Tag #141617 - Interview #98916 (Lilia Levi)

My father was rather opposed to the idea of moving to Israel. When the emigration process began in 1948 he told us that we should not even mention it and that he would never agree to go there. At that time there were two groups – the Zionists and the others. The relations between these groups, at least in our town, were hostile. They the “others” thought the Zionists were nationalists. And my father was a member of the Comsomol Young Communist League, then a member of the Communist Party. He told us that even if we went to live in Israel we should not expect that my mother and he would go with us. That is why we stayed. We made our life here, found a job and we were no longer thinking of emigration. But honestly I am a little sorry that we didn’t go when our children were little, it would be different, but… Thank God, they graduated successfully and set up.

I have a bad memory – they ruined the synagogue in our town, and it was a very beautiful synagogue, with a nice interior design, but most of all, with marvelous acoustics. The War finished and they decided to make a store out of it, and afterwards they decided to destroy it. While they were destroying it, as my nephew told me, they found some clay pots built in the walls from which that splendid acoustic must have been coming from. I am deeply sorry that they did that stupid thing to the synagogue, it was a great monument.