Travel

Henryk Umow

Legnica

Poland

Interviewer: Jakub Rajchman

Date of interview: July 2004

Henryk Umow is 86 years old, and he grew up in Lomza, where many Jewish families lived before the war. During our two meetings in his apartment in Legnica, Mr. Umow told me about Jewish life in Lomza and about his experiences of Polish-Jewish relations in Jedwabne 1, where he spent some time in the mid-1930s. Mr. Umow doesn't want to talk about the Holocaust period; he lost his mother and two sisters in the Lomza ghetto, and still finds it too painful to speak about. His story is interesting and full of insight into the difficult relations between Poles and Jews in Poland.

My name is Henryk Umow. Before the war my name was Chaim Umowa, but when the Russians entered Lomza in 1939 they registered me as Umow, because, they said, Umowa is feminine. [In both Russian and Polish, nouns ending with ‘a’ are usually feminine.] And then after the war I changed my first name to Henryk to make it more Polish. But my sister [Zlata] always called me Chaim, even after the war.

I was born in Kolno, a little town near Lomza, on 17th May 1917. In 1920, during the Polish-Bolshevik War [see Polish-Soviet War] 2, my family moved to Lomza. My father said that bullets where whizzing over our heads as we rode to Lomza in the cart. Which means I survived the Polish-Bolshevik War – everyone in the family says I was at the front!

My father’s name was Icchak Umowa. He already had two children from his first marriage: my brother Benzir was born in 1908, and my sister Zlata was born in 1910. Later, besides me, he had two more daughters with my mother – my younger sisters: Leja was born in 1920, and Esterka in 1922. My mother’s name was Dowa Umowa, nee Friedmann.

I don’t remember any of my grandparents, either on my mother’s side or my father’s. I don’t know where either family came from, or how they came to be in Kolno, where I was born. We never talked about it. I didn’t know anyone at all from either family, except for my mother’s brother, who was a shammash in the Jewish community in Jedwabne, and whom I lived with for a while. But I don’t even remember his name. Also, I know my brother and sister from Father’s first marriage had some family in Warsaw, but that was his late wife's family. There was an aunt too – Mother’s sister, I think – she married one of the owners of a carbonated-water plant. Wirenbaum was his name, but they emigrated to the US. I only remember that like us they lived in Lomza on Woziwodzka Street.

I remember Father well, even though he died before I was nine. He was tall – I came up to his shoulders, like Mother. I know he was a tailor by trade, but he didn’t work. He stayed home; I didn’t know exactly what he did – I was too little. He said he was a middleman, in horses or wood or whatever – it was always a bit of extra income. I remember that Father never hit us. When I’d done something wrong he sat me down and gave me a talking-to. And when I started to cry he’d ask why I was crying, since he wasn’t hitting me. But I would have rather be thrashed, and I’d tell him to do it. But he said that if he beat me, I’d just cry a while and then do something bad again. I had to sit and listen – he thought that was the best way to raise a child. I remember that, and I did the same with my own children.

Mother wasn’t tall – about the same height as me. She was my older siblings’ stepmother, but they respected her and called her Mother – she was like a real mother to them. Mother was a hosiery maker – she had a machine, and she made new stockings and repaired the runs in old ones. Sometimes she’d make new heels or toes for socks. Having them repaired was worth it to people – it was cheaper than buying new ones and they saved a few groszys that way. The best season for her was spring – that’s when the most young ladies would come to have runs repaired. My mother was a very good cook. Actually my favorite dish has always been every single one; I’ve always said there’s just one thing I won’t eat for love nor money: what we don’t have! And when Mother would ask if something she’d made tasted good, I always told her that if I’m still alive, that means it tasted good. I figure Mother was most likely born in 1895 or 1896. I used to have a picture of her from before she was married, but it got lost.

My brother Benzir was ten years older than me. We called him Bencak, and then later, after the war, he changed his name to Bronislaw. He was a shoemaker by trade – he made new uppers for shoes, and also patched holes when necessary. I don’t remember much about him from before the war, because when Father died, he and Zlata went to Warsaw, to live with their late mother’s family. I know he got married there in Warsaw, to the daughter of a master shoemaker that he worked for. His wife’s name was Roza; her maiden name was Pomeranc. I only visited them once before the war, for a few days. Mother sent me to find work in Warsaw. I remember I went there by car – by truck – some driver took me. I was there about three days, but there was no work to be had, so I went back to Lomza.

My sister’s name was Zlata – in Polish Zofia. Here in Legnica, after the war, after she died, when there are memorial prayers in the synagogue, I asked them to refer to her as Golda. Some people asked who in my family was named that. You see, Zlata means ‘gold’, and in Yiddish that’s Golda. She was eight years older than me. She was a communist, a member of the SDKPiL 3 and then the KPP 4, and she got in trouble for that. I’ll never forget how one time I took a job guarding an orchard, to earn a little money. There were two of us, and the other boy had the night shift, but he went to sleep in the shed, and that’s when there was a break-in and something was stolen. Some guys from the secret police came to ask questions. And as soon as they heard my last name, they asked me how I was related to Zofia Umow. When I said she was my sister, they asked right away whether I fooled around with communism too. I managed to wiggle out of it somehow, but they kept an eye on me for a long time after that. All the time they thought I was collaborating with my sister. I remember she never got married. There was a man who hung around her and I think he even wanted to marry her, but she didn’t have time, because she was put in jail every time she turned around. And that lasted up until the war.

My two other sisters, Leja and Esterka, were younger than me – Leja was two years younger, and Esterka four. I was always spanking Leja, because she was beating up little Esterka. Leja was such a practical joker. On 1st April – April Fool’s Day – I remember she told a couple to meet each other in two different places, the woman in one place, the guy in another, telling each of them that the other had asked to meet them there. Or she’d send a midwife somewhere where no one was having a baby. I used to have a picture of her with me in the park in Lomza, but it got lost.

In Lomza we lived on Woziwodzka Street at first, on the corner of Szkolna [Street], and then on Krotka [Street], which was later called Berek Joselewicz [Street]. On Joselewicz [Street] we had an attic apartment, a kitchen and two little rooms. I remember my youngest sister, Esterka, was still in the cradle. There were these skylights there, and once a pigeon got in through them, and Mother had Bencak catch it and made pigeon soup, and my brother and sister ate the meat off the bones.

I was a very sickly child. I remember that my parents kept goats specially for me, so that I could have goat’s milk, because it’s healthy. We were poor, but Mother made sure our food was kosher. She did all the cooking for the holidays herself, and on Sabbath there was cholent. I remember that once I was in one of the rooms eating a non-kosher sausage I’d bought for myself as soon as I’d earned a bit of money, and it smelled really good. Mother called to me from the kitchen, asking me to give her a piece of it; she didn’t know it was pork. So I told her I was very hungry but that I’d go buy another one for her. Mother cared about keeping kosher and I didn’t want to upset her. So I dashed to the shop and bought a kosher sausage. Something similar happened with Leja: she saw me eating ham once, and she kept looking at me – she wanted me to give her some. I told her I wouldn’t give her any, but that she could take some herself. Because that way it would be her own decision to sin – I didn’t want to encourage her to sin.

Not every street in Lomza had plumbing in those days; on our street they still sold water by the bucket. There were lots of Jews living in Lomza. Almost everyone in the building where we lived was Jewish. I remember there was one woman who made wigs – we called her ‘Szejtel Macher’, which means wig-maker. The assistant rabbi also lived there; I don’t remember exactly who he was and what he did for a living, but that’s what everyone called him. And the owner of the whole building lived on the second floor; he had a butcher shop. I met his son after the war – he had a butcher shop here in Legnica. He gave me meat for free many times. The only Pole in the building was the caretaker. And I remember that I’d play with all kinds of kids – Polish ones too – in the courtyard of the building. Once I heard how they kept saying ‘fucking hell’; I didn’t know what it meant and I repeated it over and over. I went home and asked Mother, and she said it was a dirty word. And I go back to the courtyard and keep on repeating it. I remember that – Mother must have come up with a very deft ‘explanation’ of what it meant. I didn’t understand it until later.

Our family wasn’t too religious. Father went to the synagogue on Fridays and Saturdays, but he didn’t have payes. He took me with him on Saturdays. I had to go – Father wouldn’t put up with any dissent. We had electric lighting and we used it on Saturdays as well – we didn’t ask anyone to turn on the lights for us. Some people asked Poles to do that, I remember. During Pesach we definitely didn’t have bread – Mother always made sure of that. Every crumb had to be cleaned out, just like you’re supposed to. Some of the pots were made kosher: we poured in water and threw in a red-hot stone and scalded it that way. Other dishes were kept separate, used only during Pesach – plates, spoons and so on – after all, you’re not going to make kosher a plate!

We had matzah too: we went to a bakery, where the women rolled out the dough, and one guy made the holes in it and then it went in the oven. But I’d always keep a couple of groszys in my pocket to buy rolls on the side – I wanted to see what a roll tastes like during Pesach. But I never spent that money, because every time I left the house to buy that bread, I was so full that I didn’t want to buy anything to eat. I don’t recall any seder, because when Father was alive I was still too little, and later there was no one to lead it: Father had died, my brother had left, and I was too young. We just had a normal supper. And on normal days Mother also made sure our food was kosher. When she bought a chicken, she’d have me take it to the butcher so that the ritual was carried out. And when she bought meat, it had to be thoroughly soaked and salted.

The synagogue in Lomza was on the corner of Jalczynska and Senatorska [Streets]. There was also a prayer room a little further down on Senatorska [Street], and another not far from our apartment. I don’t remember any others. You had to pay for your seat in the synagogue. I remember that Father had bought a place, to the right of the bimah, I think. It was a beautiful synagogue, with the signs of the zodiac painted on the ceiling, all twelve signs. That was the main decoration. I remember there was a balcony where the women stood. There was a mikveh too; I was there just once, with Father. That was one Friday, just before Sabbath. I had to go into the water three times – we said in Yiddish ‘taygel machen’ [to take a bath]. That’s the only time I was there; normally we washed at home, using a basin.

We spoke Yiddish at home, and I could read Yiddish too. There was a series of books called Groschen Bibliothek [the Penny Library] – these little booklets, published in Yiddish. I read Spinoza, and The Spanish Inquisition, about Torquemada [Tomas de, first Inquisition-General (c1420-98), a Dominican monk whose name has become a byword for cruelty and severity] and how Jews were burned alive, and about the Dreyfus trial. [Dreyfus, Alfred (1859-1935): central figure in the Dreyfus case, which divided France for four years. An officer of Jewish decent in the French artillery, Dreyfus was accused and convicted of having betrayed military secrets. He was sentenced to life. He was finally proven innocent and pardoned in 1906.] They were just little booklets, but what stories! I remember I left tons of those little books behind when I left Lomza.

Father died in 1927. He was 57, and he had a lung disease. I was in the hospital at the time, because I was also very sickly. I remember that my brother came to get me, but the doctor didn’t want to let me go, because it was the second time that year that I’d been hospitalized for rheumatism. The first time it was my groin, the second time it was my knees, and the doctor didn’t want me to have to come back a third time. It was in April, just before Pesach, and it was cold and wet. And if I’d come down with the same thing for a third time, it would have become chronic. But Mother begged him to let me come home. She had to sign a declaration that I wouldn’t go to the funeral, but I had to see him! And I saw Father laid out at home, and I began to sob. When they took his body away for the funeral, they left me with some neighbors who kept an eye on me to make sure I didn’t go out anywhere, not even out in the courtyard.

When Father died, Bencak and Zlata went to Warsaw to live with their late mother’s family. They knew Mother wouldn’t be able to support them. Even with just the three of us children it was hard. Mother arranged for me to live in the Jewish orphanage. That was lucky, because it meant she could take care of my sisters, Leja and Esterka. The orphanage was on Senatorska Street, in a nice building of its own. That building is still standing. On the ground floor there was a room where they had prayers, and a dining room, kitchen and storage room. On the second floor there was a playroom and the office, and the sleeping quarters were on the third floor. I remember there was a Jewish school on the same street, and between the school and the orphanage was a hospital.

Life in the orphanage was nice. The house-father was nice. Everything was done Jewish-style, and in accordance with the religion. In the morning when we got up we had to wash, then off to the prayer room for morning prayers. Then afternoon prayers and evening prayers – we had to pray three times a day. We ate all our meals together in the dining room. And the cooks had some trouble with me, because I kept finding hairs in my soup. After I pointed it out a few times, it stopped happening – apparently they started wearing headscarves. On the big holidays we got together with the children from another orphanage and celebrated them together.

I went to the cheder, which was right next door. I was very inquisitive in school – I was always asking: ‘why?’ But in religion the dogma is what it is and you can’t ask why. So the teacher was always sending me to stand in the corner – that was my turf. He said I was a big free-thinker, and that I could learn everything if I wanted to, but I didn’t always want to. They even wanted to send me to a yeshivah for rabbinical studies, but I didn’t want to go. But I often feel that orphanage did me a lot of good. I don’t know how Mother arranged for me to live there, and if she hadn’t, I would have turned into a street kid. Being a boy, it would have been easy to run wild, but in the orphanage there was discipline and order. And I saw my mother and sisters often – I went home for dinners, usually on Saturday, because during the week I didn’t have time, what with the cheder, and after classes there was homework to do.

I had my bar mitzvah ceremony in the orphanage as well. I remember there were several of us 13-year-old boys and we all had our bar mitzvah ceremony together. And after that, when I didn’t want to study anymore, I had to leave the orphanage and start working. While I was still in the orphanage they apprenticed me to a tailor. That was a first-class craftsman! But I didn’t take to that line of work, and he got rid of me. Then they turned me over to another one. I learned fast there; after a month I was better than the other boy, who had been there a whole year. But instead of teaching me, the craftsman sent me shopping with his wife, to carry the bags, so I ran away from there. But I had to go back home – I was about 14 or 15 then.

When I returned home, Mother gave me 25 zlotys. That tided me over for a while, but I had to start working. First I went to work for a cap-maker – a craftsman who made caps, partly by hand and partly by machine. I helped him make caps for veterans of World War I and the Polish-Bolshevik War. But later he didn’t have any more work for me, so I was unemployed again. Finally one of the orphanage board members – a shoemaker by trade – needed to hire a boy, and he hired me, and taught me the trade. I worked as a shoemaker up until the war. First for that craftsman, and then for another one, whose workshop was in a building that had a plum-jam factory in the basement. And that’s why I don’t like plum jam – I saw too much of it being made. Exactly what he did with those plums I don’t know, because I didn’t look inside, but I remember to this day all those plums lying on the street.

In 1935 I got very sick. It turned out to be pneumonia. I remember that Mother didn’t allow them to use cupping glasses on me , and I don’t know the reason, but the doctor said later that that saved my life. I was very weak and had to stay in bed. And this was in July, the time of year when everyone went swimming. I always went swimming in the Narwia [the river that flows through Lomza] at that time of year, but that year I couldn’t. At one point I started coughing up blood. Mother was working in the other room, and I called her, and she sent for the doctor right away. When he came he said I was out of danger, that now I’d get better. And not long after that I was on my feet again. And I quietly got dressed one day and went to my aunt’s house – the aunt who married Wirenbaum. I was still very weak, but I wanted to go somewhere. So Mother went hunting for me, and when she found me she yelled at me, because I hadn’t let her know where I was. That was a serious illness, but somehow I managed to pull through.

Not long after that I went to live with my uncle – my mother’s brother, who was a shammash in the Jewish community in Jedwabne. There was a job waiting for me there. I worked and had meals at the master craftsman’s place, and slept at my uncle’s. I was in Jedwabne for a few months. I don’t remember the town itself very well; I know there was a synagogue, but a much smaller one than in Lomza – more like a prayer room. I didn’t have much contact with the Jewish community; I went back to Lomza for holidays, except once, when the boss and his family went out of town for Yom Kippur and he asked me to keep an eye on his apartment. I don’t remember my uncle very well anymore either. I don’t remember his first name; his surname was Friedmann. He had a short beard, trimmed to a point. He didn’t have payes. His son studied at the yeshivah , and I remember that once he spent a few days with us in Lomza, and I saw how he shaved. He made lather from some special powder that burned the hair, then he spread it on and removed it with a little stick, because he wasn’t allowed to use a razor.

The one thing about Jedwabne that has stayed in my memory is the anti-Semitism. When I was going back to my uncle’s from work I had to go through the town square. And there were Polish kids sitting on the steps there. Once when I was passing, they threw a cap at me. It landed by my feet, so I kicked it and kept going. And the next thing I knew I was surrounded. I didn’t stop to think, just punched one of them in the mouth and started running away. Then they started throwing rocks at me. So I picked one up and threw it at them, and ran to the other side of the street so their rocks wouldn’t hit me. And then one of them saved me. I don’t remember his name – I know his brother was a communist. He calmed the others down. Then they demanded that I hand over my knife – they thought I’d wounded one of them with a knife. I showed them my hand with a bleeding finger that I’d cut when I punched the guy in the mouth, and I told them that that was my knife. They calmed down then. But there was a lot of anti-Semitism in the town. [Editor’s note: Following the publication of Jan Tomasz Gross’s book ‘Neighbors’, which revealed that Poles had carried out a pogrom on the Jewish population in July 1942, Jedwabne was stigmatized and has become a sort of symbol of the cruel anti-Semitism of provincial Poland.]

When father had died and I’d come back home after four years in the orphanage, we lived on Dluga Street in Lomza. That was our last apartment – we lived there until the Nazis drove us out. It was on the ground floor, in an annex; we had a very small room and a kitchen. I remember that when we had a houseguest – for example my sister or brother from Warsaw – I’d sleep under the table so they could have my bed. After all, I wasn’t about to share a bed with my mother or my sisters! It wasn’t what you’d call luxurious.

I had a few friends in Lomza, and sometimes we’d get together for a drink, to celebrate something, for example new tailor-made clothes. I remember that two friends – also Jews – and I all had new clothes made at about the same time, and we wanted to celebrate. And since they lived on the outskirts and I lived in the center of town, we celebrated at my place. I remember that was the first time my sister Leja ever drank vodka – and she downed a whole glass at once! And she wasn’t drunk; she just laughed at us. I was about 20 years old then, and she was about 18.

There were other ways of having fun too. There were two movie theaters in town, and we went to the movies. Most of them were in Polish, but there were Yiddish films too. I remember a movie called Ben Hur – that was in Yiddish. The first time I went to the movies my brother took me. That was just after my father’s death, but before my brother went away. I was about nine years old then. My brother was working in Lomza then. I don’t remember the title, but it was some kind of war film – some soldiers with pikes came on the screen, and I got scared and hid under the seat. And I told my brother we were lucky there was a pane of glass [between us and the soldiers]. I didn’t know they couldn’t see us from there. And he laughed and said it was called a screen. But it was my first trip to the movies! There was also a friend called Aaron Ladowicz – I'll never forget him until the day I die. His father was a shoemaker, and he worked with my brother. Right after a movie, he could always sing all the songs from it perfectly. What a memory he had!

There were also various Jewish youth organizations in Lomza. For example the ‘shomers’ – Hashomer Hatzair 5. They had their get-togethers in a separate building – it was open almost every day from 5pm. They had different lectures, Jewish ideas, but also dances and parties. I signed up as a member there, to stay off the streets. I remember that was where I ended my career as a caretaker. I was supposed to make sure everything was cleaned up and so on. And in the basement of the building, some fruit dealer had a warehouse, and there were apples in it. Everything was behind a grate, but we got ourselves a stick and put a nail in the end of it. And every day he lost two or three apples.

I met my fiancee at the ‘shomers’. Her name was Judis Fuchs and she had beautiful eyes – blue ones. I still remember her eyes – to this day I’ve never seen any like them. She was younger than me – born in 1920 or 1921. Her father was a porter: he hung around the town square with all his ropes waiting until something needed hauling. My mother didn't like it, but I wanted to marry Judis. I promised her we’d get married, but only after I got out of the army, because a man who hadn’t been in the army was nothing but a jerk-off.

I didn’t take much interest in politics. I didn’t belong to any party, just – I don’t remember who talked me into it, but I joined Hahalutz 6. That was a leftist organization. But just before the war broke out I resigned from it, because they were getting ready to go to Israel [Palestine], and I didn’t want to. I had a girlfriend here, and we were engaged, and anyway I couldn’t leave my mother alone with just my sisters.

I remember that I liked to work out. In Lomza there was a Jewish athletics club called the Maccabees [see Maccabi World Union] 7 and there were training sessions there every day. They were run by a sports champion who had even been in the Olympics – I’ve forgotten his name. They weren’t professional training sessions, just simple exercises. I was stopped pretty often by the Polish secret police then, because I would leave the house in the evening with a little package, and they thought my sister had come and that I was handing out some sort of illegal communist leaflets. Then I started taking a different route, in order to avoid them, but it was too far to go, so I thought: ‘so let them check me.’

The Maccabi club in Lomza was quite good, especially in soccer. When there was a match with the Maccabees and the LKS – the Lomza Sports Club, in which only Poles played – the stadium was always full. Because the Jews were playing the Poles. And the Maccabees frequently won. I remember they had some good players – three brothers named Jelen. The youngest of them ran so fast his feet barely touched the grass. Once during a half-time he heard that the Poles wanted to rough him up good to eliminate him from the game, and that the coach was going to take him out of the game just to protect him. So he ran out onto the field and rested there during the half-time, so that the coach wouldn’t replace him. And his brother – I don’t remember if it was the oldest or the middle one – once kicked the ball so hard that the goalkeeper slammed into the goal along with the ball. When a match was held on a Saturday, there were always Hassidim [see Hasidism] 8 standing at the [stadium] gates in their payes trying to stop Jews from going to the game, because it’s not permitted on Saturday. But hardly anyone listened to them. I remember the stadium was on the road into Lomza from Piatnica, a village north of Lomza. It was a really beautiful stadium.

Everywhere we lived, both before and after my father’s death, it was always the same: all Jews, except for a Polish caretaker. Most of the Jews were traders or craftsmen. I remember that one family had a windmill; that was on the way to Lomzyca. On Senatorska Street a Jew named Golabek had a mill, but an electric one, not a windmill. One Jew also had a sawmill; one had a brewery, another a textile factory. Then there was the Mirage Cinema – the owner of that was a Jew too. There were lots of Jewish shops. And on Sundays Jews sometimes did some stealthy business in their shops, by the back door, since they couldn’t open officially. [Working on Sundays was prohibited by law to accommodate the Christian majority.] Even Jews told a joke about how one Jew asks another: ‘How’s business?’ The other tells him that he loses money every day. So the first one is surprised – how come he hasn’t gone bankrupt?! The shopkeeper explains that he has to close on Sundays, so he doesn’t lose money then, and it all comes out even.

Relations between Poles and Jews varied. When there was some kind of holiday, for example Corpus Christi Day and there was a procession, Jewish kids were kept at home. [On Corpus Christi Day Catholic churches traditionally organize a street procession, during which prayers are said at four altars set up along the route.] And I think that was right, because they only would have gotten in the way. But there was a lot of anti-Semitism at times. There were two movie theaters in Lomza: the Mirage, which was Jewish, and the Reduta, which was owned by a Pole. But Jews went to both and made up the majority of the audience. Then the NDs [National Democrats, see Endeks] 9 set up a picket line around the Reduta and only let Poles in. And the place was full of empty seats. The cinema owner had to bribe them – 2 zlotys for philanthropic purposes – to get them to stop the picketing so that Jews could go in again.

Another time they stood in front of Jewish shops and didn’t want to let Poles go in. Their motto was ‘stick with your own kind’. It was a market day, and a lot of country people came after they’d sold their own wares, and they wanted to buy something: because they knew a Jew wouldn’t cheat them, and that they’d get better goods cheaper, and even get things on borg [Yiddish for credit] sometimes. But the NDs didn’t want to let them in. So the farmers went to their wagons and got their T-bars and drove the NDs off. It was the same when the NDs formed a picket not far from a company that a Jew owned, but where only Poles worked. They sorted old second-hand clothes there and packed them up for alterations. And all these workers came to that Jew and said they wanted a short break to straighten something out. So he let them go, and they went and beat up those NDs, and that was the end of it.

I had some adventures myself. Once I was walking down the street and a Jewish guy tells me not to go further, because some NDs are hanging about. But I kept going and they didn’t recognize me as a Jew, because I didn’t look at all Jewish, mostly because I was blond. Another time I was walking with a Hasid dressed in Jewish clothes, and we saw some Polish country boys sitting a little way off. I told him not to say anything, and we kept going. They were saying to each other: ‘Look! That Jew-boy is walking with one of us!’ And they didn’t touch us. I was thinking to myself: ‘You fuckers, it’s not one Jewboy, it’s two!’ Another time I was walking along the sidewalk by myself, and there were two guys on the other side. I heard them arguing about whether or not I was a Jew. And a moment later one of them ran up to me from behind and tried to kick me in the butt. I didn’t see him, just felt that he was behind me, and I instinctively reached out and grabbed his leg. And he fell down – could have cracked his skull open. And then the other one said to him: ‘I told you he’s one of us!’

When Hitler had come to power and the war was near, people talked about it. The NDs were on his side. But then some of them came to their senses and said that Hitler had used the Jews to distract them, and armed himself and now he was going to kill them. But I thought to myself: ‘You were on Hitler’s side, so now you’ve got what’s coming to you.’ By 1939 anyone who had a radio was listening to it and talking about it. I spent time at Hahalutz – they had a radio, so I heard Hitler bellowing sometimes. Then in August I came up for army recruitment. I was glad, because after the army I was going to marry my fiancee. I went to the commission and they gave me a check-up. I weighed 48.2 kilos then, but I was healthy. The doctor listened to my chest and I was classified as Category A. [Category A is the highest, indicating full fitness for active military duty.] I remember there was a rich guy’s son with me – he had a lung condition.

I chose the infantry, and I knew that in April of the next year I’d be on active duty. So I went back to work. But that was August [1939], and the newspapers were already saying that there might be a war. Then there was some sort of provocation – they wrote about that too. And one day – I think it was a Friday – I was at work as usual. We didn’t have a radio there, but I went home for dinner and someone said the war had started. I had something to eat at home, and went back to work, and the boss said ‘there’s no work anymore – there’s war’.

When the Germans were close to Lomza, I ran to the barracks and said I was a recruit. They told me the Germans were close and that I should escape, and that if need be they’d find me and induct me. So I escaped to Bialystok. Some very distant relatives of ours lived there – some kind of cousin of Mother’s. I never knew them at all – that was the first and last time I ever saw them. I spent a few days there and moved on. I remember that the Germans chased me all the way to Suprasl [10 km northeast of Bialystok]. I went back to Lomza, where my mother and sisters had stayed. The Germans were in Lomza for ten days and then our ‘allies’ came [see Annexation of Eastern Poland] 10.

I nearly wound up in the Russian police force. I was asked to join, but I thought I didn’t know Polish well enough, and besides, how could I boss around the old [Polish] authorities? So I escaped again, heading toward Bialystok. And then when the Germans came back, we all wound up in the Lomza ghetto. But I don’t want to talk about that. I lost my mother and two sisters there, and it’s too hard for me to talk about it. Too painful. I only know that when the ghetto was liquidated [The ghetto that was formed in July 1941 was liquidated in November 1942, and the surviving residents were transported to Zambrow (20 km south of Lomza) and from there to the camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau], I managed to escape and I hid in the home of a communist in the village of Zawady [3 km south of Lomza]. And that’s where I hung out until the liberation.

The only ones who survived the Holocaust were my brother Benzir and my sister Zlata, from Father’s first marriage. Zlata was in prison just outside Warsaw when the war broke out, and when the fighting drew near, the prison staff unlocked the criminals’ cells so they could escape. But they broke down the doors of the political prisoners’ cells and they all escaped together. My sister managed to walk all the way to Warsaw, which still hadn’t been surrounded. Then – I don’t know how – she and my brother both managed to escape to Lithuania. And they lived through the whole war there.

The rest of the family died. Mother and my two other sisters, Leja and Esterka, died in the ghetto. I don’t know what happened to my uncle from Jedwabne – I reckon he was burned in that barn along with the others. The only others left were the ones who had emigrated to the USA before the war. That uncle – I don’t remember his name – sent me a letter right after the war, asking me to describe the political and economic situation in Poland, and I was so stupid that instead of writing back to him, I turned the letter over to the authorities as attempted espionage. [Editor’s note: In the early years of the communist regime in Poland, every attempt at contact with people abroad, especially in the US, was likely to be regarded as attempted espionage.] And just think – he might have arranged for me to come and live with him.

I stayed on in Zawady for a bit after the liberation, and then headed west, to the Recovered Territories [see Regained Lands] 11, because I no longer had any home or family. And that's how I got to Legnica. That was in 1946. I remember that there were a lot of Jews here. Later on, during the Sinai War 12, there was a joke going around about Nasser threatening that if Israel didn’t stop fighting he’d bomb the world’s three biggest Jewish towns: Legnica, Swidnica and Walbrzych. There was a Jewish committee, and I went there first, because where else was I supposed to go? That committee, it was like all the Jewish organizations – whoever was involved most closely with it got the most out of it. There were various gifts from abroad coming in – clothes, materials, money. They’d sort through it and keep the best stuff for themselves and give the worse stuff away to whomever they wanted. I never got anything. Once, I remember, they sent me to Wroclaw to pick up some kind of parcel. It was a great big package, with all kinds of things in it. And the train was so crowded I had to ride on the roof with that package, and every time we went under a viaduct I had to lie flat to keep my head from being knocked off. And I brought the package to the committee, and they didn’t give me anything! But I didn’t care. I had some clothes to wear, and enough money to feed myself.

At first, just after I arrived, I worked for the Russians, in a tank factory [some Soviet military industry were moved after the war to Poland]. That’s what we called it, but really it was a repair service that had been at the front and then, after the war, remained in Legnica. I didn’t want to work as a shoemaker anymore, because there was work only in the fall and spring. I pretended I was an electrician and they believed me. And I became an electrician due to that ‘ailment’ of mine – just one look and I get the hang of things. [Mr. Umow likes to joke about his inborn ability to learn.] My son and my uncle have that too. I became the staff electrician. At work I often talked with one Russian who had been at the front when Lomza was captured. He told me they had huge losses, and I asked him which side they’d taken the city from. When he told me it was from the north, I told him it would have been far easier from the south, the way Lomza was taken in World War I – that’s what older people in Lomza had told me. He said it was too bad I hadn’t been there with them, because I would have been a hero. Later on they wanted to put me on a pay-per-job system, and I quit – as a staff electrician I was mostly waiting for something that needed doing, and how much would I earn for spending five minutes to change a fuse?! Then they came to my house a few time and wanted me to come back to work – they’d put me back on salary and even give me a raise. But I thought: ‘The Russians are here today, but they’ll be gone tomorrow, and I’ll lose my job then anyway.’

I found another job almost immediately. A vacancy had just come up at a vinegar plant and I went to work there as an electrician. Then they merged the vinegar plant with a winery, and the chief engineer told me to go to the winery, because it was bigger. When I looked at those apples lying on the ground and pouring down the flue onto the production line, it reminded me of that plum-jam factory from before the war that made me stop liking jam. The same thing happened with apples. I worked there for a little while, then went to work for the police. I’d rather not say how that came about. I was in the secret police, in intelligence. I was trained in Wroclaw, and then worked in Legnica. I didn’t wear a uniform – I could only put it on on a superior’s orders. Later they wanted to transfer me to Wroclaw. I agreed on the condition that I be given an apartment. They gave me a transfer, but no apartment. I didn’t earn enough to have two homes, so I commuted to Wroclaw. Fortunately one decent officer told me to submit a petition and that they’d transfer me back to Legnica. And I wound up working in the office in charge of identification cards, and that’s where I ended my career.

For a long time I had almost no contact with the Jewish community. While I was working, I didn’t have time to go to the community or to the TSKZ 13. Anyway it was a long way from my home. It was only after I retired that I started attending both. Because I didn’t feel like cooking, and I could always have dinner at the Jewish community, and chat a bit. And at the TSKZ there were sometimes concerts or other events.

In the 1960s I thought about going to Israel. But my wife messed that up for me. There were these two Jewish merchants that I used to borrow money from frequently. I always paid them back, so they were happy to lend to me. And without saying anything to me, my wife turned them in for gambling. And she came to my office, saying I was going to get a reward. I bawled her out for butting into other people’s business. I wanted to get it all straightened out, but it was too late, and they put them both in prison. As soon as they got out they emigrated to Israel. And – well, I was afraid to go there, because I was sure they thought that it was me who had turned them in, and if I ran into them there, who knows what might happen. So I stayed in Legnica. And I still owed one of them 200 zlotys. I still haven’t paid him back.

I never personally experienced much anti-Semitism in Legnica. When someone tried making comments, I’d just shut his mouth for him. Only one time, when I was in Walbrzych visiting a woman and went to church with her, I heard a sermon where some bishop – I don’t remember where he was from – said that when Jesus was asked if he was a Jew, he had said no; but a week later the church was celebrating Jesus’s circumcision [Mr. Umow is referring to the celebration of Jesus being presented in the Temple on the eighth day after his birth.] And I didn’t personally experience anything when those events in 1968 took place [see Gomulka Campaign] 14. Just one Pole asked me why I didn’t leave the country. And he even proposed that we exchange ID papers, so that he could leave in my place. Another Pole told me that in the art school in Legnica, one of the teachers locked the Jewish students in a room and kept watch to make sure nothing happened to them. That was his duty as a human being. And I also heard about one Jew who left the country then – he came back to Poland later and wanted to put flowers on Gomułka’s grave, to thank him for kicking him out. Because he’s doing very well now.

I didn’t belong the PZPR 15. There was a time when everyone had to belong, but then they threw me out, and took away my membership card. I don’t want to talk about how that came about. Later they told me to submit a petition and they’d take me back in, but I didn’t want to. Once when I was sitting in the army canteen two Russian soldiers sat down with me, and I explained to them that I agree with communism but don’t belong to the Party. Why? Because when the committee secretary or some other member steals things, and I have to call him ‘comrade’ – if he’s a thief that makes me one too. I’d rather call him ‘mister’. I remember that those two looked at each other, bought me a shot of vodka and left, saying I should forget they’d ever been there. I understood – I knew that just for hearing something like that they could end up in Siberia.

I met my wife here in Legnica, while I was working for the police. She was Polish. I found out her life story too late – I should have left her sooner, but as it was our daughter had already been born and I didn’t want to abandon her. My wife had told me that a German had lived in her family’s home, which was in a town near Tarnowo called Mosciki. I sometimes said to her: ‘what, he couldn’t live anywhere else?!’ And later it turned out that she’d lived with that Nazi! I got a divorce in the end, but far later than I should have. Anyway I’d rather not rehash it.

My daughter Grazyna was born in 1951, and my son Bogdan two years later. Both of them grew up knowing they have Jewish ancestry. My son didn’t and still doesn’t have any contact with the Jewish community, but my daughter keeps in touch with it. She goes there for dinners, sometimes helps out when it’s needed. Sometimes when there’s a holiday she helps get everything ready. She never takes any money for it, and of course they have to pay the cooks and so on. My daughter lives on her own; she has three children, and two of her sons are away from home. She’s on public assistance and has a hard time too. My son lives here with me. After he married and he and his wife moved in, they lived in the little room; now I’ve given them the big one and live in the little one myself.

My brother and sister, Benzir and Zlata, stayed on in Warsaw after the war. I used to go there on vacation pretty often; I even had a picture of us together not long after the war, at the unveiling of the monument to the ghetto heroes. But that picture’s lost too. My brother had a daughter named Lila – a very pretty girl. She was born just before the war, in 1939. He sent her to Israel when she was a teenager, and then he and his wife emigrated to Australia. And right away he arranged for his daughter to come there too, because he didn’t want her to serve in the army, and in Israel if a girl is 18 and single she goes to the army. [In fact marital status is not a criterion. Only girls from Orthodox Jewish families do not serve in the army.] It was at the beginning of May 1963 that they left the country. And my sister died that same month.

My sister worked for the Russians after the war – she was always hanging around those little Red sweethearts. She even wanted my daughter to come and live with her in Warsaw, but my wife wouldn’t agree to it and I didn’t insist. Now I regret that – maybe she’d be better off now. Back then in May 1963 when Zlata died – I remember I came [to Warsaw] on the 3rd to say good-bye to my brother. Zlata was already in the hospital then; I remember that she didn’t want me to kiss her, because she had jaundice and was worried about my children. And that was my last conversation with her. On 16th May I was at home, and the doorbell rings. I open the door, and it’s a telegram [informing Mr Umow of his sister’s death]. I remember it was 5:05pm. When I read it I started bawling like a child. I didn’t have any family left. When my sister died, I got a letter from my brother, written in Yiddish. And my wife – a Pole – mislaid it somewhere and I couldn’t even write back, because the address was lost. And I haven’t heard anything [from him] since. My sister’s medals were left to me – a bronze service cross and a Work Banner Second Class [order of merit awarded by the state], the documents as well as the medals themselves. When I worked for the police some guy told me that I could wear those medals on national holidays. I told him no – I could wear what I’d earned myself, but I wasn’t going to parade around in my sister’s medals for her accomplishments.

And so I live from day to day. Every day I’m prepared for it to be my last. I’m 86 years old already, working on 87. I can barely see anymore, not even my own writing. I’ve already got a plot waiting for me in the Jewish cemetery in Legnica; all that’s left is to move in. But I don’t mind, because the one thing I’m sure of is that I’ll live until I die.

Glossary:

Interviewee: Jan Sokal

Lodz

Poland

Interviewer: Judyta Hajduk

Date of interview: March 2006

We met with Mr. Jan Sokal in his home on Gandiego Street in Lodz, where we talked for many hours. Mr. Sokal is 91 years old. In spite of his slight stature he is a very vivacious and active man. He does housekeeping by himself and takes care of his wife who is a blind person. Our first meetings went on in the atmosphere of limited confidence. Mr. Sokal was very particular about text authorization just after the first draft. As time went by and the succeeding biography versions were completed, our relations became more and more friendly. During one of the meetings Mr. Sokal confessed he had been dreaming about writing a 'Saga of the Sokal Family' and because of that he agreed for the interview. Mr. Sokal often digresses, develops sideplots with pleasure, frequently does not finish sentences or skips subjects, and this is a reason for so many editor’s notes in the text.

Mr. Sokal didn’t want to let us publish the present pictures of him and his family, but with pleasure he made his prewar pictures accessible to us. He hopes that thanks to Internet someone of his friends from the old days will contact him in Lodz.

I rather didn’t know my [grandparents] from my father's, Natan Sokal [1860-1938] side. Some gentleman used to come, a short Jew, bearded, and his name was Fuks. Where he [used to come] from I don’t know, probably, I suppose, from somewhere in Rawa Ruska [small town, ca. 100km north-east of Przemysl, today in Ukraine], since Father was from there. [There] was such a custom that a freeholder [of the land] would give family names. [And my father's family was given the name] Sokal. [That name] is not popular. Here in Lodz, [there is] one, some doctor. [I know that, because] I used to receive his mail for a certain period of time. [But I] have never spoken to him.

My father probably came from somewhere in [the vicinity of] Rawa Ruska. I can only suspect he was born in 1860. No one in our family was keeping such a calendar, right. He was a normally shaved, cropped man. [He did not wear a beard]. I have never seen him [having a beard]. Father was a townsman. He worked until year 1928. He was a hired employee in a certain beer wholesale firm, right. He was a collector. He would travel with a carter and a load of beer and would distribute it [the beer] to restaurants, and it was his job. During those times it was a relatively well paid [job]. I suppose [so], but having such a big family wasn’t easy. And later, during that time when our family went into financial troubles, he lost his job. Father, I remember, liked to smoke a lot. [He kept smoking] until the end of his life. He apparently [started to smoke] before the war, when he was [working] in a propinacja [archaic Polish: a nobleman's monopoly, sales of alcohol beverages] of vodkas. [Father] was not a drunkard, right. No! But he did not scorn from alcohol. When he used to work, I remember him, he would return [home] frozen in winter, in the kitchen he had such ‘tens’, small [liquour-glasses, 10ml], like a thimble, [and he would drink one].

[Father] was a good expert in the history of the Jewish nation and religious matters. He had [knew] a rabbi, and Father attended his services. The rabbi's name was Herszel. When I was very young I was there [with my father] several times, lead by the hand. It was just an apartment, and people used to come there. There was a man who had rabbinical, national knowledge. And Father was respected by him, too. Because my father was strong [in that knowledge]. He knew it through and through, right. That’s how we used to say, in our family. And he used to live in accordance to that religious knowledge. All the holidays that existed [he would go to pray]. I remember, as long as I was at home, since later I flew away too, he was observant of that, [but] he was normal. As normal civilized people are dressed, [same about him] he did not distinguish himself. [Mr. Sokal wants to emphasize his father was 'civilized', in other words that he was not fanatical, not a Hasid; pious, but a progressive man]. He knew the Polish language very well. He died probably in 1938. I was already in Cracow back then.

[I do not remember my grandparents from my mother’s side].  Simply, I have never seen them in my life. I only heard some stories about them. My mother Bronislawa Sokal [?-1933] came from the Schorrs, exactly the Przemysl Schorrs. [See: Mojzesz Schorr]2. The whole family from my mother’s [side] came [from Przemysl] [town ca. 400km east of Cracow]. Grandfather's name was Ben Cijon. That was his name. My grandmother's name… [I don’t remember].

I knew my uncles [from my mother’s side]. They were my mother's brothers. They used to come to us [to the house] until the Soviet-German war broke out [1941]. They also lived in Przemysl. Their family name was same as Mom's maiden name, Schorr. They were rather intelligent people, accountants by occupation. I knew my uncle Dawid by name. The eldest. I remember another uncle, his name was Jozef [Schorr]. [He] was a kind of a story-teller. He used to reminisce about the war time [WWI], because he did his military service in the Austrian [Austro-Hungarian] forces. He could talk about the history quite vividly. There was probably a lot of fiction in it, but [I listened to it willingly]. And he lived for a long time. I still saw him in 1943 in Lwow. I had one more uncle. His name was Oskar Schorr. When I was a little boy, he was already a lawyer, right, and he was a very respected man. His story is a bit convoluted. I know Mom was very unhappy [because] of him. That is, because of the life he led. Because he married some lady, a girl, who came somewhere from tsarist Russia. She was a refugee from the Bolsheviks. And it was something terrible for my mom [who] came from such a traditional family. [My mom's family] was very national-Jewish by ancestry. Mom was raised according to this spirit, [filled with] this faith. [To her] it was a shock. How could it be? He's from such a noble [traditional, Jewish] home, and she's from some tsarist, not-Jewish one. Terrible sin! I know, when my mother learned about that, she was trying to find him in order not to allow for that misalliance, right. This was a tragedy in her life. I also knew Fajga, my mother's youngest sister, a beautiful girl. She got married late, to Mr. Lewski. A handsome man. He was a trade agent. [They had] a little boy [son]. [He was] a beautiful boy. They all perished [in Holocaust].

[My mother’s first name was] Bronislawa. Broncia, Bronia, something like that. She was slim, slender. She didn’t wear a wig, [she had] long hair. [She used to dress] normally, in a middle-class manner. She did housekeeping and looked after the children. It seems Mom's cooking was kosher. I suppose so. But I can’t characterize it. [She used to cook] very tasty. I fed only on that cuisine. [Mom worked] till late, I remember. And she was doing everything herself. Such a martyr. As the girls [my sisters] were growing up, they were surely helping her, they were involved, forced to do that. I know that as a young boy I also had my duties, because I was strong enough. I used to carry water. From a well, of course. I carried water since early childhood. I carried two buckets normally in hands. And it was not that I carried it from a building to home, but it [was] a good bit of the way, half a kilometer at least. And a lot of water was used. [Especially] when washing took place. Mother was an amazing [woman]. Good. Loving. Knowing how to raise [children]. Not old-fashioned, absolutely not. If I came to blows with someone, she used to say: 'Your fault, if you take up with such bounders, it's all right. Don’t go barging over there'. Something like that. She was an angel, not a human being. She died probably in 1933, I don’t remember exactly. She had a lot of problems, those life experiences related to certain matters that afflicted our home.

 [My parents] were not politically engaged. Absolutely not. They had no interest in that. Well, Father sometimes looked at the [socialist] literature my brothers had. But [my father] was a man who had broader horizons. Parents didn’t really lead a social [life]. I don’t remember them having [many friends]. Whereas, each of us [their children], had friends, boys and girs. And obviously we kept in touch within the family. I had many cousins in Przemysl, with the same last name Schorr, because all of them lived here [in Przemysl] with us.

This town of mine, [Przemysl], was not that big. In the pre-war times, it was also not that small, because it was a town with a population of 65 thousand citizens, right. Located beautifully. In Lwow province. Przemysl is about 100 km from Lwow. And even nowadays Przemysl is a border city. Over there, not too far from Przemysl, about 3-4 kilometers there is the Ukrainian border [Editor’s note: the border is ca. 10km from Przemysl]. Lovely foot-hills land, with water. There is the San River. I learned to swim in that San, in early childhood.

A modern city. There were, I remember, big factories. Tools and agricultural machinery factory, for example the 'Field Factory'. It was its name. The owner was a Jew, Klagsbald. [The biggest factory in town. Established in 1925 as 'Field Machinery Factory and Iron Foundry Joachim Klagsbald & Sons'. Located on Zyblikiewicza Street,  produced agricultural machinery, sewing machines, bicycles etc. In 1938 the ‘Field Factory’ employed 150 workers. Joachim Klagsbald was an active member of the Zionist organization.] And the second one, big for Polish conditions back then, the Rindeg's [factory]. It was a kind of a home factory. Of children's toys. [Also] Jewish. [Most probably 'Minerwa', producing mainly mechanical toys. Established by Jozef Reiner, Town Council councilor. In 1938 it employed about 100 people.] Furthermore there was a Gorlinger sawmill [Gorlinger & Gottfried Sawmill]. I remember since a brother of one of my friends used to work there.

There were two synagogues [in Przemysl] [Editor’s note: There were four big synagogues in Przemysl before WWII]. I knew them. [Located] fairly close to my place of living. One of them about ten houses ahead. The one [on Slowackiego Street] is still there to this day. And that was the Szynbach's [Editor’s note: Scheinbach’s or New Synagogue, at 15 Slowackiego Street, erected in the years 1910-1918. In 1960-1961 turned into a library.] Beautiful, modern. A big building. It wasn't really radical. There were children choirs and cantors. Young boys, 14 [years old], [who] had beautiful voices, used to sing there. Young folks used to go there regularly. Beside that there was the so called ‘Templum’. [Located] next to San. That ‘Templum’ [was] beautiful. [It looked like] a big hall. Very progressive people [used to go] there. [‘Tempel’, on Jagiellonska Street, erected in the years 1886-1890 as an initiative of the group of so called progressive Jews, demolished by the Germans during WWII.] However, there were [also] a couple of prayer houses, [that] my father loved. I knew the one [Father used to go to].

[From Przemysl I remember] a Jewish cemetery that exists to this day, but it’s a ruin now. [Mr. Sokal most likely refers to the cemetery on Slowackiego Street. Established in 19th century, with a cemetery gate and about 200 tombstones preserved.] I have been there several times, just after the war. [Last time] I was there probably ten years ago. A part of the cemetery with an iron gate was used after the war. It was brought into use. The mazevot were grown over. It would be necessary to dig everything up. My deceased parents lie there, [but] nobody can [tell me where].

On Basztowa Street, somewhat far from the centre of town, at the border of some district, [there was] a Jewish hospital. [Editor’s note: Mr. Sokal most likely means Staszkiewicza Street with a hospital that had been there since 1900. The hospital was supported by the Jewish religious community and the Society of Friends of the Jewish Hospital.] I have a kind of a memento [related to it]. It was an accident. I broke my leg once, when I was a child. [I broke it] when doing sports. I was 10, 12 years old. Obviously, my parents took me to the hospital. They [the doctors] set the bones on that leg back, but not properly. It was in a cast only up to the knee. I didn’t pay any attention to it; I lay in the hospital until it healed up. Friends used to come, look at my leg and laugh: 'What a crescent roll you’ve got here!' Because that leg was kind of like that. I brought it to my parents attention and I lodged a complaint. Indeed, they repeated everything, broke the leg with no anesthesia and put it together again. I was a strong boy, so I could [endure] it all.

Somewhere on Tarnawskiego Street or Dworskiego Street there was a Hebrew gymnasium. [The Hebrew gymnasium organized by the Hebrew Educational Institute in 1927. The school’s first location was in a rented house at 4 Gorna Street (today Grottgera Street). The opening ceremony of the new school building at 15 Tarnawskiego Street took place on 14th October 1928.] I don’t know who supported it. For sure it wasn't a public gymnasium. Young people used to attend it normally and [it was] a school of high standards. My girlfriend used to go to that gymnasium. She was a nice girl. A beautiful blonde, hundred percent. Petka Pater. Yes, it was such a youthful love. Those was early times, even very early. [We were both] in our teens. Maybe 17. For a certain period of time we were very close to each other, right. She completed that gymnasium. And later her history was such that during the war the fate sent her probably somewhere to Asia. After the war I got [information] from my friend that in Trybuna Ludu [‘The People's Tribune’, daily 1948-1990, an official newspaper of the Polish United Worker’s Party] there was a list of people who were looking for their families. Press advertisement. And she [was] among those people. She was searching for [her relatives], she gave her parents’ last name, address. I got interested [in it], took advantage of that opportunity, and sent a letter to her. She came back to Poland after the war. She was with her husband. He was a printer.

Various types of celebrations were organized in town. Each Sunday an orchestra used to play on the market square. Usually military orchestras. There was a lot of greenery there, right, trees [grew] around, nice atmosphere. [I know that since] as a young boy I used to go there with pleasure. Mostly young residents liked [to go there]. I don’t recall those to be any rallies [in a patriotic sense].

I think it’s worth to mention some persons [from Przemysl]. Those were important people who counted [in the town] and in the country. They were Jews by origin. The ones I am mentioning here I knew personally when I was a child. They were [all] excellent professionals, prominent physicians. For example there was Dr. Lieberman [Herman Lieberman (1870-1941), socialist, member of Polish parliament]. He was a noble man. He represented left-wing political opinions. Great, famous activist. A politician on a national scale, parliamentarian from PPS [See Polish Socialist Party]3. Yes, he was very respected by people. Workers were very fond of him, they adored him. Dr. Zustwain was a pediatrician [Editor’s note: most likely Dr. Julius Susswein, one of the most meritorious activists of the Health Preservation Society – TOZ] The Society came into existence in 1927. There were always [a lot of] people ready to join it. He was popular in the Przemysl community, regardless of his nationality. There was also doctor Sohn [one of most meritorious activists of TOZ]. [He] was a physician, an activist. I used to be treated by him. There is even a monument of him in Przemysl, [in] that undestroyed part of the [Jewish] cemetery. Uberal was an excellent dentist. In general he was a nice person and he was popular because of that. All ladies, regardless their date of birth [age], used to go [to him]. Doctor Tirkel was a director of a Jewish hospital in Przemysl, an excellent surgeon. Then, a major socialist activist, also from PPS, was Dr. Ludwik Grosfeld. A lawyer, a counsel for the defense in all those left-wingers’ cases. Moreover, during the war, he was a member of the Polish government in exile. I think he was the Minister of Trade in the Polish government in London. [Editor’s note: 1943-1944 Ludwik Grosfeld was the Minister of Finances in the Polish Government in Exile] And he was also a true-born Przemysl citizen. Sztrudler: a young industrialist in his prime. He was probably about 50 years old. He had a quilt factory. And he was a member of Bund, too. [Editor’s note: most likely Jozef Strudler, an active member of the Jewish Musical-Dramatic Society Juwal, the organization promoting Jewish culture, music, arts, theater. Almost all Jewish intelligence of town was centered around that organization.] There were also several others from Bund.

The Jewish community [in town] was diverse. It consisted of a several shades. A lot of intelligence. Generally, quite a large Jewish intelligence. For example Herszdorfer, a wealthy man, he had a large insurance company. Both his sons were sympathizers of left-wing, of communism, right. [They were men] of Zionist political opinions. I belonged to Zionist youth, Hashomer Hatzair 4. I remember that organization very fondly, because it was my school of maturation. There were a lot of shoemakers, tailors. A lot of noble men, whom I remembered, whom I knew, right.

When it comes to Hasidim, there was the Tajcher family in our house. He [was] a rather venerable gentleman. He had one daughter, if I remember correctly. Later, after she got married, she used to live in Drohobycz [town ca. 200km south-east of Przemysl, today Ukraine]. Beside that the Hirszows were also orthodox Jews. The parents observed tradition; wives wore wigs on their heads. There were also the Frenkls, the Kielcs families. The Kielcs family was poor. There were, at the same time, children, two daughters and a wife. I knew the daughters. One of them was Rozia and the other one was named something else. Lajka, something like that [probably diminutive for Lea]. And he [Mr. Kielc] was a furrier, a craftsman on his own. So there [in an apartment] he had a workshop and he tightened and cut those leathers.

There were rabbis in Przemysl. But I wasn’t familiar with those matters. Over there, where my father used to go [to the prayer house] I knew [the rabbi] by name. [His name was] Herszl. There were such men who used to kill poultry. They were butchers, specialists. They had kosher meat shops. Opposite of our house the Frost [family] [lived]. They were bakers. We often used to buy [from them]. I used to do errands at that shop. During a certain period of time we used to buy bread on credit. I used to go to the shop, he wrote down how much we were due, and so on.

During my life there were no pogroms, no disturbances. Yes, there were some town sections, [like] Pralkowce [Editor’s note: actually a village near Przemysl], where there were hooligans, but one rather did not go there. So personally [I did not experience] any harm.

Some Ukrainians also used to live [near us]. They had their beautiful, representative house. It means a national house. It was a well known house. And their various events [used to take place] over there. And probably meetings [too]. It was located in the right side of the town. I’ve never gone there, but I know something like that existed, and Ukrainian intelligentsia used to center around that. Similarly [there was] a Polish [house]. Located at the other side of San. This was the Workers' House. [It was] owned by the Polish Socialist Party. Mr. Zigman was an administrator there.

[We lived] at 3 Slowackiego Street. And this house still exists. This is a two-storey building, in the centre of Przemysl. [There] was electricity, a sewage system [too], only toilets [were] out on the porch. Each family had access to their own toilet. They took care of it. How many tenants were there [in the building], I’m not certain. Four families on each floor. With us [on the first floor], the landlord lived, the Frenkl family - they had an ironmongery hardware store, wealthy people, the Kielcs – a poorer [family], and we used to live on the first floor, too. And [everyone had] more or less two rooms. So it was a pretty big house. Obviously, on the ground floor, there were shops. Various ones. I remember, the owners of this house were the Schechter family. Their sons-in-law lived on the first floor, next to us, right. [Their last name was] Trajbec, and they had a big store downstairs with newspapers [press], stationery, etc.

My family [occupied] two big rooms and a kitchen. In the kitchen, first of all, there was a big stove. A cupboard was there for sure, a table, but we didn’t use to eat there. And a small room [a pantry] where the housewife used to store all the things necessary for housekeeping. The wash-tub was huge. When laundry was being done, all that took place in the kitchen. Some fat lady [used to come]. [But I] didn’t know the details. Beside that we had no house-maid. During my life, everyone had some kind of chores. No one had an entire single room [for themselves]. I never had a bed of my own. There was no such convenience. During that period of time, I remember, I usually [slept] together with my brother Bernard.

Our home was very progressive, with a fully formed outlook upon life, of left-wing opinions, right, and this often caused trouble for the whole family. Only the Polish language was used at home. Except my father, who knew Hebrew and Yiddish perfectly, I have no doubts, none of my brothers [spoke these languages]. Maybe the older brothers [knew some] because they went through all the periods necessary for that [cheder, grammar school, gymnasium]. Probably, I don’t know that for certain, my parents also spoke Yiddish. Somewhere, it came to my ears. I really doubt other homes knew Polish and used it to such an extent as it was at the home in which I was born.

[At home we would read] lay books, belles-lettres, all contemporary [writers]. And everyone knew [them]. Boys and girls lived to read. It was normal. Nowadays [it is] a special virtue, [but back then] nobody could imagine [otherwise]. My brother Bernard used to eat his dinner with a spoon and read.

There was [also] foreign and Polish [press], that was a rarity not everyone could put their hands on it. It was delivered [by order]. [For example] 'Imprekor' [Inprekor, a trockist, Polish-language paper of 4th International, issued in the 1880s], about the world upper class, criticizing mutual relations between people, right, in different countries. Kind of  left-wing. Uncles used to come [to us] and often read it.

Tradition was [present] all the time regardless of [the home being] progressive. During those early years, holidays were legalized [observed]. Obviously, all holidays, Easter time, when you don’t eat bread, only those matzot, right, and so on. Mostly on Saturdays [Father used to go for prayers]. He really abode by it during holidays, but he never forced us to celebrate it. Such a custom it was and that's it. I don’t know, but it was applied probably because of religious reasons. I don’t remember if anyone deviated in these matters When my parents could afford it, there was that traditional fish [gefilte fish], too. There was [also] a crisis time, [when] [there were no] such fancy dishes. We just couldn’t afford it. Mostly because of those reasons I don’t have such [recollections].

We were four brothers and four sisters [Editor’s note: five sisters; Mr. Sokal doesn’t count the sister who died in her youth]. A typical [Jewish], large, numerous family. Exactly as God told: 'Procreate and give birth.' We kept very close together. These memories of those young family years are still alive in me. Maybe it’s my weakness.

The oldest one at home was probably [my sister]. Her name was Andzia [from Anda]. But she died when she was 21 years old. I don’t even remember her, very foggy. She died of meningitis. The oldest brother's name was Abraham. He was born in 1905. He was a wise man. He was in Poland until 1930. [Abraham] practically directed upbringing at home. He infected us with opinions that the whole family well accepted. Leftist opinions. Where did such opinions come from? I don’t know. He probably died tragically. I don’t know the details of his death. I don’t have specific information and I will never have it in my life. [The next one] was another [sister], who also died in her youth. I cannot even recall her name. Then there was another brother, Bernard [1909-1939]. He was a gymnasium student. I don’t know if he completed [the gymnasium], but he was an educated druggist. Not a pharmacist but a druggist. He [used to sell] hygienic articles [in] a drugstore. The story of his life was also very complicated, right. He got into a lot of trouble. He was sent to prison because of his opinions, because of his activity. It was such radically leftist [activity]. He was severely punished, right, eight years in prison. He didn’t survive the war. He didn’t even return home. He died in 1939 on the way. This I know specifically. Next the twins. My sister Fryda and my brother Emanuel. Both were born in 1910 [or 1911]. Bernard was probably two or three years older then them. [Emanuel] started to attend the gymnasium. Fryda was the same age as him, so she probably [also] began going to school. Emanuel served five years [in prison because of his opinions]. Fryda probably died when the Germans entered Przemysl. In 1941, 1942 I suppose, something like that. Emanuel died after the war in 1951 in the Dzierzynski Antituberculotic Sanitarium in Otwock. I already lived in Glucholazy then. His grave is at the Jewish cemetery in Cracow. [Emanuel used to live in Cracow]. There is a tablet with his [particulars].

Next there was Eugenia. A very nice, beautiful girl. She was always regarded as very [attractive]. Tadzio [Bilan's] wife, right. His family used to live on Zasanie [the part of Przemysl on the left bank of the River San]. [They were]  non-Jews. But it was a healthy, beautiful family. Athletic, all [boys] were football players. And my brother-in-law was a good football player too, he used to play for good clubs. And what is characteristic, they had very Aryan opinions. National ones.

And it’s her [my sister Eugenia’s] correspondence with her husband from the pre-war times that I’ve got. It used to arrive to our home address until 1939. At 3 Slowackiego Street. My entire knowledge, wisdom, traces from the back-then world, [all that] [came to me] [thanks to] my brother-in-law’s brother. One day [after the war], when I was already working on the western territories [in Glucholazy], Leszek [brother of my brother-in-law Tadeusz Bilan] probably brought this treasure of mine to me. Their family also tragically died. [Genia] spent the entire occupation in Poland. She went through [survived] both [occupations]. She probably wasn’t in the ghetto. Genia [from Eugenia] died in Cracow in 1945. In June or July, something like that. There was one more sister, Minka, Mina. Born in 1913 or 1914. Minka was a nurse. She died probably in 1940, something like that. I was born in 1915.

My siblings at home were educated differently. My eldest brother went up to a [Polish] gymnasium. I've got a photo of him dressed in that gymnasium uniform. He normally passed the high-school final exams, and I think he started to study law. At some state university, Polish, but I don't remember where exactly. Maybe in Lwow, because it's close to Przemysl. Minka [for example] completed a co-educational school in Przemysl. Apparently, I suppose, Father could still afford it then. [Later] It was recession, family status did not allow to achieve that luxury.

I never belonged to a political party before the war. I didn't want to, because I knew [what could come out of it]. My two brothers served in prison [because of their opinions]. Bernard and Emanuel. [Yes], I was fascinated by that. I made some attempts, but I was never a member [of any party]. I believed it had [already] ruined our home terribly.

I was sent to a [cheder] to learn Jewish. [The cheder was] not far from my place. Only 10 minutes to the left [from my house]. Several steps [further] to the right Mickiewicza Street [began], Franciszkanska Street to the left. And that cheder was on Slowackiego Street, on that even [side of] the street. The cheder was in an apartment. Those were private issues. I [even] remember the rebbe's surname: Rispler. He was not a rabbi, but a rebbe and he used to teach that [Hebrew] alphabet. A, b, c. He taught in that way. He always showed majesty. And if something was wrong, he’d pinch one's ear. He was a rather venerable man, bearded, and you had to pay him some, because it wasn’t free back then [he accepted children for lessons]. The hours were fixed. I remember, I don't know how old I was [when I attended his lessons], 3, 4 years old. But I didn't stay there long.

And later [at 6 years old] I went to a grammar school. [It was] a normal grammar school.
There was no typical Jewish grammar school over there [in Przemysl]. I used to go
[to a school] on Wodna Street. Again, it was a good bit of a way [from home]. It was a 7-grades school. And what is characteristic, I already learned a foreign language - Ukrainian in that school. [If] the town had, assuming 100 [as the whole population], then the Przemysl community consisted of approximately 30 percent [of each] nationality: Jews, Poles, Ukrainians [Editor’s note: according to the 1931 census there were 63% of Polish, 30% of Jewish and 7% of Ukrainian population in Przemysl]. And it was because of that, I understand, such a requirement. That language [Ukrainian] was common in Przemysl. Religion was [also] at school. I remember, in the grammar school, the religion teacher's name was Weksler. Later, in higher grades, it was professor Gotesman. There was Polish [language], there was mathematics. I completed [the grammar school] and it was my entire education before the war. To my mind, I was not a good student. Kind of average. My school report card [was rather poor].

[I have] very pleasant memories of the school. I had a lot of friends, but I was close [mainly] with Jewish children. I had nothing against [was not biased against] Ukrainians, Poles. Absolutely not. Kids always jerk and hit one another [but] nobody ever told me: 'You Jew'.

As a child I used to go to summer camp. Those were [summer camps] for poorer Jewish children, so called 'two-pennies'. Jewish social organizations took care of it. [Most likely the Health Preservation Society, or Society 'Two Pence']. In the town we’d get onto the rack carts, padded with straw, and they took us 40, 50km away to particular villages. Those were not summer camps with some propaganda. We just simply knew we were a group of Jewish children that went to recover their health. There was healthy food and games of various kinds there. Such children's [games].

I had many weaknesses in my life. Since early childhood I wanted to ride [a bicycle]. But it was a pipe dream. I was not in such an environment where a kid would have a bike. But I liked to ride. [Rebbe's] son, Mr. Rispler, had a bicycle workshop vis-à-vis our apartment. At the same time [there] was a bike rental place and people used to come, pay per hour [and rent]. So [I] used to go there, to that shop, I would clean up those bicycles, and later Mr. Rispler in return would loan me a bike, and I would ride it. It was my whim.

I also liked to ride round on a carousel. The carousel was located somewhere near San.
It was always crowded over there. A barrel organ used to play polkas, mazurkas.
At the bottom of the carousel there was a mechanism. Boys my age pushed it at the
bottom and it would spin around. Children sat down in the saddles on the carousel,
the boys would push it and earn some. Actually they did not earn [money], instead they could later ride for free. [It was] dangerously over there. There were scamps, thieves, such an 'aristocracy'. Parents didn't know [I used to go there]. I was 8, 12, then. But a young person was curious about it then.

Beside that I had another fondness. I wanted to learn to swim, [so] I would go
several kilometers out of town, and over there, on the San River, I would pick up some reed, tie it with a belt to fasten it firmly. I would put it on the water, [there was] a strong current, and I’d let myself downstream. Later I swam up to the town, to Przemysl. That’s how I learned to swim. It doesn't mean I was a master swimmer. But, at any rate, I was not chicken-hearted, and so I learned. Over there [on San] my friends had boats and a canoe rental place, and I was also eager for that. Whenever I had some time, I would learn to paddle a canoe on San. I was probably 14 years old then.

San was my favorite place, where I would find an outlet for my energy. [Near San]
there was Gora Parkowa. There was a castle [Kazimierzowski Castle] over there, [in which] an amateur theater [functioned]. In that castle there was a Fredreum auditorium. Polish theater. [Dramatic Society Fredreum came to existence in Przemysl in 1869. It is the oldest amateur theater in Poland and most likely also in Europe. During the first
several years plays were produced in actors-amateurs' private houses. In 1865-1867 an antique Kazimierzowski Castle of Przemysl was renovated, and in 1884 a big part of it was assigned to the theater.] [I also] used to go there to see those performances. There
was some payment for that but [I don't remember] the details any more.

[Beside that] I used to play soccer. I was probably 15 years old then. I used to go to
a club. Hagibor [Hagibor Przemysl] was its name. It was a 2nd class Jewish
[sports] club. Not the 1st class - record-seeking, but a 2nd class. They assigned [players] to groups according to strength, [play] level. I [was] in the 5-th [or] 6-th group. Over there I got shoes, [special] ones, and we would kick.

We had leather balls. [We’d play] with rag balls somewhere out at courtyards. The older boys, who played there, taught us. They taught us to kick and say: penalties, fouls. I ran well, was able to kick, but it doesn't mean I was a soccer player according to present-day understanding. It's a fantasy. And I, even when I was already working, I had to be at work at 8:30am, I would leave home at 5am and literally run, not walk, I’d run beyond the town to the soccer field. Later [after the training] [I’d] run back to work. It was a great satisfaction for me, because I was quite involved in that.

[Beside that] I was brought up in a Hashomer Hatzair environment. It was a Jewish youth organization. They taught us orienteering. A type of scouting. Beautiful young people [belonged to it], very progressive, very noble people, the most gifted, the most honest people. I grew up in there.

After the 7th grade there were no funds [at home] for further education. They came to the conclusion that I should get a profession fast. Very good, that's fine with me. All the same. I had judicious parents. They were not formally educated, but they wanted to do something for these children. And when I was 13, they sent me for training, to learn to be a dental technician. This was a private apprenticeship.

The apprenticeship, what does that mean? During a day I had to work normally. In the morning I would come in and clean up the dental office. I tempered cement, I tempered
plaster, right, for those secondary tasks for the doctor. And later [if] I had spare time, I would go to the room at the back and there was technology. [The office] looked very well, as it looks nowadays. There was nothing different, except, auxiliary technology is probably different today. And in that room there was a cabinet with tools and dental accessories, those phials, those tools for tooth extraction, for drilling. Big leather dental chair, or leather-like, it doesn't matter. And over there on the dental chair, there was a container for water for patients to rinse their mouths. There was a machine there, with a foot pedal. I stepped on it, while the doctor was repairing teeth. I worked [in that office] for one full year. It was a very good occupation. Splendidly [paid]. [But] Father was dismissed in 1928. [World economic recession; In Poland, year 1935 can be recognized as the end of the recession]. We were badly off at home and we couldn’t afford [to pay for the apprenticeship] any longer. Father used to pay $5 per month for the apprenticeship. It was such an agreement with the owner of the office. Besides, that was hard currency. It was a lot for our conditions. And then I had to do something.

I ended up in a [clothes] store, a very elegant men's clothing salon, not far from my home. Firm Lette [was its name]. Mr. Jozef Lette was the owner. Mainly aristocracy and [especially] Polish [aristocracy] used to dress over there. [Mr. Lette] was a very noble man, very refined. He had a rich past. During the war [WWI] he was in a Russian servitude. I know that since he used to tell [about that] sometimes. He was a lover of cars, but he couldn’t afford to buy a car. On free Sundays he used to hire taxi-drivers [who] parked not far from his store. He would make an appointment on a free Sunday afternoon and would drive [by himself] with them. He was married, his wife was an excellent dressmaker. They used to live on Slowackiego Street, only a couple houses away [from us], right.

First [I] was his trainee. Next, I [worked] in that field. So there was continuity. I got the experience in the clothing trade. Besides, I’ve made use of it in my life. I think he [Mr. Lette] [finally] went bankrupt. [The firm] disappeared, [but] since we were in touch with a firm from Rzeszow, they produced clothes [over there], at the same time they had a big salon, [so] I got a job in Rzeszow in 1936.

Mr. Samuel Tanz was the owner [of the salon]. After one year Mr. Tanz sent me

[back] to Przemysl for some time. He opened a store in Przemysl, I returned there and
managed it for him. I lived [in Przemysl] until a certain year and later went to Cracow. Yes, it was a kind of promotion for me. I was in a big city and Cracow was an interesting town. [Besides,] I wanted to be close to somebody from my family, since my sister lived in Cracow, that Bielan [Tadeusz Bielan's wife, Genia]. [At the very beginning] I stayed with Sister for some time. She helped me find the firm Sztrasberg in Cracow. Over there I also [worked] as a salesman in an elegant [clothes] store.

I remember exactly the moment, when Hitler came to power. I was [already] an
adult man. And just [then] the Family's tragedy began. My brothers were a political
threat for the then-authorities, so as a result they served in prison. Moreover, even before then something began to happen. They alluded that the situation was tense a little. My cousin, related to the Przemysl Schorrs [family], used to live in Germany and they evicted her to Poland in 1933 [or] 1934. And she returned 5.

[I] was in Cracow. The war found me over there 6. [Father] lived in Przemysl. In 1939 Przemysl was divided. The left side of Przemysl, the Germans quartered there, but the right [side of the town] was occupied by the Soviets. At that time the Soviets were on relatively good terms with Poland. They occupied whatever they wanted and they [didn't go] any further. Father lived on that Soviet side. After some time he had to leave [our] apartment because it was too expensive. There was an owner, [so] we had to give it back. [Since that time] he stayed somewhere at private people's accommodations. What  happened over there [with that apartment and its tenants] later, I don't know. All the owners probably died.

In 1939 there was a disaster. Besides the general disaster, that there was the war,
the additional hardship was that the Jewish people were [persecuted]. Fortunately,
the fate somehow spared me. I had another history. I joined the army early, set off into the world and survived the war.

On 1st [September 1939] I was going to work and two airplanes flew by over [my] head.
[People were saying:] 'Ours are flying, ours are flying '. I was on Zwierzyniecka Street, and not far from there, there is a bridge, the Debicki Bridge. And they started bombing that bridge. [I] worked close to there, I was outside and I [saw] that. It was 8 [in the morning]. And this is how the war started for me. I realized it [was] already bad, right. I even didn't go to my sister then. I went to the house of my friends' from Rzeszow [Roza Horn and Fawek Auerchan] and said: 'Listen we have to escape'. I let my sister know I was leaving home [getting out of town]. Because there was nothing there to wait for. It was already a mess.

Along with Roza and her boyfriend we decided to get on our way [to Rzeszow]. Roza's family lived over there. At one time I lived [with her]. When I worked in Rzeszow I found accommodation with them. She was an excellent expert, an accountant. A very serious [girl]. He [Fawek] didn’t have any specific profession. They were not married then. In one little town on the way, Fawek came to conclusion [that] he they will for certain draft him to the army. He was a young, healthy fellow, right. 'I will [marry Roza], so that she’s [married], just in case'. And they came to an agreement. In one of Jewish apartments, they just used to marry couples. They had a chuppah on a rod and so on. But he [Fawek] was a smoker. And he went out for a cigarette. I stayed with Roza. Such a bad luck, a trifle, they call her, him, but he's out smoking somewhere. So I went instead of him and that’s how I happened to replace him]. Well, does it really matter? All of this [was done] in a rush. The family name was right. He got a certificate immediately, that [on that day he married Roza].

It was a long, long way from Cracow to Rzeszow. The road was difficult and it wasn't so that we [would move] as punctually as a train would. It was war time. There were no such directors that one would plan and get a first class voyage. [We moved] on foot, by cart, by train. Whichever way was possible. In the end, together, we reached Roza's home in Rzeszow. All [family members] were still alive then.

At their home there were: Roza, Chana, Mania, son Donek, brother Janek – an engineer with leftist opinions. It so happened, that he, all exhausted, [came  back] from jail [on that day]. He managed to come out of the prison safely. He sat, I remember as if it was today, keeping his legs soaking in some container. Later his story went on beautifully. For a certain period of time he was an important person in Poland. He was an educated man, a Voivodship Committee Secretary. However, his name [back then] was not Horn but Rogowski. [Roza's] Father was a Jew, bearded, but a wonderfully fine Polish scholar. He had beautiful handwriting. He earned his living by writing court applications for people. He was a ‘vinkel shrayber’ [Yiddish, literary ‘corner writer’], as we used to say.

But over there, in Rzeszow, [the war] just began. The Germans already administered everywhere. They raided [people] on streets. Once, I was in a group that was taken away into barracks to tidy them up. To clean up, to sweep. They led [the group] and called up such people as me on the way. I was well dressed. I [wore] such a new, nice jacket. I was experienced enough to wear all of that. When they caught me and I joined the group, they striped of my jacket, gave me something of their own, and took me into those barracks out of town. I already knew that something bad [was going to happen] here, and I shouldn’t expect anything good. [Finally] they released us with no consequences. I saw things were heating up in Rzeszow. There was nothing more to seek over there. We [Mr. Sokal, Roza and Fawek], without saying much, set off from there. We managed to bid [Roza's] parents goodbye and we were refugees again. We left Rzeszow.

We were on the way for several days. In the meantime, some time in September, the Soviets and the Germans signed an agreement that the Soviets would liberate the Ukrainians. For us, it was a surprise from that side. They had attacked [our country]. This is a simple name for it 7. Then, since Przemysl was free, I decided to take the opportunity to return home. The right side of Przemysl, where I used to live, was ruled by the Soviets. Then we parted. [Roza and Fawek] could not return to Rzeszow, [because the town] was occupied by the Germans.

In Przemysl, the Soviets used to say to young people: 'We can take you to Donbas. Over there, young folks who want to learn more [will have the conditions]'. Yes, it impressed me and in December of that year, 1939, I agreed and went to that Donbas in Ukraine. But it was a big mistake in my life. I let them deceive me. That was no chance to learn. I lived in such a collective barrack. There were tens of men over there. And I worked normally. They initiated me into a storehouse of cement, buildings material, I remember. I used to unload bricks, cement from carts. I was young, I could stand it pretty [well]. We were there for quite long. I don't remember exactly how long, a year or two. But I was not satisfied with that. I knew I went there to make self-improvement, to make up for my lost time, but there were no prospects over there, so I broke away from there. Me, a restless, uneasy soul. I couldn’t agree with all that. [I was] to learn, to go to college, I always used to dream about that. But it was only a dream.

Where to go to? [I decided] do go to Lwow, because I had an Uncle [Jozef Schorr] in Lwow, right, and, as it turned out, my sister [Minka], that nurse, worked at a hospital in Lwow. And again, my trip to Lwow, that was an experience.

Before I got on the train to Lwow, I was in Kiev. I camped on a street. I just wandered around. I rested to get on the train. I slept near the station, somewhere out on a street. Empty wagons stood on train tracks, so I would get into the wagons at night and would sleep there, right. I didn’t have anything, just a coat; I sold it at the station. Some thieves would come there. Those little boys, homeless, would wander about, sneak something away from you. And I had such an incident there. I bumped into a friend from Rzeszow. Hirsz. That was his name. I don’t know if he’s still alive, I don’t think so. I said: ‘Listen. I haven’t got a single grosz [Polish equivalent of a cent] to go any further.’ And I borrowed some money. And I somehow managed to get on the train to Lwow.

I arrived at Uncle’s, because I knew his address. [Then] I called my sister [Minka]. My sister was surprised: ‘You got all the way here. What happened? What all of the sudden?’ I was still in shock: ‘Don’t ask me about the details, there’s no point. We won’t talk about that.’ I stayed there, in Lwow, for a short time, I knew they couldn’t support me, right. And I went back to Przemysl.

Przemysl was in the same Soviet district as Lwow. I stayed at my sister Fryda’s. I took on various jobs, to have something to live off, right. I remember, I went to some grocery store and worked there for some time. I’ll keep it short, there’s no point to talk more about that.

All those games ended [quickly]. The Germans attacked the Soviets 9 whom they had formally been friends with since they had signed a pact with them. And the war began again. I was always unlucky. There was a new escape from Przemysl. I couldn’t be there any more. We talked, we had a family meeting. My sister Fryda, and my brother Emanuel were there. And she says: ‘Where am I to go to? Uncles [Dawid, Chaskiel] are here in Przemysl. It won’t be that bad, the Soviets will get [Przemysl] back. It’ll all be good.’ They were convinced everything would be so. [The Soviets] convinced everyone their army was unbeatable. They were as good strategists as me. They knew nothing about that. I convinced my brother [Emanuel]: ‘Listen, we have to leave. We have to!’ We weren’t ready [for the trip]. [They only thing we had] was a small sack of sugar. Maybe 5kg, maybe 3kg. So we brought it along and left on foot. We knew the area. We went through a forest, through fields.

We walked and walked, but that was just the beginning of the Gehenna. All the way to the Soviet border? To that old border, in Rowne [a city in the western part of Ukraine, the capital city of the district. It’s located on the main road between Warsaw and Kiev, about 200km from today’s Polish border.] Somewhere on the way to Dobromil [a town in Ukraine located in the Lwow county], fortunately, we met a group of ladies from our town. Glansberzanka, Wilner’s wife, with a small child in her arms, and some other [woman was with them]. Three of them. And my brother says: ‘Listen, you sit down here, I’ll walk them off the main road for a bit and then come back.’ I said: ‘Good’. I sat down. What difference does it make? Sitting or walking. I sat there until late at night. [Finally] I said: ‘There’s no point for me to stay here. He must have stayed with them.’ And I decided to go on. Without him. I can see a ‘tachanka’ coming, Russian  vehicles. Those were some kolkhoz 8 men, I ran after them and wanted to get on. I ran up, jumped on at the back [of the ‘tachanka’], and they lashed me with a whip: ‘Hola, kuda, kuda [Russian: where]?’, but I gave them such a speech, such an interpretation, that they understood.

And we drove and drove, I don’t know how many days, nights. I was hungry, simply hungry. Why not? I always had a good appetite. And I had nothing there. That sugar [only], [but] I don’t know what happened to it, did I leave it out [on the road] there, did my brother take it? Well? I ride with them and see that they’re eating. They had provisions, butter in a barrel, food. And they were bored and didn’t like they had a freeloader on board. ‘Listen, you can’t be like that. You’ll be driving the horse.’ ‘Not a problem.’ At first those horses did whatever they wanted with me. I had never driven a horse carriage [before], and they kept scorning me for it. And finally we got somewhere to Rowne. I remember it more or less. And they went to a military point there.

I can see they’re murmuring there on me, I think, that I’m a who-knows-what. And they took me for questioning, for a conversation. Fortunately I had a passport on me. But, if I had known what I know today, that I had a wrong passport, because I had a note in it that I have a sister abroad. [My] sister, Minka, when she wanted to go home [to Przemysl] from Cracow, she had to cross the border. And they must have noted that somewhere there. And later, when I got a Soviet passport, I also had a note [in it] that I have a sister abroad. [So they asked me] if I had anyone abroad. They always asked whether you had anyone on the other side of the ‘kordon’ [Russian: border]. So I say: ‘Yes, my sister is abroad, in Cracow.’ ‘All right.’ And they started talking to me [in Russian]. Fortunately I was able to talk to them. They spoke [Russian], I spoke some similar language and we managed to communicate. ‘OK, you can go’ and they left me alone. All right. Off I went.

Where to? To a train. Besides, it wasn’t far from a train station. What kind? A cargo train. Cars were divided with wooden planks, upstairs and downstairs, so that more [people] could fit in. [And] there [on the train station] entire Soviet families, with children, were running away home. Excellent, whichever way was good for me. On larger stations, since it was still the Soviet side at the time, the trains would stop. They [the Soviet families] we unhappy because they had money, but nothing to eat. They would ask to get them some groceries. [So] they’d give me those rubles, I’d jump out of the train whenever it stopped to buy food. And so I rode with them, buying them food, eating at the same time, right. We went together, but I don’t know how long because it was still on the cargo train. First we got to Turkmenistan, later all the way do Ashkhabad. That’s the capital city of Turkmenistan, on the Caspian Sea. It wasn’t far to Iran from there.

It was 1941. Over there, on the road, of course a new ‘proverka’ [Russian: control], that is a check-up, control. They talk to everyone, [ask] where they’re from, their family, brothers. So I say I have an older brother, right. He’s somewhere in the Soviet Union, I don’t know where, I can’t say, but he’s a soldier in the army. I lied, I knew there was something wrong going on with him. I told them what my education was, 7 [grades]. And they accepted me, somehow trustfully, because I could communicate in their language. I wasn’t any big expert in Russian, but I spoke ok. Actually, Ukrainian as well. That helped me everywhere.

In Ashkhabad I lived with my friend Kestenbaum, from Przemysl. Siunek Kestenbaum, that was his name. We met on the train to Ashkhabad [and since then] we were practically [together]. We always slept somewhere near town. Because it’s Asia, plains. There were no brick houses. We didn’t have an address. We borrowed a rack [bed] somewhere, and we slept like that. They [the Soviets] offered me, to my surprise, without knowing me, [a job in trade]. Can you imagine, such a surprise? They must have liked me, because they offered me a managerial position in a grocery store. I was well off. I had everything [during that time]. All the good food: butter, honey. And the working conditions were good, very good. And I worked well, nobody had any complaints.

[The Soviets] necessarily wanted to recruit me, they had a hook on me. But not rudely or something.  The head manager of the wholesale firm, [who dealt with] assigning [food to stores] was a Russian man, I don’t know his last name. After some time it turns out I’m supposed to go to a school. There was going to be a man in a classroom, on the first floor, and he [will] talk to me. He wants to meet me. All right. Siunek knew I was going there, but he accompanied me, so that I wouldn’t get lost, and so that he didn’t lose me. We were always afraid for one another. Nobody knew what was going to happen. And that man talks to me. Again, he’s asking about my life history, how I’m doing, whether I’m happy with my job. I say that yes, indeed, I know [how to do] it, and I think others are happy with me as well. ‘Well, you know, but…’ he begins: ‘Because we can see you’re our patriot, we can count on you. You, an intelligent, wise man, shouldn’t be wasting yourself in a store, should you? We have another suggestion for you.’ He doesn’t want me to go to some other business or something, but he’s got a better, respected job. I say: ‘Unfortunately I can’t do it, I don’t have life experience in those matters. You’d have big problems with me, and I’d have worries. If you want to, take me to the army. I feel healthy, I can join the army. Give me a placement. I’ll do it happily.’ ‘No, you can still stay with us, the time for that will come later. We will find you, we’ll take you to the army [later].’

And how did I know [what it was all about]? [That man when] he was talking to me, wore civilian clothes. A coat. But you could see [decoration on a uniform] underneath. A uniform top gave him away. Besides, I could tell what he represented by the character of the conversation. We parted in peace, all was good, I went back to my job. It didn’t last long, soon after that they fired me, because I’m not suitable. Too bad. [It was] a good job, an excellent job for conditions back then, [but, well, too bad]. [I went] to the head manager, [and] he says: ‘We have to make some cuts’. I understood what that ‘cutting’ was.

I was looking for a job. I learned there was an Ashkhabad Kinostudio. A movie factory, a film company in Ashkhabad. There were artists, among them a Pole, Krasnowiecki [Wladyslaw Krasnowiecki (1900-1983), Polish actor, director, theatre manager. Since 1918 he acted mainly in theaters in Lwow and Cracow. During WWII he was associated with the Polish Army Theatre. After 1945 he was a manager of theatres in Lodz, Katowice and Warsaw.] And Wohl, that famous, huge movie expert in Poland after the war. He played a huge role in the making of a Polish movie [industry]. [Stanislaw Wohl (1921-1985) a film operator and a director. In 1930 he co-founded an Artistic Movie Enthusiast Association ‘Start’. During WWII he worked for the Russian cinematography in Lwow, Kiev and Ashkhabad. In 1945 he organized technical bases for the Polish cinematography in Cracow and Lodz.] And two more operators. I don’t remember their names right now, [but] they were Jews. And I went there for a year, as a physical worker. ‘All right. What am I supposed to do?’ ‘Whatever there is to do. You’ll drive trucks, load bricks, sand, whatever is needed.’ I was strong enough to be able to do that. And I worked there. During that time, I remember perfectly, they were filming a movie. The director of that movie was a Russian Jew, Mark Donskoy, that was his name. [Mark Semyonovich Donskoy (1901-1981), director.] I don’t know how long it took. Did they leave me alone for even a year? And they came up with another idea. They invited me again for a talk, but not there [to the school] any more, but they gave me some address. It turned out it was the security [The Security Agency]. [People, when] they walked by, they tried to go around [avoid] that building. There was no sign to inform what was in there. They only let specific people in.

 [Again] that friend [Siunek Kestenbaum] went with me. And indeed, they were already waiting for me. I gave them my name. They let me inside. All those additional impressions. That silence in the building made a horrible impression, like in a sanatorium. [They led me] over such plush carpets, you walk quietly, there’s nobody in sight. They tell me to go up on the first or second floor, I don’t remember. I sat there and waited. I waited and waited, until I fell asleep. After some time somebody came and [led me] into a large room, beautiful, with luxurious armchairs. And they talk to me again. He’s suggesting again, but this time seriously, and he’s pushing me. He tells me what kind of a job it is. I said I had already had a similar conversation. I had one and I rejected it, because I really don’t think I can do it, I don’t know how to do ‘such a job’. ‘Please send me to the army’, I keep saying the same thing. But they had a different idea. But it was a polite conversation, very reasonable. They didn’t threaten me. Finally I got out of there.

 [I] didn’t like [what was going on] [anymore]. We knew we were losing ground and we decided to leave there [with Siunek]. We went to Uzbekistan. It’s a pretty country. We tried to find a job somewhere there. On a station there, a regular train station, they were looking for kolkhoz workers. Oh well. All right, let’s go to a kolkhoz. We were young and determined, we didn’t want to just travel around. I thought that kolkhoz, that there will be a normal possibility for work and some life. But there were no buildings there. Some shacks, you can’t see any movement. So we left. How? On foot, we jumped on trucks, however we could

We arrived at another station. Ziyadin, near Buchara. A busy, junction station. And we lived there for some time. I lived at some people’s. A very religious Jewish marriage, older people. They were poor, [but] whenever they cooked for themselves, they always gave me something, right. We worked, each one of us in whatever we could. You could only trade there. Fabrics, they [Uzbekistan inhabitants] were impressed. They looked for fabrics, because there was nothing else there. And that lasted for a while. I don’t remember how long I spent there. About a year, until they wanted to make me happy again and recruit to a ‘stroy-batalion’ [short for ‘stroityelniy batalion’; Russian: construction battalion]. It was a work battalion. They were building something, somewhere, they needed young people. They didn’t [ask]   whether I wanted to go or not, they just drafted me in.

I don’t remember what was the town’s name. It was also out in some field. A house was in such a deep hole, in a dugout. People there weren’t too attractive, only Uzbekistani. After a few days I said: ‘We’ve got nothing to look for here. It’s not a job with some perspective.’ And we knew that there was an army recruitment point near by. An army office, where they drafted people [to the army].  I said: ‘I want to go to the army.’ ‘Oh yes? Very good. The 1st army [Editor’s note: actually the 1st Kosciuszko Infantry Division] is already formed 10, but now they have another drafting. I’m sure they’ll accept you. You’re young, agile.’ A few of us went. They gave us a formal document for the train. And they also gave us some little money to do some shopping. All in all, they helped us leave.

It was already 1943. Probably 13th October. They drafted me into the 4th Regiment. It was the 2nd Division [2nd Henryk Dabrowski Infantry Division]. It was a regular army. Military exercises, everything. When I was an older soldier, I was moved to the 3th Regiment. When 4th Division, 10th Infantry Regiment was created, they directed me there. And that was my career. I already had my provision and all. At first they placed me in a unit of Regiment Armature, as an office chief.

They knew I could write some. My responsibility was to equip my unit with ammunition and weapons in suitable amounts, right, and then write reports on that. A normal, plain job. I didn’t have problems doing that. And I had that function almost until the end of the war.

I kept moving with this regiment, this unit. They kept moving us into various disasters. There were air raids on trains. I didn’t really have any difficult experiences. I was lucky not to ever get wounded. And we kept going towards our country, right. [In the end] we arrived in Lublin.

It was 1944 already when they pushed us [out of Lublin] further, towards Warsaw. It was peaceful for us there, because the Germans didn’t attack there. We were here [there] during the Warsaw Uprising 11. One of our units, some battalion of our regiment, was sent to help. Unfortunately nothing could be done. The uprising authorities back then were certain they could deal with liberating Warsaw by themselves. [Besides], political matters probably decided that they didn’t want the Soviets to free them. They were being slaughtered there, [and] we heard all that. [But] we kept sitting on this bank until the offence moved on 17th January 1945. Thankfully, there was beautiful weather when we marched through Warsaw. [In the city] there was still war equipment laying around, corpses; [we saw on the way] lots of destruction.  Wherever we went, it was unimaginable what we saw. Warsaw was destroyed.

[Later] through the Polish territory, through Grudziadz, we went that way to Germany, until we got close to Berlin. We ourselves, our unit didn’t fight for Berlin, but the war goes on. And my commander tells me: ‘Listen, we’re all good here, we’ll go to the country soon, home, to Poland. [But first] we’ll go to Berlin, to Reichstag. We’ll look around there.’ [And Reichstag] was all destroyed. Each [soldier], it was such a soldier manner, would go there and write his name, with a piece of coal or chalk on a wall there. First name, last name, the regiment. Just for personal satisfaction. A few days later we arrived in Poland.

And in Poland, it was fall 1945, in October, I think, demobilization. They were laying of those older people. To tell you the truth, they were trying to convince me not to go, because it was going to be good. The chief of the general headquarters tells me: ‘Janek, kuda? Ostay sye. Poyezhday ku nas.’ [Incorrect Russian: ‘Janek, where are you going? Stay. Come with us.’] ‘We respect you. You’re our man.’ I really felt good in that unit. I was much respected. Not for any special accomplishments. I had more luck than brains. [But] I said: ‘But I really want to go to Przemysl. I hope to find my family.’ Indeed, I still had hope. I knew what went on there, but somehow everybody had hope.

I don’t share a common opinion here that in Poland everybody was waiting to give the Jews up to the Gestapo. Not everyone was like that. And for example I can say that I have a few letters, correspondence between my brother-in-law in Auschwitz and my sister who lived in Cracow during that time. [That correspondence] was [sent to] a Cracow address where she used to live before the war broke out. I used to go there, slept there several times, [even my] brother [when] he came out of jail also slept there. Those tenants who had [their apartments] there knew they were a mixed family and nobody told on them. And the correspondence went back and forth between them for several years. I’m looking at it objectively. That’s the way it was. Well, not everyone was that brave to want to help, take a risk. [But] I can’t generally be upset at everyone because of that.

After the war I got a job in the western region, in Glucholazy [town ca. 360 km south-west of Warsaw, near today’s Polish-Czech border], in the position of a general manager of a company. I was supposed to organize it from the basics. Glucholazy is a beautiful town, near Nysa, between Nysa and Prodnik. There was almost no war there. The place was intact. They introduced me to the party 12 there. I was involved in my professional career, but not only, I also did some communal work. I was active in the community. They would send me here and there. Those were units of the the official government that did some community service. But I wasn’t really involved. I paid my member fees. Everyone knew about it. I’m not hiding it. It was a legal party. In the end it turned out the party accomplished nothing. I don’t regret it. I won’t change my beliefs. I had such views and I don’t feel guilty, as nobody suffered because of me.

I worked in Glucholazy for 6 years. We had a very good life there. The conditions were better than I would have dreamt up. First I had an elegant 2-storey house. With a bathroom like this room, with tiles. There were 3 rooms, I think, or 4, and a kitchen on each floor. Then they moved us, [because I] was the only one in Glucholazy that didn’t live in a villa. That was their ambition. They did me a favor. I was on a business trip somewhere, I came back, [and] my wife tells me they had come with a car and moved her to a villa. A beautiful villa, with a garden, fish.

I met my wife in Glucholazy in 1947. And we became friends there. Her first name is Malgorzata, maiden name Rademacher. She was born on 11th December [1911]. She comes from a coal-miner’s family, she was born in Katowice-Szopienice. She came to Glucholazy looking for a job. She met with a mayor who she had known before the war.  [And] because he knew I was working on something, he sent her to me: ‘Go there, he’s a decent man.’ And that’s how we met. We got close, we liked it, and we’ve been together ever since. The wedding was very modest. We got married in 1949, but I don’t remember it exactly. Malgorzata isn’t of the Jewish origin. [She is a Catholic], but she’s never been practicing, thankfully. I [also] never had a need [to practice my religion].

Nowadays my wife is unhappy. It’s been 10 or 15 years since she lost her eyesight and she can see almost nothing. She’s losing the iris. We went with my wife to [many] doctors and they [all] told her the same thing. Unfortunately… She can find her way around the house perfectly, she remembers where everything is, but that’s all. And my wife practically raised both Grandsons. Daughter didn’t have time, and [because of that] they adore their Grandmother, they really do.

My daughter was born in 1950, in January, [in Glucholazy]. She wasn’t raised in the Jewish tradition. She always knew everything [about my past]. We didn’t have any problems [with her].  She had good grades. [When] she was at a university, they pressured her a lot. Some major [wanted] her necessarily to join ZMS [Socialist Youth Union, a youth organization founded on 3rd January 1957 in Warsaw by joining Revolutionary Youth Union and Peasant Youth Union]. Since December 1957 ZMS was idealistically, politically and organizationally subordinate to PZPR. The main goal of ZMS was getting its members ready to join PZPR] and to the party [PZPR]. But she kept saying she didn’t feel like it, she wasn’t interested in it. And it didn’t interfere with anything, entry exams to the university, and she never had problems at the university. She’s a good specialist in her field. She is a doctor, a psychiatrist. She has worked for many years. She has decided to retire.

I, by the way, decided to leave [Glucholazy and go to Lodz] because of my daughter’s birth. Because, I said, what am I going to do here? [Lodz] is a big city. [I] had never been in Lodz, but I knew it, I had contacts there. So, everything has its own reason. In 1951 they called me up to the ministry. I was taking oral high school final exams then. [I remember] I asked them to let me take the exams earlier, because I had to go to Warsaw to a personal meeting with a minister. I had a letter, showed it to them, and I went. Over there, during the meeting, they suggested I move from Glucholazy to Lodz, because I did all there was to do: ‘We don’t want to waste your time. You’ll have a unit with 35 people. You’ll do fine. We know you will…’ ‘But, Minister, here, in Glucholazy,  I didn’t learn much’, I said. ‘That’s all right’ ‘But I have one condition. I have a beautiful apartment in Glucholazy, a perfect one. I don’t want anything better, as long as the conditions [are] good.’ ‘There’s a key to your apartment.’ That’s it. That’s good. It impressed me.

Starting in July [1951] I was employed in Lodz. I was moved to the Central Office of the Textile Industry Union. [Central Office of the Textile Industry Union in Lodz (CZPO) was founded in 1948.] I became the general manager of the Dr Prochnik Textile Industry Institute [Dr Prochnik Textile Industry Institute was created in 1948, by nationalization of the Martin Norenberg Krauze Partnership textile factory existing in Lodz since 1939.] Prochnik was a multi-factory corporation. The headquarters were in Lodz, a plant in Poddebice, new plants in Rawa and Uniejow. Al those factories exported [clothes] to most developed western coutries: America, England, Holland, Switzerland. I introduced those plants onto western markets.

Probably in 1957 [I started] a few years of studies here [in Lodz]. At first it was the Evening University of Marxism and Leninism at the Lodz Committee. It was political-economical education. Very valuable for managers and other head positions. But I had ambitions to finish formal studies. [Later] I took 3 year long vocational studies in the department of Economics at the Lodz University. Those were extramural studies. Saturday afternoons, because we used to work Saturdays, and Sundays from morning until 4pm [I had my classes during that time]. All that while working, having so many responsibilities, I don’t know [how I did that], [but] all went well. I graduated with very good results. The defense was in 1967. In the same year when I finished my studies, my daughter began medical studies.

[I] never had [any problems with anti-Semitism], [but] it turns out that in 1968, during my absence, somebody from the Committee came, some activist. He gathered a few [employees] and appointed one for a position of a general manager, because that was my position from the beginning. I came back and found out about it. I called that candidate for a general manager and [asked] how things were in the company. He was an educated man, with higher education, right, an excellent employee, a great specialist. He was a bookkeeper. I talk to him, ask him what the results for the last months are. [He says] the results are good, there are no problems. I say: ‘Good. So, how was it during that meeting?’ I ask. ‘I don’t know anything.’ ‘So, I’ll remind you. But you know what, let’s do it this way, why talk about it just the two of us, why don’t you call the crew up, on my behalf, to the common room and we’ll all talk. I understand you, maybe it won’t be nice, but we’ll talk to each other with the others present.’ ‘But, director, Sir, I’ve got nothing…’ he talks like that. ‘So, let’s turn things around. I will call up the crew to the common room.’ There were always about 500 people on a shift. Because there were always 1,000 people in one unit of the factory. Altogether I had a staff of 4,500 people in Prochnik. Regardless of that I was the boss of some additional people. I had over 11 thousand of them in the field, since they added that co-operation. Co-operative Institute of Men’s Clothing, to that. I said: ‘So, I will call that meeting, but I would like you to be there, because I want to talk to people. What am I supposed to talk to them about without you.’ He says: ‘I don’t know anything, I don’t want to.’ Not even three days passed, the guy is called off by the Union. They needed a vice director at Wolczanka [a clothing factory, well known manufacturer of men’s shirts] and they moved him, so that he disappears. [There was] a secretary of the basic organization in the company and she went [together] with the [entire] board of directors [to the Committee and said]: ‘Commrade, don’t do anything. If you remove Mr. Sokal from the position, the entire staff will stand up. They’ll go on streets.’ That’s what they said. I don’t know if it would ever come to that, maybe so, since I had no troubles with [people] in those factories. There were some arguments about finances, they happened, but [all problems could be resolved] reasonably.

My [employment] with Prochnik was dissolved in 1977, and I finished working in 1998. Even when I was retired, I still worked in the same Union, part-time. I used to be involved in exporting to capitalist nations. I used to go to America, to England and other western countries. And without knowing English. Because they would always give me a translator. One from the embassy. Also because I don’t believe there is something you can’t accomplish in life. It depends on people. I needed [work] for a living, life on retirement isn’t pleasant.

I have two grandsons. Adas [from Adam] is 30 [years old]. He lives in Warsaw. He does well. He works in the movie-business. He’s not an actor, he is a technician. The second one, younger – Mateusz. He’s 24. He graduated from the Musical Academy in Lodz. He is a musician, he plays double-bass. He works for the Lodz orchestra. He lives in Lodz. [Both of them], whenever they have a spare day, they still drop by, come to visit.

[My grandsons] know everything [about me, about my family]. They don’t brag about it, I suppose. [They don’t flaunt it.] It’s their business. [My daughter] is of mixed origin, she’s not Jewish. Her husband is 100 percent Polish. It doesn’t matter. It never mattered in my family. Never! Because it’s not something to show off, brag, or worry about. In my opinion, it isn’t. Yes, during the occupation there were some worries, but thankfully, I somehow never had deal with those.

I am very happy. Whatever happened there and however the society thinks, I personally think that the last governing party [was very good]. [Mr Sokal refers to Ariel Sharon and the Likud Party.] I consider him a wise, reasonable man. [But] it’s just my personal opinion about this man. Let everyone have [their own beliefs], but [one person must] govern a country. [On the other hand], those in charge must have the wellbeing [of the country and its citizens at heart]. This is how I worked. They didn’t teach me that at a university. [Simply] life taught me that. I never went [to Israel] but I would like to [go]. I would have no problems with going to Israel.

I keep in touch with the Jewish Community in Lodz. I used to even go there during the cadence of previous group, Mr. Minc and his helper. I used to go [only] on some Saturdays, listen to [the prayers]. I worked in Prochink then. They knew what my beliefs were. [But] they tolerated me the way I was. And nowadays I’m [also] never questioned. Symcha Keller [the president of the Jewish Community in Lodz], he does a lot for religious matters. During his term, they treat [people of non-Jewish origin] very liberally.  I can often see people [there] who I never knew and still don’t know, who come, listen. Some got quite comfortable there and they always come. Most likely they have some connection to Judaism. But it doesn’t really matter.

It’s unfortunate that here, in Lodz, there aren’t many Jews. That’s a problem. They are [people] from mixed marriages, [but] they come to services. Once I read in Midrasz [Jewish monthly social-cultural magazine in Polish, treating about life of Jews in Poland and abroad], there was a discussion: Ronald Lauder, some rabbis [took part in the discussion] and they talked about that work, so unfortunate, because there are no prospects, there are no live people, right. [Symcha Keller] really did something very valuable for the commune. [He caused] some institution to exist, but there are few people, it has few members.

Now I don’t go anywhere, I spare myself. I go [to the commune]. I go there, but it doesn’t mean I’m practicing. I was never a practicing Jew. Before the war I had no opportunity or need. After the war I [also] never [practiced]. Those are such individual matters. I’m not a specialist in these matters, but I willingly, with pleasure, whenever I can, I go [to the commune] on holidays. I usually [go] to those services and I listen.  I even have a Polish-Hebrew prayer book. I never learned Jewish [Hebrew] and now I have no patience, but if you know Polish, you can easily navigate [the text]. I actively pray in the sense that I read [what’s written in the prayer book].

And, whenever I can, I mainly do my own groceries. To get imperishable goods, larger groceries, I even go once a week to a supermarket.  And for everyday stuff – here, [not far from home]. Somebody has to do it, right. I do try, within possibility, move about by myself. It’s for my health. I don’t want to brag, not at all, [but] I’ve never been idle in my life and I’m happy with it.

Why did I agree for this interview? Simple. Because it’s not just my personal matter. I want something to be left of me. And because my hope to have a real saga of the Sokal family didn’t work out, I thought to at least tell a short story.

GLOSSARY:

Romana Holder
Warsaw
Poland
Interviwer: Maria Koral
Date of interview: May/June 2005

Mrs. Romana Holder lives in Warsaw with her son. They have a two-bedroom apartment in a block of flats. Mrs. Holder is very fragile. Recently she broke her arm, which has caused her some discomfort, but she is still entirely independent. She speaks with energy and perfect elocution. She remembers many details and has a wonderful sense of humor. She remembers many names of her teachers, friends and neighbors. She tends to reconstruct the world from before the war through tiny details, the slightest of facts, but does not create a full narrative. We spoke about difficult matters, but only once was there a tremor in her voice, when she spoke about her child who died. But there was a sense of outrage in her words when she spoke about the life of her husband after the war and about the current political situation in Poland, in which she feels anti-Semitism is very much present. It is mostly for that reason, in fear for her son’s welfare, that Mrs. Holder did not agree to the publication of her story before the year 2015.

My family background

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family background 

My family was from Warsaw, all of us. I know nothing about my great-grandparents. I never knew them and we never talked about them at home, for lack of interest in those matters, I suppose. To be honest, I don’t know much about my grandfathers either. I had none; when I was born they were gone. I never knew my father’s father or his mother, not even their names. I had one grandmother: my mother’s mother.

My grandmother’s name was Perla, nee Klajnbajcz. I’m sure she was born in Warsaw. I have no idea when she got married, I know nothing about her husband’s family or about himself; I never even saw his picture. Mine was not a household where people were interested in their roots, deep down.

My grandmother had a brother, Ludwik, who must have been younger than she was. He had a hat store on Zabia, I think [a prewar street in central Warsaw near the Saski Garden, no longer in existence]. His wife, Gucia, he used to call Guciuchna. They were wealthy people, without children. They had a house–to say a ‘palace’ would be too much–with a garden, in Sulejowek [a town 20 km east of Warsaw]. Aunt Gucia was very pretty. She was larger than her husband, portly, dark-blond. She ruled him and knew how to make him fear her. He loved her so much, I don’t know how he survived her death. She died before him, during the Warsaw occupation, in the Ghetto, from typhus. I never knew any other of my grandmother’s siblings, so she probably didn’t have any.

My grandmother’s married name was Kropiwko. She had four children: Felek, who ran away to France to escape the tsar’s army; then there was, most likely, my mother; after her Mania; and Szymon, the youngest. My grandmother was small, like me; I am very much like her, including the early gray hair. My mother always said she turned gray at an early age. Before I was born, Grandmother sold the Warsaw house–for which my mother never forgave her–and went to France to her son, Felek, who fell ill, I don’t know what with. When she came back after his death she was still young and worked taking care of elderly rich people. Then she took care of her younger daughter Mania’s household.

Aunt Mania was a very pretty woman, dark. She liked entertainment and frequented ‘tombola’ balls [Ital.: a party with music and a lottery]. Her husband, Nathan Gleichenhaus, opened a store at Marszalkowska [Warsaw’s main street, before the war and now], next to the bar ‘Pod setka.’ It sold stockings, socks, maybe thread and suchlike, just like haberdashery stores today. But my uncle had little to do with that store, my aunt took care of it. I know he liked to drink; he went to the next-door bar and drank with the waiters. Mostly he spent his time in the company of drunk Poles. He went to the races. Once they said in the paper: ‘Mr. Gleichenhaus was shaking like a jelly.’ I remember that because the family would talk about it constantly. They lived on Wspolna Street [central Warsaw, outside the old Jewish district]. They had two children: the daughter’s name was, I think, Natalka, but I don’t know what she had in her birth certificate; the son was Miecio. Natalka was my age, a pretty girl, black hair, gray eyes. Miecio was younger, a pretty boy, too. Uncle Nathan later left them for a woman with three kids. But I don’t know whether she was Polish or Jewish. Nobody in the family did. My aunt never remarried. She ran the store until the war.

My mother’s brother, Szymon, lived in the Old Town, at Piwna, I think [outside of the Jewish district], with his wife Cesia, also Jewish, and two sons. Those boys were younger than I was; one was Dudek–we called him Dudus–the other’s name I can’t remember. I don’t know what Uncle Szymon did, we didn’t see each other very often. He was still very young, 30-something, under 40, when he fell ill with consumption. He went to the Jewish hospital in Czyste 1. I know that my mother visited him there; either the place was so horrible or his condition so bad, she cried all day. He died of tuberculosis before the war began. We had no contact with his wife and sons.

My mother had a Jewish name, Niselcyrla. I don’t know how she became Natalia, they must have called her that since she was a child. She was born in 1890, in Warsaw. I don’t know which school she attended and I don’t remember any particularly important events from her childhood. She got married in 1911, most likely through a matchmaker. What kind of wedding they had, I have no idea; I’m sure it wasn’t held in a synagogue, because a synagogue wedding is very expensive, it’s not free. I never asked about that, it didn’t cross my mind to ask.

My father’s name was Mojzesz Bachner. He was born in 1881, also in Warsaw. He had two sisters and two brothers. Them and my mother’s siblings were our closest family. I never met one of my father’s brothers, Edward, because he lived in Bydgoszcz [a town approx. 260 km west of Warsaw]; I have no idea how he ended up there. He had no children, no wife, only a lady friend; I think she was Polish, because we never spoke about her. That’s why he didn’t get married. I don’t know what his occupation was, I was too young to be interested in things like that. He was rich, because when he died he left an inheritance for my father and the two sisters. I don’t know whether the other brother, Adolf, got a share of that inheritance.

Uncle Adolf was older than my father. He was the director of some paper factory, but it got closed down and he was left without a job. He couldn’t find another; maybe he didn’t look for one. For a while he’d come over to our house and scrounge up cigarettes from my dad, his brother. His wife, Regina–I don’t know what her maiden name was–looked like all other Aryans. They had two children, Edek and Helena.

Helena was a talented girl. She painted beautifully and her paintings decorated their apartment at Nowolipie [a street in the old Jewish district]. Helena graduated from Law School at Warsaw University. She must have been a few years older than I was, because when I graduated from high school she was already a practicing lawyer, and a good one, too. She was having an affair at the time with this famous prosecuting attorney, Lemkin. But she married below her. Her husband was not a good match at all; he was a traveling salesman of sweets and candy; she was completely out of his league. He was a Jew from Luck [now Ukraine], Lowa Lukacz. A nice, clever guy. I remember their daughter, very pretty, I think her name was Blanka. They lived all together, my cousin with her husband, daughter, mother, father and brother. Helena supported the whole household. In that big apartment she ran her own practice. Her brother Edek was a bit of a failure; he was maybe not retarded, but at least strange. He had a sweet tooth: he’d come to our house, open the cupboard and rummage around for sweets. I remember he used to carry those sweets around in a bag or brief-case and try to sell them, but he would end up eating them instead. I think he was older than I was, but he didn’t act older at all. He never got married before the war. That sister of his simply supported him. And his mother adored him.

My father also had two sisters. One was an old maid–Syma or Sima–she was really horrible. She had this big goiter, I couldn’t take my eyes off it; I was scared of her. The other aunt was Rozia. A big woman, quite fat, not very pretty; she married Maks Wach, a very decent man. I have no idea what his occupation was. She was very energetic and worked at home, finishing ties. They lived together with Aunt Sima, in the same building we did, at Leszno [part of the Jewish district before the war, now Solidarnosci Avenue], only you entered their staircase thorough a different courtyard. And they had a daughter, Niusia, whom I taught to read and write. That Niusia later played a bad trick on me and died in the Ghetto from diabetes.

Of our family, we were closest to Aunt Mania and Uncle [Nathan]. She was very different from my mom. She went dancing with her husband and they both danced. He even tried to teach me the Charleston, Uncle Nathan did. And Aunt Regina, my father’s sister-in-law. My mother’s cousin, Pola From, I think, was also in touch with us. Her daughter Emma came to my birthday parties. Later she got married to a man from Belgium. But she came back–I guess they split up and so she came back–and she must have died. Her brother Miecio, a doctor, contacted me after the war.

As I said, my parents were married in 1911. My sister Hanka was born in 1912, me in 1917 and my brother Dawid in 1918, all of us in Warsaw. Where exactly my sister and my brother were born I don’t know. From my mother’s stories I know she gave birth to me in a gynecological clinic, a private Polish practice, somewhere at Chmielna Street. We lived at 76 Leszno, second house from Zelazna [in the Jewish district].

My father was basically a tradesman, but I don’t think he had any education. He started off as a craftsman in a big shoe factory, ‘Slon.’ I don’t know where it was located, because I don’t remember seeing him work there (that was before I was born). I only remember a huge picture of the director–Barke was his name–hanging at our place. And then Father became a tradesman and had a store at the corner of Sienna and Wielka [Wielka, a street downtown, does not exist any more], with leather: ‘giemzy’ [Ger.: soft goat leather used for shoe-tops, gloves, bags, etc.] and polishes; I remember Sterling polishes were the best. It was a big store with a good selection of leathers. My father had a partner in it, Mr Zylberlast, an engineer, who knew nothing about all that, so my father went bankrupt. When that happened, he fixed up a little store for himself in the courtyard at Franciszkanska [in the Jewish district]. This time he chose leather that goes inside, not outside, the type that is used for the lining of shoes, goatskin. He had great clients there: Strus, Kielman, all of Nowy Swiat [an exclusive street in the center of Warsaw], all those well-known shoe companies.

My father was a smart man; he used to wear a bowler-hat, and later other hats. He was very handsome, mustached, they called him ‘the Pilsudski of Franciszkanska’ 2. He never talked  about himself or his family, he was always busy. He was addicted to dominoes. He used to go to the ‘Loursa’ cafe [a café well-known already in the first half of the 19th century, under the arcades of the Wielki Theater] to play with other maniacs like himself. I could never understand what that game was all about if it could get grown-up people so obsessed. For me dominoes were a game for children. I’m at a loss, I still don’t know what it is all about. But that game cost us! We lost everything because of it, life was miserable. My mom got mad at him when he came home at midnight. Even when he came early and bragged about winning, he said he’d go out again; and he did, I remember that, and lost everything. There was a huge row about that. Once it got so bad there was nothing to eat. I must have been a teenager by then or I wouldn’t remember it so well. My mom moved out and stayed with Mania, my aunt. Terrible. There was no dinner at home. But it didn’t help any. He promised her he would stop playing – and carried on playing.

My mother was quiet, unless she was ticking my father off for those domino games. She was just a housewife, taking care of us all. She was a handsome woman; my sister resembled her a little and my sister was considered pretty. I remember Mom’s picture from before she got married. Each time we looked at it we laughed so hard we cried. It’s the clothes she was wearing: the wasp figure, long jacket, an even longer skirt, a hat with some feather, and to top it all she had some kind of a collar, but she wasn’t wearing it but holding it in her hand and it looked like a tail.

My mom called my father Moryc or Maurycy and he called her Talka. They called me ‘kid’, that is, my father did; I think my mother called me Romcia. I used to say ‘Daddy’ to him, but later I called him ‘Father.’ My brother was called Dada, just that, even later. At home we spoke Polish; everybody in our family spoke good Polish, without an accent. My mom definitely knew Yiddish, my father probably did too, because sometimes they jabbered to each other when they didn’t want me to know what they were saying. I did understand some words, but not everything. Grandma Perla must have known Yiddish in her youth. And the rest of the family? I never heard them speak Yiddish.

Growing up

We lived at 76 Leszno, on the third floor, two rooms with a kitchen, a toilet in the hall, no bathroom–there were no bathrooms then. I took my bath in a large basin, then in a tub. I remember the tub hanging in the hallway with writing on it which said ‘Down with Mrs. Bachner’s laundry!’ We wrote that, me and my brother, because we didn’t want my mom to do the washing and be tired. My mom used to go to the bathhouse–state, municipal, I don’t know who owned them. She took me once, maybe, but I didn’t want to go again. There was a stove in the room which heated in two directions. I remember a ticking clock, a cupboard, a couch, a table. We had electric light and small oil lamps. We had a wood stove and a small gas one, similar to those we use today. The kitchen was very small and not very interesting for me. There was a table, a shelf, a sink and a bed for the maid. We also had a cellar in which the food was kept. I never went there because I was damn scared of the cellar, I still never go. My mom did all the cooking by herself and she was a good cook. The maid helped her with the peeling, plucking, keeping the stove hot. The maids were mostly Polish. The last one’s name was Marysia; she lasted till the end of freedom [until the Ghetto was created in 1940]. She was a very decent girl, and handsome. But earlier there was one called Elsa, a young one, who was a Volksdeutsche 3. She was once visited by a cousin or an uncle who asked what she was doing in a Jewish house.

My parents obviously felt Jewish, I’m sure of that. In those times it used to be called ‘of Moses’ creed.’ I think they had Jewish names in their papers. My mother was a little religious; she didn’t wear a wig. She lit the candles on Friday, but then, when it got closer to the tragedy, she stopped; there was no point in keeping that up. I don’t know if the kitchen was kosher or not, but I don’t think so. But before the war we never ate pork. Only later did I start buying ham for myself. I remember that during the war, in the Ghetto, my father would get mad that my mother bought meat from peasants: Polish meat, which meant pork. He didn’t want to eat it, but then he had to. My father was a man with no teeth, ever since I can remember. And he never agreed to have teeth made for him, he had to eat everything ground or chopped, even then. [My mother did not celebrate the Sabbath] because father had a bad stomach; he was on a diet and couldn’t eat certain things. He had doctor’s orders to eat fresh food, it had to be made fresh every day. He ate on the Day of Atonement. He was a superstitious man, but he never went to synagogue, never observed any of the laws. [Did your father go to the mikveh?] I don’t know, he never told me. He prayed in the morning, before going out, because he was superstitious. It’s only because he was afraid that he’d put on that thing, I don’t know what it was called, he put something on his head, a black square thing, and another on his arm; I think it was made of leather [tefillin]. He also had a white cloth with black stripes [tallit]. There was a mezuzah by the door to the apartment. My father used to touch it whenever he came or went; my mother never did.

My mother’s home was very different from that, because my grandmother was not observant. After all, she’d lived for quite a long time at that other daughter’s house. And Mania’s house was totally ‘anti’: my mother’s sister was very assimilated. She didn’t celebrate anything. She passed for a shikse and felt like one. Why my mother was different, I don’t know. She was the only one to be so [i.e. to live according to Jewish tradition]. As I said, she lit the candles on Friday and she did something over them [blessed them], then she covered her face and whispered something, I don’t know what. I remember there was always fish for Friday dinner, boiled carp. Later, after the war, I did that, too; I learned it from my mom. I can give you the carp recipe. Carp in jelly: Ingredients: carrots, celery root (or celery stalks), parsley root (or fresh parsley), 1 onion; cleaned fish cut into pieces; salt and pepper; butter. Make vegetable stock, take out the vegetables. Place the fish in a small amount of the stock, add butter, pepper and salt and cook for about 30 mins. Place the cooked fish on a platter, garnish with the vegetables, cover with stock, and chill until the stock thickens into jelly. You can add raisins for a sweet version of the dish.

At home we celebrated the Easter holidays [Pesach]. My mom did all this cleaning, I remember that. She had some pots and pans, separate tableware which she kept in a cupboard behind glass doors, wine glasses, all those treasures. For those holidays my mother baked special cookies, macaroons, made with almonds only. I remember when she made them she hid them from us, otherwise we would eat them all. On the holiday evening the table was set and everything was there. We sat around it: mother, father and us, the three kids. For a while we thought it was all very pretty. And the food was delicious, we always looked forward to those holidays, especially I looked forward to the matzah balls. Matzah balls: Pour water over 1 cup of matzah flour with salt; add 2 eggs, 1 tablespoon of butter and fresh parsley leaves. Form balls and place them in the refrigerator for 15 minutes so they thicken; Cook them in boiling salted water untill they swell (about 15 mins); serve with boulion.

I remember a little plate was placed on the table with something that tasted bad, bitter… maybe it was horseradish [maror]. There were eggs and matzah. Matzah was bought at the bakers, I think, because it was round and very tasty. Later Mom also bought commercial matzah [baked in large bakeries, mass-produced]. I remember a pillow was placed next to my father and under the pillow something was hidden, matzah or something else, and we had to find it [afikoman]. We didn’t play at that for long, but you remember things like that. Father would trick us, push the table, pretend the wine got spilled from the glass. I think Father prayed during those holidays, but I honestly have to say I’m not very well informed.  There were these little dark red or reddish-purple books in our house written in Hebrew. I don’t know what those prayers said. When we got older, we made fun of our father, because all that seemed funny to us then. We were terrible. One time, already as a grown man, my brother went out to have a drink of cider or beer on the Day of Atonement, when my mother was fasting. We were bad too, me and my sister. So our home was neither this nor that. In December we always had a Christmas tree. No presents, but dressing up the tree was a lot of fun. I liked that very much, and my sister took part in it too: we made the baubles, paper link chains… But that was entirely our–the kids’–affair. We copied it from our friend in the same house, Marysia Feldman. She had a tree, which made me jealous, so I wanted one too. I remember Purim and [the Feast of] Tabernacles, but we didn’t celebrate those holidays. I remember them from the homes of our neighbors.

Our house was a large, four-story building. It had a booth built in, very pretty, made of glass and bricks. The owners of the house–Mr. Rowinski and his family, who went to Israel even before the war started–celebrated their dinner [Sukkot] there. Others camped out in the courtyard–that’s how I knew about the holiday. It was a very pretty courtyard, with a long, egg-shaped garden and trees. The staircase was rather shoddy, wooden, with two apartments on each floor; yes, there were us and the neighbors. Now the front was much more elegant. Some relatives of my father’s used to live there, some cousin or other. As I said earlier, my father’s sisters also lived in that house, only their entrance was off a different courtyard. There was a janitor at the main gate, a Pole, I think his name was Walenty. I remember how the children teased him and he’d chase them around the courtyard with a broom. He locked the gate for the night and you had to ring to have it opened. Some people gave him a tip, others didn’t. When my father went playing dominoes and came back at night the janitor had to go up the stairs with him and turn on the light. Many people lived in that house, a thousand souls. You could say it was like a little town. Both Poles and Jews lived there. I suppose people who were neighbors had some contact with each other. My mother claimed they were all gossips, but she had her buddies too. They spoke Polish to each other.

Across from us lived the Aleksandrowicz family. They were real Jews. Something was always cooking there, because they had all these children. Later they moved to a different place because they only had two rooms, like us. Then Mrs. Gelbfisch moved in. Their daughter said her name was Irka Goldfish [Ger.: gelb-yellow, fisch-fish]. A pretty girl, later she grew up to be quite a lady and got married. Then the Janowers came, who had two daughters. One of them got married, but the other didn’t, I don’t think. There were no Polish families in our part of the building, everybody was Jewish… No, there was Mrs. Jakubowska at the ground floor with a son of a different sexual orientation. He would approach boys on the street and there were rows about that. Poor woman–his mother–she was very nice. What happened to them? They must have moved out, it was the Ghetto after all 4, so they had to leave. That was the only Polish family in our stairwell.

On the fourth floor lived the Edelsztajns, with three children. There was a girl, older than me, maybe even older than my sister. She graduated from the department of Polish literature and language and got married, to a Jew, naturally. After the war she was a professor of grammar. Her name was Salomea Szlifersztejn [1912-1994, a professor of linguistics at Warsaw University]. Her daughter emigrated to Sweden after 1968.5 Her sister Lotka–what kind of a name is that?–was a Halutz scout before the war. She belonged to this organization 6 that trained young people to go to Israel, and she did go. There was a son, too, but I think he was killed. Opposite us, on the fourth floor, there lived Janka, a terrible woman, an anti-Semite. In the corner, there was Dziunia Fajertag, a communist, very ugly; that’s probably why she was a communist. She later went to the Soviet Union with her beau, a Pole. And why the hell did they come back? They didn’t do well over there, so they came back here and got killed. Marysia Feldman, that friend of mine, lived with her parents a floor below. Her mother was a music teacher and her father a traveling salesman of a very well known company selling clothes fabrics, called AGB, at Marszalkowska. Across the courtyard from us, on the first floor there lived a mother with two daughters. Her name was Berta, as far as I can remember. When I was small I used to go there, because she used to baby-sit kids, two or three at a time. She was cross-eyed and I learned from her to cross my eyes, so my mother took me away. Then a young Jewish girl came to our house, Pola. I can’t remember her last name. She had three sisters. She taught me to read, taught me my first letters, she even taught me about nature, for example where ice comes from.

When I was 6, I went to kindergarten, even though I could read and write. That was because of that friend from downstairs, Marysia Feldman. She was disabled. She was born with a hip they had to operate on seven times and still it didn’t help, because she couldn’t walk right to the end of her life. So I had to go to school with her. We walked from Leszno to Przejazd Street, [a street in the old Jewish district no longer in existence; near the intersection of today’s Andersa and Solidarnosci] . We went to Goldman-Landauowa’s private school for girls. 5 Przejazd Street was the address; it’s where the movie theater is today [Muranow, near Bankowy Square]. The school had a very nice building; there were eight grades with a pre-kindergarten and kindergarten class; we went from Monday till Friday, Saturdays and Sundays were free–the only school which worked like that. We went for six hours, from 8am to 2pm. Our headmistress was baptized for sure, her sister Julia, the secretary, looked like a hundred shikses. The headmistress’s husband was a gym teacher in the lower grades. I remember they had her portrait done and hung it on the wall in the main gym hall. She was a crazy woman. Once she caught my friend with dyed hair and stuck her head in the sink.

For a short while, in kindergarten, I was the top student. Later I also had good grades, I did study. I had a breakdown in the 4th grade, because our teacher committed suicide out of love. She poisoned herself. Her name was Wanda Konowna, she was a teacher of Polish. She fell in love with a well-known chess-player, Frydman, I think. Her parents came for her body from Lodz in this special car and I remember we followed it [the hearse, which later went to Lodz]. We all had fits of crying, we couldn’t deal with regular classes, it was awful. She was a lovely woman. Another teacher, Pola Borensztajn or Berensztajn, taught German. I had only occasional contact with her because I took French. She called me by my full name, very official. A petite woman, we called her ‘the flea.’ She was funny; she seemed to be afraid of us. I did like some of the school subjects. I liked math, but only algebra, geometry was beyond me. The math teacher’s name was Glas. We really made her miserable, we were so bad. Today, when I think about it, I don’t know why girls go like that. One of my friends, called Bander, pretended she went mad and wanted to throw herself out the window. Poor Glas ran around the classroom begging us to stop her. Good God!

I also really liked Latin, because I was in love with the teacher. His name was Halpern and he was very handsome. He addressed us by our first names (not everybody did). I ran into him later, at the Jewish community office, in the Ghetto by then, I think; anyway, the Germans were already here. He pretended he didn’t know me. I did too. So. He was married to our [nature] teacher, a big blond called Bronislawa. He was a Jew and she was not. She died of typhus in the Ghetto. I don’t think he survived either. I also liked ancient history, I really did. It was taught by the director, the history teacher’s husband. First he was our history teacher, then her. His name was Dinces. Later I didn’t like history so much. Somehow it wouldn’t stick in my head, I couldn’t remember the dates. We had no Yiddish at school but we did have history of the Jews, up to 4th grade. Our teacher’s name was Inwentarz. I read very well, articulating everything clearly, so I was always called on to read everything. He gave me these thick volumes to read; it was something religious, but I don’t know what. I read in Polish, but I didn’t understand a word of it. Poor Mr. Inwentarz, we didn’t take his class very seriously and we made fun of him. He once wrote: ‘The whole class wanders around the class and nobody takes any notice when I call them to attention.’ Oh, there are things one never forgets… Marysia, from the floor below, didn’t like that teacher and once she spoke back to him rudely. Her mother had to take her out of the school. She went to the Polish school run by  Mrs. Warecka at Nowy Swiat. 10% of their intake were Jews. But my school was basically Jewish. Even though the headmistress was probably baptized, only Jewish girls went to that school. A Polish girl came once, stayed a few days and left. I guess she didn’t like it. She was probably from a mixed marriage, otherwise she wouldn’t have come to that school in the first place; that’s what I think.

A dancer, Pola Nirenska, the wife of Jan Karski 7 graduated from that school. She danced at all our events, back at school. Then she went to the Ballet School, not Wysocka’s but a different one. Then she went abroad and made a career there.

There were around twenty of us in my class. I used to remember all the names. At the front desk there sat a very good student, Gehen; she was good at math and physics, but she wouldn’t help anyone cheat. Next to her, there was this girl from some provincial place, very miserable-looking. There was Rega Segal, the daughter of the director of the Jewish Theater. I used to go there a lot, to that theater–at Dzika? Gesia?–[Ed. note: probably the Jewish Theater at Dzika; in 1930-33 a theater hall there was used by Jewish theater companies] because she’d drag me there with her. I think at school she sat with this Russian girl, Zenia Weksler. At the next desk sat Polcia Klaps, who looked like a shikse. Then Zosia Kestenbaum and Celinka Finkelkraut, who lived closest to me, on Chlodna, at the corner of Zelazna. Then Runia Bander, who was friends with Halinka Zlotogora. I saw Halinka later in the Ghetto; she already had a child and a musician husband. Then Zosia Klajnbart, Franka Jarlicht, and next to her this girl who was emotionally unstable, as we later decided, who committed suicide, even before the war. I also remember this wild Bronka, who pretended to faint in class and we had to carry her out. Good grief! There was also Zula Wermus, she went to dancing school. Our headmistress said it was either dancing or school so she quit dancing. She wrote very beautiful compositions. Another one was Anka Bortner who, I think, never graduated.

I sat in the last row, with Lola Henigman. But I hung around with Halinka Zlotogora, Anka Bortner and Rozka Madrzak. Rozka was the youngest of three daughters of the owner of ‘Plutos,’ a large chocolate factory. Very wealthy people; they lived at 31 Krolewska [a smart street downtown, near the Saski Garden]. That was a huge, beautiful house, with 11 rooms or so. And I’ll never forget one special room with a couch on which only pillows were arranged. I also remember the food was strange at their house; there was no bread for dinner, only chocolate. Rozka sometimes invited friends over but not everybody. All three daughters of the Madrzak family died during the war, only the son survived. After the war I had this very short meeting with my friends, including Franka Jarlicht, who didn’t spend the occupation here but went to Israel [Palestine] with her husband. Anka Bortner also visited me. After the war I got a call from the headmistress’s son, a car mechanic. He wanted to find those of us who had survived the war. But there was only one other one–Zosia Klajnbart. He wanted to put together a commemorative album. His mother, our headmistress, died before the war, I think.

Our school was politically undefined. On September 1st [the beginning of the school year in Poland] they took us to the Tlomackie Synagogue [a large synagogue in the center of Warsaw, built in the Renaissance style in 1872-78] for a service. Professor Schorr 8 read to us, I don’t know what, I only remember it was in Polish. One time we simply walked out of the service, because someone let out a pigeon with a red ribbon tied to its leg–a very communist gesture. Our class teacher quickly took us out of there. At school there were some leftist girls, I’m sure, but I don’t know if they belonged to any organization. We didn’t care for politics much. I also wasn’t interested in finding out if my friends were religious, but I think they came from homes like mine.

I never studied anything outside of school. I remember once, when my brother had his confirmation [Ed. note: bar mitzvah], someone came to teach him. So I took the opportunity to learn some Hebrew from him. But when he mispronounced some word, said ‘eart’ instead of ‘earth,’ I couldn’t stop laughing and I quit studying, just like that. I do remember a few words: ‘tsipor ofo, tsipor ofo’ [Hebr. Tsipor afa–the bird flew away], which means something like the bird went away? I also don’t remember anything from the celebration or whether it was held in the synagogue or not. There may have been a lunch or a dinner.

My brother was a good boy, really. When he was younger, he was stupid and beat us up. My mother would chase him around the table with a carpet-beater. You never forget things like that. When he was young, he played with the neighbors’ children out in the yard. Then he had some friends at school. He went to a secondary school where most of the students were Jewish, too. The school was called ‘Spojnia’ and was a teachers’ cooperative, somewhere at Dluga [a street downtown, on the border of the Jewish district]. It was a school for boys, rather leftist. We had the same geography teacher, Stefcia Halbersztat. She had a crush on my brother and they went to Zakopane together later. She married an eye-doctor, Arkin. My brother didn’t want to go to college, because he didn’t like studying, but he did graduate from high school. I remember I went to stand at the door of his school when he was taking his matriculation exam, because I was very worried about him. Until the war he worked in our father’s leather store at Franciszkanska.

My sister did not finish school; she was the lazier one, that is. She went to a Polish school, to Matyskowa. Natalka, Aunt Mania’s daughter, also went there and also never finished, because she wouldn’t study. The school was near Koszykowa Street [in the center of Warsaw, outside the old Jewish district], but I don’t know what the name of the street was, because it was quite far away from us. In the 5th grade something came over my sister and she said she wouldn’t go to school any more and nothing could make her. I remember how my mother screamed at her for not wanting to study or read.

I don’t know what I read at school. I was very taken by this book called Zycie dziewczat [‘Girls’ Lives’], I can still remember the opening of that book. It was about these two sisters, one of which is very sick; it was all very sad. I can’t remember if there was a library at school. I never borrowed books from there. I went to the ‘Humanite’ library at 14 or 16 Leszno. Even during the war, not the owner, but the woman she employed, came to Leszno where I lived and brought me a book which was a hit at the time, I can’t remember anymore what the title was. She came and brought me fresh books for a while, but then she stopped coming. Before the war, there were basically no books at my house except for the ones I bought at the Wirgin bookstore at Elektoralna Street [downtown] and the dark red [religious] ones; I can’t remember any others. Anyway, there was no space with three kids in two rooms. My mother probably read what I did and I never saw my father reading. He was busy doing something else: playing dominoes. As far as papers went, we read Nasz Przeglad 9. I remember my brother entered a quiz there, because there was also Maly Przeglad [Mini Review, one of a number of supplements, established by J. Korczak 10, published in 1926-39, addressed to children and co-edited by them]. My brother won a tennis racket in that competition.

Politics wasn’t much of a subject in our house. My father was not interested in it at all. I know he liked Pilsudski very much and my mother thought that as long as Pilsudski was in power things would be all right. So they voted for him. I remember once Dziunia Fajertag, the communist from our courtyard, came over asking us to keep some papers [leaflets, illegal materials] for her. When my father found out about it he almost kicked me out of the house. My parents didn’t belong to any party, nothing like that. My sister and brother never belonged to any organizations either, never went on youth camps, they were an asocial bunch. And neither did I; I never went on summer camp.

In the summer we went to a place near Warsaw, in the direction of Otwock [a pre-war resort around 30 km south-east from Warsaw]. When we were small we went to Michalin, Jozefow and Swider, later to Srodborow. We took the train and our stuff went on a horse-drawn cart. We used to go for two whole months. What did we do there? I don’t know. We lived in a guesthouse, my mother did all the cooking. My father didn’t come with us. He went to the ‘Srodborowianka’ house [in Srodborow]. That was a private guesthouse which belonged to a doctor, whose name was Gorewicz, I think. Father spent his holidays there and got his meals there. Unfortunately, I spent one summer with his sister Rozia–the two sisters always went together–but I can’t remember where that was. I only remember this one incident when my aunt bought a pastry for her daughter, who wouldn’t share it with me. So my memories are not very happy. For a while I was in Sulejowek [a small town 20 km east of Warsaw] at my grandmother’s brother’s, Ludwik’s. That was when my brother got sick with scarlet fever.  I remember an aunt there who was unbelievably stingy–when she bought sour cream, she waited until it went really thick before she let us eat it. There was another niece of hers there with me; we were both very young girls then, just kids really. Another time I went with Marysia Feldman to a guesthouse in Srodborow, run by a Mrs. Markuszewicz. On Sundays in Warsaw we went to Skaryszewski Park [a park on the east bank of the Vistula river, created at the beginning of the 20th century] with my mom, and Marysia and her mom. I don’t know why we didn’t go to Saski Park [a park in downtown Warsaw, created in the first half of the 18th century, often visited by Jews between the wars], which was closer. I guess it was fashionable to go to Skaryszewski. I remember once when we were getting off a tram at the corner of Chlodna and Zelazna [downtown] my brother was hit by a bike. But he was all right as far as I can remember.

As for our medical care, before the war we did not belong to the Insurance [an institution in Poland between 1920 and 1934 which provided free medical care to the insured]. We had a doctor come over to our house. Doctor Zacharewicz came to our father, and Doctor Roszkowski to us, the kids. They were both Polish, I can’t remember a Jewish doctor. No, sorry, there was one, Zylberlast, the brother of my father’s partner from that store on Sienna. He would always say, ‘Well, as far as I’m concerned…’ which meant he was taking no responsibility for his words, so we didn’t particularly trust him. I remember having blood drawn when I was sick once. I was about 14. A guy came from a clinic–a doctor or no doctor–and said: ‘Lie still or the needle may pop out.’ So I said I wouldn’t let him do it. So he left and my mother had to chase him down the staircase to bring him back. Finally he did draw my blood. My mom also took us to the dentist.

I took my matriculation exam in 1935, I think. I remember I studied for it together with Celinka Finkelkraut and she failed. She had to take it again the following year and I felt very sorry for her. I didn’t study history with Celinka, but with Bander, Runia Bander. First I had an exam in Polish. Then, even though I liked math and couldn’t do physics, I had an exam in physics. Since Rega Segal was sitting right in front of me, I said to her: ‘If you don’t help me, I’ll kill you!’ and the poor thing did; I would have never been able to do it without her help. And Latin. I had a very good grade in Latin, because I liked the teacher, unlike the other subjects where I had threes and fours [B’s and C’s]. The Latin teacher must have been scared we wouldn’t pass, so before the exam he dictated lists of words to us. And I got lucky. My mother’s cousin was a Latin teacher (she graduated from the Latin Philology department at the University) and she came to us from Konskie [around 160 km south from Warsaw]. Basing on those lists of words she figured out what I would have to translate in the exam. Can you believe that?! And indeed, when I went to the exam, he gave me that text. So I passed it with flying colors.

After matriculation I decided to study at the University. A friend, Irka, and I, we applied. But I didn’t go to a single class. I decided it was too much for me and said ‘No way, I’m not going.’ The first exam came along–with Witwicki [Wladyslaw Witwicki, 1878-1948, philosopher, psychologist, professor at Warsaw University]– which I didn’t study for, I didn’t even open a book. So I never went, and my friend did the same. But I couldn’t just sit around and do nothing. So I started attending sewing classes at ORT 11. I was very good at drawing and I planned to become a fashion designer. My mother even wanted me to go to Vienna, to learn cutting, because Vienna was known for fashion design. But it all came to nothing. I didn’t do well at ORT, because I didn’t like sewing. I went to that school, but it didn’t make sense really. I went for almost a year, but didn’t even take the exam at the end.

At ORT, I met Blima Ramler from Kolomyia [now Ukraine]. I renamed her Lidka. She was a very good student of sewing, unlike me. She did all the machine-sewing for me. She was a lovely girl: small, dark. Once I invited her home for chulent. I got my mom to make chulent. I liked it very much, I don’t know where from, because we very rarely had it at home. My father wouldn’t eat it. So she came to dinner, but she didn’t like the chulent. We remained friends even after ORT. She graduated and went back to Kolomyia. Once she came to Warsaw with her fiance, Henryk, to see an exhibition. They knew each other from a school in Kolomyia. She was five years older than him. He studied law in Lwow [now Ukraine]. In Warsaw, they stopped at my and my parents’ house and stayed for two days. Then she invited me to Kolomyia and I spent ten days there. They behaved as if they were married, which they weren’t. I don’t remember the town at all. I only remember that I was very popular as the girl from Warsaw and that we went dancing in ‘Cafe Roma.’ I met Henryk’s friend there, Emanuel, Menio. He enlarged my high school graduation picture and touched it up so that my headmistress at school said I wore makeup for it. Ridiculous! I had that portrait up on the wall above my bed. That friend went to the Soviet Union after the war broke out, and after the war went to Cuba, where his uncle had a hotel. There it turned out that the hotel was a brothel, and Menio went to Israel.

Around 1938, Lidka wrote to me because she was getting married to Henryk. I even got her a special hat at my milliner’s and sent it to her by mail. I know that until the war she was a very popular seamstress in Kolomyia and her husband worked at a friends’ law firm as an apprentice. They didn’t have children.

My other friend was Marysia Feldman, the one from the floor below. She graduated from the Warecka Gymnasium. She never went to college either. I think she was out of school already when she got married, after the death of her mother. I remember I went to that funeral with my mother. It was held at the cemetery at Gesia [Jewish cemetery at Okopowa]. But I ran away; I must have heard the weepers and I ran away. After her mother’s death, Marysia got married to Elek Kahan. She was very young, maybe 18? I don’t think I went to their wedding, I don’t know what it was like. Her husband Elek–what kind of a name is that?–had a brother Mulek; they were the sons of the editor of a Jewish newspaper, a very quiet man. I can’t say what kind of a paper it was. Their mother, Szoszana, was an actress, and behaved like one. There was a daughter there, too, Lilka, who became a dancer and then also gave recitations. I remember her reciting at IPS, the Art Institute [Institute for Art Propagation, a cultural and artistic institution active in 1930-1939, which organized shows, exhibitions, etc.], at Prosta. They lived at Nowolipki.

Those two brothers belonged to a group called ‘Balagania,’ a dozen or so men, all from the Polytechnic. I met them through Marysia. It all started when she got married to Elek and they would come to play bridge at her place. I didn’t play, though they tried to teach me. I think they were all Jewish. One of them, from Lodz, didn’t look like a Jew, but was Jewish for sure. His name was Knaperbaum. Another’s name was Kacap, but that wasn’t a real name. He lived at 13 Leszno. There was Stasiek Lipecki, who survived in the Soviet Union. Then there was Szmulenty Baran: ‘Baran’ [the ram] because his hair was kinky, but his real name was Eilenberg [Samuel Eilenberg, 1913-1998, professor of mathematics, one of the creators of homological  algebra]. He was a mathematician, very talented; at 21 he already had a PhD in mathematics. He went to America and stayed there because the war broke out. My beau, Beniek Trokan, already had his degree in surveying. We were dating for something like seven years. Then he said his mother thought that since we had been together so long we should get married. I had no such intention, I had other things to think about, so we split up. There was also Ignas Tyrmand, not a member of the ‘Balagania’ group, but he would come to play bridge. I think he worked for his father’s wire business. I don’t exactly understand how he was related to Leopold [Leopold Tyrmand, 1920-1985, prose-writer and journalist, connoisseur and propagator of jazz; from 1966 lived abroad], anyway, it was a very close relation. They used to come to play bridge and we went to the movies together. We always went at the last minute, by taxi, to the late, 10 o’clock show. When I was a girl, they didn’t always want to let me into the movie, because I looked very young. My mother suggested that I show them my high heels. I bought my clothes at Vilars’s, at Marszalkowska, I remember that as if it was today. He was the owner of a women’s clothing firm. A friend of my sister’s, Irka Fenigsztajn, was his girlfriend, but then she married someone else.

As I said earlier, my sister never finished school. She took some accounting courses and found a job. She worked for a few years. Then she got sick, mentally sick, I should say. She was afraid to go out on the street. She once fainted on the street, so she later had these fears. But finally she got married in 1937. I don’t know how they met, they dated for a short time. His name was Abram Feldman and my sister renamed him Adam, though at the beginning she did call him Abram. I know very little about him, because he was from Radom. I know he was a tradesman dealing in metal products, ovens for farmers or something like that. I have to say that at their wedding I was only a spectator, I didn’t take part in all that commotion. The wedding took place in a room rented from a rabbi from Norway or somewhere. That rabbi, if he was a rabbi at all, was wearing plain clothes, no robes or anything, only, I have to say, he did wear a hat. I don’t know, I guess he prayed in Hebrew. It was a very secular wedding because my brother-in-law was a leftist and he didn’t go in for that stuff. (He didn’t say the Kaddish for his mother when she died, for which his sisters never forgave him.) I know he did break the glass at the wedding. My sister was wearing a beautiful white striped suit. It’s difficult for me to say what kind of people came, because I hardly knew anyone. I only remember that my mother forgot to serve the salad with the dinner (back at home). The next day she found the salad on the windowsill. Those are the things you remember.

After the wedding, my sister and her husband went to Lublin. He once came to visit me with his sister, Salomea I think, from Radom. She was very ill, and it turned out she had cancer; I think it was bone cancer. She stayed in bed in our house for three days and some professor came to see her. Then her husband–for her husband came with her too–took her back to Radom in an ambulance. The other sister’s name was Kala. Salomea was not entirely assimilated, the way my brother-in-law was. My sister’s husband also had a brother, but I can’t remember his name. He was an important army official in the communist army; I saw his name in a Russian encyclopedia. In 1937 or 1938, more likely 1938, my nephew Gucio was born. He was born in Warsaw, because it was a complicated delivery. Then they went to Lublin, but not right away. They stayed in Lublin until the war.

In 1937, the year my sister got married, I started working in the ‘Linia i Litera’ print shop. It started out at Krochmalna [in the Jewish district] in a rundown building. I worked in the basement, in this horrible office, somewhere under the stairs. Then a new building was put up, on Grzybowska, I think [in the Jewish district], where the print shop was located on the first floor. I ran the office there: I paid the workers their salaries, typed various things and did some accounting. A real accountant came occasionally to check if everything was in order. I even went to the tax office occasionally; they sent me there to make sure they weren’t getting in trouble. It was a big company, with over a dozen workers and draftsmen employed. I remember I had four bosses: Michal Walersztajn, Jerzy Bursztyn–a bon vivant and a very handsome man–and two others: a type-setter and a machinist who made prints on those printing machines. They printed posters, booklets. I remember how we botched a job once with one of them. We were supposed to print a Philips radio manual. We had plates with the drawings. But even though he checked them and I checked them, we didn’t notice that the drawings were upside down. Nothing happened, because it was on the day before the war broke out. When the Germans came in, the print shop lasted a month or two and was closed down.

There was a boy in that print shop who went around on a bike with boxes of printed material. Very well-behaved, pleasant and nice. And then, when the Germans were here, someone saw him in an SS uniform.

During the war

There were both Jews and Poles at Leszno, where we lived, but really there were no anti-Semitic clashes. Maybe once only. I remember there was a family, quite religious. I can’t remember how many sons there were. One of those sons was beaten to death by Polish boys. He was 12 or 13. I will never forget that funeral in the courtyard. Terrible. And once when I was walking down Marszalkowska with that beau of mine, Beniek, suddenly these heavies started breaking windows in the stores, including Hirszfelds, this big delicatessen.12 So we grabbed a carriage and I went home. Really annoying. Once I had to pay for my own lack of common sense. I was given a costume, Tyrolean-style, gray with green stripes, with red and white lining, Tyrolean lapels and buttons (later, in the Ghetto, an acquaintance took it away in a suitcase, because I was afraid to keep it). So I went out on the street in this costume, got on a tram and this woman said: ‘Well, well, a Jewish broad wearing this?!’ What do these people have against Jews? In August 1939 I was in Muszyna [a resort in the south of Poland, in the Beskid hills] with this friend of mine from the print shop. We were coming back from Zegiestow [a resort near Muszyna] on a train. We were the last ones to get on the train and this man looked at us and said: ‘Those Jews, they’re everywhere.’ Well, that’s enough for me.

I retuned to Warsaw from Muszyna on 23rd August. My brother was in Zakopane. On 1st September 1939 I went back to work at ‘Linia i Litera’ [on 1st September 1939 the German army crossed the Polish border and World War II began]. One of my bosses said they were putting up posters about the draft, so I started crying. So this son-of-a-bitch, one of the owners, says, ‘What are you crying for?’ So I said ‘What do you mean, what for? I have a brother who is 18.’ My brother responded to the Umiastowski order 13 in September, I think. A whole group of my friends went as well. My sister’s little son moved in with us, because at the time [when the war broke out] he was spending his holidays in Srodborow with my mother. So my mom walked back to Warsaw with this child in her arms under the falling bombs. I remember she told me how she walked across the bridge with him, scared to death.

Then I went looking for my sister and my brother-in-law. I went to Bialystok [a town in north-east Poland, approx. 200 km from Warsaw], because everybody who was leaving went through Bialystok. The cafes in Bialystok were all covered with slips with names written on them. One of those slips told me my brother-in-law and my sister were in Luck. From there they were planning to go to Lwow, because my brother-in-law wanted to look up his brother, who was somebody important in the Soviet army. I stayed with them for a month and then signed up to go back to Warsaw–with my sister, because, after all, her child was there without his mother.

At the Russian-German crossing–there was no special border there, only a table where Germans sat on the one side and Poles on the other–my sister tried to cross with me. Everything was going well, only when you took a step forward you heard ‘Jude raus!’ [Ger.: ‘Jew – out’] and then shots in the air. She couldn’t take it; she pulled her hand out of mine and ran back. She hid somewhere in a kennel or sty and landed up back in Lublin. She went back to Lublin, because that’s where they used to live. And me, I was left standing there on that crossing between two Polish men, very nice. One of them took me by the hand, held tight and said ‘stand still.’ So I did. And I crossed with the two of them. I crossed and went back home to Warsaw. My mother was very surprised, because I should have stayed on the other side. Then my sister reappeared, a few months later, infested with lice. It was terrible. That was a very difficult time. She escaped from Lublin because it was even more dangerous there. So she stayed with us for a while with the child; then she left again and the child stayed behind. He was 2 years old then, maybe 2 and a half. He couldn’t say ‘ciocia’ [Pol.: auntie], he said ‘Tuta,’ so I was ‘Tuta.’ Then a Polish woman was supposed to come and pick him up. Marysia [Feldman] told me that apparently on the tram he asked her: ‘When is that shikse coming?’ There was always a bit of laughter in everything. ‘That shikse’ did come, and took him to Lublin. My brother also came back to Warsaw. I wrote to Lidka, because she lived in the East, and Kolomyia was not yet taken by the Germans, asking if my brother couldn’t hide with them. But her husband wrote back that the entire family came to stay with them. That was the beginning of a miserable life.            

Until the war, my father had his store at Franciszkanska. He had only one employee there, Albert, I think, Szapiro or Szpiro. He had the keys to the store, because he lived in the same building. When he learned the Germans were coming he took everything to his house, all that leather. We were left without money, without anything, it was a nightmare. I don’t know how, but a few packages of that leather found their way to our house. So I took a carriage to the Kielman firm [a shoe company], on Chmielna [a street downtown, outside the Jewish district] and I sold them, because we had no money to live on. (That shop assistant met a terrible end, because later I saw him and his wife and child being led in a column to the Umschlagplatz 14.)

My father was so terrified that he didn’t go out on the street, never laid his eyes on a German. He stopped shaving, he deteriorated fast. He only went to visit his sisters, who lived in the other courtyard. Once we went with him to cousin From. And From threw us out of his house for bringing father in such shape. God! My father cut it short and committed suicide, through the window in his sisters’ apartment… It might have been in 1940, before the Ghetto [before October 1940], for it couldn’t have been in 1939… I don’t remember much from his funeral at the Jewish Cemetery at Okopowa. The funeral procession was allowed to walk without German police supervision, and a group of us followed the hearse. I went to another funeral at the Jewish Cemetery later, when the father of that boyfriend of mine, Beniek, died of typhus. I wanted to go to my father’s grave. But I was told that this was not done, that one doesn’t visit [graves]. So I didn’t go. I still haven’t been. I have no idea where the grave is; I haven’t been to that registry office to check. I haven’t looked for it, I have to admit.    

We lived at Leszno: my mom, my brother and I. We had the last maid with us, Marysia, until they created the Ghetto. She was a very decent girl. She went out to the fields and pulled up tomatoes or something, so that we wouldn’t die of hunger. It was very hard. I remember how, in the Ghetto by then, I made the Jewish dish chulent, because it would keep for two or three days. You used barley, potatoes and some kind of meat. It cooked all night on a low flame, the top wrapped in paper.

When there was the Ghetto, my grandmother lived with us. First she was with my mother’s sister, Mania, but then that aunt’s kids did something inexcusable. When things got tough–not as bad as with us, because we had no means of supporting ourselves–they told her to leave. So later we didn’t have anything at all to do with them. There was no fight, no reproaches, nothing. Only we never went to my aunt’s house and she never came to ours, as if she didn’t exist. I don’t know when she left that apartment at Wspolna–she certainly had to, because that wasn’t the district for the Jews. I only know the return address on my brother’s letters said ‘53 Wspolna,’ where she used to live. I think I once saw Natalka on my street, Leszno. Before the war her hair was black as a raven’s, almost bluish. I saw someone like her on the street, only her hair was dyed red, to make it less dark. But we pretended we didn’t know each other. And that’s how it was. When Grandma was with us, her brother Ludwik came to visit her and sometimes he’d bring a little money. And then I read an announcement on a post or some fence that his wife died. He posted that obituary himself. He probably died too. My grandmother was 84 when she got ill because the food was unsuitable. A doctor came and said that it was an intestinal torsion, and that she was too old to have an operation and anyway, in those conditions, in the Ghetto…. If not for the war maybe they would have saved her. She died shortly after. I wasn’t at home at the time. I don’t even know where she’s buried.

Our family relations deteriorated greatly: we didn’t visit each other, didn’t know what was happening to any of the others. I only remember that once my cousin Helena put me in touch with this Volksdeutscher who went with me to pick up some stuff of my sister’s. Because my sister, when she was coming to Warsaw from the other side [from Poland’s eastern territories, not yet occupied by the Germans], had had two or more suitcases with her with good quality clothing. Those things were very attractive, among others there was a beautiful fur of Persian lamb paws, braytshvantse [Yid.: astrakhan] or something like that, and a whole set of linens…. She left them with some peasant on the way. So I went to pick up those suitcases with the Volksdeutscher, my lawyer cousin’s friend. Maybe he’d been her client and that’s why she trusted him. Anyway, I paid him and he took me. My mother cried that it was too dangerous. I got to the town, Siemiatycze [130 km east of Warsaw]. He introduced me as his wife, because his German friends were there with him. It was terrible. Luckily it lasted only one night and one day. In that town we looked up the man, who said he knew nothing about a suitcase or suitcases. So the whole trip was in vain and my mother worried in vain. That cousin of mine thought the Volksdeutsche would save her. She bequeathed him her fully furnished four-room apartment. But nothing came of it. She met a terrible end. Her little daughter, Blanka, who was 8 at the time, died too. How? When? Where? These are terrible questions for which there is no answer.

We lived at Leszno. Close to our house there was a ‘shop’ [German compulsory workshop in the Ghetto] where Jews worked who were conscripted by the Germans. It was called the Toebbens shop [on the corner of Leszno and Zelazna, a factory producing for the German military industry]. Before the war, Rowinski’s cotton products workshop was located there; I have no idea if it was the same Rowinski who owned the building where we lived. We remained at Leszno until the deportations began.15 Two Germans entered the house and yelled: ‘Alles raus!’ [Ger.: everybody out!]. We were all scared, so we all went out. Only we took bedclothes with us, to have something to sleep on. We got an apartment at 16 or 18 Mila. That’s a building well-known in the history of the Ghetto; the headquarters were located there. [In the bunker at 18 Mila were the headquarters of the Jewish Fighting Organization 16. On 8th May 1943 the leaders of the Ghetto uprising, surrounded by the Germans, collectively committed suicide in that bunker.] I wasn’t there long, only a few weeks; then I got out of the Ghetto.

But before I got out, I worked. First, for a short time, I worked for Ringelblum’s archive 17 in the basement of the synagogue at Tlomackie. I got that job through an acquaintance of my brother’s who was madly in love with him. Her name was Felka, I don’t remember her last name, and I think she was active in some organization. A few other girls worked there, too; we were making lists of donations for Jewish children.

And then I worked in an ink factory. A private company, not far from where I lived, called ‘Leszczynski and Company.’ A big firm. They employed Jews for the dirty jobs in which you had to deal with ink. Poles did all the other kinds of jobs, because there were also paints, carbons and other papers. Some of the Poles were very decent people, very nice. But there were a few really unpleasant ones, especially the Polish woman who supervised us, and this foreman, Stokowski, an older, gray, small guy, terribly vicious. So there were various people there. There were these two who would come to us, to the ink department, and insult people using bad words. For some reason I was spared: either they had some respect for me or they found me attractive, who knows. They had strange names, like the two painters; one called himself Michal Aniol [Michelangelo] and the other’s name was Walicki [Michal Walicki, 1904-1966, professor of history of art, specialist in painting–a coincidental similarity of names]. When things got really bad and Jews were being rounded up, one of them offered to get me out of the Ghetto. I asked how much for. And it turned out that for nothing.

It was September 1942, a few days before the big deportation [Grossaktion]. So I got up and left. I hid a few pictures in my purse: my mom’s, my brother’s and sister’s, her son’s and my own. And five dollars which my last friend made me take. I remember that somewhere on the way from Leszno to Gesia [a street which exists only partly today, as Anielewicza], I had to go through a Jewish kitchen where they gave out soup. And there was my friend’s mother. It was the first time I saw her. She gave me a rose from my friend and with that rose I went out of the Ghetto. Opposite the Jewish Cemetery I had to cross the Ghetto demarcation line. A German stopped me at the exit and said ‘Ausweis!’ [Ger.: identification card]. Damn it, nobody told me you had to have an ausweis. I just went like an idiot with nothing, not a slip of paper for that German. I hadn’t thought they should have written something for me in German. I had toilet paper with me, so I took out a piece and showed it to the German. He said ‘Los’ [Ger. colloquial: go], so I walked on. Was the German bribed already? Maybe my brother arranged that for me? And there, on the other side of the street one of those workers was waiting for me [Walicki or Michal Aniol]. I accidentally dropped the rose, so I bent to pick it up and he told me off me for being silly, wasting time for a rose. We got on a tram and went to his house on the corner of Marszalkowska. The pregnant wife of one of the men was there; she worked for the Pakulski brothers [a company selling wine and imported foods]. I spent two days there.

As was decided earlier, I called the husband of my friend Marysia. Before the war, she was the wife of Elek Kahan, but then she got baptized and married Wojtek Matuszczyk. And during the war, that Wojtek of hers would look for apartments for people, mostly people he knew. He also helped get papers; I know it cost 1500 zloty and that was a lot. He didn’t take any money from me, because I came out without any money. When I called him, he came to pick me up and we went to their house at Czackiego [in the city center]. I stayed there only for 2-3 days, because other people were hiding there too.

Wojtek found a very pleasant apartment for me, at 62 Hoza [in the city center], at a Mrs. Barbanel’s. Her husband was a lawyer. He wasn’t there, I guessed he was in hiding too. She was French-born, so her Polish was terrible. She had a beautiful, large apartment. Apart from me, a Dr. Rajchert was staying at her apartment. He survived the war and went to America. In the third room a woman lived whose name was Hanka. She would go out and not return before curfew. Mrs. Barbanel and I were both always very worried about her, worried that something happened to her. But then she would appear, all of a sudden. Once she said in French to Mrs. Barbanel that she suspected I was Jewish; so Mrs. Barbanel said that was impossible. Wojtek paid the rent for me. He also managed to get me these little toy cars to paint. He brought them, I painted them and then he picked them up.

Naturally I had to leave the house, I had to go out for dinner. I went alone to ‘Nadswitezianska,’ a restaurant at Aleje Jerozolimskie [one of the major streets in Warsaw]. There I would sit over dinner and think that everyone, the entire restaurant, was watching me, and I was scared to death. Whatever I did, I did it in fear. How else? Once, when I left Wojtek’s office and went out on the street, a guy approached me. He must have been no more than 16 or 18, my age. He says to me: ‘You’re Jewish. I’m taking you to the police.’ I knew right away that I had to act tough, so I said: ‘You punk! Just wait and I’ll take you!’ I turned around and marched off, weak at the knees. I walked on foot to Hoza and the first thing I did was to call Wojtek and tell him to come over. I was lucky I acted like that. What gave me the idea? I don’t know if I could be so clever today.

I lived for a month or two at Barbanel’s, but then Marysia got mad and refused to help me any more. She probably thought I was flirting with Wojtek. Anyway, it was horrible. I asked her ‘So what am I supposed to do?’ ‘As far as I’m concerned you can walk out of a fourth story window,’ was all she said. So I wrote a letter to my brother saying that I wanted to go back to the Ghetto. So Wojtek took offense and that was it.

My brother had been in hiding, but the Germans caught him and sent him to work. He worked outside the Ghetto, they took him to work in Skaryszewski Park.18 Marysia went to visit him twice, but later she said to me, ‘You know, I won’t go there anymore, because this woman stopped me after one visit and asked, ‘Why do you come visiting those Jews, are you Jewish too?’’ So she must have been scared to go there. When I wrote to my brother that I wanted to get out [get back to the Ghetto], he wrote back that a woman would come and take care of me.

And indeed, a woman came. She was in mourning. It turned out her father committed suicide by hanging himself. She was a friend of my brother’s, Zaba, from Konskowola [around 100 km south-east from Warsaw]. I have no idea where he met her. The year was 1942. I went with her, scared stiff, because I had no papers. Wojtek only managed to get me a fake birth certificate. He told me to walk on it, so that it wouldn’t look too new. Wojtek was a good guy. I think he was killed.

So I went to Zaba’s, to Konskowola and I actually was very comfortable there. She was a nurse, 6 years older than I was; before the war she took nursing courses in Warsaw. Her mother was Czech, a lovely woman. Zaba’s husband was a railway man. They had a daughter Ewa who was 2 or 2-and-a-half when I came. Zaba was a brave woman, and her husband was a sissy. She took care of me, she hugged me, she ruled that house so that he didn’t have much say, lucky for me… We lived in a brick house next to the railway tracks, by the crossing. When they started deporting the Jews, I could see the boxcars with people in the windows. Once I thought I saw my brother, but I don’t know if it was him… And when those trains were going to Majdanek 19, then Zaba’s husband–a kind, polite man–said that one good thing Hitler was doing was what was happening to the Jews. I told Zaba about that, and she said ‘Come on, he doesn’t know what he is saying.’ That was the end of it, but it stayed with me. Anyway, it wasn’t good company for me. Zaba’s sister-in-law, Hela, a bad one, took an astrakhan fur coat from her Jewish friend and denounced her to the gendarmes. Why didn’t she denounce me? When one of Zaba’s friends came over I had to spend the whole time under the bed. So it was pretty interesting over there…

I was pestering Wojtek for a kennkarte 20. He had good relations with the priests. His wife, Marysia, wrote me back that a human being doesn’t deserve anything from another human being. Everybody around must have known I was Jewish, but nobody said anything. I was there as a cousin; the little girl called me ‘auntie.’ But the news spread among the railway men who I was. One young one, very handsome, said to me ‘I’d find you attractive even if you were Jewish.’ And another time, when Zaba wasn’t home and I couldn’t start the stove–it was a coal stove–I went to the office where that guy worked and asked him for help. Apparently he knew right away that I was Jewish [according to a pre-war stereotype held by some Poles, Jewish women didn’t know how to start a fire in a stove]. It was only after the war that I found out why.

When I stayed with Zaba, her brother Czesio came to visit once. But because I was there, he went back to his house for the night. And that night the Germans pulled out all the young people, including him. I had a bad conscience because if he’d stayed the night, instead of me, maybe he would have survived. And he was shot.

My brother sent me letters by mail addressed to Zaba [toward the end of 1942]. My mom no longer added anything. He lied to me that she had bad legs, but what could legs have had to do with writing? Probably she was already gone. They took her out of the house and just took her away.  I don’t even know where and when she died. To this day I can’t forgive myself that I wasn’t there. I got the last message from my brother on 14th April 1943. He wrote: ‘I am well, don’t worry about me, think about yourself.’ Zaba went to Warsaw to get him out, even though we didn’t have a hiding place for him. But when she got there she saw that all of the Ghetto was burned down 21. He was a wonderful brother and a wonderful son…he loved our mother very much.

When I was in Konskowola, I still got messages from my sister. She was taken from Lublin to Majdanek. From Majdanek she apparently sent me a diamond, through a man who undertook to give me some of the money for that diamond. For a while that was the only money Zaba and I had to support ourselves. In the meantime, my sister’s husband–who they didn’t take to Majdanek and he was still in Lublin–wrote to me asking if Zaba could organize a hiding place for him. It was hard to read what he said, he’d gone completely crazy. He was wealthy. If he’d given her some money, maybe Zaba would have managed to help. But he only liked making money and didn’t know how to use it. Sometime earlier my sister wrote us that we should remember about this man – she gave his name - who could save her husband. So Zaba and I went to Lublin, which was rather dangerous as we later found out. The man said he didn’t know my brother-in-law, though he was wearing my brother-in-law’s jacket… It’s all so strange. My brother-in-law really had a chance of surviving: he didn’t have black hair, he had brown hair and blue eyes, he spoke Polish well. I’m not even talking about the rest of his family but himself. Because he was basically alone by then. His little son Gucio and my sister died in Majdanek, the child before her. I figured that out from the letters I got from my brother-in-law: there was no mention of the child.

Everybody died. Nobody was left from this family, nobody. I got out of the Ghetto then because I wanted to live. I was the only one to cut myself off, and that’s why I’m left all alone. Closer family, distant family, they’re all gone…

I spent two years with Zaba, from 1942 till the end of the war, when Lublin was freed [July 1944], possibly before Warsaw was. When the Russkies came, they wanted to arrest Zaba’s other brother, Edward, who was the mayor. People were denouncing him, because apparently he was stealing their cows and produce. To put it short, he was a son-of-a-bitch. When they came to get him he hid somewhere. But the people who he’d rubbed up the wrong way came after him and there was a court case in Lublin after the war. And I was the main witness for the defense. I said in court: ‘I can’t say anything against Edward, because I am Jewish and this family saved my life.’ I did it only for Zaba and her mother, not anybody else from that family. Because of what I said he was released, after having been held for a year and a half.

In 1944, when I was still in Konskowola, the Russian Army and Polish officers arrived.22 One time, one of them, Lajchman, slapped me on my behind in this little bar. So I told him I’m Jewish. So he asked what I was still doing there. He told me to go to Lublin to the army and say he sent me. I went to Lublin to look for someone from my family. I went to the Jewish Committee, but I didn’t find out anything. I registered in case someone was looking for me. Nobody was. So I went to the army and registered under the name Szymanska. Two women took care of me. It must have been luck among all the misfortunes that I came across that woman who signed me up. I got clothing, I got food, I got an apartment.

In Lublin I worked in the office of General Grosz. Mrs. Zabludowska was the head of that office and I was her helper. I wrote up orders on the typewriter. And once the order was to transfer somewhere a Col. Henryk Holder, son of Michal. Could it be the husband of Lidka from Kolomyia? Could there be another person of the same name? I wrote to him without thinking much of the future, only because he was someone who knew me, remembered me… He came to visit, which was very kind of him. I told him all about myself and asked about his wife. Both she and his entire family died. So later I thought, ‘What do I care which one it is?’ Since I knew him from Lidka’s stories and believed he was a decent man, we got together.

Then he went to the front and I stayed in Lublin. He was in Warsaw the day after it was liberated [17th January 1945]. I still have a letter from him in which he says that Warsaw was all gone and that the Germans should be shot, beaten, murdered. And I went through that miserable city later, too. I went from Lublin to Berlin with the army as an ensign. I was demobilized in Katowice.

After the war

In Katowice, in December 1945, we got married. I remember I had nothing to serve our two witnesses. I borrowed potatoes from the neighbors, we bought some frankfurters and that was our wedding feast.

My husband was born in 1914 in Szczerc near Kolomyia. His father worked in an office in the court in Kolomyia. His mother died before the war from diabetes, on the train to Truskawiec [a resort around 140 km north-west from Kolomyia, now Ukraine]. He had an older brother, also a lawyer, Izio, Izaak or Izydor. Henryk graduated from a secondary school in Kolomyia and then studied law in Lwow. He only took his exams there, but he studied at home. He graduated before the war. He worked in Kolomyia in the law firm of his friend, Wilf, who I later met, in Katowice, after the war. Well, and he married a friend from school, Blima–Lidka. After the Germans entered Kolomyia, his brother committed suicide in the Ghetto. He left behind a wife, Marysia, also a lawyer, and their daughter. Some acquaintances told me that Marysia left her child in front of a store and did a runner. She told me she gave the little one to the nuns and never saw her again. So I don’t know how it really was. Anyway, she is gone. Marysia remarried after the war; her new husband was an army lawyer, and they lived in the same house we did and had two children. My husband’s father must have been killed during the war. Lidka was also killed. She wanted to get through to Hungary.23 She was caught near the Romanian border. They took off her shoes and she walked barefoot to Kolomyia. There she was shot. My husband went there in 1976, to the monument to the victims.

When the Germans came, my husband fled further east. That’s how he ended up in the army, in a school for officers in Ryazan [in the Soviet Union then, now in Russia, around 200 km south-east from Moscow]. They did pre-military training. Then, I guess, he must have joined the Berling army 24. When we met he was in the First Army, in the prosecutor’s office. I didn’t even know what a prosecutor is. Had I known, maybe I wouldn’t have decided to be with him… [Communist prosecutors were infamous for their role in the post-war history of Poland: through false accusations they contributed to numerous death sentences for those belonging to the political opposition.] And he was the prosecutor for a long time. Luckily, in 1950 they fired him, most likely because of his Jewish background, and hired a Pole in his place. He was let go before all those trials, but in his time there must have been trials, too. I don’t know; he never told me and I never asked.

After the wedding we lived in Katowice. We occupied a room in an apartment at Francuska which used to belong to some Germans. But that didn’t last long, we soon got an apartment at Zamkowa. There were five rooms in the apartment, I don’t know what we needed such a big place for, plus a huge kitchen and a maid’s room. A luxury apartment – I never saw one like it since. We had a male servant, but he didn’t have much work, because we always ate at the canteen. All he did was sew on my collars. Actually I don’t know what he did in that apartment, nothing went on there. We had an army car, a beautiful green Audi. My husband had friends from Kolomyia living in Katowice. Those were Wilf, whose law firm he had worked in before the war, and the three Gotfryd brothers who survived the Kolomyia Ghetto.

My husband was then transferred to Warsaw. I followed him in a short time, for I wasn’t my own from then until the end of his life. We got an apartment which belonged to the Army at Belwederska [a representative street in Warsaw]: three beautiful rooms, a bathroom with a window, a maid’s room. I had my first child Piotr in 1948, but he died within 12 hours. In the army hospital, in Warsaw, he was taken to the other world. In 1949 my second son, Jerzy, was born, so we hovered over him. I even went to Wroclaw [to Prof. Ludwik Hirszfeld (1884-1954), immunologist, serologist, the first person to do research into high-risk pregnancy in Poland] to give birth to him. Then we came back to Warsaw. There was a very good nanny and a maid. So I finally went out to work, because we had to pay for all of it somehow. In 1954 I went on a year-long drafting course. I completed it, I even have the certificate, but I can draft just about as well as I can sew. So obviously I didn’t work in that line, but as a secretary in an office of this state enterprise, Construction of Housing for Workers, BOR. First I was in the department of planning, but I just couldn’t get it. Even today if they ask me to plan something, you can guess what it’s going to look like. We had a manager who couldn’t even sign his name, illiterate. So I said, ‘I don’t want anything to do with that kind of education.’ Later I was the secretary of the main Director. I was bored witless, I read books, because he went to conferences every day and there was nothing for me to do. I didn’t work there long, a year maybe. After that, I don’t think I worked anywhere else.

During the summer we went to those government resorts, in Bulgaria, Hungary and the GDR 25. But I wasn’t proud of that or happy about it. I knew people held it against us, particularly that we were Jews.

When my husband was fired in 1950, he was a colonel. He moved to Mr. Bierut’s 26 legal office. I can’t remember if he worked there until Bierut’s death [1956], but afterwards he became the manager of the Office of the State Council. First his boss was Zawadzki, I think [Aleksander Zawadzki, 1899-1964, secretary of the Party’s Central Committee, from 1952 head of the State Council] and then Ochab [Edward Ochab, 1906-1989, secretary of the Party [PZPR] Central Committee, 1964-68 head of the State Council]. My husband was fired from there as well, in 1968. They kicked him out for giving preference to Jews. That was all a bunch of lies, of course–no one talks about that today.

My son studied foreign trade. I wanted him very much to leave [Poland]. He gave up his studies to go abroad, but they wouldn’t let him go. He had to do something, so he went to work for this company producing glass containers. But as soon as he started working, he got his draft card from the army. Our home was in a state of panic, almost like during the occupation. An acquaintance interceded on our behalf to get him enrolled as a student again, even though a year had already passed since he left. He did manage to become a student again and did very well. After he graduated he went abroad, first to Sweden–after all, so many different people went there at the time–and then to France, then London and finally West Germany 27, to the Gotfryds. Finally he called me from Germany to say that he was coming back. I can’t believe he got out only to come back…

We had many acquaintances abroad. Before 1956 28, my friend from school, Zula Wermus, who survived the war in the Soviet Union, decided to go to Israel. She came to our house asking my husband what she should do. And she went, with her husband. Then, after 1956, my husband’s secretary left, a colleague he really trusted, Fels. He went to Israel with his Polish wife, who wanted to go, too; she was a smart girl. The sister of my husband’s first wife, Andzia, was also in Israel. She even wanted to come back, but her son, Icchak, didn’t. He was 13 then, in a kibbutz he liked a lot, so they didn’t come back. The Gotfryds went to West Germany. A friend of my husband’s from Kolomyia went to London and worked in a bank. I didn’t have anyone that close who went abroad. Ignas Tyrmand went to Australia, and the mathematician Eilenberg–from the ‘Balagania’ crowd–lived in America; I saw him twice after the war.

I keep on wondering why I didn’t think of going abroad right after the war. In 1956 when everybody was leaving I asked my husband ‘Maybe we should go, too?’ But he said ‘Go if you want, I’m staying.’ So what was I to do? Take my son and leave? I was uneducated, untrained, I didn’t have anywhere to work, I didn’t know what to do. So I stayed, like an idiot. I should have gone. A wasted life…

When my husband got fired in 1968, Cyrankiewicz 29 was still Prime Minister. So he gave my husband a retirement pension which could support us: 5000 zloty for the three of us. But they took away our apartment, of course. It was 1972; they persisted so we moved out. The apartment we’re in now was waiting for us, so to speak, because the building was newly finished when we moved in.

After that ordeal, our doctor friend Askanas sent my husband to recover in this health resort near Warsaw, owned by the government, for we were still allowed to use it. Then Marysia, my husband’s sister-in-law, called that she had a translation lined up for him. She worked for ‘Ksiazka i Wiedza’ [a publishing house established in 1948 in Warsaw] and she’d recommended him there. So my husband started translating from Russian; all those beautiful volumes: Lenin and such… Then he did German as well: Marx’s correspondence and legal texts. From then on he was a translator. He died of a heart attack in July 1980, when he was vacationing in Jadwisin [a government holiday complex near Warsaw]. He was buried in the military cemetery in Warsaw. And that’s how a life ends. He lost his mother, father, wife, then he lived through that terrible war in the Soviet Union where he suffered a lot, not being very enterprising and unable to find a job… And then they ended his life with that worthless accusation, a foul and evil thing to do [the accusation of mismanagement of human resources and his consequent firing, in 1968, led to her husband’s health deteriorating].

My son then started working for PAP [the Polish Press Agency]. The third husband of my friend the hag, Marysia, called him because he speaks very fluent English, and asked him if he wouldn’t like the job. He’s been working there for 20-25 years now. He is a translator in what may still be called ‘the English office.’

We don’t observe any Jewish traditions in our home, except my son buys matzah in this store at Twarda [the Synagogue and Jewish Theater are also on that street]. I don’t eat it, because it’s not what matzah used to be. But my son eats it for dessert after supper.

For me, it never mattered one bit what my friends’ background was. I had friends among both Jews and Poles. After the war I helped Zaba–my husband had connections, so he arranged for an apartment in Warsaw and a job at the hospital for Zaba’s daughter. After Zaba died, in 1973, her husband wanted me to help him get into the veterans’ union. How could I? I didn’t have any connections there. So I told him there was this tree campaign going on.30 And he got the title of ‘Righteous Among the Nations.’ He accepted it in his and Zaba’s name. He died last year.

Several years ago my husband’s sister-in-law Marysia died. Her son stayed in Poland, but her daughter went to Sweden with her husband in 1968. And so there are no Jews left around me except for Alina Winawer. I have known her for over 50 years. My husband got her husband a job in the army: bought him for two barrels of gasoline. Years later we found out that her mother got married in Israel to Mr. Rowinski, who owned the Leszno house before the war. His [first] wife and his daughter committed suicide in Israel, I don’t know why. In the house where I live now I don’t know any other Jewish families, it’s all Catholics around me. Who knows what they think about me. I don’t go to all those events at TSKZ 31. It used to be that I was able to go, but I only went twice. They meet at a bad time, when I’m having dinner at home. Now there is no way I could go [because of having a broken arm]. Too bad.

Everything bad that I could have experienced I already did. I don’t know if anything changed for the better in my life after 1989 32. When I hear which parties are winning [currently the left is in power, but in the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections in fall 2005, both right-wing parties and right-wing individual politicians are likely to win]–what is left to believe in? I know we shouldn’t have stayed here. I’ve known that for a long time. Every little anti-Semitic gesture or remark drives me up the wall. At moments like that I can’t forgive myself for having stayed here. It’s no good to live a lie. But what else can I do?…

Glossary

Szulim Rozenberg

Paris

France

Interviewer: Anna Szyba

Date of interview: March 2006

I met Szulim Rozenberg in his Paris apartment, a veritable haven of Yiddish culture. The walls are hung with paintings, most of them by Josel Bergner, a school friend of Mr. Rozenberg’s who now lives in Tel Aviv. The shelves are packed with Jewish books, and family photographs are displayed all around. Mr. Rozenberg is a wonderful man who becomes visibly moved as he reminisces about prewar times, when, he remembers, he “defied the poverty of his own family to discover the secrets of literature and science.” Our journey through his childhood often resembles a paean to his friends and the teachers from the Jewish school he attended before the war. Although Mr. Rozenberg left Poland just after the war, and his native tongue is Yiddish, we talk in Polish. Hence the errors in his speech, which at times was hard to understand. However, I have attempted to reproduce his style faithfully. 

My family background

Growing up

During the war

After the war

My family background

I was born in Warsaw, on a street that was called Kupiecka, at no. 16, and that was on 11th November 1918. When Father saw that Mother was somehow restless, he said: ‘Maybe we need that woman for you, to help you give birth?’ And she [the midwife] came, and I was born quite quickly. So that was 8 babies. We had not long gone into that apartment and they didn’t even have a large bowl to bath the born baby, so one of my sisters knocked to the neighbor opposite and said she wanted to borrow a bowl. And the neighbor said ‘You can wash your hair tomorrow,’ so my sister says: ‘No, my mother has had a baby, I want it for the baby.’

My parents came from very poor families from Kozienice [90 km south of Warsaw]. Father, Szmul, was born in 1879; I think Mother was born in the same year, maybe in 1880. Her maiden name was Grinberg, Dwojra Rejla.

Both Father’s parents and Mother’s parents lived in Kozienice. I know nothing about my grandparents; I only know that Father’s father was called Ichesil. My grandmother, Father’s mother, came to us one time. I don’t remember what she was called; I was maybe 2 years old. We weren’t in touch because there was no money to travel. My mother had a terrible tragedy: her mother – or maybe her father, I don’t remember – died, and they didn’t tell her. A few months later, when she found out, she sobbed: ‘I would have walked to the funeral.’

My mother had a brother in Warsaw. And she had 3 brothers in Kozienice. The one who lived in Warsaw was called Jankiel Grinberg. He lived at 27 Pawia Street. We kept in touch with him but you couldn’t go visit him because he lived in a pigsty, the conditions were a very low standard. There were 5 children there, 3 boys and I think 2 girls. The boys all survived, they were in Russia, and then 2 of them went to Israel and one to Canada. They are all dead now. Mother’s brothers who lived in Kozienice was Fajwl, Lajbisz and Mendl.

Father had no family. He was very young when his father died. And there was a brother, because his children were in Warsaw: a daughter and a son, but I know nothing about that brother. The daughter, Chaje Frydman, married well, only her husband died fairly young. She had 3 children, 2 sons and 1 daughter. She used to come to our home often – my father was her uncle. We called her Auntie Chaja. She was a gutsy woman, knew everything, could do everything; she found a husband for my eldest sister. And she had a brother, called Chisel, who lived in Warsaw too, and that brother had a wife with TB. She lay for years in sanatoria, and died before the war.

I never went to Kozienice, but my 2 sisters, they went there. And my eldest brother went there, and lived a while there, did work for the Bund 1 and worked. The uncles, Mother’s brothers, used to come and they always stayed with us.

The eldest, Fajwl, I only saw him one or two times, he came to buy something for his cobbler’s workshop. And he had a son who wasn’t very alright [he was sick] and he was in Warsaw too, we had to take him to the hospital. And that was the end of it, I never saw him again and we weren’t in contact. The second, Lajbisz, he in 1905 2 was in the Russian army, near Japan, he ate frogs there. Later, still before the war, he went to Israel [ed. note: to Palestine]. In Israel he didn’t make it either, the life was too hard and the heat was killing him, and he came back to Kozienice. They were all sitting in Poland, at home, on that one piece of bread. That Lajbisz, whenever he left [after visiting], he would always leave 10 or 20 groszy for the children. You remember that. The youngest, that was Mendl, he was a consumptive and he worked in Warsaw. They made him up a bed and he slept in our apartment. For quite a long time, but I don’t remember any more, because I was still a child.

Father went to Warsaw to work as a young boy. That was at the beginning of the 1890s. And sometimes he would come back to his mother for the festivals. Once he came back and saw a girl standing in a doorway, trying not to be seen, and he liked the look of her, so he sent a shadkhan and the shadkhan said that he was a nice guy, he worked in Warsaw, and they got married. That could have been in 1898, because their first daughter, Golda, was born in 1900. And they went to Warsaw together and looked for an apartment.

Mother could have been about 19 when she had her first baby. 3 years later the 2nd baby, 2 years later the 3rd baby, 3 years later the 4th baby, and so on. During World War I they had a very bad apartment, they lived very miserably, with 5 children in this basement, at 58 Dzika Street, and shortly before I was born they decided to take that apartment at 16 Kupiecka Street, where I was born. That was a very nice house: on the 3rd floor, above us, they were 6 and 5 rooms. The same on the second, and the same on the first.

Growing up

When I was born there were already 5 children at home before me. The eldest, Golda, was 18. They were thinking, about her, to get her married, but they were having trouble. She worked, she was a very resolute, bright girl. But what? She didn’t mix with company. And because she didn’t mix with company, she didn’t have any friends. My second sister, Rajzla, who was about 3 years younger than her [b. 1903], went to the organization [Bund] and she had friends. And then there was the first son, who was called Ksil, born in 1905. So he was 13 when I was born and he went to cheder like all the other boys. Then there was Menasze, born in 1908, and in 1912 a third daughter was born, Ryfka, who was 6 years older than me, but she went to Polish elementary school. That was the first one who went to school.

On the first floor, where we lived, it was quite a big shop. There’s no other way to describe it, because you came in off the street and there was a very high room, so my parents made this sort of gallery where they slept, and when I was small I slept there with Father up to a certain age. Underneath the gallery Father had his workbench, where he worked as a cobbler. Then there was another room, which was without windows, that was the “bath,” because sometimes water came through from the second floor. When I was a child I slept there, but not alone, with my brother, and from time to time water would pour in, so we had a free bath. There was a kitchen, and the other rooms were separate [taken by another tenant].

On the third floor lived a family that had come from Russia; they had 2 daughters: one was a ballerina at Wysocka’s [Tacjanna Wysocka, 1894-1970, dancer, choreographer, journalist. From 1918 she ran the theatrical dance section at the S. and T. Wysocki Music School], and she was always escorted home. And they had 2 sons, surgeons. Those doctors very rarely came to their parents’; they lived somewhere in the good districts of Warsaw, something near Marszalkowska [one of the widest, biggest boulevards in Warsaw]. From time to time their parents went to visit them. And then there was the eldest daughter, Ida, who looked after her parents, who were quite old, and she had no private life. On Saturdays, as a child, I used to go to them to ask for hot water, because we couldn’t boil water for tea on Saturdays. But what? I would come and say: ‘Please Miss Ida, can you give me a little fresh built water?’ And she would say: ‘Not “fresh built”, “fresh boiled”.’ It took quite a long time for that to get into my head.

On the fourth floor lived the widow Ozarow, and on the second floor lived the 2 Wolkow sisters, with a daughter and a son. There were no husbands. They sublet rooms to someone, on a temporary basis, not permanently. For instance there was this young dancer, Musia Dajches, from Vilnius, who used to come and give concerts at the Novelty Theater 3. She was 10 years old and toured all over the world, she was the national celebrity of the Polish Jews. She danced in Israel. When she came, she always stayed with them. She was a child, so they needed a child to amuse her, play with her, so I was that young man.

My parents didn’t go to any school. Maybe Father went to cheder – he had learned the prayers. That was all. He could sign his name in Russian, but in Polish not even that. At home we spoke Yiddish. My parents knew a few words of Polish. I learned Polish myself, from Grimm’s fairytales. There on our street there was this shop that sold notebooks, pen nibs, ink, and he had these little books. So for 2 groszy he would let me read one of those books. I learned to read Yiddish myself too, without school, from the newspapers that come to our house.

I liked my mother very much but she was a very unhappy woman, because she had not food to give her children. In winter we bought 2 sacks of potatoes and into the cellar, and a little onion, and that was our food. And the only thing, it was so tragic for Mother, was that she couldn’t make Sabbath, because for Sabbath you had to have a few zloty to buy a fish, to buy a little bit of meat. Later, in the 1930s, my eldest sister  Golda lived in Czerniakow and was doing well. Streetcar no. 2 went from there to us, so she would come to do her shopping on Mila Street. She would come, take Mother, and bought for Mother too. So that Sabbath was Sabbath, and I would take the chulent to the baker [Jews often took chulent to the baker’s on Friday evening to put it in the baker’s oven, to have a warm meal for the Sabbath, when they weren’t allowed to cook]. You understand how that whole life went on?

Mother had that eldest son, Ksil, well, he was sickly, and she, when she was giving us food, well I would look at his plate, that he always had a spoonful more than all the others. And that hurt. And I remember how when I was working for the tailor and something needed delivering, the patron [owner] would give me the streetcar fare there and back. And I would nip there on foot and save the few groszy streetcar fare. Mother had these varicose veins on her legs and she suffered terribly, she was in bed, so I bought a satsuma for the groszy I’d saved, and took it to Mother.

I liked her a lot, only we didn’t get on at all. With Father you could always talk a bit more, but not with Mother. She was always so withdrawn, and the poorness upset her so much that it was awful. Even now I cry when I see her, how she looked. From time to time she would go to visit my sisters, to Golda most of all, so she had to have enough for the streetcar. So when she got there, Golda gave her enough to get back.

The eldest granddaughter, Nechuma, was Rajzla’s; she married a mechanic, Icchak Fruchtman, and he worked in a button factory, which was in the precinct on Nalewki at no. 2 – there was this precinct, Simons, there [Simons’ precinct opened at the beginning of the 20th century on the corner of Dluga and Nalewki as a commercial building]. There was a factory there, a big unit, and in another unit the same was the union of tailors, and in the other unit was Jutrznia, Morgenstern 4. And he earned quite a good wage, but he was unemployed for a very long time, and only when he found a job there was great delight at such good fortune. They lived opposite me. I lived on Kupiecka, the second house, and here [adjacent] was Zamenhofa Street, at no. 21, and they had a balcony that gave onto the street, and when Nechuma went out onto the balcony she would shout ‘Grandma, Grandma!’ So we could see each other. But Mother didn’t go to Rajzla’s very often because her husband, when he came back from work, he would lie down on the couch, he was tired and didn’t like having visitors. Ryfka married a Rubin Moszkowicz and went to live at 27 Dzielna Street, opposite Pawiak [a notorious Warsaw prison]. She had 2 children. Icchak was born in 1943 in Russia, Dwora she had in 1946 in Dzierzoniow.

Father was always busy, always smiling, always dashing off somewhere, always had some idea. He matched couples together, for instance, was a bit of a shadkhan, and found them apartments. And he would forget to take money. Apart from that he was always thinking of somebody. But he was very cheerful. He had a friend who was a half-rabbi. He wasn’t an official rabbi, he just wore this round fur hat. He was very poor too, but very decent. They used to go the bar on Fridays and pay so that they could go on Saturday and drink a little glass of vodka. And he would come home in such a good mood, come to his wife and kissed her, and she would say: ‘Oy! What are you doing?’ So he would say: ‘Let my children learn how to love a wife.’

Father had a little manufactory until the 1930s, which was in our house. There were about 12 people in it. When things were going worse, he made a pair of high boots, warm ones, with fur inside, took them under his overcoat and went out into the Polish district. He saw a woman selling apples, sitting at a cash desk, and it’s cold there. And he comes in and says: ‘Put them on, Ma’am.’ She puts a shoe like that on, and then she doesn’t want to undress it… And when he’d sold that pair he could buy material for another pair, and we had enough to eat for a few days. Only what? It was hard for him because he had no-one to second him. The eldest son, Ksil, he’d learned to make uppers and started work in the factory, but the first strike at Father’s it was he who organized.

We were very poor. On the one hand because my father got involved in causes like making a kitchen for the poor and taking them food. Our apartment wasn’t too big to start with, and then they set up this kitchen in it as well, to cook. On Thursdays he would go round shops and here they’d give him something, there they’d give him something else. And they’d do the cooking, and on Friday evening they’d take it to this big hall at 32 Muranowska Street. It was this hall that was hired for weddings, dances, and there they distributed the food. Father had a lot of energy and he was a very good man, and people like that have a very hard life.

In Poland rent at that time was quite expensive. And in the crisis years it was terrible. Before, when we had the shop, together with the kitchen and the little room we paid 82 zloty a month [a kilo of bread cost 30 groszy]. That was a terrible sum. To earn it the whole family had to work, and we didn’t always have it. So in 1932, when my sister Rajzla got married, they gave her the little gallery [the platform in the apartment on Kupiecka], to live in with her husband, and there she had a daughter. And later Father stopped working. He was around 50, and he couldn’t sit on the stool any more. And Rajzla left home and took an apartment [at 21 Zamenhofa]. Then Father split the shop off and gave it to somebody else so as not to have so much rent to pay. And for the kitchen and the dark room we paid 28 zloty. But once Father wasn’t working, his earnings were all up in the air: he hooked a few zloty or he didn’t. And at one time we didn’t pay the rent for about 2 months, and the bailiff came and all there was, 2 beds, Father’s and Mother’s, and the couch, they put it out in the gateway. That was a terrible thing. When I came from work, I saw our things standing in the gateway, and Mother looked like a mummy, and she couldn’t even speak. And then we started looking for money to pay somehow, and we went round everyone we knew. When we paid it, we moved back into that ‘palace’ and I carried on sleeping in that dark little room in the same bed as my brother.

Mother went to the synagogue at every festival. She knew that she wasn’t allowed to mix dairy and meat, that this wasn’t kosher and that wasn’t kosher, so she didn’t do it, but whether she was religious? What does ‘religiousness’ mean? The whole religiousness thing among poor people like that was a bit of a comfort thing, that they would go there [to heaven after death], and it would be easier there. Mother always went to the mikveh after her period. And Father went too, only Father went every week. I went once, I think, or maybe twice, I don’t know, but it was a terrible place, the mikveh! The water was dirty!

Mother lit the candles. When I was a small child we played with a dreidl [Yiddish: a four-sided spinning top traditionally played with at Chanukkah], but later on it didn’t interest me any more: I ate at home and then went to SKIF 5, we would sit there and sing all the time. We had this small projector that they showed Chaplin films on [Charlie Chaplin, 1889-1977, the biggest Hollywood silent movie star]. At Sukkot we made a sukkah and ate there. It was almost at home – we lived on the first floor, and Mother passed us food out through the window. We ate with the neighbors, so they were careful to give us better food. When I was small I went to the synagogue, but I never took a book to read the prayers in the synagogue.

Father went to the prayer house at 21 Mila Street every Saturday. The prayer house at Mila was 2 or 3 rooms on the second floor, 2 at least because the women couldn’t be together. There was a mikveh in the same house too. I know there was a board at the prayer house, and my father was on the board. I went to that prayer house until 1932. Going to the prayer house was a kind of getting away from the hard lot. The last years, all the children in our house were Bundists. One son, Ksil, didn’t live at home any more, but I and one brother, Menasze, we still did, and Father once asked us: ‘I know you don’t want to go to the prayer house, but just take me, so that other people don’t see me going alone.’ How much humbleness did he have to have to tell his children: ‘Take me’? We took him. We walked with Father and he went into the prayer house and we went off to the side and did what we wanted.

The eldest brother Ksil and Menasze went to cheder a bit but somehow it was no joy to them. And when I was a few years old, I don’t know, maybe 5, maybe 6, Father took me to cheder and I started to go. There was this cheder not far from Mila. There was some kind of cheder in every house. There were 2 teachers, and they went round: ‘Read this, say that.’ On every week you had to pay on Sunday. After 2 weeks I come and I haven’t anything to pay with. So they sent me home: ‘When you have money, come.’ So a week later Father had something, gave me a few groszy and sent me off again. But when I come back after that week the other children had already learned something I didn’t know and I was unhappy. After that happened a few times, at 8½ years old I didn’t want to go back there again. It didn’t do anything for me. My elder brother, when I was let’s say 6, he was 19, he was earning, and he bought these Literarisze Bletter 6, which used to come to our house every week. And I remember that photograph of David, Michelangelo’s, he was naked, or Moses with horns. You were afraid to look at it!

All 3 sisters got married before the war and I remember the weddings. They were religious. What is the wedding? They take the future husband and with the future wife they are stood under a canopy and the rabbi says some prayer. They get a glass and take care that it’s a fine one, and at a certain moment the man breaks the glass to recall the destruction of Jerusalem. They all had it.

My sisters kept kosher homes. I’ll tell you this: when you left a home like ours, what you cooked you cooked kosher. She couldn’t pour milk into meat, for instance. I don’t know if they had special pots, for meat and for milk. But they kept Jewish homes, though for Ryfka it wasn’t important.

I sometimes used to go to my sister Golda in Czerniakow, that was a very long way. I used to walk an hour and a half. My parents, you see they couldn’t use transport on Saturdays, they used to go 2 and a half hours on foot to go and see their first grandson there. Golda’s husband was called Froim Sziber. He was a cobbler, totally illiterate. When I used to go by tram I would take books and in the evenings I’d read to them. Sometimes he’d still be sitting and working and I would read him books. It was kind of moving that he got so much joy from those books, that he liked it so much. And my sister too. They liked each other so much. They lived in their shop, so they made a piece of canvas to divide the first room where he worked off from where she had her workshop, there she made all sorts of knits [e.g. gymnastics suits, swimsuits, ballet wear]. When I was working in Warsaw I would buy goods for her and he came and took it and she always made some design. Swimsuits that didn’t sell, I took them, went to the wholesale and sold them. When I went to them, I slept on the other side from them, but it was the same room.

When she had to go to the hospital [to have her baby], I went to their house every evening to take her. I took her in a taxi that went via Zelazna Street, and crossed over the tracks and bounced, and she screamed: ‘Oy, oy!’ Well then it [the birth] went fast after that. When she had twins, at the hospital in Czyste 7 they told me: ‘It’s a girl, but call back in 20 minutes. I called back in 20 minutes: ‘There’s another girl.’ I had to go and register it.

The street opposite us was Wolynska, and there was a series of small food stores. At 7 in the evening all the shops closed. Sometimes when I come home and there wasn’t a piece of bread, I would go there, one of the family was standing on the street, and when I came I said to him: ‘A quarter loaf for 10 groszy, sugar for 5 groszy and for 5 groszy a medium piece of herring,’ and he took the 20 groszy and in a greasy newspaper gave me the goods. And we made a bit of tea, everyone took a piece of bread and that’s what you went to sleep on. That’s how we lived.

What I remember most is Jewish Warsaw. It took in more or less from Stawki, where the Umschlagplatz 8 was later, to the philharmonic on Jasna. In every week I would go for Sunday mornings at 12, those were classical music concerts. I went on my own, or with this one friend who also liked music, Naftule Leruch. At first we were the only ones and they laughed a bit, but later other friends from Zukunft 9 wanted to go themselves, and a whole gang of us went. And sometimes I even got in on the sly, I mean I gave the janitor 20 or 30 groszy and he let me in. And from time to time there was an inspection and they went round looking for people without tickets, but I just sat in the corner on the left, on the second floor, and when they came they just looked at me and went on. I don’t know why, but they probably saw that it would be a shame to take away the happiness that this child got from the concert.

From time to time, very rarely, we used to go for a walk to Marszalkowska. And apart from that we went to the Saski Gardens and there we had fights with the Fascists 10, who didn’t want Jews to get into the garden. There was a summer theater in that garden, and I used to go there from time to time, there was this wonderful actress, a Jewish one, Ejchlerowna [Irena Eichlerowna, 1908-1990], who used to play a doctor. I still remember her acting. And I used to go to the opera for claps, to clap [as a hired applauder]. If they didn’t have anyone you could get in for free, but if there were a few who wanted to, then he wanted 50 groszy. From time to time, if I had 50 groszy and there was a good thing that I wanted to see, I gave him the 50 groszy and you had to shout ‘Encore!’ and throw flowers on the stage. When it was vacation time I sometimes went 4-5 times a week.

In the summer we went down to the Vistula [Poland’s biggest river, which flows through Warsaw], to the other side of the Kierbedz Bridge, and there there was a non-regulation beach. We went there in the morning, everyone took a hunk of bread, a cucumber, sometimes something else, and you were there all day. That was the old Warsaw. I knew her, loved her, and never in my life would I have thought that I would leave Warsaw …

I remember, it was probably in 1928, there was a terrible storm, roofs flew off, and we were on that beach. So what did we do? We got in the water and laughed and sang. Before evening it quietened and we went home. And my eldest sister, Golda, had come out to look for me. She was walking towards the beach, and when she saw me she was so happy, she hugged me and took me home. I was not quite 10. I was very independent altogether. In 1932 my brother Ksil was sick and was in the hospital in Czyste, he had a problem with his lungs. So I went every day on the streetcar, I hung on at the back. I went to visit him, sometimes take him something if Mother gave me something. And I had to be first in the ward when it was visiting time, because that’s what he wanted!

I remember one evening the great Polish violinist Huberman [Bronislaw Huberman, 1882-1947, violinist and pedagogue. Initiator of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in Tel Aviv] came to Warsaw, and my eldest brother Ksil bought himself a ticket, and he spent a lot of money, but there wasn’t a bit of bread in the house, but he had to go. Only what? He was working, he had friends who were richer than him and they all went. Later on I understood him, because I used to do the same. Once, I was walking along Rymarska Street, near the Saxon Gardens, with a girl friend who lived in the same house as me, Estera Lenger, and we met friends of hers who lived there. And they said: ‘We’re going for coffee!’ So I say to Estera: ‘Listen, I haven’t got a single grosz.’ ‘Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.’ Later, I felt her slipping her purse into my pocket so that I could pay. But that can happen once, it can happen a second time, but it’s hard to live like that.

And 2 days before the war, on the 5th [September 1939]  there was a concert at the Warsaw Opera House. Ewa Bandrowska-Turska [1894-1979, Polish singer] was performing, and the money was going to the army. So I went with her, it was she bought the tickets, we sat opposite Rydz-Smigly [Edward Rydz-Smigly, 1886-1941, Polish marshal]. I needed it and she needed it. She saw that I loved her very much, and she loved me very much too, and her family thought very highly of me, and even of my impoverished father.

In 1929 the winter was terribly cold in Warsaw. We didn’t go to school. So I every day went to the library. And when I go, Mother says: ‘Where are you going?’ ‘To the library.’ ‘You’ll die on the way and no-one will even know where you are!’ That’s what Mother said as I left. I came back with some new book and there were the 3 of us left at home. Father, Mother and I. So I sat by the stove and read aloud, Shulem Aleichem 11, Mendele Moykher Sforim 12.

In the Simons precinct, on the first floor, was the Grosser Library [the Grosser Memorial Library in Warsaw was founded in 1915 on the initiative of a group of workers and officials. It operated until 1939]. It was the library of the Bund and the Kultur-Liga [Kultur-Liga, cultural and educational organization dominated, especially at first, by Bundist political influences. Founded in 1916 in Kiev and active in Poland from 1922]. To that library, I went every day. I had a marvelous librarian. He knew what I already read and he took my reading further. When I met someone, they had a book that I liked, I say: ‘You know what? Give it to me until tomorrow morning.’ So I went home and there in my dark room I put the light on and by tomorrow morning I finished that book and took it back. Of German literature, I remember Georg Fink wrote a book called Mir hingert – ‘We are hungry.’ It’s him talking, in Berlin, about how he’s always hungry. I read a lot and in those books I always found something in common with my life.

The Bund was a working-class party, and my brothers joined that party as young men. I was the youngest in the house and I heard what they talked about. When Perec Markisz [Markisz Perec 1895-1952, poet writing in Yiddish] came to Warsaw, there was this story: My sister Rajzla had very long hair, and she’d made a plait, and he stroked that plait, so they said: ‘Don’t wash your hair now! You mustn’t cut your hair, it’s sacred!’

In 1928, in November, Michalewicz [Bejnisz Michalewicz, 1876-1928, pedagogue, journalist, co-founder of the CISzO] died. We had a Bund place on Przejazd, no. 9; there was a kitchen there as well. So they laid him out there and people came to see him. Well I gone past 13 times. I went back in the line and gone past again. Lots of people at the funeral, hundreds of thousands came from various places to Warsaw for Michalewicz’s funeral. And Chmurner [Jozef Chmurner, 1884-1935, journalist, CISzO activist] died in something like 1934. But his was smaller. Chmurner was the leader of the leftist Bundists [in the 1920s the Bund split into 2 factions, the ‘Ones’, under Henryk Erlich and Wiktor Alter, and the ‘Twos’, led by Chmurner. The Twos were against joining the Internationale and collaboration with the PPS. The Twos were dominant until 1924, but after that the Ones gained the majority]; there were less of them, but he was a very respected leader and I often went to his lectures. I only went to Michalewicz once, with my eldest sister, to a pre-election rally. He lived opposite Joski Lifszyc [Jozef Lifszyc – dentist, Bund activist, co-founder and chairman of the Zukunft Socialist Youth Union], whose son Rubin I was friendly with. In 1928 there were elections to the Sejm, so we put on a meeting of the tenants of our house, and Michalewicz was supposed to come. And when my brother went to look for Michalewicz, he was already sick, so he went in to Lifszyc and Lifszyc came and he spoke to the tenants. I often came to the Lifszyces, because I hung out, I went round to one, then I went round to another, but I was welcome. I remember their home well – and the grandmother always put us something up to eat, because she was familiar that these children coming round are hungry.

The numbers on our street started from the first number but on one side it only went up to 11 and on the other to 18. And the side that had the lack of numbers was a dead wall without windows, without a shop, without anything. That’s where the SKIF people gathered, I saw them coming. Leruch’s sister asked if I wanted to be in SKIF too. So I went to 29 Karmelicka Street, where the school was [a 7-grade Bund school run by the Central Yiddish School Organization, CISzO], and became a member of SKIF. I was about 10.

When I went to SKIF, I met friends who went to school, I went to their houses when they were doing their homework, and I sat and did the same work as them. And one time, when I was in the SKIF place at 29 Karmelicka, I asked if I couldn’t go to night school, because I was already 10, I should have been in 4th grade, so I couldn’t go to day school. So the teacher, Halperin, who worked at SKIF, said: ‘All right, come this evening.’ She was terribly cross-eyed and we called her ‘di koke’ – ‘koke’ [Yid.] that means that she sort of looked sideways. I had another friend in SKIF, Lejbe Gruzalc, so I told him that we could go to that night school, and he enrolled as well, and we went together the whole time.

In 1932 I went on my first SKIF camp, to Gabin [100 km west of Warsaw]. We collected the money – I used to go to the Metropol bar, opposite the club for Jewish writers [Mr. Rozenberg probably means the Union of Jewish Writers in Warsaw, at 13 Tlomackie Street]. I.J. Trunk [Jechiel Iszaje Trunk, 1887-1961, Jewish prose writer and essayist who wrote in Yiddish, in the 1930s chairman of the Jewish PEN Club in Warsaw] was there, the one who wrote the 7 volumes Pojlin, and Segalowicz [Zusman Segalowicz, 1884-1949, Jewish poet and prose writer, wrote in Yiddish] used to go too. All sorts. Richer ones used to go, and in the club, on the second floor, were all the ones who wrote poems, poor lads, who wanted to get into those circles, be writers. Some of them made it, but some of them spent their whole lives sitting there.

At the committee they told us that the one who collected the most money could go on the camp free. The director of the Medem Sanatorium 13, Leo Brumberg, took a month’s vacation to run the camp. It was he who said to me, at the SKIF headquarters: ‘Listen, tomorrow evening is a committee meeting, and we’ll know who’s going.’ He said: ‘You come, and when you’re there we’ll see.’ I get there, I’m sitting there, it’s 10.30, and they’re going out, and he comes up to me and says: ‘Come here, Szulim. You know what? You collected the most money, and we have decided that for 10 zloty you can go for 2 weeks.’ So I burst into tears. I was 13. ‘Why are you crying? You should be happy!’ So I say: ‘But where’s my mother going to get 10 zloty?’ ‘Listen, I’ll see that no-one will ever know about this.’ And he took out 10 zloty.

At the camp everything was planned. We got up in the morning and did gymnastics. On the first day we had to dig a hole, which we put a plank over and that was the toilet. Then we had to make tables and we had to make a kitchen. So we had to get a few bricks and lay the bricks so that the pot could stand. And then we had to put a pole up so that the red pennant could be hoisted. That was a great honor, to hoist the pennant, a different child every day. So there were things to do all day. We had to peel potatoes, we had to go to town to buy something – we did everything ourselves. There wasn’t anyone hired. There was one teacher and then there was one deputy for that teacher, that was Emanuel Pat. At night we stood on guard for 2 hours. We drove to Gabin by ship, and in other years we drove to Brok [85 km north-east of Warsaw] and to Kazimierz [150 km south-west of Warsaw] by ship too.

After that every year I went on camp. Only once I was working I put a few groszy aside every month, so that I didn’t have to go crying to anybody to get the money to go on camp. In 1939 they did the first camp in the mountains for the trade unions’ youth section, on the river Dunajec. It was a fairy tale, so you can’t imagine it. It was run by a teacher and a juror in the Lodz magistrate court. He was so small, like a barrel, and he told wonderful stories, he taught us to hike in the mountains. We just went for 2 weeks. On our way back we stopped a day in Krakow. We visited Wawel [the Royal Castle on a hill in Krakow], we saw the Jewish area 14 and we went back to Warsaw. When I came back to Warsaw my shoes were totally walked out. And I had a girl friend, Estera, who lived opposite me, on the fourth floor, and they were quite rich people. And my mother told me that she was sick. So I wanted to go see her, but I couldn’t go in such shoes, so the next day, I don’t know what my father did: when I got home, Mother cooked some potatoes, sprinkled them with a little onion, and that was dinner, and in this bag lay a pair of shoes, so that I could go and see my friend. They were new shoes.

SKIF was so active that you knew everybody and saw everybody. And those children were attached to the organization – all the friends I had were from SKIF. We often used to go to Josel [Josel Mlotek, 1918-2000, Bund activist]. Josel had a season ticket to the ice rink. So I’d go, he’d give me the season ticket, I got in for free. You see, I didn’t have any money for all those good things. I was friendly with Bergner, his father was Rawicz [Melech Rawicz 1983-1976, poet and essayist writing in Yiddish], so I used to go round there. Once I turned up on a Saturday at his house, and my shoes wasn’t as black as they should have been. So he says to me: ‘Why didn’t you clean your shoes when you left?’ So I say: ‘I went through a garden!’ ‘What garden? There’s no garden from Kupiecka to Nowolipie! And if you come here again like this I won’t let you in the house.’ They weren’t rich; those Jewish things [cultural and educational work among the Jews] didn’t pay much. Rawicz traveled in the world a lot and wrote wonderful columns for the Folkszeitung 15. He was the secretary of the Writers’ Union 16, but all that wasn’t lucrative. Melech Rawicz used to travel around to all these small towns with lectures. He was a big expert on that Jewish philosopher, Spinoza 17. His wife didn’t work, she was a singer. They had 2 children. The daughter was called Rutka – still is called Rutka, lives in Australia. She’s a year older than me.

In Zukunft I had this one speaker, called Chenoch Mendelson, well, our club met at his house, at 43 Nowolipki. There were 3 sisters and he had a brother who was an engineer. And Chenoch worked on Saturdays till lunchtime. We would meet up in his courtyard and chat with his Mom and sister through the window, and he’d come back, go and wash and have something to eat, and only then did we go in for the meeting. During the war he emigrated to America and working in the Bund unions.

We had this speakers club at Zukunft, and for instance Mrs. Erlich [Zofia Dubnow-Erlich, wife of Henryk Erlich] would come to the club meetings, she was the daughter of Szymon Dubnow 18. She taught us literature lessons. Russian literature, German literature. She opened my head about Chekhov, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky. When we came out after she finished her evening, we couldn’t go straight home. So the whole group, we went down to the Vistula, and we took her every word apart. Later on, when I got to Russia, I felt at home there. At Hashomer Hatzair 19 they found out that she is coming to us to those club meetings, they asked her if she wouldn’t come to them too. They had this hakhshara [Heb.: center for future emigrants to Palestine], outside Warsaw, in Grochow 20 [ed. note: according to Gertrud Pickhan it was in Jozefow. Gegen den Strom, p. 293]. So she said: ‘The children want me to, so I will go. And she went there too. One evening she was there with them in Grochow, and there was this train there [a suburban train into Warsaw]. The train didn’t have the power to keep going all that time, so it stopped for a bit, for an hour or two [there was a break in the running of the trains]. And when she got home it was 12 o’clock at night, and Erlich was sitting there writing his articles for the newspaper, and he says to her: ‘I thought you’d gone to Israel!’ It was a great joy that such a woman came to such illiterates as I, she had so much knowledge, and that she could share herself with me, well, that was the biggest fortune I could have in life.

At the school on Karmelicka there were 5 different classes. We went every day evening. It started at 6.30. It finished at 9.30, sometimes maybe even 10.30. In the evening we used to go home with this Gruzalec, I remember there was this thick snow, we bought ourselves 3 bagels for 10 groszy and we each ate them on the road, a bagel and a half, so when I come home I was full. You paid for school, but it wasn’t so much for that night school. And anyway, I wasn’t enrolled. If I had money I took it, if I didn’t have any I didn’t take any.

The same teachers taught as in the day. They had a lot more work, and they were happy, because teaching was quite badly paid, so they had a few more hours. Some had families, some didn’t have families because they didn’t earn enough to have a family. Everything was in Yiddish: we had mathematics, history, Polish history, history of the Jews, and languages. Polish was taught in our school, but in little teaspoons. I did 5 or 6 years at Karmelicka. I worked, at first as an errand boy, later in a tailor’s shop, and went to that school. Later, when I was working in the shop for Znamirowski, I found I didn’t have enough Polish, so I enrolled in a Polish night school; that was in 1937.

There were 4 schools like that one [secular Jewish schools run by CISzO]. The 4th was at 68 Nowolipki [ed. note: owned by Left Poalei Zion], and a 5th, that wasn’t a Bund school; that was at 6 Zamenhofa. That was a CISzO 21 school, but it was under the influence of Left Poalei Zion 22. They had another on Muranowski Square, at no. 12. There wasn’t really any difference between those schools. Only what? At that one there was a lot about Palestine, that a state had to be built for the Jewish nation, whereas we believed that we ought to live together with others. But generally speaking, the program was the same. We knew each other. We used to go down to a square near the Vistula to play soccer.

The schools were in houses – a whole floor was taken up by the school. The rooms were made over into classrooms. There were normal benches and desks, and a blackboard that they wrote on, and we wrote in notebooks. There was one class in each room. 6 on Karmelicka, I think, and you went to the 7th class on Krochmalna. In the recesses the teachers sat in the kitchen, and we couldn’t even go out into the courtyard, because the residents didn’t really put up with a lot of noise

The difference between our school and other schools was that we were more attached to that school, and our teachers embraced us with a love that there wasn’t in any school. People who went to ‘szabasowka’ [Jewish elementary schools, where lessons were not held on Saturdays; introduced between the wars and recognized by the Polish state], or to public schools, when they went out of school they never met any of their teachers. But we stayed in that circle all our lives. That was the difference. That warmness and that duty. A lot was organized in those schools. For instance in 1937 there was an exhibition on Shulem [Sholem] Aleichem. It was like this: the children had various interests – some painted, some wrote poems or stories, or some sketches about Shulem Aleichem. Every child prepared something. It was an exhibition in some trade union [A national exhibition on the life and work of Sholem Aleichem organized by CISzO].

I hadn’t left the school on Karmelicka when I started working. My youngest sister Ryfka worked for this patron, plaited plaiting for shoes. And those were 2 brothers who had this little manufactory, and then they sold the plaiting to cobblers. Well, they needed an errand-boy, to fetch and carry. And I was that errand-boy. I worked there for maybe a year, or perhaps more. But later – I knew that wasn’t a trade – I decided I would look for work with a dressmaker. And I went to work for this dressmaker, it was a small manufactory, an atelier, well, let’s say 6-8 people worked there. What was my work? I had to go down into the cellar, bring coal, because the house needed heating. Then, before lunch I had to go and buy something for each of those workers. So he gave me this whole task: to buy a quarter loaf of bread for 10 groszy, sugar for 5 groszy, and the middle slice of herring for 5 groszy. Later I had to take a finished piece of work to a patron and bring another piece ready cut. I didn’t have the chance to learn anything there. And there was this terrible thing there, too, that haunted me my whole life, called the dead season. There was no work: ‘There’s no work, so go home.’ And then they didn’t pay.

There was this one affair, that he sent me on the day of the seder to take a piece of work to this patron, and it was already 10.00, and when I got to the seder it was after 11.00. And it was this big tragedy at home because they couldn’t start the seder. So I stopped going to work for that patron and went to another patron. I seemed to be doomed not to learn anything. This other patron already had this one apprentix [apprentice]. The other apprentix, his father gave that patron of mine work. When he gave him work, he put him in front of the machine and I did all those other things.

Back then – I was maybe 16 – I started feeling badly. And Lucjan Blind summoned me, he was the secretary of Zukunft, and he told me that Zukunft had the right to send 2 people to the Medem Sanatorium for 30 zloty. That was 1936, and it was a bit easier financially, because the family had thinned out a bit. I gone to my family and told them, and they all chipped in, and gave me the 30 zloty. I paid and went to the sanatorium for a month. When I arrived at the sanatorium, in the evening you had to go and take a shower and clean your teeth – I didn’t even know what you did that for! And I gotten into a clean bed, all on my own. I’d never slept alone. When I was a small child I slept with my parents, when I was bigger I slept with my brother. Well, I didn’t know what was going on – such a big room, such big windows, so much sun. All my life in Warsaw I’d slept in a room where there was no window!

When we got up we did gymnastics and then we went to eat breakfast. And before breakfast they read out this log, what had happened that day. At 4.00 they gave us a snack; there was this teacher, called Batke, he asked ‘What do you want to eat?’ ‘I want chocolate.’ He brought chocolate. And how could I possibly imagine that, when I’d always gone hungry?

When I was there I was elected to the committee that was in charge of all matters, and Josel Mlotek was there too; he was always at the sanatorium in the summer. We were very friendly. And I met a girl there, she was from Vilnius. It’s not the kind of acquaintance they make today, but something like it. She was called Fojgele Jofe. Her father was a teacher in Vilnius.

When I came back from the Medem Sanatorium, I gone to the trade unions, to the merchants 23. Everyone in the organization knew me, they gave me a letter to go with. I went to Mr. Znamirowski [a shop owner] on Franciszkanska. He took the letter and asks: ‘Where do you live?’ I told him where I lived. ‘Who your parents?’ I told him, and that was it. ‘And you shall come on the Monday after next.’ On the Monday after next I came and it was all all right. There came a time, I found out he had an uncle who lived on Majzelsa, so he asked, and they told him: ‘Szmul the cobbler’s child, you can take him on blind.’

When we sent parcels to customers, for down payments, we had to collect the money at the Post Office. Sometimes we had to collect it from the eastern railway station. They sent me, and I brought the money back in coins. So he asks me: ‘Have you counted it?’ So I say ‘Yes.’ So he tips it into the till. I say: ‘I don’t want that. I’m a poor kid and if I need a zloty I’ll take it, because I know you tip it in without counting it.’ So he says: ‘You’re wrong, I know that you’re a decent person.’

I remember once he told me to come in on 1 May [appointed as a holiday, Labor Day,  by the Second Internationale, from 1890 celebrated every year with mass rallies, demonstrations and marches]. So I told him that I could come in on Yom Kippur, I could come in on other holidays, but on 1 May  I couldn’t come in. So he says: ‘Well, you needn’t come in on 2 May either, then.’ But I come in on 2 May, and I come with the secretary of the youth union, and when I come in with him, he talked to the patron and the patron told me to stay.                                  

When I was working in that shop of Znamirowski’s, I go out of the house, which was at 39 Kupiecka, and I walking to Franciszkanska, and on the left there were 3 Jewish publishers and on the right 2. When I walking to work at 8.30 I always saw those writers and I knew them by sight. Shalom Ash 24, for instance, who was a handsome man. You could have made a film of him and his wife walking along. Always as he walked he looked up to heaven, like he was talking to the Lord.

During the war

And the war started, and I was walking to work in that shop at 34 Franciszkanska; that was the best job in my life. I worked there about 3½ years. And on 7th [September] a friend of my elder brother’s came in and asks: ‘Don’t you know that the president of the city has ordered all young people out of Warsaw 25?’ So me and my brother, Menasze, started thinking about it. We didn’t have any money. So I went upstairs to my friend Estera, borrowed 10 zloty off of her, and as we gone, Mother took out 2 zloty and gave it us for the journey. And that was our farewell with Mother. I saw them again but my brother never saw them again.

When we started walking, we met Josel Mlotek and we walked those 550 km together. Josel Mlotek was editor of Forwerts 26 [after the war], and he was my age, he’d known me from childhood and I’d known him from childhood. On the way we met this one teacher from the Medem Sanatorium, Trupianski – a musician -he was a beautiful man [Abraham Brumberg remembers Jankew Trupianski as a 'tall, well-built man over 30, the owner of a huge nose and a bushy mop of black hair.' Midrasz, September 2005, p. 17]. He was pushing a baby carriage with a baby and he was worn out, so we took it from him and we pushed that carriage for 5-10 km.

And when we came to Sarn [ed. note: Sarny, today Ukraine, 230 km east of Chelm], I met my patron’s son – Jakub Znamirowski. My patron had stayed in Warsaw; his son was this small, fat guy, but he’d bought himself the loveliest wife that Warsaw had. She was an orphan [ed. note: she had no father but her mother was alive], and when he got his hands on her, her mother said: ‘This is gold!’ and she married him.

From there we walked on foot to Maniewicz [today Ukraine: 30 km from Sarny], that was a beautiful little town. In Maniewicz was one of the richest Jews in Poland, who was a factory owner in Lodz – I don’t remember his name. The Russians there had started arresting anyone wearing Polish army clothes. So Josel Mlotek and I went to that factory owner and told him that there were Jewish soldiers who needed civilian clothing. If not, they are sending them to plen [Russ: taking them prisoner]. He took out a few hundred zloty – that was a huge amount. For that money we clothed about 15 people.

Then Josel Mlotek decided that he was going to Vilnius, and my patron’s son went to Vilnius too. So at one point I said to my brother: ‘You know what, we’ll go to Vilnius too.’ That was right after the war ended between Poland and Germany 27. I get to Vilnius, and on the street I meet Fojgele Jofe, the girl from the sanatorium. I was with my brother, and she took us to a friend who’d been with us in the sanatorium, and his mother gave us clean underwear and I had a bath. It was more than a month that we’d been on the road. That was the first time I washed after that month. And the girl said: ‘My father said he wants to meet you.’ He was a teacher, in our schools, and was a Bundist, and he was hiding, he didn’t live at home. I came at the arranged time, and he sits there with me, talking to me, and he says: ‘You know what, I believe that in such hard times it’s better to throw in your lot with a bigger country than to stay here in Lithuania, because there’s no knowing what might happen here. I’m even sending my daughter to Grodno.’ So we thought, and we went to Volkovysk [today Belarus, 100 km east of Bialystok].

If I’d stayed in Vilnius, then Sugihara [Sempo Sugihara, 1900-1986, Japanese diplomat, consul general in Kaunas at the time of Lithuania’s incorporation into the Soviet Union, who issued over 2,000 transit visas forJewish refugees], who was giving out the visas to Japan – I could have gone there too. My friend Josel Mlotek and my patron, they went to Shanghai and they survived the war there, but as it was I had the chance to get my sisters and brother out of Poland.

We were in Volkovysk for about 6 months. Rajzla, Ryfka and my brother and I, we were all living in this shop. Golda had stayed in Poland. One of my teachers, Halperin, was Volkovysk. Her parents lived there. She met me and it turned out there were 2 other people from our school there, so every week we had to go to her place for tea. There was such a community, between those students and those teachers, like nowhere else in life.

When I was in Volkovysk from time to time I went to Bialystok, because people from Warsaw come there. On one day I’m standing selling cigarettes on the street, I meet my elder brother Ksil. So I ask he: ‘Where are your wife and child?’ and he says: ‘The Germans took me into plen and I escaped.’ So I give him the cigarettes and I say: ‘I’m going to the train, to bring you your wife and son.’ And I decided to go to Warsaw. That was sometime about October [1939]. I went to Zreba Koscielna [Zreby Koscielne, 120 km east of Warsaw] and there you could still get over onto the German side, it wasn’t so hard, though when we went into Zreba, the Germans grabbed us by the head and cracked our heads, but they let us go and I took a train to Warsaw. I bought lots of things, because when I went to my patron [Znamirowski], he gave me money, and things. By then I knew what we needed.

After his wedding my brother Ksil lived in Otwock [25 km south of Warsaw]. He married a young girl. He was 34, she was about 18. She was called Tauba Frydman. They met because he was working for her father, he made shoe uppers, very expensive, lovely things. She was from Otwock, and she’d been to school in Warsaw. She was a nice girl, and there aren’t even any photographs of her in the family. And in about 1937 she had a little boy, Perec. And I took them from Warsaw to Volkovysk. And they put their names down to get Russian passports [people who lived in areas occupied by the USSR were forced to take Soviet citizenship. Refugees who had arrived there from central Poland could take Soviet citizenship or put their names down to return to the General Governorship. The latter were deported to Kazakhstan in June 1940] and went to live apart from us.

Ryfka was pregnant. Ryfka’s husband saw I’d brought so many things from Warsaw, so when I came back, he said he would go too. And he went to Warsaw – it was a week, 2 weeks, he didn’t come back. And he had 2 brothers in Bialystok. So I went to Bialystok. I go to his brother and I ask him: ‘You know anything about Rubin?’ So he says: ‘Yes, I know, he’s sitting on that neutral strip [a strip of no-man’s land on the Russian-German border]. He’s been there 18 days and they bring him food from Warsaw. A wonderful thing, a good lodging.’ So I say: ‘Come on, we’ll go to the border and see what we can do there.’ We went to get something to eat in a Jewish bar, and a young boy came in, maybe 15-16 years old. I ask him: ‘Do you know how to get to the neutral ground?’ He says: ‘Yes.’ ‘Would you come at 12.00 at night to take us there?’ ‘Yes.’ In exchange he wanted a pair of officer’s boots worth 200 zloty. At 12 he came, we went to that neutral strip – there were 5,000 people there. We started shouting: ‘Rubin! Rubin! Rubin!’ And somehow we found him and we took him away, to some village. What he’d brought we packed in bags and put the bags in a hole, and I brought a barber to shave him, cut his hair, and we took him home. The next day they took those 5,000 people and transported them back to Warsaw, and almost all of them perished.

Rubin and I went cleaning railroad tracks, and Ryfka had a little boy. I think he was called Jakub. That was their first child. After that they started sending families to labor villages [kolkhozes], they escaped from that village and were supposed to go east, but on the way the child died. That was terrible.

There in that Volkovysk we had to put our names down, whether we wanted to be Russian citizens. So I said no, that I wanted to go to Vilnius. And in April 1940 they arrested me, put me on a train, we were going to Minsk, but there was nowhere to put us out, so we went back to Volkovysk. Here they put us on a barge and we went to Koltas, that was the NKVD zone, where you couldn’t get out from.

And then we lost each other. They went one way, and I and my brother Menasze found ourselves in a camp in Komi ASRR, near Vorkuta [160 km south of the Arctic Circle, the region with the biggest forced labor camps in the European part of the USSR], and we didn’t get contact with the rest of our family. In 1944, when I met Ida Kaminska 28 in Moscow, she gave me contact with Ksil, and then he gave me the address to Ryfka and to Rajzla.

In the camp we worked, we hacked wood. But when I came to the camp, I had dysentery, from the journey on the barge. I gone to the doctor, well, I didn’t know Russian yet. So I ask him if he knows any other language, and he says he knows Jewish. He was from Bukovina. He asked if I didn’t want to work with him, as an assistant – clean, wash the floor. So I was pleased, and I worked in the hospital. One day a commission came round to see what was going on in the hospital. I was reading Pushkin for my patients. And they ask what I’m doing here, and the doctor says I have tuberculosis. But they sent me to work, made me a brigadier [gang foreman]. I worked for 20, and I told them I didn’t want to be a brigadier, that I’m no good at holding a truncheon to beat people over the head. So they sent me to the horse base to water and wash the horses. And I never went back to the heavy work any more, I come out of the camp in good shape.

We sat in the camp about a year and a half, and when the Russian-German 29 war started, that was a great fortune for us, because we knew we would get out. When I gotten out of the camp, my brother, with some different boys, they made this sewing manufactory, where they mended broken jackets, padded trousers, everything. It was in the same place, in a building next to the camp, but we were free people, we had our own kitchen, we made good soups there, you could buy a bit of bread. And my brother was a good tailor, so they took him to the center, to do work for the managery. So he went there, and I stayed here. I had a brigadier there, a Chinaman [Mr. Rozenberg probably means someone of Asian background] and one day he gave me a pair of trousers to mend that were dirty. I said: ‘I’m not doing that!’ I threw it in his mug and went to my brother.

After a few days I got my first job: I was to tidy up the pharmacy store. But my brother had gotten friendly with his director, a woman, and asked if she didn’t have work for me. So she says: ‘We’re looking for a head of snabzhenie [Russ: provisions], which means someone to take care of the whole supply process.’ So he says: ‘Maybe my brother.’ I come to them, and by then I could speak Russian, only writing I found very hard. And one of the foremen from that group went into the army and left a young wife and child, so I said that maybe she could do the writing for me, because I had to write reports. And she started doing it.

At the end of 1942 we finished our work in Komi ASRR and went to Gorki oblast [the Gorki district]. Menasze stayed, because he had a good job. At the end of 1943 I went to Moscow for the first time on business. When I was coming back I brought various things – needles, pins. So the wives of the engineers working there took them from me, round the villages and brought back a pile of money. So I left my job, because I knew that if anything happened with my brother I would be left all alone. So I decided that I will go to my brother in Krasnodar. I had a girl, a Russian girl, her name was Lena. And we went to Ukraine together, where she lived, and she stayed there. I said: ‘When I get myself fixed up you will come.’ I didn’t go back to her. And I went to my brother. When I got there, on the street I met a guy I knew from Komi ASRR. And he knew that I worked in transport there, as head of snabzhenie, so he says: ‘I got a good job for you.’ And he took me to the NKVD construction authority 30. In that district was one of the 10 most devastated cities, so there was building going on. I was head of purchasing. It was a good salary. Every morning when I come to work, the boss asks me: ‘You have money?’ So I say ‘Yes.’ ‘Dania! Bring the car!’ That was to the driver. And we went to the market, where they sold vodka in 100g shots, and he would have a drink: ‘Sashenka [Szulim] will pay.’ That was how my working day started. And I had to travel – for instance for glass almost to Chechnya. Once I brought lamps, for kerosene lamps for myself, and I sold them and earned a pile of money, and there was money to live on.

I didn’t work till the end, because I got sick, and I went back to Krasnodar, about 120 km, and hailed a doctor, and the doctor gave me sick leave. And they fined me for not being in work. So I gone to the prosecutor and got a job in this big pharmacy store. And there they would always leave me a little of the dressing stuff, it was in meters, and I sold it and made as much as I could have earned in a month. I was in Krasnodar until 1946, and from there I went to Poland.

I had a girl there called Dina. I used to go round to her house, I was welcome, like a son. They wanted me to go study pharmacy. But around that time, in 1945, I got a telegram, that they put Ksil away for 10 years ‘after Henryk [Erlich] and Wiktor [Alter]’ – which meant for Bundism. He had been speaking at the funeral of a friend’s father who’d died and they arrested him. It wasn’t the post office that brought the telegram to the house, it was a policeman. I come to Dina’s in the evening, and her mother took me into another room. She had been at school with the chief of the police in Krasnodar, and he told her that I should take my evacuation card and leave. Then this whole drama began between me and Dina. But she couldn’t go. She could have registered to leave, only what? Her father was director of agriculture. He had another daughter who was at university. And he said to me: ‘If you stay here, then that’s nothing, but if she goes, then our life had no value.’ Menasze and I decided to leave. And back before that, Ryfka and her husband had already left. In the meantime she had had another son, Icchak, and when they got to Poland in 1946 she had a daughter as well, Dwora. So she had 3 children: Jakub, Icchak and Dwora, but Jakub didn’t survive.

After the war

We went back to Poland. When we arrived at Ryfka’s address in Lodz, she had gone to Dzierzoniow [60km south of Wroclaw], because she had a nice apartment there and he’d got work there right off. She wasn’t there, so I had to go to her. And Rajzla had gone back, to Szczecin. I went to Ryfka, Menasze went to Rajzla, he was closer to her. There he met a woman, and got married there. She was Jewish, Anna Karmazin. They had a daughter; she lives in Paris, her name is Izabela.

In Dzierzoniow I went straight to the organization [Bund], but my sister kept me on a tight rein. And I wasn’t used to being told what to do any more. So I went to Lodz. And I gone to the apartment where they were before, got a job straight away, in the Jewish Committee 31, in records, and later distributing food and the clothes they sent from America.

In 1946, at the Bund camp in Bielawa [60km south of Wroclaw], I met Zenia. And back in Lodz, then working for a tailor’s co-operative – I was a buyer and a seller – I met Zenia, who was walking back to her student dorm with her friend Lena. I kissed Zenia, shook hands with Lena, and Zenia says: ‘She used to work in the embassy in Moscow.’ So I say to her: ‘I need you – I’ve got a problem for the embassy. Can I come and see you today?’ Because all the time the thing with my brother Ksil was upsetting me. I come, I started telling her of my brother, and she started writing letters. She was a very practical girl. I started coming to her, and almost every day in the evening were together. Apart from that I had meetings in the evening – I was secretary of Zukunft at that time. And Lena moved in with me.

Rubin came, Ryfka’s husband, and he saw that there’s some girl here in bed. Well, they introduced themselves, and everybody liked her a lot. And my eldest sister asks me: ‘What kind of wedding do you want?’ So I say: ‘We’ll go to the town hall and register.’ But she says: ‘But if our parents were alive, wouldn’t you have a chuppah?’ Well, I despaired, and I said: ‘Do what you want.’ And they ordered some rabbi, and we went, it was raining, a Saturday evening, and they did the chuppah thing, and we laughed, and the rabbi told us not to laugh.

We met on 17 September 1947. At the end of November, on her birthday , I took her to my place. We got married before the rabbi on 27 December 1947. Our son, Samuel, was born on 24 November 1948.

My wife was born on 30 November 1924 in Bialystok. She was 6 years younger than me. She was called Lea Jedwab. Later, in Russia, she became Lena, and that’s what they called her all the time. Lena Rozenberg-Jedwab. She came from more or less a family like mine. Even more miserable. She went to a CISzO school, too, in Bialystok. And she moved in, and she was pregnant, and she didn’t even make food. We had this kitchen in the Bund, opposite where I worked, so she came and we ate there every day.

Being in Russia we didn’t know a lot about what was going on in Poland: Mother and Father, and Golda and the 3 children were in the ghetto 32. The Germans killed her husband with a bomb. When I was in Dzierzoniow I went to Lodz via Wroclaw [330 km south-west of Warsaw]. While I was in Wroclaw, I thought to myself that I’d go visit an acquaintance from the camp, Berenfeld. I ring the bell, and the door was opened by my neighbor from before the war, we grew up in the same house from the first day of my life! Kronenberg, she was called. It was she told me that my father and her mother died in the ghetto around the same time. Her father and my mother, and my sister and her children were taken to Treblinka 33 on the same day.

In 1948 the witch-hunt against the Bundists started, for its links with the Bund in America, because the Bund in America is against communism. And they told us the Bund had to be shut down and we had to go over to the workers’ party, PPR 34. When we heard that, we made a meeting of the Zukunft Central Committee and the Bund Central Committee separately, and we decided we were leaving. [A faction of the PPR aligned with the Central Committee of Jews in Poland (CKZP) was attempting to break up the Bund from the inside. In 1948 part of the Bund joined the PPR, creating a faction of the PZPR aligned with the CKZP. Most of those who didn’t agree with the fusion with the PPR emigrated to France]. And groups started being organized to emigrate. Before that I’d never thought to leave, because I was waiting for my brother Ksil to be released from the camp. On 15 May 1948 my brother Ksil came back from Russia. I’d gone to buy flowers, and the train came in, and Lena saw, this old man walking along, holding some dirty sack on his back, and Lena says: ‘Isn’t that your brother?’ It was my brother. And I took him to a friend’s house, we took a tin bath and put him in that tin bath, washed him, and I had brought with me the clothes I had worn at my wedding. And he was a different man. No-one knows what happened to Ksil’s first wife. When the war started, they fled from Nesvezh [today Belarus, 50 km east of Baranovichi] and on the way their child wouldn’t walk; he couldn’t carry it, and they split up. She said: ‘They won’t do anything to me, I’m a blonde.’ And she disappeared, and he married again in Russia, Jentel Rubin. Jentel Rubin had already been with a husband, and already had a daughter – she had her years, she was from 1909, and that was 1945, so she’d had time to have her first child.

When there was the decision to leave Poland, there was a group of 6 of us, and we went to Katowice [290 km south-west of Warsaw]. In Katowice was the boss who was running the emigration 35. I don’t know who he was. We were to go in the night, over the border, and in the morning we were in Prague. I went with my wife, my brother Ksil, my friend who I lived with after the war, Leon Krolicki, and there was also one of the editors of the Folkszeitung with us, a writer and historian, Mordechaj Bernsztajn. From Prague we had to go to Germany. And we went by train to the border, and from the border by bus to Feldafing [Germany]. We arrived in Feldafing in the night; they saw there was a pregnant woman with us, so they took us straight away to a private family. We stayed with those private people those few weeks that we were in Feldafing. For a visa to America you had to wait a year, a year and a half, and I didn’t want the child to be born in Germany. And we went to Ulm and from Ulm there was a group that was going to Paris. And we arrived in Paris on 22 August 1948.

We arrived here, and they sent us to a hotel. And here, the first evening, I started crying terribly. So Lena asks me what’s wrong. I say: ‘I don’t understand a single word, I can’t say anything, I can’t buy anything, and I haven’t a trade. What are we going to live on?’ So she comforted me a little. And a few days later I went to the Bund club and there I met a friend from Warsaw, called Rochman, and he ran a manufactory there, they made windcheaters, these coats with fur on the inside. And he took me on at his place. But that only lasted until the end of December, because the season finished. I went to work for a tailor who made women’s suits, as an assistant machinist, and I worked there 2 weeks but then he said he didn’t need me any more. So I gone to an elderly lady, she worked alone, and what it took her a whole week to make, I did in a day. So that wasn’t normal either, so she sent me to her sister, who also had a studio where they made coats and other things.

I arrived the first day and asked how much they’d pay me: 5,000. OK. I come on the Monday, and the guy attacks me and starts screaming: ‘How dare you ruin other people’s property!’ First of all, no-one had ever screamed at me, I’m not a street urchin to be screamed at like that. What for, what was the problem? He comes out and brings this overcoat, and I start to laugh. So he says: ‘What, and now you’re laughing?’ So I say: ‘What, you want me to cry as well? I didn’t do that.’ He had a son, who did the same things as me. So the son gets out of bed, in his pajamas, comes in, still half-asleep and says: ‘Dad, it was me did that.’ ‘Ah, well, if that’s the case, go to your machine!’ So I said: ‘Go to a machine I will, but not yours.’ He paid me and I gone.

I had the address of another workshop, so I went there, and they told me to report to Monsieur Marcel. This young guy, maybe 35. An older lady, a finisher, asks me: ‘And where are you from?’ So I say: ‘Warsaw.’ ‘I’m from Warsaw too.’ ‘Where did you live, Ma’am?’ So she says: ‘At Dluga, no. 12.’ So I say: ‘I had a friend at Dluga 12. Lea Kristenfrajnd, she was called.’ So she starts crying terribly. And she told me that Lea had died in the ghetto. So I say to her: ‘There’s no need to cry. She’s alive.’ Because of course we knew who was still alive, and who wasn’t. I say: ‘I’ll bring you her address.’ That lady was Marcel’s wife’s sister’s mother-in-law. And he told me to come to work, and I sat down at the machine and started work.’ And one time he says to me: ‘You know what, Szulim, you could find yourself a machine.’ So I say: ‘My friend has a machine, I’ll get it from him.’ ‘And you could go to the same patron and do the same thing, and earn 2 or 3 times more.’

The next day I went to the patron, took material off him to make up, and if I earned 5,000 with Marcel, in the first week I earned 18,000. That was the beginning. Later I hired a machinist, I hired finishers, and made a proper business. Only what happened? Lena got sick and went to the sanatorium. That was in 1950, on 19 August she went to the sanatorium. I was left with the workshop, with the child, and it was very hard. At Pascha, I went to Lena. And for the vacation I had to send the child to this family, to stay. For a while there was a woman in the house, but it didn’t work, somehow.

When Lena came, she threw me out, so I didn’t work at home. So I got a room on this street that went up a hill. And you had to haul those ready cut things, and I worked myself into the ground. And at the end of the year, when Lena was back home, they told us to have our son Samuel x-rayed. When I went to have the x-ray done, he didn’t want to have it done, so I say: ‘Don’t be silly, look, I’ll have one done too.’ They x-rayed me – found a hole in my lungs. I went to the same doctor as Lena, and he put me in the hospital for a few months, then they sent me to a sanatorium for nearly a year; that was 1952. And one time I go to the doctor, he x-rayed me, and says it was all healed. Two days later I was home, and through a friend I got a room near us, on the first floor, to use as a workroom.

We had two rooms at that time. On the one hand it was very nice, but we had to carry everything – coal, and everything – 4 floors. It wasn’t our own apartment, but we lived there 14 years. Our first daughter was born on 30 March 1957 and is called Flore, the second, Dorote, was born on 23 January 1962.

My wife never worked. I was always working for somebody. One time, Lerer [Yid.: teacher] Rotenberg came to Paris from Mexico. And I went round the museums with him. To Versailles a student of his was supposed to take us, who turned out to be a school friend of mine. ‘What do you do?’ I say: ‘I’m all in tsures [Yid.: tsores – trouble, problems]. I’ve fallen out with my patron and I’d like to do something on my own account.’ Well, he didn’t say anything. ‘We’ll see.’ When we’d taken our Lerer Rotenberg back to the train, where he was going to catch his ship, he took me to 2 retail stores, one on the opera square and the other opposite Galleries Lafayette. And there he said: ‘If he brings you something, try to order from him.’ So I made these leather vests. In a few days the first 12 were ready and I took them to the shop by the opera house. That was on the Thursday or Friday. On the Saturday I come to the phone, and they say: ‘We’ve sold all those jackets, haven’t you got any more?’ I say they’ll have to wait until the end of the week

If the first week I bought material for 12 jackets, on the Monday for 40. That was 1959. And by chance I gone in this street, and I saw that there was a shop to let, so I went in to that woman and I gone out a few hours later with the key in my hand. And that was at the end of the week, and on the Monday we went to the notary to sign and I fixed it up. 1 January 1960 I opened the shop, and till 8 February no-one even came in, and I got sick. And Lena went to the shop. She comes in in the evening from the shop and says: ‘One man came, and he saw those models of yours, and says he’ll come tomorrow. Well, I was better – I could have killed the world boxing champion! The next day I went, and it started. It was such a season, something fantastic. I bought an apartment straight away. I had the shop till 1985.

Ksil came to Paris with me. In 1951 Ryfka and her husband and 2 children left Poland and emigrated to Israel, and as well a year later Menasze to Israel, with his wife and daughter. And my other sister Rajzla went in 1956 also to Israel. And the 2 sisters stayed in Israel and died there. Menasze came with his wife and daughter to Paris. He couldn’t register in Paris and that was a whole problem, and somehow later he registered. His daughter, Izabela, graduated in medicine here. And Menasze died very early, in 1961, at 53. Ksil died at 89, and his sons studied at a university in Israel and then came back to Paris, and work here, as engineers in Information technology. Rajzla died in 1986. She was 83; Ryfka died at 91 in 1991.

At home we used to speak Yiddish, and only later we started to speak in French a little, because the children didn’t like it. My son spoke Yiddish like me. When he took the phone, they would say to him: ‘Szulem?’ He said: ‘Ich bin nicht Szulem, ich bin Shmil [Yid.: I’m not Szulem, I’m Shmil].’ He went to a Jewish school, where he learned to read and recite Hebrew very nicely. Only later he stopped being interested in those types of things, because his wife is French. His wife is called Elian and he has 2 children: Silvan, who is 31, and Eliza, she is 26. Flore’s husband is a Jew from Algeria, he’s called Serge Amselem, and they have 3 sons. Dorote’s husband is a Jew too, he’s called Michael Albert, they have a son Daniel and a daughter Sara.

My son did his school-leaving examinations, then he did a fee-paying IT school. In 1968 he got his diploma and got a job straight away. And he worked in one firm 32 years. Now he’s going on a pension from that company. His wife is an official at the university. My elder daughter studied in Paris at medical school and is a virologist; she teaches at the university, in the Pasteur Institute; my son-in-law is a physician too, a geneticist. He is a professor. Dorote graduated from a school for translators in Paris too and is an English-French translator, and he is a lawyer, a partner in a big law firm.

My daughters have a bond with their Jewishness, well, my son does too. We celebrated all of the Jewish holidays here, and my son’s wife always came. 30 people would sit at a table like this. Especially on Passover. One time the mayor of a large Israeli city was here, and our friend from Los Angeles brought them here for lunch. That was at Yom Kippur. We sat here from about 1.30 till about 4.30. 4.30, my son came in from school. So the mayor of that Israeli city says to him: ‘Go wash your hands and come and eat.’ But he says: ‘I’m not eating today, I’m fasting.’ It was a lovely house.

One day I come home, and I said: ‘Lena, you know what, I think I’m closing the shop.’ I’d worked hard, I was 67. What more did we need? So she says: ‘Fine, I understand, you need to close down. But what are you doing, you can’t sit at home for 5 minutes?’ So I say: ‘I’ll go to the Medem library 36.’ She says: ‘That’s a good thing for you.’ And I went to the Medem library and from then on I’ve been in the Medem library. The Medem library was set up in 1929. As soon as I came to Paris I became a member of the library. I had to have books. My wife and I used to go to various lectures there. My wife was the main reciter. She graduated in the humanities and German from the university in Moscow.

After I came to Paris I was in the party [the Bund], only I didn’t have the chance to get involved, but I was a member like the others. In 1997 in Paris we organized the 100th anniversary of the Bund, in a large restaurant, there were 300 people. There were a few Bundists who spoke. And Marek [Edelman] 37 spoke in Yiddish and that was a great thing, no-one wanted to believe it. Of those 300 people who were at the banquet, to say Bundists, I don’t know if there were 20. And now there are none at all. I couldn’t count 5 Bundists in Paris. Only what? For me, well, it was a home, it was an idea that I held on to all my life. It never bankrupted as an idea. Recently there was even talking whether it shouldn’t be wound up, but what is there to wind up? There isn’t anything to wind up. For me it was something awesome, I had such wonderful people, who showed me life, who taught me to read, taught me to write, taught everything, and above all taught me to be a man. That if there was somebody who was sicker than I, I gave him my bed and gone to the shed.

I took an interest in what was going on in Poland, because I was interested in politics. Le Monde talked about it all. Neither I nor my wife went to Poland after we left. I finished with Poland. I was wounded by Poland, because of how they received us when we came back [from Russia]. I stopped having a link with Poland.

In the library I did everything. Above all I took care of issuing books to the people of my generation, and then there were a lot of them. There were these women, for instance. If I wasn’t there, she didn’t want anyone else to give here the book. Apart from that, that was the period that the generation that had come here before the war was starting to die off. And there were libraries, some of them had fairly decent libraries.

Did I tell you how our library came into being? When anyone came from Poland, his friends, what could they give him? They gave books. When they came here, everyone had a few books. So instead of one lending to another, they made a library in this cafe in the Jewish quarter, on the second floor, with those few-score, later few hundred books. And that’s how it became a library. And they would come there, talk, drink a beer, and that was it. Later they rented a place, and before the war that library had 5,000 volumes. That was a huge sum. And there was a Bund club there, and a kitchen. The dinners were cooked by this old Russian Bundist, who had lived in Germany, in Berlin, Natan Szachnowski, and he’d married a German woman. And later, when they had to flee [in the 1930s], she fled with him. He had a daughter with her. Well, once [during World War II] the Germans came. They started milling around, but the door to the library was closed. And she started to string them along, and they said: ‘OK, we’ll come another time.’ When they said: ‘We’ll come another time,’ the next day she organized carrying those books into the cellar at her house. When they came again, the books weren’t there. And they closed the place down. That could have been 1941. And as soon as the war ended, those books came back up, and there were 5,000 books straight away. And then Americans who published books started sending all the new books that had been published in the war to Paris straight away. And there were a lot of publications, because everyone had to write something. Later, we split off from the Arbeter Ring 38.

I’m the librarian to this day, only now the books are in the cellar, and I find it hard going up and down steps. So now I send the boys and girls. But even so, I’m the brain. Everything goes through my hands.

My wife died on 15 February 2005. Only she left life 12 years ago. We came back from a walk, I met our nephew, and he kissed me and her, and when he went she asked who it was. He was 40-something then. She’d brought him up and didn’t know who it was. So straight away we started going round the professors. And my daughter Dorote’s father-in-law is the best specialist on that disease [Alzheimer’s] in America, and he dictated to the doctors, but they couldn’t do anything. She was on her feet another 10 years, but the last two she was in bed.

My life flows along with these memories of our life together, these memories of the children, of my grandchildren; that’s the compensation that I have from life today. I miss having somebody close to lean on, lay my head on. And I don’t have that, and that’s a big thing. I had such a full life with my wife, we understood each other so well, we had so many shared desires in literature, in art, in music. It goes on, I come in from the library, make myself something to eat, look at the television a while, and listen to music. I like classical music very much, and I know it well, and that’s how I fill my days and nights. And that’s all.

Glossary

Natan Shapiro
Lvov
Ukraine
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of the interview: December 2002

Natan Shapiro and his wife Tsylia live in a two-room apartment that still shows of wealth in the past. They have nice furniture bought during the Soviet regime, carpets and nice dishes. Natan is a short gray-haired man with smiling eyes. He is lame – in his early childhood he was injured and has been an invalid since then. Natan makes the impression of a very reasonable and reserved man. One can tell that he is a man that knew how to reach his goals. He stayed calm talking about his life. Only when telling about his brother Jacob that perished during the war and his daughter Raissa that died he tried to hide tears in his eyes.

My family comes from Zhytomir region. My mother’s parents, Faidysh and Hanna Gutman, lived in the village of Ekaterinovka near Narodichi, 200 kilometers from Kiev. They were born and lived in this village like all other farmers – they worked hard to make their living, keeping a cow and working in the farm field and kitchen garden.

They were poor and had many children that began to work in their early childhood. Giving education to their children was out of the question – the family lived from hand to mouth.

Faidysh and Hanna were very religious: they observed all Jewish traditions, followed the kashrut and celebrated Sabbath and other Jewish holidays. There were three or four Jewish families in the village. There was no synagogue or cheder. Jews prayed at home as a rule and went to the village of Narodichi where there was a synagogue only on major Jewish holidays because this was far, about 15 kilometers from Ekaterinovka. They raised their children to be religious and respectful to traditions.

My mother’s older sister Rachel was born in 1875. She died of tuberculosis before the revolution [1]. Her son, Isaac Kofman, graduated from the Pedagogical Institute and University in Kiev and his son, Roman Kofman, became a famous musician. He is the conductor of the Ukrainian Symphonic Orchestra of chamber music now.

My mother’s second sister, whose name I don’t know, moved to America at the beginning of the 20th century. My mother had no information about her.

I knew well my mother’s sister Surah, or Sonia, as she was called in the family. She was born about 1880. Her husband, Joseph Feldman, was a blacksmith. They lived in Korosten and had three daughters and a son – Munia.

Surah’s husband Joseph died shortly before the Great Patriotic War [2] and Munia was recruited to the army. He was at the front and got married after the war. Now Munia and his wife live in Moscow. Aunt Sonia and her younger daughter Manya went into evacuation in Uzbekistan in 1941. Sonya died while in evacuation and Manya returned to Korosten after the war. She died in 2001.

My mother’s younger sister Mikhlia, her husband and children lived in the village of Lipkovichi near Korosten. Her husband, Shmulik Feldman, Joseph’s brother, was an agent at a salvageable materials office. He traveled to neighboring villages to exchange various haberdashery goods for waste paper and rags.

Mikhlia and Shmulik had three children: sons Boris and Faidysh and daughter Riva. Mikhlia’s sons were klezmer musicians– they played at Jewish weddings.

In the middle of the 1930s Mikhlia became a widow. Her older son Boris met a girl from Samarkand, married her and moved to her home town of Samarkand. Her younger son Faidysh went to the front at the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War.

Mikhlia failed to evacuate. When the fascists were close to the village Mikhlia and her 17-year-old daughter left their village. They walked a few dozen kilometers before they understood that the Germans were all around. Mikhlia and Riva returned to their village. They stayed quietly in their house until their neighbor discovered that they were home.

This Ukrainian neighbor and Mikhlia’s family got along very well before the war – they greeted each other on holidays and on Pesach Mikhlia brought them matzah and they brought their Jewish neighbors Easter bread at Easter. When the fascists occupied the village this neighbor went became a policeman. He took Mikhlia and Riva out of the house, gave them spades and ordered them to dig a deep pit in their own yard. After that he buried them alive.

Other neighbors told Faidysh about what happened when he returned home from the war. The policeman that killed his mother and sister so brutally left with the German army. Faidysh lost his leg during the war and was an invalid. He lived in Korosten and died in the mid-1990s.

My mother’s sister Rachel, Sonia and Mikhlia and their families observed Jewish traditions and celebrated all Jewish holidays. My mother’s older sister Rachel was the most religious one of them. They always lit candles at Sabbath, fasted at Yom Kippur and had matzah at Pesach. I don’t know where they got it from. I don’t think they could follow the kashrut during the Soviet period – there were no kosher products at that time, but they didn’t mix meat and dairy products for sure.

In 1893 my mother’s mother died at childbirth. Boris, who was born then, was raised by his older sisters. Grandfather Faidysh died shortly after his wife passed away. My mother told me how hard life was treating them – her sisters took any daytime jobs and my ten-year-old mother stayed at home looking after the baby. My mother dipped bread in sweet water and gave it to the baby instead of milk.

Boris was my mother’s favorite. I don’t know what he was doing before the revolution of 1917, but after the revolution he worked in the system of consumer services. During the Great Patriotic War Boris and his wife were in evacuation. Their daughter Bronia Gutman, a medical nurse, was recruited to the army and was a nurse on a sanitary train throughout the war. Boris died in Korosten in 1975, Bronia died in 2001.

My mother, Gutl Gutman, was born in Ekaterinovka in 1883. She didn’t get any education – she became an orphan at ten. At 13 my mother went to other people’s homes to do laundry, cleaning or babysitting.

My mother married Moisey Kipnis, a poor Jewish man who lived in the same village, when she was very young – she had just turned 17. They had a traditional Jewish wedding in Narodichi where the bride and bridegroom stood under a chuppah in the synagogue. After the religious ceremony they went to Ekaterinovka with their few guests.

My mother moved to live in her husband Moisey’s house. Moisey had horses and a cart and made his living by providing transportation services. Moisey and my mother had two children: Bronia, born in 1910, and Jacob, born in 1913. Shortly after Jacob was born Moisey caught a cold and died.

My mother lived unmarried for few years and then she married a widower 20 years older than herself. She met him through matchmakers, which was customary for Jews. Her husband, Isaac Shapiro, was my father. At her second wedding my mother also stood under the chuppah in Narodichi. My mother’s relatives welcomed Isaac into the family and then the newlyweds left for the village of Didkovichi where my father came from.

My father was born in a town in Zhytomir region [about 170 km from Kiev] in 1865. There were quite a few smaller towns with a Jewish population and I don’t know more details about where exactly he was born. I don’t have any information about his family.

He had two children with his first wife: I never met his son. As for his daughter, Haya-Surah, I met her by chance after the war. She lived in the Crimea with her family and came to her daughter’s wedding in Korosten. That was where I met my stepsister and kept in touch with her until she died in 1980.

I was born on 15th April 1918.

My father was a melamed, a Jewish teacher. He went from one Jewish family to another teaching their children. In winter 1920 he caught a cold. When he reached home he had a fever. He stayed in bed a few days and then he died.

I was a little older than one year at the time. Therefore, I don’t remember my father and there were no photographs for me to know what he looked like. My mother said that he observed Jewish traditions strictly: he prayed every day with his tefillin and tallit on and read old books in Hebrew. He was a very wise man and often other Jews came to ask his advice.

My mother became a widow again with three children. It was a hard period of the civil war [3], famine [4] and devastation. There were no pogroms [5] in the village – there were only a few Jewish families – but bandits robbed villagers of whatever little they had.

Once, my mother told me that her brother Boris was taking his cow to a bull in a neighboring village. All of a sudden a bandit came out of the forest, took the rope and began to pull the cow. My uncle was a strong and big man – he took the white guard [6] gangster by his hand and squeezed it so hard that he let go of the cow. Then he snatched the bayonet of the bandit and stabbed him to death and continued on his way. There was nobody around and my uncle was beyond any suspicion. Besides, he didn’t tell anyone about what happened until many years later.

We were very poor. My mother took care of us and went to do daily work – cleaning and washing – for other people. I stayed at home alone since Jacob and Bronia went to school. Once she left me on the stove bench. I got bored of lying there. I decided to get off the bench, but I fell and injured my leg badly. There was no doctor or assistant doctor in the village. Someone advised my mother to make a bath of salt water for my leg, but it got swollen and I felt even worse. I was only three and a half years old, but because of the pain I remember this.

My second cousin studied at the Medical University in Kiev and he arranged for me to have treatment at the orthopedic institute. I had a surgery at the hospital that was unsuccessful – my leg huddled up. I had to stay in hospital for three years.

There were five other boys from Kiev in my ward. Their parents visited them every day bringing them books. They read those children’s books to all of us. My mother visited me in hospital about once in two or three months. She couldn’t afford to visit me more often. She sat on the bed beside me and cried. When I was released from hospital in three years’ time I was an invalid.

I returned to our village in 1924. Life improved a bit. My mother and sister earned their living by sewing. The biggest value in the family was our ‘Singer’ sewing machine. My mother and sister made women’s and men’s clothes and all the villagers were their clients. They paid with food products: eggs, chicken or even a loaf of bread – my mother and sister were content with any pay they could get.

My mother came from a very religious family and we observed all Jewish traditions at home. And celebrating Sabbath was a must in our family! On Friday before Sabbath the house was cleaned thoroughly: my mother freshened up the floors with light clay, dusted our furniture, however few pieces we had, and changed the bed sheets.

On Friday morning my mother and sister cooked a festive dinner. It wasn’t much, but my mother always tried to make it different from everyday dinner – she made delicious challah and pastries.

We washed in the sauna and put on clean clothes. When the first star appeared in the sky my mother said a kiddush and lit a candle in a beautiful silver candle stand. This candle stand and other religious accessories – tallit, teffilin and old thick books in Hebrew that were in a box – were left from my father. On Saturday we took a rest. Sometimes our Jewish neighbors came to see us: adults had tea and talked and children played in the yard.

We also had kosher dishes for Pesach that my mother took down from the attic before Pesach. My mother always saved to make festive food at Pesach. We brought matzah from Korosten and my mother made chicken broth and chicken. My mother conducted seder and told us about the history of the Jewish people.

At Chanukkah my mother always gave us some money. She fasted at Yom Kippur and celebrated all other holidays. My mother prayed at home, since there was no synagogue in the village. Once we went to visit my aunt Sonia in Korosten at Pesach. My mother went to the synagogue and we stayed with my aunt’s children at home.

Later, when I went to school and became a pioneer [7] I gave up celebrating Jewish holidays. I was afraid that my schoolmates wouldn’t quite understand my religiosity. On the other hand, I loved my mother and hated to be disobedient, so I celebrated Sabbath with her and tried to follow the kashrut. However, we, children, didn’t fast – our mother said it wasn’t mandatory for us, especially since we didn’t usually have enough food in ordinary life.

In 1925 I went to the Ukrainian school in the village. There were no Jews in my class. My classmates treated me all right, but I still felt myself distant from them. I felt especially lonely after my brother Jacob, or Yasha as I called him, left to Korosten after finishing school in 1927. He finished lower secondary school in our village [7 years] and he could only get professional education in Korosten. There was no educational establishment in the village to continue education – and Korosten was a bigger town with more opportunities. Yasha went to Korosten and became an apprentice to a locksmith that had a private business. He became this locksmith’s apprentice and lived in his house.

I loved my brother and missed him a lot. I dreamed of finishing school and going to a big city like Kiev. I studied well and enjoyed being at school. My Ukrainian teachers treated me very well. I often got ill and they visited me at home.

There was no anti-Semitism in the village. All villagers liked my mother and always tried to help her, especially after she became a widow. However, we were still strangers. For example, when Ukrainian guys got drunk celebrating their recruitment to the army they went to break windows in Jewish houses. We installed strong oak shutters on the windows and shut them every time there were celebrations in the village.

I became a pioneer at school. My sister Bronia conducted the ceremony – she was secretary of the Komsomol unit [8] of the village and an active Komsomol member. Sometime later Henry Fridland, an educated Jewish guy, came to the village to hold the position of secretary of the village council. There were few educated people at that time and they were valued highly. The position of chairman of the village council was electoral, but the secretary was appointed by higher authorities. Henry met my sister. They worked together and had common interests.

In 1929 Bronia married Henry Fridland. They had a Komsomol type of wedding. Young people from the village came to the party and the chairman of the village council and secretary of the party organization made speeches. There was a samovar and pastries on the table. My mother insisted on a traditional Jewish wedding, but Henry and Bronia didn’t even wish to discuss this subject.

In early 1930 my mother’s sister Sonia and he husband Joseph insisted that we moved to Korosten for the reason that life was more difficult in the village and besides, there was no place for us, children to continue our education. We couldn’t make up our mind for some time – it was difficult to leave the house for Korosten where we had no place to live.

Joseph built a foundation of a house for us near his house and insisted that we moved. In fall 1930 our family moved to Korosten. At the beginning we lived in the house of Sonia and Joseph. By the summer of 1931 Joseph, my brother Jacob and Henry, my sister’s husband completed the construction of our house.

There was a room for Bronia and her family in this house: she and her husband had children already. My brother and I had a room, there was also my mother’s bedroom and a small dining-room. I went to a Russian secondary school in Korosten. There was a Jewish school in Korosten, but it would have been difficult for me to study there. We spoke Yiddish at home, but still I began my studies at a Ukrainian school.

Korosten was quite a big town – about fifty thousand people. The majority of the population was Jewish: Jews were shoemakers, carpenters, tailors, watchmakers, locksmiths, cabinetmakers, barbers. There were also Jewish teachers, doctors and musicians that played in the Jewish orchestra in the Cultural Center.

There was a big synagogue in Korosten and on Saturday my mother, Sonia and Joseph went there. On Jewish holidays our big family got together in Sonia’s big house. My uncle Joseph conducted seder.

As soon as we settled down in our big house my mother and sister took to sewing and my brother Jacob became an apprentice for a locksmith at the ‘October forgery’ plant. Our life was just beginning to improve when the period of famine began in 1932. We starved and suffered a lot. Henry took Bronia and the children to his parents in Malin – they kept livestock and could make ends meet.

My mother and Aunt Sonia often went to Kiev by train to buy bread and sell it in Korosten. They stood in lines a whole night. Once when they left and I was alone at home I went to bed, but heard somebody scratching on the window. I saw a dark silhouette of a man that was trying to get into the house through the window. He must have known that there were no adults in the house and that I was alone.

There were many robbers at that time that even murdered people for a piece of bread and there were cases of cannibalism. I got very scared and began to shout in a low voice, ‘Who’s there?’ The man left. When Yasha returned from his night shift I was sitting at the table holding an ax. Yasha brought some food – they received food at the plant and he tried to bring some food for me. Sometimes public activists from the plant brought pies stuffed with peas or cabbage to school. They were sweeter than cakes.

I finished the 8th grade in 1935 and wrote a letter to Postyshev [9], 2nd secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine. People said that Postyshev was a kind and sympathetic man and they often requested him to help resolve their problems. I sent him a long letter with the description of my story: my invalidity and illness. I also wrote that I wanted to continue my studies.

Some time afterward a letter from Postyshev arrived addressed to the town department of public education. There was also an assignment for me to go to the orthopedic institute in Kiev. My mother and I and the manager of the town department of public education went to Kiev.

I saw the city of my dreams again. I saw military marching along Kreschatik [the main street in Kiev] – there was no holiday but they were marching before going to another course of training. We walked through the city for several hours before we went to see a doctor.

I had to stay in hospital for a long time. I had a few surgeries to straighten my leg, but it was still shorter than my other leg. I also had an orthopedic shoe made in Kiev that made walking easier for me.

I missed a whole year at school and decided to go to work and study in the evening school like my brother did. My mother worked at a pharmacy. Although she had no education she learned to make distilled water at a special unit and weigh powders for making medications.

My mother wanted me to work with her, but I was not interested. Our relative, my father’s cousin Zalman, organized an accounting course in Korosten and admitted me there free of charge. Upon finishing the course I practiced at the post office where Henry was chief accountant. In 1937 I became an accountant in the military trade department where I worked until the beginning of the Great Patriotic War in June 1941.

In 1937, at the height of the period of Stalin’s repression [10], the director of the military trade department and chief accountant were arrested. It was hard to work – people reported on each other and colleagues began to be afraid of one another. At this period my mother’s younger brother Boris Gutman, who was the director of the industrial trade office, was arrested. He was released after a few months, but he wasn’t restored in his party membership or in his previous position.

My brother Jacob also had problems at that time. He became a member of the Communist Party in 1935 when he worked at the plant. The regional party committee appointed him as chairman of the ‘selpo’ – village trade association [network grocery of shops]. He was also secretary of the party unit of the village and took part in dispossession of farmers [11]. Someone even shot his gun at him one night, but only injured his arm.

In 1935 my brother was fired and expelled from the Party. Someone reported on him – he was falsely accused of dishonesty and bribing. An anonymous letter was enough at that time to accuse a person and fire him from work. There was no way to prove that you were innocent.

Shortly afterward he was recruited to the army and sent to serve in the Far East. My brother didn’t agree with his being expelled from the Party and wrote requests to the central committee of the Communist Party in Moscow. He was restored in the Party.

My mother begged him to return and I joined her in this urge. He demobilized and returned home at the end of 1940. He became a human resources inspector at the human resources department in Korosten. In March 1941 the military registry office sent him to take a training course in coding in Lutsk.

That was where he was when the war began. All cadets were given the rank of lieutenant and sent to the front. He was appointed to the railroad troops and retreated with them to Korosten. When he reached Korosten he ran home, but the house was locked – we had left it. He took a small pillow for the memory – it was called ‘dumka’ [thought] – that our mother had embroidered and left.

Shortly afterward the Germans occupied Malin and Korosten. My brother and 15 soldiers and officers of his military unit were captured by the Germans. They were locked in a wooden shed and there was a German guard near the shed. The shed had no foundation.

The officers tore off their straps so that the Germans couldn’t recognize their rank in case the Germans took them to interrogation in the morning and all captives began to dig a sap throwing the soil inside the shed to keep their plan secret from the Germans. When the sap was ready a few of them got outside and stabbed the guard with that same knife that they had used to make a sap.

All of them escaped, but only five of them managed to get to the Soviet troops. They went through the woods and all their food was what they could get in the forest: mainly these were berries. Jacob and our other militaries covered a distance of over 400 kilometers. They reached Chernigov where there was a sanitary train where my cousin Bronia was a medical nurse. She saw my brother in town by chance. She told us this story after the war.

This was the last information about my brother. He didn’t return from the war. Around 1947 we received a notification that he was missing. On the basis of this certificate my mother got an addition of a few rubles to her pension.

We evacuated: my mother and I, Bronia, Henry, who was released from the army and their three children – Lyonia, the oldest, born in 1929, Rachel and Misha, the youngest, born in 1939. We hired a horse-drawn cart to get to the station and on 3rd July we got on a train heading to the East.

The train was bombed while people were getting on it. Many people were killed. Little Misha shook his finger at the plane saying, ‘Don’t bomb us. Don’t kill my mother.’ We were lucky to survive. We got stuck in Malin for several hours until the railroad track was repaired.

Uncle Boria was waiting for us in Malin. He had evacuated his family before and he himself evacuated much later. We said good-bye to him. He gave us a bowl of sour cream – a buttery in Malin was destroyed and people took as much as they could take with them. I shared this sour cream with other people in our railcar.

We got to the station of Vorozhba near Kiev. The train stopped giving way to the trains that headed to the front. We didn’t know how long we had to wait. My mother went to wash children’s underwear taking advantage of this occasion and I went to fetch some water. All of a sudden an air raid began and a few trains at the station left. My mother and I tried to run to catch our train, but I could move only very slowly without my artificial limb and when we got to the track where our train was supposed to be we only saw its tail. Our belongings, however few, documents and my orthopedic shoe were in this train.

After some time we managed to get on an open platform of a military train. It was getting cold at night. A woman gave me her cotton jacket to keep warm. Then during one of the stops the train made it to a place where there was a train with evacuated people that headed to the East and we were allowed to board it.

The only thing we had was the kettle that I had with me when I went to fetch some water. My mother didn’t let me get off the train when it stopped. Our fellow travelers fetched us water, soup or tea – whatever was available – in this kettle.

It was a long trip. The train stooped near Penza in Russia, 1500 kilometers from home. We were ordered to get off the train since it was supposed to take the wounded soldiers from the front. The locals took us to their villages on their carts. My mother and I and another family stayed overnight in a ‘kibitka’ [a hut] without windows or doors. We were given half a loaf of bread. It was cold at night and we were scared of the wolves howling.

We stayed there two or three days before I went to look for a job or a place to stay. I found a place to live in the village of Olenevka, Kondylskiy district, Penza region. There was a big Soviet farm some five kilometers from the village where I was hired as an accountant. My mother worked helping with the weeding of beetroots in the village. She was used to hard manual worked and she was doing all right.

I met Joseph Koenigsman, a Jew from Estonia, a veterinary, in the village. Doctors had advised his wife to change the climate and they moved to the southern steppes around 1939, after the Baltic Republics joined the USSR [12]. I worked and stayed overnight in the office. Joseph visited me every evening. We read newspapers and discussed news from the front.

Once he came to the office and told me to take my pillow and blanket and move to his house. His family was kind to me and when they heard that my mother was in the village they told me to bring her to their apartment. They kept livestock: chicken, geese and ducks and we had plenty of food.

Every evening after work I brought some bread to the station hoping to meet someone that could give me some information about my sister. I didn’t meet anyone, but just gave this bread to other people that were going into evacuation.

In October 1941 the fascists came close to Moscow. We decided to move farther to the east – to Middle Asia. Our landlords, Joseph and Linda, were in Penza – Linda was injured when she fell from the cart on the way and was taken to hospital. Joseph was with her to take care of her.

My employers felt reluctant to let me leave work, but I explained that I had to find my cousin and her children. I wrote a warm thankful letter to our landlords. We locked the house and left.

We reached Djambul, Kazakh SSR, Middle Asia, 2500 kilometers from Kiev. It was overcrowded and we spent a few nights under benches in a park. I went to the employment agency where they told me that there was vacancy of an accountant at the tax commission in the district center of Mikhailovka. A senior inspector came from there to take my mother and me to the town. We were welcomed warmly – we got a delicious lunch and were taken to the apartment where we were to stay.

I was doing well at work and my management valued me high. I was responsible for collection of taxes. Since I was a Komsomol member I was sent to distant villages. I rode on a horse regardless of my invalidity. I went to a distant village – a German colony [13]. German families were deported there from various corners of the Soviet Union in the early 1930s [14]. Of course they didn’t want to pay military taxes to contribute to our victory over Germany.

Chairman of the collective farm [15] gave me a horse-drawn cart and a cabman and I made the rounds of all German houses telling them to come to the meeting. I took the floor at the meeting telling people how important it was to pay the tax to contribute to the victory. One German said, ‘I have no money. I’d rather go to an aryk [artificial channel] and get drowned.’ I replied that since it was hot there was no water in the aryk and he should better find money to pay the tax.

In the morning all families brought money to my office. I packed this money, about 40 thousand rubles, into my military bag that I got from my brother and I took this money to Djambul. The deputy director of the regional inspection office from Kishinev valued me highly and wanted to take me with him after the war.

My mother and I were trying to find my sister. I kept writing letters to all towns where she might have been. I also wrote to Buguruslan where the central evacuation agency was located. It kept information about all people in evacuation. We were lucky – at the end of 1943 we received a letter from Buguruslan. It said that my sister and her family stayed at Kinel railway station near Kuibyshev.

I took a leave from work and set out on my way to find her. I took a 10 kilo bag of dried bread with me. I obtained a letter from the district executive committee requesting all Soviet state and party authorities to provide assistance to me with food and in my search.

When I saw my sister I didn’t recognize her – so starved they were. Misha, the youngest had starved to death a month before I came. He begged his mother for a piece of bread when he was dying. I stayed with my sister for a month. Then my brother-in-law quit his job and we set out on our way to where my mother and I were staying. Henry became an auditor in Mikhailovka and our life wasn’t too bad.

We tried to observe all Jewish traditions in the evacuation: my mother didn’t do anything on Saturday, made the Saturday meal on Friday and fasted on Yom Kippur.

We were homesick. We had no information about Yasha, but we were hoping that he was alive and would search for us. Kiev was liberated in November 1943 and I submitted a request to obtain a permit to go back home.

At that time my management set a package of my documents to Moscow to be processed to issue me a bonus for my excellent work. I didn’t wait until I got this bonus: on 20th April 1944 we left for Korosten. The deputy director was trying to convince me to go to Kishinev with him, but we were eager to go home.

Our trip back was comfortable – we went by passenger train and had enough food with us. We arrived in Korosten at the beginning of May 1944. Our house was gone – a Ukrainian man had removed it with the foundation to the outskirts of the town where he lived. My neighbor, who was in conflict with this man, told me about it. I sued this man in court, but my neighbor didn’t want to witness against his friend. He told me that he made up with his friend and changed his mind about witnessing in court. The court didn’t satisfy my request.

My mother and I and my sister’s family settled down in an abandoned house on the outskirts of Korosten. When we repaired it I caught a cold that resulted in pneumonia. We managed to get sulfidin that was hard to get at that time and I recovered.

When the military trade office was established I went to work there as inspector at the human resources department. This was my brother’s position and I had an illusion that if I worked there he would return from the front. In 1945 Bronia Gutman demobilized. She told us about my brother.

In the military trade office I was made responsible for the organization of the manufactured goods association. It was very difficult – there was no equipment necessary for this association or anything else that was necessary. I went around the neighboring towns to look for what I could get. My mother’s sewing machine – my mother took it with her into evacuation – gave a start to the sewing production shop. Gradually I organized the operation of the association that had few shops and was appointed as director of this association.

We had a great team at work. On 1st May and October Revolution Day [16] we went to parades with our families and then our photographer took a photo of all of us in the yard of our association.

In 1948 director of our trade association told me that it was time for me to join the Party. Key personnel were supposed to be in the Party. I became a candidate to the Party and then a member of the Communist Party. My mother accepted this with understanding regardless of her religiosity.

In 1949 I was sent to Moscow to take an advanced course of management. It lasted four and a half months and I finished the course with excellent results. I returned home to Korosten and took the position of director of the manufactured goods association. I was the director of this association for over 30 years.

In the early 1950s quite a few audits were arranged by higher authorities. They were commissions from higher state and party authorities. There were also representatives of the audit department to inspect our work, receipt of raw materials from storage facilities and shipment of ready products. They also audited our financial documents.

This was the period of anti-Semitism on the state level [17] and they were looking to find mistakes or drawbacks in my work to have a reason to fire me. However, they couldn’t find anything – I did my job well and our association always took leading places in the socialist competition.

Stalin’s death in 1953 was a real tragedy for all of us. It felt like the state wasn’t going to survive without him and like life had stopped. The Twentieth Party Congress [18], denunciation of the cult of Stalin was a big surprise for us. We were all crying when a letter of the Central Committee of the USSR was read at the party meeting in our department, about the denunciation of the cult of Stalin, but at the beginning it was only disclosed to the party members – that was why it was called ‘closed letter’ meaning ‘sensitive.’ We were stunned to hear that Stalin was to blame for the death of dozens of thousands of repressed and executed people.

My personal life was good. I met a friend – Fania – in the evacuation. Fania came from Korosten. Our parents were hoping that we would get married when all of a sudden I met another woman. In fall 1946 I saw three pretty girls at my work. They all looked nice, but one of them was like my destiny walking to meet me. The girls went to have their photo taken at a photo shop of our association. When they left I asked our photographer to make an extra picture of the girls.

Korosten was a small town and soon I found out that the girl’s name was Tsylia Potievskaya and that she lived in Malin. She came to Korosten on a visit. On that very night I went to meet Tsylia. I had never met a prettier girl in my life. She left home and we corresponded for about two months. Then I went to Malin to meet her mother and propose to Tsylia.

We had a small party and left by freight train to Korosten on 1st January 1947. We had a civil wedding ceremony at the registry office in Korosten. When Tsylia and I arrived Fania was at the station to look at Tsylia. In due time Fania married her cousin brother and became friends with my wife.

Tsylia was born in Malin, Zhytomir region, in 1924. Her father worked at a furniture factory. He died in 1936. During the war Tsylia and her mother were in evacuation in Yangiyul, near Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Tsylia’s brother was at the front.

Tsylia’s father wasn’t religious while her mother observed all Jewish traditions and raised Tsylia religious. Although Tsylia was a Komsomol member it didn’t interfere with her strive to observe Jewish traditions and celebrate holidays. She fasted at Yom Kippur. Tsylia didn’t complete her secondary education due to the war. After the war she worked as accountant assistant and then as an accountant at the post office.

In Korosten we had a wedding party where we invited my friends. My mother wished we had a traditional Jewish wedding, but since I was a manager and religiosity was persecuted by the Soviet authorities we couldn’t have it. If my management found out that we had a religious wedding I would have had problems at work and with my party authorities. I could have been expelled or reprimanded. Actually I was an atheist.

My mother tried to observe Jewish traditions and celebrate holidays after we returned to Korosten after the war. We had matzah at Pesach. In the first years after the war my mother was involved in charity – she collected money and clothes to help Jewish children that had lost their parents to the war.

My mother, Tsylia and I and my sister Bronia and her family lived together. We lived in the house on the outskirts of Korosten where we settled down after evacuation. We repaired it and added some space. We ended up with having four rooms and a kitchen with a stove stoked with wood. It served for heating and cooking food.

Gradually we bought furniture, my mother sewed curtains and we made our home a cozy place. Here were fruit trees planted around the house and my mother and sister grew greeneries in a small kitchen garden in the backyard of the house.

In 1947 our daughter Raissa was born and in 1956 our son Igor. Tsylia worked at the trade office for some time and then became an accountant at school. We submitted our documents to receive a new apartment, since we all lived in that old house that we found after the war.

In 1962 our trade department gave us three apartments in a new house: one apartment for my family, one for my sister’s and a one-bedroom apartment for my mother. My mother died a year after we received our apartment. My sister Bronia died in 1984.

Of course, we couldn’t raise our children religious in those years – we didn’t observe Jewish traditions. Only my mother and Tsylia’s mother told their grandchildren about Jewish traditions and gave them money at Chanukkah.

Our children studied well at school. Our daughter Raissa tried to enter the Medical Institute after finishing school, but it was impossible for a Jewish girl to enter a higher educational institution at that time. There was anti-Semitism on a state level and there was a secret direction of the government to admit no Jews to the most popular higher educational institutions and maximum 5 percent – to less popular ones [19].

My daughter failed to enter the institute and went to study at a medical school. She became a medical nurse. She married Igor Motylyov, a Jewish man from Lvov, and moved to live with her husband. After she had two sons my wife insisted that we moved to Lvov to be closer to our daughter. We exchanged our apartment for an apartment in Lvov in 1980 and stayed to live here.

My wife was a pensioner and I worked part time at the manufacture association in Lvov – I made boards for orders and medals. My daughter was diagnosed with lymphoganulomatosis. She didn’t have a happy life with her husband. She lived the last years of her life with us. It is hard for me to talk about it I shall never forget how tragically she was dying. She died in 1986.

Raissa had two children: Pavel, born in 1972 and Alexandr, born in 1977. Pavel lives in Los Angeles, USA, and Alexandr lives in Israel. Pavel has a son – Rayan, my great grandson, and Alexandr has a daughter – Sopha. Our grandchildren write us and call on our birthdays. They invite me to visit them, but I can’t afford the trip. However, we hope to see them one day.

Our son Igor entered the Forestry Academy in Leningrad. Anti-Semitism was not so strong in Leningrad during the Soviet power. Upon graduation he worked in Korosten and then moved to Lvov with us. Igor is married: his wife is called Irina, and they have two children, a son called Sergey and a daughter called Alyona.

Irina, our daughter-in-law, is Russian, but she studied Hebrew, knows and observes Jewish traditions and is a volunteer at the local department of Hesed. Alyona studies at the Jewish school. She sings and dances at the children’s Jewish ensemble. She was on tour in Israel. Irina went there with her.

Regretfully, my wife and I have never been to Israel. In 1995 we submitted our documents to move to Israel, but we decided to stay due to terrorism and wars that shake the country. I hope to go there with our son’s family, but taking this decision may take time. It’s hard to change one’s life at our age.

Perestroika [20] came as fresh wind for my wife and me. By that time I realized that we had lived our life in a cruel and merciless regime. We didn’t have freedom of word or traveling or read books of our favorite writers. I wasn’t a devoted communist and by that time I wasn’t a party member any longer. After I became a pensioner I lost my party membership certificate and never recalled it.

I agree with my wife: we are very enthusiastic about the possibilities for people to travel and chose a place of living. There is freedom of speech. It is good that people got to know about the tragedy of Jewish people during the Great Patriotic War. There were books published that were not allowed before. The Jewish life has revived. Synagogues were opened and Jewish communities established. We can state proudly now that we are Jews.

Hesed [21] and the Jewish society Sholem Aleichem [22] provide medications for us. We attend clubs there to communicate with other Jews of our age. We also read Jewish newspapers. It is easier for us to be near people that support us in spirit, in particular, after our terrible loss – the death of our daughter. We celebrated Jewish holidays: Pesach, Purim, Yom Kippur and Chanukah. Igor and his family come to see us on holidays and we sit at the table all together. I also like to celebrate holidays in Hesed.

Glossary

[1] Revolution in which the tsarist regime was overthrown in the Russian Empire and, under Lenin, was replaced by the Bolshevik rule. The two phases of the Revolution were: February Revolution, which came about due to food and fuel shortages during World War I, and during which the tsar abdicated and a provisional government took over. The second phase took place in the form of a coup led by Lenin in October/November (October Revolution) and saw the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks.

[2] Great Patriotic War: On 22nd June 1941 at 5 o'clock in the morning Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union without declaring war. This was the beginning of the so-called Great Patriotic War. The German blitzkrieg, known as Operation Barbarossa, nearly succeeded in breaking the Soviet Union in the months that followed. Caught unprepared, the Soviet forces lost whole armies and vast quantities of equipment to the German onslaught in the first weeks of the war. By November 1941 the German army had seized the Ukrainian Republic, besieged Leningrad, the Soviet Union's second largest city, and threatened Moscow itself. The war ended for the Soviet Union on 9th May 1945.

[3] Civil War (1918-1920): The Civil War between the Reds (the Bolsheviks) and the Whites (the anti-Bolsheviks), which broke out in early 1918, ravaged Russia until 1920. The Whites represented all shades of anti-communist groups - Russian army units from World War I, led by anti-Bolshevik officers, by anti-Bolshevik volunteers and some Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. Several of their leaders favored setting up a military dictatorship, but few were outspoken tsarists. Atrocities were committed throughout the Civil War by both sides. The Civil War ended with Bolshevik military victory, thanks to the lack of cooperation among the various White commanders and to the reorganization of the Red forces after Trotsky became commissar for war. It was won, however, only at the price of immense sacrifice; by 1920 Russia was ruined and devastated. In 1920 industrial production was reduced to 14% and agriculture to 50% as compared to 1913.

[4] Famine in Ukraine: In 1920 a deliberate famine was introduced in the Ukraine causing the death of millions of people. It was arranged in order to suppress those protesting peasants who did not want to join the collective farms. There was another dreadful deliberate famine in 1930-1934 in the Ukraine. The authorities took away the last food products from the peasants. People were dying in the streets, whole villages became deserted. The authorities arranged this specifically to suppress the rebellious peasants who did not want to accept Soviet power and join collective farms.

[5] Pogroms in Ukraine: In the 1920s there were many anti-Semitic gangs in Ukraine. They killed Jews and burnt their houses, they robbed their houses, raped women and killed children.

[6] White Guards: A counter-revolutionary gang led by General Denikin, famous for their brigandry and anti-Semitic acts all over Russia; legends were told of their cruelty. Few survived their pogroms.

[7] All-Union pioneer organization: A communist organization for teenagers between 10 and 15 years old (cf: boy-/ girlscouts in the US). The organization aimed at educating the young generation in accordance with the communist ideals, preparing pioneers to become members of the Komsomol and later the Communist Party. In the Soviet Union, all teenagers were pioneers.

[8] Komsomol: Communist youth political organization created in 1918. The task of the Komsomol was to spread the ideas of communism and involve the worker and peasant youth in building the Soviet Union. The Komsomol also aimed at giving a communist upbringing by involving the worker youth in the political struggle, supplemented by theoretical education. The Komsomol was more popular than the Communist Party because with its aim of education people could accept uninitiated young proletarians, whereas party members had to have at least a minimal political qualification.

[9] Postyshev, Pavel (1887-1939): political activist. In 1926 he became secretary of the Central committee of the Communist Party (of Bolsheviks) of Ukraine. In 1930-1933 secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (of Bolsheviks), 1933 2nd secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (of Bolsheviks) of Ukraine. In 1937-38 secretary of the Regional and Town Committee of the Communist party (of Bolsheviks) in Kuibyshev, candidate to members of the political bureau of the Central Committee. Repressed in 1934-38. Rehabilitated posthumously.

[10] Great Terror (1934-1938): During the Great Terror, or Great Purges, which included the notorious show trials of Stalin's former Bolshevik opponents in 1936-1938 and reached its peak in 1937 and 1938, millions of innocent Soviet citizens were sent off to labor camps or killed in prison. The major targets of the Great Terror were communists. Over half of the people who were arrested were members of the party at the time of their arrest. The armed forces, the Communist Party, and the government in general were purged of all allegedly dissident persons; the victims were generally sentenced to death or to long terms of hard labor. Much of the purge was carried out in secret, and only a few cases were tried in public 'show trials'. By the time the terror subsided in 1939, Stalin had managed to bring both the Party and the public to a state of complete submission to his rule. Soviet society was so atomized and the people so fearful of reprisals that mass arrests were no longer necessary. Stalin ruled as absolute dictator of the Soviet Union until his death in March 1953.

[11] Kulaks: In the Soviet Union the majority of wealthy peasants that refused to join collective farms and give their grain and property to Soviet power were called kulaks, declared enemies of the people and exterminated in the 1930s.

[12] Occupation of the Baltic Republics (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania): Although the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact regarded only Latvia and Estonia as parts of the Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, according to a supplementary protocol (signed in 28th September 1939) most of Lithuania was also transferred under the Soviets. The three states were forced to sign the 'Pact of Defense and Mutual Assistance' with the USSR allowing it to station troops in their territories. In June 1940 Moscow issued an ultimatum demanding the change of governments and the occupation of the Baltic Republics. The three states were incorporated into the Soviet Union as the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republics.

[13] German colonists/colony: Ancestors of German peasants, who were invited by Empress Catherine II in the 18th century to settle in Russia.

[14] Forced deportation to Siberia: Stalin introduced the deportation of certain people, like the Crimean Tatars and the Chechens, to Siberia. Without warning, people were thrown out of their houses and into vehicles at night. The majority of them died on the way of starvation, cold and illnesses.

[15] Collective farm (in Russian kolkhoz): In the Soviet Union the policy of gradual and voluntary collectivization of agriculture was adopted in 1927 to encourage food production while freeing labor and capital for industrial development. In 1929, with only 4% of farms in kolkhozes, Stalin ordered the confiscation of peasants' land, tools, and animals; the kolkhoz replaced the family farm.

[16] October Revolution Day: October 25 (according to the old calendar), 1917 went down in history as victory day for the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia. This is the most significant date in the history of the USSR. Today the anniversary is celebrated as 'Day of Accord and Reconciliation' on November 7.

[17] Campaign against 'cosmopolitans': The campaign against 'cosmopolitans', i.e. Jews, was initiated in articles in the central organs of the Communist Party in 1949. The campaign was directed primarily at the Jewish intelligentsia and it was the first public attack on Soviet Jews as Jews. 'Cosmopolitans' writers were accused of hating the Russian people, of supporting Zionism, etc. Many Yiddish writers as well as the leaders of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were arrested in November 1948 on charges that they maintained ties with Zionism and with American 'imperialism'. They were executed secretly in 1952. The anti-Semitic Doctors' Plot was launched in January 1953. A wave of anti-Semitism spread through the USSR. Jews were removed from their positions, and rumors of an imminent mass deportation of Jews to the eastern part of the USSR began to spread. Stalin's death in March 1953 put an end to the campaign against 'cosmopolitans.'

[18] Twentieth Party Congress: At the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956 Khrushchev publicly debunked the cult of Stalin and lifted the veil of secrecy from what had happened in the USSR during Stalin's leadership.

[19] Five percent quota: In tsarist Russia the number of Jews in higher educational institutions could not exceed 5% of the total number of students.

[20] Perestroika (Russian for restructuring): Soviet economic and social policy of the late 1980s, associated with the name of Soviet politician Mikhail Gorbachev. The term designated the attempts to transform the stagnant, inefficient command economy of the Soviet Union into a decentralized, market-oriented economy. Industrial managers and local government and party officials were granted greater autonomy, and open elections were introduced in an attempt to democratize the Communist Party organization. By 1991, perestroika was declining and was soon eclipsed by the dissolution of the USSR.

[21] Hesed: Meaning care and mercy in Hebrew, Hesed stands for the charity organization founded by Amos Avgar in the early 20th century. Supported by Claims Conference and Joint Hesed helps for Jews in need to have a decent life despite hard economic conditions and encourages development of their self-identity. Hesed provides a number of services aimed at supporting the needs of all, and particularly elderly members of the society. The major social services include: work in the center facilities (information, advertisement of the center activities, foreign ties and free lease of medical equipment); services at homes (care and help at home, food products delivery, delivery of hot meals, minor repairs); work in the community (clubs, meals together, day-time polyclinic, medical and legal consultations); service for volunteers (training programs). The Hesed centers have inspired a real revolution in the Jewish life in the FSU countries. People have seen and sensed the rebirth of the Jewish traditions of humanism. Currently over eighty Hesed centers exist in the FSU countries. Their activities cover the Jewish population of over eight hundred settlements.

[22] Sholem Aleichem Society in Ukraine: The first Jewish associations were established in many towns of the country in the early 1990s. Many of them were called Sholem Aleichem Society. They had educational and cultural goals. Their purpose was to make assimilated Soviet Jews interested in the history and culture of their people, opening Jewish schools, kindergartens, libraries, literature and historical clubs.

Yevgenia Kozak
Bershad
Ukraine
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: June 2004

Yevgenia, a thin, absolutely gray, poorly dressed woman, with big and sad eyes, meets me sitting in her bed. She recently had an injury – she had a hip fracture and only recently began to get out of her bed slowly. Yevgenia’s apartment has two rooms full of light in her apartment and a kitchen. Her apartment is very poorly furnished: an old bed, dented crockery, but she keeps her apartment very clean. The furniture is plain and old: there are only the most necessary pieces of it.  Here is an old black-and-white TV by the window in Yevgenia’s room. In this room there is a table and a side board with medications and a meal delivered by Hesed on it. There are two beds and a chandelier in another room. Yevgenia gets a little embarrassed saying that she’s prepared this room for her sons in case they want to visit her. During our conversation Yevgenia stops her story crying and complaining of her life full of hardships and her loneliness. I try to comfort her as much as I can. At the end of the interview Yevgenia sings beautiful Jewish songs that she knows since her childhood: she does it on her own initiative. When I say ‘good-bye’ Yevgenia asks me to remember her and call every now and then. I leave her house feeling sad.

My family backgrownd

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family backgrownd

My maternal and paternal ancestors came from Bershad, a Jewish town in Vinnitsa province. Bershad was a bigger Jewish town: its population in the early 1920s was over 6 thousand Jews. Jews lived in small houses closely adjusting to one another in the central part of the town: there was no place for gardens available. There were cobblestone streets with cunettes on both sides of streets and bridges over them to each house. In spring they were filled with rain water and melting snow flowing into the Dohna River surrounding the town on three sides. Jewish men were craftsmen: tailors, shoemakers, potters, glass cutters. They earned their living to the best they could.  They spoke Yiddish (and so did we in the family), but they all knew Ukrainian, as well as Ukrainians spoke Yiddish. There was Pyatkovka village across the river where Ukrainians lived, and there was also a ‘katsap’ street in the town. Katsap was a jargon word for Russians. Residents of the town got along well and had good neighborly relationships.  Jews attended a beautiful synagogue near the market in the center of the town.  There were several smaller synagogues in the town. Ukrainians and Russians went to a big church over the river.

My grandparents died before I was born. All I know is that they were born to big Jewish families in Bershad, traditionally religious and observing all traditions. I believe my both grandfathers were raised Jewish: they studied in the cheder, but this was all education they got.  My maternal grandfather Shloime-Yoina Mitzel, born in 1870, was a high-skilled cabinet maker. Mama told me my grandfather made not only solid and usable, but also beautiful furniture. My grandmother Etl Mitzel (I don’t know her maiden name), my mama’s mother, studied midwife’s vocation and became a good midwife. Many babies in Bershad entered this world through her kind hands. She taught young mothers to bathe and swaddle their babies. She handled the navel string and taught mothers to take care of their babies. Granny Etl was always busy with either her midwife’s business or having to look after someone’s baby – it’s amazing how she managed to raise her own eight children: four sons and four daughters. I remember the names of my aunts and uncles, but not the years of their birth. My mother, born in 1895, was the oldest. Then came the sons: Sina, Motl, Abram and Haim, and after them three daughters: Golda, Mania and Riva. 

The boys studied in the cheder. Grandpa Shloime taught them cabinet making. His shop was one of three rooms in the house. The house was very much like other houses in Bershad: three rooms and a kitchen with a big Russian stove 1. Grandmother Etl baked bread and Saturday challit in this stove, and also kept Saturday dinners in it. My grandparents’ family strictly observed traditions, followed kashrut and honored Saturday. My grandfather was religious and always wore a kippah or a hat.  Every morning he went to the synagogue in the center of the town and started work after he came back from the synagogue. He never worked on Saturday or Jewish holidays. Grandfather read religious books aloud and the family took a rest listening to him. Grandpa died of some disease in 1924. He was buried according to the Jewish traditions in the Jewish cemetery in Bershad. 

Mama’s brothers worked independently before and during the NEP 2. After the NEP they worked for a furniture shop in Bershad. Fortunately, our family escaped accusations of being declared to be kulaks 3, like it happened to many wealthier families – grandfather Shloime’s family was rather poor. I can’t remember details of my relatives’ life. I know that my uncles had Jewish wives and children. Sina had three sons: Dod, Naum and Moishe. Motl had a daughter and a son, whose names I can’t remember. They were in evacuation during the Great Patriotic War 4 and returned to  Bershad after the war. My aunts and uncles have passed away, but I don’t know the dates. Uncle Haim lived the longest life. He died in Bershad in 1978. After he died his wife Raya moved to her sister in Israel. They had no children. 

Mama’s sisters Mania and Golda, born in the early 1900s, had no education. They were raised to be good housewives and raise children. They married Jewish men from Odessa in the 1920s through matchmakers and moved to Odessa 5. Mania’s husband Aron Biller was a tailor. He arranged for his cousin brother Isaac Breiman, also a tailor, to meet Golda, the youngest sister, and they also moved to Odessa. Mania had two children: son Semyon (the first boys in our family were traditionally named after grandfather Shloime, with the corresponding Russian name Semyon 6, and  daughter Lusia. Golda had two sons: the older one’s name was Semyon, but I can’t remember the name of her younger son. Riva married Rafail Podolskiy, an engineer at the distillery in Bershad. He was a communist. Riva, the youngest in the family, was the only one to get fond of revolutionary ideas. She was an active Komsomol member 7. During the Great Patriotic War fascists shot Riva in Bershad for being a messenger of a partisan unit.  Her daughter Lusia and son Semyon were raised in our family. Lusia lives in Israel now. The husbands of my aunts perished at the front during the Great Patriotic War. Golda died in  1965, Mania in 1974 in Odessa. All my mother’s sisters but Riva, observed Jewish traditions throughout their life.

Mama didn’t have any education – this was quite customary for Jewish families. She helped grandmother Etl about the house since her early age, as grandmother Etl had to travel even to the neighboring villages: people believed her to be better than any educated assistant doctor. Mama learned to cook traditional food: gefilte fish, thick broth with delicious kneydlakh, sweet and sour stew and chalet for Saturday. She also cooked Saturday dinners and was good at preparing the house for a holiday.  

This was a small tow where people knew each other well. Therefore, mama didn’t give much thought to frequent visits of her cousin brother on grandmother Etl’s side Abram Shafer at first.  She didn’t think more than of a relative of him and it was a great surprise for her, when he proposed to her. However, at that time marriages of cousins were quite common in Jewish families. 

Abram’s mother Surah Shafer was grandmother Etl’s sister. She was a few years younger than Etl.  I don’t have any information about Etl’s other brothers or sisters. Abram’s father Gershko Shafer, born in Bershad in the 1860s, was a leather tanner. He worked very hard steeping, handling and drying leather, but he earned well, and his family was better off than the family of my grandfather Shloime-Yoina Mitzel.

Besides Abram, there were two other sons and a daughter in the family. David, the oldest son, his wife and children, whose names I don’t remember, lived in Teplik village near Bershad. They didn’t evacuate in 1941 and perished. My father’s younger brother Mendel perished at the front during the Great Patriotic War. His wife Etl and daughters Sonia and Luba lived some place in Donetsk region after the war. Etl died in the early 1980s. I have no contacts with her daughters. My father’s sister Sima, who was about 12 years younger than my father, her husband and two daughters lived in Odessa. They didn’t evacuated during the war and were shot by fascists. 

My father Abram Shafer was born in 1888. He finished cheder and became a religious Jew. His father Gershko was even more religious than grandfather Shloime. He went to the synagogue every day, read the Torah and Talmud and raised his sons Jewish. David, the oldest son followed into his father’s steps and became a tanner. My father learned to make long and warm leather coats that were of great demand with Ukrainians. Coat craft was popular in Bershad: coats were also sold to neighboring villages. My father was not recruited to the army during WWI due to his hernia.  By the time he proposed to my mother he was a skilled coat maker and could support his family.

When a shadkhan came to Etl and Shloime’s house suggesting that they gave consent to her daughter’s marriage with Abram, they were happy to give it. Besides, the fiancé offered quite a lot of money for the girl and his father Gershko promised to cover all wedding expenses and buy the newlyweds a house. Since my mother’s was a poor family they couldn’t afford to give her any dowry.  Mama didn’t want to marry Abram. She liked a poor guy from the village, a grandfather’s Shloime’s apprentice, but she had to obey. Jewish families did not appreciate disobedience to parents.  

My parents got married in 1919 during the outburst of the Civil War 8, the time of devastation, hunger and diseases, when the power switched from one group to another in the town, and each time there was a pogrom 9. However, they had a traditional Jewish wedding. There was a chuppah in the most beautiful synagogue in Bershad, and musicians played at the wedding. Grandfather Gershko Shafer bought them a house where they moved in after the wedding, only grandfather Gershko and grandmother Surah died from typhus shortly after the wedding. Mama got pregnant. During pogroms mother and father took hiding in grandfather Shloime’s cellar. Mama said they always ran to her parents’ home: she believed her father could protect her from pogrom makers. Once, during a pogrom mama put on a wet shawl on her head and lied down and father put a ‘typhus’ sign on the door, and pogrom makers didn’t dare to enter the house.

Mama gave birth to a boy: the baby didn’t have arms and died soon. The girl, who was born next, died a few months after she was born. Then there was a boy, born in 1920: he only lived a few years. I was born on 29 December 1922. One day in 1924 mama and the children stayed overnight in grandfather Shloime’s house, when his house set on fire. Grandfather rescued grandmother Etl, mama and the children from the burning house, and fell ill. A few days later he died of pneumonia. My older brother also died from tuberculosis in that same year -1924.

Growing up

I was two years old, when this happened, and I know about it from what mama told me. I was named Sheindl at birth, but at home I was addressed  Zhenia, a more common name. When obtaining my passport at the age of 16, I had the full name of Zhenia – Yevgenia put down in my passport. I was a healthy child. Mama doted on me having lost three babies before. In 1926 my brother named Shloime after grandfather was born. In 1931 my younger sister Lubov (her Jewish name was Leiba) was born.

I remember our house in Oktiabrskaya Street adjusting to or neighbor’s house. It was small and there was no space for a garden. We bought meat, vegetables and dairies at the market. It was open every day, and on Sundays it even spread to the central street. Vendors came from neighboring villages to sell their products and there was a variety of colors in the street: red tomatoes, greeneries, orange pumpkins and striped water melons pleasing the sight. My father and I went shopping that I enjoyed very much. He knew many vendors and they greeted Shloime-the-coat-maker with hugs and kisses. Some of them stayed overnight in our house and my father used to stay in their homes, when traveling to take orders. There were little Jewish shops at the market selling everyday goods: tools, buckets, plain crockery and fabrics. However, this lasted till the end of NEP only. Though I was only about 6 years old, I remember how our neighbors were dispossessed. They were taken to the railway station, including old people and children. Later it turned out that they were all sent to the virgin lands of the Kherson steppes. Some of them returned to Bershad several years later and others disappeared for good.  I remember that men from kulak families were sent to the construction of the Dnieper power plant, the biggest in the USSR. When they returned, they told us that the conditions on this ‘socialist construction site’ were unbearable.

Our family was poor. My father earned to support the family and my mother was a housewife. We were not miserably poor, though. Mama always managed to make a special dinner on Saturday. We rarely had meat or fish, but she made delicious puddings, strudels with jam and challot.  Before Pesach and other holidays we bought poultry in advance and kept them in a shed in the backyard. My father took them to the shochet and we always had all traditional food on holidays. I wouldn’t say my family was that religious. My father or mother didn’t have their heads covered.  My father didn’t cover his head to sit at the table.  Perhaps, this was the sign of time. However, my father put on a kippah and my mother had a kerchief on to go to the synagogue every Saturday. I liked going to the synagogue with my parents. I liked the ceremonious mood embracing the town on Saturday: all Jews and their children dressed up (we also had fancy outfits) to go to the synagogue. I usually carried my father’s book of prayers - he was not supposed to do even this kind of work on Saturday. Mama and I went upstairs where women were supposed to do their praying, and my father stayed downstairs with other men. I continued going to the synagogue, when I became a pioneer 10, though pioneers were not allowed to attend it. I liked Jewish holidays even without knowing their history: I enjoyed the happy moments of my childhood, going out with the family and having delicious food. On Purim mama and grandma made delicious hamantashen filled with poppy seeds. I remember Sukkot  in autumn, when we had meals in the sukkah in the backyard, but my favorite holiday was Chanukkah, when we visited grandma, who gave us some money and we enjoyed nice doughnuts and potato pancakes. During Pesach my father didn’t conduct the seder – the family just sat at the table and enjoyed a special meal.  However, we had fancy silver kosher crockery that was kept in the attic. His crockery, the matzah that my father brought from the synagogue and traditional food – this was all that marked the Pesach in our house. Sometimes we visited grandmother Etl on holiday where we met with mama sisters Mania and Golda and their husbands and children who also visited grandma and arrived from Odessa. 

I studied in a Ukrainian school. I don’t know why my parents did not send me to the Jewish school in Bershad – probably because the Ukrainian school was quite near our home. There were many Jewish children in my school. My friends were mainly Jewish girls. Our teachers were Ukrainian, but they treated Jewish children well and did not discriminate between the children. I remember the famine in 1932-33 11. I can’t imagine how we survived: probably people were more sympathetic and supported each other then. I remember my father bringing some cereals and flour from his clients in villages. The situation was also hard in villages, but they at least had some vegetables gardens where they could grow something. Mama baked bread to sell it at the market and we only could have some leftovers. Villagers occasionally paid my father for his work with potatoes an other vegetables. We were given a bun and some soup at school. Fortunately our family survived while many other people died in Bershad.

I wasn’t quite fond of studying and had only satisfactory marks at school. Being the oldest child in the family I had many duties about the house. I helped my mother and looked after my dear little sister. In summer I went to the bank of the Dohna river to bather and lie in the sun with other children. My brother Shloime and little sister also went with me and I watched them there. I was proud of having to be responsible for them. In winter mama and I did our laundry in the river.  Sometimes I went to amateur concerts in the club in the central square of Bershad. I liked Soviet holidays. I went to parades with my school: we carried slogans, placards and flower garlands.  There were parties at school. We didn’t celebrate Soviet holidays at home, though.

In the late 1930s arrests began [Great Terror] 12, when party and Soviet officials began to disappear. Nobody in our family was arrested. We didn’t give much thought to what was happening. We believed that punishment was the right thing for the guilty ones. We also thought the situation in Western Europe and Germany in the early 1930s had little to do with us. From newspapers we knew about Hitler, who came to power, and about fascists, but neither newspapers nor radio mentioned anything about their attitude to Jews.  However, we watched the ‘Professor Mumlock’ 13 film that showed the prejudiced attitude of Hitler followers to Jews, but again nobody in Bershad gave much thought to it.

During the war

A few days before the Great Patriotic War began I finished the 8th form. Mama wanted to send me to my aunts in Odessa in summer – I was eager to see the sea, but this was not to be. On 22 June 1941 at noon our neighbors came to our home to listen to the radio – we bought it shortly before the war. Molotov 14 announced that the Great Patriotic War began. Mama started crying. Papa calmed her down saying that Germans were cultured people and were not going to hurt Jews.  At first everything stayed the same. My father’s shop began to make coats for the front. We were surprised they would need them: the radio kept saying that Germans were not going to be long in the country and that our army would chase them away soon, but the reality was different. In early July grandmother evacuated with her daughters Mania and Golda, whose husbands were at the front. We and aunt Riva and her 5-year old daughter Lusia and 2-year old son Semyon were in Bershad.  Her husband Rafael Podolskiy was at the front. On 22 July the first bombs fell on Bershad. They dropped bombs mainly to destroy the distillery, but one bomb hit a Jewish house and killed a woman. The next day mama, papa, my brother and sister and I left Bershad. Many Jews feared to leave their homes and thought that since Germans were quite civil during WWI, nothing bad was going to happen to them. This was what older people were telling the others. Grandmother Etl made my mother promise that we would follow them and evacuate before she left the town. There was no transport available and we left the town on foot. Riva and her children wanted to leave some days later.

My mother and father carried whatever little luggage we had: a backpack and a suitcase, my 13-year old brother carried a bag and so did I and my sister. It was hard to think of us as refugees – there were many others like us walking along the road and so were the troops of our dear Red Army retreating. I was struck at the sight of our soldiers: gloomy and silent. During air raids we took hiding in sunflower and corn fields. We also slept in the fields at night: the weather was still hot. We arrived at Novoukrainka, Kirovohrad region, 180 km from Kiev. We arrived at night soaked in the rain. A local Ukrainian family gave us shelter. We washed ourselves and had some food and slept in the house after a long time. The next day we took a train. We already knew that on 28 July our dear Bershad was occupied. We didn’t have any information about Riva.

The train was overcrowded. This was a train for cattle transportation. We had no food stocks left. We only had dried bread. When the train stopped, I fetched some boiling water in the kettle.  Occasionally we could get some soup or cooked cereals at stations, but this happened rarely.  During air raids the train stopped and we scattered around. Our trip took a month before we arrived in Ossetia in Northern Caucasus. The train stopped near Ordzhonikidze, Azerbaijan, and we were sent to a kolkhoz 15, in a village near Ordzhonikidze. We were given a warm welcome there. We were accommodated in a small room with a kitchen. A family from Kharkiv resided in the next-door room. Mama, my brother and I went to work in the field and my father went to work as a janitor in the kolkhoz granary. We received food products for work and in winter the kolkhoz provided wood for heating. The local residents gave us winter clothes and we managed through the winter.

In summer 1942 fascists approached the Northern Caucasus and we had to move on. The kolkhoz gave us a bull-driven wagon where we loaded our miserable belongings. We bid farewell to the locals and moved on walking behind the wagon. We reached Makhachkala [today capital of Dagestan republic within Russian Federation] and from there we crossed the Caspian Sea with thousands of other escapees. We arrived in Uzbekistan and were accommodated near Andijon. Shortly afterward aunt Mania found us. She lived with grandma and aunt Golda near Andijon. She wrote us and mama went to see grandma. This was the last time they saw each other. As for me, I didn’t see grandma Etl this time. She died shortly afterward. Mama told me she was buried in a common cemetery, but she was buried in cerements and with no coffin according to Jewish traditions.

Life was very hard. Mama and I went to work at the factory manufacturing cotton ropes. Mama and I were workers. Father also worked there as a janitor – he could not do hard physical work due to his hernia. My sister went to school. My brother Shloime (we addressed him Semyon and he adopted this name, when obtaining a passport) left and didn’t tell us where he was going.  He just ran away from home with a bag of dried bread and we didn’t hear from him for ten years. We received workers’ cards, but we didn’t get sufficient food and were starving. We lived in a little room in a clay house. Its roof leaked when it rained and we had to sleep in wet beds. Actually we slept on some grass on the floor. However, we didn’t complain. This was a common situation. I suffered from malaria terribly. I had attacks, felt cold, fever and couldn’t wait to leave Uzbekistan.  

In March 1944 we heard that Bershad was liberated and decided to go there immediately.  I wrote my friend in Bershad and she sent us a permit to come home. We didn’t even wait till our documents were processed. We paid a railroad man and caught a train to Ukraine. Our trip lasted long and we changed trains, but our hearts couldn’t wait till we got home. We arrived in Bershad in May 1944. Here we heard the horrible news: aunt Riva and her children left Bershad, but got in encirclement. She had to go back home and they stayed in the ghetto. Riva was a messenger for a partisan unit under command of Yasha Tahles, a Komsomol activist. Her home was their secret address. Fascists found out the truth and shot Riva in the central square of Bershad before everybody else. Fortunately Riva’s children Lusia and Semyon survived: the partisans managed to save them. Riva’s husband Rafael Podolskiy perished at the front. There were other people living in our house and we stayed in Riva’s house. Her children were with us. We lived together for a year. Life was very hard. Riva’s children were paid a pension for their father. Mama turned to the court to have our house back and it took her almost a year before she got one room where we moved in 1946. Riva’s relatives took her children. They also sold her house. Lusia went to live with her aunt Mania in Odessa. Aunt Mania treated her like her own daughter. Her son Semyon returned from the front, fell in love with his cousin sister and they got married a few years later. Riva’s son Semyon went to live with his father Rafael Podolskiy’s relatives.

After the war

The first postwar years were very hard. Father went around the neighboring villages fixing clothes, making coats and doing whatever job he could managed. People were poor and could only afford to alter or fix old clothes. He brought some food products from the village and this helped us to survive.  Mama baked bread and I sold it at the market. However hard life was, mama was happy to move back into our house. All of a sudden my brother arrived in 1952. My brother told us that he worked in mines in Donetsk region. He was grown up and independent. He was well-dressed and brought us gifts. My brother didn’t stay long. There was no job for him in the town. He went to Orenburg region in Russia. He married Galina, a Tatar girl. He just informed our parents after the wedding fearing that they might be against his marrying a non-Jewish girl. My parents felt hurt, but they didn’t show it. 

We faced anti-Semitism in those years. I cannot say there was much of it in Bershad  where the population was mainly Jewish. I never heard direct abuses, but Jews had problems with getting a job since there were Ukrainian officials holding the leading positions in the town. I couldn’t get a job anywhere, though I addressed all kinds of offices. Well, I actually had no education: whatever knowledge I got at school was lost during and after the war. I remember Stalin’s death in march 1953: my sister and parents were crying and there was a meeting in the central square of Bershad where all people cried.

However hard life was, we continued to observe Jewish traditions. My parents went to an old synagogue (the new one had been removed) but that one was all right. On Saturday father didn’t work and mama tried to cook something special: latkes, kugel, even there was nothing else, but flour that she had. Father always brought matzah from the synagogue on holidays, or sometimes we made it in the Russian stove. We fasted on Yom Kippur and I still keep fasting nowadays. On Chanukkah mama made buckwheat pancakes. My children also know this holiday – they always got a few coins for sweets on this day. 

I had to think about my personal life. My friends got married, but I didn’t even meet with anyone. Mama’s old acquaintance offered to introduce me to her distant relative. Next day he visited us and told us his story at tea. Meyer Kozak was born in Odessa in 1915. His ancestors came from Bessarabia 16, and Meyer knew Romanian since childhood. Before the war Meyer was a worker. During the war he was an interpreter for Romanians, who were Hitler’s allies. After the war he was sentenced to 10 years in Stalin’s camps of the Gulag 17, as a military criminal. He was kept in Magadan in the north. After he was released he moved to Bershad where he had distant relatives. Meyer swore on his honor that he was not a traitor and had never been involved in any action against Jews and that he just worked as an interpreter in the town office of Odessa to save his life. I believed him – I liked Meyer. Besides, if he had been guilty he redeemed his fault. We got married in 1953: we just signed under our names in the registry office. We didn’t even have rings.  

Meyer worked at the furniture factory and earned well. We lived with my parents: my mama and papa treated him very well. Life was getting better and I even thought that my fortune smiled at me, but it happened to be an illusion. On 11 February 1954 my son was born. We named him Alexey. Shortly afterward I got pregnant again. As for Meyer, he fell severely ill: this was an impact of 10 years of hard work in the north. When I was pregnant 5 months, Meyer died from tuberculosis in hospital in Odessa. I was struck with grief. Mama and I went to the funeral. My husband was buried in the hospital cemetery. On our way back my son got severely injured – his hand was squeezed by the door. He burst into tears and I finally started crying. Now I knew I alone had to raise our children. My second child was born in late 1955. I named him Mikhail after his father Meyer. 

My parents helped me to raise the children. In 1958 I went to the town committee to ask them to help me with employment. My boys were with me. They gave me a job of a janitor and then I became a worker in the dyeing shop where I worked till I retired. They helped me to make arrangements for my older son to go to a kindergarten. Mama looked after my younger son. My work was very hard: there was no heating and it was freezing in winter. There were also hazardous vapors from paints, but I was glad to have this job. In the morning taking a slice of bread – my lunch – I ran to work and returned home late in the evening. I worked overtime to earn more. In the evening I did the laundry and fed my kids trying to give them whatever little bit of motherly care.

In 1968 my mother fell ill. When dying she begged my pardon for her leaving me with my kids alone. My father fell ill with cancer then and was bedridden for five years. Several months before he died he had duodenal obstruction. I was alone to cope with all this. My brother lived in Orsk and had his own life. He could hardly make ends meet himself.  My sister Luba married shoemaker Moshkovich, a Jewish man from Odessa in the early 1950s. She lived with her husband and son in Khust in Subcarpathia. In 1974 my father died. My sister Luba died from cancer in Khust in 1981. She was buried in the town cemetery there. She was 50 years old. My parents and sister were buried in the Jewish cemetery following all Jewish traditions. My sister’s husband and their sons Semyon and Felix moved to Israel in the late 1980s.

This was a period of emigration, when many Jews were leaving Bershad for Israel, USA and Germany. I didn’t even consider emigration: I didn’t have time to even look around. My older son Alexey had all excellent marks at school. His teachers praised him at parents’ meetings at school and thanked me for raising them well and I listened proudly. After finishing the 8th form with all excellent marks – and I was sitting in the presidium, when he obtained his certificate, my son finished the Radio Electronics College in Lvov and served in the army. Then he met Yelena, a Jewish girl from Leningrad, married her and moved to Leningrad where her family lived. From the very beginning I didn’t quite get along with my daughter-in-law. She probably thought I was an uneducated provincial Jewish woman and didn’t pay much attention to me. She didn’t even want to send her son Maxim, born in 1989, to Bershad in summer.

My younger son Mikhail injured his eye, when he was a child, and didn’t go to the army for this reason. He became a shoemaker after finishing school. He married Bronia, a Jewish girl from Bershad and lived with her and their son Boris in Bershad. I retired in 1985. In the early 1990s my son started talking about emigration: he decided to move to USA with his family. They also included me in their documents for emigration. We went to Moscow where we were given the status of refugees, but when my daughter-in-law told me that we were going to live separately in the USA, I burst into crying and told my son I didn’t want to spend my old age alone and in a strange country. I refused to go with them and they moved without me. My son and his family live in Chicago. He is an electronic specialist at a plant. Before leaving he bought me a two-room apartment in Bershad – this is where I live now. My daughter-in-law was against it, but my son insisted on his idea, and I can finally enjoy living in a good house.

Three years ago – I think, in 2000 my younger son and his family moved to Germany. I didn’t go with them – I don’t want to listen to the German language and get used to life in a different country at my age. I want to live the rest of my life beside my own people speaking Yiddish and Ukrainian and I want to be buried in my hometown where I’ve lived my life. My son lives on welfare. He rarely writes me. Visiting him is out of the question – we don’t have money for this and I am afraid I might never see any of my family again in my life. 

Of course, I felt sad. In the early 1990s a Jewish community was established in our town, and it helped me to overcome my sadness and find myself in life. I attended Sabbath and participated in celebration of all Jewish holidays. We began to speak Yiddish and talk about traditions. I was involved in preparation to the events. I cooked gefilte fish for Sabbath and baked strudels like mama did it. Jewish women still consult me on recipes. I am not a religious person, but I try to celebrate major Jewish holidays like we always did in our family. I have had a hard life and have always been hard up. I’ve never been interested in politics. All I’ve thought about was how to manage from one payday to another and how to provide food for the family. Therefore, it’s hard for me to say, when life was harder – during the Soviet period or in the independent Ukraine. But I can say one thing for sure – and that is that I’m grateful to our country for giving an opportunity for religious communities to develop and restore Jewish traditions and religion. I am ill now – I have a severe fracture and cannot attend the community, but they do not leave me. Curator of Hesed, chairman of the community, often visits me. They deliver meals to me at home and buy medications. If it were not for my disease, I would think I have a better life than I’ve ever had before. I asked my sons to visit me to see each other before I die, but they either cannot afford or don’t want to come. My brother does not write me. I know he has two sons, whom I’ve never seen and cannot remember their names. He has grandchildren, too. I feel very distressed and lonesome. When I feel sad, I hum Jewish songs that my mama taught me. They are sad songs: I sing them and cry: about my bitter fortune, hard life and lonely old age.

GLOSSARY:

Boris Slobodianskiy
Chernovtsy
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya
Date of the interview: November 2002

I met Boris Slobodianskiy and his wife at Hesed [1]. Boris and his wife live with their daughter’s family in a three-room apartment. There is an atmosphere of love and mutual respect in their family. Boris changed into a kippah with silver piping and had a shofar in his hands. He used to blow the shofar during Jewish gatherings for a prayer in his native village of Poyana when he was a child. During our interview he demonstrated his art of playing and explained the meaning of tunes. Boris is the founder, author and producer of “Yiddishe Wort,” the only radio program in Yiddish in Ukraine. It is his creation and he can talk about it endlessly.

My father, Moshe Slobodianskiy, was born in the village of Poyana, Rezinsk disrict, Moldova [2], in 1900. At that time it was the territory of Russia and in 1918 it became a part of Romania.

I didn’t know my grandparents on my father’s side. They died during an epidemic when they were young. All I know about them is that they were born in Poyana. My grandfather’s name was Berl Slobodianskiy and I was named after him.

My father told me that his family was poor and that my grandparents had many children. My father was the youngest. After their parents died their older children moved to Palestine and the USA. They didn’t write letters and there was no information about them since then.

My father and his two older brothers, Ide-Leib and Yankel, were raised by some distant relatives. My father and his brothers studied at cheder, but after finishing it they had to go to work. I remember them well – they lived in our village.

My father’s brothers built houses in Poyana and got married. One of my father’s brothers, Ide-Leib, worked as a shoemaker, but later he became a tailor. He could do many things; he was very handy. He could also cut glass. My father’s brother Yankel was growing tobacco and my father was helping him. It was his business.

My father’s brothers were religious. There was no synagogue in Poyana and Ide-Leib had Jews coming to his house for a prayer every day. Ide-Leib was a cantor during such prayers.

Ide-Leib perished at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War [3], and Yankel and his family moved to Israel in the 1970s. He died recently; his children still live in Israel.

My mother’s parents lived in the village of Pisarevka, Yampol district, Vinnitsa region. They were born in the 1860s. My grandfather, Haim Kupershtock, was a handicraftsman and my grandmother was a housewife. My mother’s parents were religious; they observed all Jewish traditions. My mother and her sister were raised in a religious manner. My grandparents had two daughters: my mother’s sister Boba, born in Pisarevka in 1895, and my mother Pesia, born in 1901.

All I know about Pisarevka is that it was a Ukrainian village and there were few Jewish families living in it. Jews were handicraftsmen: shoemakers, tailors, coppersmiths and tinsmiths. There was no synagogue in their village and Jews went to the synagogue in the neighboring village, some five kilometers away.

My mother’s sister Boba got married and moved to her husband in the nearby village of Shypka. Boba had two sons and a daughter. She grew vegetables in her kitchen garden and kept chickens. She also had a cow and sold some dairy products and milk.

My mother’s whole family was religious and Boba was no exception. She observed Jewish traditions and celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays. She also followed the kashrut. Jews bought dairy products from Boba, because they were sure these were kosher products.

My aunt Boba perished at the very beginning of the war. She had a neighbor, a young Moldovan man. After my aunt’s husband died this man was helping her about the house. My aunt treated him like a son, but when the Germans came to the village in 1941 this Moldovan man came to my aunt’s house and killed her with a knife.

Her children survived. After the war her younger son and daughter lived in Chernovtsy and her older son lived in Kishinev. Boba’s older son died in Chernovtsy and her other son died in Israel.

My parents were introduced to one another by a shadkhan. It was a traditional way of arranging marriages in Jewish families. Matchmakers showed my father pictures of my mother and her parents and he came to her village to meet her in person.

My father and mother liked each other and got married in 1922. They had a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah in Pisarevka. The rabbi conducted an official ceremony. After the wedding my mother moved to my father in Poyana. My father owned a small house that formerly belonged to his parents. My mother’s father, Haim Kupershtock, died shortly after my parents’ wedding. My grandmother died two years after my grandfather passed away – in 1924.

My older sister Haya, born in 1924, was named after our grandfather Haim. I was born on 5th August 1926 and was named after my grandfather on my father’s side. Berl in Hebrew means ‘bear.’ During the Soviet regime I was mostly called Boris. My younger sister Sheiva was born in 1932.

Poyana was a Moldovan village. It had a Moldovan and Jewish population. There were about 20 Jewish families in the village. Some of them were handicraftsmen like my uncle Ide-Leib. There were tailors, roofers and carpenters. Some Jews owned stores and the rest of them rented fields to grow tobacco like my father and his brother Yankel.

Tobacco is a very demanding plant. It required constant care to grow. After harvesting it had to be dried. Dried tobacco leaves were sold to wholesalers. This wasn’t a profitable business. Our family was one of the poorest in the village. In cold summers tobacco plants died in the field. In rainy falls tobacco leaves got rotten. Therefore, my father didn’t usually earn enough money from tobacco sales to last until the next season and there were periods when we were starving.

My mother was a housewife, but she also helped our father in the field. We, children, were helping in the field, too. There was enough work for all members of the family. We had to water the tobacco plants, turn up the soil, weed and collect harmful bugs from bushes. In the fall we gathered leaves and took them home, so they could dry on a special wooden frame in the yard. We hung tufts of leaves on this frame, but when it rained we had to take it promptly to the shed. If the leaves got wet they began to rot and were useless.

When I was five I already went to work in the field at 5 o’clock in the morning. We didn’t wear shoes when working in the field. Shoes were expensive, so we worked barefoot. We got our feet injured by dry branches. Injuries developed into blisters and abscesses. There was no medical facility or drugstore in the village and our mother used to heal abscesses with baked onions.

We had two small rooms plainly furnished with beds, a table, chairs, a cupboard and a wardrobe, and a kitchen in the house, half of the area of which was occupied by a stove. In winter this stove was used for both cooking and heating. In summer our mother cooked on a small brick stove in the yard.

There were few fruit trees near the house. We had apples and pears in July. We also grew quince and our mother made jam from this fruit. Our mother also grew all vegetables that we needed in the kitchen garden. There was a shed and poultry yard near the house. My mother kept chickens and ducks. We had meat and eggs.

There was no synagogue or shochet in our village. On Jewish holidays Jews went to the synagogue in Rashkov, seven kilometers from Poyana.

There was a shochet in Ochedar, some three kilometers from our village. I used to take chicken to have them slaughtered when I was a young boy. I took the living chickens to the shochet. I took a path across the forest. Sometimes I joined a group of people from Poyana going to the shochet. The shochet slaughtered our chickens and afterwards we returned home.

We spoke Yiddish at home. We knew Moldovan and Romanian to communicate with our neighbors. The other villagers respected the Jewish traditions and religion. There was no anti-Semitism or pogroms in our village or in the neighboring villages.

There was a sufficient number of men in the village for a minyan. On Jewish holidays, such as Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah and Pesach, Jews went to the synagogue in Rashkov, but not all of them could walk that far. So these people always, and on less important holidays all the Jews, got together to pray either in our house or in the house of my father’s older brother Ide-Leib.

Ide-Leib was a cantor. When I turned six years old my uncle taught me how to blow the shofar. I blew the shofar at Yom Kippur and my uncle expressed his appreciation. Every combination of tunes has its own meaning and there are many such combinations.

My parents weren’t deeply religious, but they always celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays according to all rules. They strictly followed the kashrut at home. On Saturday and on holidays my mother went to the synagogue in Rashkov – she walked seven kilometers to get there. My father stayed in Poyana and went to the community house to pray.

On Friday our mother made challah for Sabbath, chicken broth and gefilte fish. Besides dinner our mother made food for the next day. She stewed potatoes with beans. She left the pot with the stew in the stove to keep the food warm for the next day. Our mother also made potato pancakes and rolls.

We got together on Friday evening and my mother said, ‘Tsaritsa Subbota’ – she always said it in Russian – ‘Enter our house.’ We pronounced a traditional greeting, ‘Shalom Sabbath!’ and started dinner.

Nobody worked on Saturday. We were not even supposed to light a lamp or start a fire in the stove. We asked our Moldovan neighbors to come and start the fire in the stove. Our father read out the weekly paragraph for Saturday from the Torah.

At Pesach we bought matzah, because it was difficult to make it at home. We bought 10 kg bags with matzah at the synagogue in Rashkov. We needed lots of matzah for the five of us. We didn’t have any bread at home at Pesach. My mother made everything from matzah flour.

Before Pesach we cleaned the house. My sisters and I searched for breadcrumbs walking through the house with a candle. They were to be burned. Our mother always whitewashed the house before Pesach. We took our everyday utensils onto the attic and took a box with festive dishes and utensils down.

My mother sent me to have a few chickens slaughtered by the shochet in Ochedar. My mother and my older sister Haika were cooking the food. My sister was helping my mother and learning to make traditional Jewish food. Gefilte fish was our favorite food. My mother made boiled chicken, chicken in jelly and stuffed chicken neck with liver and flour.

I was responsible for crushing matzah in a copper mortar. Then this crushed matzah was sieved. My mother made sponge and honey cakes from fine matzah flour and pancakes from the matzah flour that remained in the sieve. Our mother also made strudels with jam, raisins and nuts and pudding from matzah and eggs.

Nobody worked for eight days at Pesach. On the first day of Pesach my parents went to the synagogue in Rashkov. On the other days of Pesach all Jews got together for a minyan in our house or Ide-Leib’s.

On the first night of Pesach our father conducted the seder. My mother put a white tablecloth on the table with embroidered quotations from the Haggadah. My father said prayers in Hebrew. I asked him the traditional questions. I began to study Hebrew only at the age of five, but I had learned these questions even before this age.

At Sukkot our father made a sukkah at a special spot in the yard. My father made a booth with a roof made of branches. My mother and sisters decorated the sukkah with green leaves and ribbons. At Sukkot we ate in the sukkah even if it rained.

Before Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur the whole family took to fasting for 24 hours. Then we all sat at the table after the evening prayer. On these days I played the shofar during praying. I was praised and was very proud of it.

All Jews in our village strictly followed all Jewish rules. Jewish families lived in the center of the village.

There was a Jewish community in Poyana. There were metal boxes [4] with a Jewish star on them in Jewish houses. People threw coins in a slot in these boxes. This was money saving for poor Jews and for Jews in Palestine. Savings were collected by the chairman of the community and his deputy.

There was no cheder in our village. When I turned six my father began to teach me Hebrew, but I wasn’t doing well. Probably it was because my father worked a lot and got very tired or I was a poor student, but our classes were no success. Later my mother hired a teacher of Hebrew for me and my sisters to teach us at home. He lived in Ochedar. After the war this teacher was a cantor at the synagogue in Chernovtsy.

All Jewish children had to study Yiddish and Hebrew. I haven’t met an illiterate Jew in my life. At the age of seven I went to the Romanian elementary school in our village. It was a free school. My sister Haya also studied in this school. I studied five years in this school.

My parents wanted me to continue my studies and so I went to the Romanian lower secondary school in Rashkov. There was also a Talmud-Torah religious Jewish school in Rashkov and my parents sent me to this school, too.

My parents rented a room for me from a Jewish family. The mistress of the house cooked for me and did my laundry. I had classes at the Romanian school in the morning and in the Torah-Talmud school – in the afternoon. I didn’t have enough time to do my homework.

Our teacher at the Jewish school used to punish us punching or even slapping us. In the Romanian school teachers didn’t punish us for coming to class unprepared, but at the next lesson we were supposed to show them our homework for a previous class. We studied Hebrew and Yiddish and religious subjects at the Jewish school. At weekends I went home.

At 13 I had my bar mitzvah. I received a teffilin and came of age. Since then I went to the synagogue in Rashkov every evening.

There was a fabrics store in Rashkov. I became an apprentice to its owner, Haim Tzenner. I also helped the shop assistant in the evening. I was paid and could pay for my accommodation and meals myself.

We lived in a small and shabby house in Poyana. My parents saved money for a new house. They were buying construction materials and began to build a new house next to the old one in 1938. My mother and father worked day and night. They also hired employees to do work that they couldn’t do. The house was completed by 1940. There were three spacious rooms, a big hallway and a big kitchen in the house. My father made a well in the yard. After we moved into our new house the old house was removed.

In 1933 Hitler came to power in Germany [5] and Romanian fascists raised their heads immediately. There were two fascist parties in Romania: the Iron Guard [6] and the Cuzists [7] – Cuza was the name of their leader. At that time there was anti-Semitism. Jews had to sit on separate benches at the higher educational institutions. It was not safe to walk in the dark – Jews could be abused and beaten. Boys threw stones and broke windows of Jewish stores.

The authorities didn’t bring fascists to order. We were glad that Moldova and Bessarabia joined the USSR on 28th June 1940 [8]. Soviet tanks arrived in the village. The whole village came out to meet them. We built up hopes for the power of workers and peasants and were attracted by the slogans of the Soviet power: ‘For Freedom, Equality and Brotherhood,’ ‘Peace to all people!’ We believed that it was a fair power and that we would have a better life.

Our family was poor and we came to the first ranks of the new regime. My mother was elected a deputy of the district council. I finished eight classes in 1940 and entered the agricultural college in Rezin, 30 kilometers from our village. On the first day in college I became a Komsomol member [9] I believed in the ideas of communism and dropped religion and everything about Jewish traditions.

My parents continued to observe Jewish traditions and celebrate holidays. They had to do it in secret. I didn’t try to dissuade my parents from Jewish traditions or holidays. I understood that it was useless and might only cause argument in the family. When I was at home I usually joined them for a festive meal during celebrations. Saturday was a working day and our father had to work in the field that belonged to the collective farm [10].

Young people in Moldova were called to work at the communist construction sites in the USSR. My older sister Haya, who had turned 18 by that time, went to work in Makeevka, Donetsk region. She wrote us letters. She was working at the construction in mines. It was very hard work and there were no comforts in their living quarters, but young people were enthusiastic about their work anyway. Some of them, even young men, tried to escape, but they were imprisoned if captured.

We lived less than a year during the Soviet power when the Great Patriotic War began. On 22nd June 1941 German and Romanian armies occupied Moldova. The college in Rezin was closed on that same day. I got to my village by vehicles. Local authorities there announced that the Germans were killing Jews and we had to evacuate. My mother packed our luggage.

The nearest railway station was in Shuldaneshty, some 40 kilometers from our village. A few Jewish families were given horse-drawn carts to get there. At the station we boarded a train. I went with my parents and my sister Sheiva. We had no information about our older sister Haya. We arrived in Novomoskovsk, Dnepropetrovsk region, where we began to work at the collective farm.

This collective farm had to drive its cattle to the Northern Caucasus. A few families that knew about cattle were sent along to take care of it. We walked day and night taking a short rest every now and then. We had to cover over 1000 kilometers. Our father had a severe cold. When we reached Chechnia he got much worse. After a few days he died. We buried him at the local cemetery and continued on our way.

We reached the village of Bekeshevskaya, Ordzhonikidze region, where we decided to stay. My mother went to work at the collective farm and I went to the 7th grade of the local school. I didn’t know Russian, but I understood that I would have to master it to continue my studies in the USSR.

In summer 1942 we went on. The Germans were close to the Northern Caucasus. We got to Turkmenia by boat and continued on our way by train. We came to Kata-Kurgan in Uzbekistan, over 2500 kilometers east of Kiev. My mother and I worked in a collective farm not far from the town.

We were accommodated in the clay hut of a local Uzbek woman. My sister Sheiva stayed alone when we were at work. We received bread per bread coupons, but there were long lines to get it and besides, its supplies were very rare. My mother sent Sheiva to a children’s home where they provided food for children and where she could study.

In Kata-Kurgan I went to study at a professional school. After finishing it I got a job as a tinsmith at the machine building plant. From there I was mobilized to the construction of the longest channel in Middle Asia. There were only men working there. Most of the construction employees were local Koreans. People were dying of malaria and other diseases in the hundreds. I was glad to go to the army from there when I turned 18 in 1944.

Upon completion of my military training I was sent to the front at the beginning of 1945. I participated in the storm of Zeelov hills and the storm of Berlin. At the beginning of the war I was senior sergeant and I finished the war in the rank of lieutenant. I was awarded the Order of Combat Red Banner [11] for my participation in the storm of Berlin. The fascists tried to resist our attacks desperately, but all sides understood that the war was coming to an end. I was wounded in my head and had to stay in hospital, but then returned to the front.

I celebrated Victory Day [12] in Berlin and from there I was sent to the border of Czechoslovakia. There were remaining fascist units in the woods in Czechoslovakia and we were to clean up the area. The Czechs were happy that we came, because the Germans were killing them. Later I returned to Germany and continued my service in the Soviet occupational units until 1950.

When we returned to Berlin we were exhausted, dirty and worn out. We got washed and received new uniforms to march along the streets signing songs. I served in Chemnitz for about two years and then in a fortress in a wood near Berlin. Our task at that period was to guard nationalized enterprises, convoy shipments and support the development of public economy in the Soviet territory of Germany.

I became a member of the Communist Party in 1948. It was easy to become a member of the Communist Party in the army. I was eager to become a party member and couldn’t imagine my life without the Party. In 1950 I demobilized.

My mother took my sister Sheiva from the children’s home after the war and returned home with her. Our new house in the village was robbed and disassembled to bricks stolen by villagers. Our relatives helped my mother and Sheiva to move to Chernovtsy. My mother went to work at the human resource department at a plant.

After demobilization I came to my mother and sister in Chernovtsy. I liked the town. I went to work as personnel inspector at the textile plant where my mother was working. Later this plant was modified into a garment factory. I worked there until retirement. I was a former military and a party member and I was employed without any problems.

I went to complete my secondary education at an evening school. I finished higher secondary school and entered the faculty of economy at the university where I studied by correspondence. Upon graduation from the university I became production manager.

Throughout this time we had no information about Haya. My mother continuously wrote letters to evacuation agencies, but Haya wasn’t registered in any of them. We believed our sister to be dead, but our mother said she was sure that Haya was alive. My mother died in 1958, some time before we heard from Haya.

It turned out that Haya was captured by Germans at the beginning of the war. She said she was Ukrainian and they let her go. She came to Poyany after we had left. Our neighbors, a Romanian family, took her to Romania as a niece of theirs. She lived all these years with a different name in Romania.

She married a German man, born in Romania and resident of Romania. He knew that Haya was Jewish, but it was no problem for him. They had two sons. In the 1950s my sister and her family moved to Germany. My sister didn’t face any anti-Semitism living in Germany after the Great Patriotic War. Her husband died there and my sister and her sons still reside in Düsseldorf. Her sons are electronic engineers.

My younger sister Sheiva lives in Chernovtsy. After the war she finished Business College and worked as an accountant at a plant. She married a Jewish man, a former inmate of a ghetto. Her husband was foreman at a textile factory.

They had twins: a boy and a girl. They are 45 now. Their son moved to America over ten years ago and their daughter lives with her parents. She is single. She lost her job recently due to major reduction of staff. My sister Sheiva had an infarction. She is 72 and her husband is the same age.

In 1952 I met my wife-to-be Dora Melman. She was born in the Romanian town of Faleshty in 1930. Her father, Wolf Melman, was a leather specialist and her mother, Golda Melman, nee Shnaiderman, was a housewife. My wife’s parents were religious people. They observed all Jewish traditions.

After the World War II they moved to Chernovtsy. Dora graduated from the Faculty of Biology of the University and worked as a teacher of Biology at a school in Chernovsty. Her distant relative was my colleague and he introduced me to her.

We got married in 1952. We didn’t have a wedding party. We had a civil ceremony and our parents organized a small dinner to celebrate. We invited our closest relatives to the dinner party.

From the plant where I worked I received a room in a communal apartment [13]. It was a dark and damp room, but we felt happy to have it. My wife spoke Yiddish and Romanian when she was a child. She began to study Russian in 1940. Dora and I spoke Yiddish at home.

We didn’t observe any Jewish traditions – I was a communist and it was not appropriate for me to follow any Jewish rules. This was a period of struggle against religion and even more so – with Zionism. Part-time agents of the KGB [14] were near the synagogue all the time. They took no notice of older men, but if they saw a younger man they photographed him, identified who he was and informed his management at work. A communist might have been expelled from the Party or fired.

However, my wife’s parents strictly observed Jewish traditions and celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays. We visited them on holidays and attended their seder at Pesach. My wife used to joke saying that even though I didn’t celebrate holidays at home I was a co-participant of my in-laws’ celebrations. My wife and I celebrated Soviet holidays, arranged parties, sang Soviet songs and enjoyed ourselves.

On 22nd May 1959 our daughter Polina was born. Her Jewish name is Pesia-Perl after my mother and my wife’s grandmother on her mother’s side. My mother’s parents looked after our daughter until she turned five. I took the girl to them in the morning and my wife picked her up after work.

Polina spoke Yiddish before she went to the kindergarten. Our daughter studied successfully at a secondary and music school. After finishing school she finished Pedagogical Music College and now she teaches music at school in Chernovtsy.

My wife and I were very happy that Polina married a Jewish man. Our granddaughter Marina is 20 years old. She finished a Jewish secondary school and Polytechnic College. They live with us and my wife and I are happy about it.

I remember Stalin’s death in March 1953. Many people were crying and I didn’t hide my tears. I was secretary of the party unit of the plant at that time. I was involved in organization of memorial meetings and spoke at them. Stalin was my idol and symbol and I believed in him like he was God. I couldn’t imagine life without him. After the Twentieth Party Congress [15] I began to see things in a different light. But at that moment it was the biggest sorrow of my life.

Upon graduation from the university I was appointed as production manager. Besides, I was secretary of the party unit of the plant until I retired. I was an enthusiastic activist. I arranged meetings to criticize underperforming employees and stimulate advanced employees. We arranged socialist competition between employees and shops. People were infatuated with the enthusiasm of building communism and a happy future for their children and grandchildren.

I wasn’t paid for such activities, but I got involved in them willingly. These activities took much of my leisure time, but I felt an urge to do them. In 1960 I was elected a deputy of the town council and held this position for 13 years. People trusted me to deal with their problems.

I never faced any anti-Semitism. People treated me with respect. When in the 1970s Jews were moving to Israel there were demonstrations of everyday anti-Semitism. I was a member of the party town committee. I went to the secretary of the town committee and told him that the situation had worsened significantly: Jews couldn’t find a job, enter higher educational institutions and suffered abuse. Of course, I put myself at risk. But I knew that the secretary was a decent and honest man and secondly, I just couldn’t help speaking my mind in this situation.

The secretary of the party town committee arranged a meeting with directors of enterprises, human resource managers and secretaries of party units. The secretary of the town committee invited the chief of the KGB office in Chernovtsy. This chief spoke at the meeting indicating that Jews were not traitors or parricides. They are citizens of the USSR like people of all other nationalities. The secretary of the town committee stated that if he ever heard of refusal to employ a Jew he would bring a guilty manager to justice.

It was at my initiative that this happened. I was head of a group of 40 lecturers at the town committee. We lectured on international education of the Soviet people. We tried to explain that if a Jew behaved wrongly it was his own fault that should not be transferred to all other Jews.

My wife and I never considered moving to Israel for several reasons. Firstly, we are attached to our home and are content with what we have. I served in the army for five years and then worked at the same enterprise for 43 years. We prefer stability to new experiences. I had a low salary, but I learned to make use of what I had.

My work and my party activities were most important for me. I was a member of the bureau of the town committee of the Communist Party. I was also a leader of a group of 40 lectors, including university professors. Or group traveled all over the Chernovtsy region holding lectures. People are looking for places where they can earn more now, but we never looked for more than we could get. People respected me and I appreciated it. I was invited to all celebrations in town.

In Israel I would have faced a language problem. I would have been isolated there. My friends were trying to convince me to move to Israel telling me that I would find a job and that even if I couldn’t find a decent job at the beginning I could work as a janitor. But I don’t want to have a job like that – I am an important person here and have many things to do.

In 1999 I went to Israel with a delegation of war veterans from Ukraine. We traveled around the country. Israel is a beautiful country. There are hardworking people there. It’s hard to imagine that this prosperous country was built in a stone desert. I wish these people a peaceful life and prosperity. I visited our relatives: 23 families of my relatives and 16 families of my wife’s relatives live in Israel. Only my sister Sheiva lives here, the rest of my relatives moved to Israel.

When perestroika [16] began we saw the difference immediately. Mikhail Gorbachev [17], the new Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, was the first Soviet leader in a long time that began to build up relationships with Israel. There were associations of friendship and cultural ties with Israel established.

In 1987 an association of the Jewish culture was organized in Chernovtsy. I became a member of the council of this association. I took a great effort in the revival of the Jewish culture by arranging lectures and concerts. At that time some people were in opposition to these activities. My wife and daughter were concerned about my safety. They feared that I might be attacked or there might be a pogrom during a lecture, but there were no such incidents.

Later I became leader of the group of the International Ukrainian Union of War Veterans and Ties with Israel. A year ago I was elected as a member of the Presidium of the Jewish Council of War Veterans of Ukraine. I work with all Jewish war veterans.

The most important work is renaissance of the Jewish identity. I have established a radio program in Yiddish – ‘Yiddishe Wort.’ It’s a monthly program and we do not pay for its broadcast. About once in three months we broadcast a Jewish program on TV. There are about 400 generals of Jewish nationality, the Minister for Armaments during the war was a Jew. There were many outstanding design engineers and we identify their names.

This is what I call renaissance of the Jewish identity – that we call them by name. We make programs with outstanding Jews: design engineers, professors, heroes, etc. This program is dubbed in Ukrainian. People write us letters. The broadcast has spread to Chernovtsy, Ivano-Frankovsk, Lvov, Ternopol and Khmelnitsk regions.

I can’t say that I am a religious man. I worked on Saturday and we didn’t observe Sabbath, but nowadays my wife and I celebrate Sabbath with our friends in Hesed. I go to the synagogue on Jewish holidays and on the death dates of my relatives to say prayers for them. My wife and I celebrate Jewish holidays sometimes at home and sometimes at Hesed.

I used to organize parties for war veterans. I invited actors and other people of art. They didn’t charge us and I wasn’t paid for my organizational activities. We didn’t even have money to buy flowers for our guests, but they enjoyed being our guests. These were interesting parties. I am used doing things for others and I think it is very important.

We have meetings at our club for war veterans at 11am every Monday. We talk about Jewish culture, literature, read literature works and listen to music. We discuss the history of the Jewish people, traditions and holidays. We have many books and other materials prepared for the future radio programs and meetings of veterans of the Great Patriotic War.

We’ve scheduled a meeting with Joseph Burg, a Jewish writer, to celebrate his jubilee, a memorial day to honor the memory of the Jews shot in Chernovtsy on 8th July 1941, the 90th anniversary of the birth of the Jewish actress and singer Sidi Tahl, the 60th anniversary of the death of Joseph Shmidt, a wonderful Jewish tenor who perished in a concentration camp, celebration of Jewish holidays and many other events.

We find common graves of Jews shot during the Great Patriotic War to install monuments on them. There are many such places in Chernovtsy region where Jews were killed by the Germans as well as by the local population.

My wife and I have lived a beautiful life. This year we’ve celebrated our golden wedding. We love each other and are in agreement with one another. Our daughter and granddaughter need us, and so do many other people. They tell us that they need us.

Glossary

[1] Hesed: Meaning care and mercy in Hebrew, Hesed stands for the charity organization founded by Amos Avgar in the early 20th century. Supported by Claims Conference and Joint Hesed helps for Jews in need to have a decent life despite hard economic conditions and encourages development of their self-identity. Hesed provides a number of services aimed at supporting the needs of all, and particularly elderly members of the society. The major social services include: work in the center facilities (information, advertisement of the center activities, foreign ties and free lease of medical equipment); services at homes (care and help at home, food products delivery, delivery of hot meals, minor repairs); work in the community (clubs, meals together, day-time polyclinic, medical and legal consultations); service for volunteers (training programs). The Hesed centers have inspired a real revolution in the Jewish life in the FSU countries. People have seen and sensed the rebirth of the Jewish traditions of humanism. Currently over eighty Hesed centers exist in the FSU countries. Their activities cover the Jewish population of over eight hundred settlements.

[2] Moldova: Historic region between the Eastern Carpathians, the Dniester River and the Black Sea, also a contemporary state, bordering with Romania and Ukraine. Moldova was first mentioned after the end of the Mongol invasion in 14th century scripts as Eastern marquisate of the Hungarian Kingdom. For a long time, the Principality of Moldova was tributary of either Poland or Hungary until the Ottoman Empire took possession of it in 1512. The Sultans ruled Moldova indirectly by appointing the Prince of Moldova to govern the vassal principality. These were Moldovan boyars until the early 18th century and Greek (Phanariot) ones after. In 1812 Tsar Alexander I occupied the eastern part of Moldova (between the Prut and the Dniester river and the Black Sea) and attached it to its Empire under the name of Bessarabia. In 1859 the remaining part of Moldova merged with Wallachia. In 1862 the new country was called Romania, which was finally internationally recognized at the Treaty of Berlin in 1886. Bessarabia united with Romania after World War I, and was recaptured by the Soviet Union in 1940. The Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic gained independence after the break up of the Soviet Union in 1991 and is now called Moldovan Republic (Republica Moldova).

[3] Great Patriotic War: On 22nd June 1941 at 5 o'clock in the morning Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union without declaring war. This was the beginning of the so-called Great Patriotic War. The German blitzkrieg, known as Operation Barbarossa, nearly succeeded in breaking the Soviet Union in the months that followed. Caught unprepared, the Soviet forces lost whole armies and vast quantities of equipment to the German onslaught in the first weeks of the war. By November 1941 the German army had seized the Ukrainian Republic, besieged Leningrad, the Soviet Union's second largest city, and threatened Moscow itself. The war ended for the Soviet Union on 9th May 1945.

[4] Keren Kayemet Leisrael (K.K.L.): Jewish National Fund (JNF) founded in 1901 at the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basel. From its inception, the JNF was charged with the task of fundraising in Jewish communities for the purpose of purchasing land in the Land of Israel to create a homeland for the Jewish people. After 1948 the fund was used to improve and afforest the territories gained. Every Jewish family that wished to help the cause had a JNF money box, called the 'blue box.' They threw in at least one lei each day, while on Sabbath and high holidays they threw in as many lei as candles they lit for that holiday. This is how they partly used to collect the necessary funds. Now these boxes are known worldwide as a symbol of Zionism.

[5] Hitler's rise to power: In the German parliamentary elections in January 1933, the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) won one-third of the votes. On 30th January 1933 the German president swore in Adolf Hitler, the party's leader, as chancellor. On 27th February 1933 the building of the Reichstag (the parliament) in Berlin was burned down. The government laid the blame with the Bulgarian communists, and a show trial was staged. This served as the pretext for ushering in a state of emergency and holding a re-election. It was won by the NSDAP, which gained 44% of the votes, and following the cancellation of the communists' votes it commanded over half of the mandates. The new Reichstag passed an extraordinary resolution granting the government special legislative powers and waiving the constitution for 4 years. This enabled the implementation of a series of moves that laid the foundations of the totalitarian state: all parties other than the NSDAP were dissolved, key state offices were filled by party luminaries, and the political police and the apparatus of terror swiftly developed.

[6] Iron Guard: Extreme right wing political organization in Romania between 1930 and 1941, led by C. Z. Codreanu. The Iron Guard propagated nationalist, Christian-mystical and anti-Semitic views. It was banned for its terrorist activities (e.g. the murder of Romanian Prime Minister I. Gh. Duca) in 1933. In 1935 it was re-established as a party named Totul pentru Tara, 'Everything for the Fatherland', but it was banned again in 1938. It was part of the government in the first period of the Antonescu regime, but it was then banned and dissolved as a result of the unsuccessful coup d'état of January 1941. Its leaders escaped abroad to the Third Reich.

[7] Cuzist: Member of the Romanian fascist organization named after Alexandru C. Cuza, one of the most fervent fascist leaders in Romania, who was known for his ruthless chauvinism and anti-Semitism. Cuza founded the National Christian Defense League, the LANC (Liga Apararii National Crestine), in 1923. The paramilitary troops of the league, called lancierii, wore blue uniforms. The organization published a newspaper entitled Apararea Nationala. In 1935 the LANC merged with the National Agrarian Party, and turned into the National Christian Party, which had a pronounced anti-Semitic program.

[8] Annexation of Bessarabia to the Soviet Union: At the end of June 1940 the Soviet Union demanded Romania to withdraw its troops from Bessarabia and to abandon the territory. Romania withdrew its troops and administration in the same month and between 28th June and 3rd July, the Soviets occupied the region. At the same time Romania was obliged to give up Northern Transylvania to Hungary and Southern-Dobrudja to Bulgaria. These territorial losses influenced Romanian politics during World War II to a great extent.

[9] Communist youth political organization created in 1918. The task of the Komsomol was to spread the ideas of communism and involve the worker and peasant youth in building the Soviet Union. The Komsomol also aimed at giving a communist upbringing by involving the worker youth in the political struggle, supplemented by theoretical education. The Komsomol was more popular than the Communist Party because with its aim of education people could accept uninitiated young proletarians, whereas party members had to have at least a minimal political qualification.

[10] Collective farm (in Russian kolkhoz): In the Soviet Union the policy of gradual and voluntary collectivization of agriculture was adopted in 1927 to encourage food production while freeing labor and capital for industrial development. In 1929, with only 4% of farms in kolkhozes, Stalin ordered the confiscation of peasants' land, tools, and animals; the kolkhoz replaced the family farm.

[11] Order of the Combat Red Banner: Established in 1924, it was awarded for bravery and courage in the defense of the Homeland.

[12] Victory Day in Russia (9th May): National holiday to commemorate the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II and honor the Soviets who died in the war.

[13] Communal apartment: The Soviet power wanted to improve housing conditions by requisitioning 'excess' living space of wealthy families after the Revolution of 1917. Apartments were shared by several families with each family occupying one room and sharing the kitchen, toilet and bathroom with other tenants. Because of the chronic shortage of dwelling space in towns communal or shared apartments continued to exist for decades. Despite state programs for the construction of more houses and the liquidation of communal apartments, which began in the 1960s, shared apartments still exist today.

[14] KGB: The KGB or Committee for State Security was the main Soviet external security and intelligence agency, as well as the main secret police agency from 1954 to 1991.

[15] Twentieth Party Congress: At the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956 Khrushchev publicly debunked the cult of Stalin and lifted the veil of secrecy from what had happened in the USSR during Stalin's leadership.

[16] Perestroika (Russian for restructuring): Soviet economic and social policy of the late 1980s, associated with the name of Soviet politician Mikhail Gorbachev. The term designated the attempts to transform the stagnant, inefficient command economy of the Soviet Union into a decentralized, market-oriented economy. Industrial managers and local government and party officials were granted greater autonomy, and open elections were introduced in an attempt to democratize the Communist Party organization. By 1991, perestroika was declining and was soon eclipsed by the dissolution of the USSR.

[17] Gorbachev, Mikhail (b. 1931): Soviet political leader. Gorbachev joined the Communist Party in 1952 and gradually moved up in the party hierarchy. In 1970 he was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, where he remained until 1990. In 1980 he joined the politburo, and in 1985 he was appointed general secretary of the party. In 1986 he embarked on a comprehensive program of political, economic, and social liberalization under the slogans of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). The government released political prisoners, allowed increased emigration, attacked corruption, and encouraged the critical reexamination of Soviet history. The Congress of People's Deputies, founded in 1989, voted to end the Communist Party's control over the government and elected Gorbachev executive president. Gorbachev dissolved the Communist Party and granted the Baltic states independence. Following the establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States in 1991, he resigned as president. Since 1992, Gorbachev has headed international organizations.

Tibor Gohman
Uzhhorod
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya
Date of interview: October 2003

Tibor Gohman lives with his wife Valentina in a standard two-bedroom apartment in a 1970s 9-storied building in a new district of Uzhhorod.  There is typical furniture of this period in their apartment. It’s old, but well preserved. It is clean and cozy in their apartment. Visitors pay attention to many pot plants in the rooms. They are on the floor, on windowsills and on stands. This is Tibor wife's hobby. They are a loving couple. He is athletic, very tall and taciturn and his wife is short, plump and always smiling. Tibor is laconic and brief and likes to joke. He has thick curly hair with gray streaks and bright young eyes. His age did not wear him out. His favorite outfits are jeans and sweaters and these clothes become him.

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

My family background

My father’s parents lived in Mukachevo [Munkacs - until 1918, Munkacevo - from 1918 till 1939, Munkacs - from 1939 till 1945, Mukachevo - since 1945. 40 km from Uzhhorod, 660 km from Kiev], in Subcarpathia 1. I don’t know whether they were born in Mukachevo, but my grandmother and grandfather were born in Subcarpathia. My grandfather’s name was David Gohman. I don’t know my grandmother’s name. My parents and I called her ‘granny’ and her children called her ‘mama’. I don’t know my grandmother or grandfather’s dates of birth. My grandfather was a neolog 2 shochet and my grandmother was a housewife.  

Mukachevo was a Jewish town. Jewish constituted about 50% or more of its population. There were two streets where only Jews resided: Yevreyskaya [Jewish street in Russian] and Danko Streets. Jews also lived in other streets in the center of the town with neighboring Hungarian, Czech, Ukrainian and gypsy families.  There was a big synagogue and a mikveh at the beginning of Yevreyskaya Street. There was also a fish market and Jewish kosher butcher stores. There were many synagogues in Mukachevo. I don’t know the exact number. There must have been about 20 of them. There was a big central synagogue with a Hasid 3 rabbi Haim Luzer Shpira. Mukachevo was a Hasidic 4 center. Hasidim had their synagogues and cheder. There was a huge Hasidic education complex in Danko Street, a big cheder and yeshivah.  

There were few Zionist organizations in Mukachevo. There was continuous ideological fighting between Zionists and Hasidim. Hasidim believed that Messiah would come and lead Jews to Israel, the Promised Land and all they had to do was praying and waiting for him. Zionists didn’t wait for Messiah to come. They established children’s and young people’s clubs where they involved Jewish children in sport activities and gave them vocational education teaching them professions that were in constant demand in Israel and they supported relocation of Jewish young people to Israel. There was also a secular Jewish grammar school in Mukachevo. They studied contemporary Ivrit spoken in Israel while in cheder schools children studied Hebrew. There was the best football team in town in this grammar school. They only slightly touched upon religious subjects in this grammar school and rabbis were rather unhappy about it.

Almost all craftsmen in the town were Jewish. Jews also dealt in trades. There were few non-Jewish stores, but they were located on the outskirts of the town. On Sabbath all Jewish stores were closed and non-Jews also got adjusted to this. They did their weekend shopping before lunch on Friday. There were also Jewish doctors, teachers and lawyers. There was no anti-Semitism in Mukachevo during Austro-Hungarian or Czechoslovakian rule 5. 

My grandfather and grandmother had 8 children: 4 sons and 4 daughters. My father Ignatz, Itzhok was his Jewish name, was the oldest. He was born in 1898. I don’t know when my father’s brothers or sisters were born. All I can say is that babies wee born every 1.5-2 years.  After my father Aron and Solomon, whose Jewish name was Shmuel, were born. Then four daughters were born. My father sisters’ names were: Frieda, Fanni, Regi, her Jewish name was Reizl, and Eszter. The youngest was son Jozsef.

My grandmother and grandfather were religious. My grandfather didn’t have payes, but he had a small beard neatly cut. He didn’t wear all black clothes like Hasidim. My grandfather wore common dark suits, not necessarily black. He also wore a common hat, different from Hasidic hats.  In my opinion, my grandmother was too religious. She wore a wig and close fitting long black gowns. My grandmother prayed whenever she had free time. She had two books of prayers in Hebrew, one for home and one for the synagogue. I don’t know whether my grandmother knew Hebrew, or just could read without understanding the meaning of words like many women at the time. Of course, they celebrated Sabbath and all Jewish holidays at home, but I don’t know about holidays in my father’s family. We only visited them to greet on holidays. All I remember is that grandmother always treated us to the plenty of food. My grandfather went to the synagogue every day. Probably the shochet had to attend the synagogue regularly. My grandmother went to the synagogue on Sabbath and on holidays, but she prayed at home several times per day. My father’s parents followed kashrut, they were strict about it. They spoke Yiddish and sometimes Hungarian at home. When we visited my grandma and grandpa, they spoke Hungarian with me and my brothers and with my mother and father they sometimes spoke Yiddish and sometimes Hungarian. I don’t know what my grandfather thought about Hasidim.

I don’t know whether my father and his brothers studied at cheder. I don’t know at all what kind of education they got, but they must have studied in cheder. Considering their religious parents it couldn’t have been otherwise. Of course, they also finished a general education school.  I don’t know where my father continued his studies. I don’t remember any talks about my father’s childhood or youth. He was taciturn like my grandfather. My father worked as mechanic at the power plant in Mukachevo. There were big diesel units generating power for the town and my father was responsible for their maintenance. He must have had some special education to do this job.

At the time that I remember, my father’s brothers and sisters had their own families and lived separately from their parents. Daughters Frieda and Fannie and sons Aron and Iosif were single and lived with their parents. Aron was a shop assistant in a garment store. He was chronically ill since childhood. Probably due to his health condition he wasn’t married. Another son Shmuel, Solomon, owned a butcher store.  There was a small sausage shop in this store where they made kosher sausage.  There were 3 employees working in this shop. His wife was Jewish and also came from Mukachevo. I don’t remember his wife’s name. She was a housewife. They had two children. Iosif worked as a shop assistant at a household goods store. My father’s sister Frieda helped grandmother about the house. Fannie was a dressmaker receiving orders at home. Regi married an owner of a confectionary store.  I don’t remember his surname. Regi was helping her husband in the store. She was rather good at baking. Eszter married a Hungarian man. His last name was Szerenti. I don’t know what my grandmother or grandfather thought of her marrying a goy, but later as I remember, they got along well. Eszter’s daughter Anna lives in Mukachevo now. She is 80 years old.

My father and his sisters and brothers were not so religious as their parents. They observed Jewish traditions and religion to some extent, but they only did it at their parents’ insistence. They only went to the synagogue at Yom Kippur. My grandfather didn’t force them to go there, but my grandmother did. The only demand my grandma had was to celebrate Yom Kippur according to the Jewish tradition.

I know very little about my mother’s family. They lived in Mukachevo. I didn’t know my mother’s parents. They died long before I was born. Their last name was Berghida, but I don’t know my grandmother or grandfather’s first names. My mother Eszter, her brother and 2 sisters were born in Mukachevo. My mother was born in 1899, but I don’t know her brother or sisters’ dates of birth. It seems, my mother was the youngest. My mother brother’s name was Yakov, one sister was Frieda, but I don’t remember her second sister’s name. I hardly know anything about my mother’s life or her family before she got married. My mother and her sisters were very beautiful. My mother’s sister Frieda even won the first place at the beauty contest in Paris in 1912, but I don’t know any details about it. My mother loved Frieda dearly and often talked about it. My mother’s sisters got married and became housewives. I also knew stories about my mother brother Yakov’s military accomplishments. He was in the Hungarian army [in the KuK] 6 during World War I. He returned a hero from the war: there were awards all over his chest. Of course, I don’t remember his tales that he told us when we were small, but I remember that we were always eager to hear his stories about the war and listened to him ardently. Brother Yakov worked at a meat factory. My mother worked for a dressmaker before getting married. I don’t know what language my mother, her sisters and brother spoke in their parents’ home when they were children. In their adulthood they spoke Hungarian to one another. They only switched to Yiddish when they didn’t want their children to understand the subject of their discussion.

I don’t know how my parents met. After a traditional Jewish wedding in 1922, and it couldn’t have been otherwise in their time, they rented an apartment. We lived in this apartment until 1944. This was a one-storied house divided into two parts. One part had one room, a kitchen and a storeroom that occupied half of a house.

Growing up

There were three children. Miklos, born in 1924, was the oldest. His Jewish name was Azril-Mayer. I was born in 1928. My Russian name was Tiberiy and Jewish name – Yisruel. My younger brother Adalbert was born in 1934. I don’t remember his Jewish name. We were called by our Hungarian names in the family. We all had brit milah according to the Jewish tradition, but perhaps, this was done to please my father’s parents. We spoke Hungarian at home and only when our parents didn’t want us to understand the subject of their discussion they switched to Yiddish. They didn’t teach us Yiddish. Most of my childhood friends were non-Jewish. It was because there were 1-2 Jewish families in our street, but they didn’t have children of my age. My paternal grandmother, when she visited us, told my mother that she didn’t like it that she allowed us to play with goy children, but my mother had a strong opinion about it: her children should play where she could watch them from a window. Playing in another street was out of the question.

My father’s sisters or his brothers’ wives or my mother didn’t wear wigs or kerchiefs. My mother had lovely hats, but they were a tribute to fashion rather then her desire to have her head covered. My mother only wore a kerchief once a year, at Yom Kippur. She had nice chestnut hair and she made nice hairdos. My mother liked perfume and jewelry. She wore fashionable clothes.  When short skirts were in fashion she wore short skirts, especially in summer and she wore light clothes and high-heeled shoes. My father wore suits with colorful shirts, ties and hats. 

Now recalling my past I understand that our family observed many Jewish traditions, but really they didn’t accentuate their attention on them. For example, my mother always prepared for Sabbath. She baked challahs on Friday morning and cooked food for Sabbath. On Friday evening she lit candles. So we had candles lit on Sabbath and there was a challah for dinner, but it was a usual dinner: no blessing of the food and no prayers. This was the end of Sabbath. [Editor’s note: this was the end of Sabbath in the Gohman family but Sabbath ends on the evening of the next day after the Havdalah ritual.] And the following day nobody thought that they shouldn’t do any work. My father worked on Saturday and had a day off on Sunday. There was one crew working on this day, Sunday, but when there was a need, they called my father to work. My father worked as diesel generator mechanic. This power plant supplied power to the whole town. It was work for the government that was of high value. My father wouldn’t lose this job for the sake of observing all rules on Sabbath. We, boys, were happy that we didn’t have to do our homework, but that was about it.  

For Pesach my mother had special crockery that was kept in the attic. We only took it down before holiday and put away our everyday dishes. My mother bought matzah for all days of the holiday in the store. We didn’t eat bread on Pesach. Everything else was like every day.  We didn’t have seder at home. Of course, my grandma didn’t approve of it and never visited us. We sometimes visited them, but never on the first day of Pesach. We usually went on the fourth or fifth day.  

At Chanukkah my mother lit another candle in a chanukkiyah every day. At Rosh Hashanah we always had honey and apples on the table. I don’t think we did it because my parents had a need in observation of traditions. Knowing my grandmother I would rather think that my mother observed rules on the outside since if grandmother had come unexpectedly on a holiday and saw that something wasn’t done for a holidays there would have been a lot of yelling and lecturing… My grandmother’s daughters and daughters-in-law did the same. They observed rules on the outside and grandmother didn’t look into details.  

Yom Kippur was the only Jewish holiday that our family celebrated according to all rules. There was a kapores ritual before the holiday. My mother bought a white hen for herself and white roosters for my father and her sons.  The hen was to be slowly turned around the head and we had to say: ‘May you be my atonement’. I don’t know what happened to these roosters afterward. Probably we just ate them. Before Yom Kippur my mother cooked a very sufficient dinner. It was allowed to eat before the first star appeared in the sky and then a 24-hour fast began. [Editor’s note: actually it is a 25 hours fast.] We, children, didn’t fast, but our parents strictly observed the fast. I remember my grandfather visiting us at home before Yom Kippur saying strictly: ‘You must be at the synagogue tomorrow!’ My parents spent a whole day at the synagogue and returned home after the first stars appeared in the sky. Then the fast was over and we could eat together with parents.

When I went to the first form, my father sent me to cheder. I studied there two weeks and decided it was enough for me. Probably this was my first personal decision in my life. My mother insisted that I went back to cheder, but my father said that if I didn’t want to study there it was going to be a waste of time anyway.  I remember that he said to my mother: ‘He can live his life without cheder!’ Of course, my grandmother was very angry about it. She blamed my parents that they raised a goy of a boy, but then things smoothed down and I didn’t go to cheder again. My older brother Miklos studied in cheder. 

I went to a Czech school at the age of 6. My older brother Miklos also went to this school. There were few Jewish children in my class and teachers and other schoolchildren had a good attitude toward them. There was no anti-Semitism during the Czech rule and they supported Jews in every way. I was doing well at school, although I wasn’t an industrious pupil. I preferred playing with my friends outside rather than sitting at home with my textbooks. I had Jewish and non-Jewish friends. There was no segregation among us, we were just friends. I sang in our school choir and we sang on all school holidays. I finished three forms in the Czech school.

In 1938 Subcarpathia fell under the Hungarian rule [in Subcarpathia] 7. Residents of Mukachevo accepted this change calmly. Many were born and lived during Austro-Hungarian rule and were sure that it was going to be good with the Hungarian rule. Many older people who had lived under the Czech rule for over 20 years didn’t even learn Czech and spoke Hungarian. My father had fluent Czech being a state employee, but my mother only knew few words in Czech. 

During the war

I went to the 4th form in a Hungarian school. We didn’ face any anti-Semitism for about a year after annexation of Subcarpathia to Hungary. In 1939 they began to introduce anti-Jewish laws 8. There was anti-Semitism on a state level. One of the first laws issued was a ban to buy goods in Jewish stores. Storeowners were ordered to reassign their ownership to non-Jews, but they could stay and work there. Then they began to expropriate other property from Jews: factories and shops. If  Jewish owners were not quick enough to reassign their property the state expropriated it without compensation. Jews were not allowed to study in higher educational institutions and were not recruited to the army, but they served in forced labors.  

Since my father was a qualified employee he avoided service in a work battalion. Hungarian authorities preferred to have my father continue his work at the plant rather than start training a newcomer and let him work at the plant without any previous experience. My father’s brother Aron died of a disease in Mukachevo in 1939. I don’t remember his funeral, but since his parents arranged the funeral, I believe, it was in accordance with Jewish traditions. Brothers Shmuel and Iosif were recruited to forced labor in 1941. Shmuel was sent to Ukraine. I don’t know where Iosif was at first. All I know is that since 1943 he was on the territory of Yugoslavia. Shmuel fell ill with typhus at the front. Typhus was so spread at the front that there was a hospital for patients with typhus from the front opened in Mukachevo. Shmuel was taken to Mukachevo in 1943 and he soon died in hospital. Iosif perished somewhere in a forced labor in Yugoslavia in early 1944. My father sister Regi’s husband and my mother sister Frieda’s husbands  also perished in forced labor.

My brother Miklos couldn’t afford to continue his studies after finishing school. The family of five  of us could hardly manage on my father’s salary. In 1941 Hungarians introduced food cards. Jews received rationed food by these cards. Food was very expensive at markets. Miklos became an apprentice with a tailor. I finished school in 1942 and had to go to work. I became an apprentice of a joiner. I had a one-year training and in 1943 I began to work as a joiner in a shop. In 1943 Jews were ordered to have yellow stars on their clothes, on the chest and on the back. It was not allowed to be outside without stars. Any Hungarian soldier could kill a Jew even without taking them to the commandant’s office.  

In spring 1944 a ghetto was established in Mukachevo. Yevreyskatya and Danko Streets were fenced with barbed wire and they ordered Jews to move therein. It was allowed to take some food and few clothes for luggage. There were many people in the ghetto.  There was at least one family or more living in one room. Then it turned out that this ghetto was too small for all Jews of Mukachevo. Then they made another ghetto near that one. It wasn’t allowed to leave the ghetto or even to go from one ghetto to another, but it was allowed to move within one ghetto, go from one house to another. We were in the ghetto with my father’s parents, his sisters Frieda and Fannie, my mother’s brother Yakov and sister Frieda. Later I got to know that Hungarians did not take Jews who had awards of World War I to ghettos or concentration camps. But this was in Hungary and in Subcarpathia they moved all Jews to ghettos. [Editor’s note: This concession of the 1st and 2nd Jewish law was changed in 1941, when nobody was an exception.] My father’s sisters Regi and her family and Eszter were in another ghetto.

We stayed in the ghetto few weeks. Then near the gate to the ghetto they placed an order for inmates of the ghetto to pack some food and clothes for moving to another place. We were taken to Uzhhorod [40 km from Mukachevo, 680 km from Kiev] to a brick factory. Jews from Uzhhorod and the rest of Subcarpathia were taken there. Jews from a village or a town were grouped in one area. We lived in an open air. There were brick drying chambers, but it was impossible to stay inside. They were ruined and damp and there were broken bricks on the ground and there was no ventilation.  There were other facilities with 3 walls left and no roof. Families tried to find space between those partition facilities. They were no protection from the cold or drizzling rain. Perhaps, all they gave was a relative feeling of protection. There was no food given in the ghetto. We ate what we had with us, but we ran out of food promptly. Occasionally people came from Uzhhorod and threw some food behind the walls. Some came to support their friends or acquaintances, but some of them were angry about this treatment of Jews and wanted to help unknown Jews in ghetto. Just outsiders were angry about this maltreatment of Jews and wanted to support the inmates. The inmates of the ghetto were sent to work. Few crews of the inmates of the ghetto, with Hungarian gendarme supervisors made the rounds of Jewish houses sorting out clothing, furniture, utilities, pictures, etc., and  hauled these to a storage facility. Nobody from our family was taken to do this work.

We stayed about 10 days in the ghetto in Uzhhorod. There was a railroad spur near the brick factory used for shipment of bricks and supplied when the factory was in operation. In April 1944 railcars for cattle transportation arrived at this spur. We were taken to these railcars together, a group of us as we were in the ghetto: 5 of us, my father’s parents, his sisters Frieda and Fannie, my mother’s brother Yakov and sister Frieda. There was no room to lie down, people could hardly find space to sit on the floor. There was a hole made in the center for a sewer. There was no way of going to the toilet in hiding and it had to be done before the eyes of others. We were not given water or food. I don’t remember how long the trip lasted, but it seemed eternity to me. We knew that we were taken to a concentration camp: there were rumors about concentration camps in Mukachevo, but nobody knew those were extermination camps. We were sure those were forced labor camps, something like work battalions.

We arrived at Auschwitz early in the morning. There were German soldiers standing near each railcar. They had machine guns. There were also people in white robes, probably, doctors. People were sorted: old men separately, women with children, young people and middle aged ones – separately.  I was almost 16 and I was strong and big. They separated me and my brother Miklos from our parents. My parents and younger brother were taken to a group guarded by Germans with machine guns. We were in Auschwitz until night and then we were ordered to border a train and taken to Katovice, a work camp of Auschwitz. My brother was taken to another camp. I didn’t know what happened to my dear ones. I didn’t know that my parents and my younger brother Adalbert, my father’s parents, my mother’s brother Yakov and my mother’s sister, whose name I don’t remember with her husband and children and my father’s sisters Frieda and Fannie were sent to a gas chamber when our group was waiting for departure from Auschwitz.. My father’s sisters Regi and her husband and the children and Eszter and her children, who were in another ghetto, also perished in a gas chamber. Only my mother’s sister Frieda survived in the concentration camp. She was very pretty and they probably felt sorry for her and didn’t send her to a gas chamber. She worked somewhere there, but her children perished.

In Katovice we were accommodated in very big plank barracks. There were narrow two-tier plank beds. It’s hard to say how many inmates were in barracks. I think there were about 500 inmates in one. The majority of inmates were Jews, but there were also Polish, Czechs, Slovaks, Austrians and people from other countries. I talked with Hungarians and Czechs knowing both languages.  There was a senior inmate in each barrack. Management of the camp knew those headmen. German soldiers with machine guns and trained dogs guarded the camp. Since it was a work camp Germans gave us food to be able to work. We had three meals per day: in the morning we had a cup of surrogate coffee with bread, then we had lunch at work site delivered from the camp. In the evening we had some boiled cereal and a little soup. Of course, there were bed sheets or pillows, but each of us had a blanket. Every morning after breakfast we marched to work sites. Katovice like other Polish towns was ruined. Almost a whole town was in ruins. We were to remove this debris. We piled bricks and debris to be loaded on trucks hauling it out. So we were cleaning up the town, street after street. We were given spades, picks and crowbars in the camp.  After work we carried our tools back to the camp. We worked without days off and didn’t know the count of days or months. 

In January 1945 Soviet and American troops began to advance. The front line was approaching Auschwitz. We were formed in columns and marched to Mauthausen under convoy having weapons. We were not given any food or water on the way. About 5 thousand people left Katovice, but less than a thousand reached Mauthausen. Many died of hunger. The convoy was shooting those who were too weak to go. They shot them in the head and pushed corpses aside the road. There was a crew walking behind us. They buried the corpses, but later they stopped doing this. It was already cold. It was January. We were in our camp robes, and our convoy allowed us to wrap our blankets around our shoulders. We slept on the ground or sometimes they took us to abandoned stables or sheds. People happened to freeze to death at night.  

We didn’t work in Mauthausen. Occasionally guards chose few inmates to clean up the territory, but we didn’t go to work systematically. We were provided one meal per day: it was some  kind of soup with half-rotten beetroots. There was no bread. We spent almost all time lying on our plank beds. There was no heating in barracks. There were many barracks. There were English prisoners-of-war in one barrack. They were treated a little better. Once per month they were allowed to receive food parcels and they got better meals than we were. In our barracks inmates died of diseases and emaciation every day. We understood that the front line was coming nearer and that the end of war was close. There were rumors in the camp that Germans were going to exterminate all inmates before leaving the camp. We didn’t consider escape. There were guards on towers who shot inmates even when they came out of their barracks at a wrong time. There were patrol dogs running across the camp. They jumped on inmates, bringing them down and tore them to pieces. We were too weak to walk away and we understood it well. We were lying on plank beds shivering from cold. We were weak and knew that death was unavoidable; one way or another we were going to die either from hunger or the guards would kill us. It lasted until 8 May 1945. On this day US troops entered the camp. This was our liberation day.

After the war

I was exhausted and they sent me to a hospital in Hirschwang near Vienna. There was a big aerodrome and a hospital nearby. They brought me to recovery there. I stayed in hospital two months. Americans visited this hospital asking patients where they came from and where they wanted to live. We could change any country. They were trying to convince us to go to USA and promised to help with lodging, study and work. I didn’t know that Germans exterminated almost my whole family and my relatives. I was dreaming of coming home and embracing my dear ones and seeing my friends. When they were making lists I said I was a citizen of Czechoslovakia, a resident of Subcarpathia and said that I wanted to go back to Subcarpathia. The officer making this list told me that Subcarpathia did belong to Czechoslovakia any longer and that it was annexed to the USSR. I knew very little about the Soviet Union. I knew that this country overtook the heaviest burden of the war and that this country struggled against fascism – and this was all. It wasn’t much, but I was eager to go back to Subcarpathia and it couldn’t have changed much. So I stood my grounds. Few other people wanted to go to Subcarpathia. We were taken to Budapest where we were transferred to Russian officers. They gave us tickets and some food to go. We were allowed to stay in Budapest for few days. I decided to go to a public bathroom. Before going into the bathroom I left my clothes and underwear to the laundry. I washed myself and went to pick my clothing, but it wasn’t ready yet.  I was sitting there wrapped in my towel waiting for them to bring my clothes, when all of a sudden my older brother Miklos came in. Of course, he was thin and he changed, but I recognized him immediately. He recognized me, too. We started talking and were afraid to lose the sight of each other even for a minute. We went home together.

We arrived at Mukachevo in July 1945. Our house was locked and the doors were sealed since we were taken to the ghetto. Any belongings were gone. Probably, they took away things from abandoned Jewish houses in Mukachevo like they did in Uzhhorod. Only what seemed to have no value to gendarmes remained in the house. Our neighbors sympathized with us and at the beginning tried to help us as much as they could. We lived in our house. There were many Jews who returned from camps there. After the war, my mother’s sister Frieda returned to Mukachevo. She told Miklos and me about what happened to our family. Frieda settled down alone in her house. She was agonizingly ill and died in 1949. When we returned Miklos went to work as a tailor in a fashion shop.  People wanted to dress nicely. The war was over and it seemed that life was beginning anew. It was hard to buy something in shops: there was one thing about the Soviet regime that we had never known before regardless the regimes: empty shops. Therefore, having a tailor make clothes was the only opportunity. Miklos had many orders and earned well. I went to work as a joiner in a shop. We received Soviet passports and became citizens of the USSR. From Tibor I had the name of Tibor written in my passport and Miklos became Nikolay.

Many people from the USSR, particularly from Ukraine, moved to Subcarpathia. Many of them came to live here being professionals and others were Party activists who were to establish the principles of the Soviet power in Subcarpathia.  It’s hard to say, probably some of them wanted to start a new life. My brother and I began to study Russian. It’s easy to pick up a language when one is young. Besides, Russian has much in common with the Slovak language. Of course, even now I speak Russian with a slight Hungarian accent, but then this accent was much stronger. However, I understood what people wanted to say and they understood me. Those newcomers from the USSR were seemed to have come from a different world. They found it strange that in Subcarpathia even young people were religious. They found this strange and we believed that what was happening when Subcarpathia became Soviet was strange. Soviet authorities began struggle against religion 9 in Subcarpathia. They were closing all religious temples. They treated believers almost like criminals. The USSR didn’t appreciate people having relatives abroad and contacts with them 10. We found it strange, but for newcomers from the USSR it was absolutely natural. My brother and I had somewhat skeptical attitude to this world, but we looked at it with interest. We understood that our past life was over and we had to adjust to life in the USSR. 

All citizens of the USSR were subject to military service after turning 18 years of age.  A military registry office acknowledged that Miklos was unfit for military service, while I was registered for future service. In autumn 1948 they sent me a notification to make my appearance at the registry office where they announced that I was recruited to the Soviet army. All recruits were taken to Byelorussia where they were forming a military unit and from there we moved to Khabarovsk in the Far East, in 7000 km from home. In Khabarovsk I had some training and then was assigned to the Pacific Ocean Navy. It was an electric engineering battalion dealing in installation of electric equipment on aerodromes. Our battalion was sent to Uglovaya station in 30 km from Vladivostok. Although I was the only person in my battalion who was not a Komsomol 11 member they appointed me chief of a logistics platoon. I was in command! A year later I was promoted to the rank of sergeant. We lived in barracks. I was the only Jew in my battalion, but I never faced any anti-Semitism at that period. I had friends of many nationalities, but none of them gave much thought to my Jewish identity. My management also treated me well.

I corresponded with my brother, my only kinship. He wrote that a cotton wool factory was opened in Mukachevo and my brother became its director. He was seeing a Jewish girl in Mukachevo. She was also in a concentration camp. Her name was Fiera, but I don’t remember her surname. In 1953 they got married. Fiera’s parents were religious and observed Jewish traditions.  Even after World War II, during the Soviet period, they spoke Yiddish at home and celebrated Jewish holidays. Fiera’s parents arranged a traditional Jewish wedding for Miklos and Fiera. They registered their marriage in a registry office and had a chuppah at home. Shortly after the wedding the family moved to Uzhhorod. Miklos went to work as a shop assistant in a store. The service term in the Navy was 5 years at that time. I had one 10-day leave plus travel time through this whole period. A trip from Novosibirsk to Uzhhorod lasted over a week and maybe for this reason I wasn’t that eager to travel. 

I met my wife to be when I was in the army. Valentina Novikova studied in the Electric Engineering Technical School in Vladivostok. I occasionally took a leave and went to town with my fellow comrades. We went for walks or to dancing events. Once we went to dance in Valentina’s school where I met her. We spent a whole evening together talking and dancing and decided to meet again on my next leave. Valentina was born in Leningrad 1928. Her mother died at childbirth. Valentina’s father was a professional military and moved from one place to another, so he didn’t have an opportunity to raise his daughter. He left Valentina with her grandmother in Novosibirsk. She raised Valentina. Her father perished at the front. Valentina was Russian, but nationality never mattered to me.  It didn’t matter to her that I was a Jew. That we loved each other was important to us. We were both orphans and cared about our future family and children. I married Valentina in 1953, when I served in the army. We didn’t have money and we couldn’t afford a wedding party. We registered our marriage in a registry office and in the evening I received a 3-day leave that we spent together at Valentina’s home and then I returned to my military unit. 

My life in Czechoslovakia and Hungary was over actually in my childhood, when I was 15.  Then few years in concentration camp, so I would say, I grew up and my personality developed during the Soviet period.  And, whether I wanted it or not, this Soviet power developed my character and my outlooks on life, though, of course, not to the extent that it influenced those who were born and grew up under its rule.  I remember that I was traveling by train to visit my brother on 5 March 1953. The train stopped at the Baikal station. The radio announced that Stalin died and then Beriya 12 said a speech. All passengers were crying and I couldn’t hold back my tears either. Of course, I wasn’t in the state of panic like many Soviet people who didn’t understand their life without Stalin. I understood that life was going on and this was not the end of the world, but his death was also a grief for me. Uncertainty was the most worrying thing: who was to replace Stalin and what was going to happen to us. I didn’t believe in changes for better and as for the bad, there are no limits to it.   

Later, after Khrushchev 13 spoke at the 20th Congress 14, I got rid of my illusions about Stalin. Of course, I believed Khrushchev instantly. I had heard before from my fellow comrades that people had been arrested without any grounds for a word spoken incautiously by someone else’s report. When I served in the army there was a KGB 15 officer in every unit. Our chief of this special department was captain Baranov. Everybody was afraid of him. There was a car mechanic from Mukachevo in our unit. His surname was Dashko. On 5 March, when Stalin died, Dashko was fixing a car lying under it. Captain Baranov came near and asked what he was doing. Dashko replied that he had to fix a car. ‘Haven’t you heard that Stalin died?’  Dashko replied that he was sorry, of course, but what could one do, his time had come… For just this phrase he was sentenced to 25 years in camps. He was released in 1956 after the 20th Party Congress, but he had spent few years in camps, anyway. This was a man I knew in person. I did suspect that there was something wrong about Stalin’s regime.  Then another incident proved my doubts was about Beriya. At the time, when Stalin was in power, Beriya was the second man in the state, but after Stalin’s death he all of a sudden became an enemy of the people, a spy and was executed on December 23, 1953. I gradually came to understanding that a party was associated with constant lies, but this understanding didn’t evolve at once. 

In 1954 I demobilized from the army. My wife finished her college and moved to her grandmother in Novosibirsk. I arrived there after demobilization. When I arrived, all I had included kersey boots, my military shirt and overcoat. My wife and I could only rely on ourselves. There was to be no help from somebody else. I went to work as a car mechanic at an equipment yard and later I became a driver there.  I worked as a driver for the rest of my life. At first we rented a room and then I received a plot of land from my work to build a house. We made a temporary hut and continued construction of a house. 2 years later our house was ready. It was a good brick house with 4 rooms and a kitchen.  I also installed water and gas piping. We moved in with Valentina and her grandmother. Our children also grew up in this house. Our daughter Natalia was born in 1955 and son Victor - in 1956. Valentina quit.her job after our children were born. She was a housewife and took care of the children. During our life in Novosibirsk I never faced anti-Semitism, or heard about anti-Semitic attitudes in Novosibirsk. My children went to school and nobody asked them about their nationality. My wife’s grandma died in 1959.

I didn’t join Komsomol in the army, though they offered me. When I went to work at the equipment yard they insisted that I joined the Party.  This was the eastern part of the USSR that became Soviet in 1917. Generations of people who grew up during the Soviet period believed in communism and sincerely thought that the party was ‘the leading and guiding force’, as they said in newspaper articles. I also partially fell under their influence. We believed in the communism that Khrushchev promised. Communist ideas are good, only they disguised their wrong deeds in them. 

I joined the party in Novosibirsk in 1959. There were three of us joining the party: I, a young driver and chief mechanic of the equipment yard; he was 45 years old. We were invited to the Party town committee for a discussion with old communists. Each of us was invited to an office where they asked us questions. An old general asked most questions. They asked me whether I learned the statute and few simple questions.  Then they asked the young driver and chief mechanic was the last one to be interrogated. The general asked him: why have you ripened so late for joining the party? And he replied jokingly: they watered me poorly and that was why it came so late. We burst into laughter, but the old Bolsheviks didn’t like this answer at all. However, all three of us were admitted. So I became a communist. I understood that this was a reliable way for me to get a promotion. Any doors opened to members of the party.  Yes, it was necessary to work honestly and comply with plans. Communists were the first ones to be questioned when there was a delay.  And I worked honestly and well, but not because this was what the party demanded, but because I had to support my family. I knew that I had to find a well-paid job by all means. So I was promoted being a communist: I was secretary of a party organization and chairman of a shop committee. In a short period I lost my trust in the party and in communism. I wasn’t a communist in my heart. 

I didn’t quite notice the invasion of Soviet troops to Hungary [in 1956] 16; we lived in Novosibirsk then and there was hardly anything heard about it there. As for Czechoslovakian events [which was called Prague Spring] 17, I was taking part in them. I was recruited to the army again working in a militarized equipment unit.  In case of combat action we were recruited automatically. We were sent to Czechoslovakia. I was commander of the equipment unit of a platoon.  We spent there 3 months. Seeing it all with our own eyes we couldn’t believe the version of Soviet propaganda that Soviet troops invaded the country at the request of residents of Czechoslovakia since Germans were supposedly going to occupy Czechoslovakia and had their armies near the border. We were told that we were going to rescue Czechoslovakia from aggression, while actually Soviet armies invaded the country since the Czechs wanted to pull out of socialism and didn’t want to obey to the USSR demands.  Of course, the USSR couldn’t allow a single country to  ‘leave the socialist camp’, or other countries would be on the run, too.  We talked with Slovaks and understood the situation promptly. They were yelling seeing us: ‘Ivan, go home!’ Everybody understood that we hadn’t come there at their request: this was not the way to greet liberators.  We were not rescuing them, but killing… I understood this clearly from the very beginning.

Of course, we didn’t celebrate Jewish holidays at home. We celebrated Soviet holidays: 1 May, 7 November [October Revolution Day] 18, Victory Day [May 9] 19, 23rd February, the Soviet army Day 20 and New Year. For my wife and children those were the holidays they were used to. As for me, I understood that I had to get adjusted to living in this environment. Our friends were my colleagues and my wife’s school friends. There were hardly any Jews among them, but I didn’t care about it. I’ve had non-Jewish friends since childhood.

Unfortunately, I could spend very little time with my family. I had to work a lot to provide well for the family. I often went on trips and stayed away from my family for few days in a row. I worked from morning till night and only came home to eat and sleep. Valentina took care of the household. Fortunately she understood that it was not my caprice, but life’s necessity. When I had days off we tried to spend this time together. We only spoke Russian at home. Valentina didn’t know Hungarian. None of my acquaintances spoke Hungarian either. In the morning  we walked with the children and took them to the cinema. Valentina made more plentiful dinners on such days and we ate and talked with our children. In the evening, when the children went to bed, Valentina and I went to the theater or to visit our friends. Unfortunately, those were rare occasions.

I corresponded with my brother. He and his wife had two children: daughter Ludmila, born in 1957, and son Yevgeniy, born in 1965. When Yevgeniy was born, we went to visit my brother. Miklos and his wife began to tell me that there were only two of us left of a big family and that we were living too far from one another and hardly had any opportunity to see each other. They suggested that we moved to Uzhhorod. One month later, in September 1965, my wife and I sold our house in Novosibirsk and the four of us moved to Uzhhorod. We bought a house near my brother’s place in Uzhhorod. Our children went to school and I went to work as a driver in an equipment yard. My wife went to work as an assembly worker at a tool manufacturing plant. Valentina was having a hard time in Uzhhorod. She was used to living in a big city: there were 1.5 million resident in Novosibirsk at that time, and Uzhhorod seemed like a big village after Novosibirsk. Valentina cried at nights and wanted to go back there. Then she made friends and work and things became easier. Then she was assigned to the position of military electronic equipment testing specialist where she worked until retirement.

After moving to Uzhhorod my family took up skiing.  Uzhhorod is surrounded with picturesque mountains and there are many slopes fro skiing. We liked going hiking in the mountains when I was free on weekends.  In winter we skied and in spring and summer we just walked on the picturesque outskirts. We also liked to spend vacation in a nice spot in Subcarpathia.

By the way, after we moved to Uzhhorod I faced anti-Semitism for the first time in my life. My daughter who was in the 5th grade at school was called zhydovka [kike]. She asked us what this word meant. This was the first time she heard this word and we had to explain about Jews. However, there were no more incidents. After we moved to Uzhhorod I began thinking and listening to what other people were saying about the soviet power or injustice taking place since Subcarpathia became Soviet. In Subcarpathia people were not so much under the influence of the Soviet power and they still thought independently. And I began to get smarter and think about thee USSR more critically.

Our life in Uzhhorod was not much different from how we lived in Novosibirsk. We made new friends at work and besides, I met my old friends who moved to Uzhhorod from Mukachevo.  I met with them often. Such meetings brought back my childhood memories. I spoke Hungarian, the language of my childhood and youth with them. My brother was near me and this was the most important thing. We visited each other every week.

In the 1970s Jews began to move to Israel. Almost all Jews living Subcarpathia before it was annexed to the USSR left the country. My few friends who had returned from concentration camps and forced labors left, too.  I was sympathetic about their decision. I didn’t conifer departure.  My wife cannot bear the heat and she wouldn’t be able to bear the climate in Israel. My brother’s decision to move to Israel was like a blow to me.  I had moved to Uzhhorod to be near him and then he was leaving me. At that time people were leaving for good and contact with them terminated instantly or later. It was impossible to think that one day it would be possible to travel abroad or invite relatives or friends to the USSR that was at that time deadly separated from the rest of the world with an iron curtain 21. My brother and his family left in 1971. They lived in Tel-Aviv, Israel, few years. Then my niece Ludmila got married and moved to Toronto, Canada with her husband. Miklos and his wife followed them to Canada to be near their daughter. My brother and I corresponded. It was dangerous for me, but I decided that since I didn’t hold any official posts they would hardly fire me. If they did, I would find another job: good driver were in demand. Many party members were having problems with district and town Party committees for corresponding with their relatives abroad. I knew that it was true, but they didn’t touch me for some reason.

My children were raised as Soviet children. They were pioneers and Komsomol members. They finished 10 forms of a Russian secondary school. My daughter went to study at a hairdresser’s school. After finishing it she went to work as a hairdresser. In 1974 she got married. My wife arranged a dinner for the newly weds’ friends. We had no relatives left. Natalia’s husband Dmitriy Galushko is Ukrainian. Dmitriy was a nice and reliable man and I knew that my daughter was going to be happy with him. He was a professional military and returned from Afghanistan war 22. After the wedding Dmitriy got a new assignment to Germany and Natalia followed him there. They lived in Germany for 5 years.  Shortly after Natalia and her husband returned to Uzhhorod our house was pulled down to build a new multi-storied building. My daughter received a 3-bedroom apartment and my wife and I received a 2-bedroom apartment. Natalia and Dmitriy’s son Oleg was born in 1980 and daughter Tatiana was born in 1985. Oleg studies in Kiev College of International Relationships and works in Ukrainian Security Service.   He is married. His wife is a student and she is Ukrainian. Natalia’s daughter Tatiana is finishing school this year. 

Son Victor entered the Faculty of Automobile and Tractor Building after finishing school. He had all excellent marks at the university. Upon graduation he got an assignment [mandatory job assiggnment] 23 to my equipment yard.  He got a position of dispatcher. He was smart and had higher education, but he wasn’t getting promotions. He worked as a dispatcher through long years. The others were promoted, but he stayed where he was.  I advised him to join the party referring to my experience. Victor said he didn’t want to join the party. Victor was married a Jewish girl Ludmilla. Her parents had moved to Uzhhorod from the USSR. Ludmila studied with Victor at the university and they met there. They got married when they were last-year students and had an ordinary secular wedding. In 1980 their daughter Yelena was born. After their daughter was born Victor’s wife Ludmila became a housewife. Victor had to support the family. He submitted his application to the party. Almost immediately after my son joined the party his career began. He was promoted to senior dispatcher, then chief of maintenance department and soon he was deputy director of the equipment yard. His earnings were growing, accordingly. Yelena decided to move to Israel after finishing school. She has served in the army and is going to enter a university. My granddaughter is happy with her life. She loves Israel and is going to live her life there. Victor’s son Edward was born in 1997. He started going to school.

I had a good attitude toward perestroika 24 that General Secretary of the Party Mikhail Gorbachev 25 initiated. I liked it when he withdrew the article stating that the party was the leading and guiding force from the Constitution. We got more freedom in life. Gorbachev wanted to turn the USSR to a better and free life. I understand that this bothered the old leaders who were feeling the ground slipping away from under their feet. They interfered and tried to stir up people’s resentment of perestroika, but I supported his policy. 

The ‘iron curtain’ hiding the USSR from the rest of the world for over 70 years finally collapsed.  Soviet people got an opportunity to travel abroad on tours or visits. In 1990 my son Victor and I went to visit my brother Miklos in Canada. He was very ill then. We realized many things in Canada. We saw that workers had a good life without thinking about politics. They just had to work well to have a good life. In the USSR party leaders, deputies and others were called ‘servants of people’. It was a typical newspaper idiom. What kind of a country it is where ‘servants’ live much better than their masters and enjoy privileges that they establish for themselves… When we returned to Uzhhorod, my son and I gave our party membership cards to secretary of the party organization and said that we didn’t want to continue our membership in the party and that we would not come to the party meeting to explain our position. So we terminated our membership in the party, and nothing happened. This took place before break up of the USSR [editor’s note: Yeltsin in 1991 signed a deal with Russia's neighbors that formalized the break up of the Soviet Union. The USSR was replaced by the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)].

I felt negative about the break up of the soviet Union at first, but then a hope emerged that if Ukraine had its independence and would make a smaller state than the USSR life might improve.  Ukraine is rich in deposits and fruitful soil. One only needs to manage it in a smart way.  However, it happened to be vice versa.  We became poor, they’ve robbed us. Anyway, this has to do with economy. Independent Ukraine gave a rebirth to Jewish life. People can openly go to the synagogue.  During the Soviet period they could only go there in secret: God forbid if somebody saw it and reported.  Members of the party could be expelled and fired from work and there might have been such an entry about the reason of resignation in the book of employment records that there was hardly any hope left to get another employment. In the independent Ukraine this has changed. There are Jewish newspapers and magazines, Jewish TV programs and Jewish performances in theaters. 

I’ve come to religion unexpectedly. I grew up in a fairly religious family. I wasn’t taught Jewish traditions or holidays. When I returned from concentration camps I became an atheist like the majority of population in the USSR. And, frankly speaking, I didn’t feel any need in religion. My brother Miklos and his family were religious. They observed Jewish traditions, celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays and went to the synagogue.  Miklos died few months after Victor and I visited him. His family buried him in the Jewish cemetery according to Jewish traditions. Miklos’s wife Fiera notified me about the funeral and asked me to recite the Kaddish for my brother, but I didn’t know anything about it. I told my friend about it. We were friends back in Mukachevo and he knew Miklos well. I knew that he attended a synagogue. He offered me to go to the synagogue with him.  I went with him for the first time and since then I’ve attended the synagogue regularly. I am a pensioner and have time to socialize with people – why not? When I worked I didn’t have free time. I was on trips days and nights. So I had no time for going out and I didn’t fee like it.  Now it has become a need for me. In the evening I think: tomorrow I will go to the synagogue. In 1990 I became a Jewish religious community in Uzhhorod.  I was elected deputy chairman of the community few years. It’s hard for me to go to the synagogue in the evening. I have poor sight. We get together 4 times a week. Every Friday we celebrate Sabbath at the synagogue. We get together in the evening, light candles and somebody recites Kiddush, blessing over wine then recite a blessing over the challah bread. I have a busy day on Friday.  Everything needs to be ready: coffee on the tables after a prayer, sweets, challah bread, 50 grams of vodka each. And on Saturday there have to be treatments after a prayer. We always celebrate Jewish holidays according to the rules and traditions. I do not celebrate holidays at home, we have better arrangements in the community. My wife goes to such events. 

In 1999 Hesed, Jewish charity fund, was established in Uzhhorod.  I take part in its activities. It is a very good and much needed organization. It provides assistance to the needy. Now many people envy Jews, especially old people. It’s hard to imagine how older people could survive, if it were not for Hesed. They provide food products and deliver meals to the elderly, provide medications and medical assistance. They also take care of the little ones. It’s no secret to all how much money a family needs to spend to take care of a baby. Hesed helps people of all ages, children and old people, to learn about Jewish religion, traditions, history and study the languages. There are dancing, choir and theatrical clubs, there is a computer school and everybody can find what's interesting for him.  There are also pastime clubs for older people. The most terrible thing about old age is loneliness and lack of communication.  They can watch a movie, listen to a lecture or talk to their acquaintances having a cup of tea or coffee and find new friends in Hesed. I work in the social commission of Hesed. Hesed has made a strong presence in our family. My son-in-law Dmitriy Galushko also works in Hesed. He retired at 42. In 1999 he became an employee of the Hesed. He takes care of lonely old people. My life is full thanks to Hesed and community. I have no time for feeling old and I know that I am doing important and necessary work.

Glossary:

LEONID KOTLIAR
Ukraine
Kiev
Interviewer: Roman Lenhovskiy
Date of interview: November 2003

Leonid Kotliar lives with his wife Ludmila Zhutnik in a two-bedroom apartment of a modern many-storied house in a new district on the outskirts of Kiev. The apartment is modestly furnished, but one can tell that they are doing well.  Leonid is a vivid, nice and very friendly man of average height with thick gray hair. He has keen gray eyes and an attractive smile. There are many books in the room: world classics and contemporary writers, Jewish writers, of his favorite are Sholem Aleichem1 and Erenburg2, and books that he needs in his professional activities: literature textbooks, manuals, dictionaries and encyclopedias. Leonid Isaacovich deals in translations and writes memoirs. There are photographs of his relatives behind the glass on bookshelves. There are many pot plants on windowsills and on a number of stands. Ludmila has been a pensioner for many years and now she can dedicate herself to her favorite hobby growing plants.

Leonid brings family albums with photographs of his dear ones and we go back in time. He gladly tells me about the life of his numerous family members. 

My family background

Growing up

The famine

Before the war

During the war

Capture by the Germans

After the war

Recent years

Glossary

My family background

My paternal grandfather Moisey Kotliar was born in Tetiyev town of Kiev province in 80 km from Kiev in the late 1860s. My grandmother, whose name I don’t know, also came from this area. In the early 1890s my grandmother and grandfather got married. They were not poor: my grandfather worked at the mill and was a co-owner of it and my grandmother was a housewife. They had 6 children: their older daughter Bluma was born in the early 1890s, and Leibl was a couple of years her junior. My father Isaac Kotliar was born on 19 December 1897, Manya was born in 1903, Yeva in 1905, and Idel was born in 1912. In those years there were fewer Jews than Ukrainians in Tetiyev and there was also Polish and Russian population in the town. They got along well. Tetiyev was famous for its sugar factories. Trade and crafts were major business activities. 

My grandmother and grandfather were very religious: they went to the synagogue, celebrated Sabbath, ate kosher food and celebrated all Jewish holidays. My father’s older brother Leibl finished cheder. My father also attended cheder where he studied Yiddish, arithmetic and Russian. However, he didn’t finish it since he had to go to work.  In 1912 my grandmother died and grandfather married a Jewish woman shortly afterward.  She had a daughter named Fania, born in 1912, and in 1914 their son Samson was born. The stepmother did her best to make her husband’s children leave their home as soon as possible so that her children could inherit more possessions. Bluma and Leibl moved to America from their stepmother in 1912. They lived in New York. Leibl had his own car. He delivered laundry from laundromat. We received letters from them until the middle 1920s and then correspondence became dangerous3 for our family and we terminated it for good. This is all we know about them.  

By the age of 14 my father learned upholstery and saddle making business and ran away from his stepmother to Kiev. There he became a seat maker’s apprentice in a carriage manufacture shop.  When World War I4 began he was mobilized to work at the big military plant ‘Arsenal’ from where they didn’t recruit workers to the army. My father made horse collars and harness for the needs of the army.

In 1919 a big Jewish pogrom5 happened in Tetiyev. Grandfather Moisey and my father’s stepmother perished. My father’s sisters 16-year-old Manya and 14-year-old and their 7-year-old brother Idel escaped to Kiev. Younger children 6-year-old Fania and 4-year-old Samson were hiding in the attic. They were lucky to find a bag with lump sugar there. They ate sugar and drank their own urine and came down when the pogrom was over.  Somehow they were sent to Kiev where people helped them to find their brothers and sisters.

Furnished rooms were on lease in a garret in the center of Kiev where sailors, prostitutes and likewise public resided before the October revolution.6 After the revolution 28 rooms in the garret became vacant and were spontaneously accommodated by Jews escaping to Kiev from pogroms.  My father and his sisters Manya, Yeva and Fania moved into this garret and their younger brothers Idel and Samson were sent to a children’s home.  Manya and Yeva sold coal in Podol7 and later they bought a knitting machine. They knitted stockings and socks and sold them at the Jewish market near their home. I have dim memories about Yeva. She died in 1933. Manya married Mikhail Zhyvotovskiy, a tradesman, in the early 1920s. They had a son named Yefim.  My father’s younger Fania married Grigoriy Tverskoy, also a Jew, in the 1930s. They had three children: Mikhail, Leonid and a daughter whose name I don’t remember. 

My father met my mother Rachil Risman living in the garret. She and her sister Toibl escaped to Kiev from a pogrom in Makarov town in 50 km from Kiev shortly after the revolution of 1917. My parents got married in 1921. Those were trying times and they didn’t have a wedding party.

My maternal grandfather and grandmother were born in Makarov town of Kiev province in the 1870s. Grandfather Leizer Risman was a tailor and my grandmother Tsyvia Risman was a housewife.  My mother said that grandmother Tsyvia was a beautiful woman with full forms, made wonderful sausage and was a very good housewife. They had four children: the oldest Toibl was born in 1888, then came Moisey, born in 1893, Ruvim was a couple of years younger and my mother Rachil was the youngest. She was born in 1900. Their family strictly observed Jewish traditions, as was customary at this period of time. Ukrainian constituted a major part of the population of Makarov, one third of the population was Jewish and the rest of residents were Polish, Russian and Byelorussian.  Jews dealt in trades and crafts. They owned taverns and inns.  There were a few synagogues, a Jewish hospital, cheder and a Jewish grammar school in the town.  My mother’s brothers finished cheder and my mother studied in the Jewish grammar school. When my mother was finishing grammar school she had a fiancé who loved her very much. I don’t know why they separated. 

World War I began and Moisey was recruited to the Red Army. A few years later Ruvim went to the army.  My mother loved her brothers dearly. She told me that they were very kind and that they were at the front in the Carpathians. They wrote letters from the front. Moisey perished during WWI. Ruvim was wounded in 1918 and sent to a hospital in Kiev. On his way there he fell ill with typhus. Grandmother Tsyvia went to see him and contracted typhus from him. She died in Kiev in 1918. Soon Ruvim died, too.  Grandfather Leizer couldn’t cope with it and died in Kiev in autumn 1919 where he had escaped from pogroms.

Growing up

I was born in Kiev on 28 January 1922. I was named after my grandfather Leizer, but my father registered me by the Russian name8 of Lusia. He liked the way it sounded: my father’s acquaintances in Kiev had a grandson named Lusik. 

We lived in the garret around the perimeter of the house on the fourth floor. My mother, my father, my mother’s older sister Tania (Toibl by her birth certificate) and I were living in a small room. My parents and Tania spoke Yiddish at home, but at times they switched to Russian.  They spoke Yiddish with an accent of provincial Jews. My mother was quick-tempered, but it didn’t mean that she wasn’t kind and nice.

On 20 July 1924 my younger brother Roman was born into this world. He was named after my mother’s brother Ruvim, but he was given a Russian name that sounded alike to not emphasize on his Jewish origin. My parents didn’t observe Jewish traditions: it was a period of struggle against religion9, and authorities tried to develop atheism in us. However, my father told us how they celebrated Pesach, Rosh Hashanah, Chanukkah and Purim in Tetiyev. There were mainly Jews living in our garret, but I don’t remember anybody openly celebrating Jewish holidays. There were 4-5 tenants in each of 28 rooms. There was a long corridor where many children were running to and fro. I remember older children singing rhymes:

‘Away, away with monks, rabbis and priests,

We shall climb heavens and chase away all gods’.

There were two water taps in the garret. Tenants cooked on primus stoves10 in the corridor and there was a toilet in the yard. When I was 12 there was a toilet installed in one end of the corridor and a year later there was another toilet installed. There was an electric bulb in each room and there was a power consumption meter. All tenants paid their fees based on their bulb’s capacity.   The corridor was lighted through glass door windows above the doors and there was some light produced by stoves.  Tenants of the garret hated electric irons, boilers and radios that appeared in the late 1930s since it was impossible to control the power consumption.  

My father joined the Party in 1926. He wasn’t interested in any Party activities, but they said at his Arsenal plant: ‘You are a worker and you must be a member of the Party.’ –My father was also obliged to subscribe to Party editions and study works of ‘classics’ [Editor’s note: by classics here Lenin, Marx and Engels are implied]. Therefore, he subscribed to the Lenin’s library11, an edition of works of the leader of the world proletariat in blue binding, and to the popular daily newspaper ‘Pravda’ [the main newspaper of the Communist party] that had a million’s circulation. My father got up very early. His working day at the plant began at 7 am. He liked staying in bed later on weekends and I liked to climb under his blanket. He used to read Lenin’s articles in bed and I was learning to read by book titles. However, he never finished one Lenin book. He never had enough patience. 

My mother’s sister Tania didn’t have a profession. She worked in a diner and was a housewife.  My mother got cancer and had one breast amputated. Then doctors discovered stomach cancer. She died in 1929. My mother was buried in the Lukianovskoye Jewish cemetery12. As far as I remember, there were no rituals observed. I remember a rabbi reciting a prayer in Hebrew in the cemetery. Aunt Tania replaced my mother to my brother and me. She was very kind to us and a few years later my father married her.

My maternal grandmother’s brother Ieshuah lived nearby. He was a tailor. Once, when my mother was no longer with us, he invited my father, Tania, Roman and me to a seder on Pesach. Ieshuah was religious. He had his tallit and tefillin on, and opened a prayer book to read a prayer. Then he posed four traditional questions in Yiddish: what did the pharaoh do, how did Jews exude from Egyptian slavery? I found it interesting, but I don’t remember any answers. We drank red wine from beautiful crystal glasses used only on Pesach. There was delicious rich chicken broth with matzah. Then we got an invitation to Ieshuah son’s wedding. The bride and bridegroom were standing under a chuppah and a rabbi recited a prayer in Hebrew. Then the newly weds broke their wine glasses ‘for happiness’ and their guests danced the Jewish freilakh.  It was all very interesting, but I didn’t understand the soul of it since we didn’t observe any traditions at home. My friend Aron Babichenko’s father was also religious. He prayed with his tallit on and his tefillin wound around his hairy hands. Aron’s grandmother lit candles on Friday evening and prayed and he laughed saying: ‘Grandmother, there is no God, don’t you understand?’  

I went to school in 1930. Children went to school at the age of 8 then. Minister of education Skripnik thought that children had to study in their national schools. I didn’t want to go to a Jewish school since Jews were always teased and at home there were talks about pogroms.  I faced routinely anti-Semitism: our janitor’s daughter Lida used to shout: ‘Zhydovochka [kike] Rukhlia lost her tuhlia (‘shoe’ in dialect)… There was a Ukrainian boy named Vovka Osichnoy living in our house, his father came from Western Ukraine. He was circumcised due to his health condition and children teased him ‘zhyd’ [kike].  I wanted to go to a Russian school since we spoke Russian in the yard and in the street.  My father decided that I had to choose myself. He went through pogroms and anti-Semitism and wanted Roman and me to assimilate. I had to take tests in a Jewish school. A teacher asked me questions in Yiddish and I pretended I didn’t understand her. Then I out my fingers on the edge of the desk and she yelled in Yiddish: ‘Take your hands off the desk!’ I flinched, but didn’t move my fingers. The teacher knew that my parents were Jews, but since I didn’t understand Yiddish she sent me to a Ukrainian school.

They registered national origin at school and my classmates knew I was a Jew, but nobody disturbed me. We were pioneers and were raised to be internationalists. In the third grade our choir sang a Ukrainian and Jewish songs in an Olympiad.  When in 1936 a war in Spain [editor’s note: Spain between 1936-1939 was the staging ground for Hitler's Blitzkrieg giving General Franco victory over the Republican government. The Spanish Civil War was not only a battle against fascism, but a social revolution. It involved all of Europe and the political forces of the left and the right, in the struggle to defend socialism and democracy from the forces of reaction.] began, we learned a Spanish song. We had a wonderful teacher of the Ukrainian language. Her name was Ustia Leontieva. She liked me very much. My Ukrainian teacher Ivan Lagodynskiy taught me to understand literature correctly.  

In 1931 my father was appointed chief of the town trade department. He had an office with a telephone in Kreshchatik  [Kreshchatik is the main street of Kiev]. It was an honorable position, but my father lacked education and was sent to a training course for district suppliers. Tania was helping him to solve mathematic problems since she had finished a grammar school. In 1932 after finishing his training my father was sent to Kozelets, a small town in 60 km from Kiev where he was chairman of the district trade department, though he was far from any commercial businesses. His main duty was to fulfill directions of the district party committee. My father rented a little room from a sewing machine repairman whose surname was Ruthstein; he was a Jew. My father rarely traveled to Kiev. The town authorities insisted that my father moved his family to Kozelets, but they didn’t provide any dwelling to him. Tania didn’t want to leave the apartment in Kiev. She took my brother and me to Kozelets in spring and we studied there until October holidays. We were cooped in a 10-square-meter room through summer and only in late autumn Tania took us back home.  

The famine

During the period of famine in 193313 there was a special closed food store for Party officials opened, but my father had no permission to buy food in it.  They probably thought that chief of district supplies could have everything he needed. Our family never had one gram of anything from this store. I was only allowed to come there and get some milk, if there was any left. I came there with my bottle and stood in the end of the line. I felt so uncomfortable never knowing whether they would give me any or not. My father supervised a buttery and they accused him of stealing butter. I felt so hurt since we never even saw butter at the time.  

In Kiev in winter 1933 there were dead villagers lying on the snow, those who came to exchange their gold or silver in a Torgsin.14 Some of them were falling near the Torgsin. Our neighbors who went to work early in the morning told us about it since by the time we were going to school the corps had been removed. There were rumors that people were selling chops made from human meat. I was always hungry: we only ate some brown bread and drank tea with no sugar. We were also given a bun per day at school. My father occasionally sent us money from Kozelets, but it was not enough. Tania wound threads from skein to bobbins. She was paid little money for it and bought a glass of corn cereal at the market. She divided the corn into two portions and boiled it for Roman and me. There was no cereal left for her. In winter, when we starved, Tania packed few silver cups and spoons that she got from her mother and went to the Torgsin store. She returned early in the morning ringing 3 kg sugar, same quantity of white flour and 6 loaves of stale corn and wheat bread. This was all she received for a heap of silver!  My father’s sister Yeva died of tuberculosis at that time. 

In spring 1934 we went to Kozelets again. I saw a woman with a child, swollen from hunger begging for food... My father said the situation in villages was bad, but villagers from the nearest village of Beleyki dressed up and walked to a church past our house, so I don’t think the situation in Kozelets district was so desperate. In summer 1934, when potatoes and millet got ripe, our neighbors and we cooked the first kander and this was the first time I ate to my heart’s content. We kept a pig in Kozelets. We slaughtered it by the end of 1934 and Tania made thin sausage. I didn’t know that religious Jews were not allowed to eat pork and my parents didn’t observe rules at the time.

I remember that it was then that comrade Stalin said: ‘We’ve got a better life, comrades, a merrier life!’

Before the war

There were many Jews in Kozelets. There was a synagogue, but we didn’t attend it. I believe it was closed. My friend Shurik Yaroshenko’s father was a janitor in the church. Once Shurik and I went to the temple. I liked the service very much, although I was an atheist like my friend.  

On 27 December 1934 my sister was born. She was named Cecilia after my grandmother Tsyvia. 

In September 1935 there was a Party ‘purge’. Somebody reported on my father that in 1919-20 He shipped sugar in railcars from Tetiyev sugar factories to sell it.  He was accused of concealing it from the Party. But he was working at the Arsenal plant then! Beautiful churches in Kozelets were given to storage facilities and clubs. So this ‘purge’ was in one of these ‘clubs’ that used to be a church. I was very worried. There were many people in the building and I heard the process. There was a district party committee sitting at the table and the first secretary chaired the meeting. My father was telling his biography. I was sure that my father would be all right and go through this ‘purge’ being an honest communist, but they didn’t believe him, expelled him from the Party and fired from work.

Since we had our residential permit to live in Kiev we returned to our room. My father had many friends and week after our arrival he was already making slippers in a shop. Then he went to work as saddle maker in a shop. Then he had an appendicitis surgery and he hardly survived. It became difficult for him to do his job and he went to the district party committee to talk about it. They sent him to work as a house manager.

At about 14 I wanted to change my name Lusik, but it wasn’t allowed at that time. When it was time for me to obtain my passport at the age of 16 I submitted a report that I had lost my birth certificate and signed as Leonid Kotliar. They said in the militia office: ‘We haven’t got your document in our archives’ and sent me for medical investigation. A doctor ordered me to take off and I told them the day of birth 28 January. They issued my new birth certificate where they wrote Tania as my mother since she was my father’s wife.  

My father’s brother Idel riveted tanks at the ‘Bolshevik’ plant. He served in the army and when he returned home he joined the Party. They wanted to involve him in working for NKVD15, but he managed to escape. My father’s brother Samson was not a Party member. He finished a textile College in Kharkov and some educated people explained to him here that Stalin was a bandit. Samson told my father openly in 193716: ‘What is Stalin doing? How many innocent people are in camps?! And all of them are enemies of the people?’17. But my father stood his ground: ‘Yes, there are mistakes, but Stalin must be there, the power must be strong’. Some people reported on their relatives for such talks. Samson told my father: ‘To hell with them for expelling you from the Party!’ But my father wanted to resume his membership. He wrote to the Central Party Committee. In 1938 he resumed his membership and obtained his Party membership card. When it happened I could finally submit my documents for joining Komsomol.18 I couldn’t do it before since they wouldn’t have admitted me as a son of an ‘enemy of the people’. I joined Komsomol and was elected a member of the Komsomol Committee.

At the age of 17 I already knew that ‘Stalin was a bandit’, but I believed that we had to build socialism. My classmates Yura Belskiy and Igor Naumyuk had ‘opened my eyes’ on Stalin even earlier. Yura and Igor called our NKVD ‘Gestapo’ and were not afraid of being reported on... I became Yura’s friend in the 4th grade. He was grandson of Suboch, our Latin lecturer in Kiev University, who taught Latin in Kiev grammar school #1 before the revolution. Yura was a cultured boy and had a rich language. His father was executed as a white guard19 officer before Yura was born. Yura’s mother worked as a typist. Their situation was hard after they lost their breadwinner. When Yura wanted to enter a military special school and join Komsomol there were some obstacles, but he was finally admitted. Before the great Patriotic War20 artillery and pilot military schools were opened. 9-10-grade students could go to study there. Some of my friends went there, but I couldn’t, having lung problems.  

Some of my schoolmates’ parents were arrested in 1937. There was a slogan of the time: ‘A son is not responsible for his father’. Only sons had to repudiate from their father’s at Komsomol meetings, though this didn’t always work either. Minister of education Skrypnik was also imprisoned in 1937. In 1939 our teacher of history Alexandr Vakulenko, Ukrainian, was imprisoned. He returned half year later. And we believed that NKVD was releasing the innocent.

In the 9th grade I got fond of Feuchtwanger21, they published his: ‘Success, ‘Jew Zeus’, ‘Ugly countess’, ‘Jewish war’. Of Russian classics I enjoyed reading Lermontov22, Pushkin23. It was my dream to become an actor and producer and I performed on all parties: I recited Yesenin24, Mayakovskiy25. I was head of a drama club at school and we won the first place at the town Olympiad in the Palace of Pioneers.  We also staged performances in our corridor in the garret. I was scenery and costume designer and an actor. My brother Roman was a wonderful actor. He acted in the school theater. All girls in his class liked him. He was not tall and very charming. 

There was a children’s tuberculosis recreation center in the woods in Budayevka.  I was predisposed to tuberculosis: my father had lug problems and his sister Yeva died of tuberculosis. Chief doctor and director of this recreation center Pyotr Mitselmakher was a Jew. He was an amazing person: everybody believed he was a hypnotist: he looked and people calmed down.  He knew all children. He was loved, respected and feared a little. I met my future wife Ghita Kaplunovich in the recreation center. She was a Jew. We were both 17 and became friends. She studied in a music school in Kiev and was a wonderful pianist already. I had visited her before the war and met her parents. Ghita introduced me to her fiancé Naum, a student of Light Industry College. He often went home in Gaisin and then Ghita and I went for walks.  We had warm friendly relationships.

On 17 May 1940 I finished the 10th grade. I had health problems and director of school released me from graduation exams. I had all excellent marks in my school certificate, but for mathematics. Director of school said: ‘On 1 September you will start work here as senior pioneer tutor and will work until it’s time for you to go to the army’. In spring 1939 a new law on military service was issued: young men of 18 years of age and school graduates were to be recruited to the army. I wanted to enter the theatrical College, but I understood that I was too young to study in the Producers’ faculty and they wouldn’t admit me to the Actors’ faculty due to my being short. I worked at the tuberculosis recreation center as a tutor through that summer. On 1 September I began to work as a pioneer tutor in my school. 

The attitude toward Jews changed before the Great Patriotic War. Our Jewish neighbor Aron Ioselevich, communist, deputy of the town council, said shortly before the war that he was persecuted, that Jews were losing their high positions and that there was a common belief that there were too many Jews.  The ‘Pravda’ cited Goebbels’ speech and quoted his words about Jews in a sympathetic manner. However, there were no comments and it was unclear whether they agreed with Goebbels or not.  

I went to the army on 8 December 1940. Before departure I went to say good bye to Ghita. We boarded freight train railcars with plank beds and hay inside.  This big train arrived in Riga in the Baltics26 that became Soviet. I served in Panevezhis (800 km from Kiev) in a training battery in an artillery regiment.  We received Red Army identity cards where it was said that I was a Jew. There was also a Karaim in our battery. His name was Mishka Sultanskiy. The rest of us were Ukrainian, Russian and Uzbek.  There were over 100 military in our battery.  There were 4 combat platoons in the battery. In the morning we had drilling in the frost and then our political officer or commander of the platoon conducted political classes 3 times a week. We had secondary or higher education and in a year we were to become junior artillery lieutenants. We were instructed: we shall learn the lessons of the Finnish War27, and as soon as the enemy attacks us we shall fire back and move to their territory. The war was inescapable. We expected it every minute and when we were raised at alarm at night we couldn’t help thinking: ‘Is it a training alarm or a war?’  I was senior telephone operator. I followed the azimuth and identified the direction for cable installation.  Once somebody stole my wallet with my Komsomol membership card in it in the bathroom.  It was a serious matter and I reported it to my commander. Shortly afterward in March 1941 during another night-time alarm I fell under the ice, fell ill with pneumonia and was sent to Šauliai (today Lithuania) military hospital. They diagnosed tuberculosis. After the hospital I was released from military service. They wrote in my certificate that I was fit only for non-effective service at wartime. I demobilized and returned home. So I automatically lost my membership in Komsomol. 

I returned to Kiev on 18 May and on 20 May I started working as a tutor at the children’s tuberculosis recreation center in Budayevka. My health condition improved there: I was breathing fresh air in a pine-tree forest and we had sufficient food. I was there when the Great Patriotic War began. I was stunned when Stalin said: ‘Treacherous attack…’ Did he trust Hitler? Molotov28 wrote before the war that there were over 100 divisions pulled to the Polish border. We all knew that the war was inevitable.

During the war

On the first day of the war, on 22 June I came to the military registry office, but they said: ‘You are in category 2 reserves and we will call you’. Our army was retreating, but we believed that it was just a maneuver: that we shall ensnare Hitler, encircle him and then give them a sharp blow.  However, our morale supervisor said to me: ‘It’s a great tragedy. All planes are destroyed on land. Our troops are retreating. It’s not a trap for Hitler, it’s serious'. On 1 July the recreation center was closed and I returned to Kiev.  

A few days before the war began my brother Roman finished the 9th grade. He was to turn 17. In the first days of July all boys from Kiev, born before 1925, were sent to Donetsk region, 500 km east of Kiev, to the mines. We bought Roman and dark blue coat before the war. I bundled it and tied with a belt. I put it over his shoulder and here he burst into tears: he had an inner feeling that we were never to see each other again.

Those boys were taken into a shaft. They took away their passports. They had to work hard and many of them ran away including Roman. He went to work as a tractor operator in a kolkhoz29. In autumn 1941 German troops came near when Roman was asleep. They knew in the village that he was a Jew. Someone woke him up and gave him a white horse. He ran away. He took a train to Tashkent in Central Asia in 300 km from home. He was sitting by a wall in Tashkent being exhausted and starved. An evacuated doctor from Kiev saw him on her way to work. He told her his story and she took him with her. When he felt better he went to the military registry office to be sent to the front. He was so thin that the commission decided he was ill. However, he stood his ground and they sent him to a military school in Ashkhabad (today Turkmenistan).  

My father was very ill before the war and he was assigned to the army a few months later.  He was trying to find Roman: there was a central evacuation search agency in Buguruslan (today Russia), the only one in the USSR. My father wrote there and so did Roman. In 1942 my father was demobilized; he didn’t have sufficient education to serve in the rear. He came to Denau in Uzbekistan where Tania and Cecilia, Manya and Fania and their children were in evacuation. Tania and my father worked in a kolkhoz harvesting cotton. Then my father was demobilized by Party authorities and he served in a deserter search group in the mountains.  

In 1943 my father finally found Roman. They began to correspond. Roman wrote about his school and invited my father to visit Ashkhabad. My father managed to travel there once and Roman told him his story. Roman was promoted to junior lieutenant and in the late fall of 1944 he was sent to the front. Their train stayed in Kiev few days. He stayed with his friends. His classmate girls arranged a farewell party for him. My father arrived in Kiev a few days after my brother left.  

Roman was assigned to 146th rifle battalion. He was a Komsomol leader of the battalion. They were like commissars: they were the first to rise in attack and the others followed them. In early 1945 my father stopped receiving letters from Roman. He wrote his commander and received his reply: ‘On 26 January 1945 he was wounded and left our division. He never returned to our division and none of our military had any contacts with him’.  Roman never wrote anyone: he died from wounds on the way to hospital.

My father’s brother Idel was taken to a fighting battalion in early July 1941. They were to fight landing units. On 17 September 1941 he got in encirclement near Kiev and perished there. My friend Yura Belskiy also perished in this encirclement.  My father’s brother Samson was also mobilized in early July 1941. He was wounded, but returned to his unit after he recovered and was at the front until the end of the war.  

I was mobilized on 11 July 1941, when German troops were approaching Kiev. Our district military registry office formed a unit and we marched in civilian clothes to the east. Then we came to Mariupol [700 km east of Kiev] by train, to a camp from where we were to be sent to the front. We slept on grass and had meals in shifts. There were about one hundred thousand of us in the camp.  They took away our passports, but we didn’t get our Red Army identity cards yet. When military representatives came from the front we were lined up. Each VUS (military recorded profession) had a number and when my number (# 50 — artillery communication operators) was called, I stepped ahead. However, when I showed my certificate issued by the hospital they left me where I was.  All of my friends from Kiev went to the front.  I couldn’t sleep at night. I looked deep into my soul, tore my certificate to smallest pieces and a few days later I was already at the front.

From Mariupol we went to Cossack30 camps near Kherson in 750 km from Kiev. On 3 September in the morning our commander ordered us to line up and said: ‘It is our task to throw Germans out of Kakhovka’.  We marched there day and night. On 8 September in the evening  commander of the battalion sent a few Jews to the battalion headquarters. He was aware that we were getting in encirclement and didn’t want Jews to be captured by Germans. Everybody knew that Germans were killing Jews. Our artillery battalion of 756 rifle regiment was not a core unit and of course our commandment left us a victim of Germans, and the remaining units retreated. After the war I got to know that sergeants of 756 rifle regiment installed a flag on the Reichstag.

Our commanding officer didn’t send me to the headquarters. That night it was my turn to be on duty. On 8 September at 11 o’clock commander of the regiment called me. I was beside my battalion commander in a trench. It was quiet and I heard the voice of our regiment commander on the phone: ‘The division and regiment are retreating. Your task is to back up their retreat’. The battalion commander said to me: ‘Not a word about it!’ He was a brave man, a real commander. He realized that we might get in encirclement. On the night of 9 September we were trying hard to hold on in the bare Pridneprovskaya steppe in 40 km from Kakhovka (450 km from Kiev). The only weapons we had were rifles and grenades. There were Germans on our left and right, driving on trucks and marching. We had small digging tools and the soil was dry and it was hard to dig trenches under the enemy firing.  

Capture by the Germans

About 4 o’clock in the afternoon Germans troops began to fire from mining units and a huge mine exploded nearby. I was deafened for the time being, but I didn’t faint. All of a sudden I heard my commander saying: ‘That’s it, guys’.  I couldn’t believe what I heard. He didn’t kill himself. He believed that we had completed our task, that we backed up their retreat and self-annihilation that military order required from us was not soldiers’ business. He was the first to get up and raise his hands when our platoon was encircled. I saw 6 of us standing with their hands up. I firmly believed that only traitors of their Motherland could be captured, that a military had to fight until his last grenade or bullet and keep the last bullet for himself. This was what we were taught. I couldn’t shoot myself with my rifle, but I had a grenade. I could throw it onto Germans or just drop it where I was. But then Germans would kill my comrades... All these thoughts flew by in a second. I saw my fellow comrades with their hands up... then Germans crawled near us and stood behind. A German soldier grabbed my rifle and then thrust his hands into my pockets where I had grenade fuses. I took them out and threw away. Chief of headquarters Myslyvchenko was also captured. But they shot him with their machine guns. There were 14 of us including our battalion commander. Germans told us to get into a pit. They led away our battalion commander and this is all I know about him. There were two Germans on each side of the pit: one had a slot machine and another had a machine gun. They forbade us to move or talk.  Commander of our unit Bevz whispered moving only his lips: ‘Don’t tell them you are a Jew. The others will not give you away’. I felt easier. He said the same to two other Jewish soldiers Ilia and Beikelman. I quickly took out my Red Army identity card and my school certificate, tore them up and dug under my feet.  

A few minutes later Germans told us to move on and we covered 500-600 meters where other prisoners gathered. I thought I was living the last minutes of my life and that I would never see the sun again.  I was a Jew. I was only 20. I didn’t want to die. An interpreter ordered our commander to line us up in two lines.  Ilia and I were together in the second line. I said: ‘Ilia, we have to stand apart, if we want to stay alive’ Ilia was a dark man with a black beard, a typical Jew or Georgian.  A car stopped in front of our line. There was a German officer standing in it.  He said in distorted Russian that from then on we were to serve the great Germany honestly. After this speech he gave an order: ‘Zhydy [kikes] and communists — 2 steps ahead!’ All of a sudden I looked at a soldier of our battalion (he was from Donetsk). Our eyes met and I understood that he was going to give me away. He breathed in when Bevz standing beside him pushed him with his elbow and said something to him. The soldier kept quiet. On the other side Ilia was called out of the line. My heart squeezed, but then he stepped back.  The only communist among us was Davydenko, commander of a communication platoon, but nobody betrayed him or us, three Jews. Beikelman stepped ahead by himself. He didn’t hope to survive with his strong Jewish accent. There were 6-7 prisoners who stepped ahead of the line. They were taken away and nobody ever saw them again.

We marched to Nikolaev. There was another lining in Berislav and again Germans ordered: ‘Zhydy and communists — come out!’ I stood quiet. Other prisoners pushed 2-3 of their fellow comrades out of the line. They gave them away. Nobody reported on me.  However, there was the fourth time on 12 September: an interpreter and a German officer ordered: ‘Russians, step out!’ The Russians did. ‘Ukrainians, step out!’ Ukrainians did. ‘Byelorussians, Uzbeks, step out!’ Then came Georgians, Tatars, Armenians and Kazakhs... I was thinking of stepping ahead with Ukrainians, but I feared that they would give me away. The line was getting thinner... And then I recalled when my fellow comrades from a mine unit asked me ‘What is your nationality?’ and I replied: ‘You guess’.  They made one effort after another, but failed. And then one of them said I was a gypsy. So I decided to say that my father was a gypsy and my mother was Ukrainian. I didn’t know yet that they were killing gypsies, too. There were two of us left. The other one had a big nose and bulging eyes… The interpreter asked him: ‘You?’ And Ukrainians were yelling: ‘Judas, Judas!’ Germans hit them on their heads with their sticks and they shut up. He answered: ‘We are Mariupol Greeks’. Everybody laughed: ‘ha-hah-ha!’ Again Germans hit them on their heads and there fell silence again. I didn’t wait until they asked me and said in Ukrainian: ‘My father is gypsy and my mother is Ukrainian’. The interpreter translated and the German officer said: ‘Ukrainian’ and the interpreter took me to the Ukrainian group.  Then we were ordered to disperse. The dusk was condensing. We settled down in a clearing in the woods. Then we went to sleep. The rule was simple: if one of us broke into run they would shoot everyone. I knew that I needed a legend of a biography. So I was lying there covered with my overcoat thinking. I decided to take the name of Kotliarchuk with a Ukrainian ending. –When next time they ordered: ‘zhydy, come out!’ one soldier said to me: ‘Why are you silent? You are a zhyd, aren’t you?’, but he looked like a Jew himself. I cursed at him and said: ‘You are a zhyd. Just look at yourself in the mirror’. He got scared and shut up. Nobody took his side. There were 8 or 9 other checks, but nobody gave me away. 

Germans convoyed us to Nikolaev. We covered over 200 km in a week and we never had anything to eat. We ate nightshade berries, corns and sunflower cake that we found beside the road... There were about 20 thousand of us. We were taken to a camp in Varvarovka village and later we went to Nikolaev (400 km from Kiev). There were about 3 dozen 2-storied buildings where workers of a plant used to live. The houses and a nearby stadium were fenced with three rows of barbed wire. We were ordered to complete construction of this camp. There were about one thousand prisoners in one building. It became warmer from our breathing. Later I got to know that in other camps prisoners were sleeping in the mud in the open air. In the morning we were given our balanda soup and then we lined up in the stadium: one thousand prisoners (5 in column, 200 lines). There were about 30 columns. Then prisoners began to die of dysentery, typhus, there were 150-200 prisoners dying every day. Nobody would go to work, but when we left the camp there was an opportunity to get some food. Once 12 of us were taken to wash car wheels in a military air force unit.  Some women gave us borsch and bread from beyond the fence. Germans didn’t stop them. In the evening a German cook brought us meat stew leftovers from their drivers’ dinner. Each of us got 2 pieces of meat and a little gravy.  Once we were taken to work at a plant in Nikolaev where we were given borsch for a meal.  

5-6 thousand prisoners were convoyed to work from the camp. Once our guard took 5 of us to make wood stocks for Germans. Our German guard was about 60, gray haired and with bristles. He gave us smoke breaks, but I had nothing to smoke. During another break he called me behind a shed and asked me in his poor Russian: ‘You are not a Jew, are you?’ – ‘No’. – ‘Tell me, don’t be afraid, I won’t give you away… You look like a Jew very much. Wait here, I will be back in a moment’. He returned with a razor, scissors and hot water. ‘You look like a Jew. I was in your captivity during World War I.  People treated me well and I want to return their kindness’. He cut my hair and I shaved. I left a Ukrainian style forelock according to the fashion of the time, put on a hat that I found during the construction of our camp. The German gave me a looking glass. I looked at myself... and didn’t recognize myself. He said: ‘Oh, now you don’t look like a Jew, good for you!’ And he let me go.

Soon I fell ill with dysentery and couldn’t go to work any longer. I was almost dying. A young soldier from administration of the camp gave me a handful of brown pills. I ate them and felt better next day, but I still wasn’t able to go to work. Ukrainians were standing behind and I stood in their line. One of them said that Ukrainians living on the right side of the Dnieper were allowed to go home. Those who were willing to go had to come to a hut behind the lines. This was Tuesday. I understood that Germans would do the checking, but I was almost dying of dysentery and could die of typhus and I decided to give it a try. On Wednesday morning I stood in a line behind the others and then I went to the hut. There were many Ukrainians there. I came on time since everybody coming later was told to go away. Then we were taken to a white house where the commandant was sitting.  We were lined in fives. I waited there all day. Prisoners went in through the front door, but they didn’t come out going to the camp across the corridor fenced with barbed wire. The interpreter told us that we had to come to the desk with ceremonial step and salute. If a commandant thought you were a poor soldier he would not let you go. It was finally my turn. I came in a saluted.  There was a big map of Ukraine on my right. 2 German majors were sitting at the desk. A German soldier was writing on the left. A major asked me: ‘Your name?’ – ‘Kotliarchuk Leontiy Gavrilovich’. – ‘Where did you live?’ – ‘In Kiev’. – ‘Profession?’ – ‘I finished school and was taken to the army. I have no profession’. I used the legend that I plotted on the way to Nikolaev. I said that I lived with my mother in a hostel and gave him a different address. My father died of typhus. My mother worked in a hospital. When the war began my mother was taken to the front and later I was recruited. They burst into laughter: ‘Ha-ha-ha, Bolsheviks send schoolchildren to the front’.  They nodded to the soldier and he gave a red sheet and said: ‘Come here on Friday. You will get your pass and you will go home’. I put this sheet in my pocket, turned away, salute and hear one German saying to another: ‘He looks like a Jew’. I keep marching toward the door… The interpreter yells: ‘Stop!’. I turn around, make 3 steps, salute, drop my hands and try to have a smile. One German said: ‘No, it’s a mistake’. I turn around and head toward the door. In the end of the barbed wire corridor a Tatar man was waiting for me. He said: ‘Here is 300 grams of bread and a cotton wool jacket. Give me your overcoat. Germans would take away your overcoats anyway and we will need them in winter. They won’t take a jacket’.  I believed him and besides, I was tempted by 300 grams of bread. I ate it. It turned out there were lots of lice in his jacket.  On Friday morning I came to the white hut and stood in line. A soldier made a speech in German. He said that German commandment and Fuhrer and the Third Reich trusted us and had hopes for us. Do you promise to serve the great Germany faithfully? Of course, we promised. He called us by our names and gave us our passes. We got one loaf of bread each and another loaf for five of us. We were walking along the barbed wire corridor and there were hands stretching to us begging for bread. I gave pieces of my bread and left only a piece of 300 grams for myself. A group of us heading to Kiev went on our way. I decided to not go to Kiev, but stay in a village. Everybody in Kiev knew I was a Jew. I took a back road that was safer. I went from one village to another. Once a group of men stopped me. One of them inquired whether I was a zhyd.  I said ‘no’, but he persisted. I said: ‘Germans released me from a camp and gave me a pass. Do you think they are more stupid than you?’ It was strong argumentation and they let me go. 

In Dymovka village I sat on a bench to take a rest and fainted. When I recovered my conscience there were a few women standing beside me. There were Moldavians living in the village, but they spoke Ukrainian. A man invited me to his house. He brought a barber who shaved my head.  When women saw how many lice I head they boiled my clothes and burned my cotton wool jacket. One woman heated some water and I washed myself. They gave me clean underwear, bed sheets, blankets and pillows. They also gave me a dry fruit compot drink and white bread.  I stayed there two days. I told them I was from Kiev. Some girls were going to a camp for prisoners-of-war in Novoukrainka hoping to find their husbands or sons there. My host said: ‘there is a straight road to Kiev from Novoukrainka’. On the morning of 5 November he took me to the kolkhoz yard where this group was gathering. I only had my shirt on and I was freezing.  The horse-driven wagons were already leaving the kolkhoz yard when all of a sudden an old woman came running. ‘Stop, stop!’ — she brought me an old cotton wool jacket. There was a Ukrainian man, a former prisoner, sitting on a wagon. I told him my story on our way and added that I had nobody waiting for me in Kiev. He said: ‘Why would you need this Kiev? You know how many prisoners work in surrounding villages? We shall accommodate you somehow’. We arrived in Malinovka village Yelanets district.  This man had a friend there who was a blacksmith. He decided to shoe his horse. The man asked the blacksmith: ‘Maybe somebody needs a guy?’ He replied: ‘Old man Kiryusha needs a guy’. So I got to this old man who had a bee garden and wanted a night watch.  He was so happy to see me that he didn’t ask any questions. It never occurred to him that I was a Jew. I assisted the old man. We went to get fuel and I fixed his tubs, ladder and rake. The old man doted upon me. He used to say: ‘Well, we shall feed a pig, go to Nikolaev, I will buy you boots and a jacket and you will get married’.

There was a district German newspaper ‘New Life’ hanging in the kolkhoz yard. One article said that the last Soviet plane was destroyed, Leningrad and Moscow were encircled. Another article wrote about how nice it was now to come to a store in the village when ‘no ugly mug of a zhyd was looking at you’. They also wrote that those giving shelter to a zhyd or a partisan would be killed immediately. When I told old man Kiryusha that Germans had destroyed the last Soviet plane and encircled Leningrad and Moscow he replied: ‘It’s a lie. Germans had never won a victory over Russia. They will be running from us’. I lived with my old man until partisans made their appearance in the vicinity and commissar of the village and all prisoners were ordered to submit their passes to the village council.  Then the commissar issued an order for all prisoners to go home.  The old man came home crying: ‘You have to leave tomorrow. 24 hours from now.’ On 18 December I was to leave the village. Next day I took my pass and had lunch.  The old man gave me a bag with food and found me a companion. On 20 December we came to Petrovskiy farm and knocked on the door of the first house. It turned out that there were my fellow country men living in the farm. There was Sak, an old man, a one-legged invalid living in the house, his wife and two sons. One of them Ivan, of the same age with me, returned from captivity three days before. This farm belonged to another district and they hadn’t heard about the commissar’s order yet. Old man Kotsupal came from another end of this settlement. He asked me about everything and then said: ‘you can stay with me. We shall be selling goods. You have education, haven’t you? You must have finished 10 grades.’ I said: ‘No, old man, I can’t do this. I can repair equipment, radio or electric wiring, but not trade’. My boots were torn and old man Sak said: ‘Go see Mykola, he will fix them for you’. It was time to go to sleep. My companion took off in the morning and I stayed at he farm.

In the morning I went to see Mykola. There was a prisoner staying with him. He was a Kuban cossack named Zhorka. There was another prisoner living in the settlement. His name was Ivan Doronin and he was from Leningrad. Zhorka was a master sergeant and Ivan Doronin was junior political officer, an artilleryman. Old man Sak said: ‘You’ll live with Fedora. She has a small girl. Her Ivan died and she needs an assistant.  I went to work in the kolkhoz. Kolkhozes functioned.  They kept threshing grain through the winter delivering it to the station. Old man Kotsupal taught me to make haystacks and was checking what kind of a worker I made. He liked how I made haystacks. In spring, when the snow melted we were finishing to thresh the grain. We were having lunch lying by a haystack, when he said: ‘Remember how I was checking on you? I thought you were a zhyd. How could it occur to me? Zhyds do not like to work and you are hardworking. I saw Germans taking zhyds to execution. They made them sing ‘Guys, start unharnessing your horses’ [Ukrainian folk song]. It was so much fun!’ If I had told him the truth he would have turned me in, even though we were friends.

Germans made Zhora a driver. He was driving a truck and Ivan ordered him to look for partisans.  However, it happened so that partisans could shoot those who came to join them for betrayal of Motherland yielding in captivity.   

I stayed with Fedora for almost a year. In early October 1942 I came from work and Fedora said: ‘There is an order to send you and Ivan to Germany’. On 4 October Ivan and I went to the neighboring village of Nadezhdovka for registration to go to Germany. After showing up in the police office we went to medical check up. Ivan went first and my only wish was to run away since I was circumcised.  Ivan kept telling me that I had to escape on our way there. Where could I run in this steppe? I came in. There was a fatty doctor of about 50 years of age sitting in the room. I took off my clothes and thought: ‘Well, that’s it now’. He looked at me pretending that he didn’t notice. He was a decent man. I put on my clothes and said quietly: ‘Thank you’. He replied: ‘Have a safe trip’.  

Next day at 5 o’clock in the morning a policeman came for us. We threw our bags on the wagon and started on our way to the district town. The policemen followed us holding his gun. From the district town we were sent to Voznesensk where we stayed in a school building sleeping on the floor for three days. Then they put us on a train and we went to a transit camp in Peremyshl.  There we were X-rayed. Then we were taken to a bathroom and they took our clothes for disinfections. We were taken for a medical check up in a big hall. There were Tatar and Chechen men who were also circumcised.  I didn’t dare to come to a doctor for a long while. He was sitting on a stand like a statue wearing rubber gloves. When it was my turn I shrank. He examined me without saying a word and I stepped aside.  

A day later we boarded a freight train in Peremyshl and went across Poland. We saw Jews with yellow stars [Editor’s note: fascists forced Jews to wear yellow stars for Jewish identification in all ghettos and concentration camps] through the windows on the way: exhausted men, women and even children. They were doing earthwork. We didn’t get any food on the way. I had some food that the kolkhoz gave me: a piece of pork fat, a bottle of honey, some bread and sunflower seeds. Few days later we arrived in Germany. We arrived in Nurnberg. There was a huge makeshift toilet built on a platform. Then they gave us food that we ate right there on the platform. They poured me some good pea soup with pasta in my pot. This was the first and the last time when we had a decent meal in Germany. From Nurnberg a train took us to a transit camp in Bittingen stuffed with prisoners. We went through another sanitary treatment and then they began to count us like they would count cattle. We, a group of 300 people, were taken to Stuttgart on 15 December and were put in Sleutwitz camp in a small forest. There were long barracks for Slavic ostarbeiters. There were rooms for 24 tenants with wooden two-tiered beds in two rows and shelves between them. On the morning of 16 December we went to work from the camp. We walked for an hour. My boots fell apart and I walked barefooted. Ivan and I were taken to a joiner shop. I noticed village guys doing earthwork near the shop. I said to Ivan: I don’t want to get wet in the rain. Let’s tell them we are joiners’. He obeyed. Master Gaimsh came wearing a yellow robe, glasses, thin, about 75 years of age with a gray crew cut on his head. There was a joiner test to be done: Master Gaimsh placed a cut of water pipe in a holdfast vertically and gave me a file. I was to level the edges of the pipe. He said: ‘That’s ok’. He turned the pipe horizontally and gave Ivan a hacksaw. Ivan did what he was told and the test was over. Our German supervisor took us to the shop to sort out transmissions. He saw me standing barefooted on the dirty floor and gave me his worn boots on a wooden sole and tarpaulin upper. Soon there was a bell ringing for breakfast. We had nothing to eat and went to the yard. There were French prisoners-of-war sitting there talking cheerfully. I understood one word ‘Stalingrad’. It meant that Germans were retreating and there were combat actions near Stalingrad.  

This was a radiator plant. We received robes with the sign ‘OST’ painted with white paint on the chest. If somebody wanted to wear different clothes they had to sew on this sign. We got up at 6 in the morning. Our working day lasted 12 hours and on Saturday we worked 5 hours. Sunday was a day off, but we were often taken to do various jobs on this day. There were 3 old Germans working in our shop. Gliazer, the youngest, Shachtu, over 70 years of age and Singer, way over 80. I often assisted him since it was hard for him to bend. At first all of them gave me errands, but then Gliazer made me his assistant. We were given a loaf of bread for four of us every day.  They also delivered a few containers of coffee in the evening: it was sweet and delicious and it was still warm in the morning.

There were jokes about Jews told in the barrack: that they like to shoot from rifles with curved muzzles since it was not so scary to shoot from round the corner. Once a week they gave us a free newspaper in Russian. When they introduced shoulder straps in the Red Army there was a caricature in it: ‘Tsyperovich with new shoulder straps’: a general of Jewish appearance looking at his shoulder straps into the mirror. They were not looking for Jews in Germany. They didn’t expect to have any after all filtrations. However, whenever something happened there was an immediate question: ‘And what’s your nationality?’ 

Germans treated us differently. There were evil and cordial attitudes. They kept their distance from us. Our old Germans didn’t humiliate us. Then a German man of about 30 years of age came to the shop. He kept pestering us: ‘Do you know why Germans wear glasses? Because we are smart and we read a lot and it impacts out sight’. He humiliated us and tried to convince us that we were nobody and nothing…

At first we were in a common camp Sleutwitz and our camp fuehrer was Meier, a cruel bandit. He always wore an SS uniform and he started fights. There were guards with Alsation dogs in the camp. One of the guards was a Czech German and the rest of them were German. One old German man came to wake us up in the morning. He once brought me an ointment when I rubbed my foot sore. Another German was a scrapper. In the first two years we were paid 8 [Deutsch]mark per month and then they began to pay 16 [Deutsch]mark.  Occasionally we managed to leave the camp to go to town, but then we had to hide our ‘OST’ badges to not be caught by the police. When we were lucky we could buy some bread or a pack of forshmak from rusty herring. Once some vendors came to the camp. I bought a striped viscose shirt for 1.5 marks. I washed it and wore it on Sunday. Ivan and I also bought trousers from a Serbian man for 8 marks. I wore a jacket that Joseph gave me at work, an old German man from a next-door shop. I dug up his vegetable garden in spring. His wife was a very sympathetic and nice lady.  Their only son was in the army and she suffered a lot for him. Joseph’s wife told me about their son. She said: ‘He looks so much like you’. She gave me a jacket and a vest, a gummed coat, bridges and even a hat. A Polish man came to take photographs. He charged little for his services and I had two photographs made for me. 

The feeling that I was working for Germany oppressed me and I was looking for an opportunity to do some harm. Twice I placed small nuts in the exhaust pipe and the ventilator blade broke.  Both times the shop was closed for two days.

When we came to our barracks in the evening they allowed us to sing songs. Our interpreter Fritz was born in Germany, but his parents were Crimean Germans. They spoke Russian and he learned from them. When in winter 1943 Germans were defeated near Stalingrad he ordered us to line up and said: ‘Listen carefully. You cannot sing for a week. Our Germany is in the mourning. We lost 600 thousand men near Stalingrad’.  Someone shouted: ‘Fritz we are ready to not sing for another week’. He grasped this hint and said: ‘You’ll get from me now!’ However, the time was changing and there were no consequences to this comment. After Germans were defeated in the Kursk battle, the regime in the camp weakened. In early 1944 the air forces of allies struck and destructive blow on Stuttgart. All laborers at the plant were ordered to clean up the ruins of one shop pulled down by blast wave. In spring 1944 air raid warnings were activated several times a day. Enterprises stopped work. There were air raid crews consisting of Germans and 10 ostarbeiters.  In spring 1944 we were taken to a smaller camp that we built. There were no bugs in breezeblock barracks. A group of Polish inmates arrived to the camp. Car engineer Vinogradov had a good conduct of German and he always brought newspapers in German to the barrack.  We learned about the situation at the front from these newspapers. When our troops began to advance Germans began to give us a package of good tobacco once a week. Chief of the camp began to fire us and we had to pay our fines with tobacco and he was selling it. One night in June 1944 the last and the hardest air raid occurred in Stuttgart.  The town was ruining and was on fire and the world was turning upside down. My boss Gliazer began to take me to town to fix the roofs and equipment damaged during air raids. 

After the war

We greeted the beginning of 1945 with confidence that the victory was close. Soon we got to know from the French that the ally troops occupied Strasburg and that they were 100 km from Stuttgart. In March work at our plant was suspended. We were given no food and were not allowed to leave the camp. In April we worked at the construction of fortifications. The town was preparing to defense and street fighting. Soon we were locked in the camp.  On the morning of 18 April the gate was wide open and there were no guards left. American planes were flying low above the roofs during the day. At night on 19 April we fell asleep before the dawn of our Liberation. In the morning the wind of freedom blew us beyond the camp wire fence. There were American troops moving along the streets on trucks. There were German prisoners in them. In the camp we took bread from food stocks and the French prisoners guarding a refrigerator gave us pork. Somebody brought a bottle of alcohol. We feasted in the camp for ten days. 

Officially we were liberated by the first French army supported by American troops and there was French administration. 1 May was coming and I decided to make a parade on a truck. There was a food delivery truck parked near our barrack.  I made a carton poster, drew red stars and wrote ‘USSR’ on the cabin.  Anybody could drive this truck along the streets in Stuttgart singing Soviet songs. On 8 May my compatriot Zhenia found a radio and we installed an antenna on the roof of our barrack. Radio station ‘Freedom’ announced that on 8 May at 23 hours in Berlin the act of unconditional capitulation was to be signed in Berlin. Soon Moscow confirmed the announcement of European radios. Volley firing blasted the quietude in the town: the Harrison of Stuttgart made grandiose fireworks in honor of victory over Germany. I didn’t even try to hold back my tears on this night of victory.

There was a center of repatriation of Soviet citizens established in Stuttgart. 5 former officer prisoners were at its head. In early 1945 they worked at the Porsche plant where Soviet sample cars were designed and manufactured. It was a sensitive plant and German troopers were going to execute the officers, but chief engineer helped them to escape. They reached Paris and came to the office of general-major Golikov [editor’s note: Golikov Philip Ivanovich (1900-80), Soviet commander, Marshall of the Soviet Union (1961). During the Great Patriotic War in 1941-43 he was commander of several armies and Bryansk and Voronezh Front forces, in 1943-50 chief of staff headquarters, in 1958-62 chief of political headquarters of the Soviet army and Navy.] responsible for repatriation at the direction of Stalin.  He gave them documents, uniforms and guns and authorized them to organize a repatriation agency in Stuttgart.  They needed trucks to transport people from all over the place. So the center opened a Soviet car factory on the basis of the Porsche plant where they repaired vehicles found on the roads.  After the victory engineer Vinogradov authorized by the center to manage the plant offered me a job. We repaired broken cars and our guys were drivers, so we made sort of a vehicle yard as it was.  At the beginning I manufactured license plates, but then I became responsible for filing documents. Sasha Pohiteluk, a Ukrainian guy, was our logistic supervisor. I went shopping with him. We lived and had meals at the plant and worked for free assiduously. American suppliers provided us, ex-prisoners, with food. There was a barrel of good non-alcohol beer at the entrance to the diner and for dinner French commandants provided us with dry red wine. I still have a certificate confirming that I worked at this Soviet car repair plant.

Germans were now suffering from lack of food and I decided to surprise Gliazer who had often supported me with a piece of bread or a pair of worn shoes. I gave him a piece of sausage and 3 kg of meat. Gliazer was astonished and thanked me.

There were suits delivered to the Porsche plant and I got a nice suit. It wasn’t new, but it was ironed. I didn’t know at once that these were the suits of Jews who were burned in incinerators. I knew from Polish inmates about death camps and I returned this suit. There were curtains at the plant and I ordered trousers to be made from a curtain. The girls cooking for us didn’t have shoes. German women gave them some clothes, but they didn’t have shoes. I found a shoe factory near Stuttgart. There were Ukrainian employees at the factory. I brought them canned meat and they gave me shoes for our girls. They also offered me apiece of leather and I ordered boots from it. They stole them from me later… In July Americans replaced French administration in Stuttgart.  

I was eager to find out what happened to my dear ones and on 5 August I left Stuttgart. On 7 August our train arrived in the Soviet zone of occupation, at Galle station. All men lined up on the platform. A colonel came: ‘Congratulations on your return to the Motherland!’ His second phrase was: ‘Do you have any weapons? Give up your weapons!’ There were 5 minutes of silence. – ‘Who has weapons, one step ahead!’ 15 minutes passed. He dawdled about, turned around and left. Then a senior lieutenant came, we picked our bags and suitcases and went to Cerbst. There in a filtration camp they divided us into companies, platoons and battalions. A Soviet lieutenant was a company commanding officer. We lived in army tents, doing combat and political training. We went through general filtration check up in the camp. A captain asked general questions and then he began to put down our answers. He was the first one whom I officially told that I was a Jew. He asked: ‘Where are you from?’ – ‘from Kiev’. – ‘Do you have anybody left there?’ – ‘My aunt and a sister’. – ‘Do you know that 125 thousand Jews were shot in Babi Yar?’31 – ‘No, this is the first time I hear about it’. – ‘Do you think they could be executed?’ – ‘Possibly. When I left Kiev, they were at home’. Then he asked me whether Gestapo ever interrogated me. Gestapo didn’t interrogate me. Then he said: ‘Since you are a Jew I have to ask you this. You will serve in the army, demobilize and then you can go to Kiev. But if you want we can send you to Poland. We allow Jews to go to Poland’. I said: ‘Why would I want to go to Poland? I want to go home. I would like to serve in the army’. Later I understood that if I said that Gestapo had interrogated me and that I wanted to go to Poland they wouldn’t take me to the army, but send to Gulag32. Then followed usual questions: ‘When were you recruited to the army?’ ‘How did you get in captivity?’ I talked with this captain like I would with someone dear to me. He asked me kindly about my father and brother and was sympathetic. He filled out a few sheets while talking to me.

After the filtration camp we were transferred to the camp in Bitterfelde near Potsdam. There were comfortable cottages belonging to the aviation plant. Everybody with secondary and higher education were selected to a special training battalion of 185th Red banner rifle division.  They issued our Red Army identity cards and gave us carabines and our service began. They trained us to be junior commanders. When I went to town I was looking for my brother Roman. I believed that he had survived. I wrote to our address in Kiev, but received no response. 

In early February 1946 we started preparations for departure and on February we left Zahna, Germany for the Soviet Union by train. We went across Poland and Slovakia and saw burned crossed the Volga covering 20 km to Pesochniy camp where they trained recruits for the army. They lived in terrible conditions, worse than prisoners. When our division arrived those boys cheered up a little. There were 2 lines of plank beds in the barracks, ground floors and there were barrels used as stoves.  My friend Sasha Kostromov and I started stoves in our company and stayed on duty until morning. In autumn we were assigned commanding officers and we had draftees under our command.  I received the rank of first sergeant. I didn’t want to ask my political officer where I had to write inquiring information about my family. Lieutenant Borisov believed we were traitors and saboteurs. Perhaps, there were others thinking the same, but they didn’t demonstrate it. I thought: ‘I survived and went through a filtration camp and now they begin to ask me why they helped me in a Moldavian village?’ Local people felt sorry for us, prisoners. People didn’t think we were traitors of our Motherland. Perhaps, comrade Stalin was the only person who thought that we were.

On 27 November 1946 we were demobilized. I didn’t know where my father and Tania were. I wrote them, but our neighbors accommodating in our room destroyed my letters. My father couldn’t get his room back, though he had one son at the front and another one perished and he was in the army.  His sister Manya gave shelter to my father, Tania and Cecilia. My father couldn’t get a job without a residential permit.33 His friends made a knitting machine for him: he knitted sweaters and Tania was selling them at the market. Only in summer 1946 my father got my letter. I sent him a photograph to prove I was alive and a certificate issued by my military unit. In June he showed my photo and certificate to chief prosecutor: ‘Here is my son, he was at the front’. Only on 4 December my father moved into his room with the help of a militia officer. On 5 December I knocked on my door. Without waiting for an answer I opened the door: there was no table or chairs, there was a box by the window with a knitting machine on it and my father standing. He turned back. He didn’t recognize me. He thought it was another militiaman. My father looked like an old man. He didn’t have one healthy tooth left. He had suffered a lot thinking that he had lost two sons. 

The next day I went to my school. Director Vasiliy Piymachok was happy to see me, but when he heard that I was in captivity, he was upset, since for official authorities I was an untrustworthy person anyway. He offered me a job of a cashier, gave me a key to the safe with 200 rubles and a pile of school certificate forms. Director issued certificates to all who returned from the war, but lost their certificates. I lost all my documents during the war and so did many others. My family left our home and many houses burned down in Kiev. The archives of Kiev registry office was not damaged and I had my birth certificate reissued to me. Priymachok issued a new school certificate to me. As for my Komsomol membership card I didn’t want to be a Komsomol member any longer.  

My father went to work at the ‘Leninskaya Kuznia’ (‘Lenin’s forge’)  plant manufacturing river and sea boats. He was a leather worker, janitor and transmission fixer at the plant.  Tania knitted clothes on her knitting machine. My father’s sisters Manya and Fania and their children also returned to Kiev. They also made knitwear at home. They died in the 1980s. Manya’s son Yefim Kotliar moved to Israel in the 1990s with his family.  They went to Bat Yam. He often calls me and we correspond. Fania’s sons Mikhail and Leonid Tverskiye and her daughter whose name I don’t remember live in the USA. We keep in touch. My father’s brother Samson returned from the front. Then he moved to Chernigov with his wife and their daughters Ella and Sophia. He worked there as an engineer at the textile factory. In the early 1990s Ella and Sophia and their families moved to Israel.

Shortly after I came to Kiev I went to my mother’s grave, but I couldn’t find it since Germans removed graves in this area.  Later they made Lukianovskoye military cemetery in this location so there is no grave of my mother. Babi Yar where so many of my dear ones perished was an abandoned area where only hooligans were wandering. 

In March 1947 I found my prewar friend Ghita Kaplunovich. Her fiancé Naum was at the front and got in captivity. When prisoners were released he returned home to Gaisin and Germans killed him there. I told Ghita my story and we began to see each other.  In July 1947 we registered our marriage and I moved into her apartment in the center of Kiev where she lived with her parents. On 23 May 1948 our son Yuriy was born. We named him after my deceased friends Yuriy Belskiy. 

Ghita Kaplunovich was born on 14 June 1922 in Kiev. She was very good at music and when studying in her music school she could play the piano wonderfully. Her father Abram Kaplunovich was chief of district health department and her mother Hanna Lopatnik was a housewife. I remember Ghita’s stately grandfather Yakov Lopatnik. Before the revolution of 1917 he was manager of one of Brodskiys’ [editor’s note: Brodski family – Russian sugar manufacturers. They started sugar manufacturing business in 1840s. Organized the 1st sugar syndicate in Russia in (1887). Sponsored construction of hospitals and asylums in Kiev and other towns in Russia, including the biggest and most beautiful synagogue in Kiev.] sugar factories. When the Great patriotic war began he didn’t leave Kiev and perished in Babi Yar in 1941. Ghita’s father went to the front. Ghita and her mother evacuated to Serdobsk in the Ural. Ghita supervised music production in the theater and taught music in children’s homes and schools. They returned to Kiev in 1944 and she entered the Piano Faculty of the Conservatory. She was a wonderful pianist and wanted to be a performing pianist, but there was one obstacle: her fingers did not fit. So she had to go to study at the theoretical department, but there she didn’t get along with one lecturer and she quit the Conservatory after finishing her third year. Ghita convinced me to quit school and go to work at the recreation center for dystrophic children in Vorsel near Kiev. There were 40 children in my group and I worked without weekends through the summer.  In August the doctor said: ‘All right, now you quit your job and go to a college’.  I didn’t want to go to college. I thought I would be persecuted for being a Jew and in captivity and for surviving.  I believed I had to be a worker so that I wasn’t in sight, but Ghita convinced me again: ‘You have a wonderful talent, you can write and be a pedagog’. I entered the Faculty of Literature in Kiev Teacher’s College, a reduced 2-year course. At the entrance exams I made 13 mistakes in my dictation and received a ‘2’ [fail]. When I came to take my verbal exam it turned out that I wasn’t in their lists.  Mikhail Levit, a teacher of the Russian language, said: a ‘3’ would be enough for you; veterans of the war are admitted without competition.  Here is my condition: I give you back your work where I stressed your mistakes, but I didn’t correct them. You will explain and correct them here. If you do it you will get your ‘3’ and will be allowed to take your verbal exam’. I coped with this task. Then I passed geography, history, Russian and was admitted. 

My father, being a Party member, had to indicate that he had relatives abroad in his application forms. Before the Great Patriotic War his brother Leibl used to write him from America, but my father didn’t reply fearing persecution. After the war Leibl was trying to find out whether my father survived and my father responded. For this my father was expelled from the Party again in 1949 during the period of struggle against cosmopolites.34 He swore that he would never again correspond with his brother and he kept his word: my father died for his brother Leibl.  He destroyed his brother’s photographs and letters. Then he resumed his membership in the Party.  

In May 1949, when I was almost finishing my studies, an unpleasant incident happened.  I was going upstairs with other students when chief of Marxism-Leninism department Babenko took me by my elbow: ‘Comrade Kotliar, I know that you take an active part in public activities, but you do not come to our political club’.  ‘I would love to join you, but I have to work. I have a one-year-old baby and my wife is not well. We don’t always have food at home. However, if you do me this honor I would like to come one day’.  He says: ‘I would like you to make a report. Many of our students have been in occupation and we need to pay attention to their political views’.  I replied: ‘I understand how important this is. I’ve also been in captivity and in occupation’. It never occurred to him. A Jew and he managed to survive? 2 days later Babenko made a lot of fuss about my being in captivity and never mentioning it. The thing is I wrote my biography briefly and even the fact that I volunteered to the front didn’t fit in there. However, I had reported on my being in captivity when serving in my special unit. Director of my college got involved in this incident and we talked with him 3 hours behind a closed door. He asked me all kinds of tricky questions, but I said: ‘I’ve been through filtration camp and answered all their questions’. As a result, director stated that he had nothing against me personally, but the circumstances… He couldn’t ignore this Babenko. Usually chief of Marxism departments were from KGB. I passed two state exams in Pedagogics and Marxism with ‘4’ marks, but they expelled me from college. Secretary of the Party committee Pohodzilo decided to help me resume my right to study in the college. He took me to the Ministry of education of the USSR. They allowed me to take other exams and I passed them with ‘5’ marks. In July 1949 I received my diploma of teacher of the Russian language and literature, but they refused to give me my job assignment.35 ‘We do not trust you politically. You’ve been in captivity’ the Ministry of education explained. I complained to the Ministry of State Control.  They protected me, but I received their response to my complaint 2 months later. 

I went to all kinds of offices through the summer and in September, when I visited another office in the Ministry of education I bumped into director of a village school and he employed me. On 24 September I came to school in Varovichi village of Kiev region. I worked in this school until 7 November and was transferred to the school in Seschina village where there was no electricity or radio. However, the wave of anti-Semitism associated with the doctors’ plot36 reached this village in 1952. Chairman of the village council read a letter issued by the district Party committee about criminal activities of Jewish doctors aiming at the destruction of Soviet people by providing wrong medical treatment and poisoning it. Later I heard rumors that Stalin was preparing a trap for Jews, but was going to present it to the world as protection of Jews from the ‘just anger’ of people.   The only way to protect Jews from the ‘just anger’ of people was to deport them to Birobidzhan37 in the taiga. They said that the Soviet Union was going to be cleaned up from Jews and then finally life would improve. Only a miracle could save Jews from another holocaust. And it happened: on 5 March 1953 Stalin died.

Shortly afterward chief of the district department of education assigned me as a district inspector. I didn’t quite like this job. Firstly, I had to run around a lot, and secondly, teaching personnel was weak: teachers could not solve a 3rd grade problem with 3 questions. I worked as inspector for a year and then went back to school. After finishing my teachers’ college I received 10% lower salary than teachers with a diploma of Pedagogical Institute. In 1956 I entered extramural department of the faculty of Philology of Kiev Pedagogical Institute. I finished it in 1959. After finishing this Institute I worked in a school in Kiev several years and then I worked in village schools of Kiev region.  Ghita worked as a concertmaster in schools and clubs.  

In the late 1950s my sister Cecilia married Moisey Dibner, a Jewish man. He worked as electrician in a design institute and my sister worked as a computer operator in this same institute. They had two children: Larisa, born in the early 1960s and Boris, born in 1972.

In May 1965 my district military registry office in Kiev called me to receive my awards. It was warm and we were waiting in the yard. They were calling veterans by a list until there were two of us left in the yard. I asked this other man: ‘were you liberated by Americans?’ He said ‘Yes’. I said ‘So was I’. If we had been liberated by Soviet troops we would have received our awards much earlier. I finally received two medals and sometime later I obtained my certificate of a veteran of the war and an order of the Patriotic War of II grade [editor’s note: There are orders and medals awarded to him for his combat deeds and labor achievements on his jacket, including the Order of Great Patriotic War, Order of Glory, and medal for defense of Stalingrad, medal for Courage, etc.  – perhaps you could put this whole part in the body of the bio, as an editor’s note or just in brackets.].

Our son Yuriy finished school in 1965, but he didn’t enter a college in Kiev: it was next to impossible for a Jew in Ukraine. He entered Cinematography College in Leningrad. In 1970 he finished this college and received a job assignment in Arkhangelsk, 5000 km from Kiev. Yuriy was a sickly boy and they released him from service in the army. He worked in Arkhangelsk for some time, but nobody needed a producer there and in 1972 he returned to Kiev. For 8 months he couldn’t get a job in Kiev and there were no prospects for him.  Soon he married a Russian girl from Siberia. Her name was Yelena Paramonova. They moved to Novosibirsk. He became senior editor of documentaries there and Yelena lectured in Theatrical School. In 1974 my wife and I moved to our son in Novosibirsk. In 1975 my son’s daughter Vlada was born and a year and a half later their son Anton was born. However, Ghita couldn’t live in Siberia due to the climate there and in 1976 we had to leave. When I imagined my problems with the Ministry of education in Kiev due to my Jewish identity I decided to go to Polesskoye (90 km north of Kiev). They remembered me there and offered 5 schools. Ghita went to work as concertmaster in a club. We received a house and a garden and school paid our fees. My son often brought Vlada and Anton to spend their summer vacations with us. 

Recent years

When in 1985 perestroika38 began I supported it for its glasnost’ policy. They began to publish works previously forbidden and reveal information thoroughly concealed before. I translated a poem by my favorite poetess Lina Kostenko39, formerly forbidden in the USSR, into Russian. This book was published.

On 21 December 1986 I lost Ghita. She had congenital heart formation and Chernobyl disaster [editor’s note: Official statistics in the USSR  kept silent about the consequences of Chernobyl power plant disaster, especially the number of dying from oncological  diseases. The doctors had a classified direction to show in the documents that a patient died from other than oncolological disease.] had this impact on her. When we buried her, an old Jewish man came to the cemetery. He said: ‘She is a Jew and there has to be a prayer recited'. He recited the prayer.  Polesskoye is located within the dangerous 30-km zone within Chernobyl. It wasn’t allowed to reside there due to high level radiation, but I couldn’t obtain my permission for relocation for a long time. There was no gas heating. I stoked my stove with wood and breathed in radiation. I lost all my teeth in those years. I can visit the cemetery in Polesskoye on the days of remembrance the deceased. Ghita’s grave is there and there is a gravestone on it. I can’t go there often.  Her father was buried in the Jewish sector of the town cemetery in Kiev. I had Ghita’s name written on a plaque on his gravestone and I go there.  

I remarried in 1988. My second wife Ludmila Zhutnik was born in Kiev in 1926. Her mother is Jewish and her father is Ukrainian. Ludmila finished Moscow College of Economics and taught economics in technical schools in Kiev. She retired almost 20 years ago. I also retired in the late 1980s and joined her in Kiev. I couldn’t imagine my life without working with children, so I was head of an artistic word studio in the district children’s house for many years.

In 1991 residents of Polesskoye left the town: there are empty houses with holes where doors and windows used to be. A bulldozer removed my small house due to high radiation. I received a small apartment in Belaya Tserkov (70 km from Kiev). I lived in this apartment two years and then we exchanged this apartment and Ludmila’s for a two-bedroom apartment in a new district in Kiev. 

In the early 1990s my sister Cecilia, her husband Moisey, son Boris and daughter Larisa and her family moved to Haifa in Israel. Larisa works as a medical nurse there and Boris is an engineer. Both of them have a good conduct of Hebrew. Cecilia and Moisey live on old age welfare. Ghita and I didn’t have money to move to Israel.  We couldn’t afford to live without work for half year. As soon as people applied for departure they were fired.  Cecilia and I correspond. She often calls me.  She wants me to go visit her.

In the late 1990s Germans began to pay ostarbeiters compensation and I needed a certificate to prove that I had been in Germany. My son’s friend Vitia Brentsler living in Berlin now helped me. He applied to the insurance agency in Stuttgart and obtained a certificate confirming that I was an ostarbeiter there.

Yuriy and his family live in Moscow. Yelena is a pensioner and Yuriy works as a scriptwriter. Anton is an actor in Moscow Theater for young spectators and Vlada is an English teacher. I miss them much and often travel to Moscow. 

My wife and I do not go to the synagogue. We’ve remained atheists, but we attend Hesed where we celebrate Jewish holidays. We enjoy learning about Jewish culture. 

GLOSSARY:

Halina Najduchowska
Warsaw
Poland
Interviewer: Joanna Fikus
Date of Interview: June 2005

Mrs. Halina Najduchowska is 80 years old; she is a retired sociologist. She comes from a family of assimilated Jews from Lodz.

Our conversation took place in Mrs. Najduchowska’s apartment, which is situated in a pre-war building in the Warsaw district of Mokotow. The place of honor among her many books is reserved for two family photographs. 

Mrs. Najduchowska remembers her childhood in detail, and enjoys talking about it.

As she said herself, our interview was quite an emotional experience for her – many memories came back, both good ones and bad ones.

• My family background
• My siblings
• Growing up
• In the ghetto
• In concentration and labor camps
• After the war
• Later life
• Glossary

• My family background

I know nothing about my grandparents and great-grandparents. Unfortunately, none of my grandparents, either from my mother’s or from my father’s side, were alive by the time I was born. I do know that one of my grandfathers was named Daniel, and I suspect it must have been my mother’s father, because there was a tradition of naming boys Daniel in that family.

My mother’s family comes from Lodz. Mother’s name was Maria Biber. She was born on 25th March 1899 in Lodz. She had lots of siblings: three sisters and two brothers: Sala, Hela, Ruta, Leon and Motek. There were six children altogether. I knew all my aunts, except Ruta, and uncles. My mother’s father died young and her mother died in 1919. The children were left on their own.

The oldest sister [of my mother] was already a married woman at that time. I don’t know her full name, we called her Auntie Sala. She lived in Lask. Her husband’s name was Lajb Borensztajn. After Grandma’s death, she took the youngest sister, Hela, to live with her, and my mother was left with the two younger brothers, Leon and Motek, and with Ruta. My mother was taking care of them, but it did not last too long. She soon got married.

My mother supported herself and her brothers by giving private lessons, they were probably Polish lessons. She would go to her pupils’ homes. By the standards of those days, my mother was quite an educated person – she had completed the equivalent of today’s gymnasium. She had graduated from a school in Lodz. She did the ‘small finals’ [semi-final exams held in the middle high-school years]. She knew Polish, Russian and German – she had probably studied these languages at school.

In the United States there lived an aunt of my mother’s, who had several children. She decided that since there were all these orphans left behind, she would take one of the children to live with her. And my mother was supposed to be the one to go. But she wrote to her aunt saying that she couldn’t go to the States, because she had already given her word to a man [her future husband] and so she couldn’t do it. As a result, it was my mother’s younger sister Ruta who went to the USA in 1919.

My mother’s brother Motek was crippled. As far as I know, when he was just a baby, less than a year old, he fell, during a bath I think, and so one of his legs was shorter than the other. I don’t know exactly what the problem was, but in any case he was crippled and it was very visible.

Motek got married at the beginning of the 1930s. His wife’s name was Helena, and their daughter was called Anulka. Helena was a seamstress, she adjusted dresses for people, and he was a caretaker. They lived in a basement room opposite the park in the area close to the university.

My father’s family came from a small town whose name I don’t remember, somewhere in the German sector. [Editor’s note: After 1795 the Polish state ceased to exist, and was split among three neighbors: Russia, Austria and Prussia. Prussia took over the western and northern part of Poland which was henceforth known as the Prussian or German sector. Poland regained its independence in 1918.]

My father’s name was Beniamin Szwarc and he was 13 years older than my mother, which means he was born in 1886. However, I don’t know the day or the month. Papa was a small child when his family moved to Lodz. My grandpa died when I was just a few months old [1926] and Grandma had died before then.

My father had siblings: two sisters, who were much older than he, then a younger sister, and a brother; their names were Hasura, which might have been short for Hanna Sura, Ita and Lola. I don’t remember the brother’s name. I believe my father was the youngest. I don’t know anything about the brother; he might have been around the same age as my father.

My father completed three or four classes of elementary school. When he was nine or ten years old his parents sent him off to learn to be a shoemaker. But after two to four days Father came home and said he would not go back there. He said one could learn to repair shoes in just a few days, and this was not for him. Then they tried to make him into a tailor but that didn’t work out either. Finally, he discovered electro-technology. He studied it as someone’s apprentice. This is how people learned their trades in those days.

As far back as I can remember, my father was always working as an electrician. This was quite an exclusive profession in those days, when electric light was only being developed. When someone’s lighting broke down, they would call my father and he would repair it. His entire workshop fit into a single briefcase – inside it, he had an inductor, a few screwdrivers, and some other small things. My father went to work in the same clothes he wore all day long

He didn’t make much money, we were quite poor. He would be gone all day, but he always came home for lunch at 2pm. We would all sit at the table, each person at their own place [at the table] and we would all have lunch together.

Papa did not serve in the military. In order to avoid being recruited into the Russian army, he had cut off two of his toes. [Editor’s note: men recruited into the tsarist army would spend 25 years in service – hence common cases of self-mutilation, a method of avoiding military service.] This was not a serious disability, he could walk normally, and you didn’t see it when he was walking. Quite simply, I knew about this because I saw it many times, and generally, it was a well known fact in the family.

My father’s oldest sister, Hasura, had two sons and a daughter. They were much older than me. I am not even sure if I addressed them by their first names, or more formally, as ‘cousin.’ Hasura lived in Lodz. I do not remember her husband’s name. Their sons survived in the Soviet Union. And the daughter, along with her husband, were both in Warsaw. They paid a very high price to get into Polski Hotel 1 and then they were killed.

The other sister’s name was Ita. My parents were good friends with her daughter, Sala, and the husband, whose name escapes me. They had two daughters and two sons: Hanka, Halinka, Romek and Izio. Halinka, was my age [she was born in 1925], while her sister Hanka was my sister’s age [born in 1923]. The children were also good friends with one another. The generations had gotten mixed up a bit. They were all killed in Lodz.

My father’s youngest sister was called Lola. I don’t know her last name. She lived in Berlin. When Hitler came to power 2, she emigrated to Palestine and settled in Haifa.

In 1936 or 1937 my father’s younger brother, whose name I don’t remember, took his wife and his daughter Dorka to Palestine, but after two years they came back. They probably did not like it there. Dorka was the same age as me. She died in Lodz Ghetto 3, her parents were killed in Auschwitz.

My mother and her siblings lived in a single room at 33 Wschodnia Street in Lodz. It was the second floor. Right on the other side of one of the walls of this room there was a restaurant. And on the day of my grandma’s [Mrs. Biber’s] death, my future father happened to be sitting in this restaurant, having his lunch. And he heard the terrible crying of children. He went over to the apartment to see what was going on. And he fell in love with my mother.

• My siblings

My parents’ wedding was on 11th November 1920 – they chose this date to celebrate the anniversary of Poland’s independence 4. My parents were also living at 33 Wschodnia Street, in the same building where my mother lived with her siblings. Except that their place was a floor below, on the first floor.

Wschodnia Street was inhabited by Jews. Not exclusively, of course, but it was a sort of Jewish quarter. There were some orthodox Jews living there as well. And of course you would hear Jewish [Yiddish] spoken in the street.

After my parents got married, my mother’s brothers moved in with them. At the age of 13 one of the brothers, Leon, took offence at my father. I will tell you how this happened. It was 1920 or 1921. My father was an electrician, and he wanted to teach Leon the trade. He took him as an apprentice, but Leon did not like the arrangement.

What he especially did not like was that my father would make him carry his briefcase when the two of them went over to people’s homes to repair the lighting. He was insulted by this; he told me so himself, over 40 years later. And he ran away from home.

There was no news from him until 1938. That’s when a telegram came to our house, from Spain. My mother took this telegram, read the word ‘Leon’ but then she couldn’t read any further. She asked the postman to read it to her. It turned out the telegram was in Spanish. But the postman misunderstood one word in it.

He though it said ‘dead.’ My mother fainted. And I ran downstairs to our neighbor, Rozia Bekier, a very close friend of my mother’s. She saw that it was in Spanish and told me where to go, who would translate it for me. It turned out that the telegram said: ‘Everything is fine. Leon.’

In any case, I can feel it even today – my heart pounding, as I ran over to Zawadzka Street, because that’s where this person lived who knew Spanish. And I could find this apartment even today. This is how strongly I felt about it. Soon afterwards, a letter from Leon arrived, and it turned out that he had taken part in the war in Spain 5. He needed some documents, such as his birth certificate. This is why he suddenly remembered that he had a family.

My mother was my father’s second wife. The first wife had died. I don’t know anything about her. My father had three children from that first marriage: Sala, Fela and Hersz. These children were all placed in an orphanage in Lodz – apparently, my father just couldn’t manage on his own with three children.

It wasn’t until after my parents got married that these kids returned home. And I was raised together with them. All three completed elementary school. These were schools for Jewish children, and the only difference from Polish schools was that Saturdays were free, and that Judaism was the religion taught at school.

My older stepsister was named Sala, and the younger one was Fela, and the step-brother’s name was Hersz. We were step-siblings, but this did not make any difference, we didn’t feel it that way. They addressed my mother as ‘auntie.’

The oldest sister was 14 or 15 years older than me, it must have been 1931 or 1932 when she got married. But we stayed in close touch with one another after that. She lived in Baluty [poor, working-class section of Lodz, in the northern part of the city, inhabited mostly by Jews], at 48 Limanowskiego Street, in a single room with her husband, Pinkus Wyszegrod, their son Bronek, and her husband’s mother.

I remember this room in Baluty quite well, because later [during the war] I lived there myself, with my parents. During the war, as you know, the Baluty area was the ghetto. I remember what this room looked like before the war: the door was in the middle of the wall, and on the left there was a tile stove.

Behind the stove there were two beds, where Sala and Pinkus and their small son all slept. To the right of the door there was a curtain which separated off the space used by my sister’s mother-in-law. And in the middle there was a table and some chairs. It was a sunny room. The water and the toilet were both outside, in the yard, but they did have electric light.

When I was seven years old, I was already an aunt [Bronek was born in 1932]. Sala and Pinkus had a small ice-cream shop. It was almost exactly opposite their apartment – on the other side of the road. Sala used to help her husband run this shop. An ice-cream cost 5 groszy [unit of currency, 1/100 of 1 zloty]. It was scooped up with a spoon into a wafer.

In the summer they were quite busy, but in the wintertime it all came to a standstill, maybe they managed to sell some wafers and some chocolate, but it was not a good business then. Pinkus had more free time then so he studied various languages, for instance English and Esperanto. He was very intelligent, and he just taught himself – out of books.

My other step-sister, Fela, was twelve years older than me. She was a seamstress. Before the war she fell in love with Henryk Szmulewicz, but she left him and married a Jew from an aristocratic family [meaning that they were educated and wealthy]. His name was Pawel Merenlender. People called him ‘Polek.’ I suspect that she did it partly out of snobbery. Pawel’s brother was a lawyer, and there were a few doctors in the family, too. Pawel worked in an office.

Fela gave birth to a child, but from the very beginning it suffered from epilepsy. This child died in the ghetto in 1940, when it was less than two years old. Fela stayed with her husband for another year or two after that, but she’d had enough. She left him, and went back to her first love, to Heniek. And she was with him until his death [Henryk Szmulewicz died in 2001 or 2002].

I don’t recall the date of Hersz’s birth – he is the last of my step-siblings. I know very little about him. For three years he was in the military – until 1938 or 1939. Before the war he was engaged to Guta Samsonowicz. Hersz died in Auschwitz. Guta survived, and after the war she went to Israel.

I also have a biological sister – Renata. She is two years older than me [born in 1923]. Before the war we both went to the same elementary school. She completed this school and went on to a Polish public vocational school on Narutowicza Street. She was studying book-binding. In 1939 she finished this three-year vocational school.

On Wschodnia Street we lived in a one-room apartment with a kitchen. My parents gave up renting the apartment that was left when Grandma died, because that was just one room without a kitchen.

Today I can hardly understand how we could live there. One large room and a large kitchen! I guess the size of this room must have been about 20 square meters. The view was onto the street. I think there was some wallpaper on the walls. When you entered the room, you had a stove on your left, two beds, and a laundry basket to the side of my father’s bed. Between the stove and the wall was where my father kept his tools, he had some shelves built in there.

There was a table – seven persons could sit there comfortably, so it must have been big. Around the table there were seven chairs and an arm-chair for Papa. And behind his arm-chair there was a large mirror. Opposite the door – two wardrobes. And two beautiful, huge portraits of my father and my mother were hung on the opposite wall.

In the kitchen my father made this partition – he made the kitchen smaller so that my sister Fela could have her sewing workshop. It was called ‘the little room.’ My sisters slept there, and there was a folding bed for my brother as well. The little room had a window.

So  altogether we were eight persons living in this one-room apartment: five kids, mother, father and a woman who helped run the household, before the war you would call her ‘servant girl.’ Her name was Frania, she was Polish, she stayed with us for many years, until 1935 or 1936. After that she got married.

Then there were also customers coming to see Fela. They would come into the room, of course, there was a screen, and they would get behind it to try on their dresses. I can hardly reconstruct it all today – how it was all possible.

We had to light up the tile stove and then the kitchen stove, too. It was in my lifetime, in my living memory, that a sink was installed in the kitchen. I must have been about five years old at the time. And a year or two later we had a tap. So that means that until then we didn’t even have running water in the kitchen. It’s hard to imagine today, a life like this.

Once a month my mother and Frania would spend three days washing the dirty laundry. Nobody had a separate bed just to themselves, except for my brother, and he slept in a small folding bed. I slept with Papa, my sister Renata slept with our mother, and the two older sisters shared a bed with each other. The servant girl slept on a folding bed. The kids would go to sleep before the parents. Frania used to put me to sleep by telling me stories and singing lullabies.

• Growing up

My mother took care of the household. She also read a lot – mostly literature, she read the same novels as the whole family. My father also did some reading, but he was more interested in the press. He read some Jewish paper, I think it was in Yiddish. I know for sure that my parents both knew Yiddish, but they spoke Polish with each other. I remember also that they spoke Polish with their siblings.

As for me, I don’t know Yiddish. I didn’t even understand it. I would always play with other kids in Polish. My step-sisters and step-brother did know Yiddish, I remember hearing them speak it.

In my family home we didn’t celebrate any Jewish holidays. And we never went to the temple. My mother did not have any political views. And Papa had leftist sympathies, but he didn’t have any strong political commitments either. I know that he was a sort of militant atheist, and my mother didn’t like this at all. What she resented was the militant part, the fact he would demonstrate his views openly. She thought you should not be too provocative, she wanted to avoid irritating the relatives, the aunts and uncles who would come visit us.

It was also a matter of food: my mother did not want guests to refuse to eat at our house. And my father used to say: if they don’t want to eat, they don’t need to eat. So there would not be a problem whether one can eat at our house or not because we did not keep kosher.

Thanks to Frania my mother cooked Jewish dishes. Because, to tell you the truth, it was Frania, a Polish woman, who taught my mother to cook such typical Jewish specialties as, for instance, chulent. On Fridays either my mother or Frania would take it to the bakery, where bread was baked, and on Saturday you would pick it up. Except that it wasn’t kosher. Before the war my mother did not buy kosher meat, because it was expensive, and the non-kosher type was cheaper, so she would buy that. And after the war she would even make chulent based on lard.

How do you make chulent? You take some fat, then the potatoes, barley and the meat. You bring it all to a boil, and cook it. The pot needs to be covered with paper, so the steam does not escape. Chulent has to sit in the stove for at least twelve hours.

On Friday night we often had fish, cooked the Jewish way. Carp. I can make Jewish carp, too. You slice the fish, and sprinkle salt on it. The fish has to remain in the salt for a while. Then you put it in sweetened water with sliced carrot in it, and you cook it for two hours.

Another dish was chopped liver. You slice some onions, and fry it. Then you add the liver and you grind it all. You add garlic, salt and pepper to taste. I did not know this was called Jewish caviar. At home we did not call it that. I don’t think we even knew that such a thing as caviar exists. We just said: liver paté. I don’t know any other Jewish specialties.

We had a Christmas tree every year, because Papa liked them so much. I am like that till this very day -– I can’t get rid of a Christmas tree, not until my son Piotr throws it out almost by force, after two months. Papa always bought and decorated the tree. There was no special meal on Christmas Eve. We just had the tree standing there, because it was so pretty. Before the war almost all the Christmas tree decorations were edible – little wafer houses, pieces of candy, toys, you’d eat it all afterwards. The tree was all the way to the ceiling.

I also remember goose-Monday [Christian custom which consists in pouring water on each other on Easter Monday]. But there was nothing Christian about this – it was just great fun for both kids and adults, this splashing of water in the street. So this is the sort of household we had.

My closest family was not religious. In fact, I don’t remember anyone who would really be religious. But I remember this cousin of my mother’s, Mala Bajgielman – her mother, who was very much a believer, used to come visit her from another city, and when she came, Mala would come over to borrow some plates, with a pattern different from her plates. Then she would tell her mother that one set was for meat, and the other for dairy products. As soon as her mother left, she would return the dishes to us.

I remember she did this two or three times. The point was to reassure her mother. Mala lived on Piotrkowska Street, near Zawadzka Street. She took care of the house, and her husband ran an applications-writing service.

I remember my father and my mother’s younger brother talking politics. But at the time I was too young to understand. They were basically indifferent to Zionism. The idea of leaving was simply not there. I don’t remember my parents mentioning anti-Semitism. Anyway, before the war I never experienced any of that [anti-Semitism].

My parents’ social life was with their relatives. There were almost no friends from outside of the family. Perhaps this one neighbor, Rozia Bekier, the one I told you about – my mother sent me over to her to have that telegram translated. This was a very close friend of my mother’s. And I was close with her daughter.

I think my mother and Rozia got to know each other when Rozia was living on Wschodnia Street, in her husband’s apartment. Her husband’s sister also lived there, along with her family. They took up the whole ground floor, on the right.

I was born on 30th October 1925. I can’t say what my nicest childhood memory is. It was a childhood lived in poverty. I remember that when they were collecting contributions to LOP [Air Defense League – pre-war organization which collected funds for the development of Poland’s air force], or some other cause – 5 or 10 groszy per month – then I would apologize and say I had forgotten to tell my mommy to give me the 5 or 10 groszy. This was not true, but I did not want to tell them my mother had no money.

I remember that in those days a 2 kg loaf of bread cost 50 groszy. A kilogram of sugar cost 1 zloty. It was very rarely that my mother sent me shopping, but I do remember those prices.

I don’t think it was an extraordinary childhood, but I guess it was a good one. I lived in a loving family. My father really adored my mother. I remember, one day in the ghetto, my sister and I were reading books, and Mother took a brush and started sweeping the floor. Papa got very angry with us: how can you sit around reading and let your mother do the cleaning! My mother was treated like a saint in the house. There were no riches, no special attractions, but it was a good childhood.

I remember my favorite toy – when you have just one doll then you remember it well. I think that today’s kids will not remember anything. In the USA, in the house of my cousin’s children, you could hardly enter the room of their kids, the whole place was so cluttered with toys. If I could draw, I could draw my doll perfectly even today.

My father’s sister, Lola, she lived in Berlin. Once she came to Poland, she took me to this store on Pomorska Street, and there she bought me this doll. I don’t remember how I named it. All the dolls had crooked legs, but mine had straight ones and she could stand up. She had a dress and hair made out of plastic. Sometimes, too, I would get a balloon. The balloons were filled with gas, and you had to hold on, or they would fly away.

I attended a school which seemed quite ordinary to me at the time, but now it seems strange. In Lodz, at 11 Sienkiewicza Street. I remember it very well, it was school number 131. A school for Jewish children, but it did not have only Jewish teachers. You could say that the Jewishness of this school was limited to two things:

no classes on Saturdays, and Jewish religion lessons, but nobody studied for those, because we all knew that you had a guaranteed 5 [highest grade] for behavior and for religion. I don’t remember anything from religion lessons I attended in this period.

We were being educated in the spirit of patriotism, and this really spoke to me. You had to stand up at attention in front of the eagle [White Eagle – Poland’s national symbol], and of course I remember till this day all the legion songs 6 and the Polish national anthem. We were taught all the patriotic, military and folk songs.

Pilsudski’s 7 funeral – this must have been the one pre-war event that made the strongest impression on me! The mourning was just terrible! I have no doubts that my parents felt very deeply about it as well. At school we all wore 4 stars on our berets, it was the school’s symbol. So you had to sew black crepe around the stars, and all year long we wore mourning ribbons.

They showed the film from Pilsudski’s funeral, and we would go to see it, the whole class would go to the theater to see it. I also remember the little poems I recited on Pilsudski’s name-day:

            We are both called Jozio - you and I.

            All of Poland knows you well,

            But nobody knows me yet,

            ‘Cause I am just a little kid.

But when I grow up big and strong,

            In the army with you I’ll go

We always celebrated Pilsudski’s name-day [19th March], and all these anniversaries, the Polish uprisings [In the 123 year period of Poland’s occupation there were three uprisings for independence, all failed: the Kosciuszko Uprising in 1794, the November Uprising in 1830 and the January Uprising in 1863].

My year was not yet co-educational. I believe co-education was introduced about two or three years before the war. By 1939, when I had completed seven years of elementary school, the first three classes were, I think, mixed. It sometimes happened at school that the boys would talk in Yiddish during the break – it never happened before that, with only girls around. And they would be punished for it. They would sit in ‘jail’ – it meant they were made to stay after school for an extra hour or more. This was a rule made by the school principal, a Jewish woman.

I don’t know how it worked in other schools. [Editor’s note: We have not been able to establish whether a similar ban, and punishments for its breaking, existed in other Jewish schools. In general, Jewish teachers did attach enormous importance to their students’ ability to speak proper Polish. Nonetheless, it appears that the strict ban on Yiddish was an individual idea of the principal of the school attended by Mrs. Najduchowska]. On Saturdays we had no school, instead we went on Sundays.

I can’t say which subjects I liked. I could tell you which teachers I liked. I did not enjoy school. I mean, I did not like studying, but I did like my school friends a lot. I was close with many girls. In my class there were 50 girls; four of them survived. Ewa Parzeczewska lives in Canada; Jadzia Rubinstein and Hanka Fiszman live in Israel, and I am the fourth.

My sister and I – neither of us was a good student. I always judged myself like this: that I was dull,  stupid... But now I sometimes think it was not so much a question of my stupidity, but rather of those conditions.

There was no place to do homework. I asked my sister: how did we do our homework? At this time the older sister [Fela] was still living with us, running that dress-making business. Renata told me that we often did our homework on the window sill. The clients would come, and they would sit at the table. If I sat at the table with strangers, who were all talking, there was simply no way to do homework properly, [though] mother did make sure we finished all our lessons.

The worst nightmare of my childhood were the dictations, that my mother did for us. I made terrible spelling errors. Perhaps today this would be accepted as dyslexia. For three months, from October till December, I studied German at Jaszynska’s Gymnasium. They taught us to write in gothic script, but I would go to my mother, asking her to read what I myself had written, because I couldn’t make it out.

So after school we had to do our homework, and later I would see my girl-friends. These were very close friendships, we were always visiting each other, and there was no need to call beforehand, because there were no phones. I would walk over to their homes on my own; we lived very close to each other. I did not play outside the building with kids from my block. I don’t know why. Maybe because for such a long time there had been a sewer there?

I was good friends with my cousin Halinka. And with Dorka, the daughter of my father’s younger brother, who had been to Palestine and then came back. And in our house there was this girl named Felunia, she was my age, a class above me. And our neighbor from the same floor, Stas Fajflowicz. His father was a doctor.

Stas and I used to draw and paint together, and we tried to write. His family later moved to a better house in a better part of the city. I was invited to his birthday and this was the first time I’d ever seen a radio, which talked real loud all by itself. I was very impressed

Then, on the second floor there lived this boy; I was friendly with. His father was a traveling salesman. They lived in a single room, like us, and later they moved to Koscielny Square. These were all kids from assimilated families. [According to Mrs. Najduchowska, assimilation meant departing from visible attributes of Jewishness, such as traditional clothing, kosher cooking, celebrating Jewish holidays.

In fact, assimilation is the emancipation of Jews, their opening up to external influence and their participation in non-Jewish social life. It appears that the difference between the two definitions pertains to the level of integration into Polish society. The fact of abandoning the Jewish way of life did not, in many cases, lead to a tighter bond with the Polish world].

I did not play with Polish children. I had Jewish friends, we visited each other in our homes. With the girls we mostly played with our dolls. We would also play ball, and if someone had a bicycle, they would lend it to the others. A bicycle was the great dream of my childhood.

On Sunday afternoons I went to church with [our housekeeper] Frania. I did everything that the others did. I don’t know whether I liked going there. I think it was all the same to me. I went because Frania wanted to take part in mass. After church Frania used to take me over to my friend’s house, on Koscielny Square.

From time to time school outings were organized to the cinema. And sometimes I would get 25 groszy for a movie. I don’t know how many times I went on my own. I did go a few times with school. I even remember some of the movies. But I also went with my girl-friends a few times, to different cinemas. I did not have any favorite film stars. You would have to go to the movies more often than I did, to have your own favorites.

Once I went to a play, to a children’s theater. My sister, the seamstress, must have gotten tickets from one of her clients. I don’t remember where the theater was located. I remember that all the children were supposed to point at something with their fingers and repeat some words.

My two aunts lived in Lask [town located 35 km south-west of Lodz]. I spent many Spring breaks, I mean Easter breaks, at my older aunt’s place there. I would stay for two weeks each time. I think once I went with Renata, but a few times I went on my own. My parents would put me on the train, and then my aunt, Sala, would pick me up in Lask. They lived right opposite her husband’s mother, at Tylna Street 9.

The seder table was always set and Uncle Leib’s mother came over and then supper would begin. My uncle read some things, or said some things. After half an hour they would tell his mother she was old now and had better go lie down. As soon as she was gone, the seder was over. They only did it [the seder] for her sake.

I don’t know whether they celebrated any other holidays. It was a small town and you could not really make it known to outsiders that you were not a believer. I know that my uncle used to go to the synagogue on Fridays, I remember this, but I don’t know if they were religious.

Sala had a bedroom, a dining-room and a kitchen. There were two beds in the bedroom, on the left there was their son’s bed.

The other aunt’s name was Hela. They married her off using some matchmakers. Her husband made men’s shirts, or maybe it was long underwear. On Fridays he would go to the market and sell what he had made during the week. They had a daughter named Anulka, born two or three years before the war. I used to go to their apartment in Lask, they lived in the main square. You walked through a small kitchen into the room. There were two beds to the sides, and as you entered the room you faced the table.

Beside these periods spent in Lask, at Aunt Sala’s, we also went for vacation to Teodory, 7 kilometers from Lask [village located 40 km from Lodz]. The last year there was no money at all for vacation. Three years in a row we went to Wisniowa Gora [summer resort, 10 km east of Lodz, popular with Jews in the inter-war period], because they built a swimming pool there and a dance hall, and they organized parties and dances there.

Today you would call it a club. My father worked at setting up electricity there. And we received – I think it was free of charge – an apartment to stay in, from the owners who were building it. And we lived there [through the vacations] in two or three consecutive years. My mother, my sister and myself – whereas my father only came for the weekends.

The next two or three summers we also spent in Wisniowa Gora but in a different house, these were summer rentals. My mother cooked and we ate at home. We played with other girls, the daughters of people who came there for vacations. We played ball, volleyball. These girls had a bicycle, so I rode a bicycle, too. I was never bored.

There is no river in Wisniowa Gora. It was a typical Jewish summer resort. I suspect that it was only Jews that went there, to spend two or three months each summer. There were no real peasants there, working in the fields, the sort you might see in Teodory. That was a real village.

The [financial] situation [of our family] deteriorated during the last two years before the war. My father’s relatives talked him into setting up a shop with electro-technical goods. A lot of money was spent on this – money we did not have. It was borrowed money, and it had to be paid back. The shop was on 11 Listopada Street. My mother helped Papa in the shop. Papa prepared the goods, such as lamps, and my mother sold them. By then, of course, we no longer had any domestic help.

I completed elementary school in 1939. After the summer vacation I was supposed to go over to that sister who was a seamstress [to learn the trade]. I was supposed to learn dressmaking. But war was coming. My parents didn’t believe it would break out; they did not want to leave. I think in Lodz there was really no chance to hide. Besides, nobody knew that the ghetto would be as closed as it later was.

I remember these conversations from the beginning of the war. People would suggest that we all go to the Soviet Union. My father would always say to this: here are my beds, here is my house, I’m not going anywhere. The idea of leaving was just never considered.

• In the ghetto

In February 1940 we moved to the ghetto with my parents and my sister. We took what we were able to pack. There was no way to take the shop with us. You moved things on sleighs, in suitcases, in bags. Over and over again we walked to my older step-sister Sala’s place [to Baluty]. Her mother-in-law was no longer alive by then. My sister Fela and her husband Pawel and their son took over the other room.

Also, by that time Sala and Pinkus did not have the ice-cream shop any more. Nobody made ice-cream, there was nothing to make it from. Later they moved away from Limanowskiego Street, because Pinkus got the position of a caretaker in another building.

My father didn’t have his shop any more. It functioned for another two or three months after the Germans came, but it had to be closed down before we moved to the ghetto. Papa worked in a ‘resort’ [German workshop with forced labor in Lodz ghetto] as an electrician. Mother didn’t work as long as she could avoid it, but later she too worked in one of the resorts. You had to work – maybe it was because this is how you got the food stamps?

The ghetto streets did not look the way they did in the Warsaw ghetto8 – you can see in the films that they had dead bodies lying in the streets. I think that [in the Lodz ghetto] the organization was better. Everyone had to work, and everyone got stamps for food rations. A lot of people did die of hunger, but you could also survive. I suppose it depends on one’s condition.

I did not feel fear. Only once, during the ‘great szpera’ 9. I was in the hospital then, I had jaundice. Suddenly, one morning, we heard they were removing people from two hospitals on Lagiewnicka Street. It was clear they were taking people away. A panic broke out. I was a person who calmed others down. It wasn’t clear where they were taking people, but in any case it meant parting with your family.

My mother, my father and my sister were standing in the street, like many other families of people who were in the hospital. I managed to jump out of a window on the ground floor. I wasn’t the only one, many others did the same thing. We knew by then that one hospital was already being emptied out, and that they would do the same with ours, so all those who could were running away. My parents caught me and we were walking home.

I remember precisely that before the bridge on Limanowskiego Street, we were stopped by the doctor, the one who was treating me, Doctor Nekricz. He took my mother aside and said something to her. It turned out that the Germans were doing a head-count at the hospital. Whenever they found a patient was missing, they went to their home and dragged this person out. So the doctor told my mother not to take me home, but to leave me with some friends or relatives.

We went to the family of the sister of our uncle from Lask. She also had a daughter my age, I played with her whenever we were in Lask. So my mother asked them to please keep me at their place for just a few days. She hoped that in a few days it would blow over. But they refused. Quite simply, they were afraid. I always remember this when people speak critically about those Polish families that refused to give shelter to Jews. Here we had a Jewish family, close relatives, and they didn’t want to give me shelter.

Then my sister took me over to her friend and I spent a week there. It turned out that nobody [no Germans] had come to get me [at our place]. Later the whole thing became clear. What happened was that at the same hospital, in the very next room, there was another Halina Szwarc, the daughter of one of the nurses. The nurse signed her out of the hospital with the false date before the ‘szpera.’ But by mistake, she signed me out instead of her daughter.

The Germans came to get her [this other Halina Szwarc] in her home, and they took her away. People told us later that she was screaming – instead of the right Halina, they are taking the wrong one! But she managed to get the daughter out of the bus they had put her on. I remember that the buses were used to take sick people to the train station.

When the war ended, I was in Mauthausen 10 and I heard there the name Halina Szwarc. I hope she survived. I don’t know how I could manage in life, knowing that someone else was killed in my place.

The ‘szpera’ went on for at least two weeks. People were taken into the yard, and they checked if all the rooms are empty. Germans stood there together with Jewish policemen, saying, ‘rechts’ and ‘links.’ I had jaundice, which I had caught in the hospital. I remember my father painting me. He would paint my cheeks red, so they would not see how yellow I was. But it didn’t help.

They made me go to the bad side [of people who were designated for the transport]. At some point my mother caught on to what was going on and she signaled to me that there was a way at the back, behind the Germans, where you could slip over to the good side. So it was the second time I had saved my life.

A great number of people were taken out of the ghetto that day. Mostly [they were taking] children, almost all of them. After such an intense experience, people would react by eating up all they had stored up at home. My mother watched carefully that we didn’t eat on one day what we had put away for the next. I remember our neighbors, who somehow managed to save their child that day, because they hid it somewhere. A few hours later they told us they had eaten all the food they had stored for the following week.

My step-brother Hersz was on the battlefront in 1939, and he ended up in a prisoner-of-war camp. I don’t know where this camp was. I believe he came to the ghetto in 1940, but I don’t know how he managed to get in. In 1941 he married this girl, Guta Samsonowicz, they were in love before the war. I remember that the wedding took place in the rabbi’s home. There were chairs, but no chuppah. [Mrs. Najduchowska cannot not remember any more details].

Frania was not able to stay in touch with us. The ghetto was very tightly closed. You couldn’t enter and you couldn’t leave. Till this day I sometimes wonder how my brother managed to get into the ghetto [after he escaped from the camp, when the ghetto was already closed]. But it must have been 1940 and maybe in this period it was still possible to get through.

During the war both my sister and I belonged to the Young Leftist Organization 11 in the Lodz ghetto. Even today I can’t tell exactly how I got involved in it. The organization reached me somehow, through friends. They had so called ‘loose fives,’ for candidates who wanted to join, and after that you were a full member. I belonged to the youth section.

Our meetings were held in private apartments. We studied Marxism-Leninism, and besides we had a very well-stocked library. We copied the books in longhand. Many large volumes were copied in this way, so there would be enough for everyone. Thanks to this there were many books. So I did not waste my time.

What did I learn from Marxism-Leninism? – I might have different views about it today, but it was certainly a very meaningful and important thing – the very fact that we studied, that we did all this reading and thinking. There were debates on various scientific topics. The [Marxist] interpretation was always provided – I suspect that I would disagree with many things today, nonetheless I still value that whole experience very highly.

We talked exclusively in Polish. The young people met in their fives, but there were also broader meetings. There was one more beautiful thing about this organization: we all had those tiny food rations, but each of us gave a spoon of sugar and a teaspoon of flour for those in greater need, and for the ill. It was literally taking food away from your mouth.

[In the organization] we all followed the slogan ‘WS - work slowly’ [Polish: ‘PP – Pracuj powoli’]. You were working for the Germans, so it made sense to work slowly. I worked at a sewing resort – my sister also worked there – and I was miserable. I know it’s a sin to talk like that – but if it were not for the war, I would be a seamstress today. I feel sick at the very sight of a needle, even today.

Later I worked in a metals factory, it was named the ‘metal resort.’ My first job was at a milling machine, then I operated a turning machine. This was quite unusual in those days, for a girl to be working in such a place, so I could afford to play games – I would show the men who were working there what I have made, I would boast to them what good job it was.

And then I’d put it under the cutter again, take off another millimeter, and it was ruined. Of course, they forgave me as a girl, how could a girl know how to do such things? I also tried to communicate with my co-workers in Yiddish, but that didn’t work. They began to laugh at me and I had to back out of it.

The population of the part of the ghetto where we lived was being displaced [the ghettos were being made smaller]. We moved into the factory – my father, my mother, Felka, Renata, and myself. We stayed in the ghetto until the very end, the last day. Until 1944 [the last transports from the Lodz ghetto took place in late August 1944].

I remember that people had these little plots of land where they grew something [vegetables] to eat. Papa and I crossed over to the other side illegally. If we had been caught at that point, immediately [we would have been sent] to hell [to the camp]. We picked some beets.

• In concentration and work camps

Then there was the transport to Auschwitz. We were all taken with the last transport [August 1944]. We were all taken to Auschwitz: Mother, Papa, Renata, Felka along with her husband and her son, Sala and her family. Once we got there, we were all separated. All the men go to one side, then go the children. My sister went with Bronek; she didn’t want to leave the child. Papa, as far as I know, went straight to the gas.

I was left with Mother, Renia and Felka. We survived the war together – it was a completely exceptional situation that we were not separated and that we survived. We only spent one day in Auschwitz. They took us off to Freiberg [the Freiberg camp was located in Chemnitz Kreis in Saxony, Germany]. There was a metals factory there and this is where we worked.

They had an exceptionally decent ‘Unterscharführer,’ that is camp commander. Unfortunately, the Americans killed him. On 14th April 1945 they evacuated us from Freiberg to Mauthausen and unfortunately the camp commander was killed. During the wartime I thought of him as a terrible bastard. But after the war, when I found out how things were in other camps, I thought that he was an exceptionally decent man. This was in 1944-45, I don’t know how he behaved in 1941 or 1942 or 1943.

In any case, he saved three pregnant women. He was supposed to send pregnant women to Auschwitz, but he hid them when there was some sort of inspection. These three children were born, and they all survived the war. I knew about it all the time, but we were living in dreadful conditions, eating in dreadful conditions. I didn’t know at the time that this [his hiding these women and thus saving their lives] was something extraordinary.

The Americans came to Mauthausen on 5th May, but we were not released until July. People did not return home from Mauthausen right away, because the Americans wouldn’t allow it. My mother, Felka and I returned in the first Polish transport, early in July [1945]. My sister [Renata] returned earlier, she was smuggled out of the camp by some Czechs. The Czechs stole away over a dozen people, because they were allowed to go home.

• After the war

We were kept locked up in there for another month. I was in a hospital then. I was very weak, there were problems with my heart. I was not allowed to leave the camp site. I would like to know myself why they forbade us to go outside the camp.

The Americans were spreading propaganda through the radio, claiming that they had sent messengers to Poland, to find out what was going on there. And that nobody is coming back. So they suppose that war is still going on over there, and that is why they won’t let us go.

Of course all of this was pure lies, they knew very well what was going on in Poland. They were creating a Polish Army somewhere in the west of Germany. They were encouraging men to go there. We were there as Jews, but they wouldn’t let anybody out – neither Jews, nor Poles.

It never occurred to us that we might not return to Poland. This was my homeland! I had been brought up to think in this way. I never heard at home that I was Jewish. Even today I find it hard to say that about myself. I always knew that I was a Polish-woman whose creed happens to be Judaism, except that my family were not believers.

My sister – the one who returned home a month before we did – went to the Lodz party committee. They had lots of empty apartments and she got one. Apparently, she had several to choose from, but all of the apartments were empty, without furniture. But on Strzelcow Kaniowskich Street, near the Kaliski train station, there was this one room. It wasn’t large, but there was furniture, sheets, towels, dishes, everything you need.

Olga Baden had lived there during the war. She left behind an album with photos of various SS-men. So my sister chose this one room and this is where we lived for a while.

The keys were always left with the caretaker, so when someone returned from camp and asked about us, the caretaker knew he should give them the keys. We would come home and find people there, waiting. This was my ‘largest’ apartment ever – in the sense that there was room for everyone there.

The whole floor was covered with bedding, anyone who needed to stay, was welcome. Friends from the wartime, and from before the war, they would return, ask around, find out we were living there and come over. They could stay until they got something of their own.

After the war we found out that my mother’s two sisters, and their entire families, were killed in Lask. Apparently, they took all the Jews to the cemetery, and shot them. [In 1942 4,000 Jews were taken out of the Lask ghetto: 3,500 were taken to the camp in Chelm on the Ner River, and 760 persons were taken to the Lodz ghetto]. Their children were also killed: nephew Daniel, Sala’s son and Anka, Hela’s daughter.

My mother’s brother, Motek, was killed during the war, along with his wife Hela, and their daughter, Anulka. They were taken out of the Lodz ghetto. My step-sister, Sala, died in Auschwitz with her child. They separated the children. The mothers went with their children. Her husband Pinkus survived Auschwitz, I saw him in 1964 in the United States.

My step-brother Hersz was taken to Auschwitz and died in one of the camps after Auschwitz was evacuated. His wife Guta survived, and after the war she emigrated to Israel. She completely cut her ties with our family. Evidently, she wanted to free herself of the past.

The other step-sister, Fela, survived the war. After the war, she married Henryk, when she was already pregnant. She gave birth to two children and in 1957 she left for Israel. Her son Teodor is in Australia, and her daughter lives in Israel. In Poland her name was Ryszarda, but in Israel she is called Ruth. Both the son and the daughter have their own families. Fela is no longer alive.

My mother’s brother, Leon, went to England, leaving Spain after the civil war, and he was in the Polish army 12. He married an Irishwoman, Minnie, and they had a son, another Daniel. After the war they settled in the USA, in California, in Los Angeles. He worked as a salesman in a shoe-store. He was 55 when he quit that job due to the conflict with the shop owner.

I remember that Aunt Ruth thought he had gone mad, because at his age he would never find another job. I remember that Mother told this story when she returned to Poland, and nobody could understand. He never came back to Poland again. They were not doing very well. And besides, Los Angeles is a bit further [from Poland] than New Jersey, [which is where Ruta lived]. After his wife’s death he moved to Israel and he died over there in the 1980s.

My mother’s third sister, Ruta, also survived the war, because in 1919 she had gone off to the United States. There she married Aba Fejtlowitz. They had two sons, Daniel and Harvey. My mother went to the States in 1959 – she saw her sister Ruta for the first time in 40 years then.

After that Aunt Ruta came to visit us a few times. She liked it in Poland very much. She especially enjoyed taking trams – she was very pleased that when she got on a tram, people would give up their seats for her. She did not know this custom from the States. She used to bring toilet paper with her [she probably thought Poland was terribly backwards and there isn’t enough toilet paper]. Aunt Ruta died in 1981, during martial law 13.

In 1959 my mother also met with her brother, Leon. In 1964 I had a scholarship to the States and I got to know them then. Our relations were very warm. I stayed with Aunt Ruta’s son [in New Jersey] for four and a half months. I didn’t notice them celebrating any Jewish holidays. Uncle Leon also did not know Jewish religion or Jewish customs.

When I was in the States, his son, Daniel, was 18 years old and graduating from high school. He became very religious. I was in their home for Passover and Daniel was making sure that everything was kosher, he did the whole seder celebration, because his father wouldn’t know how. His mother was getting very upset that he kept controlling her.

Later Daniel married a minister’s daughter. They brought their children up in such a way, that they could all decide on their own what they want to be: Jewish or Protestant. They celebrate the holidays of both traditions.

The first thing I did after the war was to join ZWM [Fighting Youth Union] 14 and to sign up for school. I went to school half-legally. I wanted to join straight away the fourth year of gymnasium, although I had only completed elementary school. I thought there was no point for me, at my age, to start with first year students.

One of my friends told me about this teacher who had taught in a gymnasium before the war, and whose ambition it was to be able to recognize all her former students. I went to see her. She pretended to recognize me immediately, claimed to remember me, she said I sat at the third table by the window. Of course, I confirmed that indeed this is where I used to sit and I got the permit.

I went to school, the fourth year, and for half a year I couldn’t work because I was catching up all those missing years. I did complete that fourth year of gymnasium then, and without any 3s [C’s]. For that matter, I didn’t have that many 5s [A’s] either. But I decided that this school does not satisfy my ambitions, and I went to one that did. Before the war this was a boy’s school named after Pilsudski, and after the war they turned it into the 3rd City Gymnasium on Sienkiewicza Street. This is where I completed two years of high school, while working full time at the ZWM.

I passed my final exams and enrolled in the university, the physics faculty. I wanted to study electricity, but it turned out to be too difficult, after all, to both work and study electrical engineering, so I finally opted for physics, because I thought it would be easier. But after the first semester, I found I couldn’t manage that either, even though my friends were helping me.

In Lodz there was a faculty of social pedagogy, and I began to study there. I kept at it for a year and a half, and then I moved to Warsaw, to take a position in the main headquarters of ZMP [Union of Polish Youth] 15. I moved to Warsaw on 1st March 1949. I lived at Unii Lubelskiej Square.

It took me until 1953 to bring my mother from Lodz, I only did that when I got a decent apartment, in Muranow district, on Nowolipie Street. That was also when I took [from Lodz] the remaining books and a few pieces of furniture. In Warsaw there was no pedagogy faculty, so I switched to sociology. For one month, this was in October 1955, I worked in the Department of Party History, but I quickly quit this job.

[After our return from the camp] my mother did not work. She had a job from 1954 to 1957 at ‘Ksiazka i Wiedza’ [‘Book and Knowledge’ publishing house] as a proofreader. After the political changes of 1956 16 they reduced the staff. My mother could have tried to struggle against this, she was close to retirement age, but we didn’t want it to seem like we cared so much about her getting her pension. She just stopped working and began taking care of the house.

In 1955 sociology was reactivated. I got a job at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, at the Polish Academy of Science. The head of my section was Julian Hochfeld [1911 – 1966, sociologist, socialist activist]. I did research on the process of disintegration of the ZMP structure. Later I did studies in the sociology of industry.

In 1956 we were doing our research in Zeran. I was a participant of all the changes taking place in Zeran at the time. Leszek Gozdzik [b. 1931, political activist at the Zeran car factory in Warsaw; leader of Zeran’s workers during the anticommunist protests of 1956], the leader of the workers, was in constant touch with us.

I was supposed to go to Zeran in the evening on the day of the famous Plenum of the Central Committee. [In October 1956 the Plenum session of the Central Committee (KC) of the communist party (PZPR) was held under pressure of workers’ protests, and with the threat of Soviet military intervention looming in the background. Wladyslaw Gomulka was elected for the position of the First Secretary of the Central Committee]. I stood in the hallway of our apartment, all dressed and ready to go, when my husband got a call – they said, if you want your wife to stay alive, you’d better keep her safe at home. I did not take this to heart and I went to Zeran anyway.

Later I went to work at SGPiS [Main School of Planning and Statistics – school of economics in Warsaw]. I really enjoyed teaching students. I gave lectures in sociology. In 1968 they decided I was unfit for academic work. The secret services sent in this list of people who were to be kicked out from work at SGPiS. But they had to motivate it somehow.

So they wrote that I do not seem promising in terms of my scientific research. Despite the fact that two or three months earlier I had received a post-doc scholarship, because I was finishing up my post-doctoral project. Over 60 persons were fired from SGPiS then.

It was a great tragedy for me, but my students behaved beautifully. I had a group in my MA seminar, twelve students, who sometimes visited me at home. When I told them I had been let go, one of them called to ask if he can come over. I said yes. That afternoon the bell rings, I open the door and there is line of twelve students, each of them holding flowers. This spontaneous gesture of solidarity coming from them really helped me live through the tragedy [of being fired due to Jewish roots].

Fortunately, I had good friends, who found me a job at the Institute of Politics and Scientific Research and Higher Education. But I kept up my fight to return to SGPiS, [despite the fact that] the Party organization accused me of organizing an illegal student demonstration, which was not true. A colleague warned me, however, that they might hire me again at SGPiS, and then throw me out [due to changing political atmosphere]. So I arranged to be [officially] hired again, [but did not return to work] and then resigned of my own free will.

I worked at the Institute until it was dissolved, which was in 1991 I believe. I mean it wasn’t totally dissolved, because it still exists, but there used to be 100 persons employed there, and now there are only ten left. Since I was past retirement age at the time, the new director said I might take some contracts from them, but I should not hold up a full time position. So I retired.

For a short period of time after the war, my sister worked at a post-office in Lodz. She cheated about her school years the way I did, except that in her case it was a lie of greater scope. She had finished only a vocational school. And she enrolled at the university without ever admitting that she was not a high school graduate. She told them her school documents were lost. They said she must take the finals. She would have passed them in the humanities, no problem. I don’t know, however, how it would have been with math and science.

When she was in her second year of studies she became an assistant of Ossowski, who valued her very highly, and she confessed to him that she did not have the finals. [Stanislaw Ossowski (1897–1963): great Polish sociologist and activist of the democratic opposition; enjoyed great respect and authority among the intelligentsia] When she went to take the exams it turned out there was a document from Ossowski, which said that there is no need for her to take the exam, because she is an excellent student. This way she avoided taking the finals!

Later she worked at Lodz University, then at the INS [Institute of Social Science] in Warsaw, and finally, until her retirement, she worked at the Institute of Sociology and Philosophy, Polish Academy of Science.

She married an Italian. She had studied Italian before the war. Someone had talked her into joining a course. After the war there was a trip to Italy, she was sent as translator, and this is how she met Vico. He fell in love with her and wanted her to move to Italy. She said this was out of the question, so he came here and they got married. And he stayed. They have a daughter who is a writer, her name is Magdalena Tulli.

• Later life

My husband’s name was Roman Franciszek Najduchowski. He was born on 21st January 1926, near Cracow. There was terrible poverty in that home. He lived in very bad conditions. This is probably why he got this bone disease, osteonecrosis. He had bone surgery 21 times. They amputated one of his legs. The disease attacked his kidneys.

We met during those two years when I was working at a ZMP school in Otwock, teaching history. My future husband was working at the economics department. Whether or not he knew much about economics then, I do not know. He had graduated from high school.

We got married in 1954 and we moved to Warsaw. My husband decided to continue studying – he graduated in economics at SGPiS. When we were about to get married I asked my mother if she would mind if my husband was not a Jew. She was surprised I would ask – of course she did not mind! She loved my husband.

In 1959 we had our son, Piotr Tomasz. When the child was born, my mother started taking care of him. She did absolutely everything about the house. She wouldn’t let me touch the kitchen: she thought that since I am working and my husband is working, it is her duty to do all the domestic chores. I appreciated this very much.

My son sometimes gets up at two in the morning every Friday, and puts the chulent in the oven, so that it’s ready for 2pm on Saturday. Then the guests can come. One does not eat chulent alone – so much work, all this getting up in the middle of the night – just to eat alone? But I don’t think he is especially attracted to Jewishness. At one point we used to make chulent for Sundays, because we worked on Saturdays. We treat it simply as a dish we make for our friends.

My mother died in 1978. Till the very end she was incredibly fit and active. She is buried in Warsaw in the Northern Cemetery. This is also where my husband’s grave is, and those of my mother’s cousins.

I was in Israel with my husband, for treatment for his disease, at the turn of 1977 and 1978. I managed to arrange for a certain sum of money from the bank. My sister Felka had left for Israel and was living there at the time, so we had a place to stay. For four months we lived in Bat Yam near Tel Aviv. We experienced great warmth from the people there.

We did lots of sight-seeing. Whenever my husband was not in the hospital, he would join me in my excursions. We were trying to see as much as possible. This was the best thing that could have happened to him before he died. He loved Israel. Unfortunately, there was nothing one could do for him, and my husband died in 1979.

I was in Israel once more, this time with my sister, at the beginning of the 1990s. We stayed with the husband of my sister Felka, but she was no longer alive by that time. Felka had died in the mid-1980s. We did a lot of sight-seeing, going from north to south. I have friends there, people I know from the organization in the Lodz ghetto. They often visit Poland. I also have a good friend from elementary school, Jadzia Rubinstein; we are in touch with each other on a regular basis.

Today I don’t work anymore, I live with my son. I miss work a lot. Life without it seems empty. Just three or four years ago I was still working. Now I read a lot. Sometimes I go to the cinema, to the theater or to a museum. Fortunately, I have many good, loving friends. I am happy as long as I have them.

• Glossary:

1 Hotel Polski: A well known German provocation. In 1943 the Germans announced that they would enable all Jews – citizens of neutral countries and territories incorporated into the Reich – to legally emigrate from Poland. They were supposed to be exchanged for German citizens who were being detained by the Allies.

Volunteers were supposed to come to Hotel Polski, which was located at Dluga Street 29, and to Hotel Royal on Chmielna Street in Warsaw. Many Jews considered this to be a possibility for saving their lives. They purchased documents of deceased persons or fake documents for huge sums of money.

In 1943 the first transport of Jews left Hotel Polski for a camp in Vittel in France. 4-5,000 people passed through Hotel Polski. Some were shot to death in the Pawiak prison in Warsaw. Most were taken to France and then to death camps in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Approx. 10% survived.

2 Hitler's rise to power: In the German parliamentary elections in January 1933, the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) won one-third of the votes. On 30th January 1933 the German president swore in Adolf Hitler, the party's leader, as chancellor. On 27th February 1933 the building of the Reichstag (the parliament) in Berlin was burned down.

The government laid the blame with the Bulgarian communists, and a show trial was staged. This served as the pretext for ushering in a state of emergency and holding a re-election. It was won by the NSDAP, which gained 44% of the votes, and following the cancellation of the communists' votes it commanded over half of the mandates.

The new Reichstag passed an extraordinary resolution granting the government special legislative powers and waiving the constitution for 4 years. This enabled the implementation of a series of moves that laid the foundations of the totalitarian state: all parties other than the NSDAP were dissolved, key state offices were filled by party luminaries, and the political police and the apparatus of terror swiftly developed.

3 Lodz Ghetto: It was set up in February 1940 in the former Jewish quarter on the northern outskirts of the city. 164,000 Jews from Lodz were packed together in a 4 sq. km. area. In 1941 and 1942, 38,500 more Jews were deported to the ghetto. In November 1941, 5,000 Roma were also deported to the ghetto from Burgenland province, Austria.

The Jewish self-government, led by Mordechai Rumkowsky, sought to make the ghetto as productive as possible and to put as many inmates to work as he could. But not even this could prevent overcrowding and hunger or improve the inhuman living conditions.

As a result of epidemics, shortages of fuel and food and insufficient sanitary conditions, about 43,500 people (21% of all the residents of the ghetto) died of undernourishment, cold and illness. The others were transported to death camps; only a very small number of them survived.

4 Poland’s independence, 1918: In 1918 Poland regained its independence after over 100 years under the partitions, when it was divided up between Russia, Austria and Prussia. World War I ended with the defeat of all three partitioning powers, which made the liberation of Poland possible.

On 8 January 1918 the president of the USA, Woodrow Wilson, declaimed his 14 points, the 13th of which dealt with Poland's independence. In the spring of the same year, the Triple Entente was in secret negotiations with Austria-Hungary, offering them integrity and some of Poland in exchange for parting company with their German ally, but the talks were a fiasco and in June the Entente reverted to its original demands of full independence for Poland.

In the face of the defeat of the Central Powers, on 7 October 1918 the Regency Council issued a statement to the Polish nation proclaiming its independence and the reunion of Poland. Institutions representing the Polish nation on the international arena began to spring up, as did units disarming the partitioning powers' armed forces and others organizing a system of authority for the needs of the future state. In the night of 6-7 November 1918, in Lublin, a Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland was formed under Ignacy Daszynski.

Its core comprised supporters of Pilsudski. On 11 November 1918 the armistice was signed on the western front, and the Regency Council entrusted Pilsudski with the supreme command of the nascent army. On 14 November the Regency Council dissolved, handing all civilian power to Pilsudski; the Lublin government also submitted to his rule.

On 17 November Pilsudski appointed a government, which on 21 November issued a manifesto promising agricultural reforms and the nationalization of certain branches of industry. It also introduced labor legislation that strongly favored the workers, and announced parliamentary elections.

On 22 November Pilsudski announced himself Head of State and signed a decree on the provisional authorities in the Republic of Poland.

The revolutionary left, from December 1918 united in the Communist Workers' Party of Poland, came out against the government and independence, but the program of Pilsudski's government satisfied the expectations of the majority of society and emboldened it to fight for its goals within the parliamentary democracy of the independent Polish state. In January and June 1919 the first elections to the Legislative Sejm were held.

On 20 February 1919 the Legislative Sejm passed the 'small constitution'; Pilsudski remained Head of State. The first stage of establishing statehood was completed, despite the fact that the issue of Poland's borders had not yet been resolved.

5 Spanish Civil War (1936-39): A civil war in Spain, which lasted from July 1936 to April 1939, between rebels known as Nacionales and the Spanish Republican government and its supporters. The leftist government of the Spanish Republic was besieged by nationalist forces headed by General Franco, who was backed by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy.

Though it had Spanish nationalist ideals as the central cause, the war was closely watched around the world mainly as the first major military contest between left-wing forces and the increasingly powerful and heavily armed fascists. The number of people killed in the war has been long disputed ranging between 500,000 and a million.

6 Polish Legions: A military formation operating in the period 1914-17, formally subordinate to the Austro-Hungarian army but fighting for Polish independence. Commanded by Jozef Pilsudski. From 1915 the Legions came under German command, but some of the Legionnaires refused, which led to the collapse of the organization.

7 Pilsudski, Jozef (1867-1935): Polish activist in the independence cause, politician, statesman, marshal. With regard to the cause of Polish independence he represented the pro-Austrian current, which believed that the Polish state would be reconstructed with the assistance of Austria-Hungary.

When Poland regained its independence in January 1919, he was elected Head of State by the Legislative Sejm. In March 1920 he was nominated marshal, and until December 1922 he held the positions of Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Army. After the murder of the president, Gabriel Narutowicz, he resigned from all his posts and withdrew from politics.

He returned in 1926 in a political coup. He refused the presidency offered to him, and in the new government held the posts of war minister and general inspector of the armed forces. He was prime minister twice, from 1926-1928 and in 1930.

He worked to create a system of national security by concluding bilateral non-aggression pacts with the USSR (1932) and Germany (1934). He sought opportunities to conclude firm alliances with France and Britain. In 1932, owing to his deteriorating health, Pilsudski resigned from his functions. He was buried in the Crypt of Honor in the Wawel Cathedral of the Royal Castle in Cracow.

8 Warsaw Ghetto: A separate residential district for Jews in Warsaw created over several months in 1940. On 16th November 1940 138,000 people were enclosed behind its walls. Over the following months the population of the ghetto increased as more people were relocated from the small towns surrounding the city. By March 1941 445,000 people were living in the ghetto.

Subsequently, the number of the ghetto's inhabitants began to fall sharply as a result of disease, hunger, deportation, persecution and liquidation. The ghetto was also systematically reduced in size. The internal administrative body was the Jewish Council (Judenrat). The Warsaw ghetto ceased to exist on 15th May 1943, when the Germans pronounced the failure of the uprising, staged by the Jewish soldiers, and razed the area to the ground.

9 Wielka szpera ('Great Curfew'): On 4th September 1942 the residents of the Lodz ghetto learned that according to an ordinance of the German authorities, all elders above 65 years of age and children below ten years of age would be deported from the ghetto.

Chaim Mordechai Rumkowski, head of the Council of Elders of the Lodz Ghetto, made his most famous speech then: '(…) In my old age I have to hold out my hands and beg: Brothers and Sisters, give them away! Fathers and Mothers, give me your children!' On 5th September 1942 Rumkowski implemented a curfew (German Sperre - closing, blockade, curfew).

The resettling committee began its work of preparing elders and children for deportation. The Jewish police, whose members were assured their children would not be deported, also participated in the action. Policemen with lists of names dragged children and old people out of their homes.

Sick people were also searched for by teams of Jewish physicians and nurses. Small children were torn from the hands of desperate mothers, sick people were dragged out of their beds. At the time everyone was conscious that the fate of the deported would find its end in the death camp in Chelmno upon Ner.  

10 Mauthausen: Concentration camp located in Upper Austria. Mauthausen was opened in August 1938. The first prisoners to arrive were forced to build the camp and work in the quarry. On 5th May 5, 1945 American troops arrived and liberated the camp. Altogether, 199,404 prisoners passed through Mauthausen.

Approximately 119,000 of them, including 38,120 Jews, were killed or died from the harsh conditions, exhaustion, malnourishment, and overwork. (Source: Rozett R. – Spector S.: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Facts on File, G.G. The Jerusalem Publishing House Ltd. 2000, pg. 314 – 315)

11 Leftist Organization in the Lodz Ghetto: Anti-Fascist Organization - Lewica Zwiazkowa (Union Left). - The name 'lewica' (left) began to be used in the 1930s, because the communist party was illegal. Lewica consisted mostly of young people, organized in so-called fives (five-person groups). Zula Pacanowska directed Lewica until 1942, later Hinda Barbara Beatus took over. Other well known members include Samuel Erlich (Stefan Krakowski), Natan Radzyner, Arnold Mostowicz. Their actions consisted mostly of sabotaging labor for the occupant.

12 Polish Armed Forces in the West (PSZ): Military formations of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Poland, organized outside of the country’s borders after the defeat in September 1939. At first PSZ forces were stationed in France, but due to the German attack on France, they were evacuated to Great Britain. The soldiers took part in the Battle for England (August 8October 31, 1940).

In 1944 PSZ, alongside the Allied forces, participated in the Normandy landing, where the Poles fought until the surrender of Germany. In 1945 the Polish Armed Forces in the West consisted of approx. 200,000 soldiers. They were dissolved in 1946-1947. Some soldiers returned to Poland, some remained abroad, disagreeing with the new pro-soviet Poland.

13 Martial law in Poland in 1981: Extraordinary legal measures introduced by a State Council decree on 13th December 1981 in an attempt to defend the communist system and destroy the democratic opposition. The martial law decree suspended the activity of associations and trades unions, including Solidarity, introduced a curfew, imposed travel restrictions, gave the authorities the right to arrest opposition activists, search private premises, and conduct body searches, ban public gatherings.

A special, non-constitutional state authority body was established, the Military Board of National Salvation (WRON), which oversaw the implementation of the martial law regulations, headed by General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the armed forces supreme commander. Over 5,900 persons were arrested during the martial law, chiefly Solidarity activists. Local Solidarity branches organized protest strikes.

The Wujek coal mine, occupied by striking miners, was stormed by police assault squads, leading to the death of nine miners. The martial law regulations were gradually being eased, by December 1982, for instance, all interned opposition activists were released. On 31st December 1982, the martial law was suspended, and on 21st July 1983, it was revoked.

14 Fighting Youth Union (ZWM): Communist youth organization founded in 1943. The ZWM was subordinate to the Polish Workers' Party (PPR). In 1943-44 it participated in battles against the Germans, and hit squads carried out diversion and retaliation campaigns, mainly in Warsaw, one of which was the attack on the Café Club in October 1943. In 1944 the ZWM was involved in the creation and defense of a system of authority organized by the PPR; the battle against the underground independence movement; the rebuilding of the economy from the ravages of war; and social and economic transformations. The ZWM also organized sports, cultural and educational clubs. The main ZWM paper was 'Walka Mlodych.' In July 1944 ZWM had a few hundred members, but by 1948 it counted some 250,000. Leading activists: H. Szapiro ('Hanka Sawicka'), J. Krasicki, Z. Jaworska and A. Kowalski. In July 1948 it merged with three other youth organizations to become the Polish Youth Union.

15 Union of Polish Youth (ZMP): Polish youth organization founded in July 1948 as a result of the fusion of the Youth Organization, the Society of the Workers' University, the Union of Democratic Youth, the Union of Fighting Youth, and the Union of Rural Youth ("Call to Arms"). The ZMP was politically and organizationally subordinate to the PPR and subsequently to the PZPR.

It was responsible for putting into practice the communist party's youth policy, and for ideological indoctrination designed to mould the consciousness of young people and set them against older generations. It mobilized young people to work on vast industrial construction sites, organized rivalry at work, controlled discipline at work among young people, participated in the collectivization of the countryside, monitored school curricula from the ideological standpoint, and kept strict control of the work of teachers in secondary schools and at universities.

In 1948 it had some 0.5 million members, in 1951 over a million, and in 1955 around 2 million. During the October political power struggle in 1956 the ZMP collapsed, and it was disbanded in January 1957.

16 Polish October 1956: The culmination of the political, social and economic transformations that brought about the collapse of the dictatorial regime after the death of Stalin (1953).

From 1954 the political system in Poland gradually thawed (censorship was scaled down, for instance, and political prisoners were slowly released - in April and May 1956 some 35,000 people were let out of prison). But the economic situation was deteriorating and the social and political crisis mounting.

On 28th June a strike and demonstration on the streets of Poznan escalated into an armed revolt, which was suppressed by police and army units.

From 19th to 21st October 1956 a political breakthrough occurred, the 8th Plenum of the PZPR Central Committee met under social pressure (rallies in factories and universities), and there was the threat of intervention by Soviet troops. Gomulka was appointed First Secretary of the PZPR Central Committee, and won the support of many groups, including a rally numbering hundreds of thousands of people in Warsaw on 24th October.

From 15th to 18th November the terms on which Soviet troops were stationed in Poland were agreed, a proportion of Poland's debt was annulled, the resettlement of Poles back from the USSR was resumed, and by the end of 1956 a large number of people found guilty in political trials were rehabilitated. There were changes at the top in the Polish Army: Marshal Rokossowski and the Soviet generals went back to the USSR, and changes also to the civilian authorities and the programs of political factions.

In November 1956 permission was granted for the creation of workers' councils in state enterprises, and the management of the economy was improved somewhat. In subsequent months, however, the process of partial democratization was halted, and supporters of continuing change ('revisionists') were censured.

17 Gomulka Campaign: A campaign to sack Jews employed in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the army and the central administration. The trigger of this anti-Semitic campaign was the involvement of the Socialist Bloc countries on the Arab side in the Middle East conflict, in connection with which Moscow ordered purges in state institutions.

On 19th June 1967, at a trade union congress, the then First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party [PZPR], Wladyslaw Gomulka, accused the Jews of lack of loyalty to the state and of publicly demonstrating their enthusiasm for Israel's victory in the Six-Day-War. This marked the start of purges among journalists and people of other creative professions. Poland also severed diplomatic relations with Israel.

On 8th March 1968 there was a protest at Warsaw University. The Ministry of Internal Affairs responded by launching a press campaign and organizing mass demonstrations in factories and workplaces during which 'Zionists' and 'trouble-makers' were indicted and anti-Semitic and anti-intelligentsia slogans shouted.

Following the events of March, purges were also staged in all state institutions, from factories to universities, on criteria of nationality and race. 'Family liability' was also introduced (e.g. with respect to people whose spouses were Jewish). Jews were forced to emigrate. From 1968-1971 15,000-30,000 people left Poland. They were stripped of their citizenship and right of return.

Eugenia Berger
Warsaw
Poland
Interviewer: Zuzanna Solakiewicz
Date of interview: January-February 2004

Eugenia Berger has been working at ‘Dos Yidishe Wort’ 1 for 35 years. She proofs articles written in Yiddish. She is a very elegant woman.

Our subject often seemed trivial to her – ‘Who is going to be interested in my family?’, she would ask. But in the course of our conversation memories slowly began to come back to her, and new stories cropped up.

We met twice in her apartment in a beautiful part of Warsaw not far from the city center. She lives alone; none of her closest relations are alive any more.

I also visited her at work, at the headquarters of ‘Dos Yidishe Wort.’

• My family background
• Growing up
• During the war
• ​After the war and later years

• Glossary

• My family background

My family is Jewish through and through; my father’s side of the family came from Wilno and my mother’s side from Latvia. I don’t remember either of my grandfathers or my grandmother on my father’s side. They died before I was born. All I know about my grandmother on my father’s side is that I was named after her – Eugenia.

But I remember my maternal Grandma Weiner well. She brought us up; she lived with us. She was a truly fantastic grandmother! We all loved our grandma to pieces. It may sound strange, but I can’t remember her name. We always called her ‘Grandma’; we never used her name.

Grandma was from Dzwinsk. I never went there because by the time I was born Dzwinsk was abroad [Latvia]. Grandma was very energetic and cheerful. My sister used to say that it was Grandma that I inherited my energy from, not Mama.

It was Grandma who looked after us. She washed our hair, she dressed us and changed us, because Mama couldn’t manage on her own – there were eight of us children at home. Nothing was impossible for Grandma. In her view there was a remedy for everything. Often, when Father needed something sorted out at the bank or at a government office, he would ask Grandma to go and do it for him. Everyone knew her. She knew how to deal with people.

Grandma came from a very rich family. She was very rich herself, too. Back before World War I, she had a shop selling furs in Dzwinsk. But then she had to escape. At home we had a beautiful silver samovar and an accounts ledger that had survived from that time.

The story about that ledger went that it contained the names of everyone who had ever taken goods from the shop on credit. It used to be said that if Grandma could recoup all those debts she would probably be a multi-billionaire.

Was Grandma religious? At home it was Mama who kept kosher. I have the feeling that my grandmother was worldlier but Mama was very religious. Grandma did go to the synagogue, of course, at Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah – the high holidays, and on Saturdays. But like some people used to: always sitting around in the synagogue – there was none of that!

Grandma lived to a very old age; she died just before the war, in 1939 – she was 90-something. I was not at home then. I was probably on vacation. When I came back, they told me that Grandma had died. Her funeral was very solemn. An awful lot of people came, because everyone had known her. She was buried in Wilno Jewish cemetery.

There were ten people in our family – father, mother, five daughters and three sons. It doesn’t seem necessary to me to describe them all here. What can I say about them? Well, all right.

My father was called Herzl Chanion. He was born in Wilno in 1895. What did he do? My father was a true expert. He had a huge, huge workshop. After all, he had to earn enough to keep such a big family. He was a men’s tailor. He had very good employees and he was a master tailor.

Father’s firm was in the house opposite our apartment. About 20 people worked there. It has to be said, though, that it wasn’t a tailor’s for everyone – the people who came to my father were the very, very best people. Father made gala dress for generals, army officers, and for the rich and wealthy. He had a lot of regular customers, not just from Wilno. A few very rich people came to his shop every year from Warsaw.

My father was blond. All my brothers and sisters and I inherited his light hair and fair complexion. And for that reason nobody believed that we were Jewish. My father had a beautifully groomed moustache. He was very elegant. He could not but be elegant – he was one of the best tailors. Indeed, to this day my friends say of me, ‘Ah yes, she is her father’s daughter,’ because I like to dress very smartly, too.

My mama was called Sonia. She was born in Dzwinsk in 1896. She was an only child. Her maiden name was Weiner. As I mentioned, she was from Latvia. She was very religious. Mama didn’t wear a wig; she had beautiful hair. She would fasten it up in a bun. She was not from a Hasidic family 2.

She was just devout, she observed the rules, kept up traditions, but she didn’t wear a wig. [Editor’s note: At that time wigs were worn not only by Hasidic women, but also by many women belonging to other Orthodox Jewish traditions.]

She dressed very elegantly. Well, no low necklines, of course, because that was not the done thing then, but my Mama was a very smart, very beautiful woman. She kept house. There were eight of us, so keeping such a house was really very hard work. I should also say that my Mama was a socialist. She didn’t belong to any party, but I remember her singing Jewish revolutionary songs in Yiddish.

I don’t even know how my parents met. If I’d been an only child I’m sure I would have asked about all things like that. But there were so many of us that there wasn’t even time to ask. All I know is that my father was a very handsome man and Mama a very smart woman. I’m sure they met somewhere and fell in love. When they got married Mama was 17 and Father 18.

My eldest sister, Cyla – her married surname was Kopsztel – held right-wing views. She belonged to Betar 3, and was a Zionist. She was a leader in her organization. They sent her on hakhsharah 4. In 1930 she immigrated to Palestine. She was 19 then. She ended up in a right-wing kibbutz. She lives in Israel to this day. She is 90 now. Only she and I survived; all the rest of the family died in the [Wilno] ghetto 5.

The first boy in our family was Mordechaj. He was four years younger than me. There were already four girls, and still no boy. God, what joy there was when he was born. And after that, there might not be enough for us, but there was always enough for him. He was very clever, and liked studying. First he went to cheder, and later to a yeshivah.

When he got a bit older, he would never let me forget one particular story. Well, he would always get chocolate and I never did... He was very small at the time – he couldn’t read or write yet. He would always come to me and ask me to read him stories. I would take him to my room – so that nobody would see – and say: ‘Give me some chocolate and I’ll read to you.’ And he would give it to me; he really loved being read to. And later on he would never let me forget that I used to take that chocolate off him.

I remember his bar mitzvah, too. Lord... the goings-on, the goings-on! Mordechaj dressed in the tallit, in the tefillin, stood in the synagogue and read from the Torah and gave a speech. He was a very good student, so it was beautiful. And then we came home, and at home the table was already laid with all the good things in the world. And so many guests, and so many of us.

Mordechaj was given a lot of presents. Most importantly, he got a bicycle from Father. That was his dream, you see. From other people he got mostly money. Some people, such as our neighbors, brought homemade cakes with them. One neighbor brought spice cake. How tasty it was! To this day I remember the smell and the taste!

The rest of our brothers and sisters were small children. I’m not going to describe them here. I don’t want to talk about it any more.

• Growing up

I was born in Wilno in 1918, the third child in our family. I was a member of Hashomer Hatzair 6. In our organization we often had lectures about Israel [then still Palestine]. All the young people were preparing to immigrate to Palestine. We would go on hakhsharah, too. We were very involved young people. We all wore uniforms: gray blouses and navy blue skirts and gray panama hats. Our group was co-educational. Both students and grammar-school children belonged to it.

I went to a Jewish school, where the language of instruction was Yiddish, and after that to a training college run by YIVO 7. I often performed at school – I recited poems. When I was in the third grade we held a celebration in honor of Sholem Aleichem 8, Peretz 9 and An-ski 10, our Jewish writers. I was very fond of poetry, so if ever there was anything to be recited the teachers always came to me.

When I was still in third grade they invited the sixth-graders in to see me reciting. I’ll never forget that. I got so many ovations, and my teacher came up to me and kissed me on the forehead. Then she went to my parents and praised me. She said that I was bound to become an actress.

As regards religious education, all my brothers went to cheder, and then to yeshivah, and we girls went to the Tanach elementary school. We even had special Hebrew-Yiddish dictionaries so that we would understand everything fully.

I remember, too, that we were always having discussions among ourselves. Of the eight of us, you see, four of us belonged to different organizations. Cyla was in Betar, I belonged to Hashomer Hatzair, another of my sisters was in the Bund 11, and Mordechaj went to yeshivah and was very religious. We were always arguing, especially during the elections to the various organizations. We would even come to blows over whom to vote for in elections to various councils and youth organizations.

We all had our own affairs. We rarely sat around at home. We all had our friends. We would come home after school, do our homework and then off we would go to a friend’s house, for walks, to parties; we would go to the woods and down to the river. Whenever anyone came to our house, they were always surprised: ‘Such a big family – where are all the people?’

When we were little we never went to bed without a story. Mama told us the most stories – about gnomes, about Little Red Riding Hood, and other children’s stories. Sometimes Grandma told us stories, too, but Grandma mostly sang us songs in Yiddish. Many of them I remember to this day.

At home we only spoke Yiddish. The exception was Cyla, who did first grade in Polish, so she knew the language. But all of us, all the rest of us went to the Jewish school and only spoke Yiddish.

We were considered a rich family. And now I always say, ‘Yes, eight children is a great wealth.’ Our apartment was in a burgher house, and we had a yard, too. There was lots of greenery all around. The house was fenced off, and at night we closed the gate. In the house opposite, where my father’s workshop was, there was even a night watchman with his family. There was so much material there that it had to be guarded.

We had a huge apartment in a house in the center of Wilno. Five large rooms, a big bathroom and lavatory, a spacious dining room – we needed it. All of us sisters slept in one room; we each had our own bed. The boys had their own room, too. We had running water. As for electricity, I don’t remember how it was exactly. We burned candles and lamps. I know that when electric light came in it was like a new era – a new life.

In our apartment there were a lot of books; all of us collected something. Cyla had a whole library in Polish. I used to go to the Jewish library almost every day and borrow something to read. What interested me most were the Yiddish classics I mentioned before– Sholem Aleichem, Peretz and An-ski.

We had a kosher household. Always, right up until the outbreak of war. God forbid that something not kosher should turn up – I don’t even know what would have happened then. If they found out then they wouldn’t even have let us in the synagogue. My mother was particularly careful in that respect.

Once we were older we didn’t have to be so careful. But our household remained kosher to the last minute. We would have shuddered if we’d had to go and buy sausage, for example, from a Christian. There were special Jewish shops where the tastiest sausages were sold.

There were two cupboards in the kitchen. One was painted white and the other brown. The first was for dairy crockery, and the other for meat. And God forbid that anyone mix them up. If Mama saw someone putting a meat plate into the dairy cupboard, she would throw the plate away at once.

I have to admit that I was always a ‘naughty’ girl. I really didn’t like potatoes. If I even saw a potato in my soup that was it – I couldn’t eat it. One day I knew that it was going to be vegetable soup with potatoes for lunch. When I was setting the table I took one plate from the dairy cupboard on purpose and put it in front of my chair. Mama didn’t notice until she had served us all with soup. At once she took the plate, poured my portion away, smashed the plate and threw it in the garbage.

Of course, I had to be punished: I didn’t get another portion of soup. I must say that I was very pleased with that punishment, because I couldn’t look at that soup. That’s what a rogue I was. It was unthinkable that anyone should play such pranks on Mama in our house. They were more traditional and obedient than me.

We had help at home, too. She was a young girl, a Pole. Her name was Stanislawa. There is a whole story connected with her. We had a neighbor who had a daughter. The little girl’s father died when she was still very small. When she was 16, her mother died, too.

Then it transpired that before her death, the mother had come to my father – Father was known for his goodness – and said that she was very ill. She already knew that she would die soon; she was very poor and probably didn’t have any money to get treatment.

So she came to Father and asked him, if after her death he would take care of her daughter. She said, ‘You have eight children, take her in. She will help.’ Then my father said, ‘May you live even to 100; what you ask I will certainly do.’ The woman died shortly afterwards and my father kept his promise and one day brought the girl to our house and said, ‘She is going to live with us, she will go to school; I will take care of everything.’ And that was Stanislawa. She lived with us as if we were one family.

When the war broke out the Germans came and threw us all out of the house and took us to the ghetto. Then she resolved to go with us. There were some Lithuanians there [Lithuanian members of divisions collaborating with the Nazis], and they said to her, ‘What nonsense are you talking; we know you are a Christian, get out of here!’ But she said, ‘No,’ and went with us. I was told that she died along with my family in the ghetto.

On Friday evenings before we went to the synagogue, Mama would light the candles. Mama had a beautiful shawl wrapped around her head and we were all dressed in our best clothes, too. We prayed with the candles lit. Then Father went with my brothers to the synagogue, and we girls went with Mama.

When we were very small, we all went in a line, holding hands. We went to a synagogue that was in our neighborhood, on Zawalna Street. It was a very large synagogue. Afterwards, at home, we all stood around the table and when the blessing over the challah was said, we all said, ‘Amen.’

When we came back from the synagogue in the evening the table was already set with dishes that had been prepared earlier. There always had to be gefilte fish. At home the challot were always baked beforehand as well, and then they lay on the table covered with a white napkin.

We always ate chicken noodle soup and then for the second course there was always meat, but cooked so well, so aromatic, and various side dishes, and tsimes, there had to be. Tsimes is made of carrot to which raisins, prunes and sugar are added. It is all stewed together in the oven until it browns and goes very tasty.

The next day, Saturday, there was also a feast. Father prayed over the challot and we all stood around and at the end we would say, ‘Amen.’ Later on, when my brother was a little older, ten years old, he started saying the prayers over the challah, and when he was 13, he said all the prayers. Then we would sit down to eat.

Because cooking wasn’t permitted on Saturday, everything was prepared on Friday and kept warm. How they did it, so that it stayed warm, didn’t interest me, I was still young and I didn’t care, as long as the food was tasty.

On Saturdays we ate chulent and kigl [kugel]. Chulent I know how to make myself, but what Mama made kigl from I don’t remember exactly. There were eight of us – there would have been a to-do if we had all gone into the kitchen to watch Mama cooking. In any case, we children waited for those Fridays and Saturdays as if for the Lord’s coming. That food was exceptional. I was simply in raptures; it was all so tasty.

The greatest holiday for us children was Pesach. When the holiday was drawing near, Father would take us all to the shoe shop. As Father commanded great respect, so as soon as we all entered the shop, the owner came over at once and called, ‘Please put chairs, armchairs, out for these folk!’ And no wonder, really – after all, Father was buying eight pairs of shoes at once. So we would all sit down on the chairs and armchairs and the fitting would begin: slippers for some, boots for others.

Afterward, all the rest had to be bought: new dresses and stockings. We would go from shop to shop, holding each other by the hands. We were kitted out from top to toe after that shopping trip.

Then the owners of the food shops would come to see Father – the Jewish ones, of course. They pleaded and begged him to buy from them. After all, he had to buy food for eight days. Everything had to be kosher – and how kosher – extra-kosher! The Pesach dishes were brought down from the attic; they were kept there all year in a special trunk. Can there be any more beautiful memory – all those silver cups and the cutlery silver, too.

I was very fussy – one day Grandma had gone out and bought a beautiful teaspoon especially for me. Silver underneath and gold on top, and it had had a rose engraved on it for her. Nobody other than me had the right to use that spoon. Pesach was the most beautiful holiday, ah, how I used to love it.

At Sukkot a shelter [sukkah] was set up in our yard. We had to call the workers in and they would knock up this shack from planks of wood. It was covered with fir and spruce branches on top, and inside it was light and there were candles burning. But not everybody was allowed to go into that shelter: only Father and the boys. Supper was prepared for them in there. And we were only allowed to go and see it during the day.

What I remember most about Chanukkah are the presents and the lighting of the candles. To this day I have beautiful Chanukkah lamps at home. It was like this: every evening of Chanukkah we would stand by the window and every day another light was lit – eight candles, for eight days, and one was lit all the time – the shammash. It was used to light all the others.

As for vacations, yes, we did go away, but never all the family together. Firstly there were too many of us; it would have been very expensive, and secondly Father had his business, so he couldn’t go with us. Sometimes I went with Mama, but usually we children went away on school camps, and even more often than that on trips out of town.

Wilno, what can I say about Wilno? They always used to say that it was the second Jerusalem; an awful lot of Jews lived there. You could walk the streets without worry; everybody spoke Yiddish without lowering their voices, without embarrassment. The signs on the shops were in Yiddish at the top and in Polish underneath. There were a lot of synagogues there, and a yeshivah on every street. There were theaters, concert halls and libraries.

The headquarters of YIVO was also in Wilno. There were a lot of different political organizations, too. The intelligentsia mostly belonged to Hashomer Hatzair. There was the Bund, too; they propagated Yiddish and were against Hebrew. And there was the right-wing Betar. I couldn’t possibly list all the organizations.

As for Polish-Jewish relations, I have to say that until 1936 I really experienced no anti-Semitism. Our neighbors were Polish, and we never knew any nastiness from them. I had one good friend, who was Polish, and my sister Cyla, as I said, went to a Polish school – she even won a medal for her studies – and all her friends were Polish.

It was only after the death of Pilsudski 12, in 1936, that it all started at the university. ‘Right side for Poles, left side for Jews’ [see Anti-Jewish Legislation in Poland] 13. Poles could sit down during lectures, but Jews had to stand. Students beat up young Jews on the street. It was awful.

• During the war

Then the boycotts of Jewish shops started. Poles would stand at the doors and watch to make sure that other goyim didn’t go into those shops. One day I even got beaten up for going into a Jewish store. Mama asked me to go and buy something for her. So I’m going into the shop and they start to hit me with this stick. ‘You Jewish flunky!’ they shouted at me. I burst into tears, because it really hurt. And all because I was blonde and didn’t look like most Jewish girls, and they took me for a goy.

In fact, I have to say that anti-Semitism has always been around, as long as Poland has been Poland: a millennium of anti-Semitism. They used to say, in small towns, in villages and everywhere, that the Jew must be beaten, because they slaughter Christian babies and take the blood for matzah [blood libel]. What more do you need?

And then just after the war there was that pogrom [the Kielce Pogrom] 14. There too, it all started with a little boy being hidden, and immediately the rumor went round that the Jews had kidnapped him for matzah.

In 1939 the Russians came and then the Germans. We were taken to the ghetto. Of the whole family, only I and my sister Cyla, who was already in Palestine by then, survived. The rest of the family was shot in Ponary 15.

I escaped on the fourth day after they put us in the ghetto. I was very lucky I was young. A whole group of us, young people, left the ghetto. Then, sleeping in the woods, we walked east. That was right at the beginning of the war. If they’d caught us, it would have been back to the ghetto and we’d have been sent to our deaths.

In the end we made it over onto the Soviet Union side. And there it all started. We found it very hard. We were searched, they started interrogating us, but they didn’t lock us up in prison. We went to work in a kolkhoz 16. Then I escaped from the kolkhoz and got to Smolensk. I don’t want to talk about that any more.

In Smolensk – I will be honest – I netted a very high-ranking Russian. He was a general, and a senior military prosecutor. He was 16 years older than me. I was 22 at the time, and what did I have? I was poor, I had nobody in the world, nothing to live on, but I must admit that I was pretty. He was attractive, too – handsome, elegant.

The Russian women were crazy about him, and he would call me ‘child,’ ‘child’ – I was a child to him. Times were different then. I married him and we lived together in Smolensk. I have no more to say on the subject.

Then in 1949 the men from the NKVD 17 came and took me away. They threw my husband out of the Party. They accused him of marrying a woman with anti-Soviet views. They were carrying out these purges in the army at that time, and the same thing happened to everyone who had a Jewish wife.

They accused me of spying for Hitler. They wanted to give me 25 years, but they didn’t have any evidence that I was a spy. So they changed the charge. They said I was a cosmopolitan 18. They sentenced me to ten years. I was sent to a camp, to Kolyma 19.

My husband did what he could to stop them sending me there; he knew that I was an innocent child. He knew what was behind it all. When the sentence was passed on me he went home and shot himself because he hadn’t been able to save me. That’s it, there’s nothing more to say about it.

The NKVD officials took everything I had, even the family photographs that I’d managed to take with me and then smuggle out of the ghetto. Not to mention my gold rings and things like that. They never gave anything back. They deported me to a camp deep in Siberia, in Kolyma. There is only sky and tundra there. Nothing grows there. In winter only mountains and ice: to have water to boil you have to chop up blocks of ice.

Our camp was just for women. We worked, in very harsh conditions. If anyone has read Solzhenitsyn 20, they know what it was like there. Our camp was 30 kilometers away from the one where Solzhenitsyn was. We were there at more or less the same time.

There were not only Jews there. We were from different places: from cities, small towns, even from the country. There were German women there, too, and one Englishwoman. I remember that Englishwoman well. She had been a language teacher in Moscow. A Russian, an old general, had taken a fancy to her. She didn’t want to get involved with him, so he dealt with her by having her sent to Kolyma. She was so fragile and delicate; she was perhaps 19. My God, how sorry I felt for her.

I was supposed to sit out my ten years there, but they let me out after seven. That was after Stalin died. Khrushchev 21 said then that those eight million innocent people sentenced to Kolyma had to be released. I was released after seven years’ work in hunger and cold, in the most terrible conditions.

That was in 1955. I was put on a train. Twelve days later I arrived in Moscow. They wanted to send me to a kolkhoz in some village in Belarus. They thought that all we people liberated from the camps were anti-Soviet. They didn’t want us spreading propaganda, talking about the conditions in the camps.

I didn’t want to go to a kolkhoz for anything in the world. So I got out in Moscow and went straight to the NKVD. How did I look then? Like I was straight out of a camp: I was hungry, I dreamed of just a slice of bread, I had no money, no food, no home, but I was young, pretty and audacious. I thought, ‘What can I lose, when I’ve already lost everything? I have no-one, I have nothing.’

So I went to the commissariat and told the NKVD officer on duty that I was there on a very important matter, and that I had to speak to the chief of chiefs, and nobody else. The duty officer looked at me dubiously and said, ‘Sir, there is a citizen here to see you, she’s got some important matter to speak to you about, she can’t reveal what, can you see her?’

[Editor’s note: Instead of ‘Sir’ probably ‘Comrade’ was used in the conversation according to the contemporary communist jargon.] And his door was open, he looked at me like so and said, ‘Let her in.’

• After the war and later years

And there and then I said to him that I had come to him as to my own father, that I had nobody, that I had come out of a camp, that I had been rehabilitated [see Rehabilitation in the Soviet Union] 22. And at the end I said, ‘I have come to ask for help.

I have no work, nowhere to live. Look, I’m young and healthy, how can I go and live under a bridge? Sir, can you imagine that for 24 hours now not a thing has passed my lips, because I haven’t got any money to buy food with and I have no-one.’ That moved him; he stroked my head and said, ‘I was just on my way to a restaurant for lunch, come with me, child.’ So I went.

When we walked into the restaurant we were shown straight to a special table for people in superior positions. And he said to the waitress, ‘Please bring this young lady food that will make her remember you well,’ and the waitress looked at me and probably thought ‘Well, a fine ‘lady’ she is!’ I looked half-dead, I had only just come out of the camp. But I didn’t care, and all I thought was, ‘Let her talk, let her not talk, just let them give me something.’

I would have happily eaten his lunch, too. When I felt that full feeling in my stomach I blushed with happiness. And he said, ‘And now we shall go to the militia.’ So we went. We went in, he picked up the phone and called this factory director and asked me if I could sew. Sewing was one thing I could do. So he said to this factory director that tomorrow he would be sending a girl, a young woman, and told him to give me a job and a room to live in.

And then I said, ‘That’s all very well, but where am I going to stay tonight? I haven’t got anywhere to sleep.’ He said, ‘Today you shall go with me to my house, my wife will give you bed linen and everything.’ He was a man of his word. He took me to his house and introduced me to his wife. And I could see that it was a decent household.

His wife gave me tea and made some sandwiches. When I had eaten she took me to the bathroom. They even had warm water, but I washed in cold water and fell asleep... I’m sure that if they hadn’t woken me up I would have slept there for a month.

The next day he and his wife went with me to the factory. I got a room as well. And that’s how it was, that’s how I found work and a place to live in Moscow. Only that was no way out for me. I didn’t want to stay in Moscow.

I wanted to go to Israel. I wrote to my sister Cyla, who lived in Israel, and asked her to send me an invitation. I took the invitation to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I walked in and saw this real looker, a young Russian, sitting behind the desk. I told him, ‘It’s like this.’ He asked me why I wanted to leave the Soviet Union? I said, ‘I have no one here. I am alone. And there I have a sister.’

Then he said to me, ‘So you want to go to those Jews, those speculators?’ – I guess he didn’t realize that I was Jewish; I’ve always had light hair – and he went on, ‘That’s no nation. They’re speculators, swindlers, and you, you’re a young, pretty woman – what, you can’t find a husband here? You won’t be alone; you’ll have children yet. And where will you have it as good as here in our Soviet Union?’

I couldn’t tell him them that I had been in the camps. I couldn’t admit to that. They’d said to me that if I ever told anyone about that, they would come and take me away again. Anyway, it would probably only have made matters worse. In the end, he sent me away and told me to come back in two months. But I’d already realized that it was not going to work, that they wouldn’t let me out of the Soviet Union.

I worked in that factory sewing clothes for three years, and then I wrote my sister another letter. I asked her to help me get to Poland somehow. It turned out that a distant cousin of ours had a husband who was a Polish diplomat. He helped me to get to Poland. I came back in 1958.

Unfortunately there was no way of getting to Israel from Poland, either, because Khrushchev had said that Poland was not to become a stopping-off point, and that they weren’t to let people go who had returned from the Soviet Union. So I stayed in Warsaw.

In Warsaw I moved in with that diplomat and his wife – after all, they were family. As soon as I arrived I went to the editorial office of the ‘Jewish Word,’ which was called ‘Folksshtimme’ at the time. I walked into the editorial office, and there I saw a whole group of people I knew from Wilno.

As soon as they saw me, they said, ‘What a good job you’re here – tomorrow you can come to work.’ One of my friends from back in Wilno took me to the editor-in-chief and said ‘This girl knows Yiddish well.’ And that’s how I started work with the paper.

At first I was a typist – it was a huge editorial office; there must have been about 100 people working there: editors, proofreaders. Not like it is now. Then, 98 percent of the issue was in Yiddish and only 2 percent in Polish. And now it’s the other way round: 90 percent is Polish and 10 percent Yiddish.

Not long after I arrived in Warsaw I married for the second time. I must admit I was pretty and men liked me. My husband was Jewish. He was called Meir Berger. He was handsome and knew Yiddish ‘perfekt.’ He was from Volhynia; I can’t remember where from exactly.

When he was seven his father died and his mother was left alone with three children. They didn’t have anything to live on, so Meir went to learn to be a carpenter, to be able to keep the family. Meir didn’t have any higher education. He was self-taught, but he had more knowledge than many a university graduate. There was no subject he couldn’t talk about.

We met at the home of my distant cousin and her husband, where I was living. He was a friend of theirs. He was single and I was single and they very much liked him and talked well of him. Very soon, after just one week, we got married in a registry office. I didn’t want to be a lover and I was sick of living alone. He too wanted to have the security that I would be with him. And so we proposed to each other.

We didn’t have children; I didn’t want them. I had not yet recovered, and then to have a baby at once... no, no. All the more so that frankly we weren’t very well off.

Meir was a communist, an idealist. Before the war he had even been in prison for his communist activities. After the war he moved to Wroclaw and worked for the party. When the anti-Semitic purges in the party began, he applied to be moved to Warsaw. That was about 1955, 1956.

Before he left Wroclaw he was offered a move to officers’ school and a high-up post in the UB [see Office for Public Security] 23 But at that Meir said, ‘I’m not cut out for that kind of work.’ And that was the end of his party career. When he came to Warsaw he still belonged to the Party but was just a rank-and-file member.

Then he remembered that as a young boy he had done a carpentry apprenticeship, and step-by-step with his friends he organized an artisan co-operative. Its members were carpenters, furriers, cobblers and others. Meir was a carpenter, then a cabinetmaker, and ultimately he was the head of the carpentry section. As I said, we weren’t very well off; he earned very, very little, and I went out to work then, too [in ‘Folksshtimme’].

Our house was always full of guests. On Fridays sometimes even 20 people would come round, and I would make chulent. And as I already told you, chulent was something I could do. In fact we often had guests round, and we went out a lot to other people’s houses. Our house was full of people, all Jews. It didn’t matter whether they were ministers, or held other important functions, all that was important was that we were united by the fact that we felt Jewish.

Meir remained a communist to the end. He wouldn’t hear of our going to Israel. I even tried to apply for documents to go, but he didn’t want to let me. And so we stayed.

In the 1960s there were still a lot of Jews in Poland. Our editorial office [‘Folksshtimme’] was in the same building as the headquarters of the Jewish Social and Cultural Society 24. I remember how once I took part in a recital competition organized by the JSCS. I prepared a poem by Norwid, ‘To a German poet.’ I won the first prize. [Norwid, Cyprian Kamil (1821-1883): famous Polish poet, dramatist and painter]

I also read Russian and Jewish poetry many times at festivals and on other occasions at the JSCS. Once I was offered a position as an actress in the Jewish Theater, but I refused – I preferred to stay with the editorial office.

In 1968 my husband and I lived in Warsaw. He wasn’t thrown out of the Party; he was just a normal rank-and-file member. But I do remember that Meir was very distressed by those events [see Gomulka Campaign] 25. He couldn’t get over the fact that the communists had hounded out their own comrades, their own people... From then on he withdrew into himself more and more.

Then he fell ill and couldn’t work any longer. He was awarded special benefit for having been imprisoned as a communist before the war [World War II]. I was working then to keep us. I would have preferred him never to have worked if it had meant that he could have lived longer. I would have worked a thousand times harder just to have him with me.

Meir was an exceptional man. Exceptional! Everyone envied me him. He wouldn’t eat anything until I came home from work. He always had a meal ready for me. He read an awful lot, and was very knowledgeable. Everyone called him ‘professor.’

Meir died in the 1970s from leukemia. That was after the Jewish doctors had been thrown out of the hospitals, all the best doctors, so who could have treated him? [Editor’s note: Mrs. Berger probably means by this the consequences of the events of March 1968]. In hospital they only made him feel worse. The anti-Semitism in the hospital was terrible.

All the Jewish life came to an end after 1968. Now there are really no Jews in Poland, and those that are still here are assimilated. They don’t know much about Judaism. They are married to Poles – they’re more likely to go to church than to the synagogue. They’re not Jews, to me they’re just rotten people.

As for the changes since 1989 26, I’d rather not express my views. I have to say, looking at our own Jewish backyard – the community organization and so on – that I don’t even want to have any contact with them.

A few years ago I went to Germany with some other Jewish combatants. I experienced great disappointment then. We went into a church, and they’re all on their knees. And I thought, ‘Bloody hell, back there, in your own backyard, you’re all Jews, but here you’re Christians – so exactly who are you, then?’ And so that’s why I don’t like associating with them.

I have some very good friends, well-educated people, but they are Poles. I don’t really have any Jewish friends. The exception is one lady, who’s a Jewish historian. She comes from Wilno, too. We often talk.

And that’s my life and all about it… I’ve told you everything now.

• Glossary:

1 Dos Yidishe Wort/Folksztyme: Bilingual Jewish magazine that has been published in Warsaw every other week since 1992. The articles deal with the activities of the Jewish community in Poland as well as with current affairs. In addition there are reprints of articles from the Jewish press abroad.

2 Hasidism (Hasidic): Jewish mystic movement founded in the 18th century that reacted against Talmudic learning and maintained that God's presence was in all of one's surroundings and that one should serve God in one's every deed and word.

The movement provided spiritual hope and uplifted the common people. There were large branches of Hasidic movements and schools throughout Eastern Europe before World War II, each following the teachings of famous scholars and thinkers. Most had their own customs, rituals and life styles. Today there are substantial Hasidic communities in New York, London, Israel and Antwerp.  

3 Betar: Brith Trumpledor (Hebrew) meaning Trumpledor Society; right-wing Revisionist Jewish youth movement. It was founded in 1923 in Riga by Vladimir Jabotinsky, in memory of J. Trumpledor, one of the first fighters to be killed in Palestine, and the fortress Betar, which was heroically defended for many months during the Bar Kohba uprising.

Its aim was to propagate the program of the revisionists and prepare young people to fight and live in Palestine. It organized emigration through both legal and illegal channels. It was a paramilitary organization; its members wore uniforms. They supported the idea to create a Jewish legion in order to liberate Palestine. From 1936-39 the popularity of Betar diminished. During WWII many of its members formed guerrilla groups.         

4 Hakhsharah: Training camps organized by the Zionists, in which Jewish youth in the Diaspora received intellectual and physical training, especially in agricultural work, in preparation for settling in Palestine.

5 Vilnius Ghetto: 95 percent of the estimated 265,000 Lithuanian Jews (254,000 people) were murdered during the Nazi occupation; no other communities were so comprehensively destroyed during WWII. Vilnius was occupied by the Germans on 26th June 1941 and two ghettos were built in the city afterwards, separated by Niemiecka Street, which lay outside both of them. On 6th September all Jews were taken to the ghettoes, at first randomly to either Ghetto 1 or Ghetto 2.

During September they were continuously slaughtered by Einsatzkommando units. Later craftsmen were moved to Ghetto 1 with their families and all others to Ghetto 2. During the 'Yom Kippur Action' on 1st October 3,000 Jews were killed. In three additional actions in October the entire Ghetto 2 was liquidated and later another 9,000 of the survivors were killed. In late 1941 the official population of the ghetto was 12,000 people and it rose to 20,000 by 1943 as a result of further transports.

In August 1943 over 7,000 people were sent to various labor camps in Lithuania and Estonia. The Vilnius ghetto was liquidated under the supervision of Bruno Kittel on 23rd and 24th September 1943. On Rossa Square a selection took place: those able to work were sent to labor camps in Latvia and Estonia and the rest to different death camps in Poland.

By 25th September 1943 only 2,000 Jews officially remained in Vilnius in small labor camps and more than 1,000 were hiding outside and were gradually hunted down. Those permitted to live continued to work at the Kailis and HKP factories until 2nd June 1944 when 1,800 of them were shot and less than 200 remained in hiding until the Red Army liberated Vilnius on 13th July 1944.  (Source:http://www.deathcamps.org/occupation/vilnius%20ghetto.html)

6 Hashomer Hatzair in Poland: From 1918 Hashomer Hatzair operated throughout Poland, with its headquarters in Warsaw. It emphasized the ideological and vocational training of future settlers in Palestine and personal development in groups. Its main aim was the creation of a socialist Jewish state in Palestine.

Initially it was under the influence of the Zionist Organization in Poland, of which it was an autonomous part. In the mid-1920s it broke away and joined the newly established World Scouting Union, Hashomer Hatzair. In 1931 it had 22,000 members in Poland organized in 262 'nests' (Heb. 'ken'). During the occupation it conducted clandestine operations in most ghettos.

One of its members was Mordechaj Anielewicz, who led the rising in the Warsaw ghetto. After the war it operated legally in Poland as a party, part of the He Halutz. It was disbanded by the communist authorities in 1949.

7 YIVO: Yidisher Visenshaftlikher Institut, an Institute for Jewish Research, initially the Yiddish Scientific Institute . The first secular Yiddish academic institute, founded in 1925 at a conference of Jewish scholars in Berlin. The institute's headquarters were in Wilno. Its primary aim were the studies of the Jewish population, with particular emphasis on the Jews of Central Europe. It had 4 sections: history, philology, economics and statistics, and psychology and education.

The institute's greatest achievements include the formalization of a literary form in the Yiddish language, the inventory of archival materials and historical relics of Jewish culture, and sociological studies of the Jewish youth. In the 1930s a training program was developed enabling students with an interest in Jewish matters to gain a specialist education not offered by Polish universities. Leading figures involved in the institute's work included Simon Dubnow, Jacob Shatzky and Noah Prylucki. After the outbreak of World War II the New York branch of YIVO assumed the central direction, and still operates to this day.

8 Sholem Aleichem (pen name of Shalom Rabinovich) (1859-1916): Yiddish author and humorist, a prolific writer of novels, stories, feuilletons, critical reviews, and poem in Yiddish, Hebrew and Russian. He also contributed regularly to Yiddish dailies and weeklies. In his writings he described the life of Jews in Russia, creating a gallery of bright characters. His creative work is an alloy of humor and lyricism, accurate psychological and details of everyday life. He founded a literary Yiddish annual called Di Yidishe Folksbibliotek (The Popular Jewish Library), with which he wanted to raise the despised Yiddish literature from its mean status and at the same time to fight authors of trash literature, who dragged Yiddish literature to the lowest popular level. The first volume was a turning point in the history of modern Yiddish literature. Sholem Aleichem died in New York in 1916. His popularity increased beyond the Yiddish-speaking public after his death. Some of his writings have been translated into most European languages and his plays and dramatic versions of his stories have been performed in many countries. The dramatic version of Tevye the Dairyman became an international hit as a musical (Fiddler on the Roof) in the 1960s.

9 Peretz, Isaac Leib (1852-1915): Author and poet writing in Yiddish, one of the fathers and central figures of modern Yiddish literature, researcher of Jewish folklore. Born in Zamosc, he had both a religious and a secular education (he took courses in bookkeeping and studied law in Warsaw). Initially he wrote in Polish and Hebrew. His debut [in Yiddish] is considered to be the poem Monish, (1888, Di yidishe Folksbibliotek). From 1890 he lived in Warsaw. Peretz was an advocate of Yiddishism, and attended a conference on the subject of the Yiddish language in Jewish culture held in Czernowitz (1908). His most widely read works are his novellas, which he wrote at first in the positivist style and later in the modernist vein. In his work he often used folk motifs from the culture of Eastern European Jews (Khasidish, 1908). His best known works include Hurban beit tzaddik (The Ruin of the Tzaddik's House, 1903), Di Goldene Keyt (The Golden Chain, 1906). During World War I he was involved in bringing help to the victims of war. He died of a heart attack.

10 An-ski, Szymon (pen name of Szlojme Zajnwel Rapaport) (1863-1920): Writer, ethnographer, socialist activist. Born in a village near Vitebsk. In his youth he was an advocate of haskalah, but later joined the radical movement Narodnaya Vola. Under threat of arrest he left Russia in 1892 but returned there in 1905. From 1911-14 he led an ethnographic expedition researching the folklore of the Jews of Podolye and Volhynia. During the war he organized committees bringing aid to Jewish victims of the conflict and pogroms. In 1918 he became involved in organizing cultural life in Vilnius, as a co-founder of the Union of Jewish Writers and Journalists and the Jewish Ethnographic Society. Two years before his death he moved to Warsaw. He is the author of the Bund party's anthem, 'Di shvue' (Yid. oath). The participation of the Bund in the Revolution of 1905 influenced An-ski's decision to write in Yiddish. In his later work he used elements of Jewish legends collected during his ethnographic expedition and his experiences from WWI. His most famous work is The Dybbuk (which to this day remains one of the most popular Yiddish works for the stage). An-ski's entire literary and scientific oeuvre was published in Warsaw in 1920-25 as a 15-volume edition.

11 Bund: The short name of the General Jewish Union of Working People in Lithuania, Poland and Russia, Bund means Union in Yiddish. The Bund was a social democratic organization representing Jewish craftsmen from the Western areas of the Russian Empire. It was founded in Vilnius in 1897. In 1906 it joined the autonomous fraction of the Russian Social Democratic Working Party and took up a Menshevist position. After the Revolution of 1917 the organization split: one part was anti-Soviet power, while the other remained in the Bolsheviks' Russian Communist Party. In 1921 the Bund dissolved itself in the USSR, but continued to exist in other countries.

12 Pilsudski, Jozef (1867-1935): Polish activist in the independence cause, politician, statesman, marshal. With regard to the cause of Polish independence he represented the pro-Austrian current, which believed that the Polish state would be reconstructed with the assistance of Austria-Hungary. When Poland regained its independence in January 1919, he was elected Head of State by the Legislative Sejm. In March 1920 he was nominated marshal, and until December 1922 he held the positions of Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Army. After the murder of the president, Gabriel Narutowicz, he resigned from all his posts and withdrew from politics. He returned in 1926 in a political coup. He refused the presidency offered to him, and in the new government held the posts of war minister and general inspector of the armed forces. He was prime minister twice, from 1926-1928 and in 1930. He worked to create a system of national security by concluding bilateral non-aggression pacts with the USSR (1932) and Germany (1934). He sought opportunities to conclude firm alliances with France and Britain. In 1932, owing to his deteriorating health, Pilsudski resigned from his functions. He was buried in the Crypt of Honor in the Wawel Cathedral of the Royal Castle in Cracow.

13 Anti-Jewish Legislation in Poland: After World War I nationalist groupings in Poland lobbied for the introduction of the numerus clausus (Lat. closed number - a limit on the number of people admitted to the practice of a given profession or to an institution - a university, government office or association) in relation to Jews and other ethnic minorities. The most radical groupings demanded the introduction of the numerus nullus principle, i.e. a total ban on admittance to universities and certain professions. The numerus nullus principle was violated by the Polish constitution. The battle for its introduction continued throughout the interwar period. In practice the numerus clausus was applied informally. In 1938 it was indirectly introduced at the Bar.

14 Kielce Pogrom: On 4th July 1946 the alleged kidnapping of a Polish boy led to a pogrom in which 42 people were killed and over 40 wounded. The pogrom also prompted other anti-Jewish incidents in Kielce region. These events caused mass emigrations of Jews to Israel and other countries.

15 Ponary: Forest near Vilnius that became the killing field for the majority of Jews from Vilnius. The victims were shot to death by the SS and the German police assisted by Lithuanian collaborators. In September-October 1941 alone over 12,000 Jews from Vilnius and the vicinity were killed there. In total 70,000 to 100,000 people, the majority of them Jews were killed in Ponary.

16 Kolkhoz: In the Soviet Union the policy of gradual and voluntary collectivization of agriculture was adopted in 1927 to encourage food production while freeing labor and capital for industrial development. In 1929, with only 4% of farms in kolkhozes, Stalin ordered the confiscation of peasants' land, tools, and animals; the kolkhoz replaced the family farm.

17 NKVD: (Russ.: Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del), People's Committee of Internal Affairs, the supreme security authority in the USSR - the secret police. Founded by Lenin in 1917, it nevertheless played an insignificant role until 1934, when it took over the GPU (the State Political Administration), the political police.

The NKVD had its own police and military formations, and also possessed the powers to pass sentence on political matters, and as such in practice had total control over society.

Under Stalin's rule the NKVD was the key instrument used to terrorize the civilian population. The NKVD ran a network of labor camps for millions of prisoners, the Gulag.

The heads of the NKVD were as follows: Genrikh Yagoda (to 1936), Nikolai Yezhov (to 1938) and Lavrenti Beria.

During the war against Germany the political police, the KGB, was spun off from the NKVD. After the war it also operated on USSR-occupied territories, including in Poland, where it assisted the nascent communist authorities in suppressing opposition. In 1946 the NKVD was renamed the Ministry of the Interior.

18 Campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’: The campaign against 'cosmopolitans', i.e. Jews, was initiated in articles in the central organs of the Communist Party in 1949. The campaign was directed primarily at the Jewish intelligentsia and it was the first public attack on Soviet Jews as Jews. 'Cosmopolitans' writers were accused of hating the Russian people, of supporting Zionism, etc.

Many Yiddish writers as well as the leaders of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were arrested in November 1948 on charges that they maintained ties with Zionism and with American 'imperialism'. They were executed secretly in 1952. The anti-Semitic Doctors' Plot was launched in January 1953.

A wave of anti-Semitism spread through the USSR. Jews were removed from their positions, and rumors of an imminent mass deportation of Jews to the eastern part of the USSR began to spread. Stalin's death in March 1953 put an end to the campaign against 'cosmopolitans.'

19 Kolyma: River in north-east Siberia; the Kolyma basin is best known for its Gulag camps and gold mining. Between 1922 and 1956 there were hundreds of camps along the banks of the river, where both criminals and political prisoners were transferred. They were mainly working in the gold mines, but there were other industrial plants built there too. Over 3 million people were taken to the Kolyma camps.

20 Solzhenitsyn, Alexander (1918-2008): Russian novelist and publicist. He spent eight years in prisons and labor camps, and three more years in enforced exile. After the publication of a collection of his short stories in 1963, he was denied further official publication of his work, and so he circulated them clandestinely, in samizdat publications, and published them abroad. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970 and was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974 after publishing his famous book, The Gulag Archipelago, in which he describes Soviet labor camps.

21 Khrushchev, Nikita (1894-1971): Soviet communist leader. After Stalin's death in 1953, he became first secretary of the Central Committee, in effect the head of the Communist Party of the USSR. In 1956, during the 20th Party Congress, Khrushchev took an unprecedented step and denounced Stalin and his methods. He was deposed as premier and party head in October 1964. In 1966 he was dropped from the Party's Central Committee

22 Rehabilitation in the Soviet Union: Many people who had been arrested, disappeared or killed during the Stalinist era were rehabilitated after the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956, where Khrushchev publicly debunked the cult of Stalin and lifted the veil of secrecy from what had happened in the USSR during Stalin's leadership. It was only after the official rehabilitation that people learnt for the first time what had happened to their relatives as information on arrested people had not been disclosed before.

23 Office for Public Security, UBP: Popularly known as the UB, officially established to protect the interests of national security, but in fact served as a body whose function was to stamp out all forms of resistance during the establishment and entrenchment of communist power in Poland.

The UB was founded in 1944. Branches of the UBP were set up immediately after the occupation by the Red Army of the Polish lands west of the Bug. The first UBP functionaries were communist activists trained by the NKVD, and former soldiers of the People's Army and members of the Polish Workers' Party (PPR). In many cases they were also collaborationists from the period of German occupation and criminals.

The senior officials were NKVD officers. The primary tasks of the UBP were to crush all underground organizations with a western orientation. In 1956 the Security Service was formed and many former officers of the UBP were transferred.

24 Social and Cultural Society of Polish Jews (TSKZ): Founded in 1950 when the Central Committee of Polish Jews merged with the Jewish Society of Culture. From 1950-1991 it was the sole body representing Jews in Poland. Its statutory aim was to develop, preserve and propagate Jewish culture. During the socialist period this aim was subordinated to communist ideology.

Post-1989 most young activists gravitated towards other Jewish organizations. However, the SCSPJ continues to organize a range of cultural events and has its own magazine - The Jewish Word. It is primarily an organization of older people, who, however, have been involved with it for years.

25 Gomulka Campaign: A campaign to sack Jews employed in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the army and the central administration. The trigger of this anti-Semitic campaign was the involvement of the Socialist Bloc countries on the Arab side in the Middle East conflict, in connection with which Moscow ordered purges in state institutions.

On 19th June 1967, at a trade union congress, the then First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party [PZPR], Wladyslaw Gomulka, accused the Jews of lack of loyalty to the state and of publicly demonstrating their enthusiasm for Israel's victory in the Six-Day-War. This marked the start of purges among journalists and people of other creative professions. Poland also severed diplomatic relations with Israel.

On 8th March 1968 there was a protest at Warsaw University. The Ministry of Internal Affairs responded by launching a press campaign and organizing mass demonstrations in factories and workplaces during which 'Zionists' and 'trouble-makers' were indicted and anti-Semitic and anti-intelligentsia slogans shouted.

Following the events of March, purges were also staged in all state institutions, from factories to universities, on criteria of nationality and race. 'Family liability' was also introduced (e.g. with respect to people whose spouses were Jewish). Jews were forced to emigrate. From 1968-1971 15,000-30,000 people left Poland. They were stripped of their citizenship and right of return.

26 Events of 1989: In 1989 the communist regime in Poland finally collapsed and the process of forming a multiparty, pluralistic, democratic political system and introducing a capitalist economy began. Communist policy and the deepening economic crisis since the early 1980s had caused increasing social discontent and weariness and the radicalization of moods among Solidarity activists (Solidarity: a trade union that developed into a political party and played a key role in overthrowing communism).

On 13th December 1981 the PZPR had introduced martial law (lifted on 22nd June 1983). Growing economic difficulties, social moods and the strength of the opposition persuaded the national authorities to begin gradually liberalizing the political system. Changes in the USSR also influenced the policy of the PZPR.

A series of strikes in April-May and August 1988, and demonstrations in many towns and cities forced the authorities to seek a compromise with the opposition.

After a few months of meetings and consultations the Round Table negotiations took place (6th Feb.-5th April 1989) with the participation of Solidarity activists (Lech Walesa) and the democratic opposition (Bronislaw Geremek, Jacek Kuron, Tadeusz Mazowiecki).

The resolutions it passed signaled the end of the PZPR's monopoly on power and cleared the way for the overthrow of the system. In parliamentary elections (4th June 1989) the PZPR and its subordinate political groups suffered defeat. In fall 1989 a program of fundamental economic, social and ownership transformations was drawn up and in January 1990 the PZPR dissolved.

Frida Muchnik
Bershad
Ukraine
Date of interview: May 2004
Interviewer:  Zhanna Litinskaya

Frida Muchnik didn’t give her consent for this interview at once: she is known to be a withdrawn and willful lady in Bershad she never has guests and hardly ever visits people. She didn’t invite me to her home either. She agreed to give this interview, but later she mentioned that she did it, because she liked my voice and my gentle manners, besides, she didn’t mind recalling and telling about her family. Frida visited me in the hotel: she is a handsome aged lady with her hair neatly done and her lips slightly touched with lipstick. She had trousers, a blouse and a wide-brimmed hat on: she got used to keep her head and face off the sun in Israel. She looked defiant in this small poor town and its impoverished townsfolk. Frida is a very interesting person with a clever mind and a sense of humor. She gives accurate judgments about people, harsh at times, but probably fair in Frida’s opinion.  

My family background

Growing up

Before the war

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family background

I didn’t know my grandparents. I know that my father’s parents came from Bershad. Bershad is my hometown, too. I was born and lived my life here, and my parents were buried here. Bershad is a rather big Jewish town, in the 19th Century about 90% of its population was Jewish. In the early 1920s there were over 6 thousand Jews living there. Jews resided in small houses closely adjusting to one another in the central part of the town. The streets were paved with cobbles. In the old times Jews dealt in crafts: they were tailors, shoemakers, potters, glasscutters earning their living with what they were best at doing. They bought food products from Ukrainian farmers from the neighboring villages. They had good neighborly relationships. All residents of our town spoke Yiddish, but we all knew Ukrainian well, as well as Ukrainian residents could speak good Yiddish.  

My paternal relatives lived long lives. My grandfather lived as long as almost 90 years, but I don’t remember him. I was about 6 years old, when he died. His name was Yankel Muchnik. He was born in Bershad in the 1840s.  My father said he was the son of his father Yankel’s second marriage.  His first wife died, but I don’t know whether they had children. Yankel’s second wife, my grandmother Frima Muchnik (I don’t know her maiden name) was also born in Bershad 20 years later than my grandfather, in the 1860s. I don’t know what kind of education my grandfather Yankel had. I think he must have finished a vocational school. He worked as executive manager for a wealthy Jewish merchant. All I know about this merchant is that he lived near where my grandparents lived. Grandfather Yankel earned well, and the family was rather well-off. Grandmother Frima was a housewife, which was customary for a Jewish woman. According to what my father told me, grandfather Yankel was a kind and nice man, and grandmother Frima was a strong-willed woman. Papa said she did not only manage the household, but also inquired about grandfather’s business issues and gave him efficient advice. Besides his work, grandfather spent most of his time reading the Torah and the Talmud. He prayed every morning. He prayed at home with his tallit and tefillin on at home, and on Sabbath and on Jewish holidays He and grandmother went to the synagogue. They piously observed all Jewish traditions at home and raised their children Jewish.

Grandfather Yankel and grandmother had four children: three sons and a daughter. My father was two-three years younger than his brothers: Motl, the oldest, was born in 1882, and Folyk - in 1884. I don’t know what they did for a living. I know, though, that they were married and had children.  When WWI began, they crossed the border to Romania to avoid service in the army. At this point of time Jews gathered into groups, gave bribes to frontier guards, who pretended they didn’t see how they crossed the border. From Romania they could move further on. My father brother Motl’s first daughter was born then – ‘prima’ as we said, the first baby. She was still a baby and cried, when she could be heard. Older Jews in the group planning to cross the border, decided that uncle Motl and his family had to go back home since the baby could be an obstacle for their crossing the border. Motl could not agree to this, they began to argue and older Jews said they would kill the baby, if he didn’t make it keep silent. The girl slept quietly that n8ght, as if she understood what was going on. The group reached Romania successfully. Few months later my father received a letter from them that was sent from Canada. We terminated correspondence with them in the middle 1930s, when it was not recommended or even dangerous to have relatives abroad,1 so this is all information I have about them.

My father Moisey Muchnik was born in Bershad in 1886. He took after his father: he was quiet, gentle and kind. Though my grandfather could well afford to pay for his education, my father finished cheder and decided that he had to go to work to support his aging parents. He became a craftsman making fur jackets and embroidering them, this was a popular craft in Bershad.  He must have had an artistic talent since he was doing quite well.  His jackets embroidered with red yarn were in great demand with Ukrainian farmers from nearby villages. When WWI began and his brothers decided to escape abroad my father didn’t dare to take up this risky venture due to his gentle character, probably. He didn’t want to go to serve in the czarist army either. Besides, religious orthodox Jews – and grandfather Yankel and his family belonged to them, could not kill people, even for the sake of their motherland. Some Jews turned to mutilation to avoid service in the czarist army. There were even such individuals, probably, the ones having primary medical education, who did such injuries that did not threaten those people’s life, but released them from their military duty. They injured eyes, and then the person actually grew blind due to the wall rye. My father was very handsome and girls liked him. He didn’t want to make himself ugly and he had one ear injured – they broke his ear drum and he had a hearing problem. My father avoided recruitment to the army, but he had a hearing problem fro the rest of his life and it particularly bothered him at his old age, when he actually became an invalid. My father had a nickname of Shmatok [‘a lump’ in Ukrainian]. My father’s cousin brother on grandfather Yankel’s side Moisey, whose surname was also Muchnik, was a big strong guy, while my father was short and frail, - a piece, to be short. However, he was a handsome young man and girls kept looking at him. He was also ready to get married. The problem was, my father had an older sister. Her name was Rosia, she was born in 1885. Rosia was not married and was not popular with young men. She was ugly and very withdrawn. According to Jewish rules, a young man could not get married before his older sister did. My father had to wait for almost ten years before Rosia finally got married. Her husband Itzyk Farberman, a wealthy Jew, didn’t stay long with Rosia. He divorced Rosia leaving their daughter Hana with Rosia. Since then Rosia always lived where my father lived. When my father decided to get married, he was about 30, and he could not find a nice girl he thought he deserved in Bershad: he had known all of them for a while and was not interested. So his parents invited Leya, a matchmaker, and she told them about a pretty girl from Chechelnik, a town near Bershad, and that my father could not have possibly found any fault with her.

My mother came from the Ukrainian village of Kravetskoye [This village does not exist today. It might have merged with a bigger town or may have disappeared for some other reason.], near the Jewish town of Chechelnik. My mother’s family was the only Jewish family in  Kravetskoye. My grandfather’s name was Iosif Roiter, but I don’t know my grandmother’s maiden name. They were born in the middle 19th century. My grandfather owned a store selling an assortment of everyday consumer goods. Besides, my grandfather’s family rented a part of the river adjusting to the house and a mill. Every Friday my grandmother and her daughters sold the fish from the river in Chechelnik where Jewish housewives bought it for Sabbath. My grandfather’s family worked from dawn till late in the evening and was well respected by Ukrainians, particularly that my grandfather was a very honest man.

The Roiter family also respected their neighbors. Mama told me they never worked on Sunday to be seen by Ukrainian villagers or on Christian holidays respecting the other people’s religion. When the Roiters had candles lit in their house on Friday, their Ukrainian neighbors knew that Iosif could not take the money in his hands to sell his goods. They could come into the store, put the money where they knew and took whatever they needed. Not once did anybody cheated on my grandfather. On Saturday a Ukrainian woman came to my grandfather’s home to do whatever chores were needed.  When she went to the cowshed to milk the cow, the cow mewed angrily and did not want to recognize a stranger. My grandmother usually stood beside them talking to the cow: ‘Manechka, dear, give us the milk’. During the period of the Beilis case2, when Jews were accused of adding the blood of Christian babies into their matzah, the villagers in Kravetskoye, however ignorant they were, knew that nothing of the kind could happen, because they knew that the Roiter family did not even eat eggs with a drop of an embryo’s blood since they were non-kosher. So, decided the villagers, Beilis cannot be guilty either. They did not change their attitude to the Roiters. Grandfather Iosif was rather religious. He prayed at home, and on holidays he went to the synagogue in Chechelnik with his wife and children.

Mama’s oldest sister Sura’s marriage was also prearranged. She lived with her family in the small town of Obodovka near Bershad. She was born in the 1870s. She was much older than mama, and her children were almost the same age as mama. Sura was a housewife and had two daughters. I don’t remember their names. During the Great Patriotic War3 Sura’s family wads in the ghetto in Obodovka. Sura’s husband died. After the war Sura lived with one of her daughters. She grew blind at her old age and died a tragic death. She burned in her bed that from a stove sparkle that fell on her bed, when nobody was home. When her daughter came home, her mother was dead, and the house had burnt down. This happened in 1968.

My mother’s two sisters and two brothers moved to Argentina during WWI. Mama corresponded with them at the beginning, but in the middle 1930s she terminated their correspondence and lost their track. My mother’s youngest brother Ehil Roiter, born in 1897, served in the czarist army during WWI. He got into an Austrian captivity. Later he told his family about a good attitude toward the captives. When he returned, Ehil married a girl from a wealthy Jewish family Chechelnik. They owned horses, and this was the measurement of wealth at the time. During the Civil War4 in 1918 Ehil and his wife rode their own wagon to go a wedding in the neighboring village, when they were caught by a gang5, one of many in Ukraine at the time. They killed Ehil, bullied his wife and let her go. Ehil was buried in the Jewish cemetery according to the ritual. My grandfather recited the Kaddish over his grave. My grandmother mourned after him for a long time. She never recovered from the loss of her son. She died shortly afterward in 1918. Ehil had no children. The family had no contacts with his wife.

Grandfather Iosif remarried soon. My mother Elka, born in 1895, had no education. She worked hard helping her parents about the house. Her stepmother was not good to her and mama knew she needed to take care of herself. At this moment Leya, a matchmaker from Bershad, came onto the scene. She showed mama a photo of my father with his brothers where they were photographed wearing posh fur hats. Mama agreed to marry him. Since her mother had died recently, there was actually no wedding. In early 1918 the bride and the bridegroom were married under a chuppah at the synagogue in Bershad. There was a small wedding dinner at home for the closest relatives.  Mama told me that people from Bershad came to take a look at Moisey Muchnik’s beautiful wife.  I cannot say, in what way grandfather Iosif would have hurt my mother, perhaps, she could not forgive him for having forgotten his wife so soon. At least, mama never saw him again after the wedding. All I know is that he died in the early 1920s, and my parents always ordered a memorial prayer at the synagogue for him. I never saw grandfather Iosif.

The newly weds came to live in my father’s house. Hey were given one room that was actually a family living room where the family had dinners and tea from a samovar in the evening.  Mama got pregnant soon. She could not go to bed earlier, though, since there were people coming into the room until late: grandfather and grandmother, papa’s sister Rosia and some distant relative living in one room at the back of the house. In late 1918 my mother gave birth to a boy. He was named Velvl after my father’s grandfather. Mama told me that during pogroms6, their family and their neighbors took shelter in the basement of the house. When little Velvl was crying, mama went with him to hide in haystacks in the field. In 1922 my mother had another son, whom she named Ehil after her deceased brother. Mama was always very serious about considering having children, which was different from other Jewish matrons. She always said a family should have as many children as they could afford to support and raise. She thought two children were enough, but she always wanted to have a daughter.

Growing up

I was born in 1926. I was a long-awaited and beloved baby. I was born during Rosh Hashanah and mother said this was a sign that I should be happy. They registered my birth in December 1926. I was named after my grandmother: in the synagogue they wrote my name as Frima, and in my birth certificate my name is Frida.  After I was born my mama decided our family needed a room of our own. She sold all her golden jewelry, including her wedding ring and hired workers to build another room in our house. This was a low house like many other huts in Bershad. Mama only had sufficient money for a hatched roof. At that time there were four apartments in the house: one of our family, another one – for aunt Rosia and her daughter, the third apartment was occupied by the accountant of the mill and the 4th apartment belonged to some distant relatives, who  were deported to the Kherson steppe in the late 1920s during the liquidation of the NEP7 for being accused as ‘unreliable’. This is all I know about them. Their surname was Muchnik, but I don’t remember their names.

Our family had two rooms and a kitchen with a Russian stove8 where mama baked bread and delicious challot for Sabbath. She kept Saturday dinners that she cooked in advance on Friday, in the stove as well. Mother and father did no work on Saturday in conformity with Jewish traditions. However, neither mama nor papa was as religious as their parents. My father was raised religious, but watching indecent conduct of Jews at the synagogue where they argued and cursed, he grew indifferent to religion. He said that if a Jew prayed from morning till night, wears a kippah, etc., this still does not prove his Jewish identity since a real Jew is the one who follows the covenants and lives an honest life. My father wore a kippah to go to the synagogue. Mama and papa went to the synagogue on holidays. In the course of time Sabbath turned into an ordinary day off in our house, and mama gave up lighting candles. She or father did not cover their heads. Celebration of holidays was just delicious dinners. I don’t remember celebrating Chanukkah or Purim in my childhood, but I started fasting on Yom Kippur at the age of 13 and I follow this fasting up to date.

Our family had a modest living. My father was a skilled jacket maker and worked hard. Since there were many jacket makers in Bershad they divided the adjusting areas to avoid any disagreements about their customers. My father made jackets for few neighboring villages. He often stayed in one village for weeks to cover the demand of villagers for jackets. Villagers also stayed in our house, when they traveled to the town. They left some food products to pay for the warm welcome and a place to stay overnight. Mama was different than my gentle and quiet father. She was business-oriented and took up any work she could lay her hands on. In due time she developed her own business that was a great support to our family. Villagers brought their meat for sale to our house. Mama weighed and sold it and gave the money to villagers. They gave her some meat and other food products, so we never felt short of food in our houses. Mama’s business was based on trust, and she never demanded any receipts or other security from villagers. This finally let her down. One farmer, having received money from my mother, went to a tavern where he drank all night through.  Of course, he wasted his money. When he sobered in the morning, he decided that mama hadn’t given him his money and came to our house with a scandal. Mama could not convince him how wrong he was. This was a hard time so for our family. This man, who had wasted his own money, kept coming to our house with scandals, threatening us and throwing stones into our windows.  We were afraid of going out. Then my mother and father went to the synagogue to talk to the rabbi. Whatever he had to tell them was to become a rule for a Jew. The rebe said that if mama was saying the truth, then the villager was guilty. My parents were to wait for a year upon which period there will be a prayer said at the synagogue, and the villager would disappear. If mama was afraid of living in fear for a whole year, than the family should move to another place, but if mama was lying to the rebe, and this Ukrainian man was telling the truth, the prayer a year from then would not help and then it would be clear that mama was to blame. Mama decided to move away. My father had doubts about leaving home. He was an irresolute man, but mama said she could live and work at any place as long as there was no threat to her family.   

We locked our home, took the most necessary things with us and moved to the Jewish kolkhoz9, in Dnepropetrovsk region, 600 km from Bershad, where we received an apartment in the house with another Jewish family. Mama went to work in the kolkhoz and soon she became leader of a crew of wine growers. She was used to hard work. My father also worked in the kolkhoz. I cannot remember any details of our life there, but I remember the feeling of warmth, lots of fruit and the bright southern sun. I spent a lot of time playing with the neighbors’ children outside, and in the evening the family had dinner together. In summer 1932 mama received a letter from Bershad. It said that this villager, who had abused her, died. The rebe’s prophecy came true and we could go back home.

Before the war

In autumn 1932 we returned home. The joy of coming home was saddened: this was a period of famine10 in Ukraine. Only many years later we got to know that this famine was provoked by Stalin and his government, but at that time people felt perplexed: how could people starve to death in Ukraine that had never lacked bread? I remember dead people in Bershad, early in the morning wagon pulled by a weak horse rode along the streets full of dead bodies. The situation was hard in our house as well, but thanks to mama’s energy and hard work our family survived. Mama went to work to a recently established Jewish kolkhoz. She was a crew leader. She received some miserable ration of food in the kolkhoz. My father went to work in a craftsmen association in Bershad. It consisted of those craftsmen, who managed to survive after the NEP was liquidated. After work my father made and altered clothes for the villagers he knew and they paid him with food products. They managed to grow some vegetables in their gardens. Villagers came to the town to sell whatever little food they had and mama was an intermediary for them and received some small reward for her work. Any people took their valuables to the Torgsin,11 but mama had spent all her jewelry to build the house, and we had nothing left. However hard the situation was for the family, they never let me feel it – mama adored me beyond limits, and my father and brothers loved me dearly. I always knew I would never be refused of anything.

When it was time for me to go to school, my parents had no doubts about what school to choose for me. My brothers went to the Jewish school and this was where I went. This school was built as a Jewish gymnasium for girls by a wealthy Jewish woman before the revolution of 1917.12 The construction was completed after the revolution and became a Jewish school. In 1934, when I went to school, my brother had finished the 7th form and went to continue his studies in Donetsk since there was nowhere else to study in Bershad.  He entered a factory vocational school.  I went to the ‘zero’ preparatory class, but since I was doing very well there, they took me to the first form.  Our family spoke mostly Yiddish and this was the language of my childhood. Our family also spoke fluent Ukrainian and so did I. I studied well and even finished the 5th and the 6th forms with honors. In the 7th form, however, I lost some interest in further studies. I wanted to become a pharmacist. There was a school in town, but mama told me she was not going to let me leave home. I knew there was no place to study after school in our town and this had an impact on my study at school.  I received ‘3’s [out of 5] at school and mama looked at me with reproach, when she returned from parents’ meetings at school, but she never told me off. I do not remember any of our household raising their voices at me. At one time I was thinking of becoming a teacher, but this did not last long: I didn’t like it that schoolchildren teased teachers and gave them funny nicknames.  Also, like all other girls, I dreamed of becoming an actress. There was a big new club in Bershad where theatrical groups came on tours. My father brought tickets from his work. Mama and I dressed up and went to their performances. These were amateur and professional Jewish theaters for the most part.

I had many friends, they were mostly Jewish girls – my schoolmates. I became a pioneer13, and I liked wearing a red neck tie. I liked Soviet holidays: 1 May, October revolution Day14, when there were parades in our town. I went to parades with my school, and asked my mother to make me a new outfit for every parade. I wore a Ukrainian folk outfit one time, an embroidered blouse and a coral necklace, or a kossack costume15 another time. There were concerts in the club in the evenings. At one time I recited poems in these amateur concerts. Our favorite pastime was going to the cinema. I remember children’s movies, movies about the Civil War and comedies.  The boys were fond of the legendary hero of the Civil War – Chapayev [Chapayev, Vassiliy Ivanovich (1887 - 1919), Soviet commander, hero of the civil War. Played a significant role in the defeat of counterrevolutionary forces.] and there was a movie about him entitled ‘Chapayev’. My brother Ehil watched it 15 times. I liked comedies ‘Volga-Volga’, ‘Circus’ and others. In the late 1930s we got a radio at home and I listened to brave and optimistic Soviet songs.

We didn’t celebrate Soviet holidays at home. If it was a day off, mama cooked a festive dinner. Our family traditionally got together on Jewish holidays. Mama prepared for Pesach according to the customs. She cleaned the house. We also had special crockery that we kept in a special box. There was also a special dish to place the food required on this holiday. Besides mandatory dishes mama cooked gefilte fish, stew, little pies filled with mince, potatoes and cabbage, beetroot borscht. Mother and father went to the synagogue, but we didn’t have seder at home. A holiday was another occasion for the family to get together. This became particularly important after my brothers left home. After finishing his vocational school my older brother returned to Bershad. He worked at the cap factory and later he went to work at a plant in Odessa16. From there he went to the army. Velvl served in the military regiment of Leningrad and studied in the artillery school in Leningrad. We were concerned about the Finnish war17, hoping that Velvl would not be sent there, fortunately, their military unit was not involved in combat action. In early 1941 Velvl was demobilized. He stayed at home two weeks. Before his departure to Odessa my brother asked me what kid of present I would like him to bring me from there. I had a sweet tooth an asked him to bring me all kinds of sweets from Odessa that we did not have in Bershad. Soon we received a parcel. My brother kept his word and spent a bigger part of his salary to buy presents for me. My younger brother Ehil studied in the machine building school in Odessa. He studied well and stayed in the school hostel. There, in Odessa, were my brothers, when WWII began.

During the war

Or family got to know that the Great Patriotic War began from the Molotov18 speech that the whole country listened to on 22 June 1941 at noon. On that same day the recruitment began. Mama was sobbing. She knew that her sons would be taken to the army and she would not see them. This was true – we never saw my brothers again. We know that Velvl perished during the defense of Odessa, but we know even less about Ehil – he disappeared during the retreat in 1941. We got this information after the war.  The first month after the war began was quiet in Bershad. One might thought that nothing extraordinary happened if it hadn’t been for young men going to the army and lack of food supplies. Our family did not even consider evacuation. There were rumors that fascists had no mercy toward Jews, but mama said Germans were a cultured nation and that we had nothing to be afraid of. On 22 July 1941 Germans dropped the first bombs on our little town. A bomb hit a house near the military registry office killing an old woman living in this house.  Next day we moved to my uncle in Chechelnik hoping to evacuate with him, but the roads were already jammed, we had no means of transportation to undertake and few days later we returned to Bershad. In the course of their retreat Soviet troops blasted bridges across the Dochna River hoping to stop the avalanche of the German armada, but Germans reinstalled the bridges within few hours and then motorcycles broke into the town with a horrifying and deafening roar. This happened in late July 1941.

This was the beginning of the most crucial time in my life that I’ve tried to forget in all years after the war. It’s hard for me to recall the occupation, reopening the old wounds in my heart, therefore, I would just tell briefly about this part of my life. When fascists came into the town, they gathered all Jews in the ghetto that occupied the central part of the town. Our house was beyond the boundaries of the ghetto and we had to leave it. We moved into the house of a Jewish family that had evacuated from the town. The ghetto was fenced with a barbed wire and there were policemen guards at the gate. The inmates were not allowed to leave the ghetto. Bershad belonged to the so-called Transnistria19 zone that was annexed to Romania. The Romanian occupants replaced the German troops. Many people think that the life was easier under the Romanian rule. It is true that the Romanians did not conduct actions aimed at the extermination of Jews, but we lived under the constant threat of death from hunger, infectious diseases, and hits of drunken Romanian policemen with their batons. Our lives were within a hair’s breadth from death. The girls of my age were abused in a beastly manner, and my mother decided I should stay in hiding from the very beginning.  It’s hard to imagine that I stayed in shelters for two and a half years: in the basement, in the attic or in the shed, when fascists or policemen searched the houses. My parents managed to hide me so that I didn’t go to work one day through this period. Girls were taken to wash floors in the commandant office and hospital, wash blood-stained bandages, they were beaten and abused. Mama rescued me from this. She gave money to representatives of the Jewish counsel Judenrat,20 established in the ghetto and responsible for supplying workforce to the occupants, when they came to the house searching for me, or she just kept me in a shelter. Mama was also our breadwinner. She bribed policemen to get out of the ghetto where she could always find some Ukrainian friends willing to help us. Mama gave them money or things, or worked for them and they gave her potatoes, bread, beans that mama brought to the ghetto. At least, I did not starve, and mama and papa pretended they had enough food: for them the most important thing as to provide sufficient food for me. Many Jewish families gave shelter to Jews from Bessarabia21 that had been deported here. They were in a terrible condition. They were not so used or adjusted to hardships. They were exhausted after their long walk here. Many of them had died. When they arrived at Bershad, they brought typhus and tuberculosis to the ghetto. Many inmates were dying. Their dead bodies were removed by a wagon and buried in a common grave in the vicinity of the ghetto. Mama refused to have Bessarabian Jews where we were staying. She was afraid of diseases, but she tried to support them sharing whatever little food we had with them.

I hardly ever left the house or met with my friends, whose parents also kept them in hiding. Mama fussed over me and was very worried about my brothers. Her motherly heart must have told her they were not among the living any longer. I often saw my parents praying. My father took his old book of prayers in his hands and mama whispered the words of prayers. They were begging the God to give them their sons back. Of course, there was no way to observe Jewish traditions in the ghetto. All we were concerned about was how to survive. However, all three of us fasted on the Judgment Day [Yom Kippur].

There was an underground movement in the ghetto headed by Yasha Thales, a Komsomol activist22. In order to get out of the ghetto he imitated his death and was hauled to the woods on the wagon. He escaped and created a partisan unit. I don’t know anything about whatever acts of this partisan unit, but I do know that  innocent people died because of them. In late 1943 activists were collecting contributions for this unit. We had no money to give them. At somebody’s hardly smart initiative they made the lists of all contributors and indicated the amounts they gave, they probably hoped to receive compensation from Soviet authorities later. They placed the list into a bottle, sealed and buried it, but there was a traitor, who reported on this bottle and fascists found the list. They made the rounds of the houses and shot all those, who supported the partisans. If those, whose names they found on the list, happened to be away from their home at the moment, they grabbed and killed their neighbors or just passers-by. Yasha Thales has turned 90. He has a good life in the USA.  In the middle of March 1944 the Soviet army liberated us. The Partisan unit with Yasha at the head of it was the first to come into the ghetto and the Soviet tanks followed them. They installed their field kitchen and made delicious cooked cereal for inmates of the ghetto. I got out of the basement: I could not believe that the horrific years of occupation were over.  

After the war

Our house was gone: people took it apart for wood. We stayed in that house where we were during the occupation until its owners returned and we had to move out. We rented a small room in a basement. Mama was looking for her sons. Only in 1946 we received a notification of death of her older son, and a notification about Ehil. This was a terrible disaster, and mama never recovered from it. She never stopped crying and developed a cataract in both eyes. Mama grew almost blind. Mama was given a pension for her older son – 26 rubles per month, the cost of 3 loaves of bread at the time. Papa continued making jackets traveling to villages.

I went back to school and finished the 8th and the 9th forms. Then I had to go to work to help my parents. The thing is, in the postwar years education in senior school was not free: they charged 150 rubles per year. I still studied in the 10th form, when I became an apprentice in the bank where my cousin sister worked as a cashier. Director of the school did not know I was working. After finishing school I entered an extramural Bank Technical school in Vinnitsa. I worked diligently and was a smart employee, when in 1947 the bank received a direction to have no related employees in the bank. Though a nephew of the manager of the bank worked in this bank, and chief accountant had her niece working in this same bank, they fired me since I was the poorest and had no rights. So I lost my job in this hard and hungry year of 1947. Life was very hard, and again my father’s Ukrainian friends helped us. Shortly afterward I went to work as a cashier to the ‘New life’ cooperative of invalids. I worked there a little over one year. The members of this cooperative happened to distort their documents, speculated, produced many products without registering them in production lists, and in 1949 an assize court took place in Bershad. All employees, but me, went to trial. They were sentenced to imprisonment. I went to work in the ‘Trud’ [labor] cooperative. I worked there for many years. There were many Jews in Bershad in the early 1950s – almost all those who survived the Great Patriotic War returned home. Probably for this reason there was no such adamant anti-Semitism here in the late 1940s-early 1950s, the period of ‘rootless cosmopolitans’23 and the ‘doctors’ plot’24 went past us. We didn’t read newspapers and had no interest in politics. The main thing then was to survive and the rest seemed insufficient.  I didn’t hear about these campaigns till the 1990s. I remember a meeting in the central square, when Stalin died: all people were crying and so was I.  

My parents lived in a sort of drowsiness after the war – they were struck by distress. We observed Jewish traditions as much as we could and we celebrated Pesach, but my father did not go to the synagogue any longer – he said he did not believe in the God, who allowed this violence over Jews.  I can say that I sacrificed my life to my parents. I realized I would never be able to leave them. If my brothers had survived, my life might have been different: I would have got education and arrange my personal life. I had friends, but I did not meet with young men. We lived in a small room and I knew I would have no place for my own family, if I wanted one. In 1952 I went to see my cousin sister in Donetsk. I met a young Jewish man there. His name was David. We saw each other for few days and then registered our marriage in a district registry office. There was the first night and there few days of closeness, but this was all there was. He did not want to go to Bershad, and I could not leave my parents. I returned to my parents, but I did not say a word to my parents. Some time later my acquaintance working in the passport office helped me to obtain another passport with no trace of my short and unhappy marriage. I don’t even remember David’s surname. I’ve never seen him again. Later I met a very good man, but my parents did not give their consent to our marriage, because he was Ukrainian. This was the end of my personal life. I have no children. My parents were not feeling well and I could not even afford to spend my vacations elsewhere. I only took 10 days off every year to go to Odessa to take treatment for my back: I had osteochondrosis due to the lack of movement, I had to sit at my desk at work. We didn’t have an apartment of our own for many years. I kept writing letters to the district executive committee requesting an apartment, but each time they gave apartments to somebody else, who could afford to bribe them. In 1971 we finally received an apartment  a little two bedroom Khrushchevka apartment25 on the first floor. Papa died five months after we moved into it. He died on 2 July 1971. My mother passed away one year later. They were buried in the Jewish cemetery with no ritual followed.

After my parents died I felt free and lonely. I could travel a lot all over the country or to recreation homes. I had no problem buying tours: I was a member of the local trade union committee and was responsible for distribution of tours. I had many friends. We celebrated Soviet holidays and went to meetings and parades. In the 1970s, when Jewish mass emigration began, many of my friends and acquaintances moved to Israel. There were fewer and fewer Jews left in Bershad. I sympathized with those, who moved away, and felt jealous about them. I didn’t consider moving to live in Israel: I was alone, and if here I had a job and still had friends and acquaintances, I knew that if I went to live in another country without knowing the language, I would just go crazy from loneliness and melancholy. However, in 1988 I received a letter from an acquaintance of mine, who was in Israel. I met him at the recreation house in Odessa. He invited me to Israel and proposed to marry me. He offered financial support. I did not love him and wrote back refusing him. My friend wrote again until I finally made up my mind to go to Israel. However, I told him honestly that I would travel to Israel, but I didn’t want to stay with him. He submitted the information about me to obtain an invitation letter for me to go to Israel. At that same time I received a parcel. Organizations from Israel specifically sent these parcels to support the future repatriates, but they wrote in the accompanying documentation that these parcels were sent by relatives to enable people here to receive them. I sold the clothes from this parcel and obtained the necessary documentation for departure. In 1990, having overcome all obstacles, bureaucracy and bribery of Soviet organizations I moved to Israel.

Israel is a wonderful country where I felt at home at once. I received a nice apartment and had a very good life, but… I felt very lonely and missed my homeland. I wanted to visit the graves of my dear ones. Every year I’ve come to Bershad. I go to my parents’ graves. Few years ago I returned to Ukraine for good. I am a Ukrainian  citizen and have a permanent residence in Bershad. I’ve bought a nice apartment and I receive a significant pension from Germany, being a former prisoner. I am doing very well. I like it that there are great opportunities for the Jewish community life after perestroika and after Ukraine gained independence. I am an active member of the community and a client of Hesed26, it gives me material and moral support. Here in Hesed I’ve found new friends. We celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays together, study the religion and history of Israel.  I have no regrets about having been to Israel or coming back to Ukraine.    

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