Travel

a

Odessa, Ukraine, 2002

I know about my grandfather on my father’s side Shmerl Zhornitskiy from what my grandmother Haika and my uncles and aunts told me. My grandfather was born in Tulchin in about 1854. He studied in a cheder. He wore clothes common for Jewish men in our town: a black jacket, a cap and boots. On Saturday and on holidays my grandfather went to synagogue. He was a tailor, but a very poor one. There were quite a few tailors in the area and my grandfather didn’t have many clients. My grandfather also made some additional earnings. He was a healer and often helped other people. My grandmother told me that he could even help to get rid of a corneal spot in the eye. People paid him and this was additional support to the family. My grandfather Shmerl died of some disease in 1914 when he was about 60 years old.

My grandmother Haika was born in Tulchin in 1856. I remember her well: she was short and lively and had blue eyes. She wore long skirts and dark long-sleeved blouses. She was very reserved and nobody remembered her losing her temper. She had many grandchildren and remembered all their names. She had a phenomenal memory and was aware of the situation in every family and gave unobtrusive advice to members of the family.

My grandmother and grandfather lived in the poorest neighborhood in Tulchin that was called kaptsanovka (kaptsan/kabtsan means beggar in Yiddish). The majority of the population in this town was Jewish. The town was surrounded by woods and was located in a shallow gully. The Jewish cemetery was on a hill and one could see the panorama of the town from there. There was a pond near my grandmother’s house and we liked to swim in it. My grandmother’s house was very old and the windows were low. There were four rooms in it: a dark bedroom with a small window, a small room, a bigger room and another bedroom. There was a kitchen with a big stove in it where my grandmother baked bread. They fetched the water from a rather distant well. There was no electricity.

My grandmother’s family was religious. They went to synagogue on Saturday and on holidays. The synagogue was located near the Old Market that was not far from their house. There were several synagogues in Tulchin and my other grandmother went to synagogue near the New Market. They celebrated all Jewish holidays and followed the kashrut in the family. I remember that my brothers and I visited our grandmother at Hanukkah and grandmother Haika gave us Hanukkah gelt and various treats. After my grandfather died Haika lived with her daughter Khona and was a housewife. On Friday my grandmother and Khona baked bread and chala for the Shabbat meal. My grandmother died after she fell into the cellar when she was old. She died in 1931 when it was cold and there was snow on the ground.
My grandmother had four sons: Moisha, Shoil, Idl and Yankl and two daughters: Pesia and Khona. The sons studied in the cheder and the girls were helping their mother around the house. I don’t think they had any education. The oldest Moisha was born in 1883. He went to America before 1914 and returned home. He was a tailor, but worked at home because he had some health problems. I remember him with Jewish newspapers in his hands. He read in Yiddish. My uncle Moisha had six children. In the 1930s his middle son Yankl started working at the GPU (1) on the recommendation of the Komsomol (2) In a couple of years he got a job assignment in Piatigorsk (in the Northern Caucasus, about 1000 km from Odessa) and moved there with his family. Moisha perished during evacuation in 1943: he was crushed between two railcars. His family was in evacuation in Alma-Ata and returned to Piatigorsk after the war.

My father’s next sister Pesia was born in 1885. In 1904 she married Yosl Shneiderman, my maternal grandmother’s brother. They had seven children. Uncle Yosl always wore dark clothes and had a big beard. Pesia also wore dark clothes. My uncle was called Yosl Kloits (kloits means a log of wood in Yiddish) in the family. He often entered into deals that could hardly be successful. He was a fur specialist. He made fur hats and sold them. In the 1920s he opened a store in his house in Tulchin where he sold commodity goods. Yosl and his family moved into a better apartment in the center of the town in due time. After the NEP(3) was over they moved to Dnepropetrovsk in 1929. After the war he and his family often came to big family celebration to Odessa where the majority of our family lived and they were guests of honor at such family reunions. I remember uncle Yosl dancing on the table at the wedding of my cousin Manechka despite of his advanced age. He lived almost 90 years and died in 1976. Pesia died a year later. They were buried in Dnepropetrovsk.
My father Shoil was a third child in the family. His younger brother Idl was born in 1890. He helped my father to upholster furniture and later got a job as shop assistant at a department store. He married my mother’s sister Zlota who was born in 1892. They had two children. Some time before the Great Patriotic War (3). Idl went to the Far East to work there for 3 years under a contract. When he returned he bought an old, but solid house. There were many rooms in the house and they leased them to have additional income for the family. Zlota was a housewife. During the war Idl and Zlota evacuated with my parents to Frunze via the Caucasus, Baku and Kirghizia.Idl died in Tulchin in 1982 and Zlota died in May 1986. Their children live in Brooklyn, New York.
My father’s younger sister Khona was born in 1892. When she was a young girl she fell in love with Meyer Ostrovskiy – a boy of her age, but his parents were against their son’s marriage. They said to him that he would only be able to marry her after they died. She married another man who she didn’t love and had a daughter: Fira . Khonia divorced her husband and earned her living by selling flour and baking bread. She married Meyer Ostrovskiy after his parents died shortly before the war. They had a son Fima. Khona and Meyer were killed in the ghetto in Tulchin. After the war Fira married and lived in her husband’s family. Her husband served in the army and after he demobilized he worked as shoe designer at the shoe factory in Tulchin.
My father’s youngest brother Yankl was born in 1894. He was a merchant. He lived in Dnepropetrovsk and had three children: two daughters and a son. Yankl died in the 1970s.
My grandfather on my mother’s side Leib Portnoy was born in Tulchin in 1856. He owned a grocery store. He also bought up the bristle in the surrounding villages and supplied with it a number of factories. He was a successful businessman. At first he rented an apartment for his family, but then he bought a house from a Catholic priest. I remember that it was an old house. There were 3 bedrooms and a big living room in the house. There were earthen floors in the house. There were few pieces of furniture and there were many plants in pots on the floor. The house had a cellar. In winter a heap of ice was placed in the right hand corner of the cellar that was covered with sawdust. It served as a fridge in the summer. There was an orchard around the house. They did not raise any animals. They didn’t have any housemaids: my grandmother and her daughters managed with all housekeeping chores. My grandfather was a giber (strong man, hero in Yiddish). Once he was involved in fighting a fire at the cigarette factory in Uman. He climbed onto burning roof to remove sheets of iron from it when he caught fire himself. He jumped into a lake with ice cold water and caught cold. He was paralyzed and was confined to bed for a few years before he could walk again. But he couldn’t walk properly, he was lame and people gave him the nickname of Leib der krimer (Leib the Lame in Yiddish). On Saturday and on holidays my grandfather went to synagogue where he had his own seat . My mother told me that my grandfather was a severe man and could not stand any objections. He was strict with the children and punished them often. He didn’t want his daughters to study. He used to say that it was sufficient for a woman to be able to count the items that she was giving to a laundress. The girls grew up to be wonderful housewives and cooks. His younger daughters studied in grammar school. Times were changing and my grandfather had to give up his outdated views. In 1920 grandfather Leib fell ill with diphtheria, but nobody could diagnose this illness in Tulchin. My grandmother took him to a professor in Odessa, but it was too late. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Odessa. This cemetery was later removed, but my grandfather’s photograph is on the gravestone of his son Volodia in another Jewish cemetery in Odessa.
My grandmother on my mother’s side Etl Portnaya, nee Shneiderman was born in Tulchin in 1862. She was a tall thin woman. She was very religious. Before the revolution of 1917 my grandmother wore a wig. I saw a wig in her house, but when I remember her she wore a shawl. When I was 9-10 years old my grandmother often visited us. She asked us to turn off the radio and asked if we had a minute. She told us stories about Jews and Biblical stories. When her daughters got married she lived alone in her house. Her daughters visited her every day or several times during a day. Sometimes they managed to find a tenant for her just to keep her company. My grandmother lived in the smallest room in the house which only had a bed and a sideboard in it. There was a bottle of eau-de-Cologne and a glass of water on the sideboard. There was also a settee near the bed. The room had a small window almost on the ground level facing the neighbor’s yard. The ceiling was so low that we often hit it with our heads. My grandmother Etl followed the kashrut and celebrated Shabbat till her last day. I asked my Russian friends to come start a fire in her stove on Saturday, because she didn’t allow us to do it. My grandmother used the hallway during Succoth. . We removed the tiled roof over the hallway before the holiday to make an impression of a succah and grandmother celebrated the holiday in her succah.

My grandmother lived according to the motto “Tomorrow is another day”. After my grandfather died she continued in the store selling cereals, sugar, flour, etc. When one of us replaced her in the store she asked us to stay away from the candy, because it was too expensive for her to give us candy. My grandmother kept this store until the early 1920s. In the early 1930s she had an ear surgery and later another surgery on her eye. Since then she became very sickly and abandoned her business. Every evening one of us came to her to stoke her stove to heat her small room. We locked her house from the outside and in the morning one of her daughters brought her something to eat. I often saw her sleeping in her bed. In the summer of 1941 when the war broke out (for the USSR) grandmother Etl couldn’t walk and it was impossible to take her to evacuation. My father’s sister Khona agreed to look after her. The Germans ordered all the Jews to walk to a camp and as my grandmother couldn’t walk they shot her at the entrance of her house. There was nobody to bury her and she didn't have a grave.

I also remember my great grandmother on my mother’s side Sluva Shneiderman. She lived in her son’s family in Tulchin. Every day she came to the store of her daughter Etl, my mother’s mother. My great grandmother sold candy, matches and tobacco at the market to help her daughter earn a bit more. She took her small stool and we took her goods to the market where she was sitting even on frosty days wearing gloves leaving her fingertips uncovered. She also drank boiling water to get warm. My great grandmother Sluva died in late 1920s. She was very old, about 80 years old.
My grandmother Etl and grandfather Leib had eight children: three sons and five daughters.
My mother’s older brother Berl was born in 1888. He was tall and handsome. He finished a commercial school. In 1910s Berl, my grandmother’s sister Soibl and her husband Shmil Shiser moved to America.The Shisers stayed overseas. Before the war we received letters and parcels from them, but after the war we lost track of them. Berl returned home. He brought young apple and pear plants that we planted in my grandmother’s orchard. I don’t know what kind they were, but they were the most delicious fruit I ever tried. My grandmother didn’t have a single tooth, but she could eat these pears, they were so juicy. Berl was an intelligent and respectable man. He helped my grandfather Leib with the accounting. He married Feiga Rubin, a girl from an respectable family in Tulchin. She finished grammar school. Their daughter Raya was born in 1917. Berl was killed by a stray shell during the civil war. There was a woman in labor in the neighboring house and Berl came out of his shelter to help her. Feiga and her daughter Raya didn’t keep in touch with us. They thought we were kaptsan (beggar in Yiddish). Only when my brother and I became students a few years before the war did they begin to visit us. In the summer of 1941, on the way to evacuation Raya started to give birth and they had to get off the train on a station and they were killed by the Germans there.
My mother’s second brother Volka was born in 1894. I don’t know whether he had any education besides cheder. He worked with grandfather Leib. Before WWI he was recruited to the tsarist army, but his unit didn’t take part in combat action. But during the civil war he was in a red partisan unit with uncle Idel. He was captured by the Petlura units (4) and they beat him with ramrods in the central square of Tulchin. The Jewish population of the town took every effort to collect enough money to pay his ransom -- and he was ransomed. Volka often went to Odessa on business at his father’s request. He married Klara (Haika) Skhotskaya who came from a very religious family in Odessa before the revolution of 1917. Her father Haim Skhotskiy served in the synagogue as gabbai. They strictly followed the kashrut and celebrated holidays regardless of the fact that the authorities disapproved of religious convictions. On Friday evening when the Shabbat came in they lit candles and Klara said a blessing over them. She didn’t cook on Saturday. The family ate the food cooked a day before. I came to enter an Institute in Odessa in 1938. Volka worked as shipment forwarder since his marriage. He was a very sickly person. He had a son (Lyusik) and a daughter (Manya). They studied at the Jewish school and later they graduated from university. After the war Lyusik worked as director of a flour-grinding mill in Voronezh. He lives in Israel now. Manya and her family live in America. Volka died at the beginning of 1970.
My mother was the eldest of all sisters. My mother’s sister Molka was born in 1896. She was a real beauty and sang in the Leontovich choir (5). In 1922 her brother Volka asked her to come to Odessa to help his wife with their son. Soon she married Abram Rozenberg, a tailor in Odessa. Abram and Molka had two sons. They both graduated from university. Molka and her older son Dodik came to our grandmother Etl in Tulchin almost every summer. Molka died in 1993. Abram died few years before her
My mother’s second sister Rachel was born in 1898. She lived with my grandmother Etl in an old house. Rachel was constantly involved in repairs in the house. She was the director of the Ukrainian library in the town. She married Gabriel Kolotinskiy who came to our town from Tomashpol to work in the bank. They had two children. Rachel and her husband bought a house in a good neighborhood in Tulchin. They evacuated to Dnepropetrovsk. Gabriel worked at the excavation of trenches and perished during an air raid. He was buried in a common grave along with other deceased. Rachel and her children went on to Frunze. After the war Rachel and her children moved to Odessa. Her son Yan perished of an electrocution. Her daughter Sopha graduated from the Construction Institute and married Isaac Klauzner. They had two sons. The family moved to Australia in the 1980s with Aunt Rachel. Aunt Rachel died in Sidney in 1996.
My mother’s third sister Myndia was born in 1900. She married Mendel Vexler. He was a party official. He took part in the revolution of 1917. He was always afraid that our family would spoil his reputation and didn’t allow Myndia to communicate with us. Mendel got a job in Vinnitsa and Myndia moved there with him. They had a daughter. Mendel died of a heart attack. Myndia finished a course in typing and worked in the NKVD (6) office. She worked in Lvov before the war. At the beginning of the war her family evacuated to Tashkent (3000 km from Odessa). In 1945 she came back to Odessa with her daughter. They lived with us for five years. Aunt Myndia died in 1986 and her daughter died shortly afterwards. They were buried in the town of Nikolaev (150 km from Odessa). Myndia’s grandchildren and great grandchildren live in Israel.
My mother’s youngest brother Efim (Fima) was born in 1903. He was the only one of this generation of the family to get a higher education. He finished a polytechnic in Bratslav and graduated from the Odessa Construction Institute. Upon graduation he became a lecturer there. He married a Jewish girl from Odessa. In May 1941 his daughter was born. In July he went to the front. His family was in evacuation during the war. In 1945 they returned to their two-room apartment at the seashore. After the war their second daughter was born. In the 1950swe used to bathe in the sea until dark with Fima and his daughters. We often discussed various subjects with Fima. We often had family celebrations on the big verandah in his house. Fima died in the middle of the 1970s. We buried him in the Jewish cemetery. His children and grandchildren live in Israel and Australia.
My mother Sosia Portnaya was born in 1890. She studied without her father’s knowledge. She could read and write in Yiddish and knew Russian literature well. My mother helped her mother around the house. She went to the market with her mother. The market was held twice a week in Tulchin. Farmers from the surrounding villages brought their food products: milk, eggs, poultry and vegetables. My mother was a very reserved shopper and made good choices at the market. All the relatives always treated my mother with big respect.

My father Shoil Zhornitskiy was born in 1888. After finishing cheder (they learned Torah and Talmud in cheder and that was all) he became an apprentice for a furniture upholsterer. My father was very qualified. He restored furniture at the mansion of the counts Pototskiy and Sheremetiev My father met my mother at his sister Pesia’s wedding in 1904 when he was 16.
My parents got married in 1914.They never told us whether they married for love or convenience. My relatives said that some members of the family of the counts Pototskiy where my father worked as upholsterer gave my parents bedcovers from Warsaw as a wedding gift. They lasted for many years through the revolution and war and my wife used them after the war to cover our bed. My parents settled down in the house of my father’s mother Haika. They had the smallest room with earthen floor. The window was very low and it was always dark in their room. My father’s sister Khona and her daughter Fira lived in the biggest room. My father worked as an upholsterer and his brothers helped him with his work. They had a workshop and a store – two in one -- at the market and their business was so successful that they even had to hire employees. Later, when furniture was not so much in demand my father started up a soap-making business. He made soap in our kitchen. Later he organized a soap-making workshop and became its manager. They did not work on Shabbat.

My older brother Leo (Leib) was born in 1916 and Volodia (Voya) was born one and a half years later, in 1917. I was born on Yom Kippur on 10 September 1919. On this day the gang (7) of a certain Marusich, a woman that came from a noble family, burst into our town. Her family had an estate near Tulchin. All Jews hid in their cellars. My mother with a newly born baby stayed at home. She didn’t want to put the others at risk in case the baby started crying. It was our good luck that Marusich was just looking for an upholsterer. Some bandits stormed into the bedroom and my mother froze with horror. Marusich grabbed me, gave me a kiss and put me back on the bed. Since then my mother always celebrated my birthday on Yom Kippur. In 1923 our mizinik Boris (Berl) was born. (Editor’s note: The younger son of a family is called mizinik or ‘little finger’ in Yiddish.)
My mother was very weak after she gave birth to four sons. We were always concerned about her health. She was always busy doing work about the house, washing, cleaning and cooking or altering our clothes. Volodia and Boris were helping her a lot. They fetched water from the well, cut wood, stoked stoves and did a lot more. We had a Singer sewing machine with a hand drive. At my mother’s request we turned the handle to make sewing easier for her. Our father got up at 5 in the morning. He stoked the stoves, took out our night pots, made breakfast and went to work. He worked very hard and made every effort to provide for his wife and sons. He was very kind and sympathetic. He died when he was 54.

As I remember Tulchin from my childhood it was a small Jewish town. Some of the Jewish traditions were still strictly observed in our family. We spoke Yiddish. Non-kosher food was forbidden in our family, just as in the families of our relatives - there was shochet in the market, we used to go there to have our poultry killed according to the rules. Before 1927 we all went to the synagogue with our parents. I remember how matzah was made at home before Pesach. We rolled the dough out on a big table, then we made the knurling with special rollers and took the trays to a family across the street to have it baked. Our stove was not good for baking and they didn’t have a big table, so we worked in cooperation with them. I remember that before Pesach the house was cleaned in some special way. My mother cooked traditional food: Gefilte fish, chicken broth and matzah pudding. My father sat at the head of the table reading the Haggadah. As a rule we invited relatives for Seder eve. The children got a sip of Pesach wine. This is about all that I can remember about the Jewish festivals of my childhood. In the late 1930s we, children, stopped taking active part in the religious celebrations. We became Komsomol members and celebrated Soviet holidays. And our parents had to say only that one must be in the main stream of life in the state.

We had very little space in our apartment and in 1924 the family got together and took a decision to build a new house. There wasn’t enough money for the construction and the family decided to build an annex to the store in grandmother Etl’ yard. It took the family a year and a half to build two extra rooms in the annex and turn the store into a kitchen and a hallway. It turned out a beautiful apartment. We had wonderful furniture – these pieces had remained since the time when my father and his brothers had their upholstery business. I guess it wasn’t sold at the time and was stored until we decided to use it.
In 1923 Leo went to a Jewish school. Volodia went to school with him, even though he was two years younger. In 1926 my mother’s sister Rachel took me to the exam at a Ukrainian school. She was an advanced woman for her time and believed that I had to study in a Ukrainian school so that I could get a higher education. She knew people at the admission commission and managed to convince them to admit me to the school. Through the first two years I had big problems with the Ukrainian language, as I had only spoken Yiddish before. I had to spend two years in the 2nd form, but it was for my benefit. My teacher Olga Petrovna Utkina, a great pedagogue and a nice person, helped me to become one of the most successful pupils in my class. Boris studied in the Ukrainian school with me. He was very smart and had the highest grades at school. We were all good at studying. Our schoolmates used to get together at our home. We studied together, played or had discussions. Our neighbors said that our parents were very special. They didn’t mind our getting together. At one time when my father had a god income we had a housemaid who used to grumble that she was only wasting her energy trying to keep the floors clean. We were all good at swimming. We used to cross the pond in Tulchin from one bank to the other and back. We played football, skied and skated. We were also very fond of chess. We hardly ever had any arguments. My brothers were always ready to share everything with one another.
The years of famine 1932-1933 (8) were very hard, but we all survived. My father’s soap was not in demand during the years of famine. There was a pit at the location of my father’s soap-making shop where dead horses were buried – two cavalry regiments were lodging in Tulchin. The horses were buried during the day and at night the same workers dug them out to take their meat home. Our mother used to boil this meat for a long time after boiling she kept it on the fire until it almost turned into embers. We didn’t go to bed until late on such days waiting for this meal to be ready. Or mother also boiled potato peels that we got from our neighbors or relatives. Boris and I got a meal at school: a bowl of skilly and a slice of so-called bread. Our teacher watched us until we finished this piece of bread so that we didn’t take it home to our parents. Leo worked as a cinema operator after finishing lower secondary school (7 years). Volodia became an apprentice for a typesetter in a printing house after finishing lower secondary school. They received a ration card for 800 grams of bread as workers. We were dependants and only received 200 grams. Our parents were so weak that they could hardly stand on their feet. On some days we had no bread at all. Sometimes uncle Idel or uncle Gabriel helped us. Every now and then officers from cavalry units ordered my father to upholster some furniture and paid him with flour or bran. It was a feast for us. Our mother mixed the potato peels with bran, added some flour and made delicious pancakes. Once my father brought home some soybeans that he got from an officer. We had never tried them before, but after our mother kept them over the fire until we could eat it we got fed for the first time in a long while. One of our relatives was the director of a recreation center – after the Revolution the palaces of rich men turned into such institution - in Antopol village near Tulchin. They asked us to make new cases for the mattresses and my father took me to assist him. We had meals at the canteen for the employees. Boris was too young to work and our parents paid for his meals in this center. There was a Torgsin store (9) in Tulchin during the period of famine. My mother and I took our silver cups there and got some millet, flour and sugar in exchange. My mother was hoping for more and took me to help her carry the bags home, but, alas, my assistance was not necessary.
On 2 May 1932 the first Soviet film, “A pass to life”, was shown in our town. A few years before this event the town municipal building, a communist party school and a cinema theater were built in our town. Our father draped the walls in the cinema theater with sound absorbing fabric. Our older brother Leo also worked in this cinema theater and we often came to watch films sitting in his operator’s cabin.

1935-1936 also was a difficult period. The NKVD office demanded gold from people. Our father was also summoned to go there. He was tortured there so hard that he knew he wouldn’t survive. He requested permission to see his wife. When our mother came to see him he asked her to get some money and buy golden coins. He said he would die if she didn’t. Our mother did as she was told, notified our father where she hid them in our home. Some NKVD officers came to search our home and “found” the coins. They released our father. My neighbor Gorenshtein was arrested in 1937 (10). We were students of the 9th form and he brought a book of Lenin to school where Lenin wrote that Stalin should not be given state power. He was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. In this same year a formerly noble family was deported from Tulchin. Their son Volodia was my classmate. He was a very educated and intelligent boy. They were exiled to Siberia. Volodia’s mother came to us to ask my mother to let Volodia live with us until he finished school. My mother gave her consent and Volodia stayed with our family. After finishing school Volodia entered an Institute, but when the Great Patriotic War began he went to the front and perished in 1943.
Some time before the war my father went to work in the meat factory. He worked in the fat treatment workshop where they melted fat and loaded it into barrels that were transported to Kharkov for margarine production. My father left to work early in the morning. He started a fire in the stove, loaded a big bowl with fat, melted it and poured it into wooden barrels with a scoop. At the end of the day he had to clean the bowl and load the wood to get it dry for the following day. My father was working alone and we had to take his lunch to work. Our mother cooked his lunch, packed it into a white pillowcase and one of us had to walk 3 km to the factory to deliver the food.
In 1937 Leo was recruited to the army. He was sent to the Far East where the Japanese army attacked the USSR in 1939 (11). Leo’s unit was not far from military operations sites and our parents were very concerned about him. Leo brought a photo camera from the Far East. He also participated in the Finnish war (12). Fortunately, it wasn’t long and Leo returned home in the winter of 1940. In the winter of 1941 he married Rachel, a student from Bratslav. They were living with us.
Volodia worked in the printing house and studied in a trade school for workers. He finished it when he turned 17. In 1937 he entered the Faculty of Chemistry of the Dnepropetrovsk University. In the summer of 1939 a Russian secondary school was opened in our town and Boris went to the 9th form there. Boris attended an aviation design club at the district technical center for schoolchildren. He was also secretary of the Komsomol organization in his school and a member of the Komsomol district committee. Boris was awarded a tour to Moscow for his Komsomol activities. He told us lots of stories about what he saw in Moscow. He also managed to bring presents and a little bit of millet cereal. Boris finished school in 1941.
I finished school in 1938. I didn’t have any preferences as for my future profession. Some of my classmates decided to continue their studies in Odessa. Three of us: Kalmen Kreitchman, Kolia Sherban and I entered the Institute of Sea Transport Engineers in Odessa. We lived in a dormitory. Our parents were very happy for their children. I received a stipend and sometimes received food parcels from home. I shared this food with my roommates. I was often hungry and on weekends went to see my mother’s sister Molka who lived in Odessa. When I could not manage to go to see her, aunt Molka came to my hostel on weekends to bring me some food and take care of my laundry.
On 22 June 1941 the Great Patriotic War began. My brothers and I went to the front on the first days of the war. We didn’t have any information about our parents or each other for a few months. My mother told me after the war how they, together with her sister Zlota and Zlota’s husband Idl with her daughter Donia, Leo’s wife Rachel and some of their neighbors were leaving Tulchin on horse-driven carts. They stayed in the open air overnight and ate whatever they could get. They exchanged clothes for bread and dug up potatoes in the fields or found pumpkins or beetroots. The German planes targeted every cart or person and there were dead bodies and overturned carts scattered around. They were facing death many times on their way to escape. My uncle had a casserole where he kept embers and when they stopped he made a fire to cook food. They got to Dnepropetrovsk (500 km from Odessa) where they boarded an open railroad platform. The trip was long. They had no money or food on the way. They stayed in Budyonnovsk, Stavropol region, for some time, but as the Germans were approaching my family moved on in the summer of 1942. They reached Baku and crossed the Caspian Sea to get to Turkmenistan. They stayed on a collective farm where they were involved in cotton harvesting. At the beginning of November 1942 they reached Frunze (3500 km from Odessa), the capital of Kirghizia. My father fell very ill there. He had stomach hemorrhage and died in October 1943. He was buried in Frunze.
Leo perished in the first months of the war in 1941. Volodia saw Leo marching with an artillery unit in Dnepropetrovsk. He marched with him to the gate of his military unit and this was the last time when Leo was seen. We don’t know where he perished. Leo’s wife Rachel lived with our mother until the end of the war hoping that Leo would return.
Boris studied at a military college. After finishing it he worked at the military factory that manufactured shells in a village in the vicinity of Ufa (Bashkiria). He forwarded shell shipments to the front. When our father died in evacuation my mother went to Boris and lived with him until the end of the war. After the war Boris went to study at the Kharkov Military Academy and our mother moved to us in Odessa. Upon graduation from the Academy Boris was assigned to work in Serpukhov near Moscow. He worked in a design office. He got married and had two sons: Alexandr and Volodia. In the 1990s he moved to the USA with his family. They live in New York.
On the second day of the war, on 23 June 1941, I was assigned to a fighting battalion (13) of Voroshylov district. We patrolled the town, excavated trenches and chased after spies. On the first days of the war the Germans bombed our institute and the dormitory. At the end of July Kalmen Kreitchman, Kolia Scherban and I entered the artillery college in Odessa. On the last days of July the college was evacuated to the Urals. We lived in barracks. It was cold there and we didn’t have enough food. We studied artillery, topography and logistics. I was a good student, but I was homesick and missed my family. In February 1942 we moved to Novosibirsk where we continued our studies. At the end of July 1942 we went to the front. I started my military career as a platoon leader and was promoted to commander of battalion. On 24 August 1944 I was severely wounded in the shank of my right leg and my right hand near Belostok in Poland. I was bleeding profusely, fainting and regaining consciousness. I was lying there until dark. I was unconscious and our soldiers thought I was dead. One of them was attracted by my box calf boots. When some soldiers began to pull my boots off my leg I groaned. The soldiers called the nurses and I was taken to a house. I had stayed at the battlefield for over six hours. I was thirsty and was allowed to drink as much as I wanted, because the nurses thought I was in agony. Later the doctors in the hospital in Belostok told me that this saved my life. The hospital was overcrowded and many patients were lying on the floor. I was there several days when doctor Sarah Markovna Bluvshtein came to me asking “Are you an officer?” I told her my rank and position and asked her to send a message about me to my regiment. I was moved to an officer’s ward. On 1 September the chief surgeon examined me and announced that I had gas gangrene. He explained that I needed to have my leg amputated to my knee, in an hour and if I hesitated it might become too late. I had a high fever and didn’t care about anything. I kept silent. The chief surgeon said that it was useless to ask for my consent and did what he had to do. I regained consciousness in a ward. Sarah Markovna was sitting beside me telling me that it wasn’t going to be easy to live with my leg amputated, but that I could still lead a good life. She looked after me for a month and a half that I was in this hospital. I am so grateful to her and her husband, the chief surgeon.
Later I was transferred to a hospital in Tbilissi. My wounds were healing very slowly and I stayed in Tbilissi for a long time. I was young and soon began to look at girls. I liked Julia Kintsurashvili, the senior nurse. She was tall and beautiful. She was very kind and caring. I began to pay more attention to her. I was prepared for getting an ammunition leg and was staying in a separate ward. Julia was looking after me there. On Victory Day I was in hospital. There was so much joy and happiness everywhere. When all sutures were removed from my leg I proposed to Julia. She accepted it and said that I had to finish my studies at the institute and that we would live on her salary and my pension meanwhile. Julia’s father said: “A Jew, and without a leg! On the other hand, all of my friends are Jewish and besides, he lost his leg at the front.” I was released from hospital on 29 June 1945. On the same day the doctors and nurses arranged a wedding party for us in the apartment of Julia’s best friend. Boris and my mother invited us to stay some time with them. After a few days we arrived in Uman, a small town 30 km from Ufa, where Boris and my mother lived. We spent 3 wonderful weeks in Bashkiria. My mother liked Julia from the first minute.
In August we came to Odessa. We were trying to get an apartment. The military commandant of the town helped us to get a two-room apartment. My aunt Myndia and Lena moved in with us. We didn’t have any furniture in this apartment and Abram and Molka gave us a bed and a table. Uncle Idl made a string mattress for us.
I went to the dean’s office to get a permission to continue my studies. The dean advised me to give up this idea, as I wouldn’t be able to find a job at the fleet. I went to see the rector. He put his signature on my request and said that I would have enough work at the fleet if I had a head on my shoulders. He called the dean’s office and insisted on my readmission to the Institute. I am so grateful to him for what he did for me. I continued my studies as a fourth year student. There were 6 other students demobilized from the front. One of them, Pavel Medvedev, became my close friend and we were friends until he died in the late 1980s. He was a senior student and I was the party organizer of our course. I became a member of the Party at the front. In 1947 I had sailing training. Our boat cruised to Bulgaria, Rumania, Turkey, Singapore and Malay.
Our older daughter Emma was born in 1946. I received a stipend and a pension for my invalidity. We were poor, but we managed to make ends meet. My brothers Volodia and Boris and my cousin Fira were helping us at this period. Volodia and his wife visited us in Odessa several times. My mother moved in with us in Odessa after her granddaughter was born. My mother’s brothers and sisters also lived in Odessa. My mother had heart problems and walking was difficult for her, so our relatives visited us on the big Jewish holidays. On the holidays my mother went to the only synagogue in the city, at Peresyp (14). My wife escorted her there and made sure that she was all right.. Mother lit candles for Shabbat and followed the kashrut. There was a shochet at the New Market after the war. The Jewish spirit was alive in my house until mother’s death. In 1950 my mother went to visit her sister Zlota in Tulchin and died of heart attack. She was buried in an old cemetery in Tulchin where all her relatives had been buried. After my mother died all family celebration were arranged in the house of Abram and Molka. They supported our family during and after the war. I never saw Abram upset. I will always remember how he used to say “Molkaly, it’ll be O’K. Everything will be fine”. We had traditional Jewish food, sang Jewish songs and partied until late at our family celebrations. Uncle Yosl and Pesia from Dnepropetrovsk and Idl and Zlota from Tulchin often came to our celebrations. We had very strong family ties.

I graduated from the Institute in the summer of 1947. I got a job assignment in the newly established design office of the Black Sea Fleet in Lastochkin Street. I worked there for 40 years. I was awarded the badge of Honorable Employee of the Ministry of Navy of the USSR and Honorable Employee of the Black Sea Fleet, and I am the author of several inventions. I was a designer, senior engineer and leading designer. Since the 1970s I worked with fire-fighting systems. I took part in a number of conferences in Leningrad, went to experimental fires to develop standards for fire fighting on land and on sea. I never had any problems or disadvantages because of my Jewish nationality.
I remember 1948 when Israel was established. Our people suffered a lot during the Holocaust and this was an opportunity for them to get a home. However, moving there never occurred to me. In 1967 I followed the events of the Six-Day War. There were quite a few Jews in our design office and we were very happy about the victory and congratulated one another.
1952 was the period of the “Doctors’ Case” (15), it was a time of fear. We were as quiet as mice. There were rumors that Jews were going to be deported to Birobidjan (16). When Stalin died the Doctors’ Plot was closed and the rumpus vanished. When Stalin died we felt very unhappy and my wife cried. We had no idea how we were going to live without Stalin.

Our second daughter Svetlana was born in 1953. When our children grew older Julia went to work at the polyclinic not far from our house. Our girls received a good education. Both of them finished music school. I raised my daughters with Jewish identity and they were registered in their ID cards as Jews. Fortunately they had no problems because of their Jewish origin. Emma graduated from the Hydrotechnical Faculty of Navy Engineers and Svetlana graduated from the Cryogenic Faculty of the Refrigeration Institute.

Emma married Slava Braverman - a grandson of my mother’s sister Zlota - in 1973. They have two sons: Dima and Igor. They live in America. Svetlana married her fellow student Yura Golovchenko in 1976. They have a daughter Natasha. She lives in Odessa. She married her fellow student. They have their own business and they are successful.
Our daughters live nearby. Emma lives in our former apartment and Svetlana lives in the apartment that I received in 1976. Our family received two apartments at that time. My wife and I live in one of them. Julia hardly ever goes out, but our daughters come to see us every day. We follow events in the world and in Israel, in particular. I read a lot about the history of my people. I bump into familiar stories that my grandmother Etl used to tell me. I know that Jewish life has revived in our town lately. There are Jewish associations in our town and there are two synagogues. I am very glad that the synagogue in Richelieu Street has been returned to the Jews. I receive the Jewish newspapers “Or Sameach” and “Shomrei Shabos” that publish all news about Jewish life in Odessa. Recently I began to receive assistance from the Jewish charity center “Gemilot Hesed”.

Glossary

1. GPU: State Political Department, the state security agency of the USSR, that is, the punitive body of Soviet authorities.
2. Komsomol: communist youth organization created by the Communist Party to make sure that the state would be in control of the ideological upbringing and spiritual development of the youth almost until the age of 30.
3. Great Patriotic War: On 22 June 1941 at 5 o’clock in the morning Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union without declaring a war. This was the beginning of the so-called Great Patriotic War.
3. NEP: New Economic Policy, the economic policy of the Soviet Union in the period of transition from capitalism to socialism when private business was allowed on a small scale in order to save the country ruined by wars and revolution. It was launched by Lenin in 1921 and was gradually abandoned in the 1920s with the introduction of the planned economy.
4. Simon Petliura (1879-1926): Ukrainian politician, member of the Ukrainian Social-Democratic Working Party; In the Soviet-Polish war he was on the side of Poland; in 1920 he emigrated. He was killed in Paris as a revenge for the pogroms against Jews in Ukraine.
5. N. D. Leontovich (1877 – 1921): Ukrainian composer, conductor of choir, organizer and director of several Ukrainian folk choirs, founder of the famous Ukrainian national choir.
6. NKVD: People’s Committee of Internal Affairs; it took over the functions of the GPU, the state security agency, in 1934.
7. Gangs: During the civil war in 1918-1920 there were all kinds of gangs in Ukraine. They used political slogans to cover their criminal deeds. These gangs were anti-Soviet and anti-Semitic.
8. Famine in Ukraine: In 1920 a forced famine was introduced in Ukraine that caused the death
of millions of people. It was arranged in order to suppress the protesting peasants that did not want to join the collective farms. There was another dreadful forced famine in 1930-1934 in Ukraine. The authorities took away the last food products from the farmers. People were dying in the streets, whole villages became deserted. The authorities arranged this specifically to suppress the rebellious farmers that did not want to accept the Soviet power and join the collective farms.
9. Torgsin stores: These stores were created in the 1920s to support trade with foreigners. One could buy good quality food products and clothing in exchange for gold and antiquities in such shops.
10. Arrested in the end of 1937: In the mid-1930s Stalin launched a major campaign of political terror. The purges, arrests, and deportations to labor camps touched virtually every family. Untold numbers of party, industrial, and military leaders disappeared during the “Great Terror”. Indeed, between 1934 and 1938 two-thirds of the members of the 1934 Central Committee were sentenced and executed.
11. The Japanese army attacked the USSR in 1939: in the summer of 1939 on the river Halkhin-Gol the Japanese army attacked the territory of the Mongol Republic that had a union agreement with USSR; The Japanese were defeated by the Soviet-Mongol joint army.
12. Soviet-Finnish War (1939-40): the Soviet Union attacked Finland on 30 November 1939 to take hold of the Karelian Isthmus. The red Army was stopped at the so-called Mannengeim line. The League of Nations expelled the USSR from among its members. In February-March 1940 the Red Army broke through the Mannengeim line and reached Vyborg. In March 1940 a peace treaty was signed in Moscow, according to which the Karelian Isthmus and some other areas became part of the Soviet Union.
13. Fighting battalion: people’s volunteer corps during the Great Patriotic War; its soldiers patrolled towns, excavated trenches and watched buildings during bombings at night. Students often volunteered to participate in these fighting battalions.
14. Peresyp: An industrial neighborhood in the outskirts of Odessa
15. Doctors’ Plot: The so-called Doctors’ Plot was a set of accusations deliberately forged by Stalin’s government and the KGB against Jewish doctors of the Kremlin hospital charging them with the murder of outstanding Bolsheviks. The “Plot” was started in 1952, but was never finished because Stalin died in 1953.
16.
Birobidjan: In the 1930s Stalin’s government established a Jewish autonomous region in Birobidjan, in a desert with terrible climate in the Far East of Russia. The conditions were very inhospitable there. There was no water, power supply, houses or transportation. The Soviet government hoped that educated people would populate this area and make it a civilized republic. People were in no hurry to leave their jobs and homes and the comforts of living in a town and move to the middle of nowhere. The Soviet government set the term of forced deportation of all Jews to Birobidjan in the middle of the 1950s. But in 1953 Stalin died and the deportation was cancelled.

Inessa Vitkina. Biography
Inessa Vitkina
Biography

Chernovtsy, Ukraine, 2002

​I was born in Moscow on 28 February 1933. My mother Tsylia Isaakovna Vitkina was born in Yanishki Shauliai district Vilen region, Russia that is presently Vilnius region, Lithuania.
Isaak Vitkin, my grandfather on my mother’s side, was born in 1850s in the town of Yanishki where he continued living with the family of his own. He was a shoemaker. In winter he made winter coats. My grandmother’s name was Miriam and she was few years younger than my grandfather. I guess she was born in 1860s. I don’t know where my grandmother came from or anything about her life before she got married. My grandparents had a big family. My mother was the youngest of 6 children. The family was poor. They didn’t have a house of their own. My grandmother did some farming and kept few cows. The children helped her around. Every day after milking the cows my grandmother made cottage cheese and butter and the children went to nearby borough Shauliai to deliver the dairies to their customers. Their family lived on these earnings.

My mother’s parents were very religious. There were quite a few Jews in Yanishki. I don’t know how many synagogues there were, but there was one for sure. My mother told me that her parents went to the synagogue on Saturday. My grandmother had one fancy black velvet gown that she wore to the synagogue. Granny always wore a wig. I asked Mama once why Granny had such pretty curls when my sister’s and my hair was straight. And mama replied that my grandmother had a wig. . They observed all Jewish traditions, celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays and my Granny strictly followed the kashruth. My mother wasn’t religious when I knew her. However, in our house they kept dairy product and meat dishes separately. My sister and I still follow this rule. My mother always put salt on meat and soaked it in water. She used to say that she was following what her mother was doing. This means that she still kept Jewish traditions even if she didn’t quite realize it. It became her habit since childhood. They spoke Yiddish in the family. Later my mother often talked with my Aunt Leya in Yiddish. The boys and Aunt Leya studied in cheder and a secondary school. My mother was the youngest in the family and she didn’t get a chance to study. She had to help her mother about the house. My mother always spoke with resentment that my aunt did get some education, but she herself never got a chance. She had to make clothes for the family and help my grandmother to provide for the family. My mother never got rid of this feeling of jealousy towards my aunt. My aunt could write and read in Yiddish. My mother learned to write and read when she was grown up in Russian only.

​I already mentioned that there were six children in the family. There were more of them born, of course, but those six survived. I only knew two children: my Mama’s sister Leya – she was called Lina – and her brother Haim. I have bits of information about the rest of children. Two older sons of my grandparents moved to America. I don’t know their names. One of them left in 1912 before WWI and another one was at the front during the civil war and left in the early 1920s. Our family didn’t keep in touch with them. One more brother was at the front during WWI and died in hospital from spotted fever. I don’t remember his name, but I remember a story about him. My mother and Aunt Lina told me that he was a very handsome young man and a married woman fell in love with him. It wasn’t a love affair, but she was in love with my uncle. All we know about her is that her name was Sophia Petrovna. When my uncle was departing to the front she gave him a ring with her initials as a pendant for good luck. The ring didn’t keep my uncle safe. After he died my grandmother received a package with his belongings from hospital and there was this ring among them. This was a golden ring but there was no value on it and nobody took it away during the pogroms – I’m going to tell about this later. The ring stayed with our family and when I reached 16 my mother gave it to me as a gift in the memory of my uncle. Now my sister and I have a granddaughter – she is Uncle Haim’s great granddaughter. We gave this ring to her as a symbol of love.

Before the revolution of 1917 Lithuania was an outlying district of the Russian Empire. Pogroms began there even before WWI. The gangs consisted of Lithuanians that were fighting for separation of Lithuania from Russia. However, they also broke into the Jewish houses massacring the Jews. My mother told me about one of such pogroms. She was almost 10 years old. She was milking a cow in the shed when she heard terrible noise, screams and horse neighs. She went into the yard and saw her Jewish neighbor being pulled by her hair by a horseman. My mother ran to her home to tell my grandmother about it. My grandmother and her children that were at home at that time hid in the cellar. They left it the following day to find out that bandits killed few people and took away all horses from the village. Everything was turned upside down in the house and my grandmother’s ring and her golden chain with mogenduvid (a hexagonal Star of David – the Jewish talisman) disappeared. Only the ring was there – I had already mentioned it. There were other pogroms but Mama only told us about this one. The situation with aggression in Lithuania caused Russia some concern and Russia decided to move its citizens from there. My mother’s family was ordered to go to Byelorussia. My grandfather died on the way and my grandmother and Leya stayed there to bury him. My mother’s older brother Haim and my mother ended in Byelorussia. Later, in 1920s Lithuania separated from Russia. That was how it happened that my grandmother and Aunt Leya stayed in Lithuania and my grandmother’s children – Haim and my mother – lived in Byelorussia.

​Aunt Leya and my grandmother lied in Vilnius. Aunt Leya worked at the printing house. After the revolution of 1917 Aunt Leya became an active participant in the trade union movement. Her childhood friend Rieva Shwartz from Yanishki moved in with her. Rieva was the same age as mama. She also got fond of the revolutionary movement. They were both good at organizing things, lectured in revolutionary clubs and spoke for the Soviet power. My grandmother died in 1933. She was buried at the Jewish cemetery in Vilnius. Soon after she died Leya and Rieva got arrested by Lithuanian authorities for their trade union and revolutionary activities. They were imprisoned. Lithuanian authorities released them under condition that they would leave Lithuania immediately. Rieva went to Palestine and Rieva never heard about her any more. The Soviet Union agreed to accept my aunt under condition that she would go to Birobijan. In 1934 Aunt Leya left Lithuania for Birobijan. She lived there for a year and in 1935 se moved in with us in Grozny. She lived with us her whole life and we were her only family. My aunt was an accountant. During the war she evacuated to Stalinabad with us and stayed with us after the war. Aunt Leya died in 1973 in Chernovtsy. She died in her sleep. She was buried at the Jewish cemetery in Chernovtsy.

Now I’ll tell you about the family of Uncle Haim that lived in Byelorussia. At first Uncle Haim and my mother lived in Vilyuye, but then he got married and moved to Krichev with his family. My uncle worked at the printing house. His wife’s name was Faya. She was a very beautiful, fair-haired Jew. They had 5 children. The oldest is Ida, then came Naum – they are both living. I also remember Isaak (Izia), Lev and their daughter Maria – they passed away. Ida studied at the Pedagogical Institute in Leningrad before the war. During the war she was in the blockade and in 1942 she was taken out of Leningrad. She joined us in Grozny and we all evacuated from there together. Naum was in the Navy during the war. He lives in Vladimir now. Naum is very ill. His wife passed away. He has a son and grandchildren. His son lives in Minsk. Ida lives in Tel-Aviv, Israel. She turned 80 last year. My sister and I visited her in Israel to celebrate her 80th birthday. 4 family generations got together there. Uncle Haim died in 1960 and Faya lived 4 years longer.

After Haim got married my mother moved to Bobruysk. She worked at the printing house. As she was constantly exposed to lead she got ill with eczema. She had to quit. Later she was sent to Moscow to take a course of kindergarten teachers. After finishing the course she worked at the kindergarten in Bobruysk. Children always loved her. Until the last days of her life children came to our house to play with her. They told her all their secrets. Mama was a very wise and smart woman even though she had no higher education. She was educated but she was too shy to write. She always asked us to write official papers because she learned to write when she was grown up and felt awkward about it.

Mama was an activist of the Jewish movement when she was young. I guess, in the 1920s the Party authorities encouraged Jews to speak Yiddish and cultivate their Jewish identity. Authorities were opening Jewish schools and Jewish theaters. There was such period but it passed by promptly. Young Jewish people were active in their effort to improve things. But even at that time hardly any of them could speak Yiddish.

​My father Andrei Nikanorovich Koshkin was born in 1895 in the village of Ozeriye Novo-Konstantinovsky district Riazan region. My father was Russian, a Christian. I know very little about my father’s family. His ancestors were serfs. My father’s great grandfather, a serf, was whipped to death. My grandfather Nikanor Koshkin was a carpenter. That’s all I know about him. My grandmother Maria married my grandfather when she was 15 and she gave birth to 18 children. Only the oldest and the youngest of them survived. My father was an older son. When he turned 8 years old he became a tinsmith’s apprentice and later he became a turner. During the revolution he was a turner at a plant in Petersburg. In February 1917 my father became a member of the Communist Party. During the civil war of 1914 – 1920 he was in the Red army. My father had a younger sister Lidia. I know no details about her life. I only know that she died in 1934 and my sister received her name after her.

​My parents met in Moscow when my father was studying at the Communist University. He was finishing his post-graduate studies and my mother was at the training course for kindergarten employees. This communist university prepared propaganda and political specialists. My parents didn’t leave us any details about how they met. They didn’t have a wedding party. They even didn’t register their marriage officially. At that time this was an ordinary thing. There was no nationality specified in my and my sister’s birth certificate and later we had to prove our Jewish identity. It was particularly difficult for my sister. The registry office issued her birth certificate on death certificate form, as they had no birth certificate forms left.

I was born in Moscow on 28 February 1933. Our parents were living at the hostel then. When I was born they tried to choose me a name. My father suggested Klara or Rosa in honor of Klara Tsetkin of Rosa Luxemburg, German revolutionaries. My mother wanted to give the name of Galina. However, there was a Spanish woman in that hostel. She got a baby and named it Inessa. My parents found it a beautiful name and decided to name me so. When I was born my father had problems with his party activities and even had to face the court. Therefore, my mother gave me her last name – Vitkina.

Grandmother Maria, my father’s mother, visited us in Moscow when I was born. But she refused to stay with us helping my mother to raise me. My grandmother told my mother that she had raised her own children and that my mother had to take care of hers. My grandmother had a house in the village, but my sister and I had never been there. My grandmother died before the war. My mother said that my grandmother couldn’t forgive my father for his marrying a Jewish woman and that their marriage wasn’t sanctified by the church. The relationship between my mother and my grandmother was tense and my grandmother showed no affection toward me or my sister. I know that my father always sent some money to my grandmother.
​
​In 1930 the case against Industrial Party began. This was the beginning of Stalin’s terror. The authorities arrested and sentenced the leadership of the Industrial Party and then, beginning from 1933 they arrested the people that were acquainted with prisoners in one way or another or were employed by them. In 1934 my father was arrested. Besides other accusations he was blamed of having relatives in America (my mother’s older brothers). My mother hardly remembered them due to a big difference in their age. My mother wasn’t in any contact with them, to say the least of my father. But he was charged of almost sending them intelligence information. My father rejected all these absurd accusations at the preliminary sitting of the court. He refused from having an attorney and defended himself during the whole course of the case. As a result of all his suffering Papa fell ill with diabetes that caused his early death. We had Papa’s notes of his speech in court, but after his death NKVD took away all his papers. When I was in the first form I had to prepare a report about the Great October Socialist revolution. Papa wrote me a draft. They even took away this notebook. I don’t know the details of the court but Papa was discharged of all accusation. As my father was close to Stalin opposition circles our family had to leave Moscow. My father was offered a job at the oil fields in the Caucasus. In 1934 my parents moved to Voznesenka village, Malgobekskiy district, Chechen-Ingush ASSR. My father became manager of an oil field. My sister Lidia Koshkina was born there on 11 October 1934. We lived in a small house at the bottom of the hill. In less than a year my father was transferred to Grozny where he became secretary for propaganda in the regional Party committee. After we moved to Grozny my mother didn’t work any more. As my mother had eczema she couldn’t do any housework and we had a housemaid. My mother couldn’t even hold Lida to breastfeed her and somebody had to do it for her. When Lida grew up and could eat from the bottle feeding her became my responsibility. I didn’t mind as I liked to look after the little ones.

In Grozny we lived in a big 4-storied apartment building in a 4-room apartment. My father had a study and my sister and I shared the nursery room. When I got ill and stayed alone in the room it seemed huge to me. When our Aunt came to live with us she was given a separate room. With Aunt Leya’s arrival my sister and I became close with her. This was the first time when we heard Yiddish – my mother and my aunt talked in Yiddish. They switched to Yiddish when they wanted to discuss something that we were not supposed to hear. But my sister and I got to understanding Yiddish very soon. We lived a good life. My sister and I went to kindergarten, involved in active social life. We had many friends regardless of their nationality. In those years this was a matter of no significance. There was no anti-Semitism. Only during evacuation we heard the word “zhyd” or “Jewish” for the first time. I fell ill so often in my infantry that Lida very often attended the kindergarten without me. We liked the kindergarten. Our teachers read us fairy tales, we drew and staged performances. They paid us a lot of attention in the kindergarten.

​My sister and I also had an adult friend. He was my father’s driver, a young Chechen man. He was a very nice man and he loved children. My father got angry with him once, although it was my fault. The driver was waiting for my father and I asked him to give a ride to other children, our friends which he did. My father didn’t want us, children of secretary of the regional party committee secretary (this was the most respectable and important position in town) to enjoy anything that other people couldn’t afford. He didn’t even allow himself to have what others didn’t have. He had one leather jacket that he was wearing his whole life. He had one suit. Later Mama made me a skirt from it. He was one of those communists that were convinced that they didn’t have a right to afford themselves what other people didn’t have. Once the Party committee delivered strawberries to all its employees and mama accepted it. But Papa made Mama take all berries to the kindergarten. My sister and I were no different from other children in our yard. Maybe our toys were a little better, because our father was deputy of the Supreme Soviet and went to Moscow often. He brought us toys from there but we always shared them with other children.

​My sister and I learned to read before we went to school. Mama taught us to read from the books of Russian classical writers Pushkin, Turgenev, etc. Reading has always been our favorite pastime.
​I remember our first New Year celebration. It was before the war in 1940. There was a New Year tree for all children of our building. We saw little rabbits and bears wrapped in silver and golden aluminum paper for the first time in our life. There were tangerines, oranges and apples under the tree. All neighbors decorated the tree together and made decorations along with the children. There were no decorations sold in stores at that time. We had the tree in our apartment. The children sang and danced and received prizes. New Year became our favorite holiday. We didn’t celebrate religious holidays at home. It wasn’t possible – my father was secretary of the regional party committee and a communist. Communists were to be atheists. However, Mama used to get some matsa at Pesah somewhere and we all enjoyed eating it, even Papa.

​Repression of 1937 didn’t touch my father. He was far away from Moscow. Many of his colleagues were arrested in Moscow and Leningrad. My father had other problems. The situation in Chechen-Ingush republic grew worse. [Grozny – capital of Chechen-Ingush republic]. Chechens were fighting against the Soviet power and against occupation for their independence. Few party committee employees were killed. My father got a gun and all employees were told to take their weapons when leaving the house. But I remember that Papa never took his gun with him. He left it in the drawer of his desk.
​In 1939 German army entered Poland. We had a radio at home and listened to the news about the war. I don’t think this was extensive information but they said in the news that Germans were killing Jews purposely. At least they were chased away from Poland and Czechoslovakia. Polish Jews, refugees, began to arrive at Grozny. At that time the word “Jew” didn’t have a link to Mama or us.
​In 1940 I was to go to school. But schools were closed due to the war with Finland. They housed hospitals. Mama and aunt Leya often went to help at the hospital. After the Finnish was the authorities were training everybody, even children, to use gas masks. I remember a tent in our yard filled with some gas. We were to put on the mask properly and enter this tent to check whether we did it correctly. We kept our masks at home. All food was sold for food cards. Only lolly-pops and sweet rolls could be bought without cards. But we still didn’t have any premonition about the war. We were convinced that we were so strong that nobody would dare to attack us.

​I remember 22 June 1941, first day of the war. It was Sunday, the only day when Papa could stay in bed longer. I turned off the radio. Papa promised to take Lida and me to the Circus and we were waiting for him to wake up. We were walking to the circus when some of our neighbors said “where are you going to? We’re in the war!” So we heard about the war. Papa was very angry with me for turning off the radio. In the first days of the war all adults began to dig up trenches. Tenants of our building were digging up the trenches behind the building. We, kids, were bringing them water. I got sunstroke then. But it was quiet in Grozny. Bombing began in 1942. In 1941 I went to the first form at school. I changed 9 schools during my first form. The schools were transformed into hospitals and children went to another school. We studied in two and then in 3 shifts. Lida was in the kindergarten. Evacuated people began to arrive in Grozny. We let one room to the evacuated family: the husband worked at a plant and his wife was a doctor in hospital. There was a hospital not far from our house and Mama went to help them.

I remember the first bombing in 1942. We went onto the balcony and one of the adults said loudly so that my sister and I could hear “Here’s a thunderstorm” and then quietly “Germans are near”. The planes were dropping bombs and the noise was terrible and everything around was on fire. The next day children were playing in the yard when air raid alarm was on. Everybody ran to hide in the basement and I was collecting my toys. Then I raised my eyes and saw a German plane flying very low.

In 1942 our family was evacuated. They evacuated Jews and communists in the first turn – they knew that Germans had no mercy for them. This was the second year of the war. Grozny wasn’t occupied yet, although the armies were fighting near the town. The town was on fire and it was dark even during the daytime. Meanwhile they suspended evacuation, but all Jews had been taken out of town by then. In 1942 our cousin Ida, Haim’s daughter arrived from Leningrad. She survived the blockade – the horrible famine. And the first thing she did after she escaped was buying about half a bag of black flour that she brought with her. When I opened the door I didn’t recognize her and ran to Mama to tell her that some gipsy with a sack was asking for her. Ida visited us before – a beautiful woman with long hair. After the blockade she looked terrible – black and thin. Ida still never throws bread away; she either finishes it or makes crusts. I believe all survivors of the blockade do the same. The five of us – three of us, my aunt and Ida - went to the evacuation. Ida’s father, Haim, was on labor front in Leninakan, not far from Grozny. He was 50 years old then. I don’t know where his family was at that time. Haim had a big family: his wife and four children and his wife’s sisters. One of them was married and another was single. The married one lost her husband in the war, and his two daughters died in the evacuation.

We evacuated to Stalinabad (now Dushanbe – capital of Tadzhikistan). My father stayed in Grozny to fight the fires. Then my father decided to go to the front. My father had a friend that had his arm amputated. The two of them were involved in sending trains with soldiers to the front and they decided to go. But they were ordered to get off the train, as one of them was without an arm and another had diabetes.

We were getting ready for evacuation. My parents were told to take only the most necessary things. Mama took her sewing machine. This sewing machine rescued us during and after the war. Lida was begging Mama to allow her take her teddy bear and a toy wardrobe for doll clothes. We only took her teddy bear. My father had a huge collection of Russian and foreign classical literature and I hated to leave the books, but my father took them all to the library. Our trip lasted from June till the end of August. We went to Baku by train. In Baku we changed for an overcrowded ship. The weather was stormy and everybody got sick on this boat, people, luggage and all unimaginable mess of everything. We crossed the Caspian Sea and took a train from Kislovodsk. The train often stopped because of the bombings. In Stalinabad few families and we got off at an alley near the railway station. It was warm and then it began to rain. A railway man that lived near the station took us, children, to his home. The adults stayed behind. We lived in the open air for some time. Later an evacuation point was arranged at the stadium and we moved there. When we were there I faced anti-Semitism for the first time in my life. Some boys called one boy a Jew and were about to beat him. I stood for him saying “Stop beating him! I am a Jew and he is a Jew, so what”. I didn’t know what this meant but I knew they shouldn’t beat him. This was the first event of this kind, but unfortunately, not the last one.

Later railroad people accommodated us in the barracks. Few families shared one room. Later my mother received a separate room of 6 m2. Only a bed and a table fit in there - that was all. The three of us lived in it at first until Papa joined us. Aunt Lina got a job in “Tadjikkarakul” trust. She and Ida moved to the hostel. We had almost no space in our room. If one needed to go out at night he should have watched his step. Papa slept on the table. Lida and I slept under this table. Later we received a room with a verandah in an apartment. We didn’t have a kitchen, though, because a people from Leningrad lived in the kitchen. There were Jews, Armenians and Lithuanians in this apartment, but the issue of nationality was of no significance.

​My father stayed in Grozny until January 1943. By this time the town had burnt down. They said that people were putting oil fields on fire because they didn’t want Germans to get them. The situation in town was alarming. My father had severe diabetes. He was sent to Moscow to get treatment, but he asked permission to go visit his family in Stalinabad. In Stalinabad party authorities were in need of a propaganda specialist and they persuaded my father to stay. My father went to hospital and took to his work when he was out. He went around the villages to lecture and organized discussions there. We hardly ever saw him. Almost after each trip my father got to hospital. He died in hospital. When he was in hospital he called us to come there. I was 10 years old. My father said that we ought to know who our ancestors were and began talking about them. What he told us in hospital then is all we know about our grandfather and the others. He died on 17 August 1943. We didn’t come to the funeral. Te family decided to save us from grief. They didn’t tell us that Papa died.

My mother became a widow at 38 with two small children to bring up. She received a small pension for my father. But during the war my mother had to provide for the family. She could make clothes and even slippers. My mother met a woman from Western Ukraine that could sew as well. They were buying military overcoats to make women’s coats that they were selling. Mama decided against taking a job. She thought she could do better with sewing and she was providing for us.

After we came to Stalinabad in 1942 my sister and I went to the Russian secondary school. My sister went to the first form and I went to the second form. Later the schools were divided into schools for boys and schools for girls. Then I was transferred to another school. Children studied in two shifts: boys in the morning and girls in the afternoon. Mainly evacuated children studied at this school. There were two or three Tadjik girls in my class and the rest of us were from other towns. Each summer we went to pick up cotton. We also went to a hospital to meet with the wounded, read and write letters for them and make concerts. During the war I became a pioneer. At school we made tobacco bags and gloved and sent them to the front with little notes from us. There were many children in the house where we lived. Many parents were at work and I looked after the younger children. When their parents stayed at work overnight I took the little ones to our place and put them to bed. Tadjik people taught us to cook plov – stewed meat with rice and herbs. Each of us brought something: some rice or a carrot and we made plov for all of us. We also leaned to make another delicious meal: fried some flour, added some cotton plant oil, dried this mix a little – and it came out very delicious. We played a lot. My sister and I read whatever we could get. During the war we read books that didn’t have a beginning or an ending. We didn’t even know the title or the author.

Local people treated us nicely. There was no hostility in their attitude and there was no national hostility. Once we happened to be at the real Jewish wedding with a rabbi and huppah. We didn’t quite understand it but it was interesting to be there.

We often fell ill. My mother and I had malaria. Then Lida and my aunt fell ill. This was some rare 3-day malaria.

A theater from Leningrad was evacuated to Stalinabad. Two famous actors lived next door to our apartment. All people knew in advance about the victory. I heard all news standing in line for bread – it was my responsibility. I had friends there. There were homeless children begging for a piece of bread. I always gave them some if I got a smaller piece to make the weight. There were many homeless children. I brought the news about the end of the war. We all got together at the apartment where these two actors lived waiting until they declared that the war was over. This was on 8 May 1945. The next morning, on 9 May, the radio announced our victory. All people went outside. They were kissing, embracing and dancing and crying for the lost ones. We ran to the hospital to share the joy with the wounded. Ma has said us that father to perish only after the war several years.

When the war ended Mama didn’t want to go back to Grozny where everything would remind her of Papa. We had neighbors from Chernovtsy (this west of Ukraine) in the evacuation. They told us that they received letters from those that were back home there telling them that this town was not destroyed and that schools and colleges were open. Mama decided to go to Chernovtsy. I remember we arrived there on 11 October 1945. I was 11. At first we lived there with our acquaintances that had arrived in the town before us. The border was opened then and the local families were moving to Rumania. Mama found an apartment to buy from the family that was leaving. Mama and aunt sold all our possessions to collect the money to pay for the apartment. There were four of us there: Ida stayed in Stalinabad to finish her studies and later she joined her family in Mogilyov.

​Lida and I went to Russian secondary school. There were children of different ages in my class. There were older children that were in a ghetto during the war and there were boys that fought on the front. There were 40 children in our class and only 3 of them had fathers. The following year we were transferred to school # 2. It was a school for girls, like a grammar school. There were many Jews in the school both among children and among teachers. The majority of the population in town was Jewish. I liked social activities. I was a pioneer leader in two other forms. When I became a senior student I took the children on tours to Kiev and Odessa. I did well at school. My sister and I liked literature and mathematics and physics. We had a wonderful History teacher. Life at school was interesting. We became Komsomol members at school, but there was no ideology involved. We just got our Komsomol cards and badges.

​Persecution of cosmopolites in 1948 went past us. We were officially Russian, although we never rejected our Jewish identity. Mama had a typical first name and patronymic – Tsylia Isaakovna. If we heard any anti-Semitic talk we tried to terminate it reminding the others that we were Jews. Anti-Semitism was everywhere then, both on everyday and on the state level. Because of my mother’s nationality I couldn’t enter the university, the radio physics department that had just opened then. Nobody of our acquaintances suffered from the “doctors’ case”. At that time the best specialists were Jews. People in Chernovtsy still say that there have been no more good doctors left since the Jewish doctors moved to Israel. The majority of people didn’t believe that the doctors encroached upon Stalin. They only could say “It can’t be!”

​We were enthusiastic about Israel. Mama said with tears in her eyes that at last the people have got their own land. Until she died Mama always watched news about Israel and felt sorry about any events that could do harm to this state.

​In 1951 I finished school. After I failed to enter the radio physics department I went to Novosibirsk to enter the University of Cybernetics that was also called a “bourgeois pseudoscience”. I made friends there. When I was a second year student I fell ill and doctors advised me to change the climate. I went to city Gorky in Russia to University. Only they offered me the programming department although I was theoretical mathematician. But I agreed. There were lecturers from Moscow in Gorky University. I had pre-diploma practice in Moscow and prepared my diploma thesis in Moscow. I graduated in 1957 and got a job assignment at the Institute of Earth magnetism in the vicinity of Moscow. In 1957 the authorities issued a decree about foundation of Siberian department at the Academy of Sciences and we were all sent to work at this Department. We lived in Moscow for two years. I worked at the Institute of Earth magnetism, department of Earth electricity. Later we all moved to Novosibirsk, including our lecturers. We were the first to start and work at this department. After we arrived we all worked at the Institute of mathematics that was built for us. Later they built computation center. I received a room in Novosibirsk and then – an apartment. Mama, Lida and aunt Leya were in Chernovtsy. Then Lida entered Kiev University. She finished school with a silver medal and only had to pass an interview to enter the Physics department. I visited her in Kiev. Mama continued earning her living by sewing. When the two of us went to other towns to study she helped us sending parcels and money. We had a two-room apartment in Chernovtsy and Mama leased one room to students. All students that lived there remained her friends. They even visited her later with their children and grandchildren.

Stalin died in 1953 when I was still a student. People stood in the streets crying. We had a mourning meeting at the University. We were standing in the guard of honor beside the portrait of Stalin. I cried sincerely, just couldn’t hold back my tears. I was crying all day through. There was only one thought “How are we going to live without Stalin?” But gradually we were coming to understanding the real status of things. By the time of ХХ Party Congress we were quite prepared to what Khruschov said in his report about the cult of personality. It didn’t come as a shock to us. At that time we thought of Stalin’s death as of the rescue of the country. Mama’s reaction to Stalin’s death was different, though. I understand she knew about what was going on in the country from my father. She didn’t grieve for Stalin, although she was wearing a black arm-band when going out. But it was a formality for her.

Lida got a job assignment as a teacher of physics at school after she graduated. This school was at the railway station Cheliabinsk-Yuzhny. This whole area was a penitentiary zone where criminals were imprisoned. Lida worked at the evening school there. She was teacher of physics, mathematics, chemistry, astronomy and even English due to the lack of teachers. She also had to give few classes a week to the inmates of the prison. The teachers were escorted there but the discipline was excellent there. There were gifted people among the inmates. Lida worked there a year. Mama had an infarction and Lida had to come back to Chernovtsy in 1959. Lida couldn’t find a job at once in Chernovtsy. She worked at school for two years and then she got a job of an engineer at the laboratory at the chemical plant. Then my sister decided to continue her studies. She went to Moscow to take a post-graduate course at the Moscow Institute of steel and alloys. She studied there from 1967 till 1970. She wrote her thesis, but then she fell ill and had a surgery. She didn’t defend her thesis. Lida got a job assignment as a teacher of physics in Briansk at the Institute of Railroad Transport. She worked there 3 years. Then Mama got worse and my sister had to go back to Chernovtsy again. She worked at a plant and retired from the position of the leading engineer meteorologist with a good salary. But then it was a period of perestroika leaving her with a miserable pension.

In 1970s Jews started moving to Israel. There were meetings held at where the immigrants were working to condemn them for leaving the USSR. But my sister and I had a different attitude towards those people. Many of them were our friends and acquaintances. We sympathized with them and acknowledged their right to choose the country of living.

Mama died in 1984. By that time the Jewish cemetery had been closed. She was buried at the Jewish corner of a town cemetery.

In 1990 I was a pensioner. Lida lived alone. I wasn’t feeling well and I decided to move in with her. I’m still a Russian citizen. We get along well with one another and my sister likes me to be with her. She doesn’t have a family of her own and I’m single, but we feel all right to be together. I’m thinking of moving to Chernovtsy for good.

​I’ve already mentioned that my sister and I were in Israel at our Cousin Ida’s 80th birthday. I also have many friends in Israel. We visited them, too. We liked everything in Israel: their life, culture and people. But we haven’t decided about moving there. We have a life of our own here. Besides, it’s difficult to change things at this age. We also would feel ashamed to go to the country as pensioners when we did nothing for this country.

Frankly speaking, my sister and I have things to do here, in Ukraine. The Jewish life has restored in the recent years. We participate in all activities at Hesed. We even participate in “Purim-Shpil” there. We attend lectures, hobby clubs and lead an active Jewish life. There is a community of progressive Judaism in Chernovtsy that we attend. Every Friday we meet Sabbath there. We always cook for holidays. We’ve got recipes of the Jewish dishes and cook sweet and sour stew, stuffed fish and strudels and try to follow the kashruth. In our old age we’ve returned to the Jewish way of life and to our roots. We cannot say that we are very religious, but we find Judaism the most logical, humane and wise religion. We do not belong to orthodox Judaists, but we do belong to the progressive ones. We’ve learned Hebrew for over a year. We can’t speak it fluently but we never miss our classes. We also study at the University of the Spiritual Heritage of the Jewish people. Our acquaintance wrote a letter there and they made me their regional representative. They send us tapes about Jewish history, traditions and culture. We have a group of people get together to watch these tapes and discuss what we learn. We work as volunteers at Hesed. We have five people to take care of. We visit them once a week and talk with them. We feel that we are needed here and that our life is just beginning.

Lev Yagupolskiy

Kiev, Ukraine, 2002

I was born on 6 February 1922 in Uman Cherkassy region. Uman is one of the most picturesque towns in Ukraine. It is located halfway between Odessa and Kiev. It is famous for the Sofievka park. This is perhaps the most beautiful park in Eastern Europe. Hasid tzaddiks (holy men) had been buried in Uman and it became a place of pilgrimage for Jews from all over the world. A rather big Jewish community has always lived in Uman. Uman belonged to those areas in the Russian Empire where Jewish people were allowed to settle down.

My father Moisey Lvovich Yagupolskiy was born in 1887 in Uman. He finished a Jewish trade school (3 years) and worked as a specialist of firebricks. These bricks were used in the construction of fireboxes in locomotives. There were deposits of fire clay in Ukraine to manufacture firebricks. My father was a very good specialist of the manufacture of firebricks. In the 1930s he was deputy director of a brick factory in Kiev and during the war he helped to organize the production of firebricks in Orsk, Chkalov region in the East. After the war he returned to Kiev and kept working at the brick factory. My father died in 1964 when he was 77.

I know that my father comes from a family of millers from Balabanovka village in the vicinity of Uman. Recently I met a man that knew my father and he told me that my father had been a well-respected man. [He was a miller at first]. He always helped people and if they didn’t have money to pay him immediately, my father ground flour at no cost to the people. I was curious about the origin of our family name and once I found the word “Yagu” in a book. It turned out this name derived from the word “yagve” meaning “god” in Polish. We might have had some roots in Poland, and that was where the “polskiy” came from. My grandfather’s name was Leib (Lev). He was a miller. He was born in a Jewish family in Balabanovka village in the 1860s. He was religious: he went to the synagogue, observed traditions and holidays, honored Shabbath and followed kashrut. He died in Uman in 1920 from some disease. My grandmother (my father’s mother) Hanna Yagupolskaya was also born in Balabanovka village in the 1870s. She was a housewife and she was religious. She went to the synagogue, observed traditions and holidays, honored Shabbath and followed kashrut. She was very nice and kind. I remember how she prepared meals for me: she made flat shortcakes and spread some ground poppy seeds on top.

See, I am 80 years old but I still remember my grandmother’s shortcakes. She was laconic, she was very reserved and she worked a lot. She was always conservatively dressed in a long black gown and with a kerchief on her head. Grandmother did all the work in the house, there were no servants, she did not trust anybody, she did all by herself. She got up at five in the morning and worked until nightfall. Later the children helped her. She was exterminated in Uman in 1941. The Germans killed her. My father failed to get her out of Uman.

My grandfather and grandmother had 12 children. I have no information about them. I only remember some of their names: Shlyoma, Ilia, Fania. Grisha moved to Palestine when he was young. When my wife and I were in Israel we tried to find the children of my father’s brother. They changed their last name to Yagor, but we failed to find out anything about them. Isaak, one of my father’s brothers moved to America in the 1920s. I only know that he lived in Mexico for some time. I have more information about my father’s two sisters. They are Vera, born in 1904 and Betia born in 1906. They didn’t have any education and they were housewives. When I was small they were living in our house and helped my mother about the house. There was no place in the house of the grandparents and they lived with us. They did not marry and had no children. They perished along with my grandmother in Uman in 1941.

My grandfather (my mother’s father) Shmul (Samuel) Fabricant was born in Balabanovka village in 1855. He was a senior man at the Jewish community in Balabanovka village, but he lived in Uman mainly. There were many Jews in Balabanovka, and my grandfather was responsible for the official issuance of documents to recruitment to the tsarist army. He knew all traditions, laws and was a very intelligent and educated man. He was very fair and people always came to ask his advice. He was dressed like everybody else around. He was wearing a long beard and a hat, though. My grandfather had an apartment somewhere, but I don’t remember it. The family celebrated holidays according to the Jewish traditions and rituals. I remember my grandfather teaching me to say my prayer at Pesach, and I pronounced it quite clearly and everything was according to the rules. I remember general talks with my grandfather. He spoke Russian to me because I didn’t know any Yiddish, only a few words. I studied Russian at school.

I always had to learn a few words in Hebrew before the holidays. The rules required having a drink at Pesach. I remember small silver wineglasses with wine. My grandfather’s daughters, my mother and her sister Eva were responsible for laying the table on holidays. There was only kosher food on the table. The food was very delicious: stuffed fish, very special meat with prunes, deserts: strudel with jam, apples and nuts. They spoke Yiddish in my grandfather’s family, their correspondence was in Yiddish and the pictures were signed in Yiddish.

My grandmother Hanna Fabricant (my mother’s mother) was born in Balabanovka village. I know very little about her, they didn’t talk much about her in the family. She died in Uman in 1923.
My mother had two brothers and two sisters: Abram was born in 1885. He was a pharmacist. He lived in Uman and then he moved to Kiev. He was the guardian of Jewish traditions in the family. He established the rules to be followed. He always went to the synagogue, observed Shabbath and other holidays, followed the kashrut rules even when it was almost impossible. They talked Yiddish in his family, although his children went to Russian schools. During the war he evacuated to Kokand in Uzbekistan and stayed there. He was the director of a pharmacy. He observed all Jewish traditions in Uzbekistan, too, although there was no synagogue there. He had 3 children. One of them lives and works in Kiev, and two others live in Israel. He died in Kiev in 1995. Isaak, my mother’s 2nd brother, was born in 1897. He worked as an economist in Uman and died there in 1985. He didn’t have a family of his own. Eva, my mother’s sister, was born in 1900. She lived in Moscow and was a housewife. She died in 1983. Her children and grandchildren live in Moscow. Lisa, my mother’s younger sister, born in 1920, lived in Uman. During the war she was in the evacuation. She died in Uman in 1996. She had no family of her own.

My mother Rachil Shmulevna Yagupolskaya (nee Fabricant) was born in a very respected Jewish family in Uman in 1895. She studied at school for 7 years. It was a Jewish school for children from well-to-do families. My mother was a very educated woman. She could write in Russian and Yiddish and she read a lot. For its time it was a very good education for a girl. Their family was religious and my mother observed traditions and holidays, honored the Shabbath and followed the kashrut. She was a housewife spending her whole life raising her children. She dedicated herself to her family. She was convinced that a woman was bound to take good care of her home and children. That’s why she didn’t work. She shared my father’s joys and sorrows and supported him in the evacuation in Orsk. She returned to Kiev in 1946 and lived with my sister’s family for the rest of her life. She died in Kiev in 1991 when she was 96 years old.

My mother’s family was different from my father’s family. My mother’s family was more educated. And my father’s family was a modest family of workers. His sisters were often helping my mother about the house working as housemaids. They knew one another since they were children, but they only got married in 1920. I don’t think my mother’s parents gave their consent to my parents’ marriage. My father came from a lower level family, and it wasn’t easy for him to get education. My father courted my mother for 8 years. My mother listened to her parents’ advice – it was important for her. However, my father was insistent and he got what he wanted. They were very much in love with each other and didn’t want to listen to what their parents were telling them. They waited and believed that the time would come when all people would live happily. If it hadn’t been for the revolution their marriage would not have been possible. Before the revolution marriages between people from different social classes were not allowed. But in the 1920s such marriages were even fashionable. They had a Jewish wedding: with huppah, Jewish songs and dances and traditional Jewish dishes.

My mother told that once she rescued my father’s life during the pogroms. She was a very beautiful woman and when the bandits broke into the house she came ahead of my father and told them to kill her first before they wanted to kill my father. And they didn’t touch my father. My parents always talked in Yiddish, and my sister and I spoke Russian. My sister and I also understood little Yiddish. We observed all holidays and traditions until we moved to Kiev in 1936. It wasn’t safe to follow any religious tradition in Kiev, it was unpopular and any religious expression was persecuted by the authorities. Our parents went to the synagogue in Uman and later when they were living in Kiev. They were moderately religious and celebrated all holidays. I can hardly remember the celebrations. I was probably not very interested in the details. I can only remember that there was a lot of delicious food on the table. This was different from everyday life.

We lived in a nice house in Uman. It was a brick house consisting of 6 or 7 rooms. My parents were well-to-do people and could afford such a house. They had no housemaids. My mother did all the housekeeping by herself. She had a lot of work to do: bring water from the well, start a fire in the stove and cook for the whole family, etc. There were 4 of us: my father, my mother, my younger sister and I. My sister was born in 1926 (she was 4 years younger than I was). Her name was Ania. We were not very close. We were very different. It happened so that I’ve achieved much in life, and my sister didn’t reach any successes in her studies. She was a very weak girl. Perhaps, it was because of the concussion that she had had when she was a child due to an accident: she got run over by a horse.

When I was under 5 years of age a German woman came into our house and said that she would live in the spare room that we had and teach me German. She was a very good teacher and I spoke fluent German when I was 5 or 6 years old. She seemed an old woman to me, although she could not have been more than 50 years old. She was short and nice and she used to tell me fairytales. My knowledge of German was very helpful. I read lectures at German Universities and completed some tasks during the war.

I had a governess before I went to school. She was Jewish. A governess was someone that had 5-6 children to teach and prepare for school. Our governess was about 30 years old. Parents took their children to her place and she gave us classes in Russian. Our governess was an exceptional teacher and she gave us very good knowledge. I went to school when I was 6 years old, but when I was to go to the 2nd form they told me that I with my knowledge I had to go to the 3rd form. Quite a few children that were pupils of this governess were my friends. And I know that they grew into very important people. One of them studied Arabic and another one was a scientist.

There were Jewish schools in Uman, but I finished a Russian school. It was thought that Russian schools were more progressive and gave a better education. Russian, Ukrainian and Jewish children studied in this school. We got along very well. I didn’t know any differences at that time. People were either good or bad. There was no discrimination by nationality. My father and mother spoke Yiddish, and my sister and I spoke Russian. Our parents spoke Russian to us.

We had beautiful ancient Russian books at home. My mother got them from her father. They were Russian and world classical literature publications, children’s books and fairy tales. My parents used to read a lot and had lots of interests. They ingrained this in me and my sister. My father had a book of prayers and a Torah. I’ve never read the Torah, somehow I’ve never got to it.

I remember well the famine of 1933. The way they put it sounds that Ukrainians went through this famine. But it was about all people living in Ukraine. What saved us were 3 sacks of carrots that my father got somewhere. My mother gave us 1 or 2 carrots per day and it was a sufficient support for us or otherwise things would have turned much worse. It was a common calamity for everybody and everybody was trying to survive.

In 1936 my father moved to Kiev. He got a job assignment at the Kiev brick factory. He constructed a house in Kiev and then moved his family there. This house is still there in Franko Street in the center of Kiev. It’s a one-storied house. Our family had two rooms, and there was a tiled fireplace in the house. There were all comforts in the house: a toilet and a kitchen. My mother lived in this house until the last day of her life. The authorities wanted her to move out, but I helped her to stay in the house.

I finished 8 years of school in Uman and studied in Kiev in the 9th and 10th forms. There were many Jewish children at school, both in Uman and in Kiev. I had a friend Yura Kaganovich –he was Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich’s nephew. Yura’s father was Director of the Central Grocery store in the center of Kiev. Once I heard an interesting discussion when somebody from the Municipal Council visited him and offered him to become Chairman of the Kiev Municipal Council. His answer was “Lazar- has a big head and I have a small one. I am director of the grocery store and that’s where I belong”. Yura and I were fond of Chemistry and we entered the Chemistry Department at Kiev University. I had a laboratory in the kitchen at home and I often experimented there until 2-3 o’clock in the morning. I entered the Chemistry Department in 1938 easily. I had excellent grades at school and so I didn’t have to take any exams.

Yura was my very good friend. We went to the cinema and theater and played volley-ball together. I named my son after him. He perished during the war in Moldavia in 1943. He was a very gifted man, he learned to play some musical instruments in 3-4 months. Yura was courting Oksana Meyerkovskaya, a Ukrainian girl. I remember how Yura walked on the arch of the Paton bridge (a 30 meter high bridge in the park area in the center of Kiev) to demonstrate his love to this girl. He had a fracture in his arm and the consequences would have been terrible if he had fallen. Oksana lives in America now, her father was President of the Ukrainian Academy in New York. She stayed in Kiev after the Germans entered it and got married. When the Germans were retreating she left with her husband. Yura was very upset when he found out that she had left. He was an interpreter on the front, but after he heard about what happened he became an intelligence officer. He was probably looking for death. He loved Oksana dearly.

In the late 1930s Isaak and Abram, my father’s brothers, and Eva, my mother’s sister also moved to Kiev. Our relatives used to get together. I cannot say it happened often, but it was every now and them that we met them. My mother helped them, she managed to save some money and help the family. Their children always came to my mother with their problems. We celebrated holidays and birthdays together. My mother cooked many very delicious Jewish dishes. Her stuffed fish was very special, she was the only one that could make it this way. She could spend a whole night cooking it – it was like a piece of art. She stuffed chicken neck, made liver paste and very delicious jam. We didn’t eat pork in our family. We were poor. My father’s salary was rather modest, and he was the only breadwinner in our family. He lost his business. All private businesses were persecuted by the authorities. During the Soviet rule families didn’t own or live in big houses. People were deprived of everything they had had before the revolution: business, house, social position, just everything. After the civil war was over thousands of people had no food for the day or a place to live. Ten or more people had to share one room, etc. Brick factories belonged to the Ministry of Railroads. Their employees were wearing a dark blue uniform. My father received a piece of dark blue fabric to make a uniform, and my parents gave it to me to make my first suit when I was a student.

My father was working very hard at the brick factory. He often went on business trips to other factories. The factory that my father worked at was in Korchevatoye (in the vicinity of Kiev). I was there once and saw how bricks were manufactured. He wasn’t a member of the Communist Party. He was a taciturn man. He took no interest in politics and my mother didn’t either. My mother’s only interest was to give education to her children. One can understand this. Our parents didn’t have an opportunity to study. The Soviet power gave their children a chance to get education. I was doing well in physics, chemistry and mathematics. But when it came to the history of the Party or socialist economy I wasn’t doing so well. My mother was convincing me to learn them, too. It was thanks to my mother’s influence that I had all excellent grades and finished my studies at the university successfully.

There was no anti-Semitism before the war. We got along well with all people. At the university we helped all other students that were having problems with their studies. Many students came from villages and their education wasn’t so strong as ours. I had Russian and Ukrainian friends and we were living as one family. I can’t remember any maltreatment at school or at the university. I was a leading student at the university. I was Chairman of the Scientific Group at the university and a Komsomol activist and I believed in all Communist ideas. All people did. This was the way we were brought up. We had no idea about the arrests, repression or prison camps. Ours was a common family far from any politics. We were devoted pioneers and Komsomol members. We believed that everything in our country was right.

I was very fond of sports at the university and I went in for sports for the rest of my life. My favorite sport was volleyball. I liked to study. Our lecturers were outstanding chemists and great scientists. I took to science during my first year at the university. I liked it a lot and I arranged a small laboratory at home. My mother was very patient with me. She felt that it was all interesting for me, although sometimes it led to incidents like minor explosions or fires –I even burnt my mother’s gown once.

Students at that time were reading a lot. We loved Mayakovskiy (one of the greatest Soviet poets), we attended performances of the MHAT Theater (Moscow Art Academic Theater). We didn’t have money to buy a ticket. I had a friend – Valentin Seliber. He did the following – if after the first act one goes outside for a smoke one gets a free pass to come back. He received 30 of such passes. We always entered the theater after the first act of a play and saw all MHAT performances.

Kiev theaters are beautiful. The Kiev Theater of Russian Drama was very good. The actors were wonderful and they acted in beautiful plays.
There was a Jewish theater in Kiev at that time. These were plays of Jewish writers, staged in the Russian translation. We often went there: Ukrainian, Russian and Jewish boys and girls. We enjoyed going there. I read all works of Sholem Alechem., in Russian translation. I had books by other Jewish writers, by Ehrenburg, Babel, etc. They influenced my cultural background very much. Jewish poets were often published then. We knew nothing about what happened to the majority of Jewish writers and poets. Many of them were liquidated by the Stalin’s regime or died in camps and prisons. But we only heard about it in the 1980s.

I remember well the day of 22 June 1941. I was standing in the yard in Franko street and saw the aircraft flying and bombing. I saw one plane brought down, but I didn’t realize how serious it all was. Later we, students, were sent to excavate trenches. We were excavating them in Vassilkov near Kiev. My father had to work on an important mission – fix firebrick manufacture process in the rear. He said to the Komsomol authorities that he was going on an important mission and he couldn’t go without his son. He realized that there had to be special methods of convincing me, because I was a Komsomol member and wouldn’t go if my father had come for me by himself. I was summoned to go to Kiev from Vassilkov. My father saved my life. All university students perished there.

Before the beginning of the war I finished 3 years at the university. My father was evacuated to Tambov. The nearest university was in Saratov 500 kms from there. I submitted my documents for transition and studied about a month there. We, students, all wanted to go to the front. Each time we went to the military recruitment office and wrote applications that we were volunteers to the front. We were 4th year students. And by that time a decree had been issued with the directions to recruit no 4th year students to the army. There was only one year left and we had to finish our course at the university. It was surprising to me: in the middle of this war what difference did it make whether I finished the university or not? There were seven of us, guys, we were young and stupid. But we were patriots. And we wrote a letter addressing it to Stalin. We were all Jewish boys. We wrote to him that they were not taking us to the army. Of course, that letter never reached Stalin, but in a week's time we were summoned to the military recruitment office and they sent us to the Military Academy in Moscow. On 16 November (the most dangerous day for Moscow: Hitler occupied the nearest access to Moscow and panic broke out in the town) they woke us up in the middle of the night and I thought we were to be sent to the Moscow defense line. All military academies were moved to Middle Asia from Moscow in one night. There were 140 of us in one carriage, 8 on each berth. We were turning all together on it after we received an order. We studied in Samarkand until 1942. We studied from morning till night until we became real officers. There were 3000 of us.

We were needed there, because when I was at the front I found out that intelligence officers had found some shells with chemical substances near Smolensk. The commandment and soldiers didn’t take the dangers of chemical hazards seriously. Soldiers had enough difficulties besides carrying the extra weight of gas masks, they thought. I was in a rifle regiment on the very front line. In my regiment everybody had gas masks, it was a strict requirement. We arranged smoke screens against tanks, we had to complete very serious tasks. Once my knowledge of German almost killed me. This happened at the Kalinin front. On 25 December 1942 there was shooting – they were shooting, we were shooting. Then all of a sudden it became very quiet. Our commissar called me, gave me a megaphone and told me to go to the 1st trench (about 100 meters from Germans) and say whatever occurred to me. He said the Germans were preparing a break throughsomewhere and the only way to identify the location was to force them start shooting. I started talking against Hitler – no response. Then I said that they came to our land and they would be defeated like they were near Stalingrad. There was no reaction from them to whatever I was saying. I thought I was going to fail to complete the order. But then I recalled that our newspapers wrote about a train of French and Italians arriving in Germany. And I said “You are sitting here in the country that is not yours, and your wives are at home with the French and Italians, great masters of love making…” And they started shooting on one end, and then on another end.

Our side responded. There was so much shooting that I was under a layer of soil. Later they pulled me out of there. It turned out it was their Catholic Christmas and they weren’t preparing any action against us, they were just drinking their schnapps. They say Jewish people did not fight. I remember Bogomolniy, a battalion commander, a Jew. His soldiers carried him out of the battlefield with a wound in the stomach. There was no anti-Semitism on the front. My orderly was Onischenko, a Ukrainian. He was a senior sergeant. We got along very well. We were one big family. It couldn’t have been otherwise. We only distinguished between a good man and a bad man. I was 19 years old, and many soldiers were older than me. The war was a little bit like a game for me. Different things happened in the war. In 1942 Stalin issued an order “Not one single step backwards!” and anybody suspected of being a coward was to be shot with no delay. One man there stretched his hand and the German bullet targeted it, and he was shot as a suspect for trying to find an easier way to leave the front. I learned important lessons in the army. There was much concern at the Kalinin front with regards to a chemical attack.

A general arrived to check the readiness of military units to a chemical attack. In the morning the Germans began shooting with smoke shells producing a crimson smoke screen moving in our direction. The general gave a command “Gases!” Everybody put on their masks in my regiment. The general finished his inspection and left. In 3 days time there was an order issued at the Kalinin front to promote the Head of Chemical Department Yagupolskiy to the rank of senior lieutenant and position of Chief of Chemical Department of the Division. Very soon I was sent to Moscow – mine was a very high position. I arrived in Moscow but my division had already left for the front. I kept submitting my requests to be sent to the front but I was refused. I was sent to Novosibirsk and then to Omsk to lecture at the Officers’ College. I was teaching tactics and Chemistry. In 1943 I visited my parents in Orsk on my leave. My father worked at the brick factory. They lived like any other family in the evacuation. My sister lived with them, studying at school.

I served in the army until 1945. When the war was over on 9 May 1945 I wanted to demobilize, but they were convincing me to finish the last year at the military academy. However, I kept submitting my requests until I demobilized and returned to Kiev in September 1945.

Kiev was completely destroyed. Other people were living in our apartment. Our military unit was located in Nezhyn after the war. And when commander of the regiment found out that the man living in our apartment had supported the Germans during the war he said “I will give you a platoon of machine gunners and we shall throw him out of there”. But it didn’t come to this measure. I just showed my documents and he moved out in a week. My father and mother were staying in Orsk because of my father’s work. My sister Ania arrived and my sister and I were living in our house. There was a wardrobe that my father bought in 1915 in Warsaw. We made a small stove with a stack out of the window that filled the room with a lot of smoke. Life was very hard. My father worked at the brick factory and my mother stayed at home. She always tried to make our home warm and cozy. She could make a dinner from the least that we had and have sufficient food for everybody. I understand now that she may not have had enough food herself. My father’s salary was hardly enough to provide some food for the family. We didn’t have clothes or shoes, but everybody had a similar life and nobody went deep into his problems. Everybody understood that the terrible war was over and that the main thing was that we were alive and we won. And that people would overcome difficulties in due time. I continued my studies at the university. In early 1946 my parents came and we all lived in the small room as the stove heated it.

I missed four years of studies when I was in the army. But I felt such an urge to study. I made notes of Palladin’s biochemistry from the 1st to the last page on some newspapers and in fine handwriting. We were fanatic students. We committed ourselves to studying. I was involved in scientific work. I was dreaming of making discoveries in organic chemistry. Then upon graduation from university I received the job of deputy editor at the regional newspaper related to my Communist Party activities. I became a member of the Communist Party in 1943 at the front. We were following the call “Communists – go ahead!” I was a patriot. I had no doubts about things. So, I thought I had no right to refuse this job. They told me: “Kharkov is the town of students, an industrial town, and they need somebody good at all these scientific issues”. I was trying to explain to them that I wanted to do what I was most interested in – my scientific work. But this assignment was not subject to any negotiations – they told me that I would be expelled from the Party if I refused to follow their instructions. What it meant at that time was that if this were to happen I wouldn’t have been able to find a job or would have had all kinds of problems in life.

Academician Kupriyanov, my tutor, saved me then. He had a lot of influence in the Academy of Sciences. He sent a letter to the Party authorities and they dismissed me sending to the postgraduate university course.

I went through the period of struggle against Cosmopolitism in 1950s. I lived through this period relatively all right. I am afraid I didn’t quite understand what was going on in the country. I was busy working from morning till night. I had a small boy and didn’t listen to what was said in the radio broadcast or written in the mass media. Besides, all people ultimately believed in what was written in the newspapers and they believed that it was right. This process didn’t touch our family directly and I wasn’t quite interested in the essence of it. I was too busy at work. We heard that so many innocent people suffered much later, in the 1980s. Here is my story. I was a member of the Communist Party and a fighter for justice. At that time the authorities were trying to get rid of the Jews for any reasons possible. My colleague read to me an article about Cosmopolitism by Dmiterko (a Ukrainian poet and political activist, quite forgotten nowadays).

Dmiterko wrote that “Der Shtern”, a Jewish magazine, was published in Ukraine. I had never seen it, I didn’t know Yiddish, my parents only spoke Yiddish with each other. They always spoke Russian to us. I didn’t even know the alphabet. He wrote in this article that the magazine had to be closed, because it was published by the bourgeois nationalists. I said “why close this magazine, not all Jewish people are nationalists”. This man (I knew him well) went and reported on me immediately. There was a party meeting to discuss the issue of expelling me from the Party which meant that I was to leave the university. But my students and colleagues stood for me although it was dangerous for them. I was reprimanded for “promoting the elements of Jewish bourgeois nationalism”. This was a lucky ending for me. I might have ended in Siberia, if things turned out in a different way. The situation with anti-Semitism eased a little after Stalin’s death. The dictatorship was reduced, and a new period of the development started in the Soviet Union. But still, unofficially, the Jews were not quite favored in the official institutions of various levels.

I met my future life Lidia Naumovna Kuritskaya at the university. She was born in a very intelligent family in Kiev in 1925. My wife is half-Polish. Maria Klementievna Yatsemirskaya, the sister of my mother-in-law, was Catholic, and Elena Klementievna, my mother-in-law, was (Greek) Orthodox. My mother-in-law registered her nationality as Russian, and her sister – as Polish. They were 3 brothers and 2 sisters in the family. They all had Jewish spouses. Elena Yatsemirskaya, my wife’s mother, was a surgeon. During the war she was on the First Ukrainian front and after the war she worked at the Children’s Hospital in Kiev. Naum Kuritskiy, my wife’s father, was an engineer, a bridge designer. He was involved in the construction of a bridge across the Oder (in Germany) when our army was advancing toward Berlin.

Lidia was one year younger than I. She also studied at the Department of Chemistry. She returned from the evacuation and continued her studies. She noticed my picture on the Board of Honor (pictures of the best students were displayed there). She approached me and said that she wanted to meet the best student of the university. That was how we met. She studied physical chemistry and I studied organic chemistry. We got married in 1948. There was no wedding party, only a civil ceremony. We just got together with our friends in the hostel. Everybody brought whatever they had, we ate and drank and that was it. We lived at my parents’ place in Franko street.

We remember Stalin’s death well. My wife was on a business trip in Moscow and she was almost killed by the crowds. The death of the leader was a tragedy for us and we couldn’t imagine what was going to happen to the Soviet Union. I remember well the “doctors’ case”. It was a troublesome time. People didn’t want to visit Jewish doctors. They believed in what the mass media wrote. They believed that Jewish doctors were murdering and poisoning their patients. Such was our upbringing that we believed the communist newspapers and propaganda. My specialty was pharmacology and at first people didn’t want to hire me. As soon as they closed the “doctors’ case” I was offered a job. We didn’t understand much, we didn’t even have radios and we were not allowed to listen to foreign stations. We knew nothing. Only later did we get some information. Later I got a job at the Academy of Sciences. I had an employment agreement with a pharmaceutics factory.

I developed the Levomycetin (antibiotic) technology and the technology of Rontgen contrasting agents for the diagnostics of liver and brain diseases. I manufactured the substances that were injected into the carotid artery to identify brain tumors. These were my first steps in the direction of neurosurgery. I even have kept the first brain photographs. We were doing this when the world didn’t know anything about it. The first surgeries of this kind were performed in America 5 years’ after we did it. Based on this and other work I became candidate and then Doctor of Chemical Sciences. My works – books and articles were known in other countries.

Lidia Naumovna, my wife, finished the post-graduate course and became candidate of science. She worked at the Paton Institute (Kiev Institute of Electric Welding named after Academician Paton). Later she worked at the Institute of Materials. She defended her thesis in Moscow.

My son Yura was born in 1949. When Yura was born, my wife’s father said he wanted to retire to raise his grandson. He had strict rules. Yura’s day was planned to details. As far as I can remember he was always teaching Yura. Our son is a chemist, he studied at the Chemistry Department. He returned to the university as a professor. Now he is the chief of the laboratory that I founded. He identifies himself as a Jew and he understood that he was born in a Jewish family.He remembers my parents well. They were raising him, too, and must have told him about their Jewish roots. However, we haven’t discussed our Jewish origin in the family. Yura grew up in the international family and has never faced any anti-Semitism. At the time when he was entering university the official anti-Semitism was a thing of the past. People knew me at the university and wouldn’t have dared to plot against the professor’s son. Our family has never been religious. We didn’t go to synagogue or observe any traditions. It happened so that we are all internationalists and develop our relations on the basis of kindness, decency and love to each other and to the people around, regardless of their belief. Of course, Yura doesn’t know anything about Jewish history and traditions; he doesn’t go to synagogue or celebrates Jewish holidays. I don’t think he has time or energy for this. He has worked a lot. He works at the computer and he knows English well. His English is fluent, and my German is fluent. We can communicate with the whole world. We make a good team. Yura married a lovely Russian girl Tania. She graduated from the same university and she is a chemist. They fell in love and got married. We didn’t mind. We like Tania, she’s made a wonderful wife and a beautiful mother for my granddaughter. We get along very well with her. Nationality is of no importance to her. They often visit us on our birthdays or come by for a cup of tea in the evening. We enjoy each other’s company.

My son’s wife worked as a teacher, and now she’s retired. My granddaughter Maria, born in 1973, studied at the Philology Department at the university. She is an editor at a trade company. She earns good money. I think she earns more than my son. Although my son is professor, she works at a company and she earns well. She knows about her Jewish origin and she has never concealed it. But she is an internationalist and I don’t think she takes any interest in the issues of nationality.

My sister’s fate was tragic. She was a sickly woman. She worked as an accountant, but she didn’t have a higher education. She always identified herself as a Jew, but like me she didn’t keep any Jewish traditions. In 1991 Ania poisoned herself with gas in her kitchen. Her husband, Jew, Boris Isaakovich Reznikov was an engineer. He worked at the vegetable storage facility. He died soon, too. He had asthma and heart problems. Their son Lyonia is a very sickly person. He is alone. He works in a library now.

I have always been interested in the Jewish way of life. My wife and I have subscribed to the “Jewish News” newspaper. I have lots of books about the Jewish history and the Jews in Ukraine. I hardly remember any Yiddish. Regretfully, we’ve forgotten all Jewish traditions and holidays and we do not observe them. We were atheists in the past. It is good that there are synagogues and Jewish communities in Kiev. [But] we do not go there. We have no time and we feel uncomfortable after so many years away from the Jewish way of life. My wife and I got to the Babiy Yar at the anniversary of this tragedy. I have never forgotten my Jewish identity. If I were not a Jew I would have become an Academician. The Central Committee of the Communist Party issued an order to promote the national (Ukrainian and Russian) employees. But I wouldn’t say that it had a severe impact on me. I am glad that I had an opportunity to work. I am called an outstanding personality and one of the greatest scientists in the world. This acknowledgement is very important for me.

The situation has changed radically in our country lately. There is freedon of freedom of speech and freedom of press. We couldn’t even dream about going abroad and meeting with our friends before. They were always called traitors and it was not allowed even to correspond with them. We’ve got the opportunity to think and sday what we think. We’ve stopped suspecting each other in spying and reporting. Our children are different from us – they are free and uninhibited. They don’t have fear of the existing regime, the fear that has been with us our whole life. And this is beatiful.
I am 80 years old. I work from 10am till 7pm. My wife is a pensioner and she is not very happy about me working. I have students, I work in a scientific school of chemistry. I was an Honored Worker of Science and was awarded the State Prize of Ukraine. I have been in many countries in the recent years. I lectured in Germany, Czeck Republic, Poland, and France. I’ve also lectured at the Jerusalem University. I liked it there, but I am not young any more and I don’t want to change my country of living.

I can call myself a happy person. I have been doing what I like. This is happiness. Big happiness.

Simon Glasberg
Botosani
Romania
Date of interview: September 2006
Interviewer: Emoke Major

Despite being retired, Mr. Simon Glasberg is a very active person. He still works as a technical law expert and an expert real estate assessor. In addition, he spends his spare time in the garden, growing vegetables for his household. He has a special love for plants – which I believe guided him in choosing to be an agronomy engineer – and an unconditional faith in people.

Family Background

Antisemitism, Deportations, and Forced Labor

Liberation

Judaism

Growing Up After the War

Marriage, Children, Family, and Later Life

Glossary

Family Background

My father’s parents were Moise and Rebeca Glasberg. They lived in the mountain-foot village of Straja, near Radauti. [Straja is located 33 km north-west of Radauti.] My grandfather worked in a timber station. These grandparents were no longer [alive] when I was born. My grandfather died when he was more than 80 years old, about the time that I was born, around 1937-1938, while my grandmother died some 4-5 years prior to this.   

They had two sons and one daughter. My uncle, Fritz Glasberg, was about 2 years younger than my father. He went to Bucharest at an early age to work in a store, and he gradually saved some money, bought a small shop, and was a shopkeeper afterwards; he even owned a larger business in Bucharest, he had a larger store with hired employees on one of Bucharest’s commercial thoroughfares. This was before and for a very little time while after World War II, because his store was nationalized afterwards 1, and he became freelance, he worked here and there. He turned from a well-off individual into a proletarian. He was very upset about it, that’s why he actually left Romania. He left together with his daughter, Erica – his wife had died by then, she had fallen ill, she was suffering from something her body couldn’t cope with. He settled in the Netherlands, lived in The Hague. He ran small businesses there, for as long as he was able to work (he was older by then) but he also got married afterwards, and lived for quite a few years after he retired. He died around 1989, in any case, a year either before or after the Revolution 2 in Romania. My cousin is still alive, she lived and still lives in Frankfurt am Main in Germany. She was a doctor, now she is retired. Erica is around 4-5 years older than me, so she is in her 70s, let us say.

I don’t recall for certain my father’s sister’s name. She remained in Straja to live in the parental home, my grandparents’ house. She was married, but I don’t know too much about her family. They had no children, lived alone, but they died during World War II, they too were exterminated during the evacuation to Transnistria.

My father, Samuel Glasberg, was born in 1900 in Straja, near Radauti. He only graduated primary school, 7 grades. My father took part in both world wars, as a soldier during World War I, and as a deportee to Transnistria 3 under the Antonescu regime 4 during World War II. He was only a soldier during World War I, but he was promoted to corporal – that was it, he never made it past corporal. He fought in the mountains, I know for a fact that he actually reached Marasesti 5, but I don’t know too many details about the war period, I didn’t hear or learn any stories about it. My father was kind by nature, I can’t imagine him taking aim to shoot someone else.

I didn’t know the grandparents on my mother’s side, either, they perished even before my other grandparents. They lived in the village of Marginea, also located near Radauti. [Marginea is located 9 km south-east of Radauti.] My grandfather was a religious person. He wasn’t officially a rabbi, but he performed religious services, they often invited him to the … [Torah], people knew him even in Radauti. I know this from my mother, for she told us that he recited the prayers with a very pleasant intonation. And this was proof of exercise and knowledge, for those who read it for the first time do so jerkily, heavily.

Their name was Licvornic – probably a name of both German and Polish origin. For we came from the south of Poland; we came to Romania through Galicia. At least that’s what my parents told me about their grandparents and great-grandparents. I don’t know anything about my great-grandfather. He might have been buried over there. In any case, there was no record of him. Our parents didn’t know, either, they never told us stories about him. I forget my grandfather’s name, I never knew it. And it’s very odd, you see, how these things happen, nowadays data is more accurate, communication [is better]. But formerly, life was more existential, you weren’t aware of these matters, they somehow came second. It wasn’t because of lack of respect for parents, relatives, ancestors. On the contrary, there was respect, there just wasn’t this notion: ‘Well now, I must know for certain.’ I used to ask my elder brother, who is 11 years older than me: "Herman, where are the grandparents from our mother’s side of the family?" "Well, I don’t know for sure. Perhaps they are buried in the cemetery in Marginea, perhaps they are buried in Radauti in the old cemetery…" I said: "I haven’t seen any tombstone with the name of Licvornic in Radauti. I would have wanted to light a candle for them." To which he replied: "I haven’t either. You see, I lost sight of this. Our parents are dead, and now whom could we ask?" And I set it as my task to go there, inquire at the town hall in Marginea, see if there is any trace of a Jewish cemetery. For there are Jewish cemeteries in villages as well, wherever significant Jewish communities lived, there are some in the county of Botosani, too, at Stefanesti, Frumusica, even at Bucecea. But I never managed to do it. Whenever I go there, time is always limited.

My mother had a sister, Ester Licvornic, who lived in Radauti and whom I have met. She was married, but had no children, either. I forget her husband’s name. I went to visit her when I was little, my mother took me along when she visited her sister; I called her aunt Ester, but I don’t know her family name after she married. They were taken to Transnistria 3 as well, but I don’t know where exactly. In any case, they weren’t taken to Djurin with us, they were taken somewhere else. They survived the war, both of them returned home, but he was very ill. They emigrated to Israel, but once again, I don’t know exactly where and how they lived. We didn’t keep in touch, those were the days of the iron curtain, we were wary of letting people know we had relatives abroad, for it went on your record in no time. I know that he passed away in Israel before she did – I know this from conversations with other people – and that she died of old age.

My mother’s maiden name was Rasela Licvornic. She was born in Marginea, also in the vicinity of Radauti, in October 1898. My mother was the second born, but she was born late, after my grandfather from my mother’s side remarried. My mother’s sister was the offspring of my grandfather’s marriage with his first wife, so the two of them were stepsisters. Just like my father, my mother’s education consisted only of primary school, too. They lacked the material means to go to high school. My mother, at least, would have been prone to study. She greatly enjoyed reading, she was self-taught. She recited Heine [Editor’s note: Heine, Heinrich (1797-1856), German poet] and Goethe [Editor’s note: Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749-1832), German poet, playwright, novelist, and scientist.] in a very literary German.

We were 3 brothers. The eldest, Herman, is 11 years older than me, he was born in 1928; the second born, Jacob, is also almost 5 years older than me, he was born in 1934.

My name is Simon Glasberg, I was born on 17 August 1939 in the town of Radauti in the county of Suceava. We spoke German at home. I spoke German fluently. I’m still pretty good at it even now but, naturally, I have forgotten some words, and other words I pronounce with an accent; not quite a Moldavian accent, but still, a Romanian one. I belong to the generation that lived and suffered – even if only as a child – the errors of World War II and in the wake of it, which were ridden with poverty, precarious living conditions, lack of education and so on.

Antisemitism, Deportations, and Forced Labor

I believe 99% of the Jewish population in Radauti was deported to Transnistria. Maybe they spared a doctor or specialists that they needed. But the rest of the population: craftsmen, shopkeepers, petty merchants – anyone belonging to the population that presented no interest to them and wasn’t a necessity, such as medical assistance or any other field of special interest – the majority of the population was taken to Transnistria.

Let me recount the period of the departure. We know that we took very few things with us to Transnistria. An order had been issued that people should leave in a very short while with only the bare necessities: clothes and some suitcases, bundles, whatever they could carry. My mother wrapped the head of the sewing machine in a blanket, lest they should see it, because we weren’t allowed to take such things with us – which is to say, a means of survival, basically, that’s what it was. And that’s what kept us alive in Transnistria. We traveled through Moghilev 6, and were taken to Djurin [nowadays Dzhurin, in the Vinnytsya region in Ukraine] in Transnistria. We were six all in all, the five of us – three sons and our parents – and there was also a first-degree cousin of my father’s – I can’t offer any details about her, as she died when I was very little. I know her name, but I forget it right now. She was much younger than my father and was closer to our age, which is to say closer to my eldest brother’s age, who was 12 years older than me. And the six of us received ‘accommodation’ – let us say, between inverted commas – in a single room in a semi-basement, it was more like a cellar, with a tiny vestibule in the front and some stairs that led directly from the street in that vestibule, and where we spent the 4 and a half years in Transnistria. We arrived there during the fall of 1941, and we returned home in 1945.

The living conditions there were extremely difficult. Shortly after we arrived there, my father was caught by the Germans, by the SS troops, and was arrested while simply walking in the street, taken to the concentration camp in Bug, the forced labor camp. And mother improvised a sort of chair on which to place the sewing machine, and my older brothers – I couldn’t really do it, I was too little, only 2-3 years old – would take turns spinning the sewing machine’s wheel with the help of a small stick; she sewed as much as she could for the diverse population there – especially Ukrainian, Russian and Moldovan women, those who spoke Romanian, that is, to a smaller degree. As payment for her sewing we would get a handful of flour or cornmeal, or they would bring us the smaller potatoes that couldn’t be peeled – we would boil them as they were, whole –, and on many occasions my mother would ask them to bring us the potato peels as well. That was the reality of our life. I remember that. For it was because of this precarious food, and that’s what we ate most of the time, that I have always been sickly as a child. It was there that I heard for the first time the word ‘cir,’ it was there that I learned the word ‘prici,’ which aren’t Romanian words, but probably Ukrainian. Cir is a very light polenta, cornmeal with water, to which potatoes were usually added – it was the poor man’s way of thinning the polenta, of combining –, small potatoes, rejects, as they say, which are kept neither for eating, nor for planting – these potatoes are too small. But we also added potato peels. Prici is a large bed – so-called bed, it doesn’t come close to what we call bed nowadays – made of straw covered with sackcloth on top, and that was the bed people slept on using blankets as improvised pillows – as long as the blankets brought from home lasted –, and this is how we spent approximately three, if not four years in Transnistria.

At a certain point, my mother contracted exanthematic typhus, and was taken to the hospital in Moghilev, and we had no clear idea whether or not she would survive. And we, the three children and my father’s cousin – she was slightly older – practically lived from the alms the people there gave us out of pity, they would bring us something to eat now and then. From what I recall and from what my parents told me, there is quite a long distance from Djurin to Moghilev, around 15-20 km, I believe. So it was too much for children to walk it on foot. I know that we went there only once, by cart, with one of our neighbors, and we talked with mother at the hospital’s window. Even I remember that, although I was only a little child – by 1943-1944 I was 4 years old going on 5 –, but it remained stamped in my mind. Also stamped in my memory is the fact that when the front was being pushed back, the Russian armies advanced and bombed the area, as there were some resistance lines of the German army there, and my older brothers ran into the garden, hid themselves somewhere among whatever vegetation there was, and my mother took me, placed me on the ground and covered me with her body. For it was dangerous, bombs were dropping in the area of the Djurin village, too. To conclude, it was an utterly precarious episode, at the limit of existence, very hard to bear even by children, by a child less aware of what was going, like myself. But I remember that even in the latter period there I used to wear only a little shirt and walk completely barefoot – from spring till fall, this was my entire outfit. During winter, my mother improvised something for us to wear on our back, out of shreds of sackcloth or blankets. That was Transnistria.

I also want to mention in relation with this episode that, even though I respect the Romanian people in the general context, for it is the people in the midst of which I live and have lived for so many years, my heart shrinks when it comes to this particular aspect, that such events were possible in which completely innocent people – such as my family and countless other families that I met afterwards, after they returned from Transnistria – could be punished in such manner, for absolutely no reason other than being Jewish. So, only based on ethnic origin, they could be deported in such conditions – the respective conditions being nothing else than more or less slow extermination. I say this because I shudder even at present, I am dumbfounded by certain voices trying to rehabilitate Marshal Antonescu 4. I admit, and I know he was head of his class at the Military Academy, I’ve read and heard say that he was a good strategist, a patriot in his way, but this aspect, that he could ally himself with the beast whose name was Adolf Hitler, and that he could share the same ideas with regard to the Jewish minority, that debases him in my eyes… the other qualities have no value as long as he could embrace such a conception, such a way of thinking as to send hundreds of thousands of people to extermination solely on ethnic grounds. My conception and my conviction is that a human being who is capable of doing such things, regardless of his name, regardless of what people he belongs to, even the Jewish people itself, can no longer be called a human being. He is subhuman. An Untermensch. With this, I’d like to close the chapter of Transnistria.

Let me tell you a little about the return home. With the liberation and the advancing of the Russian troops, my father returned from the concentration camp, and he came to Djurin, where he knew we were. So the Germans took my father, he was taken to a Nazi camp of the SS troops, a forced labor camp. I know a few episodes that happened there – in any case, its purpose was extermination as well. Through forced labor and also through the abuses that have been and are still committed throughout the world when some human beings that have weapons and power face another human being who is powerless and their prisoner, they believe to be superhuman. Let me recount a single episode my father told me, and I believed him, for he wasn’t the kind of person to fabricate stories. They were eating – meaning they were sitting cross-legged around a so-called square, of course, there was a barbed wire fence behind them and they sat around that square with some sort of used military mess kettles and a spoon, and they ate first, second and third course consisting of a single dish, a very thin soup made from potatoes, vegetable marrow, beet, and so on – I’ve heard stories of soups that in any case do not belong to regular human cuisine, rather to that for animals. My father was sitting next to a good friend of his from Radauti, a tailor – he was a professional tailor in Radauti –, and while they were eating an SS sergeant appeared, and the rule was that they should stand up – as a sign of respect for the respective officer. The man sitting next to my father simply wasn’t wearing his glasses, didn’t notice him; they were generally starving, and when that food was brought they would rush to sip it, and he wasn’t paying attention, and in the instant when that man had the spoon to his mouth the sergeant drew his pistol, and instead of swallowing the soup, the man was shot in the mouth by the sergeant; of course he died instantly. This is one of the episodes my father told me about the Bug concentration camp. But there were countless such episodes. Human beings didn’t count for the Nazis. Even among them, there were some who, in turn, thought themselves to be elite citizens at home – and, like everywhere, the war, the weapons, the conceptions inoculated in people’s consciences can turn even educated human beings, as many of the German officers and sub-officers were, into beasts.

They mainly worked at building roads, because this entire region: the south of Ukraine, Ukraine itself, Russia in general, the Russian steppes had very poor infrastructure – these were muddy roads; they carried stone, laid it, dug ditches, built bridges, and so on. They worked shifts of 12-14 hours a day, so tiresome that many would collapse on the way back from work – the elderly or the sick. God willed that father, who was a more robust individual, raised in the countryside, as I said, at Straja, and accustomed to hard work ever since he was only a child, should survive the efforts there, but with consequences, nevertheless. Meaning that he managed to return home, but he suffered all his life from angina pectoris, an ailment that he contracted there, and that’s also what caused his early demise – he died at home at 59, in Radauti.

Liberation

After liberation, we remained in Djurin for a few years, because my father managed to find some jobs, earn some money. There was a sugar factory in the neighborhood – I don’t know for sure whether it was in Moghilev 6 or in a closer locality –, and I know that my father, as he had a very legible and calligraphic handwriting, succeeded in getting hired there – temporarily, of course. Our wish was to return home immediately. We had our house in Radauti and it was meaningless to stay there and barely build a house; besides, these were different places, our acquaintances were here, our dead were buried in the cemeteries here.

Only 5 of us returned home, my father’s cousin perished – she too fell ill, and they couldn’t save her. I believe that she died approximately 3 years after we arrived there [around 1944], she was young, I think she was around 20. We returned home by means of a cart that we hired there [in Djurin]. I don’t remember exactly how long it took us to get home, for anyway, it’s a long distance to travel, but I remember this image, that in the spring of 1945, when we returned, the snow was thawing and there were many puddles to cross. And the horses weren’t very tall and didn’t look that good, but they were very good for pulling. They managed to take us – five persons, well, six if you count the carter –, we traveled by cart day and night, and we managed to reach our home in Radauti.

Certainly, we found the house devastated, there was no piece of furniture left. Our parents were able to scrape together the bare necessities for inhabiting it from whatever they managed to give some honest neighbors for safe-keeping [before the deportation]; some of them returned what we had left with them, others didn’t want to admit, they said they didn’t take anything, were never given anything. I don’t know who had lived in our house during our absence, probably somebody from the German military who was quartered there, or somebody connected with the German military, because we found a collection of German war magazines, published in Romanian, called ‘Signal.’ I don’t know if it was distributed throughout the whole of Romania, perhaps only in Bukovina 7, but such a magazine was indeed issued, it was an entire collection. And I read many of them, as a child I gathered much information about the war – of course, from the point of view of the German propaganda – from those magazines. Like any child, naturally, I enjoyed browsing through them, for there were many battle scenes, all sorts of stories. But it was very well printed for those times, the graphic quality was very good. To be sure, the content was as expected, it couldn’t be otherwise, that of the Nazi propaganda.

Times were very hard after the war. Although my father had a store – he started to rebuild his store at the outskirts of Radauti, where we lived, on Putnei Street no. 162 –, even though my mother managed to get her sewing machine working again, we struggled to get by, but times were very, very modest. Which is why at a certain point my father recovered his former horse from before the war and bought a cart so that he could do the supplying of the store himself. Among his customers were even people of different ethnic origins – Romanians, gypsies, even some Czechs or what have you. There was one in particular, and I remember him to this day, because he wore a beard, he said his name was Cerny, with a ‘y’ at the end. He was from Czechoslovakia – Slovak or Czech, I don’t know for sure. But there were others who came to borrow. Times were very hard, poverty was widespread, there was also a severe drought back then – at least in Moldavia –, and people came to borrow on credit.

As long as he lived – only 59 years - and inasmuch as I knew him, my father was a man of rare good nature. He was almost too kind, too good-natured. As a dressmaker, my mother, who was more pragmatic, more calculated by nature, would tell him: "Husband, pay attention to whom and how much you give, for you won’t have enough money to pay the wholesaler for the merchandise." My father couldn’t follow her advice, out of pity for people, and he would record the debts in a notebook – he had a very calligraphic handwriting – but this didn’t mean that everybody paid him the money. On the contrary, many of them couldn’t pay their debts and, after a very short period, 3-4 years after the war, my father went bankrupt, because he literally couldn’t pay for the merchandise he received, and it was only with the help of one of his brothers in Bucharest, Fritz, that he managed to escape legal punishment.

Also, times were extremely hard after the war, what with that drought. Children were actually starving to death. Since an international aid was probably offered in those days, children up to the 7th grade were given polenta to eat at school during the break, which was, of course, already cold by the time we got it, one slice of cold polenta and govidla – that means jam made from plums – and a cup of milk which was indeed warm or even hot. It was a delicacy for us. Even for me, the son of a shopkeeper. When I told my children what special cake I used to eat during the 10 or 11 o’clock break when they distributed it, they almost couldn’t believe it. I was in the 2nd or 3rd grade – but I remember as if it were yesterday, to such an extent it made an impression on me, as it was very welcome. That’s what I want to say, it was a very good thing to have. By comparison therefore, our welfare wasn’t that great, since it seemed so special to me. Because a child coming from a family where dessert was a matter of course, where he would be well-nourished, would have perhaps turned up his nose at the polenta and milk we were given.

Judaism

My parents weren’t particularly religious. But certain customs were observed – from the lighting of the candles on Friday evening to the prayer for peace and minimum welfare, to have bread on the table. We observed the Yom Kippur fast, when the isker [yizkor] was recited, the prayer for the dead, for the parents, the relatives, the oppressed. So it was somewhere in-between – observing tradition neither too strictly, nor too loosely. What I mean to say is that I have often seen my father wearing that tallit, even at home. When he couldn’t go to the synagogue, he would wear it at home, take out the prayer book and intoned a few broche prayers as follows: starting with Sema Israel and those regarding thanksgiving or the respective holiday. These are my childhood memories. He didn’t go to the synagogue during the week, I don’t remember him going to the synagogue in the evening. Other people used to do so, those who were well off or weren’t working at that hour. He used to attend the synagogue at the end of the week, whenever he could, not on Fridays, but usually on Saturdays. But he couldn’t go to the synagogue during the rest of the week, he was struggling and striving to make ends meet.

There were several synagogues in Radauti. The temple still exists to this day, it is one of the most beautiful temples – at least in the north of Moldavia, in Bukovina. On major holidays – Passover, the New Year [Rosh Hashanah] – we attended the religious ceremonies at the Temple, and I would regularly attend the prayers on Saturday together with my father; we used to go to a small synagogue in our neighborhood, which could house 25-30 people at the most, and where the service was performed by one of the citizens, the most knowledgeable one. I’ve been there countless times. Admittedly, my father wasn’t a very religious person, but he tried as much as possible to attend the religious service at least on Saturday or Friday evening, in other words, to go to the synagogue once during the weekend. It was also a way for him to break with everyday life, to meet with people he knew, exchange an opinion, for, of course, people would sit and discuss worldly matters before or after the religious service was performed. And during the prayer people would usually meditate. At least that’s how it was in Radauti, there was no talking during the religious service, people would pray to God for “Shalom veLehem”, so for peace and bread. These were the two prayers. I never heard big words, happiness, anything else. But if there was peace and if there was bread, to ensure as tranquil an existence as possible…

We had silvered candlesticks, I remember that my mother used to light two candlesticks on Friday evening. She didn’t bake coilici very often. [Editor’s note: Coilici is a variant for challah, similar to the word „kajlics“ used by some Hungarian-speaking Jews in Romania. Both words have the origin in the Hungarian word „kalacs“.] She baked them when she could and when she had the necessary ingredients, but not very often. I remember that she covered it, she placed a clean kitchen towel over it, and recited the Friday evening broche. As for holidays, of course we could always hardly wait for the holidays to arrive as we ate better, special food. Not to mention that we performed a major cleaning of the house before the holiday, everything shined in the house. 

On Passover we used the clean dishes we kept for holidays – my mother had special dishes for Passover, which were kept separate from the regular dishes. We bought matzah. But it was only later that we bought matzah through the Community; in the beginning, during the post-war period, my mother would bake bread that resembled matzah. For matzah is baked using a special technology, it is really made only from water and flour and is specially prepared, pressed, thin – you can’t actually bake it like that at home. But she baked something similar. Father would organize a seder evening at home. It was shorter, I don’t remember if he observed the entire seder, but we were raised in this tradition. We usually recited mah nishtanah. Being the youngest child, I didn’t understand much of it. And, because of the war, the conditions, the miserly childhood, I probably was a rather feeble-minded child, who couldn’t compare to my grandson in those days. I think he would have thought me to be the village idiot, or the neighborhood’s. Because from what I remember, I was an ignorant, uninformed child. My parents didn’t have much time for us, to explain things. For if the parents start explaining, the child asks: ‘But why is that so? But why is that so?’, and then they must explain in more detail, and, little by little every day, the child makes progress, becomes more informed. They didn’t have much time to spend with me, it was rare when they did.

We didn’t wear masks on Purim – I don’t quite remember doing that. They recited one of the books of the Torah at the synagogue, in which are recounted the events that took place then, with Ester, Haman, and people would make noise whenever the name of Haman was mentioned. My father used to read at home as well, we had prayer books for every occasion. The Machzor, for instance, was the prayer book we used on Friday evening, on Saturday, on all days, as it were. [Editor’s notes: The Machzor is a specialized form of the Siddur. It is used on Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot. It does not include the daily prayers and blessings that one should recite on week days and Sabbath, which are found in the Siddur. http://www.judaica-guide.com/machzor/ ] We observed the holiday with modest capabilities. People baked cookies and gave them to relatives, friends. We usually gave cookies to our neighbors, because we had good neighbors, not all of them were Jewish. Some of them were Jewish, in the house right across the street lived a certain Mehler, who was a Jewish carter – he earned his living hauling things. Unbelievable, but true. Just as I work in the field of agriculture – unbelievable, but true. Or just as my parents raised sheep at a certain point, my father was a sheep breeder.

On Chanukkah we used to go to the shil, and light candles at home. Usually, it was the children who lit the candles. But we, the children, left home one by one. At a certain point, I was the only child who was still living at home, and I would light the candles. We had candles at home and a special candelabrum for Chanukkah, with several brass branches, it was beautiful, it resembled gold, because it wasn’t made from gold, far from it. You can usually find it in the home of every more or less religious Jew. We used to place it on the table, not by the window, we didn’t expose ourselves, we didn’t boast about this. I don’t remember receiving toys on Chanukkah. Perhaps they gave us an improvised spinning top during my entire childhood. We didn’t really have toys, only very few.

In addition to the temple, there was a Jewish school, this so-called chedder. They only taught Ivrit there, Hebrew, starting with the alef-beys, and including reading. I started to go to the chedder rather late, I believe I must have been in the 6th grade by then, so I was around 12. I attended the chedder for only 2-3 years. I could read well by then. Nowadays, I read the prayer book with punctuation, it’s rather hard for me to read without punctuation. That’s how it is. We were taught by a melamed, a teacher. He was an elderly man, I believe he was around 60 at that time, who didn’t have any special didactic methods, for, after all, he gave us texts to copy. For instance, he would say: ‘alef,’ he had a small board on which he scratched this – for he didn’t even have decent chalk, if I remember correctly, for there was a shortage of chalk –, and we all had a little notebook, and wrote down what he wrote.

The shochet – also a religious title – was the person who performed the kosher slaughters for the believers. People traveled to Radauti in order to go to the shochet. I remember that my mother would have wanted to take the fowl to the shochet, but she didn’t always manage to do so because we lived far from the downtown area. There was one kilometer and a quarter from our house to the synagogue where we attended the religious service. We had to walk at least one kilometer and a half in order to reach the temple. Another 500-600 meters and you were out of the city. There was only one shochet in Radauti, also in the dowtown area, close to the Jewish bathhouse, that’s where people went and where the shochet performed the ritual slaughter. It was a place specially fitted for this purpose, in a blind alley, similar to a courtyard, but still a public place, where there was someone who cleaned, erased any left-over traces, if there were feathers or… [other remains]. I used to go the shochet sometimes, I accompanied my mother. But she wasn’t able to go there very often. She would ask one of the neighbors to do it. She didn’t have the strength, the heart to do it, and she had some good neighbors who used to say: ‘Give it here, Mrs. Glasberg, for I’ll chop its head in no time.’ In the Jewish tradition, for instance, fowls are not slaughtered in the fashion Romanians do it, by chopping the head completely. The head wasn’t severed, only the veins in the front, and the blood was drained – a certain ritual. I, for one, couldn’t find anyone to slaughter the fowls for me, and I slaughtered the birds as Romanians do. For there’s nothing you can do, you have to get by. Where would I go? There has been no fowl shochet in Botosani lately – for the last 20 years, if not more. You could only buy ritual beef that was brought from a slaughterhouse once every few months, usually around holidays. But there was someone who came from Bucharest for this purpose [to take care of the ritual slaughter]. They performed the slaughter in Botosani for several cities, for Radauti, Dorohoi, and they would deliver the meat. But nowadays, this has become ever more rare lately, as the Community itself is growing smaller – not by the day, but surely by the year. For there are many elderly people, many ailing people.

Growing Up After the War

After he went bankrupt, my father worked in a bakery as a worker – as a baker’s help, for he wasn’t really a baker – bread seller, then worker again, and he retired due to poor health, as he was suffering from a serious cardiac condition he contracted in the concentration camp during the war.

My father died at 59, in 1959, of a heart attack. It was basically an instantaneous death for him. He didn’t feel well after a sustained effort, he lay on the bad, and said: ‘I’ll rest a little.’ My mother was just preparing lunch. And he didn’t wake up to eat anymore. I was a student in the 2nd year at the university, of course I rushed back home. My mother didn’t even mention in the telegram that father was dead, she told me: ‘Father is gravely ill.’ In fact, he was dead. He is buried in the Jewish cemetery. There is a large Jewish cemetery in Radauti – it is one of the large cemeteries. These cities: Botosani, Radauti, Siret, Suceava, Dorohoi – even more than other cities –, have had large communities. I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard someone say, in a conversation about ethnicity attended by the mayor himself, that at a certain point before World War II almost 60% of the population of Botosani was of Jewish or mixed descent – which is to say, Jewish women married to Romanians and men belonging to other ethnic groups. After the war, it had dropped to approximately 40%, and then people emigrated en masse; now there are 50-60 of us left – museum items.

My mother died at 72, in 1970, after a prolonged period of suffering. She contracted a severe case of pneumonia, she fell seriously ill. And there was nothing we could do for her. We had her consulted by a doctor, of course, she followed a treatment, but… She died in Radauti, in her home, in the parental home. My middle brother was living there with her, he is now living in Germany.

But what did my parents want more than anything else? They wanted their children to learn. My eldest brother, Herman, attended school, completed his economy studies, and is living in Israel at present, at Bat Yam. My middle brother had no calling for studying, but he had a high-tech profession as a radio and TV break-down mechanic; he is living in Berlin. As for myself, I went to school as well, and, being the youngest and probably the least courageous to start a new living from scratch on foreign grounds, I stayed in Romania, also in a city starting with ‘b’, Botosani.

So I had a regular trajectory, as most children would: primary school, high school, faculty. I started attending primary school after the war, at a rather too early age, yet it wasn’t my parents’ fault but my own, for, seeing that my older brothers have books and that there are all sorts of pictures in them, I thought that one goes to school in order to look at pictures. And I wanted books as well, I wanted to have my own books, to look at pictures, for they [my brothers] didn’t really let me browse through their books, as the age gap was rather big, too. So I started attending school in 1945, as soon as we returned from Transnistria 3. We returned in spring-summer 1945, and I started going to school in autumn, it was a state school. And I received physical punishments for speaking a very broken Romanian, a medley of words. My language wasn’t well-defined, as my entire childhood since I was 2 and until I was 5 and a half – for three years and a half – I spoke a medley of words. We spoke German at home, even during our period as evacuees; I would meet other Jewish children outside our home, they spoke Yiddish, Ukrainian, Romanian and, as a result, I spoke 2-3 words in Romanian and then 1 word in another language, or I used the Romanian word, but unintelligibly.

Elementary school consisted of 7 grades, after which I attended 3 years of high school – schooling consisted of 10 grades in those days – at the Eudocsiu Hurmuzache High School in Radauti, a very good high school with a good tradition, we didn’t have much time for distractions as pupils. There was a high degree of knowledge compressed in the three years of high school. In other words, from a certain point of view it’s better to stretch it to cover 4-5 years, so that pupils can be a little more relaxed, so that they a little have less to study. But we had to swot during those 3 years in order to graduate. I graduated high school in 1955. So I was 16 – a mere child.

On graduating from high school you received a bachelor’s degree, you could attend any faculty you wanted. I wanted to attend the Military Academy as I had dreams of becoming an officer, but I wanted to become an officer dealing with technical matters, matters of design – I was dreaming of becoming an airplane designer. Those magazines I found [in the attic on returning from Transnistria] had a great influence on me. Seeing so many vehicles – those were war vehicles, of course –, and capable of very easily imagining ships, submarines, tanks, airplanes, you name it, I used to say: ‘Well, here’s what, I will become a designer of ships or airplanes.’ And it goes without saying that my name and origin weighed heavily at the Military Academy and, without being communicated my results after the written examination, although having apparently passed it, my application for personnel was rejected… for personnel office. And I had to make an about turn, go home. There was nothing I could do at that point, I had missed all examination sessions [for entering another faculty], and I stayed home and tutored younger children for a year – in the 7th, 8th grade –, mainly in mathematics, but also in physics. And the following year, in 1956, I sat for an examination for medical school, failed to pass, and during the second session of exams I applied for agronomy in Iasi instead of medical school, and I passed the examination for agronomy. Of course, attending this faculty was easier despite the fact that it is a difficult faculty, contrary to some opinions that say: ‘Wait, what do you study? About planting seeds and looking after animals.’ But before studying about that, the direct technology of crops or raising livestock, you learn botany, plants diseases – which is called fitopathology –, I studied animal anatomy and physiology. The faculty lasted for 5 years and half – I could have easily completed medical school. I supported myself during the 5 years and a half using my stipend, otherwise my mother couldn’t have supported me. And in 1962 I graduated the Faculty of Agronomy. I served my military service as students did, namely during the faculty, followed by a summons after graduation of two and a half months spent here, at the military facility in Botosani.

Five years later, around 1967, I started attending my second faculty, the technical-economic faculty in Bucharest, but under the optional attendance system. This lasted for 3 years, and by 1970-1971 I had already passed the state examination. So I also have a degree as economy engineer. This technical-economic faculty served a good purpose, as it broadened the horizon. For we, technicians, are rather narrow-minded when it comes to technical matters, and accountants, economists, are narrow-minded when it comes to economy issues. The technician became aware from a technical-economic point of view, namely that any technical decision involves an expense, requires a revision of expenses, and it proved the economist the importance technicians, for nevertheless, technicians are the ones who advance, they are the engine of society. I also received my degree as Doctor in Philosophy before retiring. At work, my colleagues used to call me ‘comrade Study’ – that was the term people used back then, comrade. I have been and I remained a person who enjoyed poring over books, considering issues of the past and present, and of course I try to imagine what the future will be like, like many people who hope it will be better.

After graduating my first faculty I started working as an agronomy engineer. You received a mandatory repartition from the agriculture faculties, you didn’t simply choose where you wanted to be hired. And I received a repartition in Botosani, I could choose the facility in Roma – there is a locality called Roma in the county of Botosani, but it had nothing to do with Rome in Italy, except for the fact that it was placed on some hills, some hillocks –, the village of Roma includes three villages: Roma de Sus, Roma de Jos and Cotargaci. [Roma is located 14 km north-west of Botosani.] And I worked there for a year, the facility underwent a merger, I was young, so they requested me to move, and afterwards I worked for almost 5-6 years in another village, a village called Corni. [Corni is located 23 km south-west of Botosani.]

Work was very hard. We belonged to the generation of collectivization, of agricultural co-operatives 8 – we were a sacrifice generation, despite outside opinions or ideas that are not familiar with the specificity of the profession of agronomy engineers, and that portray us as tools of the communist party for implementing collectivization and for administering those communal farmsteads – later called Agricultural Production Co-operatives. I say that on the contrary, the largest percent of those working in this branch were cannon fodder, meaning that I had an inhumane work schedule, we had to work even Sundays – during those 40 years of work I had no idea what weekend meant, except from foreign motion pictures –, and during the years of collectivization [the late 1940’s and throughout the 1950’s], and even afterwards, the amount of work was enormous because, being the only engineer in an agricultural facility with more than 3,000 ha and 2 livestock breeding sectors, as the case was in Corni, in the county of Botosani, there was work to be done. If possible, I could have worked for 24 hours out of 24, and still it wouldn’t have been enough, as I was the only one in charge of making all the technical decisions, and on many occasions, not only the technical ones; the citizen in charge of the facility was a very decent person, we got along well, he respected me, but it was still he who used to tell me: ‘Listen, please, you take care of my problems as well, for I will go wherever you send me to oversee a work process, where work is being done, but you run this facility.’

Being part of a facility in a locality with several thousand inhabitants, out of which some were active persons, was like being in a display case: everyone analyzed you, everyone knew what you did from dawn to dusk, what kind of person you were, how you talked, how you addressed yourself, how demanding – or lenient – you were, and you not only had to perform a purely technical work, but also had to be a very tactful, respectful person – my parents had instilled this respect in me; they were simple people who indeed taught me when I was still in primary school or high school, they told me: ‘Son, you must respect each and single human being. You have something to learn from everyone.’ This principle helped me immensely, but it didn’t apply when having to do with that percent of unruly people present in any community, of rude people, of people accustomed to disobeying their parents, let alone strangers. However, I can say that during all the years of direct production, 7 in number, I was never told: ‘Jidan [derogatory term for Jew],’ I was never told: ‘Listen, go to your country, you have no business being here.’, I was never told: ‘We don’t need you here.’ On the contrary, despite being severe within humane limits, for otherwise it is impossible to run a business, I left room for mutual respect, so that even tens of years later I still meet peasants from the village of Corni who smile and ask me: ‘How are you doing, Mr. Engineer, sir?’ It is a small thing, yet small and modest as it is, the form of address makes me feel good every time, makes me feel taller as it were, as if unbent by the years that rest on my shoulders. That is why I emphasize once more – all the more so, as this recording might reach the western world: the collective farmstead wasn’t 100% bad. The collective system was a bad system, a bad planning system, a bad system regarding the infringement of human rights, a system that forced people to work mandatorily, both those that could and those that couldn’t – it was a political system, which was superposed over the economic one. But the technical-economic was good, because many regret it even to this day. They regret the large, cultivated, well tilled fields, the crop rotation, the absence of weeds, the large crops, and not what we have nowadays – something I often come across while wandering even today across the county of Botosani on various errands –, when you see countless untilled or poorly tilled lands – to the point that a country cannot rely on such a home agriculture. I believe we have become largely dependant on other countries’ well-organized agricultural systems – which is very sad for Romania, a country and a people with great resources.

I am married. I met my wife in Corni, she was teaching Romanian there at the school for 10 grades. As I was the best, the greatest, the nicest agronomy engineer in the village of Corni, seeing that I was the only one, I was invited, quite often even, to hold classes about my profession, about agriculture, nature. And as she was master of a class, we met, we started seeing each other.

Her maiden name is Marioara Sandu, she was born in Vatra Moldovitei in 1936. [Vatra Moldovitei is located 73 km west of Suceava.] She graduated the Faculty of Philology, has no brothers or sisters, is an only child and like no one else on earth. She is partly Jewish – from her mother’s side –, as her mother was 100% Jewish. Her mothered entered a mixed marriage, she married Sandu. Her mother’s maiden name, my mother in law’s, as it were, was Berta Zoller. Her father had been administrator of an estate, too, somewhere on the bank of the river Prut, he had several daughters, and Berta was among them. My father-in-law worked in the Romanian gendarmerie and was appointed head of the unit of that locality. He was a very spruce individual, and he looked very handsome in that gendarme uniform, for it had all sorts of belts, epaulets, golden laces, and what not. And she literally fell in love. Of course, he loved her too. Her parents were against it. Oh, it was a semi-tragedy, for Mr. Sandu basically ran away with my mother-in-law, and they eloped without the parents knowing anything about it and got married at the registrar’s office. She became a Christian then, so that they could perform the religious ceremony. And the reverse happened, as their daughter performed the Mosaic religious wedding ceremony with me. And, in turn, my son performed the Orthodox religious wedding ceremony with my daughter-in-law. There you have it, this is the fate of those living abroad, and it is natural that it should be so, in my opinion, and something without significance, unimportant. My son asked me if I consented to his marriage. And I said: ‘If you like the girl, if you love her, if you believe it is something that will last and not a passing love affair, just because you happen to be together, then I can only give you my blessing; may you live a long life and may you love each other your whole life.’ That was it.

We were married in 1964, I was 25. We skipped the engagement period. We were good friends, determined to get married. My parents-in-law were aware of it, [that we will have the wedding ceremony at the synagogue], and, oddly enough, they also consented. Naturally, as my mother-in-law was Jewish by birth, she shouldn’t have had reasons to be against the marriage. But my father-in-law, a gendarme without higher education, as they only graduated some sort of military high school – he attended high school in far-away Oradea, he used to call it Oradea Mare, those were his words, for he graduated the gendarmes high school at Oradea Mare –, and he wasn’t against it, there were no discussions. But we didn’t have the religious ceremony in Botosani, for we didn’t know many people there [from the Jewish Community in Botosani]. And I asked my older brother – he was a university lecturer in Iasi – to inquire if we could perform it in Iasi. And they [the rabbi] agreed to perform it in Iasi, but we had to pay a fee, for her religion was considered to be Orthodox, and she had to enter the Jewish religion. And then my brother said: ‘Bear in mind, my brother is a student, and he doesn’t really have money.’ For I didn’t – I was recently hired, my salary was small, incredibly small. And we went there, but I had to pretend to be a student – such were the times. They charged me something symbolic, I only paid a symbolic fee. [Her entering the Mosaic religion] was like a sort of baptism, there was a mikveh there, I know that there was a bathtub there, and I don’t know how it was performed – my wife told me the details back then, but countless years have passed since then. There was a rabbi in Iasi, but it wasn’t the rabbi who performed the wedding ceremony, but an assistant, who was also a sort of rabbi. It was performed in a synagogue. A kippah was used as well, so it was performed with everything required for a marriage ceremony.

Marriage, Children, Family, and Later Life

Naturally, I don’t regret doing this, and neither does my wife, we never had an argument about this subject. I raised 2 issues before we got married. One of them received a negative answer, and one of them received a positive answer from my wife-to-be. One of the issues was: seeing how hard working conditions were at an APC [Agricultural Production Co-operative], and given the isolation, I said that I’d like to go to Israel while still young, start a life there. And she told me: ‘I can’t accompany you because I have my parents here, I am an only child. And my father has always got along very well with Jews, but I don’t think so, I can’t even suggest that he should leave his house here to go and live over there; he doesn’t even speak the language – it would be extremely hard for him, and it would mean punishing him in his old age. And leaving them here in order to go so far away would be like turning my back on them, like being indifferent towards my parents.’ So she didn’t agree to that.

And the second issue that I raised was: ‘You know what? There won’t be any problems at first, but there may be discussions along the way – the children might ask: "What religion are we? Where do we worship? In the church, in the temple? According to one of you, we should be going to the temple, according to the other, we should be going to church. What do we do?" And so, maybe we had better decide this, and given the fact that, nevertheless, you are half Jewish, and I’m not half Romanian, I’d like you to join the Mosaic religion if you believe, if you agree.’ And she said yes, that she believed it was entirely up to her, and that there was no problem, she would convert to Judaism. So we settled that. Of course, the children followed the natural course [of their own life]. If it came to pass that our son should enter a mixed marriage, this didn’t prevent him from becoming an Orthodox. He doesn’t attend the synagogue. He isn’t the type who goes to church too often, but on holidays, when celebrating the New Year or Easter with his parents-in-law, they do attend church. He doesn’t parade it, but he doesn’t conceal it either.

Our son was born in 1967, and our daughter was born in 1969. Our son, Marius, is living here in Botosani, he is married to Mariana, they are both engineers; I even have a grandson, Dan – or Dani, or Danut, as they call him –, who turned 5 recently [he was born in 2001]. My son graduated electronics at the Polytechnic Institute in Iasi, he works in computer informatics for a company from Botosani; he earns a modest salary, but he gets by. We sometimes work together, he helps me with computer tasks, for he is more skilled than me – I use the computer as well, but he helps me with certain projects that are more demanding, with tables and formulas, so that they are as correct as possible.

My daughter’s name is Simona, she is a physician and is living in Israel. She left just after graduation, it will soon be 10 years since her departure. It was very difficult at first. She graduated medicine here, in Iasi, the school was very good, very demanding, but the state of Israel, and other states as well, require that her diploma be validated there. She had to pass an examination either in English or in Hebrew, and certainly, it was even more difficult to speak the specialized medical language in Hebrew – she speaks it now, but this is after several years of study, in addition to using it in order to talk to patients or co-workers. She passed the examination in English, she was crying almost every time we spoke on the phone; we encouraged her as much as we could, told her that everyone has difficult periods in life, that she must fight, that life itself is nothing but a choice between fighting and resigning, and more fighting again, of various degrees, of course, but even fighting a cold is still fighting. And she became a specialist physician, she is now a specialist in one of the most difficult specialties of medicine, endocrinology and endocrine diseases pathology; she is in London at present, where she was sent to complete a 1-year training course – different perspectives, different possibilities.

She is married to Hedvin Grozinschi, born in Piatra Neamt of Jewish descent; he also graduated from faculty in Iasi, and they emigrated together. He insisted that they should leave, she hadn’t made up her mind, because she would have wanted us to be together. And we couldn’t leave. We just couldn’t. It wasn’t because we were afraid, for it doesn’t necessarily take a bomb to fall next to you to end your life, there is now a degree of insecurity even in Romania – it doesn’t in the least compare to the one in Israel, but it is there. Besides, you could slip on a stone, or a street curb, and if it is your fate that your life should end then and there, it ends. They are living in Petach Tiqwa in Israel, it is a city slightly larger than Botosani, with approximately 150,000 inhabitants, somewhere in-between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, but much closer to Tel Aviv. My daughter gave me 2 granddaughters – one prettier than the other. The elder daughter, Maian, will be turning 9 [she was born in 1997], and the cadet, Shirley, will be turning 4 [she was born in 2003]. They were born in Israel. They speak Hebrew very well, as well as English, of course, but they also speak Romanian, they speak Romanian very often at home. We use Skype to talk over the Internet, and of course I freeze at first, but I can talk to them afterwards, for, you see, I am shy, sentimental by nature. But we are very happy to hear one another almost daily. Science put to the use of humanity solved even this problem – people can hear one another, and they can do that for free. It’s no small matter!

My older brother, Herman Glasberg, left to Israel many years ago, around 1967-1968. The family of my sister-in-law, Lea – God rest her soul –, left earlier. She had a sibling but, being the older one, she was her mother’s favorite daughter, and she considered herself to be her parents’ main support at old age. And they insisted very much in their letters that she should go there, so much that my sister-in-law was on the brink of a nervous breakdown because of this. My brother didn’t really want to go, but the circumstances led to this, for he was a university lecturer in Iasi; however, as he wasn’t a member of the Communist Party – and, probably, as a secondary but unofficial reason, on account of his name being Glasberg – he was dismissed from his position in the educational system and, as his formation was that of an economist, he was appointed inspector at a bank. And this disappointment, in conjunction with his wife’s desire to emigrate, made him decide to leave. He remained rebellious in Israel, he was very puzzled by some aspects of capitalist society, despite the fact that he wasn’t a communist or a member of the Communist Party, but he was brought up with this reality, life seemed to him much more difficult over there. But still, he didn’t give in. He worked in a company as an economist, but it was rather difficult. People commute over long distances there. As he didn’t have a car, and probably not wanting to have a car, he rode his bicycle to work. And he used to get up an hour and a half earlier, given the fact that it took him one hour to reach the company where he worked, and one hour to return home, of course; and what with the traffic, what with the pressure, it was rather tiresome.

His wife’s maiden name was Lea Sapira, she too was born in Radauti. She was a very good person, a woman of rare kindness. She graduated from the Faculty of Natural Sciences in Iasi. But in Israel, she had to teach natural sciences in Hebrew. She worked for a hew years, but it was very hard. Israeli children – as will soon be the case with Romanian children, if it isn’t so already – have no patience or tolerance towards an ole hadash teacher – ole hadash means new-comer –, and who, in addition to that, has difficulty speaking Ivrit. Hebrew is a very difficult language to master for someone born into another language. For it has no resemblance to European languages. It may be similar to Arabic languages – I do not know Arabic, but, hearing it on the radio, on television stations broadcasting in Arabic as well, it seemed to me that certain words, certain roots of words are alike. But it has no resemblance either to Romanian or to German, Russian, or other languages that we might have known, that we had learned at school. And due to the weakening of her nervous system at home, for her mother kept saying ‘I need my daughter here,’ and that she was missing her terribly, due to this unstable nervous system, it got worse after she arrived there; she practically had a nervous breakdown, and, as a result of that, she died after several years of suffering. For she couldn’t stand being mocked, laughed at. So you can die in the Holy Land as well, in the midst of your own people.

Now my brother is living alone in Bat Yam, he has 2 happily married sons who, in turn, have children. The elder son, Avi, is an IT specialist, he is very successful, financially as well: he is the manager of a company which, although not that large, exports products abroad. And the other bears his grandfather’s [my father’s] name, his name is Samuil. He was actually born in Israel, so his Romanian is not so good. The elder one speaks a bit of Romanian, what he remembers from childhood – he was 5 when he left –, we sometimes conversed in Romanian, but mostly in German. He worked for a company representing a company in Brussels, and he had to deal with German nationals as well, he was compelled to learn German, and he speaks it rather well. The children are eager to learn about their roots, and they promised they would come to Romania, to visit the cemeteries as well, see where their grandparents are buried. But they haven’t been able to do so yet, for when the children are on school holiday, the parents have pressing business to take care of. [Editor’s note: Herman Glasberg died in 2007.]

As for my middle brother, Jacob Glasberg, he too left Romania many years ago – in any case, it was before the Revolution 2, but I believe it was after the eldest brother left. He emigrated to Israel at first, he lived in Hedera, he couldn’t integrate in Israel, was offered a job offer to work for Philips – he was a radio technician – in Berlin, Germany, so he went there. Philips offered him a service center workshop for repairing radios, radio cassette players during the warranty period. Afterwards, he started his own workshop, and he is still living in Berlin to this day. He has a family, a wife and two children, a son and a daughter. His wife is Jewish; officially, her name is Charlotte, but her pet name is Sari. Their son’s name is Ronald, and their daughter’s, Perla.

I have traveled many times to Israel, and I was impressed on every occasion. I’m particularly impressed by Jerusalem; I have been impressed, and still am, by Israel as a whole, by the fact that this people labeled – wrongfully to a large extent, I believe – as a people of former innkeepers, racketeers, profiteers on account of other peoples generally speaking, has managed through hard work to develop there that infrastructure, those buildings, that distinctive order. The Jewish people is an intelligent people, but we must also admit its shortcomings: everyone enjoys being slightly übergespitzt – this is a rather improvised German term – than others, which means being a smart aleck in relation to others. Nevertheless, it was there that they realized that only by means of determination and work… [will you accomplish anything]. Certainly, they received financial support, but that doesn’t solve everything. No matter how much money there is, if there is no one willing to work and see to it that things get done in order to achieve what they have achieved, I believe it couldn’t be done. It took the sacrifice of several generations of Jews, starting with the chalutzim, the youth that left just after the war and lived in tents, and down to the next generations who managed to improve, to perfect. Of course they have problems of their own over there; insecurity is first and foremost, the enmity of Israel’s neighbors – hardly ever justified. It had something to do with land, territory, but any history will confirm that that was the land of Israel, and this people must have a territory to call its own.

Speaking about my children still living in Romania, they said they didn’t want to leave, like father, like son, most likely. My son is decidedly conservative by nature, prone to philosophy – to a greater degree than I am –, he says that one can live anywhere as long as people respect one another, as long as they do unto others as they would be done by, live in harmony with one another. It goes without saying, I couldn’t have forced him to do so, but neither did I urge him too persistently, for going to live in a foreign country, even that of your ancestors, is something that, nevertheless, involves a high degree of risk regarding integration, learning a new language which isn’t an easy one to master, getting used to living among a diversity of people – it isn’t by any means easy.

As for my life being a fulfilled one, I can say that I am a fulfilled person, even if I stayed in Romania and was criticized by former classmates who live abroad and who, truth be told, have a much better financial situation than me. My only possessions are a three-room apartment, an automobile, and a Dacia at that – I would have wanted to have a better car, maybe I will get it next year, or two years from now, if we live until then, if we are in good health –, a garden – actually, it is my wife’s, as mine remained in Radauti next to our parental home, and my middle brother lost it, for the house and land were somehow confiscated when he left for Israel. Back then, under the dictatorial communist regime, they gave you very small, symbolic compensations, which he refused to accept and he has an ongoing lawsuit against the Romanian State, but without any hope of winning the case. Be that as it may, I feel fulfilled, as I was saying, because my financial situation is modest yet satisfying, taking into account the conditions I was accustomed with for so many years – we are used to eating not only specialties, or driving cars that aren’t necessarily luxury –, my children made a life for themselves.

And now, after having retired, I want to continue to be useful to society, I am a technical law expert, an expert assessor for real estate and other goods, and I want to render myself useful. That is what I did until recently, now I mainly handle projects for obtaining European funding, vehicles, tractors for farmsteads. I have my office at home – since I have a three-room apartment, one room serves as a dining room where we watch television, one as a living room, and one as an office. I still get working contracts, some of which are in the field of my former profession; for instance, I was recently told that they needed an agro-chemical study this autumn, a soil analysis to determine how to use fertilizers. I take on whatever I can and I try to be useful in any way I can, I charge negotiable, advantageous fees, much smaller than others so that I can get some work, earn some money – for we need it. My garden hasn’t fared well this year, for there was the drought, and also the hailstone. I still have a decent crop of carrots, some root crops, I had potatoes, some fruit-bearing trees, but they were so damaged by the hailstone that they were affected and all fell to the ground, I have some grapevine left. It is a place where it is peaceful and quiet. I talk to the plants, and they are so obedient, they don’t talk back, they listen to me, not a single one moves ostentatiously or defiantly. There are 4 km from my house to the garden – sometimes I even walk there, it’s a half an hour’s walk.

I still take part in the events organized by the Jewish Community in Botosani. The community’s president [Iosif David] summons me, he calls me on the phone from time to time, as he has on this occasion. He knows that I am sometimes busy, for there is the garden as well, and my grandson. For some people only have their wife or husband when they retire, or they only have themselves to look after, and in that case of course they can be a pillar of the Community and of the synagogue. But when you have family, household obligations, you can’t be readily available, you can’t attend every event. But he sometimes calls me, when there are funerals, for a minyan is needed on such occasions, you can’t recite the Kaddish for the dead without a minyan. And on these occasions I perform ‘am mitzvah,’ as they say.

Glossary

Leizer Finchelstein
Iasi
Romania
Francisca Solomon
November 2006

Mr. Leizer Finchelstein is 83 and is a very active, cheerful, and outgoing person. He is very tall and his hair is white. He goes to the Jewish Community every day and is still helping his friends and acquaintances with various carpentry repairs. He is living together with his wife in a two-room apartment, decorated modestly. He appeared to be very excited during the interview. He took great pleasure in remembering certain childhood episodes: the love with which the parents raised their 9 children, the very tight bonds between brothers, or the Jewish traditions and customs observed at home. The questions regarding the war period had a very profound effect on him, and he found it very difficult to recount his experience on the “death trains” during the Iasi pogrom of 29th-30th June 1941.

My Family Background

Growing up

During the war

After the war

My family background

The name of the grandfather from my mother’s side was Sloim Vaserman, I believe he was born in Iasi and was a stove fitter. Formerly, all people had wood stoves in their homes, and he was a great specialist in those corner, bricklaid stoves. People built very beautiful stoves in those days. Erecting that system for the evacuation of the smoke was a science in itself. Some landlords would come to pick him up from home by dogcart. On many occasions, they accepted that my grandmother accompany him as well because my grandfather ate only kosher food. My grandmother cooked kosher food for him there so that he wouldn’t have to eat food that wasn’t kosher, but he wouldn’t even eat food that wasn’t kosher. The grandfather from my mother’s side wore a beard. That’s all I remember, we were still little and so many years have passed since then. I remember how we, the children, used to pull his beard when he called on us. He spoke Yiddish at home, but he knew Romanian as well. I don’t remember if my grandfather had any brothers or sisters. My grandfather died in Iasi in the 1930’s.

I can’t offer too many details about the grandmother from my mother’s side, both grandmothers died when I was very little and I barely remember their face. I remember that her name was Sura and I am sure that she was a good grandmother, that’s what the older brothers confessed. I think my mother said that my grandmother resembled her perfectly, as if they were twin sisters, not mother and daughter. Both grandmothers are buried in Iasi in the Jewish cemetery in Pacurari.

My mother had 2 other sisters and 3 brothers. The brothers left to England at a certain point, to Manchester, I don’t remember their names, nor what they did there for a living. From what I heard tell in the family, they didn’t leave together at the same time, first one, then the other followed him. However, my mother’s sisters stayed in Iasi. I remember aunt Pesl and aunt Sura, I forget their family names. Aunt Sura was divorced. She was married with a Jew from Bulgaria who, for reasons unknown to me, left her and vanished. Aunt Sura had 2 children, they were approximately the same age as me. One of the cousins died during the Podu Iloaiei pogrom 1 and I buried him with my own hands in one of the common burial grounds of Podu Iloaiei. And one of them is now living in Israel. Nowadays we talk on the phone, and when we travel there we are their guests. Aunt Pesl was married to a tailor named Vigder, who had a workshop opposite the Golia Tower [Ed. note: monastery in Iasi], on Cuza Voda St. Aunt Pesl had 2 sons as well, who were born handicapped, they were deaf and dumb, despite the fact they were very intelligent children and physically very sound. They were both killed during the pogrom. Aunt Pesl’s husband had 2 children from a previous marriage, for he had 2 children when she married him.

My mother, Haia Risla, born Vaserman, was born in Iasi. I forget the year of birth, it was around 1890. My mother didn’t go to school; I believe her family gave her a religious education.

I don’t remember anything about the grandmother from my father’s side, not even her name. She died when I was very little. The name of the grandfather from my father’s side was Avrum Finchelstein and he was a tailor of women’s clothes in Pascani. I can’t say exactly when he was born. Back then, people didn’t care much for anniversaries, we never celebrated our birthday in the family. We didn’t have the material means, either, nor was it customary. For instance, it was only after I grew old that I celebrated my birthday. I celebrated my first anniversary at 60, when I retired. Like most Jews back then, the grandfather from my father’s side spoke Yiddish. Many Jews of that generation didn’t even speak any language other than Yiddish. Jews lived in Jewish neighborhoods, they worked together. I can’t offer any details about the brothers or sisters of the grandfather from my father’s side, I don’t recall his having any.

Both grandfathers wore regular clothes, only the very religious Jews from Iasi wore sideburns and always donned a tefillin when they went out. I reckon that in Pascani, the town where my father was born, it was the same. The rest of the Jews wore a tefillin only during the morning prayers at the synagogue. But it was out of the question for my grandfathers to go out bareheaded, they always wore a cap. Whenever we ate over at their place, we had to wear something on our head, even though we were children. The grandfathers attended the synagogue on every Friday, Saturday, and on holidays. The kashrut was observed in the household of both of my grandfathers, but also in my parents’ house.

My father had 2 brothers and a sister. I believe they were all born in Pascani, it was later that they moved to Iasi. The eldest brother’s name was Haim Finchelstein. He had an inn on Abator St. in Iasi. Haim had around 4 children, very close cousins of mine. The second-born was Strul Finschelstein, he was a tailor by trade, and he left to America at a certain point before World War II, probably in the 1920’s. The family used to say that during the time that Strul was doing his military service in Romania, he had an argument with a minor superior, slapped his face a few times and was thus forced to flee the army. He came home and told my father: ‘Dear brother, I will not do my military service in Romania anymore.’ He left to Constanta and boarded a ship there and kept going. My father helped him with some money before he departed. My father’s sister’ name was Hona, she was a housewife like most women in those days. Her husband died, and she was left with a daughter. I regret not being able to remember too much about them. The brothers and the sister saw each other again 52 years later in Israel. My father and Haim, one of his brothers, were living in Israel, and their sister traveled from Romania so that they could meet again. It was probably easier for all 4 of them to meet in Israel rather than in America or Romania. This happened in the late 1960’s. Strul came from America for the specific reason of meeting my father and his sister. Afterwards, it wasn’t long before they all passed away. However, my father’s sister died in Iasi.

My father, David Finchelstein, was born in Pascani around 1884. He was a very smart and learned person. Despite having no studies, he learned to read and write by himself, as he was a self-taught man. He acquired a solid general culture on his own by reading Romanian newspapers, but also Jewish ones. Still, as a boy, my father was sent to the cheder, and he learned Yiddish there. He could read and write perfect Yiddish. He attended only “the small cheder,” there were several levels. He worked as a carpenter in Iasi. I don’t recall my father talking about his period in the army, but I think he did the military service, as Jews were required to serve in the army until 1918-1920.

I don’t know many details about how my parents met. I don’t remember them talking about it at home. I think they got married around 1910. Of course there was a religious ceremony performed by a rabbi. In any case, I can say that in our home the relationship between my father and my mother was very good, in spite of the fact that it was a home with many children, and whenever there are children quarrels may always ensue. In turn, we inherited the spirit of this relationship based on good concord; we got along very well as brothers, but with our spouses as well.

Growing up

We all lived in a modest, very poorly house, like most hoses in the Jewish neighborhoods in Iasi, in fact. There were also some Jews who enjoyed better material means, they lived downtown, but the majority of the population lived in Jewish neighborhoods with no comfort, no running water, no electricity, with a toilet in the courtyard. The gas lamp was lit in the evening, and water was brought from the water pump in the street. Back then, water carrying was considered to be a trade. There were the so-called vosertreger [Yiddish: “water carriers”] who brought water to people’s homes. When we grew up, we brought the water home ourselves.

My mother was a housewife, she raised 9 children. I don’t remember my mother ever going to bed or waking up at the same time as we did. We always went to bed and she stayed up longer, for she still had chores to do. In the morning she got up long before us in order to get us ready for school or work. We always found her where we left her, about the house, doing the chores. And let us not forget that washing machines or other possibilities of making life easier didn’t exist in those days. She washed by hand, we didn’t even have running water. Sometimes, when the material situation of our household was better, mother used to hire a woman to do the laundry. She collected the dirty laundry during a week or two and, if she managed to hire a woman to help her with the laundry, they washed all the laundry and stretched it out to dry in the courtyard. All the courtyards were full of washed laundry. This was during summer, it was harder during winter, when we strung the laundry to dry inside the house. Mother was a very hard-working woman. It was only when the girls were a bit older and could take over some of the household chores, that my father started taking my mother out for a walk, or to the park once in a while during summer. That’s how it was in all households, not only in our home. She was always cooking, back then people ate cooked food at lunch and at dinnertime. Young people nowadays can’t even imagine the kind of life that our mothers led.

Father worked from dawn to dusk so that he could support the entire family. During autumn, the preparations for the winter were taken care of, we were 9 children. Mother began by preserving everything that could be preserved, from plum jam, poultry fat, walnuts, honey, potatoes, garlic. Father couldn’t find work during winter, it was the so-called dead season in construction works. When winter arrived, nobody built anything anymore, people didn’t even strike a nail anymore, which is why you had to have everything prepared, from firewood to beans. Many a time, we ate a few slices of bread with butter and plum jam at dinner, a few walnuts and tea. The teapot was always on the stove. At other times we ate some baked potatoes smeared with a little poultry fat.

Father attended the synagogue on every Friday evening and on Saturdays. Normally, he didn’t go to the synagogue during the week as he was working and didn’t have the time for it. There was no reference about the parnusa [Yiddish with a Romanian influence: earning] in the siddur [Yiddish: prayer book]. Father spoke mainly Yiddish, in fact, my parents only spoke Yiddish at home.

Father had a special talent for recounting everything he read. His brother from America, Strul, often sent him Jewish newspapers from over there. These were some very interesting weekly newspapers, with many articles, some on religion, others on the life of Jews in America. Also, stories and anecdotes about Jewish life were printed. We lived in a courtyard with around 14 other tenants, and it was a delight for all the tenants to gather together on Saturday evening under an acacia tree that was growing in the courtyard, and, as we drank tea, father had to tell stories, read one of the more interesting stories from those newspapers. Father was considered by the neighbors to be one of the most intelligent people of the neighborhood; very many people who had small differences, such as various misunderstandings, quarrels or business problems came to him. In those days, people didn’t go to lawyers, or they went to see the rabbi or an older man about their various disputes, someone who had a renown for knowing how to weigh and solve issues.

We were a numerous Jewish family, but we weren’t very religious. The Sabbath started on Friday, and mother began the preparations for it on Thursday. She went to the market on Thursday, brought home a pair of hens, a few kg of poultry or fish, depending on what we could afford. If father earned more money food was better as well, if he earned less money food was worse as well. But there was no Friday evening on which my father didn’t recite the Kiddush [at table, over a glass of wine]. We never had any sausages or pork meat in the house that weren’t kosher. There was a sausage factory that belonged to one of my father’s customers. It was called Leibovici and it produced kosher sausages. Sometimes we ate some frankfurters with mashed potatoes during the week. There was no holiday when we didn’t have soup, made either from poultry or beef, or fish dishes. As a rule, on Saturday we ate fried fish, soup, sometimes meat, then we had something sweet, stewed fruit or kigl [Yiddish: pudding made from pasta] or sweet beans. Of course, Jewish food was our favorite, especially the one prepared on holidays. If you called on somebody on Saturday and they had some special pudding, you knew that the material situation of the family was somewhat good. My mother had to cook something for Saturday from anything she could find.

My father and the boys went to the synagogue every Friday and Saturday. We observed the kashrut and all Jewish holidays. The fact that we were a family with 9 children, out of which 6 were boys and 3 were girls, plus father and mother, we were 11 in total. Yet one of my mother’s sisters lived with us in the house, aunt Sura. As I have previously said, she had been married to a Bulgarian Jew who left her or disappeared, and she was left to raise 2 children. So we were a team to be reckoned with. Father had to work, he was the only one who earned money in the family, mother was a housewife. I will never forget our parents’ effort to raise us. Back then, conditions were very hard, there was no hot water, no electricity. We all studied by the light of the gas lamp. Water was brought from the water pump and heated on the stove. Our only good fortune was that we lived near the Zisu Herman bathhouse, which was a public bathhouse and, as a carpenter, father sometimes worked at this bathhouse. Thus, we had free entrance to the bathhouse. Father would take the boys to the bathhouse on Friday, the schedule was for men on Friday morning, and for women towards the afternoon. Mother would take the girls then and go with them to the bathhouse as well. We washed in a wooden bathtub at home. My mother heated a large cauldron of water and we, the little ones, would enter the bathtub 2 or 3 at a time, and gambol there. There were no luxury soaps back then. You bought some sort of homemade soap which was sold by the pound, cut a slice out of it and that’s how you washed. Mother prepared changes of clothes for us at the end of the week, we didn’t change our clothes 3-4 times a week like nowadays.

Each holiday had its particularity, each came with various dishes. Mother was glad when holidays were on Friday and Saturday, as these were considered holidays anyway. Thus, mother didn’t have to prepare food for the Sabbath, but for the respective holiday as well. For instance, an entire ceremony was performed on Pesach. It began with cleaning of the house some 2 weeks in advance, walls were whitewashed, beds were aired. Everything was washed. We had a trunk in the attic with special dishes for Pesach, which was lowered, washed and tidied up. The chametz was gathered and burned and people bought matzot. On Pesach, my parents bought unleavened bread baked right there in Iasi. Back then, the unleavened bread wasn’t delivered from Israel. There were a few places in Iasi where they baked unleavened bread. The unleavened bread was wrapped in a mat made from bulrush wickerwork, and every family bought as much as they could afford and depending on the number of family members. Every family prepared the flour for the unleavened bread themselves, the slices of unleavened bread were mashed in a steisl [Yiddish: fulling mill, mortar]. Then, the resulting flour was sieved and used to make latkes [Yiddish: a variety of apple fritters made from unleavened bread flour to which eggs and condiments are added, and which are fried in oil afterwards] or farfelakh [Yiddish: small pieces of unleavened bread dipped in egg and dried in the oven] for soup.

The seder evening was very beautiful in our family. As there were very many of us, we had a 2-3 meter long table and we all sat around the table. Mother and father were seated at the head of the table, where the afikoman was usually hidden. A couple of other families lived in the courtyard where we lived, and they didn’t have any children, so that we invited them over at our place during the seder evening and it was a joy for them to sit at such a table. Mother prepared a cast-iron kettle of potatoes and eating bread was out of the question. Father would conduct the ceremony, he read the prayers in Yiddish. Most of the times, the youngest children recited the MaNishtana, the 4 questions that are asked at the beginning of the seder ceremony. Then we, the children, rejoiced when the Pesach songs were sung, and the atmosphere became more loose and cheerful.

On Rosh Hashanah there was the custom of shaking your pockets clean in the proximity of a watercourse or a pool of water and of symbolically getting rid of your sins. It was called di tasleh [Yiddish: the pockets]. We, the children, played in front of the synagogue, and the boys threw thistle balls in the girls’ hair. We had fun in whatever way we could. We didn’t have toys as I see nowadays in the homes with children. We had toys made from patches and balls made from rags. We were very wretched as children. Our great joy was on Pesach and the autumn holidays when we were bought new clothes. And if father earned well before the holidays, he used to buy new things for all the children and come home in a hackney coach, that’s how laden with luggage he was, from shoes to socks, shirts, clothes for all ages. When I put on new shoes, I used to polish them with shoe polish for weeks on end, even on the soles.

Purim was a special holiday as well. Mother began grinding walnuts about 2 weeks in advance, more than 1,000 walnuts. Back then you didn’t go to the store in order to buy the pastry for the strudel, the thin pastry layers were prepared at home. Strudel was one of my mother’s specialties, followed by hamantashen. Apart from that, every housewife prepared yet another 4, 5 kinds of baked dishes. On Purim, there was the custom of sending one another shelakhmones. Mother sent us, children, with trays of various baked pastries, after which we returned with the trays full of baked pastries we received from our relatives. It was an occasion of great joy for us as we also received Purim gelt [Yiddish: Purim money]. We wore masks on Purim, especially the children and the young. Gypsies knew that we were celebrating Purim and they came to play music. Music filled the air in the entire neighborhood. There were many Gypsy bands that came with trombones and drums in our neighborhood. For us, the children, Purim was one of the merriest holidays. It was when we used to break walnuts, then eat hamantashen.

Chanukkah was another joyous occasion, when we received Chanukkah gelt [Yiddish: Chanukkah money], and mother prepared varnishkes [Yiddish: triangular dumplings with potato or cheese filling]. We went to the shil on Simchat Torah and people were given apples and small flags.

As I have already said, I come from a rather numerous family, a Jewish family of 9 children. We were all born in Iasi, at home, not at the hospital maternity ward. We thank God that we were all healthy and didn’t know what it meant to need a doctor. And I can boast of the fact that we never fought one another, incredible though it may be, but it is true, there were never any arguments among these 9 children. We didn’t even have reasons to argue, we didn’t have separate rooms or toys so that another could take them and start an argument. We shared everything.

My eldest brother’s name was Elisa Finchelstein, he was born around 1910. He went to high school and then attended commerce studies under the evening studies system. He thus became an expert accountant. He worked for various shop owners who needed accounting services. Elisa died in 1964 in a car accident during a holiday at Baile Felix. He went to see Goga’s castle in Ciucea and he was run over by a car as he was crossing the street. He is buried in Iasi.

The second-born was Moise Finchelstein; he was born around 1911. He worked as a clerk in a silk-products store, “Galia.” Liza followed, our first sister, she was born around 1915. Her Jewish name was Lea, her Romanian name was Liza, and the Romanian name of her husband, Mothe, was Marcel. She worked as a dressmaker. Shortly afterwards, they left to Israel illegally through Hungary. In Austria they were welcome by and received the support of Zionist organizations which helped them to continue their journey. They made it to Cyprus and they waited there for almost 2 years until they could enter Israel. They had a macolet [Hebrew], a sort of bakery. She is still alive today, she is over 90 years old. Liza’s husband is no longer alive, they have an only daughter, Braha, who is also living in Israel.

Clara was born in 1916, and Mina was born in 1917. They worked as dressmakers as well.

Iosel Finchelstein was born around 1919. He worked as a carpenter in a workshop together with my father and was killed during the Iasi pogrom in the summer of 1941. He was only 22 at the time. I don’t know where he is buried, probably in one of the common burial grounds. I remember that Iosel often worked with my father for the Yiddish Theatre in Iasi, “Pomul Verde,” and, on many occasions, played as an extra or was given very small parts in the plays that were performed there. [Ed. note: The first professional theatre in Yiddish was founded in Gradina “Pomul Verde” (The “Green Tree” Garden), today the Park in front of the National Theatre in Iasi, as it was intended for a Jewish audience, the vast majority of Jews living in the Podul Ros suburb. The theatre was founded by Avram Goldfaden in 1876.] Most often, he played the part of a “iusam” [Yiddish], an orphan child, he was very convincing in that part. On other occasions, he used to help change the sets and props. Leon Finchelstein was born in 1921. People also called him Lica. He worked as a clerk at a shoe store which was called “La Doi Lei.”

The youngest brother, Hari, was born in 1925. People also called him Haim. He was a leather dresser, he made shoe uppers, formerly there were no shoe factories. Then the shoemakers came, took the shoe uppers and pulled them over shoe-lasts, thus making footwear. With the exception of Elisa and Iosel who died an untimely death, all other brothers emigrated to Israel. Only I stayed here. My brothers and sisters had children. I have nephews and nieces from them and we are on very good terms with them at present. They are like my own children. Had I had children of my own, I don’t know if they would have showed me so much respect as these nephews and nieces do. Both those from my side of the family and those from my wife’s side. Not a week goes by without them calling us on the phone and asking right away if I need anything. And when I go to Israel, they fight over who should accommodate me.

I was born in Iasi in November 1923. Both I and my other 8 siblings were born in Iasi and we all lived there until people started emigrating to Israel, and some of my siblings left. Until then, we were all together. I lived for several years on Conductelor St. in Targu Cucului, a predominantly Jewish quarter.

The financial situation of the family was rather difficult and insecure, for you could never tell what tomorrow would bring. Our parents always strived to ensure the livelihood of our numerous family. Father worked hard, the income that carpentry brought wasn’t that good, and people also paid taxes in those days. It was hard to pay taxes, if you didn’t pay them, the tax collectors used to come and levy a distraint upon certain goods in the house. And it was rather hard. Father was the only one who earned money in the family. That was until we grew up and managed to earn some money ourselves. And carpentry was season-bound. It wasn’t a system based on the certainty that the month would pass and the wages would roll in. All money earned was spent mostly on food and less on clothing. We were so many children that had to be bought some clothing, the youngest used to wear the clothes of the elder brothers, but you had to buy clothes for the eldest as their existing clothes wouldn’t fit them anymore.

A large part of the population of Iasi was of Jewish origin, approximately 50% before the pogrom. I reckon 90% of them were craftsmen, 5-6% were traders, and there were also a few bankers. Most of the trades before the war were practiced by Jews, starting with carpentry, tailoring, shoemaking, cooperage, joinery. There were only Jews living on Cuza Voda St., Targu Cucului St., Costache Negri St., Aron Voda St.

There were almost 100 synagogues and prayer houses in Iasi. There was a street called Synagogues’ St. where the Great Synagogue still stands to this day. Each guild had its synagogue. These were according to trade: the shoemakers’ synagogue, the tailors’ synagogue, the butchers’ synagogue, even the musicians’ synagogue. Everybody had a synagogue of their own, which was almost not roomy enough on holidays, that’s how many people attended these synagogues. But people didn’t really attend the synagogues outside holidays. I couldn’t say that the Jews in Iasi were extremely religious, the men had to work in order to provide for their families, but not going to the synagogue on Friday night and on Saturdays was out of the question. There were a few rabbis in Iasi, and each synagogue had a cantor of its own. The children, especially the boys, used to go to the cheder. There was the small cheder for beginners and the large cheder. There was no Jewish child who didn’t go to the cheder. There was a mikveh over at Zisu Herman’s. Brides had to go to the mikveh before getting married; also, rabbis and the very religious people always went there in order to wash.

I don’t remember many things about the bar mitzvah ceremony, but I do know that most of my relatives attended it. Family relations were very strong when I was a child. Of course, the entire religious ceremony was performed at the synagogue, then our parents organized a small family table. There was no Jewish boy who hadn’t been circumcised 8 days after being born or who hadn’t had a bar mitzvah at 13. You had to study very hard for the bar mitzvah, even if at times you didn’t know exactly what you were saying. The boys were tutored by a rabbi or by a melamed on most occasions, a sort of a teacher. You had to prepare yourself so that you wouldn’t shame your father. The ceremony marked the fact that you were becoming a man, you made a commitment of going to the synagogue and wearing a tefillin, of becoming a good Jew.

I can’t say very much about the Community as an institution before the war. In fact, the Community was organized after the war. Back then, there were many charity institutions run by well-to-do Jews living in Iasi, such as the Israeli Hospital. There were also those who took care of funerals. For the poor, there was the “Ghelter” canteen. [Editor’s note: One of the excellent social assistance institutions was the school canteen “Amalia and Isac Ghelter.” The building on Elena Doamna Street offered a good working environment for the school canteen, ensuring warm meals for 500 children. Over time, the canteen also served meals to adults. The dining room could be rented out for weddings and parties; the income increased the budget of this popular institution. Source: “Contribution to the History of Jews in Iaşi”, Translation of “Contribuţii la Istoria Obştii Evreilor din Iaşi”, by Iţic-Svarţ Kara, Hasefer, Bucureşti, 1997, project: JewishGen, Inc. and the Yizkor Book Project: http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/iasi/Iasi.html#TOC]

There were no automobiles in Iasi before the war. There were carriages and carts that handled the heavy-duty transports. Everything that was required in constructions or moving was done by horse carts. There were no taxi cabs at the train station in those days, there were carriages instead. Even the dead were carried by cart. There were special hearses, for the rich and for the poor. The market Piata Halei existed in Iasi ever since I can remember. There were many Jewish traders who sold wholesale products, but peasants came there as well.

All our neighbors were Jewish. We all knew everybody else’s woes and joys. Whether a child was born or if a bar mitzvah or a wedding was performed. There were entire weeks when you didn’t even go out almost at all, people worked from morning till evening, radio or television didn’t exist. Sometimes, our parents went to the Yiddish theatre. When summer came, it was a joy to go to the Pomul Verde or even on Rufeni St. where there was another Yiddish theatre. Our parents would sometimes go to the public park, but this happened very seldom. We spent time sitting with our neighbors in front of the house, we bought and ate sunflower or pumpkin seeds.

My wife has a beautiful story about one of her neighbors in Targu Cucului. She lived on the other side of the fence where her family lived. She had more room in the house and kept tenants. And when she accepted a tenant she explained to him what he rented. In fact, she rented him the room. The cellar was over at her neighbor’s, they could store food there if they wanted. The clothes were hung to dry across the street, near the Zvolover synagogue. There was a large courtyard there with many trees and if the tenant wanted to hang his clothes to dry, he would tie clotheslines between trees and that’s how clothes were dried. If they wanted water, there was another neighbor named Bodler who made casks and barrels. The neighbor would tell the tenant: ‘bam Bodler nemt’m voser, bam Zvolover hengt’m greit, bam Suhn fun a bai iz du der keiler’ [Yiddish: you can take water from Bodler, hang your clothes to dry at Zvolover, the cellar is over at Suhn’s]. That’s how she rented rooms, comfort 1. As for the toilet, it was all the way in the courtyard, a hole in the ground covered by wooden planks and a roof. Basically, these were the living conditions in those days.

I went to the cheder as a child. There were no kindergartens in those days. Many of us weren’t too glad to go to the cheder, the rabbis who taught there treated us very harshly at times. The children were kept in check with the help of a cancichi [Yiddish], a sort of a whip with several strips of leather, and if you skipped the cheder or weren’t paying attention during classes you were flogged rather hard. That’s why I didn’t enjoy going to the cheder.

There were a few Jewish schools in Iasi, such as “Steaua” [the Star] on Elena Doamna St., which was a school for girls, “Junimea” on St. Lazarus St., the “Vachter” School, ORT 2. Some of the schools were named after those who were their patrons. One of the reasons why Jewish people enlisted their children to Jewish schools was the fact that no classes were held on Saturdays. They had very good Yiddish teachers. One of them, Frenkel, later taught Yiddish at the Romanian high school. At a certain point, in the 1939-1940’s, some anti-Jewish laws were passed and Jewish children were no longer allowed to attend Romanian schools. [Editor’s note: In October 1940, Jewish pupils and students were denied access to public education of all degrees. The Jewish people were free to organize private primary and secondary schools. The Jewish schools were allowed to function but they weren’t allowed to be advertised. The graduation diplomas were not recognized by the state and had no practical validity regarding the graduate’s admission into a profession.]

I attended primary school at Vasile Adamache, it was a Romanian school. I don’t know why I wasn’t enlisted at a Jewish school. I think the custom for Jewish parents to send their children to Jewish schools wasn’t very well-spread before the 1930-1935’s. It was only when the anti-Jewish laws 3 were passed that parents had no choice anymore, and Jewish children were allowed to attend classes only at Jewish schools. I am indebted to father who sent all of us, children, to attend primary school. Back then, these four grades weren’t mandatory. It was fortunate that father, realizing he had no studies whatsoever, wanted that at least his children should graduate these 4 primary grades.

I will never forget the words of our teacher after we graduated the 4 primary grades. He told us at the graduation celebration: ‘Well, children, mind that you don’t forget how to read. During these 4 years I have strived to teach you how to read, write, and the 4 essential rules of arithmetics: subtraction, multiplication, addition, and division.’ He thus guided and advised us to read whatever we could get our hands on. He knew from personal experience that most children entered apprenticeships into various trades after the 4 primary grades and didn’t have time to read anymore. However, very many adventure installments were published in those days, and we, the children, were eager to read them. I recall an interesting children’s magazine, it was called “The Doxa Submarine.” This submarine sailed across the world, even all the way to Africa, where it found tribes of cannibals. One of these little stories told how these cannibals caught white people and tied them to a post, leaving them in the heat of the sun. In this way, you didn’t forget how to read. Because the work system before the war, especially in our Jewish neighborhoods, didn’t allow you to allot too much time to reading. I worked in a workshop from morning till evening. You lived in an environment where you couldn’t develop. That’s why, when I secured a job with the CFR [Caile Ferate Romane (Romanian National Railways), the national railway transport company], I felt how my life brightened up. It was a different kind of work, different people, I had to deal with engineers, architects and you had to read willy-nilly, get some further training in order to keep the pace. But prior to that you worked in a workshop with rather backward people.

I remember how my primary school teacher asked me to bring wooden rulers to school, as I was apprenticed to a carpenter. On other occasions, together with other classmates, I brought firewood to school in order to heat up the stove. Times were hard. Our teacher was harsh, we were administered 10 rulers across the palm of our hand if our fingernails weren’t clipped, our hands were unwashed, or if we didn’t do our homework assignments. That’s how it was in those days. Be that as it may, despite the fact that he was a harsh teacher and punished me with many rulers across the palm of my hand, I remained grateful to him for passing on to us elementary knowledge to help us start our life.

Although it was a Romanian school, most of the pupils were Jewish as the school was located in the Jewish quarter. I remember that when the priest came to teach religion classes, we weren’t obliged to attend. I graduated school around 1933-1934. After that, I only worked, I didn’t go to school anymore. However, I did attend a few grades under the evening studies system during the socialist period, but I always read very much.

I couldn’t say that I had favorite subject matters, perhaps Mathematics. Otherwise, we were absorbed by our work, by the apprenticeship. You had to clean the employer’s shop, go to the market with the employer’s wife, carry her basket. Besides, the employer wasn’t forgiving at all. He said that he didn’t employ you only so that you could learn the trade, he had to gain certain benefits from this. I worked for 10-12 hours on end, sometimes even 14, depending on how much work there was to be done. They all wanted to hire you as much as possible during the season when there was work to be done. It was fortunate that Jews observe the Sabbath, which was indeed free, otherwise I think we would have had to work even on that day. We could enjoy the Sabbath.

I continued to work as a carpenter after I finished my apprenticeship. I enjoyed very much what I was doing, working with wood. I brought joy to all the people I worked for. Whenever I built something in people’s homes, I could feel their joy, regardless of whether it was an apartment door or a piece of furniture.

The rest of my brothers attended a Romanian school as well, only my youngest brother studied at “Junimea,” a Jewish school, as this was happening during the period when Jews were no longer allowed to attend Romanian schools. [Ed. note: Mr. Finchelstein is referring to the period of 1940-1941, when the anti-Jewish laws were passed]. Afterwards, all my brothers entered various trades, except for a brother who worked as a store clerk, and my eldest brother who was an accountant, he worked as a buchholter [Yiddish: accountant]. He also graduated a few grades under the evening studies system, he was basically the only brother who didn’t enter an actual trade. Two of my sisters worked as dressmakers, and the third worked as a hatter, she made peaked caps. All brothers married and most of them had children, only my eldest brother and myself didn’t know this joy. In days of yore, a Jewish family without children was somewhat unfulfilled.

My friends lived in the same neighborhood as me, we were all apprentices. On Saturday I would go out with them for a stroll or to the cinema. Later, as we grew up, girls started to accompany us during our strolls through the city. We strolled down Lapusneanu St. We spent our childhood in the neighborhood where we lived. We were all like the newly hatched chickens of a hen. Especially since there was some anti-Jewish hatred in the air, and we avoided leaving our neighborhood and being in the center of their attention. In fact, the first time that I traveled outside of Iasi was on the death train during the pogrom of June 1941.

My parents sometimes went out to the public park, you brought food from home, and you only ordered something to drink there. When we grew up a little and if we managed to have some 2-3 lei [Romanian currency], we, the children, would go to the cinema to watch movies with Laurel and Hardy, Tom Mix, or Pat and Patachon. And that was all the entertainment we had. Back then, movies at the cinema ran without intermission. Sometimes, if we had any money left, we bought a bag of sunflower or pumpkin kernels and watched 2 movies in a row.

Yet I have a dear memory of the military parades on May 10 4 when the Monarchy was celebrated. Beautifully clad soldiers passed by on white horses and the military fanfare played music. Because of the music, all the children used to gather together and follow the military parade.

Every now and then, we used to go to Pomul Verde, the Yiddish theatre. One of my brothers was working as a clerk in a store located not far from the Pomul Verde theatre. He sometimes helped arrange the sets when the scenes had to be changed for the respective play. Thus, our family had free entrance to the theatre. Theatre was held in very high esteem by Jewish families in those days. There was no radio or television back then, perhaps a few families in the neighborhood had radios, but we were forbidden to own radios during the war. [Editor’s note: It was not allowed for Jews to have radio sets in their own house, Jewish physicians could continue their praxis only with Jewish patients. All Jews were obliged to surrender clothes to the authorities on the grounds that the (Romanian) army and society needs them. Jewish properties, businesses, factories, lands, farms were confiscated. (...) Although these were governmental decisions, they were not totally legal, they actually did not have a proper law on the base. Usually the orders were carried out on the basis of verbal commands of the legionary leaders. With the Antonescu regime all these decisions became authorized and continued during 1941 and 1942. Source: Victor Neuman „Evreii din Banat şi Transilvania de Sud în anii celui de-al doilea război mondial” (Jews from Banat and South Transylvania during World War II), in România şi Transnistria: Problema Holocaustului, Curtea Veche Publishing, 2004, Bucharest, p.152)]. It was a real pleasure for us on Saturday evening when father used to read the papers or some story of Salom Aleichem 5. We, the children, gamboled at the walnut or buttons pit, there were all sorts of harmless toys.

Except for the Yiddish theatre, Jews who weren’t very well-to-do didn’t really go to the Romanian theatre. My wife recounts how she went for the first time to the National Theatre when she was in the first grade of primary school, and she saw the performance of “The Golden Pomegranate,” I believe. [Editor’s note: rhymed theatre play written in 1919 by Adrian Maniu in collaboration with Al. O. Teodoreanu, known as Pastorel.] She had won a ticket at a school lottery and she went there with her mother. All the spectators seated in the loges wore astrakhan fur coats and jewelry, she hadn’t seen such things before. When you entered the National Theatre, you took off your street shoes and put on the theatre shoes. Our neighborhoods were always muddy, especially when it rained. Most streets weren’t paved as they are nowadays. Those that were paved were paved with gravel from rivers which was permeated by the mud.

We had no library at home. As we grew up, we started borrowing and reading books. At first, adventure installments. However, I read more after the war. My wife’s eldest sister had entered a Zionist organization called Hasomer Hatair 6, a left-wing Zionist organization which was also present in high schools. My wife tells how she brought home all sorts of books. So that as a child, my wife read very many books. For nights on end during the war she would stay up with a blanket over her head and a flashlight under the blanket, for it was curfew, and every night she read until the battery would run out. And she read all the books that were published then: Tolstoy, Zola, Dickens, Dostoevsky, and others.

During the war

Starting with 1937-1938, the Goga-Cuza 7 government and Zelea-Codreanu’s 9 legionnaires came to power, so we avoided going to public places. Students enlisted in the legion and Cuza’s followers 8 came and broke the windows of Jewish stores. These were awful events. And we had to hide indoors. Mother used to say: ‘That’s it, don’t go out of doors, children. The students are here to break windows.’ 

Anti-Semitism permeated the air before the war broke out, but we lived in the Jewish quarter and didn’t experience these manifestations very directly. If we left the neighborhood, we were verbally abused by some Christian neighbors. We were called ‘jidani.’ In addition to that, there were also the anti-Semitic publications: “Porunca Vremii” [The Time’s Commandment], “Sfarma Piatra” [Break-Stone]. I can confess that I even sold newspapers for a while. I was unemployed at a certain point and I was hired to sell newspapers at a newspaper stand. So I was forced to deploy these newspapers for all to see. They were all filled with caricatures of Jews with hooked noses. It was also from those newspapers that I learned of Hitler and the situation of Jews in Germany, but it was only later, after the war, that I learned of the concentration camps. In any case, at that time it seemed unimaginable for me that the Germans, with such a developed civilization, could perform such horrible deeds.

The anti-Jewish laws had no direct effect on my family’s life. Since we worked in various trades, we weren’t affected by these measures. We kept working, for we worked for Jews like ourselves. Before the war, I worked for almost 2 years for a foreman; except for this period, I worked with my father, and father had a plethora of clients who had rooms for rent. These were well-to-do people, and we worked for them and had nothing to do with Christians. It was only when I was employed by the CFR, after 23rd August [1944] 10, that I started working with Christians. However, I had no conflicts with them and, even if they happened to say something that didn’t sit well with me, I pretended not to hear it. But after the war broke out, there were measures that directly affected our family as well.

I wore the yellow star during the war 11. There was no Jew in those days who didn’t have to wear the yellow star. I still keep it to this day. The yellow star was made from a piece of cloth sewn on a black background so that it would be visible.

Bombing runs were frequent, so that we mostly stayed in underground cellars. In the morning, at daybreak, when we went out of those cellars and saw that we were still alive and our property intact, we were pleased that we escaped with our lives. We always heard tell that a bomb had fallen at Podul de Fier [Iron Bridge], in the Pacurari neighborhood, near the Hala [neighborhoods in Iasi], at the gas depot, and that this or that person had died. Then, after 9 o’clock [in the morning], you could go out of the house, Jews weren’t allowed to go to the market whenever they wanted. We went to the bakery with the bread ration book and received our ration. You couldn’t buy as much bread as you wanted or as much as you needed. Nobody knew what the following day had in store. And this didn’t last for a day, it lasted for so many years. We lived with death beside us, as they say. In addition to that, there was a lot of filth.

There were 2 Russian bombing runs on the 24th and 26th June 1941. I hid in some nearby cellars on that occasion, but I was very fortunate, as these shelters wouldn’t have lasted even if someone had dropped some boulders on them. We learned from our neighbors afterwards that many Jews were taken by surprise by the shelling while they were standing in line at a bakery. It was called “Spicul Verde” [The Green Cereal Ear] and it had been a Jewish bakery before the Romanian cleansing began [after World War II]. The pogrom took place in June 1941. A few Christians lived in the Targu Cucului neighborhood as well, and, before the outbreak of the war, we got along relatively well with them. However, some 2-3 days before the pogrom, many of them left their homes and marked their houses with crosses. We didn’t understand at the time what was going on. On ‘that Sunday’ [29th June 1941], Jewish men were taken out of their houses by force and taken to the Police Precinct. We had heard that Jews would be issued some sort of residence permit by the authorities. As we didn’t hurry to get to the police precinct, on Sunday morning about 4 sergeants from the police station and a few civilians entered our house. We were threatened and taken out of the house. My mother and sisters were forced to get out of the house as well, but they were released immediately afterwards. They made father and us, the boys, walk towards the police precinct along Cuza Voda St. in single file and with our hands raised above our heads. Even if this happened 65 years ago, I cannot forget the horror on my mother’s face when they took us out of the house, but neither can I forget her joy when 6 out of 7 men returned home. She was the happiest of all mothers, it was the second miracle of Maglavit. [Editor’s note: a shepard named Petrache Lupu from Maglavit claimed to have seen God in 1935 and King Carol II of Romania decided to build a monastery there]. I lost a brother then, Iosel, and to this day I don’t know where he is buried. I would offer a reward even now to find out where he is. We attend the commemoration of the pogrom every year, when the Community offers us transportation starting with the Pacurari cemetery, then to the common burial grounds of Podu Iloaiei and Targu Frumos.

The chaos at the Police precinct was indescribable. There were Romanian gendarmes and I think I even saw a few German soldiers wearing helmets with “SS” written on them who were delivering blows left and right with a baseball bat. Dead people were already lying in the courtyard of the Police Precinct, there was blood and scattered brains everywhere. It was for the first time in my life when I saw dead bodies. I was so terrified.

After being taken to the Police precinct on “that Sunday,” I was boarded on “the death trains.” I was 17 at the time. It is extremely difficult for me to talk about this. I think no film director will ever be able to depict the experiences on “the death trains.” To lie with the dead, covered with excrements. We made chairs and benches out of the dead. We stretched the dead bodies and sat on them, stepped on them. Later, on reading about Auschwitz and other concentration camps, I told myself: ‘By God, perhaps those people were more fortunate than us. At least they entered the gas chamber and were dead in a matter of minutes.’ We stayed inside these train cars which turned into gas chambers and people would die just like that, standing up. Now one, another one 10 minutes later, and so on. Nobody had any hope left of escaping with their lives. There were over 100 people in our train car, of which about 20 survived.

When I was among those who stepped off the train cars and were instructed to bury our dead, I still had no hope left of ever returning home. Anyone could kill you, nobody was accountable for their actions. One of my brothers, Leon, who was also on these trains, was taken to the hospital, as he slipped when he got off the train car and a portion of skin from his back was torn off. At first, we didn’t even notice that Leon was missing, that’s how exhausted and terrified we were.

We were lodged overnight in Jewish homes from Podu Iloaiei. The following day we were taken out in the field where the dead bodies were unloaded from the trains and we were forced to bury them. The smell was awful and it was so hot. We subsequently stayed for 6 months in Podu Iloaiei, until the end of November 1941. We were distributed to live with other Jewish families in their homes, and were sent to perform labor during the day. In the beginning I worked for a landowner, collecting the harvest, then I worked for a carpenter. I was very fortunate that this carpenter was a God-fearing man and helped me vey much; he even paid me a sum of money for my work and I sent home, to Iasi, money through him.

I returned home, in Iasi, in November 1941. I returned by train. The grandfather from my father’s side died during the war, around 1942-1943. I was still in Iasi at the time. I remember that my father wasn’t allowed to travel to Pascani by train. This happened during the racial persecution, and Jews were allowed to travel by train only escorted by gendarmes. Still, my father managed to get to Pascani on that occasion and attend his father’s funeral.

It wasn’t long and in May 1942 I was taken from the street to the recruiting centre during a raid. The sergeant asked me if I presented myself to be recruited, I was already 18. I told him that I hadn’t. He then took me inside the cellar of a police precinct located across the street from where the Europa Hotel stands today. I spent the entire night among delinquents. It was unimaginable for me. I had never had anything to do with the police. I had to take out the tub full of filth, for you weren’t allowed to leave the cellar to go to the toilet. Early in the morning they made us form a column and took us directly to the recruiting centre, I was given a so-called medical inspection, they measured me and sent me straight to the Socola train station. I was again boarded on freight cars, and this time I was sent to Bessarabia. I thought that I would once again go through my entire experience on “the death trains.” Still, this time the train cars weren’t that fully loaded and we also received some food.

I served my first period of labor at a stone quarry in Bessarabia, at Saba, Cetatea Alba, on the Dniester riverbank. We hauled out stone and loaded it on train cars. 2 of my brothers, Moise and Leon, were also sent to labor camps in Bessarabia as well, but we weren’t together. I don’t know how my youngest brother, Hari, as well as my eldest, Elisa, managed to do it, but they weren’t sent to labor camps. They remained at home with my mother and sisters, but stayed mostly hidden for fear of being seized and sent to concentration or forced labor camps.

For months on end my mother didn’t know anything about me. After a while, we were given military postcards to write home that we were alive. As part of the labor detachment, I worked from morning until nightfall. We were ridden with lice, we couldn’t get rid of them. There were no sanitary conditions whatsoever. We slept on the floor of a former stable. At night, we placed underneath us the clothes we wore during the day so that we could sleep. We placed under our head the polenta that they gave us to eat in the evening, and in the morning we wiped it clean of lice and ate it for breakfast. The conditions were horrible. As for washing, once a month, if I’m not mistaken, they brought shower train cars there, which were pulled by a locomotive. These were train cars fitted with showers and drying stoves for disinfecting our clothes with very hot water in order to kill the lice. You passed by this drying stove, packed the clothes you were wearing into a parcel, and placed them inside the drying stoves; you walked on into the shower chamber, I forget whether we washed ourselves with a piece of stone or if we were given actual soap. I couldn’t say for sure, I don’t remember being given soap. And afterwards we retraced our steps, picked up the bundle of clothes from inside the drying stove and put on the clothes which were so warm, yet the lice were still alive. Then, a year and a several months later, I was transferred to Predeal, straight from Bessarabia, that is. I remained in Predeal until 23rd August 1944. I worked on a strategic highway there, cutting down trees and things like these. In Predeal, we were part of roads regiment 1 but, at a certain point, the precinct of that regiment entered repairs, so they built a small workshop inside the concentration camp and we performed carpentry work there. There were many people from Iasi and its surroundings in this detachment. Although they weren’t carpenters, they claimed to be carpenters in order to escape the hard work building highways, and even if they didn’t know the trade, they stayed close to me and I helped them. The conditions were those of a concentration camp, there was no toilet, only a ditch dug outside, the food was very bad, there were wooden bunk beds with no bed clothes, and the boards weren’t level, so that I had marks on my back for a long time after returning home. You covered yourself with your own clothes.

I got rid of the lice when I returned home and some American aids started to arrive, and among them was DDT powder. It was with this DDT that we managed to get rid of the lice, for we had failed to do so using petroleum, which had been the only known disinfectant until then. Later, they said that this DDT wasn’t very good for your health, but I thank God for reaching this age, DDT and all.

I was so thin when I returned home [from Predeal] that any doctor could have X-rayed me without looking at the Roentgen machines. Every bone was on the surface of my body and you could see all my internal organs through my dried up skin. When I was in the labor detachment I slept on some wooden bunk beds whose boards were placed along the length of the bed. And the boards were of uneven thickness, one was sitting higher, another lower, so that it was years before the marks on my back caused by these boards healed. But I stayed alive. I returned home almost barefoot, wearing shoes that were tied with string and wrapped in pieces of sackcloth.

My father was on “the death trains” himself, then he was taken to the labor camps of Calarasi and Ialomita. Afterwards, he returned to Iasi. He was profoundly affected by everything that he and his family experienced, and, in general, by what the Jews living in Iasi experienced. He was very weakened when he returned and he always avoided talking about this period.

During the Holocaust, my mother was left alone, with my 3 sisters and 2 brothers, after the other men in the house were taken away on “the death trains,” and then to labor. I don’t know how my mother managed to subsist on her own. I received some money for my work from the carpenter I worked for during the time when I was in the Podu Iloaiei labor camp – he was a very God-fearing person. Using this money and with his help, I managed to send home some food for my mother and sisters.

After the war

When we returned home, we found the city completely evacuated. There were no state authorities left in the city, no city hall, no police or fire department. Almost all of the Christian population working in these institutions was evacuated. I could say that right after August 23, the city of Iasi was to a very large extent a Jewish city. Later on, the Christian population returned. As for the Jews, they started emigrating 12. 400,000 Jews left Romania. I gathered my family and, little by little, we tried to move on with our life.

Immediately after the war, around 1945, I entered a Zionist organization, Borohovia, which was an organization for the working class. [Ed. note: Borohovia, Zionist organization for the working class initiated by Ber Borochov (1881-1917), one of the founders of Socialist Zionism. His theories became the ideological basis of the left-wing movement Poale Zion]. I was a halut [Hebrew: pioneer] and I entered the ahsara training [Hebrew: training for emigrating to Israel with the help of Zionist organizations] in some kibbutzim in Falticeni, Targu Neamt, Botosani, Piatra Neamt and Galati. It aimed at helping youth get used to the work ahead of us once we left to Israel. It was in these kibbutzim that they chose the youth who were going to do the aliyah. There were other activities apart from work, such as learning Ivrit. It was also at that time that I met my future wife. We were supposed to marry on the kibbutz and leave together. Things evolved in such a way that we didn’t leave anymore. They rewrote the lists of those who were supposed to emigrate and we weren’t on them anymore. I was a member of this Zionist organization until 1947 when these organizations ceased to exist. The Securitate 13 came and asked us to leave those kibbutzim. We left home then with only a blanket and a bed-sheet.

It isn’t my intention at present to pass criticism on these organizations and those who ran these Zionist organizations, but the fact was that they represented various orientations, those who ran them quarreled with one another, and we, the ordinary members, couldn’t understand why they were arguing. Our wish was to emigrate, we didn’t know the meaning of right-wing party or labor party. We were educated in the spirit that when we arrived in Israel we had to completely change the Jewish mentality regarding work.

My brothers managed to leave. Many Jews left by illegally crossing the border through Hungary. I accompanied my brother Lica [Leon Finchelstein] all the way to Oradea, but I couldn’t leave with him. I was very fond of my parents, so I told my brother: ‘Look here, Lica, I’m returning home, Godspeed and, if I can, I will join you together with our parents.’ I returned to Iasi where I started working.

Sometimes, if I was doing well money-wise, I would go for a stroll with my girlfriend, we would enter a confectionery to eat a cake. There were no bars or discos in those days. I didn’t have time for other hobbies.

I got married in 1949. It was a vey beautiful wedding, despite its being pretty simple, it was a traditional Jewish wedding, with hipe-kidise [Yiddish: the nuptial canopy]. The wedding party was organized in the courtyard of the house where my wife’s sister lived, on Sfantul Teodor St., it was the month of August. Our mothers prepared the table. Not many people were invited, it was a family-only party, without music and fuss. We also have a chisibe [Yiddish: marriage certificate, Hebrew: ketubbah] that we keep to this day. In those days all weddings that were organized observed these customs. Before the wedding, the bride performed the ritual bath. Only then could you start living your life as a couple. We started in life from scratch. My wife didn’t have a dowry chest. We worked in order to secure a minimum of comfort, and we did this without anyone’s help. And I can say that I was educated in such a way so as to always look for a peaceful life together. In 56 years of marriage, I didn’t raise my voice to my wife or had a fight with her. It’s incredible, but it is true.

My wife’s maiden name was Devora Faiestein. She too was born in Iasi, in January 1925. We met for the first time in our Jewish neighborhood, I fell in love with her and to this age, after 56 years of marriage, I’m still in love with her. When I come home and ring the doorbell, and she opens the door for me, it’s as if a spotlight lights up the entire house. When I was going to work in the morning and by the time I returned home, I’d start missing her as I didn’t see her all day long.

My wife often talks about her parents. Her parents met around 1913, probably in Sculeni [Ed. note: Village in the county of Iasi located on the right riverbank of the river Prut, on the border with the Republic of Moldova, 31 km north-east of Iasi]. Immediately afterwards, the war broke out and her father served on the front for about 6 years. When Bucharest was occupied by the German army, king Ferdinand 14 and the government took refuge in Iasi. My wife’s mother was from Sculeni and she went [to Iasi] to visit a neighbor in those days. The neighbor told her: ‘Do you want to see the king? Here, pull that small curtain to the side and inside you will see the king.’ Her mother was very curious, she pulled the curtain and saw the king. She asked that neighbor if she could ask for something from the king. Her neighbor told her to give it a try, but that she should talk quietly and respectfully. Then she asked the king in a Romanian with a countryside accent because, as she lived in the countryside, she spoke with a peasant’s accent, if she could go to the front to see her husband, meaning my wife’s father. The king approved of it, and her mother got on the train and left. It seems that they met somewhere on the front, but it was only 6 years later, around 1919-1920, when the peace was signed and her father returned from the front, that they got married.

My wife’s family observed the Jewish customs and traditions. They weren’t very religious, in the sense that none of them wore sideburns or a straml [Yiddish: a special fur hat worn on the Sabbath and on Jewish holidays, especially by the Hasidim], but they observed all holidays, attended the synagogue on Saturday and on holidays, they observed the kashrut.

My wife’s family situation wasn’t very different [from ours]. They were 5 children, 3 girls and 2 boys. The girls went to school during roughly the same period. Her mother wanted all her girls to be elegant and she woke up at the crack of dawn to iron their school uniforms. The uniforms were washed and the collars were starched, and in order for them not to wear their great coats over the collars, they went to school with the collar placed in a book and they attached it once they arrived at school. The girls wore their hair long, and their mother had to braid it into plaits and iron their bows.

My wife had 4 other siblings: 2 sisters and 2 brothers. Her eldest sister’s name was Sifra Faierstein and she was born in 1921. She attended the Commercial High School, then she went to the Faculty of Law. She worked in Bucharest in the field of journalism. Her brother, Puiu Faierstein, was born in 1923; he worked as a clerk in a store, then as a driver until his retirement. Beti Faierstein was born in 1926, she graduated high school and a few years at the university, after which she worked as a draughtsman for CFR until her retirement. Eli Faierstein was my wife’s youngest brother. He was born in 1928. Their father died when Eli was 12, he had various jobs here in Romania, then he left to Israel at 16.

My wife lost her father during the pogrom. She doesn’t know where he is buried either.

Just like her sister Beti, my wife attended the Alexandru Lambrior school, too. It was a Romanian school for girls. Perhaps my wife would have attended high school and even a faculty if all the Jews hadn’t been kicked out of Romanian schools. She worked as a dressmaker her entire life.

As I have already said, right after I returned home from the concentration camp, I worked as a carpenter for various employers until my father rebuilt his old workshop and we started working together. That was until 1947 when a decision was instated that all private workshops had to be closed down and the collectivization began 15. We also worked for CFR at that time, but since they didn’t have their own workshops, we worked at home. CFR was in great need of employees, all train stations had been destroyed. No train station had escaped intact. Everything made from wood had been destroyed or stolen from train stations, and it was used as firewood during the war. The trains didn’t run, the train stations were deserted. There was chaos after the war, especially in Iasi which had been under Russian occupation. You couldn’t even find bread, it was a period of famine, bread was being sold on a ration book system, it was a sort of bread made from a mixture of potatoes and corn. That was until a little harvest started being gathered and all the destroyed cities started being rebuilt.

Thus, my father and I were hired. While he worked for the CFR, my father had a convention with the employers to the effect that he didn’t have to work Saturdays: ‘Either I come in and work on Sundays or, if not, I will work 5 days a week. I don’t work on Saturday, during the Sabbath’ my father told his superiors. He managed to observe the Sabbath during all these terror regimes. My father worked for the CFR until he left to Israel in 1952, when emigration peaked. He left by boat from Constanta, I accompanied there myself. My mother left with my father and I didn’t get to see her alive anymore when I first visited them in 1969. She died in Israel in 1960. My father died in Israel at 84 around 1970. Mother didn’t get another job in Israel, father did some carpentry, they lived from a social pension.

I worked for CFR until my retirement in 1983. I was on very terms with my co-workers, I can’t say that I had problems because of my Jewish origin. Although I was the only Jew in my entire team of 120 people, I can say that I was held in the highest esteem. My photograph as top-ranking worker was never removed from the poster of honor. I set it as my task to contradict that mentality according to which Jews are playing truant and don’t want to work. Those on my team wanted to work with me because they knew that if they worked with me they would earn more than other teams. I worked more orderly. So that I had no problems in this respect. Maybe if I had had problems, it would have urged me to leave. I didn’t have to sign any loyalty oath at the workplace. Back then, you had to bring an autobiography when you were appointed a certain job. And because my autobiography was good since my father was a working man, so I had a somewhat “healthy origin,” I didn’t have to sign anything like that. And this workplace offered us much better conditions than the primitive workshops where I had worked until then. Everything was better organized at CFR, we had a bathroom, some sort of safety equipment, the salary was ensured, whereas you had no such insurance if you worked for a private employer.

In 1951 I traveled to Sinaia through the intermediary of CFR with my wife on our first holiday together. It was a novelty for us. We had heard of Sinaia, Mamaia, Tataia [Ed. note: Tataia (fam. Romanian for “grandfather”) is not an actual existing locality, but Mr. Finchelstein uses it as a play on words.] or other resorts that, in those days, we never thought of ever seeing. And I can say that my parents left to Israel without ever going to the mountains or at the seaside in Romania. They saw the sea when they left by boat to Israel. We went at the seaside through the trade union. And when I saw the sea for the first time, it was a miracle for me to behold this immensity about which I had learned this and that during primary school; but I had never seen it with my own eyes until then. And after that we started to go on holidays every year, and we always had a very good time.

In any case, we wanted to leave to Israel. And we prepared for the departure and for 5 years they tormented us and repeatedly rejected our request. My neighbor was patient and kept addressing complaints, after 8 years she was granted permission to leave. But we stopped trying after 5 years, we lost patience writing addresses. The emigration requests were filed at the county Militia, there was a standard form to which you had to attach some photographs. If the request was accepted, you went to the Israeli Embassy where the emigration department offered you transportation money. However, our requests were never accepted. Most of those who filed the requests in the beginning of the 1950’s received negative replies. There was a big emigration wave in 1962, but we had given up trying to get our paperwork accepted. During these 5 years of waiting to leave, we worked and prepared ourselves and we gathered only things that we could take with us: bed linen, silverware. And finally, we said: ‘That’s enough, we can’t live like beggars anymore.’ And we started arranging our home.

I haven’t been a member of the Communist party, nor did I wish to become one. And I couldn’t have become a party member, either, on the grounds that my brothers were living abroad; I was a mere trade union member, I paid my due contribution on time and that was as involved as I ever was in politics. Instead, I can say I was one of the best workers, there was no trade union event or distribution of vacation tickets without my being on the list, even if I was Jewish.

In the beginning, we somewhat thought that socialism will be better for Jews because there no longer was that difference of religions. And the initial propaganda itself pleaded for a good understanding among people regardless of nationality or ethnic origin. Everyone was considered as human beings. But after a while everything deteriorated, this happened around 1975. The anti-Semitic propaganda was resumed again and we realized that it was a utopia.

We took part in the parades during communism, in fact we had to take part. They were organized on November 7, the commemoration of the soviet revolution, August 23 and on other occasions. I took part as a simple worker, I was neither in the first ranks, nor did I carry slogan banners. I was merely present, I had to attend. On many occasions you had to sign an attendance book to force you to be present. We had a holiday on May 1, we went for picnics in the woods. After 23rd August [1944], we, Jews, felt human again, for we were considered to be worthless during the Holocaust period. Especially since I had the misfortune to be on the “death trains,” and then in a concentration camp. When the gates were opened and those who guarded us vanished, we couldn’t believe that we could go out of there once more, that we were free, so to speak. And I hoped that it would get better, that a better world would emerge, but people are still evil and they are becoming more evil still, more selfish. Given the fact that I was a working-class man, I wasn’t affected by all the socialist restrictions that affected the rich or those who had properties which were nationalized 16. I had nothing that they could take from me. I worked during the previous regime, I worked just as well during the newly-instated regime of those days. I worked the same trade as before and I focused on my work, and at first it seemed that things had changed for the better, as you were guaranteed a workplace. You, who live today, didn’t get to experience unemployment, especially in the field of constructions before 23rd August [1944] [before World War II], winter was a dead season. Nobody could find any work. And we were forced to work 12-14 hours a day during summer so that we could save some money. There was no child support offered by the state in those days, no unemployment indemnity, no retirement pay, nothing. You didn’t have a job, you were a dead man. All the more so since you had to gather wood for the winter, for there was no central heating, no running water, no electricity. I learned my trade by the light of the gas lamp. We had electricity only after August 23, so that moment represented a great change for us, in the sense that the majority of the people living in the suburbs secured a job, had to wash and clothe themselves. We weren’t rich, but there were people who were poorer than us. Some poor people had nothing whatsoever, no clothes and no means to keep themselves warm, and they were in dire straits.

After August 23, many people were given apartments in blocks of flats. They were fitted with a bathroom, central heating and electricity. People’s lives changed. When we were given the apartment, I can say that I kissed its walls. One couldn’t even compare it to our home located on Conductelor St. Formerly all of us, our parents, 9 siblings, 6 brothers and 3 sisters, lived in 2 rooms and a kitchen which were rented, in fact. We slept 3 people in 1 bed, there was no electricity, no running water, the toilets were outside in the courtyard, and we shared the courtyard with 14 other tenants. Now, everything was new, the house was very clean, the windows were wiped, everything was very bright, the conditions were very good, even though the apartment that we received was located on the top floor of the building, on the 4th floor, that is. I remember that some television crews came there when these blocks of flats were given to people. The blocks of flats had been designed by students for their diploma paper.

To receive an apartment, you had to file a request at your industrial unit workplace. The industrial unit was then allotted by the Popular Council [Ed. note: the socialist equivalent of the city hall; local state authority in a given administrative-territorial unit] a certain number of apartments. A waiting list was drawn and, depending on each family’s situation, you were appointed one such apartment if a family with many members lived in a very small space or if you received special merits at your workplace. Based on this distribution, the one who received an apartment signed a leasing contract with the Popular Council, for these apartments were owned by the state. Starting with 1972, there was the possibility of also contracting such an apartment from COCRU [the County Office for Constructions and Residence Utilization]. You were communicated an estimate value of the apartment and, depending on that, you could secure a down payment or a loan from the BSC [Bank for Savings and Consignments] in order to pay the first payment or to secure a loan reimbursable in 25 years. That’s how you became the owner of an apartment. However, very many people rented these apartments, just as we did.

Yet what I admired about this socialist system was the obligation to go to school 17. Previously, education wasn’t compulsory. If your parents wanted to send you to school, they did so, if not, they didn’t. When the war was over, after August 23, almost 50% of the general population was illiterate.

Progress was everywhere. Radio appeared and it was a great wonder. I was still living in the Targu Cucului neighborhood when I bought this radio equipped with a record player, and the entire courtyard gathered together whenever I turned on the record player and especially when I played certain records. These were songs from the soundtrack for The Tramp [Ed. note: The movie referred to is “Awara,” with the English title “The Tramp,” directed by Raj Kapoor. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043306/] and many other songs whose tune everyone hummed. We managed to buy a television set later on. We were among the first people in the neighborhood to own a television set, and when we turned it on, people sat on the floor, I had no place left to seat my neighbors. We had 2 rooms separated by a door. The television set was in the back of the rooms and people sat on small chairs from in front of the television set all the way to the front door. And there were some 30 people inside the house, all of them friends of ours. That was around 1956 when the Romanian Television first started broadcasting. Nobody dreamed in those days about remote controlled color television sets, computers, the Internet and so on.

When I traveled to Israel for the first time, I brought back a small transistor radio. A neighbor of ours who was a secretary at the courthouse visited us one day and she tells my wife: ‘Oh my, such a marvel, a radio! Where did you get it?’ ‘My husband just brought it from Israel,’ my wife replied. ‘Does it also speak Romanian?’, the neighbor asked. And we thought we were more backward, while this neighbor was working at the courthouse. Over time, we bought other household appliances as well, depending on our financial means.

I traveled abroad during Communism, but only to Israel. I managed to travel there approximately 18 times as a tourist. I was among the few tourists who were on the first airplane after tourism with Israel was resumed in 1969. My parents had already left to Israel some 18 years earlier. I only saw my father over there. I didn’t get to see my mother anymore, she had already died. And since then, I left every 2, 3 years, for that’s how it was in those days. If you had a passport, you were allowed to travel abroad once every 2 or 3 years 18. Certainly, that is if you had “good grades” [with regard to the check performed by the Securitate]. Otherwise, you weren’t issued a passport.

I kept in touch with my family through letters, we didn’t have a telephone yet. There was a song in those days about papirene kinder [Yiddish, http://www.nizza-thobi.com/papirene_kinder.htm], meaning paper children. Children who lived only through photographs, who had left abroad and whom their parents didn’t see anymore. My father had a brother who was living in America and they saw each other again in Israel after 50 years. It’s like a story from a soap opera. Instead, my mother had three brothers who were living in Manchester, England, she died and didn’t get to see them ever again. Nowadays we are fortunate to have the telephone, the Internet, you can talk with your children, you can see them. In those days, we only had letters and photographs.

After the war, we continued to maintain friendship relations mostly with Jews; I had Christian co-workers and we got along very well, but we didn’t really go out together.

I observed holiday traditions after the war as well. I can say that I never ate bread on Pesach, even though I am a heavy bread-eater. I was used since childhood to eat a lot of bread; in a home with so many children, bread was the main food. And there was also a saying in Jewish homes with many children: ‘Eat a small piece of meat and a large piece of bread.’ And despite all that, it’s as if I don’t even know what bread is during the 8 days of Pesach. I ate with my colleagues at work. I ate unleavened bread, they ate normal bread. To this day, my wife still prepares the Pesach observing the traditions she learned at home, from her parents. I always fasted on Yom Kippur, although I am not a religious fanatic. Likewise, we tried to observe the Sabbath as much as we could: we ate soup, and as long as there was a shochet, we took the fowl there to be slaughtered according to the ritual. There was a shochet in Iasi until around 1975-1980, then somebody from neighboring towns would come about once a month. People brought fowls to the Community so that the shochet could perform the ritual slaughter. You paid a small amount of money for this service.

My wife lit candles on Friday evening, blessed the Sabbath and prayed for the health and well-being of our family. The soup we ate on Friday and Saturday evening always had a special taste. On Saturday we spread a clean tablecloth over the table, everything had to look as it should on a holiday. Saturday was a day for resting, but that was until the communist period when I started working for the CFR. One couldn’t observe the holiday on Saturday and I worked on Saturday as well. You had to somehow turn Sunday into a day for resting, but it didn’t resemble Saturdays.

As for my workplace, I was a mere working man, I took almost no interest in who was in command. What I was interested in was to have work to do, to receive my salary at the end of the month, to be able to support my family and live a more decent life. That was it.

We weren’t in Romania when the Revolution took place 19, we were in Israel. We had left as tourists and we stayed there for six months as we couldn’t return home, and no airplanes were flying to Romania in the beginning, either. We left for Israel before Christmas, in November, and the Revolution broke out in December 1989. And we returned in March. So we didn’t experience the days when the Revolution took place. But I don’t know what the Revolution truly brought in our lives. Especially since after the Revolution I saw again these anti-Semite newspapers being published, such as Porunca Vremii [The Time’s Commandment] or Sfarma Piatra [Break-Stone], which I was familiar with from before the war. Although one couldn’t say that anti-Semitism was eradicated during the socialist period, it was somewhat illegal. One couldn’t publish such articles in newspapers. After the Revolution, all anti-Semite proponents could write whatever they wanted. For me, as a simple human being, this change didn’t seem too good. Perhaps it was also because of my old age, when you’re young you are tempted by many things and have different kinds of needs. This transition stage arrived for us at a time when we were already too old to change our way of life.

Nowadays’ young people don’t know what youth meant for us, how it was like for us. There have been years and years of work. And even when I retired, I still couldn’t rest, I couldn’t settle down and stop working. I sought to earn some more money, I kept working after the Revolution, you could find work from various employers, black market jobs, as they say. Neither I, nor my wife knew what it meant to waste a working day without doing any work.

But we are pleased now, we live in cleanliness, we have everything we require. All we need is good health, nothing else. I am very glad when I receive my retirement pay, especially since our forerunners didn’t even know what retirement pay meant. Small as it is, you can’t imagine how welcome it is when the month is over and the postman knocks on your door. I must admit that I also received a strong support from my brothers who settled abroad. Whenever I visited them, I never returned empty-handed. I can say that I haven’t bought clothing in the last 20 years or more. I received all my clothes from them along with other gifts; we even received money from them, they never deserted us in times of need.

We observed the same traditions after the Revolution, we didn’t change at all. We don’t care who is in power. We only pray for peace and tranquility so that we can live our old age. Naturally, I watch the news on TV and on the radio, I’m interested in the evolution of the situation in Israel and all other countries. I’m not impressed by all events, all tragedies that unfold in the world. Maybe that’s because I can understand some things better than others who didn’t experience what a war means.

The Jewish Community was organized only later on. Certainly, the Community as an institution existed before the war as well, but I’m referring to the period when it was modernized. This happened in Iasi in the 1960’s-1970’s under the presidency of pharmacist Simion Caufman. A social care service was organized then, there was a choir for young people, and many other things. That’s when Joint 20 aid started to arrive; we benefited from it and still do to this day. We are nowadays assisted by the Community and we benefit from free medical care; we also receive certain food parcels when they are distributed. So we thank God that we are thus able to get by.

We have very few friends at present. My wife’s sister is living here and she visits us, but her husband is very ill and she herself calls on us more seldom. They had another brother who was living in Romania and who died recently. Nowadays, we spend the holidays at the Community where we are invited to go; that’s where we meet some of our acquaintances. There is nothing else left for us. Our house was either full, in the past, or empty, at present. I think we are now the only Jews left in this entire neighborhood [Podu Ros]. But we are on very good terms with all the neighbors in our block of flats. I did a bit of handiwork for all of them. Whenever someone moved in, they had work to be done: whether the windows didn’t shut properly, or the wardrobe didn’t fit through the door. It had to be taken apart and reassembled inside the apartment. The neighbors aren’t the same as of yore, either. But our friendship wasn’t the same as it would have been with Jewish neighbors. The latter knew even where the front door key was. It was a different kind of relationship. My wife gave advice to little girls, how to dress, how to wash. Whenever we go to Israel, we meet these children of our former neighbors, and they welcome us as if we were their own parents. Although God didn’t give us the blessing of having children, we have these children of our former neighbors, but our nephews as well. The latter are very close to us, as if they were our own children. The phone is always ringing in our house: ‘Uncle Leizer, how are you, how is your health, do you need anything?’ Even if they travel to America or anywhere in the world, they call us on the phone. My wife has a little niece and when she traveled to Israel and her niece was still a child, she told my wife: ‘Auntie, I will tear your passport to pieces and you won’t be able to leave here anymore.’ We enjoy the special love they nurture for us. We were happier whenever our nephews and nieces came to visit us. I took the boys with me in the workshop and made toy rifles and swords for them. When they had holidays and still lived in Bucharest, and if we didn’t visit them on the day when they were on holiday, they would tell us the following day: ‘Look, we wasted one day of our holiday.’ Sometimes, it so happens that you might not have such good relationships with your own children as those that we had and still have with our nephews. This gives us satisfaction, makes us glad, and we enjoy it.

Glossary:

Oto Konstein
Zagreb
Croatia
Name of interviewer: Lea Siljak
Date of interview: February 2003

Oto Konstein is a very active and agile person. He remembers many details from his childhood, especially concerning his friends and family and their life in Cakovec.

He describes his childhood memories rapturously. However, Oto chooses not to speak comprehensively about the events during and after WW II.

Those were very traumatic experiences that Oto chooses to speak about shortly and tersely.

Once a foreign trader, Oto is retired today and lives with his wife in a quiet apartment in the center of Zagreb.

• My family background
• Growing up
• During the war
• After the war
• Glossary

• My family background

My paternal great-grandparents originate from what used to be Czechoslovakia, more precisely from what is Czech Republic today. The paternal grandparents first came from the Czech Republic to Maribor in Slovenia, where my grandfather Salomon Konstein founded a leather factory.

The grandparents came to Slovenia together with their children, three sons – Ernest, Vili and my father Emil, and two daughters – Erna and Paula. They had two more daughters; in total, there were seven children in my father’s family. One aunt, aunt Juli, stayed in Brno, and another aunt, aunt Lisel married and lived in Vienna. At those times, that all used to be the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.

My paternal grandfather Salomon was born in 1856 and died in 1932, when I was 3 years old. Therefore, I don’t remember him clearly. But I do remember my paternal grandmother Jeanette Konstein very well. She also lived in Cakovec, like my parents, my sister and me, but she lived with her daughter, my aunt, Erna, with aunt Erna’s husband Karol Singer and their son Milan.

My grandmother was a housewife. She was not very religious, like the rest of my family from both my father and my mother’s side. Neither did she look nor did she dress religiously. I am not sure if she attended the synagogue and how regularly, but I know that she didn’t cook kosher food. She cooked traditional Jewish food, for example she made cholent for every Shabbat, but the meat she used was not kosher meat.

I remember she had black hair even in her old age. My grandmother was a wonderful, calm person, good-natured who loved her grandchildren dearly. She had many grandchildren in Cakovec and she spent a lot of time with us. I specifically recall her soft and gentle nature and her love for her grandchildren.

She would tell us stories from Czechoslovakia; unfortunately, I do not recall any of them any longer. But I do remember my grandmother as a wonderful and serene person. Fortunately, she died peacefully at the age of 78 of natural causes, and was not taken to a death camp. She died and was buried in Cakovec. I was already a schoolboy when my grandmother died in 1943.

My father Emil Konstein also came with his parents and siblings to Maribor and worked in his family’s leather factory. My father was a leather-worker. Together with his older brother Ernest Konstein, he completed some kind of a school for leather-workers in Vienna. When my grandparents came to Maribor, they established a leather factory. My father’s brother Ernest was the owner and my father Emil worked together with him.

My maternal great-grandparents originate from Hungary and Medimurje, the northeastern part of Croatia. I don’t know where exactly my maternal grandparents Leopold and Malvina Heimer were born, but they lived in Cakovec most of their lives. Actually, they lived in the same street where my parents, my sister and I lived, so I spent a lot of time with them when I was very young.

My grandfather Leopold Heimer was born in 1874 and he worked in a textile factory, a Jewish factory called Neumann [Neumann is today’s factory called Cateks, a well-known Croatian artificial leather factory]. They used to produce raw textile. I don’t know what exactly he did there, but from my mother’s telling I remember that he was known to be a hard-working man.

My grandmother Malvina, born around 1877, was a housewife. Like my paternal grandparents, my maternal grandparents were not very religious. From what I remember at my grandparent’s home, holidays were observed by going to the synagogue and eating nice meals at home, but Shabbat or kashrut was not observed. They fasted for Yom Kippur and observed high holidays such as Rosh Hashana, they lit candles for Hanukah, but did not do much else.

I don’t recall any particular stories they told me; I was 7 when my grandfather died, and 9 when my grandmother died, so I don’t recall many details. I remember that both grandfather and grandmother looked very old to me. Even though they died young, at the age of around 60, they looked older than they actually were, as if they grew old before their time. I recall that my grandfather was very ill, and he was in Zagreb in hospital.

It must have been in 1935 or 1936 when my mother and I went to visit him in the hospital. That was the first time I came to Zagreb, and although I don’t remember much clearly, I remember that I was very excited. Another thing I remember was that I was ill when either my grandfather or grandmother died, I cannot recall exactly who, but I recall looking through the window at the funeral procession.

It was a Jewish funeral. They are both buried at the Jewish section of Cakovec cemetery. Luckily, neither my grandfather nor my grandmother lived to experience the horrors of the war. My grandfather Leopold died in 1936, and my grandmother Malvina died in 1938.

Matilda Sinko was a housemaid who started working with my maternal grandparents when she was only 13 years old. After my grandmother died, Matilda came to stay with my parents, my sister and me. Matilda was a wonderful, intelligent person; she spoke German, Hungarian and of course Croatian fluently, she had a beautiful handwriting, and made beautiful needlework.

Apart from cooking, cleaning and helping in the household, Matilda played with my sister and me. She didn’t have family of her own, so she considered us her own children; she loved us and we loved her. Matilda was treated as if she was a member of our family, and long after the war was over, I considered her as my grandmother.

It was customary for Jewish families in Cakovec, and I suppose elsewhere, to have housemaids that stayed with a single family and that became a part of that family.

Although she was Catholic and not Jewish, she learned Jewish traditions and customs by living with us. When the war started, she went to her hometown Prelog and lived there until sometime in 1980s when she died. My wife and me went to visit her in Prelog, just a few days before she died, but then we didn’t expect that she would die so soon.

Other things I remember vaguely. My mother had 2 brothers; the eldest brother Bela Heimer was born in 1901. He lived in Varazdin and worked in a silk factory. He was married to Ivka Heimer and they had one daughter named Verica. They were all murdered in the war – his wife and daughter died in 1941 Loborgrad 1 and Bela died in Jasenovac 2 in 1942.

The younger brother Stjepan Heimer was born in 1904. He completed veterinary school in Zagreb and moved to Dalmatia, the southern part of Croatia in 1930s. He first left for Metkovic, and then moved to Sinj where he worked as a veterinarian.

He was married to Greta (nee Cegledi), who was a medical doctor, and they had one son named Stjepan born in 1942. During the war, he and his family were saved. Both Stjepan and Greta were Jewish and both were very liked by the people in Metkovic. The priest in Metkovic county intervened on the behalf of my uncle and aunt, and collected around 15 000 signatures from the whole county so that they wouldn’t be taken away. This is how they survived the war.

My mother was the youngest child in her family. I am not sure where or how my parents met, but I know that my mother Vilma Heimer lived with her family in Medimurje, the northeastern part of Croatia. She was born in Kotoriba in 1911. I have one photograph where she, as a young girl of 16 or 17 attends a sewing course. She completed the course, but she never worked.

She was a housewife, a very diligent young woman, caring very much for her family, very sensitive. Although Matilda was in the house and helped around the household, my mother was nevertheless hard working and diligent in housekeeping. She was a sensitive and a caring mother, often helping my sister and me with homework and schoolwork; she was patient and understanding always showing her love for us.

When she was still a very young woman, she had some health problems and had to be operated. The operation was done in Budapest, I don’t know when, and one of her kidneys was removed. She was a sensitive and fragile person who didn’t have an easy life. She was still very young when she was taken away and murdered.

After my parents married, they moved to Cakovec where both my sister Tea and me were born. Having been educated as a leather-worker in Vienna, and having had some experience in his family’s leather factory, my father opened a leather store in Cakovec and worked there as a leather-worker.  My father was a mild, gentle man, and not a strict parent. He was a sociable and open person and had many friends who often came to our house. He mainly socialized with other Jews but he was also in very good relations with the Catholics in Cakovec and the surroundings. I remember him as an approachable person, as a good host always welcoming friends to our house, and mostly as a good family man, a good husband and a very good father to my sister and me.

Cakovec was a very vibrant town, industrially well developed. Most of the factories were owned by the Jews: the firm Neumann, where my grandfather used to work. The Graner brothers owned the Medimurska trikotaza [a famous Croatian textile and knitwear factory]. There was also a chocolate and biscuit factory that was also owned by Jews.

There were many Jewish traders, and in general many wealthy Jews lived in Cakovec and Medimurje. But apart from being wealthy, Jews were also intellectuals and well educated. Among them, there were many doctors, lawyers, graduated engineers and they were highly appreciated by the population of Cakovec. However, not all were well educated or wealthy; there were also middle-class and poor Jews as well, but to a lesser number.

There were generally good relations between Jews and non-Jews. I suppose like in other places, in Cakovec too there were a few people who were anti-Semitic minded, but there were generally no problems. Not only were the Jews equal participants in the society; they also contributed in an advancement of life in Cakovec. There was no ghetto, and Jews lived dispersed around the town.

• Growing up

I was born in Cakovec in 1929. I had a younger sister, named Tea. Tea was five years younger than me. My sister and I got along very well; we were very close. She was a sweet little girl, very lively and happy. My sister and I were very close and we had a wonderful childhood, until they came to take us.

My family lived in a single-story house that had two separate apartments. There was a large hall and to the right of the hall was our apartment, and to the left was the apartment of family Geiger, our neighbors. They had one daughter, Lea Geiger, who is 3 years older than me. Lea survived, and is still alive living now somewhere in Germany. Whenever she comes to Croatia, she calls me and we meet. In my childhood, I remember we played as well as quarreled, just like children do.

In our apartment, we had a large living room, one bedroom for my parents, one smaller children’s room, and a smaller room for Matilda, our maid, when she came to live with us. There was of course a large kitchen, since in those days life mainly took place in the kitchen, especially during the daytime.

The evenings we mostly spent in the living room, or in bedrooms. There was electricity in our house, but no central heating, of course, so we heated on woods. We also cooked on woods. There was one room that served as a bathroom, but that was not a typical bathroom like today.

There was a bathtub in the middle of the room but we had no running water. Instead, the water had to be brought from a well that was in our yard. We didn’t have a television set, but we had a radio and during the war we listened to Radio London in order to hear the news. That was done in secret, so we had to be careful not to be seen or heard while listening.

We had a large yard with a woodshed. In the yard, there were a few fruit-trees, and a small garden, but no animals. We had a mezuzah at the front door of our apartment, for sure, but I don’t remember if we had a mezuzah on every door inside the apartment.

Having spent time with my grandparents, I learned Hungarian since they spoke Hungarian at home. In my parent’s house, we spoke German; Croatian of course I learned with my friends and in school, and later I also learned French in school.

I don’t know the exact number, but there were around 400-500 Jews in Cakovec before the war. That is, around 10% of population in Cakovec was Jewish. We were socializing almost exclusively with other Jews, which was quite normal and logical since there were many of us.

Our families and parents also socialized with Jews and that brought us even closer together. We also attended religious instructions, went to school together, and it was due to this socialization and friendships that we were bonded.

For instance, one of my best friends was Pista Patkai; he was an excellent pianist. His family was Jewish. They were exempted from being taken to the camp. During the war, some people were exempted from being taken away due to their family’s credits.

My friend Pista’s maternal grandfather was a famous Hungarian writer, and his paternal grandfather founded a steam-powered flourmill in Cakovec. Due to their merits, the Patkai family was exempted from the war, and ran away to Budapest where they hid and stayed until the war was over.

Unfortunately, Pista passed away suddenly a few years ago, but for many years after the war we kept in close contact. He founded a quintet and played all over the world, he really was a first-class musician. I don’t have any of his photographs, unfortunately, but I do have his melodies and his music.

In general, there were many young Jewish boys and girls in Cakovec. For this reason, the majority of marriages before the war were Jewish; there were only a few mixed marriages. This is one of the most important and fundamental ways how Jewishness persisted and was maintained. It is not only the same mentality that keeps us together, but also the persecution and similar experiences that keep us tightly-knit. Back then, mixed marriages were exceptions whereas today they are quite common.

One of my friends Fritz Lobl, who was one year older than me, was from a mixed marriage. His mother was from Vojvodina, her surname was Hencej. She stayed in Cakovec and wasn’t taken away during the war. Both her husband and her son, Fritz, died in the concentration camp.

Fritz was together with me in Auschwitz but he endured only 3 or 4 months. Upon my return from the camp, I had to tell his mother that he had died. I had another friend who was from a mixed marriage; his name is Eugen Cajzler. His father was Jewish, and his mother was Catholic.

She could have stayed in Cakovec had she wanted to and they wouldn’t have taken her. But, she didn’t want to leave her husband and her two sons, Eugen and Picko, so she went with them. Eugen was a bit older, so once he arrived to the camp, he was put into forced labor. And he endured it, he survived. However, both his parents and his brother died. Had the mother stayed, she could have survived. After Eugen came back, he was all alone.

The Jewish community in Cakovec was very large in terms of both members and space; I remember well the spacious rooms in the community. All together, there was a complex of buildings: in one building, the rabbi lived with his family, and the president of the Jewish Community lived with his family, one apartment above the other; to the right, there was a Community building with large rooms and a hall where various manifestations took place, such as celebrations of holidays and performances for holidays; and behind these two buildings, there was a large courtyard with the synagogue in the middle of the courtyard.

The synagogue, or the temple as we used to call it, was large and beautiful, and always full for the Jews attended the services on a regular basis. Our rabbi was dr. Ilija Grunwald. Apart from him, there was also a cantor – therefore, two professionals working in one Jewish community. One rabbi, one cantor, one synagogue, and a large Jewish Community building.

The president of the Jewish Community was dr. Schwarz. He was the father of Eva Schwarz, who today lives in Budapest. In addition, there was a kosher butcher who slaughtered animals, but my family did not consume the meat from him. I suppose that the rabbi, the cantor and only a few other families in Cakovec were kosher and consumed kosher meat. There was no mikveh in Cakovec.

Within the Jewish Community, we had many different activities and we met up regularly. Among other things, there was also a Youth Club. As a matter of fact, we had two kinds of Youth Clubs: a Zionist and a revisionist. The Zionists were the followers of Weizmann 3–while the revisionists followed Jabotinsky 4, the latter were more revolutionary. Some of us belonged to one, and some to the other group, but we didn’t make large distinctions and we mostly socialized together. 

In Cakovec there were many wealthy Jews and we often went to their houses to entertain. In one of these houses, I remember there was a ping-pong table and musical instruments and a few friends and myself would play all day long. Already as a young boy, I was inclined to music and together with Pista and other friends we played Hungarian melodies and had a good time. There were also two families that were related among themselves; their surname was Langer and Weiss. They had a wholesale store with food grains that was in our neighborhood.

The whole family was very musically talented, and we used to spend every day together playing and listening to music. When I recall now, we used to live very well. Even though we had no television or radio, we would entertain well. We’d go to the cinema in the afternoon, and in the evening to we’d walk down the corzo [a promenade in the center of the town].

My family is Ashkenazi. In Cakovec, there were no Spanish Jews, Sephardim. Neither my grandparents, nor my parents were very religious. At home, we celebrated all the holidays and kept Jewish tradition. Every Friday and Saturday we regularly went to the temple as well as for all the holidays.

We celebrated the holidays according to the tradition respecting the elementary religious laws and customs, especially with regard to dietary customs. For example, for Passover we ate only maces and didn’t consume bread. We celebrated Seder in the Jewish Community building; the rabbi and the cantor were leading the services and ceremonies.

For Yom Kippur, my parents fasted the whole day; my sister and me fasted only until the noon.  My father didn’t wear a kippah; he put it on only while in the synagogue and didn’t wear it at home. It is possible that my mother wore a hat or a scarf in the synagogue, but I cannot recall precisely.

Every Friday night we would have Shabbat dinner, but we didn’t sing songs around the table. My father and the whole family went to the synagogue for Friday night and Saturday morning services, and for the holidays of course.  Neither my father nor me nor any other members of my family attended the synagogue services during the weekdays.

At home, we lit the candles for Hanukah, and we lit candles and oil-lamps for the deceased. But we didn’t light the candles for Shabbat. I think this was the case for the majority of Jewish families in Cakovec, except for those families that were very religious. But there was only a small number of Orthodox Jewish families in Cakovec. Although the level of socialization was high among the Jews, both older and younger, Cakovec was in general a very liberal town when religious and inter-religious relations were considered.

It was the tradition that for Passover, Purim and Hanukah celebrations were made in the Community. For both Purim and Hanukah, children made a performance. I was involved with a group and we played music; usually those were Jewish traditional songs but we also played Hungarian melodies.

We had rehearsals before public performance and for those performances we were skilled by Duci Stern who was a musician himself. Other children made a theater performance, usually on the theme of a holiday that was celebrated.

For Purim, of course, we put masks on. Most of the girls were masked as Queen Esther, and boys were masked as Mordechai. My family celebrated Hanukah both at home and in the Community. We lit candles at home every evening of Hanukah, and in the Community we had a celebration with the rest of the Community. We sang “Moaz Cur”. I hear the melody of “Moaz Cur” that is being sung in the Zagreb Community today, and I hear that the melody remained the same.

The text, however, is pronounced differently today than we pronounced it once. We learned to read Hebrew text with a different pronunciation and diction than the text is read today. We spoke with Yiddish pronunciation. For example, we would say Gut Shabes or Gut Yontef, the words I don’t hear in our Community today.

Although my father and I were in a very close relationship, we never studied Torah or Talmud together. Neither did he teach me or did we have any discussions about Torah or religious issues. All that I learned about our religion and traditions was during the religious education with our rabbi. I didn’t have Bar Mitzvah because I turned 13 in 1942. It was already very critical and dangerous. Otherwise, Bar Mitzvah celebrations were commonly taking place in Cakovec before the war.

Before the Second World War started, I recall that the children in school would mock the Jews. I remember that they used to call us ‘Zibek’. This word comes from the word ‘Zidov’ [Croatian for Jew], and they would yell at us Zibek. However, I don’t think I could consider these incidents anti-Semitic. I don’t think that there was any serious or acute anti-Semitism present in Cakovec before the war. Or at least I didn’t feel it.

• During the war

From April 1941 to April 1944, Cakovec was under the Hungarian occupation. For the first two years during this period, there were no greater differences from our life until then. We lived more or less normally as we lived until then.

In 1943, there was a border between Cakovec and Varazdin, a nearby town; Cakovec was under the Hungarian occupation and Varazdin was under NDH, the Independent State of Croatia 5. There was numerus clausus in Varazdin, which meant that only a limited number of Jews was entitled to study in schools. Since there was only an elementary school in Cakovec, I had to attend high school in Varazdin for two years. But because numerul clausus was employed, I couldn’t attend high school any longer.

Therefore, in 1943 I started to work illegally. For one year, I was delivering newspapers and I worked in a weaver’s store. In this way, I helped my family in earning some money since my father was forced to close his store in 1941.

At first, this wasn’t so terrible until Hungarian fascists, so called “Njilasi” came to power at the beginning of 1944 6. Until then, people were sent to forced labor, myself included, but in general we didn’t have any greater repercussions. When Hungarian fascists came to power, we were forced to wear a yellow star. Regardless of the fact that I was just a young boy, I also had to wear the star.

So did my sister and my parents. I don’t really remember how my father supported us financially after he was forced to close his store. He had a truck that he sold and that provided some money. We also had some savings. I know that I worked from 1943 to 1944 until they took us away to help support my family.

Around April 1944, most of the Jews in Cakovec were taken to the synagogue where the Hungarians held us captive for about two days. From there we were taken first to Velika Kanjiza (Nagykanjisza) and then to Auschwitz. We didn’t know what was really happening.

Of course, we were aware that terrible things were going on but we also heard that, by 1944 the Allies were coming forth and we assumed Germans were losing the war. I think it was unimaginable for us that all these horrors were happening to Jews. People didn’t know about concentration camps and murdering of Jews;

I assume that, had they known, they would have tried to run away or hide. Nobody really expected anything like this to happen. We thought we’d be captured somewhere for just a few days or weeks until the war is over and that all will be well again.

I was taken to Auschwitz in May 1944. People usually don’t know the difference between Birkenau and Auschwitz and they think that Auschwitz was one large concentration camp. But, they first took us to Birkenau, a huge transit camp that could receive about one hundred thousand victims. In Birkenau we were unloaded and put through a selection; some were taken left, others were taken right.

One thing that is interesting in this story is that my life was saved because of my knowledge of German language. When we were being unloaded, I was still together with my mother and my sister. I was then approached by one of the concentration camp inmates, the one who was unloading our belongings from the train, and he asked me: ‘Do you speak German?’ I said: ‘Yes.’ Then he asked: ‘How old are you?’ And I said: ‘15.’ Then he said: ‘Listen, don’t hold on to your mother or your sister.

When they take you to the medical board, tell them you’re 16, throw your chest out and make sure you show them you are capable to work.’ This is how it was. I was separated from my mother and my sister, although I thought we would be able to visit and to be in contact. For a long time, I didn’t really know what was happening. And what happened was that my mother and my sister were taken to the crematory in Birkenau, and I stayed in Auschwitz and was forced to work.

From Auschwitz I was transported to a nearby camp, a so-called Nebenlager where I worked partly in a coal mine, and partly in bricklaying. As the Russians were approaching, we were evacuated from this prisoner camp to the Dora Buchenwald camp. I stayed there from January to April 1945.

As the Allies came closer to Dora Buchenwald, we were transferred to Bergen-Belsen. I was in Bergen-Belsen when we were liberated.  There were several inmates from the former Yugoslavia and we kept together at all times. One of the former Yugoslavians cleverly thought to hide in one of the cellars in Bergen-Belsen among the corpses.

That was the only chance for us to survive, to hide among the dead bodies in the cellar, and to wait for the liberators. We survived because we were among the corpses. And then, as the English came, we were liberated.

• After the war

After the liberation, we were not allowed to go out of the camp for about 2-3 weeks because we were sick and we looked very sick. I must have been 52 kg when I was sent to the camp, and 28 kg when the war ended.  It happened that people who ran away from the camp died of dysentery or because they simply couldn’t take in food any more.

The English were very smart to keep us in quarantine and to give us dietary food until we recuperated. There were three of us companions, one from Slovenia and another one from Serbia, and when we recovered we ran away from the camp.

All we wanted was to go home. Bergen-Belsen was close to Hamburg and it took a long, long time to return home. We walked, we hiked, we used all kinds of transportation, we really went in every way possible. The roads were damaged, the bridges were destroyed, and by very many different means we managed to reach Prague. That must have taken us about 2 months. 

Once we reached Prague, it was a bit easier since the victims were taken in very kindly there. A whole group of us Jews who survived the concentration camps, both male and female, stayed in a castle in Prague for a while. I remember the name of the caste: Titova kolej. Many of them were from Vojvodina, and we kept in contact for some time afterwards.

Somehow, and through many obstacles, I reached the Austrian-Yugoslavian border. The control was very strict at the border. Being afraid that they might let Ustasha 7 or fascists in, they didn’t want to let in just anyone so the checks were very rigorous. After they saw the number on my arm, the number from Auschwitz, I was given a pass in which it was stated that all civil and military authorities should treat me kindly. I still have this pass.

Since I had no problems with the officials, I started off on foot from the Austrian-Yugoslavian border to Cakovec. I remember, I arrived home at midnight. To a home that was completely robbed. That night I slept in an empty apartment. At the age of 16, I happily returned home only to find no one.

On the following days I tried to find anyone who was still alive, and then I remembered the Patkai family, the family of my friend Pista, who were hiding in Budapest during the war. They had just returned to Cakovec at that time, and they took me to stay with them for some time.

When one of my father’s friends saw me, saw that I was still alive, he started to cry and gave me 10 dinars; that was the only money I had. In the meantime, I sent a telegram to Metkovic, where my mother’s brother Stjepan Heimer lived with his wife. They were the ones who were saved during the war by the priest and the people of Metkovic county. I received no answer from him after I sent the telegram, so I sent him a card.

When he received the card, he immediately came to Cakovec to see me. I don’t know which route he took, but I am sure it wasn’t easy to come from Metkovic to Cakovec.

Ever since then, and until the time of his death in 1987, we were extremely close. Afterwards, he even came to Zagreb to work as a veterinary inspector. He was practically like a father to me. I became very attached to this uncle of mine, who was my mother’s favorite and my mother was his favorite. This made a strong bond between him and me, and I never considered separating from him. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why I never considered moving to Israel after the war.

I completed secondary school in Zagreb. I worked for 12 years as an economist in textile industry. Afterwards, I worked for 10 years in a sock factory in Zagreb. Then, after 10 years of work in the sock factory, I was enrolled to study foreign trade, in a school that was the first foreign trade school in Zagreb.

This school lasted for 2 years, or 4 semesters. And, as I completed foreign trade, and considering my knowledge of foreign languages, I worked as an economist in foreign trade. I worked and lived in Zagreb, and never had to work abroad.

I’ve been living in Zagreb since 1947. I met my wife Katarina (nee Ovcar) in Zagreb. My wife is not Jewish, she is Catholic, a Croat. She was born in Cakovec in 1933, but has been living in Zagreb since 1951. Katarina completed a 5-year long University of chemical engineering and was a Professor in one of the technological colleges in Zagreb. Today she is retired.

We have only one son, his name is Tomislav. Tomislav was born in Zagreb in 1958. He completed electro technology at he University in Zagreb. Today he lives in Basel, Switzerland. He has taken neither one nor the other direction in his religious orientation, he is half-half. 

He knows he is Jewish, but in order not to hurt either his mother or me, he keeps neutral. In his soul he is Jewish, but he keeps neither Judaism nor Catholicism. He also has only one child. My granddaughter’s name is Tea, she is 7 years old. She was named after my sister who was murdered in 1944 in Birkenau. She is very proud to be called Tea.

After the war, life in the communist Yugoslavia was without any problems from the point of view of religious or national discrimination. There are many people today who say that, during the former communist regime, one was not allowed to say that he was a Croat. This is not true and whoever says this perjures himself. You could be what you felt. 

I as a Jew never had any problems. I have always emphasized that I am Jewish, in comparison to some others who kept it a secret after the war. For me, my first words to someone were always that I am Jewish, not so much out of pride, but because I never wanted to keep it a secret.

If someone minds me being Jewish, he’d better not have anything to do with me. I have also been traveling around the world and have met many Arabs. We always spoke nicely, and I never had any problems. Once I say my name is Konstein, it is clear that it is a Jewish name. After the war, I never felt threatened and never felt any dangers for being Jewish.

I have always been a member of the Jewish community in Zagreb. When I came to Zagreb in 1947, I came straight to Palmoticeva, where the community building is. I come here regularly and I’ve been very active since then. One of my friends doesn’t want to be a member of the Jewish community even though his whole family is Jewish.

I don’t know why; maybe he doesn’t want to be registered as a Jew any more, especially after what happened to him. He was in one of the concentration camps, I think in Mauthausen. But, I do hold this against him, and I openly told him: ‘You were in the camp, your parents are Jewish, your grandparents, the whole family was Jewish, you socialize only with Jews, why wouldn’t you be a member?’ He doesn’t want, and I hold this strongly against him.

In 1991, when the war broke out in Croatia, I felt terrible. Every aggression, every aggressive behavior influences my state of mind. I was bitter for all that happened, and I will never forget what happened in Vukovar or in Dubrovnik or in other occupied places. However, the war has not changed my feeling towards Jewishness at all.

This aggression has equally affected me as a Jew as it had probably affected the Catholics in this country. For I was born in Croatia, Croatia is my homeland. According to my nationality, I don’t consider myself a Jew. In my opinion, no single religion can be simultaneously a nationality, and no further discussion can convince me of the contrary.

My religion is Judaism, I feel Jewish and I emphasize this always. But, my nationality is Croatian as long as I live here. If I lived in Israel, I’d be an Israeli; but, I live here and I always write Croatian as my nationality.

I think that Jewish life today in Croatia is very lively. It is good that people come to the community, and we really should be active. It is important to learn Hebrew, to learn the history of Judaism in order to know how we have survived through many centuries.

It is very nice to see people coming to the community and different activities going on. However, the fact that there are only a few of us left and that there are many mixed marriages is frightening. And this mixture goes from one generation to next, it’s a shame.

Apart from my wife and my son’s family, I have no other family still living. I have one female cousin who survived the war and now lives in the Czech Republic. I remember that my parents used to be in contact with some far away family, and I remember that this family was in Israel, in Kfar Vitkin. But I am not in contact with them.

My son looked over the internet to find other Konsteins, but it is a very rare surname. He found one Konstein in Russia, otherwise nowhere else, but this Konstein is not our kin. What my son did find very interesting over the internet was that one path in Dora Buchenwald was named Konsteinweg.  Of course, this has nothing to do with me personally, but it is incredible that in the camp that I was taken, there was one path that had my name.

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