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I have dim memories from my childhood, from 1950s, of some talks about Palestine and a new state of Israel, our historic Motherland that people were moving there and that life was going to be better in this country. But this had nothing to do with us. It never occurred to our communist mother that we might live anywhere else besides the Soviet reality. She was raising us 100% Soviet people.
Stalin’s death in 1953 was a terrible woe for our mother. She never accepted the following denunciation of him. We were also in grief, so big that I even fell ill. I had fever and fits. It seemed life was impossible without Stalin.
Some time in 1956 our relatives from Kharkov arrived after exculpation. Even this fact or whatever little they told us what had happened to them did not change our opinion. My mother felt very sorry for our relatives. Aunt Genia never found her children, but somehow these processes were going on as if in parallel and independently. My Uncle Max was of different opinion. My mother called him a “contra” (one who was against the Soviet power). He called my mother a “little Komsomol girl”. However, they loved each other tenderly. I heard about Hanukkah from Max when I was 14. He wasn’t religious, but he knew Jewish history and traditions.
Stalin’s death in 1953 was a terrible woe for our mother. She never accepted the following denunciation of him. We were also in grief, so big that I even fell ill. I had fever and fits. It seemed life was impossible without Stalin.
Some time in 1956 our relatives from Kharkov arrived after exculpation. Even this fact or whatever little they told us what had happened to them did not change our opinion. My mother felt very sorry for our relatives. Aunt Genia never found her children, but somehow these processes were going on as if in parallel and independently. My Uncle Max was of different opinion. My mother called him a “contra” (one who was against the Soviet power). He called my mother a “little Komsomol girl”. However, they loved each other tenderly. I heard about Hanukkah from Max when I was 14. He wasn’t religious, but he knew Jewish history and traditions.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Ella Lukatskaya