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My name is Efim Pisarenko. I was born in Gomel, Belarus, on 10th July 1937. I come from a Belarus Jewish family. Efim is my name in as it's written in my birth certificate. My real name, given to me by my father and mother is Haim-Gedalie. My father's name was E'Kusiel Pisarenko. They called him Kusha in the family. He was born in the village of Rechitsa, Gomel region, Belarus, in 1898 ????. My mother, Basia Pisarenko [nee Shulkina], was born in Gomel in 1900.
Before telling you about my family I would like to explain the origin of my last name. Sometimes people ask me why a purely Jewish family has a typical Ukrainian name. My father told me that my ancestors got this name during the reign of Peter I [Peter the Great] [1]. There was a man called Aizek in a town in Southern Belarus. He could read and write in Yiddish, Hebrew and Russian. He was the only educated man in his town. He worked as a writing clerk in the town council. In Russian the word 'write' sounds like 'pisat'. His children were called Pisaryonok, which means 'children of the writing clerk' in Russian. Later that became Pisarenko. Aizek had a big family and many children. Life in that little town was miserable, and bored and young people always wanted to have a different life. This was at the time of Empress Ekaterina Catherine II [Catherine the Great] [2]. During her reign the Russian army liberated a bigger part of the Crimea - it was called Tavria at the time - from Tatars and this became the new territory of the Russian Empire. CatherineEkaterina let gave big privileges to those willing to move there and start farming. They were tax exempt for 25 years and received money from the Treasury to start their own farming business. They got as much land as they could manage to till. The climate there was favorable.
This was a big temptation for a young man from a small Belarus town, whose ancestors were trying to grow their crops on a little plot of land and led a hand-to-mouth life. One of Aizek's sons decided to move to the Crimea. He received a plot of land in Kherson. He started the family branch of Pisarenko in Kherson. I met one of the family members in the 1960s. Somebody introduced him to me and we found out that we had a similar last name. I asked about his nationality, and he said he was a Jew. And I said to him that two Jews with the last name of Pisarenko, who both lived in Ukraine, simply must have been relatives. With my mother's help we found out that he was a successor of Aizek's son. And that's how I found out that our last name goes back to the period of Catherine IIEkaterina.
Before telling you about my family I would like to explain the origin of my last name. Sometimes people ask me why a purely Jewish family has a typical Ukrainian name. My father told me that my ancestors got this name during the reign of Peter I [Peter the Great] [1]. There was a man called Aizek in a town in Southern Belarus. He could read and write in Yiddish, Hebrew and Russian. He was the only educated man in his town. He worked as a writing clerk in the town council. In Russian the word 'write' sounds like 'pisat'. His children were called Pisaryonok, which means 'children of the writing clerk' in Russian. Later that became Pisarenko. Aizek had a big family and many children. Life in that little town was miserable, and bored and young people always wanted to have a different life. This was at the time of Empress Ekaterina Catherine II [Catherine the Great] [2]. During her reign the Russian army liberated a bigger part of the Crimea - it was called Tavria at the time - from Tatars and this became the new territory of the Russian Empire. CatherineEkaterina let gave big privileges to those willing to move there and start farming. They were tax exempt for 25 years and received money from the Treasury to start their own farming business. They got as much land as they could manage to till. The climate there was favorable.
This was a big temptation for a young man from a small Belarus town, whose ancestors were trying to grow their crops on a little plot of land and led a hand-to-mouth life. One of Aizek's sons decided to move to the Crimea. He received a plot of land in Kherson. He started the family branch of Pisarenko in Kherson. I met one of the family members in the 1960s. Somebody introduced him to me and we found out that we had a similar last name. I asked about his nationality, and he said he was a Jew. And I said to him that two Jews with the last name of Pisarenko, who both lived in Ukraine, simply must have been relatives. With my mother's help we found out that he was a successor of Aizek's son. And that's how I found out that our last name goes back to the period of Catherine IIEkaterina.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
efim pisarenko