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My children were growing up like all other Soviet children. They studied in a general school and were pioneers and Komsomol [26] members which was usual. They had Jewish and non-Jewish friends. For my wife and me nationality didn’t matter. What mattered was the person. However, we raised our children Jewish. My wife taught them Hebrew and told them about the Jewish history, traditions and religion. At about the age of 4 my son knew 4 traditional questions in Hebrew by heart. When I conducted seder at home on Pesach he posed four traditional questions to me according to the rules. Of course, my wife and I told them that they shouldn’t talk about it in the kindergarten or school since we might face problems if they did. It’s strange, but the children understood this. We organized a bar mitzvah, when my son turned 13. Our friends, Subarpathian Jews, attended it, and the ritual was conducted according to the rules. My wife and I spoke Hungarian and Yiddish at home, and spoke Yiddish, Hungarian, and sometimes Russian to the children. I didn’t know Yiddish as well as my wife: it was her mother tongue while I only studied it in the cheder, but I picked it promptly from my wife. My wife believed that our children had to know Yiddish.
After finishing school my daughter went to work as telegrapher at the post office and studied at the Electric Engineering College in Zaporozhiye by correspondence. When she received her diploma she was promoted to the position of electrical engineer. She worked at the post office till she moved to Israel. When she was a student, Vera got married. Her husband Viacheslav Dolburd, a Jew, was born in Uzhgorod in 1945, his parents had moved to Subcarpathia from the USSR before. Viacheslav was an engineer, he worked at the Uzhgorod instrument making plant. They had two sons: Iosif, born in 1981, and Yefim, born in 1983. Both grandsons had circumcision according to the rule. We had to make the same trick that we used when having our son circumcised. The same surgeon circumcised my grandsons in the polyclinic.
After finishing school my daughter went to work as telegrapher at the post office and studied at the Electric Engineering College in Zaporozhiye by correspondence. When she received her diploma she was promoted to the position of electrical engineer. She worked at the post office till she moved to Israel. When she was a student, Vera got married. Her husband Viacheslav Dolburd, a Jew, was born in Uzhgorod in 1945, his parents had moved to Subcarpathia from the USSR before. Viacheslav was an engineer, he worked at the Uzhgorod instrument making plant. They had two sons: Iosif, born in 1981, and Yefim, born in 1983. Both grandsons had circumcision according to the rule. We had to make the same trick that we used when having our son circumcised. The same surgeon circumcised my grandsons in the polyclinic.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Laszlo Ringel