and knew it very well. As soon as he heard about a new street, he went to explore it. He didn't go to the theater with my mother, but he liked to wander about museums on his own. He was always given some presents, but he didn't like new things and put everything into the closet. Mother used to joke about it saying that he had a 'museum of presents for comrade Stalin'.

My father worked as a senior research assistant at his Institute, although he didn't defend a doctor's thesis. In later years he worked at the Informational Department, was the academic secretary of GIPH and dealt with the distribution of precious metals for experiments. He spoke several languages besides Russian: English, German, Ukrainian, Latin and Hebrew, the language of the Torah. He had a phenomenal memory and neglected notebooks all his life. He was a very erudite person, and all employees addressed him with questions, as if he were a 'walking encyclopedia'. He was a real workaholic. When he took a vacation, he walked about Leningrad during the first week, then he would visit his relatives in Moscow and walk about Moscow during the second week, but when the third week came, he ran back to work. So, when he died, there were a lot of unused vacation days. After the war he never took a sick-leave. He took his first sick-leave two weeks before his death. He died in 1977, two and a half months after his 80th birthday was solemnly celebrated.

My father was a silent person and spoke very little. My mother used to say, 'He silences a whole room'. But when he told me something, it remained in my memory for a long time. One spring, before school exams, we had an hour off, and I went to the Orthodox Preobrazhensky Cathedral with my class- mates. We had hid our pioneer neckties under our dresses. We came from atheist families but we were curious like all children. We even tried to cross ourselves, exchanging smiles, imitating the believers.

In the evening I talked about this interesting event at home. My father was very displeased with me. He said, 'You are atheists, and you go to watch praying people, as if they were animals at the zoo. That's an outrage upon the feelings of pious people. You shouldn't do that.' I remembered these words forever and now when I enter a church as a tourist, I behave quietly, in order not to attract attention or disturb anyone. There was another incident when I climbed into the neighbor's garden with my friends and stole some cucumbers. Father was terribly angry and said, 'How dare you not respect other people's labor?'

My mother differed from my father when it came to temper. She was a sociable person, loved to chat and had a lot of friends. Her closest friend was her mate at the Institute, Nyusia, also a Jew, with whom she went to the theater and spent her vacation. In order to take me to the country- side, my mother worked in Komarovo, a resort village near Leningrad, in a district children's hospital. It only operated in the summer when a lot of children left Leningrad to spend summer holidays in kindergartens and pioneer camps, located along the Finnish Gulf. She worked there on assignment from her hospital. My mother had a very serious and responsible attitude to her job, just like my father had. She was keen on medicine. She never refused to help any of our neighbors in our big house, if they asked her to look after their sick children. She was even offended when they offered her money because she considered that assistance to sick people was her obligation according to the Hippocratic oath.

My mother's friend Nyusia listened to the 'voices', as they called it at the time in this country, that is, the radio programs Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. My father considered her anti-Soviet, didn't like her and left the room when she came to visit us. Influenced by her friend, my mother didn't quite believe in the 'correct party policy' but, just like father, had a good attitude towards Stalin. They were both very proud of him after the war. However, after the fake Doctors' Plot 15 of 1952-1953 they regarded the death of the leader rather calmly.

My father wasn't concerned about the case, but my mother was very upset. On the one hand, she was afraid to be fired, on the other hand, she suffered from undisguised suspicions, which the sick children's parents expressed towards a Jewish doctor. When usually very uncared-for children recovered, some parents apologized for their suspicions. Mother was mostly irritated by a phrase like, 'There might as well be good people among the Jews'. She often replied to it, 'They are in the majority'.

My mother was proud of her Jewish identity, telling us about the Great Jews and their contribution to the treasury of mankind, though Jewish traditions were never observed in our family. For instance, she told me about the great writer Sholem Aleichem 16 and about the scientist [Albert] Einstein. However, two customs were sacred to her and she observed them, as well as I observe them now - a separate pan for milk and the inadmissibility of food in the cemetery. [The interviewee is referring to the Russian custom of funeral repast.] 17.

Our family was not used to blame all losses on anti-Semitism. We treated the occurrence like bad weather. In such situations mother usually repeated her older brother's wife's saying, 'No need of fear for the Jews'. Mother very often used well-known folk idioms and Russian-Yiddish-Ukrainian proverbs in her speech. For example, 'Agitsyn parovoz' [heat in the steam- engine], which means 'nothing special'. My mother lived a long life. She stopped working and retired after an infarction in 1958. She lived with my family during the last years of her life and died in 1985 at the age of 86.

My school years

I went to school after we arrived in Leningrad in 1946. Only one fourth of my 42 classmates had fathers; out of those fathers some were mutilated and some drank heavily. I had a father and a mother, a good, normal family, so I was one of the lucky ones. We also lived in relatively decent conditions, as we had two rooms with a total area of 32 square meters in a communal apartment in the city center.

In 1949-1950 me and my school friends got into a difficult situation and my father had to rescue us. We were admitted to the pioneers, which we were very proud of. Under the influence of a movie called The Young Guard 18 we set up an organization of our own with the same name. The movie was about a secret youth organization that did really exist in the occupied town of Krasnodon in Donbass and fought against the German invaders. Later almost all members of the Young Guards were caught by the Germans and executed by shooting.

One fourth of our class-mates were members of our organization and our intentions were certainly the most noble: honesty, good studying and the like. We kept the secret for about half a year. When our class mistress, a Jew, found out about it, a scandal broke out, ending with a boycott and expelling us from the pioneer group. The complete terror of the situation became clear to me later, when I read about secret youth organizations being smashed by the authorities. I don't know what my parents knew about it at that time and what kind of rumors were spread.

It turned out that only I was admitted to our organization upon my word, all the others swore an oath, like real Young Guard members, but certainly with a different contents. I had tonsillitis at that time and it was resolved to admit me in my absence, just like Ulyana Gromova, the Young Guard heroine. When we understood that our silence might have a bad end, I was instructed to talk to my parents. They took the story very seriously and discussed it for a long time in the evening. The next day my father put on his worn soldier's blouse and all his medals, went to the Party's District Committee and told them about the situation. I don't know what kind of words he used in the conversation, but the case was dismissed. We were blandly scolded for hiding our good intentions from society, and our pioneer neckties were returned to us. This was how my father rescued us.

I finished school in 1956. Unfortunately, I didn't enter an institute [university] right after school because the competition was high, so I had to go work as a copyist at a Repair-Assembly Combine. My mother asked my father to arrange a job for me at GIPH, but my father, a man of principle, flatly refused to do so. In 1958 I entered the Leningrad Technological Institute of Cellulose-Paper Industry. I graduated as an engineer- technologist in 1963.

Everybody in our family liked to read, be that books, magazines or newspapers, and after the war we assembled a big library, which we still keep. This is our second library, because the first one, collected before the war, had been used for stove kindling in besieged Leningrad by people that stayed in our apartment when we had been evacuated. After the war a lot of classics were bought for me, a lot of literature about chemistry and medicine for my profession and history and art books, which I was very fond of. I didn't choose history to be my profession, because I considered this science to be too politicized. All books were in Russian.

I started to work at the Technological Department of the Giprobum Design Institute [State Design Institute for Paper Industry] and worked there as a technologist until I retired in 1996. We had a very nice and friendly team, most of the people were born between 1930 and 1939. We still keep in touch, call each other and meet from time to time. I liked the job and the business-trips, and even periodical emergencies, when we had to work till late at night and on weekends. However, there was something I really hated. Those were trips to sovkhoz fields and vegetable storages, which occurred regularly. [Editor's note: All townspeople were systematically engaged in agricultural works in kolkhozes and sovkhozes, collective and state economies, within the conditions of the chronic Soviet agricultural economical crisis.]

Married life

I got married rather late, in 1970, when I was already 31. We had a secular wedding at home, with our friends and some relatives present. My husband, Alexander Moiseyevich Shkolnikov, was born in 1933 in Leningrad. He graduated from the Leningrad Ship-Building Institute as an electrical engineer in 1957 and started to work at Gidropribor CIHD [Central Institute of Hydraulic-Engineering Devices]. He worked there all his life.

My mother knew Alexander's family very well. She worked with his aunt at the hospital and also spent her summer vacation in the village of Repino with her for 10-15 years. They often told me that Alik as they called him at home, was a wonderful man, but we didn't have a chance to meet before. One day we were sent to the theater together. We saw each other on and off for two to three years. Alexander often had to go on business-trips. When he left, we kept in contact by correspondence. We soon got married. Alexander's relatives accepted me very warmly. It was a very nice family, and the wife of Alexander's cousin, with whom they grew up, still remains my best and closest friend.

My husband's father, Moisey Mendelevich Shkolnikov, and his wife, Khana- Sarah (her common name was Anna) Abramovna Shkolnikova [nee Dvorkina] were both born in 1902 in the town of Zhlobin in Belarus, which was part of tsarist Russia. They had an economic education, lived in Leningrad and had two sons: Emmanuil, born in 1927 and Alexander, my husband.

When the war broke out, the children were evacuated from Leningrad with the kindergarten Alexander attended. At first they were brought to Yaroslavl and later to the Northern Ural. The boarding-school was located in the village of Vilva, Solikamsk district, Molotov region. Alexander's brother Emmanuil, a schoolboy at the time, lived at the same boarding-school. Their mother was later evacuated from Leningrad. She lived close to her children, but not with them, and worked as an accountant at a sovkhoz in the neighboring village.

Moisey Mendelevich Shkolnikov worked as an economist in the Purchase Department of the Oktyabrskaya Railroad before the war. He held this position up until 1943 in besieged Leningrad and was transferred to the Department of Military Reconstruction Works afterwards. Their organization was responsible for the restoration of railways, destroyed during the military operations. They reconstructed railways in Pskov, the Baltic countries and Dnepropetrovsk. He was allowed to take his family with him in 1944, so his wife and their younger son followed him to Dnepropetrovsk. After the war they returned to Leningrad and Moisey returned to his previous workplace. He died in 1958 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Leningrad. Khana moved to Astrakhan at the end of her life and lived with her older son. She died there in 1993.

Emmanuil completed secondary school in Vilva, in the Ural, in 1942 and entered the Second Leningrad Military-Navy Special School, which was evacuated from Leningrad and was located in the town of Tara, Omsk region. He finished that school in 1946 in Leningrad, but he was immediately transferred to the reserve because of poor sight. He entered the Leningrad Electro-Technical Institute of Railroad Transport and graduated from it in 1952. After graduation he left for Middle Asia to participate in the railroad construction in Tashkent. After his marriage he moved to the town of Astrakhan, where he still lives with his family. I visited them in the summer of 2002.

I always had good relations with my husband's mother and his relatives. When we got married, they gave us a one-bedroom cooperative apartment. Our son, Mikhail, was born there in 1971, and our daughter, Lyuba, followed in 1976. In the same year we moved in with my parents. We exchanged our one- bedroom apartment and two rooms of my parents in a communal apartment for a separate three-bedroom apartment.

We always got on well. My husband was a very nice man. He was known for his kindness, obligation and tenderness, and he never let anybody down. If he understood that his assistance was required, he always helped without waiting for a request. He was an optimist. I was always afraid of something bad to happen. He always calmed me down, saying 'Everything will be fine!' or 'Don't be afraid, we'll break through!' Alexander collected stamps and postcards. He liked old German movies and Charlie Chaplin, and he collected old books of the 'Life in Art' series about famous Hollywood actors. I collected books about artists.

He worked a lot, even after he was diagnosed with an incurable illness in 1991. He only stopped working in 1999, when he was confined to bed. He died in 2000, to my enormous grief. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery and rests in the same grave as his father. After his death I was in a very bad condition, and only a trip to my Aunt Rakhil and cousin Eleonora in Moscow and their sympathy softened my anguish a little. Afterwards I was able to carry on. My children are already grown-ups and have families of their own. My husband liked to joke that our children corrected our mistake: we got married late, they got married early, at the age of 19. Now they live separately from me. I live alone in our old apartment.

Our children didn't get traditional Jewish upbringing, though they identify themselves as Jews. Their mother and father are Jews, and they consider themselves Jews too, not from a religious but from a nationality point of view. Traditional Jewish customs were never observed at home and we only celebrated Soviet holidays: 7th November - the Day of the October Revolution, 1st May - the Day of the Workers' Solidarity, 8th March -Women's Day, and so on.

Mikhail graduated from the Leningrad Electro-Technical Institute named after Ulyanov-Lenin [LETI] in 1994 and works as a programmer. His wife Tamara is a Jew; they studied together. When they got married she quit, and now she looks after their daughter Asia, who was born in 1997.

My daughter, Lyubov Bugayeva [nee Shkolnikova], graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics [LITMO] in 2000. She chose to get married to a Russian man, and I insisted that she rose the issue of her Jewish nationality before the wedding. My son-in-law told me that it didn't matter to him. All in all, I've met many Russian people in my life, to whom the person was important and not his or her nationality. Of course I've also met people who were the complete opposite, but I learnt not to communicate with them or to reduce such communication to the minimum. My daughter's husband also graduated from LITMO and now works in a mobile telephone repair shop. Lyuba doesn't work at present; she looks after their daughter, Anastasia, who was born in 1999.

My cousins and their children live in different cities and countries now. All my relatives, both on my father's and my mother's side, who lived in Ukraine left for either Russia during the Soviet times, or for Israel and Germany. Actually, and strangely enough, those who were born in mixed marriages, were the first to leave. We hardly keep in touch. Sometimes we call each other, and this goes for both relatives in other countries and other cities. It's very bad that we don't communicate more, but that's the way it is.

I'm certainly very worried about Israel and get very upset, when I see and hear about acts of terrorism and the victims. It's not a foreign country to us because Jews live there. The life of the Jewish community is reviving in our city nowadays. Jewish holidays are solemnly celebrated in the best city halls. I receive food parcels on holidays from the 'Eve' Jewish charitable organization and I attend cultural events that they organize.

Glossary

Iosif Shubinsky
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Orlikova
Date of Interview: December 2001


Of all of my forefathers I only knew about my great-grandfather, but I never met him. His name was Meyer Shubinsky, and he was born at the beginning of the 19th century. He was a tailor. I think he was rich because he owned two houses and a cow. He had eight children: Tevye, Nuchem, Godl, Mosya, my grandfather Kopl, Sureh-Leah, Avram and Chaya.

The oldest son, Tevye, was born around 1830. He lived in the village of Talny near Uman. He got married there and had children. The second son was Nuchem. He was two years younger than Tevye, so he must have been born around 1832. I know that he was a cantor, and when he was praying, people from other synagogues would come to hear him. He had two children. The next son was Godl, who had two children, then came Mosya and then Kopl, my grandfather, who was born around 1850. He had a younger sister called Sureh-Leah. Her husband was called Moishe. He was a tailor and they had children. The youngest son, Avram, was a retail trader. Then there was another daughter, Chaya, but I never met her and don't know anything about her.

I would like to tell you about my grandfather Kopl's family. His eldest son was called Chaim. He was born around 1871. He had three children, who moved to America after the Revolution of 1917 1. Three years ago I got a letter saying that his eldest son is still alive. I was surprised. He is older than me - and still alive. Then my grandparents had a daughter, Golda, born in 1875, whose photo I still have. His next son was my father, Veniamin Leib, born in 1876. After him came another daughter, Chaya-Rukhl, born in 1877. She also moved to America, and her son still lives there today. She divorced her husband. Then there was another daughter, Riva, born in 1882, who was single and died when she was young. The next child was Nuchem, born in 1885, who stayed in Zvenigorodka and was killed by the Germans. In a picture I have you can see his daughter with a cigarette. She was also killed by the Germans: she looked out of the window and was shot. And finally there was Avram, the youngest son, born in 1889. That's the generation of my family that I remember.

My great-grandfather owned two houses, which stood next to each other. Between them there was a barn where horses could be kept. He left these two houses to two of his sons. My grandfather Kopl lived in one house and his older brother Mosya in the other. My grandfather was very poor. He set up a hotel in his house. In Ryzhanovka people didn't work during the week, but had fairs on Thursdays. So visitors came to the fair and stayed at my grandfather's hotel. He also cooked for them and thus earned his living. The entrance to the hotel wasn't from the street, but through the barn. There was one big room and two small rooms. There was hardly any furniture in the house. The big room was furnished with a table and long benches. My grandmother lived in one of the small rooms, so there must have been a bed or something in that room, but there was nothing else. I remember jugglers who came to the fair on Thursdays. One of them was from China. He stayed at my grandfather's hotel. An organ-grinder also stayed at his place. He had a street-organ that only played one song: 'Oh, Marusya, oh Marusya'.

All people in our family spoke Yiddish. There were many Jews in the village, but I don't remember them because we moved to Zvenigorodka when I was four. We only visited my grandfather in later years. There was a synagogue in Ryzhanovka; or maybe even two. All the Jews lived downtown, while the Russians lived on the outskirts of town. There were stores downtown and a trading square in the area where my grandfather lived. There was a tavern in the middle of the square that looked like a hall. Weddings took place there. There was a lot of dirt in the streets. After the rain it was impossible to walk in the street.

I remember my aunt Chaya-Rukhl's wedding. My grandmother was already ill. So, from our house to that tavern, where the wedding took place - it was around 200 meters - she was taken by sledge because she couldn't possibly walk through all the dirt. The dirt reached our knees! In those times young people who got married always had a chuppah - a traditional Jewish wedding ceremony under a canopy. The main participant of the ceremony was the rabbi who lead the ceremony. He gave a glass of wine to the groom, then to the bride, and then this glass was broken, which symbolized happiness. Then, when the groom put a ring on his bride's finger, he said one sentence: 'Rey akt mekadeshes li...', which means 'You will be my wife' in Yiddish. This is the official part of the ceremony. It is followed by a non- official part - the wedding feast. There was no orchestra in Ryzhanovka. There were only Jewish bands - klezmer musicians. It happened so that two weddings took place at the same time. The better klezmer musicians played at one wedding, and the worse ones at ours. There was a tradition that klezmer musicians were paid separately for each dance. For instance, if you wanted to dance a waltz, you ordered your waltz and paid them immediately. Klezmer musicians were interested in playing at richer weddings where they could earn more. However, my uncle Chaim was witty. He put three rubles on the floor, slightly covered them with his cap and went to talk to the chief klezmer musician. He said, 'Look, go play at this wedding! Don't you see - these are rich people, they throw money on the floor'. And thus he enticed them. All the guests at the wedding were Jews. They were all relatives. They married their relatives and came together again at the wedding. So, our weddings were purely Jewish.

Our neighbors were on good terms with us. A Ukrainian family lived next to my grandfather's house. They had a garden, and every time they collected fruit, they shared some with my grandfather. They were very good neighbors. I remember one landowner had a lot of cherry trees in his garden. So his wife would go around the village in a cart and throw cherries to everyone she saw, especially little children.

My father had many different professions. When he was young he visited the United States. One of his relatives, who also went by the name of Veniamin, moved to America after a pogrom 2 in Odessa, and sent an invitation for my father to come and join him there. In America, he owned a chocolate factory and a factory manufacturing wallpaper. My father worked at the latter one. He spent two and a half years in America; then he returned to Ryzhanovka. Later, after he got married, he moved to Zvenigorodka, opened a confectionary shop and manufactured wafers. He made wafers with his own hands. He made a mixture of flour, eggs and milk. Then he poured this mixture into two presses and closed them. Beneath the presses stood two big Primus stoves, which heated the presses. After enough heating, the hot wafers were taken out and processed on the table.

My mother's name was Etl Aronovna Shubinskaya, nee Upendik. She was born in Zvenigorodka in 1887. My father was eleven years older than her. He died in Kazakhstan during evacuation in 1945. They had three children: I was born on 14th January 1907 and the eldest son; one year later, in 1908, my brother Meyer was born; he was killed at the front. and in 1911 my sister Sonya, or Bidona followed. Sonya lives in America. She moved there in 1989.She recently celebrated her 90th birthday. It's amazing, I have lately paid attention to the fact that we probably have some special genes in us - we all live very long. My uncle Godl, whom I've already mentioned, lived for 100 years - he died exactly at the age of 100. My aunt Golda lived for 90 years. My mother died when she was 86, but she was ill; she had cancer. I will also turn 100 soon - in about five years.


I was four years old when we moved from Ryzhanovka to Zvenigorodka in 1911. We bought a house with grandfather Aron. I know that they didn't have enough money, so they borrowed money from their friend, a barber.

The house was nice and new. It was located on the outskirts of town, near the Russian cemetery. But there was a big square not far from it, even though it was at the end of town and only Russians lived there. The house was made of clay. It was nothing special, but nice.

The roof was made of iron. The house was divided into two. Both had two rooms and a kitchen. My father experienced both good and bad times. For some time we lived with my uncle Chaim; but then he was killed in Zvenigorodka ghetto in 1942. I remember Zvenigorodka very well. I remember that the furniture in our place wasn't very luxurious, but it included everything we needed: beds, chairs, tables, etc. My mother cooked in pots. There was a big oven, in which we baked bread for the whole week. There was a well in the yard. Every day we would fetch water from there - first the adults, and later, when I was older, I.

My father was very religious. He prayed every day. He attended the synagogue. He also fasted when it was necessary. My father kept every rule, every tradition. Every Saturday, when he went to the synagogue, he took me with him. Since he wasn't allowed to carry anything in his hands on Saturday, I carried his tallit. When I turned 13, my younger brother accompanied my father to the synagogue. We weren't allowed to carry anything in our pockets either, according to the Jewish tradition, that's why we would tie our handkerchiefs around our necks. In America, however, my father embraced some secular manners as well. He could speak English after spending more than two years there even though he wasn't really educated. But people often came to ask his advice when they were in need to know how to deal with the one or the other situation in life.

My father played the trombone. He wasn't a musician though. My mother sang; she had a wonderful voice. She mostly sang Jewish songs. By the way, she sang songs I rarely hear any more today. My brother played the mandolin. My sister couldn't sing at all.

My mother's parents lived with us. My grandmother's name was Hannah- Riva Barabash and my grandfather's Aron Mendelevich Upendik. They both died around 1928: my grandmother died first and two weeks later my grandfather passed away.

Grandfather Aron worked as a glasscutter all his life. He would go around villages and offer his services to people. He made special stretchers to carry glass to the place where it was cut. Cutting glass is hard work.

My mother was a very good cook. Her mother taught her. My grandfather's sister-in-law was a specialist when it came to cooking: she cooked for every wedding or any other celebration for which something delicious had to be cooked. She was the one who taught women to cook all kinds of different tasty things. The best dish was sweet-and-sour roast meat.

And here's how we celebrated Pesach. First of all, just like all other Jews, we burnt chametz, that is, we burned all food leftovers that had leaven in them and began to only eat matzot.

In Ryzhanovka we baked matzot at home - we made thin dough from flour and water, put it on baking trays and into the oven. The process of matzah-baking was the better holiday for young people in our village than Pesach as such. Usually, all the young people from the village gathered at our house and made a lot of matzot - 20-30 kg of matzos, much more than people make now. Now they only buy one or two kilograms, while in those times they would buy dozens of kilograms. So, first the youth would gather in our house, then in another house, then in yet another house - they would go around the village singing songs and celebrating. We held the tradition to celebrate all holidays with the whole village. On Easter Ukrainians would treat us to their delicious cakes; on Pesach we treated everyone to matzot. It was a lot of fun. In Zvenigorodka, however, there was a special machine that made matzot, so there we began to buy matzah rather than bake it ourselves.

There were four synagogues in Zvenigorodka, but there were a lot of Jews. There are very few Jews left now. My wife's sister and her husband still live in Zvenigorodka, and they say one synagogue has been given back to them. But in Ryzhanovka no Jews are left at all. The synagogue in this village was very beautiful, with many decorations... It was small but beautiful, especially inside. The other synagogues were large.

I remember how synagogues were destroyed under the Soviet rule [see struggle against religion] 3. Komsomol 4 members would march and sing: 'Away with rabbis and priests, we will climb into the heaven and scatter all gods...'

I never walked with them; I never joined the Komsomol. I was more drawn to my Jewry. My father was religious and I was a believer, too. I also attended the synagogue and prayed. Usually, we wore the same clothes as the people around us, only when we went to the synagogue we always wore hats or caps. I remember well the ceremony when I turned 13, my bar mitzvah. The ceremony was held at my uncle's, my mother's brother.

His official name was Mendl, just like my great-grandfather, but we all called him Zeidl. His name was changed in his childhood. When he was still a boy, his nose was often bleeding. His parents took him to a rabbi. The rabbi said, 'Don't call him Mendl any more, call him Zeidl. And put a little key around his neck'. They put a key around his neck and began to call him Zeidl - and he stopped bleeding. I don't know why - whether it was due to the key, or his new name, or if it just stopped in general - but fact is his nose stopped bleeding.

After he got married, he and his wife began to invite people to pray at their house; they got together for a minyan. This was a tradition back then when it was too difficult to go to the synagogue: Jewish people would pray in somebody's house. But they could only pray if ten men gathered; if there were only nine it wasn't allowed to pray, according to the tradition. But if there were nine Jewish men, they were allowed to even take a Russian man in order to be ten.

When I turned 13 and had to undergo that special ceremony to come of age and read a section of the Torah I didn't go to the synagogue, but to that minyan. There I read my part from the Torah. And everybody liked it a lot. After most people left, the hostess laid the table and treated me to dinner. I even remember that she gave me vodka to drink - that's how impressed she was with my reading. I didn't know Hebrew at the time. I could only pray in Hebrew a little, but I couldn't really read or speak it. Most of my life I dealt with the Slavic philology.

Under the Soviet power I couldn't be involved in the study of the Hebrew language. But without reading and understanding the Torah, the Bible, one cannot understand writers, architects, or artists... For example, a certain artist has made illustrations for the whole Bible. If I look at his picture from the Bible 'Return of a Prodigal Son', I can see that it's nice, but what does it mean? What son is he talking about? Why is he prodigal? In order to learn all of this, I began to read the Bible. And I got so interested in it that I didn't just read the Bible, I even began to study the Bible after I retired. And I also learned Hebrew.

So, in Zvenigorodka I began to go to school. I entered a two-year Jewish school. We were taught in Yiddish there, but nothing Jewish was taught. I learnt the ABC; I was eight or nine years old. Then one more year was added to the school, so I finished three years there. That's all, I had no other chance to study there any more - the Revolution took place; gangs 5 were all around. However, I had a great desire to study. For some time, a very short time, I studied at vocational courses, but then a special 'Worker's Department' [rabfak] 6 was opened and I studied there for some time. I studied and worked as a barber at the same time. Then I worked as a watchmaker. And then I moved to Kiev.

I was 16-17 years old. Many people were unemployed at that time, and there were special employment agencies in towns and cities. In Zvenigorodka there was no industry. There were three mills, one factory and a meat plant, if I'm not mistaken. The rest of the people worked as shoemakers. There was no place to work. Five to six kilometers outside town there was a watermill. It stood idle, but it had to be guarded. So, the employment agency offered me that job. I agreed. For some time I worked there. Then I worked as a barber in the central barber's shop.

One of my friends gave me a gift - a guitar. I wanted to learn to play the guitar very much, but I didn't know how or with whom. So I began to learn it on my own and I managed to play some songs soon. Then I met a girl who asked me if I wanted to buy a mandolin that used to belong to her brother. He had moved away and left it in her possession. I was saving money for a pair of pants at the time. So, I was facing a choice: should I spend my money on a mandolin or on a pair of pants? I bought the mandolin. I had no spare pants, but I had a mandolin. I played my mandolin, gave my guitar to my friend Kostya and we played together. Then we joined an orchestra and played with it. We performed in a club, playing waltzes and other dances. Sometimes we even played outside, in a big square and many people gathered around to listen to us.

Kostya - his full name was Konstantin Yuryev - was my best friend. His family belonged to the sect of Old Believers who combined traditions of Christian Orthodoxy and Judaism. They believed the Orthodox Church was no longer pure Christianity, while they did their best to maintain religious purity according to their understanding, so they always tried to stick to their own and live in their own communities. The Russian authorities hated them and often made raids in their villages. My friend's family lived across the square from us, so we could see one another from afar. I also had other friends, the Chudnovskies, for instance. I was a calm person. I had a lot of friends.

I was very interested in books. I would read about something interesting and then share it with my friends - and they got interested in it, too. We didn't have a lot of books at home, only a few. We read books from the library. Our club used the central library in the city. I also knew a lot of anecdotes and funny stories. My friends loved to listen to me telling them. For instance, we would go to a concert in the city garden to watch some performance. Then I would have to go home, passing by a cemetery. Not everyone would go to the outskirts, where I lived, especially not near the cemetery. People were afraid of it. But I would tell anecdotes to my friends on my way home and they were glad to walk me home. Kostya was my best friend. He felt at home at my house, and I felt at home at his house. When I talked with Kostya, I would speak Russian. When he came over to me he would speak Yiddish. Later, he knew Yiddish very well because he spent a lot of time in our house and heard Yiddish every day.

I remember how the Soviets came to power. First we had a temporary government. We had a Russian teacher at school, Zhakov. He organized a manifestation. He went to the second floor of the post office, went out on the balcony and talked to people. The crowd listened to him attentively. I don't remember what he was saying, but I remember how he took a portrait of the tsar, tore it to pieces and threw it over the balcony.

Then terrible things began to happen. The Bolsheviks came; Denikin's 7 soldiers came; Petliura's 8 soldiers came and then some rebels came to our village, too. It was horrible. All the time we had to hide from everyone in basements because of the shooting. I remember I was recovering from typhus when Denikin's soldiers came to our village. One of them came to our house, stood over me with a hand grenade and wanted to throw it at me. My father stood between us. The soldier hit him with a rifle or something, and my father fell down. I think I will never forget this incident.

Every time the government and the power changed, we knew we'd better go into hiding. For instance, one of our Russian neighbors came to our house and sought for weapons. We certainly had none. He couldn't steal anything from us, so he decided to break our gates - it was all he could do to harm us. One time Petliura's soldiers came and knocked at our door yelling, 'Open the door!'. In the window we could see that those were soldiers, so my uncle jumped out of the window on the other side of the house, went to Petliura's officers and brought them to our house. The officers looked like decent people. They talked to their soldiers and took them away. We had a neighbor, who spoke fluent Ukrainian, and once she went and talked to the soldiers and they just left. The neighbor was Jewish but she spoke fluent Ukrainian because she lived in the village. So, all in all, there were different experiences. Another time, when Denikin's soldiers attacked our village, an old man, the father of the famous Jewish singer Khromchenko - thought he could talk to them and reach some agreement. [Khromchenko, Solomon (1907-2002): famous Ukrainian born Jewish singer. Soloist in Kiev and later in Moscow's Bolshoi Theater; taught at the State Musical Pedagogical Institute. In 1991 Khromchenko repatriated to Israel, where he continued both his singing and teaching activities.] We all hid, while he went out to talk to them, but they took him to the wall of our house and shot him. Every regime brought more victims. Representatives of the Soviet power came to every village and town, demanding gold, money, food... It was easier for us, workers, at that time. I was also working then, combining my studies and work. I got used to it.

My parents didn't care. They only wanted their life to be quiet and comfortable. They never got involved in politics, they didn't know how to deal with it. My grandfather read a lot of newspapers though and insisted that the Bolsheviks were the best because they were against the war. Well, that was his understanding, but neither he nor anyone else from our family got involved in politics.

I remember the famine 9 of the 1930s. My father was swollen up due to starvation; I was starving, too; everybody was starving. We thought it was easier to live in Kiev because it was possible to find jobs there. In Zvenigorodka, let alone in Ryzhanovka, it was too hard to find a job. So, we moved from Zvenigorodka to Kiev. The situation there was also very difficult. For instance, my father got a salary, bought a loaf of bread with this money, but on his way home this loaf of bread was stolen from him and he came home with nothing. It was a real tragedy. Certainly, we were all starving.

This was in 1932. It was hard to find work in Kiev, but we had to find an apartment. We settled in a house on Novo-Prozorovskaya Street, in the area of Vladimirsky market. It was a private house made from stables. Many apartments were made from former stables and then given out to rent. So, we lived in one of those. We occupied one room: we slept, cooked, and ate in this one room. There were several people living in this one room: my father, mother, brother, my sister with her husband, and I. Sonya's husband Grisha Varenburg served in the army and as soon as he returned from the army they got married. He worked as a barber from his early childhood.

I couldn't find any job first, but finally I found work at a tailor's shop. I was a simple worker there; helped put material in neat horizontal rows. I worked there for six months and then I entered university. Of course, I didn't enter university immediately. After the tailor's shop was closed, I was looking for another job. I went to the plant that manufactured fire extinguishers. I couldn't work there for a long time because it was very hard work. At the same time, my brother was working at a disinfection station. He worked as a paramedic. One day he offered me to come and work with him. So I went there and worked as a barber. This station was located very far, almost at the other end of the city, which is why I was given a room to live in that area. So, my brother and I lived and worked there. But I wanted to study. One day I went and got registered at the library. I began to read books. Soon, I was asked to help some workers with finding books and thus I became a librarian at that station. Soon after that I entered the Library Institute. It used to be called Kharkov Institute of Journalism, but later it was renamed Library Institute and yet later - All-Ukrainian Institute of Communist Enlightenment. Anyway, my diploma is equal to the diploma of a teacher.

When I studied at university, especially from 1934 to 1937 [during the so-called Great Terror] 10, people were arrested practically every day. Almost all of our teachers were arrested. But we believed that everything was justified. We were sure of that and therefore didn't protest. Moreover, there were many married couples at university, and many wives denied their arrested husbands. They said, 'If he is like that, I don't need him!'.

I joined the Communist Party when I was in the army. There were many people who didn't join the party. I studied at that university for some time, but I received my diploma from the Pedagogical Institute.

When I graduated, so-called 'buyers' came to select workers for their institutions. That's when I was selected to work at the department of manuscripts in the library of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. I had never even dreamt about it! You can't even imagine the place I worked at. It was so interesting there that every day I would go to work as if it was the cinema. Every day I would learn something new. I was working on the subject of Russian philology back then. I remember, before I studied at university, I didn't like working, I only liked reading. When I was a barber, I always hated it when clients came.

There were many Jews who came to Kiev from other cities and small towns. But everyone treated them nicely. There were a lot of mixed marriages, nobody thought of nationality at the time.

My father worked as a glass-cutter at the Physiology Institute. My mother was a housewife. My brother Meyer attended some medical vocational courses in Zvenigorodka, then worked in the hospital under the leadership of the well-known doctor Shmigelsky. By the way, Shmigelsky had a Jewish wife.

My brother worked as a nurse. Then he moved, after Doctor Sigalov took him as his assistant. When World War II broke out, my brother had a special red paper in his military ticket, which meant that at the first call-up he should come to the military enlistment and registration committee. He went there before any call-up. He was assigned to a military unit on the second day of the war [see Great Patriotic War] 11. We never saw him again. Neighbors told us he had come to say goodbye, but we weren't home. In May 1941 he got married. His wife went into evacuation; she was a teacher. After returning from evacuation she fought with us for our apartment, so we didn't communicate with her much afterwards. I think she got married again. My sister Sonya worked at a sewing factory. Then she got married and worked as a manicurist at the same place where her husband worked. Then they moved to America. She has a daughter and grandchildren. She even has a great-granddaughter.

When I was young I had some love affairs, of course. In Zvenigorodka my friend Kostya had a cousin, Marusya Kovalyova. She was a very nice girl. We would often get together, take our instruments and celebrate holidays at her house. We mainly celebrated Russian holidays. I remember we played a lot, but I don't remember anybody dancing. We also sang songs there. And we drank vodka. We never got drunk, we just drank a bit. In Kiev I had a girl-friend, whom I met accidentally in Zvenigorodka. I came to visit, and she came to visit there as well. She was a very nice and interesting girl. Once our book club had a picnic in the forest and we had a guest, a well-known critic called Adelgeim. I invited my girl-friend to this picnic, and he enticed her. He began dating her, so I dropped her.

I continued to study music on my own. I had a record-player at home. One time I was buying records and met my neighbor, Grisha Boginsky. He asked me, 'Where are you going?' I said, 'Home'. He said, 'Wait, let's go to this house, there are interesting girls there. I will introduce you to them'. I said, 'Fine, but what about my records?' He said, 'No problem, take them with you'. So, we went to that house. There were two young girls: a blond and a brunette. I was introduced to them and suddenly I said, 'Wait a second, you are Fayerstein'. I was right: she was my far relative from Zvenigorodka. Her first name was Eva. She was eleven years younger than me. I took her out. But first I asked, 'Oh, what about my records?' She said, 'You can leave them here'. So I left my records at her house and came by the next day, as if to pick them up. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I married her in 1939. There was no wedding ceremony; we simply went to the registration office and began to live together as husband and wife. In those times people often did just that.

Eva worked at a Jewish collective farm 12 in Zvenigorodka. She came to Kiev to do accountancy courses. She didn't finish those courses: she was working and studying at the same time. Anyway, we got married. By the way, here's a good example of ethnic relations. Her father had a cousin who married a Russian peasant woman. They had children, grandchildren; then they died. Many years later I went to Zvenigorodka on vacation. One time my wife's sister came over. She told us that a man had come from the village of Volyntsi and heard that her last name was Fayerstein. He asked her, 'Is your last name Fayerstein?' She replied, 'Yes'. He said, 'In our village we also have Fayersteins'. My father-in-law said when he heard this story: 'To tell you the truth, it was my cousin who married a Russian girl and who lived in Volyntsi'. Later, we had a whole family from Volyntsi coming over to meet us. We also learned that there were Fayersteins in other villages: Shpol and Morinets. They only changed the name Fayerstein to Farstein - it was easier for them to pronounce it that way. One time a young man from Shpol came, who also came from a family of Farsteins. He explained to us that his grandfather was still called Fayerstein. This young man got married and came to live in my apartment for two years - he studied at university, but stayed at my place even after his graduation.

When I got married we began to rent an apartment on Novo-Prozorovsky Street, across from my parents'. The street was so narrow that I felt both living at home and living with my wife. We had no kitchen, so we cooked on a Primus stove. We had a small corridor, where we cooked. My wife worked at a secret construction site on Zhukov Island. I worked at the Academy of Sciences. Our life was fine. On 22nd June, at 6am, we heard shooting. We went outside. A son of our neighbor, who had just come home from the army, said, 'Oh, these are training maneuvers!' Later, when I came to work, I saw a piece of a shell - this shell had exploded somewhere near the Bolshevik Plant and one of my colleagues had taken a piece from it.

We worked on Sundays. It was hard. We often worked on Saturdays and Sundays. I had a radio for some time, but according to the Soviet law I had to turn it in to the authorities. I remember I took it there, but before I gave it away, I was able to listen to Molotov 13 and Stalin, who announced the war. There was no panic; people were simply worried. Then I was called up. I came to the military enlistment committee and was sent to the ammunition warehouse. I worked there for two weeks. We loaded weapons. We left Kiev when the Germans were already very close. My wife went with me. We made two backpacks out of sacks, put them on our backs and went on foot. I remember crossing the bridge across the Dneper. We walked on foot, all the time. We stopped at Glukhov. My wife ate with me. I simply sat her down at my table, and my colleagues didn't object. So she stayed with us. Later I gave her a special paper that proved that she was the wife of a soldier and gave her the right to evacuate. I had no rank at the time. I was just a soldier. There was a group of workers of the Academy of Sciences, who were taught some things about fighting. We learned lubricating oil materials. We were taught by General Yakshin. We were joking that after the Academy of Sciences we entered the Academy of Yakshin.

We retreated and learned at the same time: during the day we retreated, at night we learned. Well, I can't say it was real studying. Anyway, we finished the course and I got my rank as junior lieutenant.

I became commander of a rifle platoon and was sent to Kursk region. The commander of a company was killed and I had no idea what to do! Anyway, since I was sent there, I had to do something. So I went to that company. The soldiers were asleep because it was nighttime. I asked, 'Is anyone here?' An assistant was there. I asked, 'Do you have a list of some sort?' He said, 'No, just these guys, the rest have been killed...'. It was total chaos, nobody knew anything. In the morning an attack started. We began to attack. And I knew nothing, absolutely nothing: who should go where and how. But I went into attack and my platoon followed. I didn't even know who exactly was in my platoon. We came to our destination at dawn. Firing began - the Germans were firing. It didn't last long, only for about 30 minutes. I was wounded very soon. First I didn't even feel it; I only felt warmth. I put my hand to the place that felt warm and saw something red. I realized it was blood and decided to retreat. I saw that other soldiers were retreating as well. The sun was shining and it was frosty.

The Germans occupied a school building and could easily see everything we did. We were crawling. Suddenly one of our soldiers said, 'Do you have matches?' I said, 'No, I don't smoke'. He searched his pockets and found some matches; then he set some hay on fire. The smoke from the fire helped us crawl further. We only heard the sound of flying bullets. I had a winter hat that was tied on top. I wanted to tie it under my chin, but my hands were frozen. By the time I had crawled to the commander of the company my hands, ears, nose and feet were frozen. When I reached him he looked at me and said, 'Are you done?' I replied, 'Yes, I am. I'm wounded', whereupon he said, 'Ok, leave'.

I went to the hospital. But I didn't spend too much time there. When I came back, officers from the personnel department asked me, 'Do you speak German?' I replied, 'Yes, but not perfectly'. They said, 'Will you be an interpreter for the platoon?' I said, 'I will'. So, I became an interpreter. One day the chief of the political unit came to our platoon by car. He told me, 'As of tomorrow you will work for me; I'm taking you to work for the division'. So, I got to the division. I was appointed senior instructor of the political unit of the division to work with the troops of the enemy. It was a high position. The same position belonged to Erich Weinert, the famous German poet. [Weinert, Erich (1890-1953): German poet, writer, painter and illustrator; fled from Germany in 1933, fought in the Spanish Civil War in 1937 and was granted asylum in the former Soviet Union. He returned to Berlin in 1946 and continued writing poetry directed against militarism, nationalism and fascism.] In general, such positions belonged to important people.

I was given a pair of horses, a driver, and a mortar. But my mortar didn't fire mines - it fired leaflets. I would take this mortar and go to the front line; it was particularly good to do that at night. I would fire it, making sure that the wind blew in the right direction. I also used a record-player with German records. I went to the Germans and talked to them, calling upon them to give up, to stop shooting at us, etc. Soon, a telegram came from the headquarters that ordered my officers to send me to the headquarters. So, I went to the headquarters of the army. There, all senior instructors from all divisions were gathered for advance training. We spent two months in training. This was in the area of Zhytomyr, Ukraine, around the end of 1943.

There were also courses for German anti-fascists. During these two months we moved to the territory of Poland. We found ourselves in the town of Dembnitsa, which was located near the San River. A count lived in that town. His mansion was given to us for training. We, Soviet soldiers, occupied one half of it, while the German anti- fascists occupied the other half. We often talked to each other and exchanged opinions. We finished our training at the same time as they did. Upon completion we were put in two lines, facing each other. We were told, 'Every instructor should choose a German to work with'. Everyone tried to choose Germans who spoke Russian, so that it would be easier to work with them. But I was looking for a German who wouldn't speak Russian: first of all because that way I would have plenty of German-language practice with him; and secondly, he wouldn't escape. Those who spoke Russian could easily escape, but a German soldier who didn't speak Russian; where would he go? So, I chose young, 18-year-old, Hans, a student. He gave up and claimed he was against the fascists. So, we went to a new unit. I began to work with this German. I dictated letters to him and he wrote them because he could write in German much better than me. We would go to the front line and talk to the Germans. By the way, I wish I had kept my coat, which was full of bullet and shell holes. We would play a record with German songs, and then the Russian song Katyusha, which the Germans liked very much; they even shouted to us to play Katyusha. And then we began to fire at them... with our letters.

Then he would say, 'Your commander, such and such, is leading you to certain death. Stop fighting. The fascists say that the Russians kill their prisoners of war. That's not true. See, I'm German, my name is Hans, and I'm alive and talking to you'. These were the words I dictated to him. One day, our scouts came with five Germans, who had given up after reading our letters. I was awarded a medal for this. One time an officer said at our party meeting, 'What are you looking at? Look at Shubinsky: he had no weapon, but captivated five German soldiers'.

For a long time I knew nothing about my parents. Later I learnt that my parents evacuated from Kiev. They left on their own, without any organization. I knew they were having a bad time at different evacuation destinations. I wrote to many places but couldn't get any certain information about them. I was looking for them for a long time. Only in 1943 I was informed that my parents were in Kazakhstan. My wife also went there. My father died there. But I don't even know where he was buried. There is no cemetery there - a stone was simply put on his grave. Here, in Kiev, I set up a special tombstone for my mother, after she died, and for my father.

There was no anti-Semitism in the army. Only Jews served in the first political department, led by Fux. The chief of the political department, Betkham, was also Jewish. In the second political department I was the only Jew, but in none of these places did I feel anti-Semitism.

Soldiers rarely get a leave during the war, but I was given one. I went to Kiev. My wife was in Kiev already; she stayed at a friend's house. There was no place to live. I was given a room that belonged to one woman, who lived alone in two rooms. She was certainly against us but didn't want to have a lot of trouble, so she agreed to let us stay there. We lived in Stalinka [a district in Kiev]. Later, we changed the room for a basement because our relations with that woman were bad. Our room in the basement was nice but small. We lived on Ulyanovy Street, opposite the polyclinic. We created two rooms in the basement. In the beginning we got constantly flooded from the first floor because our ceiling was partly ruined.

I was elected chairman of the house committee. Every house had such committees to keep order in the house. Once, I had some high officials come visit me. After they climbed down to my basement with great difficulty, they told me they would give me another apartment. They made me number one on the privileged list for apartments. For ten years I remained number one on that list, even though apartments were given to other people. Ten years later, I was offered a new apartment. It wasn't new in the strict sense of the word: somebody lived there but got a better apartment, and I was given this one. But I have to say: it was a good apartment, even if just a communal apartment 14. There were six neighbors: a Russian from Novosibirsk in the first apartment, a Pole in the second, a Ukrainian in the third, a Chinese in the fourth, a Jew in the fifth, and me. Six neighbors of different nationalities, but our relationships were wonderful. Why? Because we hardly spoke to each other.

In the morning I would see one of my neighbors on my way to work and say, 'Good morning'. In the evening I would come home, see another neighbor and say, 'Good night'. That's all, no other relations. We never celebrated holidays together or visited one another. It was wonderful to live that way. But when I received my next apartment, these neighbors came to me and said, 'Now we can tell you that we are sorry you are leaving'. I asked 'Why?' And the answer was: 'Because we were never enemies, but we never were friends either'. However, for instance, when one neighbor's daughter had to write something in English for school, I helped her and she got an excellent mark. Or, take the husband of our Chinese neighbor: he was an artist, but illiterate. Sometimes he had to write inscriptions on tombstones, so I helped him to spell words correctly. I lived 22 years in that communal apartment. It was really close to my workplace, just across the street. Wonderful! But it was still a communal apartment. Afterwards I got a separate apartment in another district of Kiev - Teremki. It was a new district. I received a two-bedroom apartment. It was a wonderful, excellent, quiet place. I couldn't have dreamt of anything better. I lived there for 20 years.

I felt anti-Semitism only when I heard of the Doctors' Plot 15. I worked in the department of manuscripts of the Republican Library, and the chief of department was David Mikhailovich.

There was a Jewish newspaper in America - I think it still exists - called Forverts. Its editor once came to Kiev and visited our department. Usually, when high-ranking officials came, I was always present at the meetings. This wasn't because I was so smart or important, but because my chief worked part-time at a university, and he was mostly occupied there, so he didn't know all the details of what was going on in our department. Therefore he always asked me to be present. That time we talked to the guest, and my chief showed him a manuscript by Gogol 16. It was a large notebook written in Gogol's handwriting. This original was of great historical value. After we talked, the guest left. Soon, the director summoned the chief of my department. When he returned, he said that there was a rumor that one of us wanted to sell this manuscript to that American guest for money. It was a very unpleasant story. A similar story happened to me, when I was accused of taking an original from the library. It took a very long time to clarify things, and I realized that there was some reason behind it all.

During the first war in 1956 in Israel, I heard my new chief of department saying, 'I wish I could go and shoot a few Jews'. That's when I felt anti-Semitism. And he was an invalid - he had lost his leg in the war.

I remember the Jewish Cabinet of the Academy of Sciences. It existed until 1948. I knew its workers Spivak and Loitsker, very well. I often went there to listen to the best Jewish actors - Anna Guzik and others. Spivak was a highly educated man, a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences. Nevertheless, he was killed in 1949. Litsker was imprisoned but then released. He couldn't find a job, so we wanted to take him to our department. But my Jewish boss was against it. He said, 'We are two Jews here - why do we need a third one?' Such things happened as well.

After the war my wife worked as a bookkeeper in a food store. She worked there until her retirement.

Our son Boris was born in 1948. My wife and I always spoke Yiddish to one another, and my mother always spoke Yiddish to her grandson. He was a good boy and a good friend of his grandmother. He is a mathematician now; he graduated from university, then finished some computer courses and now his work deals with computers. He supports Jewish traditions in his family.

My grandson Zhenya lives in Israel. He graduated from Jerusalem University. He served in the Israeli army and upon completion of his service he was offered to stay in the army. He has some rank there now. So my family is scattered around the world. My wife's sister remained in Zvenigorodka, while her grandson lives in Israel.

My wife Eva died in 1985. Since then I've been living alone. My son would come visit me and cook. But gradually I realized I couldn't take care of myself any more. Then I got ill and was taken to hospital. So, we decided to unite with my son's family.

I devoted all my life to Russian and Slavic manuscripts: Russian writers such as Gogol and Turgenev 17, Ukrainian writers, descriptions of autographs of Ukrainian writers starting from the end of the 10th century and up to the middle of the 19th century.

Was only Gogol anti-Semitic? What about Pushkin 18? What about Chekhov 19? Once Sholem Aleichem 20 wrote something and asked Chekhov to review this work, but Chekhov refused. Leo Tolstoy 21 and Korolenko 22 were real Russian intelligentsia. Every nation has good and bad people.

The manuscripts that I was accused of selling, were actually transferred to a secret storage place. They may well have been destroyed. I only know there were manuscripts by Sholem Aleichem, typed, with his remarks. It was a greeting card with an invitation to dinner. It said, 'I invite you to dinner, to eat gefilte fish'. From 1949 to 1990, nobody studied Jewish manuscripts in the Academy of Sciences, and that's 50 years. Once there was a man called Epstein, who studied them. I remember him because I helped him: he wanted to measure the length of the Torah scroll, so we put it on the floor and measured it. But after Epstein nobody ever studied them! Sometimes people turned to me with questions, but not in our department. I was once invited to the Central Archive. They found two manuscripts and didn't know what they were. I went over there and looked at them. There was one small book. I opened it and closed it almost at once. They asked, 'So, you don't know what it is?' I said, 'Yes, I know what it is'. When I opened it, I saw gallows and dead bodies on them. So I said, 'It is Megilat Esther. And this other piece I need to read some more'. I read it and it turned out to be a section from the Torah. That was the only case when somebody was interested in Jewish manuscripts.

I retired and began to study them. Before my retirement I couldn't study them. But now I'm very interested in these things: I read the Torah and learn Hebrew words. I'm very glad that Jewish life has lately revived in Kiev. Three synagogues and a kosher cafeteria are operating; there are Jewish programs on TV, where I can learn the news about Jewish life in Ukraine and in Israel. A lot of interesting Jewish newspapers are published as well. It's wonderful that I can buy matzot any time I want. Sometimes a car comes to my house and takes me to Hesed where I spend the whole day, listening to Jewish concerts, watching Jewish movies and just talking to people who are spiritually close to me.


Glossary

1 Russian Revolution of 1917: Revolution in which the tsarist regime was overthrown in the Russian Empire and, under Lenin, was replaced by the Bolshevik rule. The two phases of the Revolution were: February Revolution, which came about due to food and fuel shortages during World War I, and during which the tsar abdicated and a provisional government took over. The second phase took place in the form of a coup led by Lenin in October/November (October Revolution) and saw the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks.

2 Pogroms in Ukraine: In the 1920s there were many anti-Semitic gangs in Ukraine. They killed Jews and burnt their houses, they robbed their houses, raped women and killed children.

3 Struggle against religion: The 1930s was a time of anti-religion struggle in the USSR. In those years it was not safe to go to synagogue or to church. Places of worship, statues of saints, etc. were removed; rabbis, Orthodox and Roman Catholic priests disappeared behind KGB walls.

4 Komsomol: Communist youth political organization created in 1918. The task of the Komsomol was to spread of the ideas of communism and involve the worker and peasant youth in building the Soviet Union. The Komsomol also aimed at giving a communist upbringing by involving the worker youth in the political struggle, supplemented by theoretical education. The Komsomol was more popular than the Communist Party because with its aim of education people could accept uninitiated young proletarians, whereas party members had to have at least a minimal political qualification.

5 Gangs: During the Russian Civil War there were all kinds of gangs in the Ukraine. Their members came from all the classes of former Russia, but most of them were peasants. Their leaders used political slogans to dress their criminal acts. These gangs were anti-Soviet and anti-Semitic. They killed Jews and burnt their houses, they robbed their houses, raped women and killed children.

6 Rabfak (Rabochiy Fakultet - Workers' Faculty in Russian): Established by the Soviet power usually at colleges or universities, these were educational institutions for young people without secondary education. Many of them worked beside studying. Graduates of Rabfaks had an opportunity to enter university without exams.

7 Denikin, Anton Ivanovich (1872-1947): White Army general. During the Russian Civil War he fought against the Red Army in the South of Ukraine.

8 Petliura, Simon (1879-1926): Ukrainian politician, member of the Ukrainian Social Democratic Working Party, one of the leaders of Centralnaya Rada (Central Council), the national government of Ukraine (1917-1918). Military units under his command killed Jews during the Civil War in Ukraine. In the Soviet-Polish war he was on the side of Poland; in 1920 he emigrated. He was killed in Paris by the Jewish nationalist Schwarzbard in revenge for the pogroms against Jews in Ukraine.

9 Famine in Ukraine: In 1920 a deliberate famine was introduced in the Ukraine causing the death of millions of people. It was arranged in order to suppress those protesting peasants who did not want to join the collective farms. There was another dreadful deliberate famine in 1930-1934 in the Ukraine. The authorities took away the last food products from the peasants. People were dying in the streets, whole villages became deserted. The authorities arranged this specifically to suppress the rebellious peasants who did not want to accept Soviet power and join collective farms.

10 Great Terror (1934-1938): During the Great Terror, or Great Purges, which included the notorious show trials of Stalin's former Bolshevik opponents in 1936-1938 and reached its peak in 1937 and 1938, millions of innocent Soviet citizens were sent off to labor camps or killed in prison. The major targets of the Great Terror were communists. Over half of the people who were arrested were members of the party at the time of their arrest. The armed forces, the Communist Party, and the government in general were purged of all allegedly dissident persons; the victims were generally sentenced to death or to long terms of hard labor. Much of the purge was carried out in secret, and only a few cases were tried in public 'show trials'. By the time the terror subsided in 1939, Stalin had managed to bring both the Party and the public to a state of complete submission to his rule. Soviet society was so atomized and the people so fearful of reprisals that mass arrests were no longer necessary. Stalin ruled as absolute dictator of the Soviet Union until his death in March 1953.

11 Great Patriotic War: On 22nd June 1941 at 5 o'clock in the morning Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union without declaring war. This was the beginning of the so-called Great Patriotic War. The German blitzkrieg, known as Operation Barbarossa, nearly succeeded in breaking the Soviet Union in the months that followed. Caught unprepared, the Soviet forces lost whole armies and vast quantities of equipment to the German onslaught in the first weeks of the war. By November 1941 the German army had seized the Ukrainian Republic, besieged Leningrad, the Soviet Union's second largest city, and threatened Moscow itself. The war ended for the Soviet Union on 9th May 1945.

12 Collective farm (in Russian kolkhoz): In the Soviet Union the policy of gradual and voluntary collectivization of agriculture was adopted in 1927 to encourage food production while freeing labor and capital for industrial development. In 1929, with only 4% of farms in kolkhozes, Stalin ordered the confiscation of peasants' land, tools, and animals; the kolkhoz replaced the family farm.

13 Molotov, V. P. (1890-1986): Statesman and member of the Communist Party leadership. From 1939, Minister of Foreign Affairs. On June 22, 1941 he announced the German attack on the USSR on the radio. He and Eden also worked out the percentages agreement after the war, about Soviet and western spheres of influence in the new Europe.

14 Communal apartment: The Soviet power wanted to improve housing conditions by requisitioning 'excess' living space of wealthy families after the Revolution of 1917. Apartments were shared by several families with each family occupying one room and sharing the kitchen, toilet and bathroom with other tenants. Because of the chronic shortage of dwelling space in towns communal or shared apartments continued to exist for decades. Despite state programs for the construction of more houses and the liquidation of communal apartments, which began in the 1960s, shared apartments still exist today.

15 Doctors' Plot: The Doctors' Plot was an alleged conspiracy of a group of Moscow doctors to murder leading government and party officials. In January 1953, the Soviet press reported that nine doctors, six of whom were Jewish, had been arrested and confessed their guilt. As Stalin died in March 1953, the trial never took place. The official paper of the Party, the Pravda, later announced that the charges against the doctors were false and their confessions obtained by torture. This case was one of the worst anti-Semitic incidents during Stalin's reign. In his secret speech at the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956 Khrushchev stated that Stalin wanted to use the Plot to purge the top Soviet leadership.

16 Gogol, Nikolai (1809-1852): Russian novelist, dramatist, satirist, founder of the so-called critical realism in Russian literature, best known for his novel the Dead Souls (1842).

17 Turgenev, Ivan Sergeyevich (1818-1883): Russian writer, correspondent member of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1860). Turgenev was a great master of the Russian language and psychological analysis and he had a great influence on the development of Russian and world literature.

18 Pushkin, Alexandr (1799-1837): Russian poet and prose writer, among the foremost figures in Russian literature. Pushkin established the modern poetic language of Russia, using Russian history for the basis of many of his works. His masterpiece is Eugene Onegin, a novel in verse about mutually rejected love. The work also contains witty and perceptive descriptions of Russian society of the period. Pushkin died in a duel.

19 Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich (1860-1904): Russian short-story writer and dramatist. Chekhov's hundreds of stories concern human folly, the tragedy of triviality, and the oppression of banality. His characters are drawn with compassion and humor in a clear, simple style noted for its realistic detail. His focus on internal drama was an innovation that had enormous influence on both Russian and foreign literature. His success as a dramatist was assured when the Moscow Art Theater took his works and staged great productions of his masterpieces, such as Uncle Vanya or The Three Sisters. and also had some religious instruction.

20 Sholem Aleichem (pen name of Shalom Rabinovich (1859-1916): Yiddish author and humorist, a prolific writer of novels, stories, feuilletons, critical reviews, and poem in Yiddish, Hebrew and Russian. He also contributed regularly to Yiddish dailies and weeklies. In his writings he described the life of Jews in Russia, creating a gallery of bright characters. His creative work is an alloy of humor and lyricism, accurate psychological and details of everyday life. He founded a literary Yiddish annual called Di Yidishe Folksbibliotek (The Popular Jewish Library), with which he wanted to raise the despised Yiddish literature from its mean status and at the same time to fight authors of trash literature, who dragged Yiddish literature to the lowest popular level. The first volume was a turning point in the history of modern Yiddish literature. Sholem Aleichem died in New York in 1916. His popularity increased beyond the Yiddish-speaking public after his death. Some of his writings have been translated into most European languages and his plays and dramatic versions of his stories have been performed in many countries. The dramatic version of Tevye the Dairyman became an international hit as a musical (Fiddler on the Roof) in the 1960s.

21 Tolstoy, Lev Nikolayevich (1828-1910): Russian novelist and moral philosopher, who holds an important place in his country's cultural history as an ethical philosopher and religious reformer. Tolstoy, alongside Dostoyevsky, made the realistic novel a literary genre, ranking in importance with classical Greek tragedy and Elizabethan drama. He is best known for his novels, including War and Peace, Anna Karenina and The Death of Ivan Ilyich, but also wrote short stories and essays and plays. Tolstoy took part in the Crimean War and his stories based one the defense of Sevastopol, known as Sevastopol Sketches, made him famous and opened St. Petersburg's literary circles to him. His main interest lay in working out his religious and philosophical ideas. He condemned capitalism and private property and was a fearless critic, which finally resulted in his excommunication from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1901. His views regarding the evil of private property gradually estranged him from his wife, Yasnaya Polyana, and children, except for his daughter Alexandra, and he finally left them in 1910. He died on his way to a monastery at the railway junction of Astapovo.

22 Korolenko, Vladimir (1853-1921): Russian writer and publicist, honorary member of the Petersburg and Russian Academies. His stories and novels are full of democratic and humane ideas; he criticized the revolutionary terror that seized the country after 1917.

It was not easy to talk to Gisya Rubinchik. She was constantly turning her eyes towards the door of her sick son's room. Thus it was sometimes embarrassing to ask her about details of various events. People like her can be called great martyrs - so many ordeals she had to withstand! A cultured, educated and noble-looking person, at her 83 years of age, she has preserved a tenacious memory, expressive speech, and most importantly, an unusual courage.

My family background

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family background

I was born in 1919 in the town of Shklov located on the Dnieper river. When I was young there was a magnificent park in this town, second after the one in Minsk in size and beauty. Shklov was a small, green, and very picturesque town. It's famous in Russian history. When it was still a village, Catherine II 1 declared it one of her favorites. Poles lived there, Belarus and a lot of Jews, too. They were generally craftsmen. Everyone lived in peace and friendship. The doors of our house were never locked.

My father's name was Evsei Lapis. Evsei is a Russian alteration of the Jewish name Ieshua. Later, when I received my passport, an illiterate employee of the passport bureau put down my patronymic absolutely wrong: Gamseyevna. My real name is Gisya Evseyevna, but she wrote it down the way she heard it: Gamseyevna. My father came from Shklov. When he was young, he worked with his father in a mill, which stood on the bank of a lake, above the Dnieper river.

My father had three brothers. The eldest was Moisei, and the younger ones were called Abram and Honya. They moved to Petrograd after 1917, when the Pale of Settlement 2 was abolished. He also had three sisters. Fanya was a real beauty. She lived with her husband in Smolensk, and then moved to Lvov. For the first 10 years of their marriage they had no children. Then a daughter, Zoya, was born, who now lives in Germany. My father's youngest sister, Liza, was an active communist. She married one of our relatives. I don't remember what kind of kinship that was, maybe one of her cousins. Then she divorced him, married a Russian guy and left with him for Murmansk, a seaport in the north of Russia. Her second husband, Smirnov Sergei Alexandrovich, was the secretary of the Murmansk regional committee of the Communist Party and supervised personnel allocation in all parts of the region.

The third sister, Haya, lived with us after the death of her husband. When her husband, Vladimir Shur, was still alive, their family lived in the neighboring settlement Kopys on the Dnieper river. Their older son was called Lev. Their second son, Zyama, fell from a swing and struck his head against a stone. I was still small, when he died. Their third child, Mishenka, was born in Shklov, where Aunt Haya moved to get help from her mother, my grandmother Sore-Riva Lapis [nee Shafkid]. Right then Haya's husband, Vladimir, committed suicide. As it became clear later, the reason for this act was nonsense, or better, his kindness. Someone had borrowed 90 rubles of community money from him and hadn't paid back the debt. Vladimir was supposed to report it. He felt such remorse, as if he had embezzled the money, and hung himself. It was such a horror, I remember, when it happened. Haya fell ill after this news, bleeding from her throat. The children and she had found shelter in our house, although it was already rather crowded, because other people lived in the second half.

Unfortunately, I don't remember when exactly my parents were born. My father was born around 1885. I don't know anything about his education. He served in the army from 1914 to 1918, participated in World War I, and then in the Civil War 3. He was a very strong person, strong-willed and brave. He didn't join any party and stayed away from politics. He was awarded a St. George Cross 4 for his service at the front. I remember, we had a photo that showed my mother and my father's sister sitting, and standing behind them were my father and his friend, a Russian, with St. George Crosses on their chests. It was a very rare award for Jews. Father returned from the war as an invalid: he lost a leg and one eye. He was treated in a hospital in Petrograd.

I don't know too much about my mother Maria Gershevna Lapis' family. Here's how I learnt about her difficult childhood. I remember that once I was very offended with my mother for something. I was sulky and angry, and suddenly my grandmother, Genya Orman, the wife of my grandfather Gersh Orman, came to me. My mother was crying in the bedroom: I hadn't been eating or talking for three days in a row. She said to me, 'Okay, let's go over to our place, since you don't listen to your mother and upset her so much!' Without thinking twice I put on my coat and went with her. This all happened in winter. We walked slowly, and she told me that when my mother was only 12 years old, her mother died. My mother was very gifted and wanted to study. She had an inclination to literature and even wrote compositions for her cousin, who was a student in grammar school. But she couldn't continue her education because from the age of 12 she had to do all the work around the house. She even had to step on a bench to light the oven. It was then that grandfather Gersh married the younger sister of his deceased wife: grandmother Genya, who was actually my mother's aunt. And I had thought to that very day that grandmother Genya was my real grandmother. Her story shocked me so much, that I rushed home to apologize to mother. I stood on my knees, promised never to misbehave, and she, certainly, forgave me. I cried all night long, and my parents couldn't understand why. I was very upset.

My father got married soon after he returned from the front. So my mother married an invalid. She was only one year younger than my father. Mother and him loved each other very much and had known each other from childhood, because they were cousins. That means that my grandmothers were sisters. Their father, Ilda Shafkhid, lived to 93, and, as they said, preserved a clear mind, a tenacious memory and all his teeth to his very last days.

Growing up

We lived with my father's parents. They were deeply religious people, strictly adhering to traditions. My grandfather's name was Yankel Lapis. I remember him praying and reading old books all the time. They were Jewish books, principally the Talmud. Grandmother didn't read books, she did all the housework. Grandfather had a tallit and tefillin, and, of course a kippah. He wasn't a rabbi, but read so much, knew so much about Jewish history, was such a wise and fair person, that 'Yankel Lapis from Shklov' was almost considered a saint by everyone in town! I can't remember any specific case, but people used to come and consult him.

When I studied at school, he even helped me to do my maths homework. He already had a poor vision then and therefore used to put a stool on a table, to be closer to the source of light. And, he read that way, too! He used to tell me stories from the Torah, but by now I have almost forgotten them all. Since I was a pupil in a Soviet school, where we didn't study any religious subjects, my grandfather couldn't study with me. Of course all Jewish traditions were strictly kept and respected in our house. Everything was done exactly in accordance with traditions. The oven wasn't lit on Saturdays - meals were prepared beforehand. And, certainly, all holidays were celebrated, including Pesach, and Sukkot. Grandfather made a sukkah out of fur-tree branches in the kitchen garden and lived there as long as it was necessary. I was a pupil then and remember this very well: He lived there for seven days, slept, ate and prayed there.

We attended the synagogue, too. There were two synagogues in Shklov. One of them was a big, two-storied synagogue. Women were praying separately from men, on the second floor. The other synagogue was one-storied. We went to the small one more often, because it was closer to our home. When I lived in Shklov with my parents, we visited the synagogue every week, and, of course, on major Jewish holidays.

On Fridays my mother used to put a clay pot with coffee and milk into the Russian furnace, and baked cinnamon buns. These buns, I think, were called plekhah. She also baked crackers: cut the dough, sprinkled the slices with sugar and dried them in the oven. Such a tasty thing that was! I took them to school to treat my friends. On Saturdays, after visiting the synagogue, grandfather Gersh usually came to see us. He worked as a forest warden and also lived in Shklov, but in another district.

Both Yiddish and Russian were spoken in the house, but adults mostly spoke Russian with the kids. I spoke some Yiddish with my grandfathers and grandmothers, and sometimes with my parents. I remember Yiddish a little bit; I could write in Yiddish, and I remember the names of the months.

All the housekeeping was done by my mother. She was skilful in everything she did, and besides, she was very quick. The family had a small kitchen garden. At one stage there was even a cow, but later all dairy products had to be purchased at the market. My mother carried heavy buckets and iron pots, and she brought water from three blocks away! She worked day and night. I don't know how she could handle it all. While we lived in the family, my brother and me helped her as much as we could.

Grandfather Yankel's home, where we lived, was a one-storied wooden house, but rather a large one. A part of the house was later taken away from him, when the so-called dispossession of the kulaks 5 began. We lived in terribly poor conditions. Father was an invalid and couldn't earn much. He worked in a company for the handicapped as a cutter of footwear. It was very difficult for him to walk. His artificial leg was of poor quality. He got wounds from wearing it. He was always sick because of these wounds. When I was small, I enjoyed it when father took me in his arms and told me episodes from his military life. Unfortunately, I can't remember any details of his stories any more.

Before my grandfather was deprived of one half of his house, my father's older brother, Uncle Moisei, lived with us. Once his wife, Aunt Brokha, took a large pot of boiling water out of the stove and put it on the big round table, around which I was playing with her daughter Nina. I wasn't even 4 years old, my cousin was even younger. We were running and romping along. And suddenly I missed my trajectory and hit the table, whereupon the pot with boiling water fell onto me. After that I had to spend one and a half years in bed, and had to learn how to walk anew. Probably, this event was the first in a chain of misfortunes that haunted me throughout my life.

Here's one more episode from my early childhood that I remember. It was the day when Lenin died in 1924. I was no more than 5 years old. My cousins Yasha and Boma came running to break the news to us. They were about 10 years old and loved to tease me. They said that Lenin had died. I dressed quickly to run into the street and see what was going on - I thought it had happened in our town. And the boys threw a fur coat over me. I was crying, because they didn't let me attend Lenin's funeral.

My parents, and everybody else, wore very simple clothes. They were no suits or any fashionable clothes. In winter they wore short fur coats, and women wore checkered woolen kerchiefs. Jewish women didn't wear wigs in Russia in the 1930s. Both men and women wore Russian countryside-style clothes: a vest, a shirt and a frock coat. Men didn't wear kippot, only peaked caps. Kippot were only put on in the synagogue. All in all, it was a peasant's outfit. But we [children] were treated and dressed in better clothes.

Our parents also wanted us to get an education, and we tried our best to study well. Up to the 4th grade I went to an elementary school. I even remember, what my first teacher's name was - Evgenia Ignatievna. Later I changed to another school, where I studied up to the 8th grade. And it was in a third school that I finally completed my secondary education, the 10th grade. All schools were Soviet schools. I studied German at school, but I didn't like it. It was an ordinary Soviet school with Komsomol 6 and pioneer organizations. I had very good teachers. My teacher of chemistry was Irina Antonovna. She was so graceful, swarthy and slim - I liked her very much. Therefore I took a great interest in chemistry. Later, in Leningrad, at a conference in the Institute of Experimental Medicine, where I worked after graduating from the Medical Institute, I met her again. She had quit teaching and was studying to be a pathophysiologist. We became colleagues.

My brother, Yuda, was born on 8th March 1921. He didn't go to cheder, because there were no more cheders after the Revolution of 1917. He studied in an ordinary Soviet school like me, with kids of various nationalities: Poles, Russians and Jews. I also had a sister, Sonya. She was born in 1930 and a small, thin, fair, and blue-eyed girl - that's the way I remembered her all my life. My mother had such a hard time with them! They were very often sick, their teeth grew slowly, and they even fainted sometimes.

Mother told us that they had once given shelter to refugees from Latvia. It was a woman and her three daughters who had fled from the Germans, when they seized Riga in 1917, and settled in Shklov. My mother taught them Russian. She didn't speak German. When they returned to Western Latvia they lived in the town of Tukum. After they left, they kept sending letters to each other for a long time. And they didn't forget to put a ribbon or a handkerchief into the envelopes. When one of the daughters got married, they even sent mother an invitation to the wedding party, with a golden stamping. But my mother couldn't really leave her home for such a trip. And when, at the beginning of 1930s, a terrible famine struck Belarus, they used to send us parcels with products: butter in blocks, as large as bricks, and even cereal. I remember how I inscribed their address in German on large envelopes with small mica windows.

Our neighbors were people like us, very simple people. I remember some old ladies coming and asking mother to write a letter in Russian. And she never declined. I had a friend, Raya Dankevich. Her father was Belarus, and her mother was Polish. They were probably against our friendship, but never showed it. Later, during the war, as I was told, they became betrayers and cooperated with the Nazis. But as kids, Raya and me often ran to visit each other through our adjacent kitchen gardens. Her brother, Senya, was my brother's classmate and even tried to court me - by putting a line in my copybook or giving me a note every now and then. We often frolicked in their house. Their mother, Sophia Alexandrovna, was a very strict woman, and even made her children kneel down and beat them with a rope for mistakes they had made. As to us - we weren't ever beaten by anybody of our family.

Nobody ever paid any attention to people's nationalities at school. We made friends, fell in love. My first love was called Vladimir. He was fair- haired, brown-eyed, from a Belarus family. He joined our class in the 10th grade and was a big troublemaker. I frequently fought with him. I was rowdy and always talked back to anyone. I remember a school party in the 10th grade. We were reciting poems. When somebody read verses, I always had tears in my eyes. After the party we had a discussion about who was reading what at the time. I said that I was reading a novel by Balzac, Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes [English title: A Harlot High and Low]. It turned out that Vladimir was reading the same book. And he called me by the name of one of the heroines - Esther. This is how our love affair began.

From my childhood on I was a romantic person, taking great interest in literature and poetry. And I still like to draw, mainly portraits. Even now, that I can hardly see any more, my hand reaches out for paper. I was fond of walking in the forest and always had my head in the clouds. My husband used to joke that he brought me down from the heavens onto the earth.

My brother loved to read, too, we had a lot of Russian books at home - purchased or borrowed from the library. We used to read even late at night. I wrote very good compositions. The director of our school always read my compositions out loud to the other children. I had beautiful handwriting, too.

I lived in Shklov until 1937. After leaving school I went to Smolensk to enter the Medical Institute. I went there with my friend Raya, though my mother advised me to pursue drawing. I studied for two and a half years in Smolensk. Then my parents decided that it was better for me to live closer to my brother, who was a student at the Leningrad Aircraft Institute by then. So in the winter of 1940 I found myself in Leningrad, and continued as a student of the 1st year at the Medical Institute.

It was in Leningrad that I saw my father for the last time. He came to visit my brother Yuda, me, and his brothers, Abram and Honya. It was the first vacation in my father's whole life. For the first time he had a rest from his work, from his household chores. Before he left, my father and I went on a ride in a tram. When the tram turned from Kuibyshev Street to the Revolution Square, I suddenly felt my heart stand still due to a bad presentiment. I felt as though I was seeing my father for the last time. I was almost choking from tears, something was squeezing my throat and chest. I could do nothing, and neither could I explain my condition to my father. That happened in the spring of 1941. There were only a few months left before the beginning of the Great Patriotic War 7.

During the war

When the war began, I lived in a student hostel in Leo Tolstoy Square, and my brother was staying in a hostel in Moskovsky Avenue. Soon we had to move to other places. The war turned our lives upside down. All students were ordered to take part in defense preparations. We [medical students] dug trenches near Kingisepp. When we were unloading heavy beams, one of them fell down on me, injuring my hip joint. Since that accident I have had trouble walking. When we returned from trench works, we were commissioned to night and day shifts in a hospital in the old center of Leningrad. In the meanwhile, lectures in the Medical Institute continued. A marine hospital was arranged in our hostel facilities. We had to move over to Petrovskaya Embankment. Later that building was hit by a German bomb, and we were left homeless.

In the beginning my brother took part in defense work in Moskovsky Avenue. The front line was very close to the hostel of the Aircraft Institute, and they built anti-tank obstacles. The hostel was in the zone of artillery bombardment, and my brother moved over to the flat of Uncle Abram, in the center of Leningrad. Uncle Abram was at the front, and his family in evacuation. The apartment was occupied by their relative, Aunt Rose, and her adopted son, Yasha. The first winter of the blockade 8, 1941-1942, was the most awful one. The temperature fell to 30 degrees Celsius below zero. People were starving. My brother was could not work any more. But Aunt Rose made the poor boys take out the slops and carry water to the third floor. They had to live one way or another! My brother was weaker than me, he had been suffered from a liver disease since his childhood. I supported him as much as I could.

After shifts in the hospital and lectures at the Institute, I used to walk a long way through the city in the nipping frost, and brought my relatives bread. When Aunt Rose died, and Yasha followed her shortly after, Yuda gave himself up to despair completely. Each time I came, he said, that I would be burying him on my next visit. I remember him lying there, unable to get up any more, wasting away in front of my eyes, and I tried to convince him, 'Come on, Yuda, brace yourself up, this nightmare will be over soon'. But on 14th March 1942 I found him dead. A few days before, on 8th March, he had turned 21. I buried him myself.

My sister Sonya, who had only turned 11 at the outbreak of war, remained in Shklov with our parents. At the beginning of the war I lost contact with them. I still have my mother's last letter from 27th June 1941. She wrote, 'Maybe we can survive this thunder-storm, as we did in 1918...'. She couldn't imagine what would happen to them, what vile atrocities the Germans would commit. They were all buried alive in Shklov, in the mound between the lake and the Dnieper River, in the very same place, where the mill once stood, where my father and grandfather worked. [This was the famed Shklov killings.] 9 For three days the ground was stirring on that spot, and groans of people were heard from under the ground. All my relatives were murdered there: my mother, father, both grandfathers, both grandmothers, my sister Sonya, Aunt Haya and her son Misha; and, thousands of other Jews. I didn't know about it back then. After the war I wrote many letters to official bodies in Minsk and many other places. I was searching for exact information, but it was in vain. I got no answer whatsoever. Later I learned everything about this tragedy from eyewitnesses.

After the war

I studied and worked throughout the war, from 21st July 1941 to 29th March 1944. But I had to interrupt my studies, because I was physically unable to attend lectures. I worked as a nurse in the hospital of the First Medical Institute then.

I received my diploma in 1946. After graduation I was directed to work in the House of Sanitary Education. When I came there, the managers were surprised. They didn't need practical doctors. So I was told to look for another job myself. I found one with the Institute of Experimental Medicine without any patronage and despite my nationality. There was no anti- Semitism yet. The only thing I was concerned about was my lack of experience. I remember walking down the corridor looking for the director's office. The director asked me what I was interested in. I said that I liked chemistry and knew how to draw. 'OK,' he remarked, 'we need someone who can work with the microscope and draw in the Histology Department.' But actually there was a vacancy only in the Department of General Comparative Morphology, headed by professor Nasonov. And my chief, Michael Abramovich Brown, was a wonderful man. Following the reorganization of the Institute I was transferred to the Department of General Pathology. I worked there for almost 30 years until my retirement. I had no time to defend my candidate's thesis due to family circumstances, but I passed the exams all right.

I have to say that my colleagues treated me well. I didn't feel any humiliation. Even in the most gruesome times, during the so-called Doctors' Plot 10. We, just like employees of other Soviet establishments, constantly had political training: we studied Marxism-Leninism, Stalin's works and historical materialism. We were permanently engaged in all sorts of political seminars and meetings. I was often appointed secretary at these meetings because of my nice handwriting. I remember how we condemned the 'poisoning doctors' in our Institute. And everyone believed it was true, including me. The paradox of the Soviet regime consisted in the fact that people were made to believe the most improbable things and even renounce their relatives. This is what one can call mass foolishness.

I'll tell about one particular case. My mother's elder brother, Lev, was married to a Russian woman, a physiatrician called Anna Sergeyevna Plotkina. They had two daughters, Inna and Rita. They lived in Volgograd. They lived very well, but when this case against doctors began, Uncle Lev's wife kicked him out. He came to Leningrad to stay with us and his older daughter. I was already married then and had an invalid son. Uncle Lev remained with us, until he settled in his own flat.

I got married in 1945. We had no wedding celebration at all. What kind of a wedding party would it have been anyway, in 1945, after everything that we had gone through?! I got acquainted with my husband, Pavel Abramovich Rubinchik, a Jew, at a friend's home. He came from Bryansk region, from the settlement of Zhukovka. He was an engineer, fought at the Leningrad front and was wounded. His wife was evacuated to Kuibyshev during the war, fell in love with another man there and left Pavel. After the war he worked as chief engineer at a Leningrad factory called Weaver.

My husband was 13 years older than me, he had two daughters from his first marriage, and he missed them a lot. His first wife wrote that she couldn't cope with the older daughter, and that he should take her into his new family. He persuaded me. I agreed and cried because of her behavior every other day. His daughter was very spiteful, disliked me and was jealous of her father.

We lived in a communal apartment 11, two rooms were occupied by my husband's relatives. Then we moved to another flat. Our son, Misha, was born in 1947. The delivery was terrible. My son was born disabled. From that moment my excruciating torment began. I corresponded with Academician Filatov 12 and addressed other prominent medical specialists, but my son remained completely helpless. He sees nothing, hears nothing and cannot speak. And he had a bulk of other diseases. How horrible it was in a shared flat with the ill child! How our neighbor scoffed at us! It was another, terrible blow to me when my husband died in 1968. I buried him in the Jewish cemetery.

I moved to another flat with my son after the death of my husband. Some people helped me. The flat was hard to obtain. So many doors I had to knock at: the district party committee, the city department of national healthcare, and so on. I had to go through many hardships.

I haven't left my home for as long as three years now, because of my illness. I'm almost blind. But when I think back of everything that I lived through, I consider myself a happy person. God saved my life, while all my folks were buried alive. Nothing remained of them, just a few photos survived by miracle.

I did not lead a religious life. We only had atheism and the Soviet political propaganda before the war, when I was a student, and even after the war. I was a scientific worker and thus didn't need to be a member of the Communist Party. Luckily, I didn't experience any anti-Semitism or political repressions. I don't really know what's going on elsewhere in the world, even in Israel, because I'm completely preoccupied with the health of my sick son and my own. I regularly get various kind of support from Hesed, and I appreciate it a lot.

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