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My father's family was religious. My father observed all holidays except Saturday because it was a working day. One couldn't just say that we had to have the day off on Saturday, so we had to work on Sabbath. But on holidays my father always went to the synagogue; he had his own seat there. He even went there when he was already very, very old. And later we took him there by taxi and I brought him back home. And even the year he died he was at the synagogue at Yom Kippur. At home we observed all holidays. I knew what this holiday was about and what was to be done for each other holiday. For Yom Kippur they cooked chicken and stuffed fish; for Purim they made little pies with poppy-seeds and so on.
We generally spoke Russian. My parents only switched to Yiddish when we, children, weren't supposed to know the subject of their discussion. I understood Yiddish, but I never learned to speak or read in Yiddish. My parents knew it well. My father could read and write perfectly in Yiddish and Hebrew; my mother only spoke Yiddish.
After my older sister was born in 1926, the family moved to Moscow looking for a better life. My mother's older brother, Solomon Tsyrulnik, lived there. But for some reason they didn't stay long in Moscow. They came back to Kiev, and I was born there.
I never heard my father call the Soviet power anything other than, 'these bandits'. Mama only said, 'Careful'. Well, but this does seems to be all one can say about the Soviet power, really. My father didn't take it seriously. He never spoke about it seriously. He didn't even want to talk about it. If there were discussions he used to tell me, 'Remember what I tell you, Zina. These bandits won't last long'.
We openly discussed things. Once, when I was younger, they warned me, 'Zina, you're not supposed to talk about this elsewhere'. Besides, we knew very well what was going on in the 1930s [during the so-called Great Terror] 6 because Aunt Golda's husband, Semyon Novobratskiy, was repressed. He was raised in an orphanage, and he was promoted in the Party and was a delegate of the Congress and Party organization in Vorontsovo-Gorodische. And he was a Jew. Once they came and took him away. When they took him to their office an NKVD 7 employee said to him, 'You understand, Semyon, that I can't do anything. All I can do is to allow you make a phone call'. He called my father immediately.
Aunt Golda - she was also a party member - was a woman with a strong character. She went there, put her party membership card on the table and said that if her husband was an 'enemy of the people' 8 she couldn't be a party member, and left. Late in the evening an acquaintance of theirs came and said, 'Leave immediately'. My father went there and took her to Kiev right away. There they separated. My aunt and her younger son were in Belaya Tserkov at her brother Gershl's, her second oldest son stayed with us and her older daughter was in Dnepropetrovsk. My aunt changed her name but she was afraid all her life and kept it a secret. She always took on minor jobs as a cleaning woman or something the like because she was afraid of being recognized. However she was summoned to the authorities during the rehabilitation 9. They told her that her husband had been rehabilitated and that she would receive compensation. She replied that she wouldn't accept anything for her husband. She took the certificate and left. But she was on the lists for an apartment and she received it promptly, strangely enough. Mama's brother Yankel lived in Alma-Ata. His son-in-law was also repressed and shot.
We generally spoke Russian. My parents only switched to Yiddish when we, children, weren't supposed to know the subject of their discussion. I understood Yiddish, but I never learned to speak or read in Yiddish. My parents knew it well. My father could read and write perfectly in Yiddish and Hebrew; my mother only spoke Yiddish.
After my older sister was born in 1926, the family moved to Moscow looking for a better life. My mother's older brother, Solomon Tsyrulnik, lived there. But for some reason they didn't stay long in Moscow. They came back to Kiev, and I was born there.
I never heard my father call the Soviet power anything other than, 'these bandits'. Mama only said, 'Careful'. Well, but this does seems to be all one can say about the Soviet power, really. My father didn't take it seriously. He never spoke about it seriously. He didn't even want to talk about it. If there were discussions he used to tell me, 'Remember what I tell you, Zina. These bandits won't last long'.
We openly discussed things. Once, when I was younger, they warned me, 'Zina, you're not supposed to talk about this elsewhere'. Besides, we knew very well what was going on in the 1930s [during the so-called Great Terror] 6 because Aunt Golda's husband, Semyon Novobratskiy, was repressed. He was raised in an orphanage, and he was promoted in the Party and was a delegate of the Congress and Party organization in Vorontsovo-Gorodische. And he was a Jew. Once they came and took him away. When they took him to their office an NKVD 7 employee said to him, 'You understand, Semyon, that I can't do anything. All I can do is to allow you make a phone call'. He called my father immediately.
Aunt Golda - she was also a party member - was a woman with a strong character. She went there, put her party membership card on the table and said that if her husband was an 'enemy of the people' 8 she couldn't be a party member, and left. Late in the evening an acquaintance of theirs came and said, 'Leave immediately'. My father went there and took her to Kiev right away. There they separated. My aunt and her younger son were in Belaya Tserkov at her brother Gershl's, her second oldest son stayed with us and her older daughter was in Dnepropetrovsk. My aunt changed her name but she was afraid all her life and kept it a secret. She always took on minor jobs as a cleaning woman or something the like because she was afraid of being recognized. However she was summoned to the authorities during the rehabilitation 9. They told her that her husband had been rehabilitated and that she would receive compensation. She replied that she wouldn't accept anything for her husband. She took the certificate and left. But she was on the lists for an apartment and she received it promptly, strangely enough. Mama's brother Yankel lived in Alma-Ata. His son-in-law was also repressed and shot.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Zina Kaluzhnaya
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