The Jewish class of the Ukrainian school where Rakhil Givand-Tikhaya's husband Naum Tikhiy-Shtilerman studied.

The Jewish class of the Ukrainian school where my husband Naum Tikhiy-Shtilerman studied. He is sitting on the extreme right in the second row. In the top row in the middle is his elder sister, Dina, who now lives in Israel.

Naum and his sisters attended to a Ukrainian school, but were placed in a Jewish class. It was not a class where Yiddish or Hebrew was the language of instruction, but simply a class into which all the Jewish children from the neighboring villages were collected. Even though Naum's family spoke Yiddish at home, he also spoke fluent Ukrainian and considered the Ukrainian language to be his native.

Naum entered the university before the war at the age of 15. He wanted to study at the philological department. He was a very gifted person. He passed all high school exams early and then passed the entering exams. He was accepted even though his father had been arrested in the Stalinist times. Maybe he was accepted because he entered the Ukrainian department, which was 'out of fashion' at those days - everyone wanted to learn only Russian language and literature.

The Centropa Collection at USHMM

The Centropa archive has been acquired by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. USHMM will soon offer a Special Collections page for Centropa.

Academics please note: USHMM can provide you with original language word-for-word transcripts and high resolution photographs. All publications should be credited: "From the Centropa Collection at the United States Memorial Museum in Washington, DC". 

Please contact collection [at] centropa.org (collection[at]centropa[dot]org).