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I was born in 1931. I was their second child. Their first girl died of some disease at the age of three and a half years. I was a white-skin baby with no eyelashes. I was very quiet. Before I was born my parents rented apartments in various parts of the town, but when I was born they bought a house in the center. It was a big house that belonged to a landlord in the past. As I understand now they bought it almost for nothing. This house was bought for three families: my grandfather Mindel, our family and my father sister Sima’s family. Sima and her family moved to Moscow some time later and our family lived in this house until my father died. I was brought to this house from the maternity hospital where I was born. I was named Sarra after my maternal grandfather Isroel. These two names sound similar. My grandfather Mindel insisted on giving me this name. He respected my mother’s father who had died by then very much. He saw that I wasn’t a pretty baby and to console my mother he said: ‘The girl looks very intelligent’.
My mother often recalled the period of hunger in the early 1930s [13], there was nothing to eat and they ate potato peels and other junk food, but my mother had a lot of breast milk and she breastfed me until the age of two. My mother had sufficient milk to breastfeed another baby. He was a Ukrainian boy from a dispossessed family [14] of Petriks who lost their home. My parents gave shelter to a few dispossessed families and they were grateful to my parents for the rest of their lives. I was very fat in my childhood and everybody thought I was swollen from hunger. My mother always said: ‘I survived the periods of hunger in 1931-1932 and during the war and I don’t want to be hungry ever again’. When the period of famine was over my father took a cow into the house and it stayed with us until the end of his life. It was a deity of the family. The family worshipped it and we had a housemaid who milked the cow. If the housemaid was away my father put on her apron and kerchief to milk the cow. My mother never came close to the cow. She was a softie and my father never allowed her to do physical work to preserve her appearance.
My mother often recalled the period of hunger in the early 1930s [13], there was nothing to eat and they ate potato peels and other junk food, but my mother had a lot of breast milk and she breastfed me until the age of two. My mother had sufficient milk to breastfeed another baby. He was a Ukrainian boy from a dispossessed family [14] of Petriks who lost their home. My parents gave shelter to a few dispossessed families and they were grateful to my parents for the rest of their lives. I was very fat in my childhood and everybody thought I was swollen from hunger. My mother always said: ‘I survived the periods of hunger in 1931-1932 and during the war and I don’t want to be hungry ever again’. When the period of famine was over my father took a cow into the house and it stayed with us until the end of his life. It was a deity of the family. The family worshipped it and we had a housemaid who milked the cow. If the housemaid was away my father put on her apron and kerchief to milk the cow. My mother never came close to the cow. She was a softie and my father never allowed her to do physical work to preserve her appearance.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Irina Lopko