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My brother Yefim was born in 1936. I remember sitting on my mother’s lap and she had such a big belly and there was something stirring inside. Then this crying and screaming nubbin came into the world. He was big and beautiful. Eight days later my brother was circumcised. I remember this well. The baby was whining there were old people around him doing something to him and I was very worried and horrified thinking that they might harm this little baby and they were trying to calm me down.
Something happened in 1936. This incident made me grow mature and feel for the first time in my life that we were Jews and that we were different from all others. My mother went to work two months after Yefim was born. She was a highly qualified accountant. She worked all her life. My parents hired a Ukrainian girl from a village to look after the baby. She also helped my father to look after the cow and milk it. My father’s stepmother looked after the whole household. All of a sudden this girl disappeared on the eve of Pesach. My father contacted her family, but she was not there either. Her sister came from the village, we searched for the girl, but she was not found. She was missing for three days. The whole town came to our yard. My father and grandfather were sitting on a bench and there were militiamen beside them on both sides. Actually, they were about to take my father and grandfather to prison. There was a rumor that they killed the girl to make matzah. People were yelling ‘They always kill girls to add their blood into matzah’. We had never heard anything like that before. The girl’s brothers didn’t say anything. They kept looking for her. They looked in the river. This river was sparrow knee deep. Other people held torches for them and they searched the bottom with hooks. She was found suddenly. It turned out that she suffered from mental disorders since childhood. She suddenly fell into depression and then she found shelter where she could sleep for days. She removed a plank in the chicken house and slept there, warm and healthy, all in her urine. She was taken to hospital. There was one ward for patients with mental diseases in the hospital in Nezhin. Her sister replaced her and stayed with us until the war. Everything ended well, but we had a bitter aftertaste. We faced anti-Semitism. I kept asking ‘Who was killed when matzah was to be made?’. I couldn’t get rid of this horror for a long time.
Something happened in 1936. This incident made me grow mature and feel for the first time in my life that we were Jews and that we were different from all others. My mother went to work two months after Yefim was born. She was a highly qualified accountant. She worked all her life. My parents hired a Ukrainian girl from a village to look after the baby. She also helped my father to look after the cow and milk it. My father’s stepmother looked after the whole household. All of a sudden this girl disappeared on the eve of Pesach. My father contacted her family, but she was not there either. Her sister came from the village, we searched for the girl, but she was not found. She was missing for three days. The whole town came to our yard. My father and grandfather were sitting on a bench and there were militiamen beside them on both sides. Actually, they were about to take my father and grandfather to prison. There was a rumor that they killed the girl to make matzah. People were yelling ‘They always kill girls to add their blood into matzah’. We had never heard anything like that before. The girl’s brothers didn’t say anything. They kept looking for her. They looked in the river. This river was sparrow knee deep. Other people held torches for them and they searched the bottom with hooks. She was found suddenly. It turned out that she suffered from mental disorders since childhood. She suddenly fell into depression and then she found shelter where she could sleep for days. She removed a plank in the chicken house and slept there, warm and healthy, all in her urine. She was taken to hospital. There was one ward for patients with mental diseases in the hospital in Nezhin. Her sister replaced her and stayed with us until the war. Everything ended well, but we had a bitter aftertaste. We faced anti-Semitism. I kept asking ‘Who was killed when matzah was to be made?’. I couldn’t get rid of this horror for a long time.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Irina Lopko