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My father was highly educated. Until the very outbreak of the Second World War we had a wonderful library in Hebrew. Even though he was a very young man, he was appointed director of the yeshivah. Being the son of very religious parents, he certainly couldn't get any secular education, but we had the following encyclopedias at home: School At Home and University At Home, both published before the October Revolution. The letters my father wrote to me at the beginning of the war were written in surprisingly good Russian. He learned to play the violin without the instruction of any teachers. He finished correspondence courses and got an accountant diploma. After the Revolution, when he could no longer work in his main professional job, he worked as an accountant for some time. He also had a diploma of a penman. And as far as I can remember, from the age of 40-45, he was a member of the arbitration court of the Kiev synagogue. He perished in Babi Yar at the age of 54.
With each other and with our senior relatives - and we regularly had relatives from every little village of Ukraine as guests - my parents always spoke Yiddish, while with my brother and me they only spoke Russian. I could understand Yiddish, though.
My father knew Hebrew perfectly and spoke Russian with a strong accent. However, his accent wasn't caused by poor knowledge of the language, but by some phonetic changes in his throat, I think. Besides, he was quite fluent in German, which he had to learn during his trips to Austria and Germany. When my father was the director of the Yekaterinoslav yeshivah, the well- known classic poet Byalik [7] taught Hebrew literature there. My father kept corresponding with him in Hebrew up until the middle of the 1920s. I still remember those letters. My father also had Rabbi Gelman, the city rabbi of Yekaterinoslav, teach at the yeshivah, and my grandfather on my mother's side, whose family were refugees to Yekaterinoslav, from around 1916 to 1919. His appearance was so biblical that he was very popular among the students; every time he entered the room his students would say, 'Oh, look, Moshe Rabeinu came to us'. My father was the director of the yeshivah and taught Hebrew. The yeshivah was big and famous all over Ukraine. I don't remember any more details about it because I was very young back then.
With each other and with our senior relatives - and we regularly had relatives from every little village of Ukraine as guests - my parents always spoke Yiddish, while with my brother and me they only spoke Russian. I could understand Yiddish, though.
My father knew Hebrew perfectly and spoke Russian with a strong accent. However, his accent wasn't caused by poor knowledge of the language, but by some phonetic changes in his throat, I think. Besides, he was quite fluent in German, which he had to learn during his trips to Austria and Germany. When my father was the director of the Yekaterinoslav yeshivah, the well- known classic poet Byalik [7] taught Hebrew literature there. My father kept corresponding with him in Hebrew up until the middle of the 1920s. I still remember those letters. My father also had Rabbi Gelman, the city rabbi of Yekaterinoslav, teach at the yeshivah, and my grandfather on my mother's side, whose family were refugees to Yekaterinoslav, from around 1916 to 1919. His appearance was so biblical that he was very popular among the students; every time he entered the room his students would say, 'Oh, look, Moshe Rabeinu came to us'. My father was the director of the yeshivah and taught Hebrew. The yeshivah was big and famous all over Ukraine. I don't remember any more details about it because I was very young back then.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Deborah Averbukh