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My mother was born in 1905 near Golaya Pristan in the vicinity of
Kherson. This village was called Kalinindorf in the Soviet era. It was
founded in the XVIII century when the tsarist government established
national minority colonies in the Azov Sea area, south of Russia and
Ukraine.
In the village where my mother was born there was a big German colony
with a Jewish neighborhood near it. Its inhabitants were mainly farmers.
There was a German church, a synagogue and an Orthodox church in the
village. Representatives of various nationalities got along well and
treated one another with respect.
My mother was born into a family of nine children. I have no
information about her father, Wulf Tomchinsky. I only know that he went
somewhere to earn some money and never came back. I have no idea where he
went.
My mother never mentioned him, because my grandmother and her
children believed that he had another family somewhere and that was the
reason for his not coming back. My mother's family was very poor. They kept
a few cows and worked from morning till night. They took dairy products to
the market in Kherson. It was a big family and they could hardly manage
with the money they got by selling their dairy products. My grandmother
raised her children all on her own. I don't remember her name. She spent
her last years with her oldest daughter, Fania. When the war began, Fania
and her family evacuated, but my grandmother didn't want to go with them.
She judged the Germans by what she knew about them from the neighboring
colony, and she didn't believe the Germans could do any harm to Jewish
people. When Kherson was occupied the Gestapo took my grandmother's house
and used it as their office, and, of course, my grandmother was one of the
first to be shot.
I didn't know all of my mother's brothers and sisters. Ethel was the
oldest, born around 1890. Ethel was married to Mihail Krapivnikov, a Jew.
He became one of the first managers of the Kharkov tractor plant during the
first years of Soviet power. They had four children: two girls, Asia and
Fira, and two boys, Vladimir and Arkadiy.
Kherson. This village was called Kalinindorf in the Soviet era. It was
founded in the XVIII century when the tsarist government established
national minority colonies in the Azov Sea area, south of Russia and
Ukraine.
In the village where my mother was born there was a big German colony
with a Jewish neighborhood near it. Its inhabitants were mainly farmers.
There was a German church, a synagogue and an Orthodox church in the
village. Representatives of various nationalities got along well and
treated one another with respect.
My mother was born into a family of nine children. I have no
information about her father, Wulf Tomchinsky. I only know that he went
somewhere to earn some money and never came back. I have no idea where he
went.
My mother never mentioned him, because my grandmother and her
children believed that he had another family somewhere and that was the
reason for his not coming back. My mother's family was very poor. They kept
a few cows and worked from morning till night. They took dairy products to
the market in Kherson. It was a big family and they could hardly manage
with the money they got by selling their dairy products. My grandmother
raised her children all on her own. I don't remember her name. She spent
her last years with her oldest daughter, Fania. When the war began, Fania
and her family evacuated, but my grandmother didn't want to go with them.
She judged the Germans by what she knew about them from the neighboring
colony, and she didn't believe the Germans could do any harm to Jewish
people. When Kherson was occupied the Gestapo took my grandmother's house
and used it as their office, and, of course, my grandmother was one of the
first to be shot.
I didn't know all of my mother's brothers and sisters. Ethel was the
oldest, born around 1890. Ethel was married to Mihail Krapivnikov, a Jew.
He became one of the first managers of the Kharkov tractor plant during the
first years of Soviet power. They had four children: two girls, Asia and
Fira, and two boys, Vladimir and Arkadiy.
Period
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Leonid Karlinsky