Travel

Lev Drobyazko
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Tatyana Chaika

My name is Lev Yevgenyevich Drobyazko, and I was born in May 1937 in
Moscow. Soon after my birth, my parents moved to Kiev. And here I lived all
of my life, with the exception of three years in evacuation. The history of
my name has nothing in common with any Jewish traditions, but nonetheless,
it is interesting. My parents, especially my father, admired the "leftist
front" in literature and art, and that is why they wanted to name me Lef.
Fortunately, those clerks who registered my name knew nothing about my
parents' intentions and registered me with the traditional name - Lev. And
I like it.

My family background
Growing up during the war
Post-war
Glossary

My family background

When I was born, my father, Yevgeny Drobyazko, a famous Ukrainian
writer and translator, was 35 years old; my mother, Leah Vaisblat, had just
turned 32. I was their firstborn. My parents had known each other for a
very long time, approximately 10 years before their wedding, but there was
a problem with my mother's father. He was the famous Rabbi Nukhim Vaisblat,
and he was very much against his daughter's marriage to a Russian Orthodox
man, so their wedding could take place only after the rabbi's death. It is
also worth noting that my father's father, Anton Drobyazko, never opposed
my parents' wedding. So, when I was born, I combined two different cultures
and two family lines, each of which is interesting.

I know about the family of my father from family legends, even though
I remember my grandfather, Anton Drobyazko. When he was arrested in June
1941, I was four years old. In Kiev, our family lived not far from him, and
I saw him quite often. He was very kind, smiled a lot, and expressed a lot
of love to me. He came from a family of potters, but for outstanding
services as a lawyer the tsar granted him the status of a nobleman at the
age of 40. He graduated from Kiev University's Law Department, and began
his career in a court in Nezhin, Ukraine. He had a very good career. After
the revolution he worked as an editor and translator in various publishing
companies in Ukraine, and in 1926 he and a team of authors issued Ukraine's
first Soviet Law Dictionary. He worked as an editor and a translator until
1941, when he was arrested.

His wife, my grandmother, Maria Lebova, also came from a family of
Russian noblemen. Having received a wonderful education, she provided the
same for her two sons. Having no financial needs in her life, my
grandmother spent all her life working as a teacher in various schools,
particular, in Kiev. She was a modern, emancipated woman, who wanted to
benefit people with her labor.

My grandparents were Russian Orthodox, but they welcomed the Soviet
power, nevertheless, and were quite loyal to it. Anton Drobyazko and Maria
Lebova had two children: Yevgeny, my father, and Anatoly. Even though both
had good educations, their social orientation was quite different. The
Civil War, which followed the Revolution of 1917, split the family. My
father, just like his parents, embraced the Revolution and everything it
brought. Anatoly, however, rejected the Revolution and actively fought
against it. He was a White Guard officer, and graduated from the military
school of the White Guard. He was reported missing in 1919 during his fight
against the proletariat.

After my grandmother's death in 1924, my grandfather Anton lived in
Kiev, actively working in Soviet publishing structures. On June 30, 1941,
at the age of 71, he was arrested by the State Security Service and
condemned, charged with anti-Soviet propaganda and with welcoming Hitler
and the fascists, and he was sentenced to death. His court hearings never
took place, however, and he, too, was reported missing. I found
investigative materials pertaining to his case only in 1997-1998, and they
stated that the fate of the condemned Anton Drobyazko is unclear. Most
likely he was shot during the evacuation of the prisoners of the
Lukyanovksaya prison at the end of August or the beginning of September
1941. As far as I know, the arrest of my grandfather had no effect on my
father's career.

It is peculiar that in my memories of my father, I never remember him
sleeping. I usually saw him working, or sitting in an armchair with a
pencil and a piece of paper in his hand, reading. He was member of the
Writers' Union, an author and a translator. He knew eight European and all
the Slavic languages. He translated classical European poetry into
Ukrainian. The main work of his life was the first translation into
Ukrainian of Dante. He also translated many other authors. He learned all
these languages in school and on his own. He graduated from the Law
Department of Kiev University and from the Department of Film Producers of
the Kiev Theatrical Institute. Both prior to and after the Second World
War, up to his death in 1981 (at the age of 83), my father translated
poetry, edited and published texts, and staged plays in Kiev theaters. All
his life my father was a pioneer in work and in society. He was an atheist.

In 1922 or 1923, at a literature meeting, my father met my mother;
they fell in love quickly and lastingly. But this wonderful fact did not
mean that they could get married. Young Leah Vaisblat was also an atheist
and a person of advanced views. When they married, my mother was 28, and my
father 32. Even though she defied her father's will and married a gentile,
my mother still remained Jewish. She never gave up her maiden name and
remained Vaisblat for the rest of her life as a sign of honor, love and
respect to her family.

This was a wonderful family, and I would like to tell you about it.
Unfortunately, I know nothing about the history of the Vaisblat family
prior to her father, my grandfather, who died before I was born. But I know
a lot about him. My grandfather, Nukhim Yankelevich Vaisblat, was born in
the middle of the 19th century - between 1850 and 1860 - in the town of
Malin, in the Kiev region. Malin then was a typical Jewish town. The first
education my grandfather received was in the cheder of Malin, and later he
finished his studies at a school for rabbis, probably in Kiev. At a young
age he became the rabbi of Malin's Jewish community and became famous for
his knowledge and and even his quick wit.

In the 1880s, a so-called Eternal Jewish Calendar was widely
circulated around the Malin, Berdichev, and Kiev Jewish communities. This
calendar was calculated and compiled by my grandfather. The Berdichev
printing house published it in 1887.

During the 1890s, Nukhim Vaisblat and his family moved to Kiev, where,
according to my mother, he was the chief rabbi of the so-called Soldiers'
Synagogue, a position he retained until the end of his life. According to
other sources, he was the chief rabbi of the Merchants Synagogue of Kiev.
It was a very good career for someone who came from the small town of
Malin. Nukhim Vaisblat held high status not only within the Kiev Jewish
community, but also outside it. The family of the Vaisblats settled in
Zhilyanskaya Street, which was famous for the fact that only Jewish
merchants of the first class and high clergy were allowed to settle there
because of the "Jewish Pale" law.

Rabbi Nukhim had eleven children. He married when he was still living
in Malin. He chose to marry a poor girl who worked as a twister at the rag
workshop of the Malin Paper Factory. It was hard work that did not pay
well. As a result of this work, my grandmother became ill with
tuberculosis. She died from it many years later. My grandmother's name was
Basya-Rakhuma Shloimovna; her maiden name was Lerman. She was born in
Narodichi.

My grandparents and their eleven children occupied a seven-room flat.
This flat belonged to them until the Revolution. They also had servants.
After the revolution and before the death of my grandfather in 1925 and my
grandmother in 1927, the government began to allow other people to live in
the same flat (making it into what was known as a "communal flat") until
finally, my grandparents' children had only two rooms left. The Vaisblat
family was very Orthodox, keeping every Jewish tradition, holiday, and
kashrut. All eleven children received a primary Jewish education in cheder.
Later, eight sons and one daughter - my mother - also received a secular
education. All eleven became famous and made contributions either to Jewish
culture, or to secular science and culture. All of the siblings had
different destinies, but one thing they shared in common - none of the
rabbi's sons became a rabbi.

The first son of rabbi Nukhim and Basya Vaisblat was born in 1880 in
Malin. He left Malin very early, after finishing secondary school. In Kiev
he was trained as a builder and worked in construction. Yankel, later Yakov
Vaisblat, lived an absolutely secular life; he was very handsome, he played
cards and billiards, had lots of girl-friends, and saw many countries
during his construction tours. He never had a family of his own. He died at
the age of 44 from tuberculosis, catching the infection from his mother, my
grandmother.

Their second son, Vladimir, was born two years after Yakov. He
received not only a secular, but also a philosophical education in Germany.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Vladimir became very famous in Russia
as an expert in the arts, as a literary critic and also as a publisher. He
was one of the sponsors of the World Exhibition of Kiev in 1913. Even
though Vladimir was Jewish, the tsar gave him permission to act as an
official representative of Russia at the World Book Exhibition in Leipzig
in 1914. In addition, Vladimir was known for his knowledge of theater. He
also collected porcelain, carpets and paintings. He died in 1944 from
typhus after returning to Kiev from evacuation. He left his wife, Lubov,
his son, Alexander, and a daughter, Iya, all of whom preserved his literary
and artistic heritage for the rest of their lives.

There is an interesting episode concerning Vladimir in that family's
legend. When he returned home from Germany in 1906, being a highly educated
man and an atheist, he sat down at the dinner table without a yarmulke and
prayer, and Rabbi Nukhim threw him out. No man was ever allowed to sit at
the table in that house without a yarmulke and prayer. This is fascinating,
because Rabbi Nukhim had paid for his children's higher secular education.
(Since he wanted his Jewish children to go to a regular secondary school,
he had to pay not only for their education, but also for the education of
two poor Russian Orthodox students per each of his own children).
Nevertheless, Rabbi Nukhim never denied financial support to his children,
and never forced them to choose any particular profession. But Jewish
traditions were considered holy in that house.

Their third son, Solomon, became a famous dental surgeon. He graduated
from the Medical Institute of Kiev in 1922 and later created the method of
conduction anesthesia in stomatology. Since the 1930s Solomon was Professor
of Stomatology at the Medical Institute of Kiev, and after World War II -
the pro-rector of this Institute. Solomon Vaisblat had a large dental
practice in Kiev both prior to and after the war. Moreover, he insisted
that all of his brothers should become dentists as well, and Kiev is very
familiar with the dental dynasty of the Vaisblats. During the course of the
war - from 1941 through 1945 - Solomon Vaisblat worked as a military dental
surgeon in the hospital of Stalinabad (now Dushanbe, the Soviet Republic of
Tadjikistan). Solomon performed his first experiments with conduction
anesthesia on himself, with the help of his younger brother, Aron. Aron
then was the second person to experience the benefits of conduction
anesthesia. Later, he, too, became a dental surgeon. Two of Solomon's
daughters also became famous doctors in Kiev. Both of them are still
living. One of them lives and works in Germany, the other in Australia.
Solomon died in 1965 at the age of 79, having left a huge number of
students and good memories of his life.

The eldest daughter in the Vaisblat family was my Aunt Genya. Her
husband's last name was Genderfeld. She was born in 1890 and was the only
child of the rabbi who was home-schooled in Jewish subjects. Jewish
teachers taught her at home, and she was good at Hebrew, knew all the
Jewish holidays, traditions, and recipes for Jewish cooking, in general
everything that a Jewish woman ought to know. Genya could also speak and
write French. In 1910-1915 she was considered one of the most beautiful
Jewish girls of Kiev. At her wedding at the Brodsky Synagogue in Kiev there
were so many guests, that the carriage wagons which brought them to the
celebration occupied all the streets within a two block radius of the
synagogue. In July 1941 Aunt Genya and her two children, my mother, and I
were evacuated together, while Aunt Genya's husband, Israel Genderfeld, who
actively propagated the idea that nobody needed to leave Kiev because the
Germans were a highly cultured nation, stayed here and was subsequently
killed in in Babi Yar1. Aunt Genya was the oldest girl in the family, so
she brought up my mother, and was like a second grandmother to me. She died
in Kiev in 1980 at the age of 90.

The next child in that family was my Uncle Israel. Under the influence
and insistence of his elder brother Solomon, he became a doctor -a neuro-
pathologist. Prior to the war he was Chief Neuro-pathologist at the Naval
Hospital in Odessa. He spent the entire Second World War as a military
doctor. After returning to Kiev as a Major in the Soviet Army, Israel could
not find a job here. Due to a strange twist of fate he found himself at
Gagres, in the Caucasus, where he became Chief Neuro-pathologist at the
"Ukraine" Health Center, which served the Soviet government officials.
Israel was the first child in Rabbi Nukhim's family who married a Russian
girl. This was sometime in the 1930s, after the death of the rabbi. His
wife, Nadezhda Alexeyevna Kiseleva, moved back to her homeland, Siberia,
after her husband died, and we lost communication with her and her
children. Israel died in 1970 at the age of 70 plus.

The next child in the family was my Aunt Tsipa, Tsipora. Later, she
was registered as Tsilya. After getting married, she became Tsilya
Medvedeva. Despite her Jewish education and the Jewish lifestyle at home,
she, just like her brother, married a Russian man. Her son, whose name I
unfortunately don't remember, went deaf after an injury at the age of 4,
and since there was no special school for the deaf in Kiev at that time, my
aunt and her husband had to move to Leningrad where they could give their
boy an education. It will sound strange, but that boy, being almost
absolutely deaf physically, had an absolute musical ear. He played the
violin wonderfully. Prior to the war, Aunt Tsilya gave birth to another
child -a daughter named Maria. During the Second World War that whole
family stayed in Leningrad and found themselves in that horrible siege by
the Germans. The women survived, while the men - husband and son - died.
After the war, Aunt Tsilya and her daughter Maria lived in Leningrad. They
are no longer living.

The next one was my Uncle Yosif. He was born in 1897, and in 1920 or
1922 he graduated from the Arts College with honors. He thus "broke the
tradition" of Nukhim's children, most of whom became either dentists or
doctors. Elder brothers did not like such behavior from their younger
brother, and tried so hard to influence Yosif that he had to leave his
family and Kiev in 1922 and go to Moscow to pursue his interests. In Moscow
Yosif graduated from the Art Institute. Prior to the war he was a famous
Soviet artist, who had his own studio in Moscow and exhibitions almost
every year. From 1941 through 1945 he lived in Kuibyshev, working as an
artist and teaching several children's and young people's art clubs. After
the war he returned to Moscow and then to Kiev, but in 1950 he was sent to
the gulag. We still have no idea what he was arrested for. Probably, for a
bad joke. He had to serve ten years of hard labor in Kolyma (East of
Russia). Fortunately, he served only five years there, because times had
changed, and he was released in 1956, not after rehabilitation, but for the
then customary definition - "for health reasons." From 1958 on, he lived
outside Moscow, working as a painter to the best of his abilities. He even
married. During the day he was a happy man who smiled a lot, but at night
only his relatives knew that he either did not sleep at all, or cried in
his sleep. He lived to the age of 82, and if not for the camp, he probably
would have lived much longer. He had no children.

My mother had two more brothers - Aron, who was born in 1900, and
Emil, or Milya, who was born in 1915. I will talk about them together
because their lives were similar and they died together. Aron became a
dentist, worked as a senior lecturer at the Kiev Stomatology Institute, and
had a private practice of his own. Emil was only able to graduate from the
Stomatology Institute before the war broke out. Aron served as a military
doctor at the front. In the first month of the war he found himself in the
German encirclement and then in the Syrets camp for prisoners of war in
Kiev, which was practically the same as Babi Yar. Emil turned out to be
there as well. My mother and I learned about them after the war from those
few prisoners of that Syrets concentration camp who survived - by the way,
due to Aron and Emil. Both brothers worked as doctors and took part in an
amazing, even unique procedure that was carried out by the Germans. In
addition to the normal procedure employed by the Germans to identify Jewish
males, which was pretty simple, due to Jewish circumcision, there was also
a skull examination and special blood tests, which were supposed to make
Jewish identification definitive. Aron and Emil were supposed to conduct
such tests - and they did their best to help people escape being identified
as Jews. I personally heard these stories after the war, but unfortunately,
I was too young back then, so I don't remember the details. I am not even
sure how the brothers died. They may have been shot and thus shared the
destiny of all Babi Yar victims. Or they could have committed suicide,
taking the poison they possessed as dentists. There was a custom at my
grandfather's house: every dentist had in his possession gold and strong
poisons. When they went to fight the fascists, they put strong poisons into
the lockets they wore around their necks. Both brothers died without
families. They left only good memories behind.

However, this was not the end of the story of the dentists from the
family of the rabbi - there was one more son, Isaac, who attended cheder,
then secondary school, and graduated from the Dental Department of the
Medical Institute - this was already a tradition in the family; he became a
dentist in Kiev's Military Hospital. He spent the war years as a military
doctor. After the war he worked in Kiev, becoming renowned and loved by his
patients. He died in 1996 at the age of 93, having seen the death of all of
his many brothers and sisters. His wife, Maria Yefimovna Kats, united the
line of Vaisblat with the line of Brodsky. She was a relative of the famous
Brodsky who was a sugar plant owner, and she was certainly a dentist.
Moreover, the son of Isaac and Maria, born in 1925 right after the death of
Rabbi Nukhim Vaisblat and was named after him, also became a dentist.

My mother, Leah Vaisblat, Rabbi Vaisblat's tenth child, was born in
Kiev in1905 and brought up there. After obtaining a Jewish education at
home, she studied at a secondary school and then attended the artistic
reading studio of Sladkopevtsev which was very famous and popular in Kiev
in the 1920s. Then she worked in a library. By the way, she attended that
studio together with her brother Milya, who was also a very good artist, as
good as his brother Yosif. For several years Milya attended the Jewish
artistic studio "Esther" and only upon his brother's strong insistence
became a dentist.

The turning point in my mother's life was her marriage to my father,
Yevgeny Drobyazko. Her elder brothers, Solomon and Vladimir, waited ten
years before they would speak with my gentile father, and certainly not
until after the death of Rabbi Nukhim and Basya Vaisblat. The marriage of
my parents was typical in its other characteristic: apart from uniting
people from the Russian Orthodox and the Jewish Orthodox families, it also
united two strong atheists. Nevertheless, this marriage was very happy for
my father and my mother. From her marriage until her death, my mother's
main profession was being the wife of the famous Ukrainian writer and
translator Yevgeny Drobyazko, and serving as his literary secretary.
Mother's Jewish education was also an advantage in this union: she actively
helped father in his Yiddish to Ukranian translations. They translated
Sholom Aleichem's works into Ukrainian together. Side by side, my parents
lived a long life. They lived through the war, the evacuation, and through
post-war hard times. My mother kept father's literary salon in the 1950s,
1960s and 1970s, and she preserved our house up to her death in 1997. She
died at the age of 92.

Growing up during the war

The first things I remember relate to pre-war Kiev. We lived in the
same seven room flat; there were seven of us: my parents, Genya and her
husband, Milya, Yosif, and me. We lived in three rooms, while the four
other rooms were occupied by our neighbors.

My mother's brothers and sisters surrounded me all my life, and I
remember most of them pretty well. They all spoke Russian at home, which
also became my native language, but Aunt Genya, when she was excited,
combined Russian and Yiddish words, and the more excited she grew, the more
Yiddish words she used. The adults also spoke Yiddish when they wanted to
keep a secret from me. But I learned to understand them very quickly. This
understanding came to me automatically - nobody ever taught me Yiddish on
purpose. Our neighbors were gentiles, but our relations with them were
fine.

At the beginning of the war I was four years old. I remember bombings
and people running to shelters. The sound of sirens and bombings made me
pass out and get very sick. I began to lose a lot of weight, and doctors
insisted that I should be evacuated from Kiev immediately.

In August 1941 we were evacuated from Kiev, having left behind our
relatives and my two babysitters - Lyalya and Galya. It was impossible for
people to evacuate on their own, so we were evacuated with the Kiev
military hospital, where my uncle Isaac worked. My mother and I, Aunt Genya
and her two children, as well as Uncle Isaac's family - we were all put on
the medical train to Kharkov. Despite the red crosses on our railcars we
were constantly being bombed. German planes were flying low over the train,
I could clearly see their pilots. I looked at one of them, and he looked
directly at me, smiling ... and bombed us.

It took us a surprisingly short time to get to Kharkov. Life there was
almost like before the war: flowers were sold, music was played, only,
antiaircraft guns stood on the roofs. But the relative quiet did not last
long. Soon afterwards bombing raids began there, too, and I again was
losing weight and passing out.

We had communications with Kiev then. We learned that practically all
the Vaisblats had left Kiev for various places: the front or evacuation.

At the end of September, right before our departure further eastward,
my father came from Kiev to Kharkov on foot. He had spent all that time as
a military correspondent of the Writers' Union outside Kiev. When on
September 18 he returned to Kiev, he found out that it was no longer
possible to evacuate in any normal way, so he packed and went to Kharkov on
foot. It took him 14 days. Considering the conditions of those times and
his extremely bad eyesight, it was a real miracle he made it. Father
brought a special paper for work in Novosibirsk, and so we travelled there
by train.

I remember that road as a nightmare. There were a lot of bombing
raids. My physical and nervous condition grew even worse. In the town of
Votkins, Udmurtia, far from Novosibirsk (Russia), we got off the train and
spent the whole evacuation period there. My father found a job at the
newspaper of the "Arsena" plant. Gradually, I recovered. I even went to
school there and finished first grade prior to our return to Kiev.

During the first two years of evacuation my parents lost a lot of
weight because of lack of food and the different climate. They also lost
almost all of their teeth. But I don't remember being too hungry there.

Very soon I began to understand the Udmurtian language of the local
population, but there was only the Russian school in the town. Soon, the
Russian-speaking population multiplied and was greater than the local, and
Russian was heard everywhere. I heard no other language spoken besides
those two in Votkinsk.

In 1942 my parents already knew about the shooting in Babi Yar. I
don't know how this information reached them. Aunt Genya cried hard over
her husband's death. During the summer of 1942 they also learned about the
death of Aron and Milya Vaisblats. I remember how hysterical my mother and
aunt were at the news.

Then we were moved to a two-floor house. It had more room but was very
uncomfortable and cold. Our main staple food during evacuation was pumpkin
in every possible form. Very seldom we bought milk, which was so frozen
that it could be taken home in a sack. Bread was baked with sawdust, then
bran, and finally, machine oil. It was practically impossible to eat such
bread, but even that was hard to get on bread cards. We could trade
additional bread, milk and even bear meat for gold with the local
population (we still had some gold left). We could also trade gold for
women's underwear, which was very popular among the locals, because the
local girls wore the slips as ball-dresses on holidays. My parents were
paid with money for their work, but it was practically impossible to buy
anything with this money. Paper money was was practically worthless for
anything but wallpaper. However, sometimes we could buy pieces of bread and
food cards with this money at the market, and then receive slices of bread
and bits of other foods at the store.

We lived in Votkinsk almost up to mid-1945. Victory and the end of the
war brought practically no change in our lifestyle or diet. I remember that
Victory Day was celebrated in Votkinsk. But again, it was impossible to
return to Kiev on our own, just as it was impossible to leave it before. We
needed an invitation. Fortunately, my father received this special
invitation, and I went to the second grade in Kiev in September.

It took us about sixteen days to get to Kiev by train. The main
problem on the way was the presence of thieves: homeless teenagers climbed
onto the roofs of railcars and put iron rods through the open windows,
hooking and taking out whatever they could. Sometimes they even took babies
out this way. In general, this was the time when I first encountered
bandits and anarchy.

Post-war

I remember that Kiev was in ruins in September 1945. Our flat was
occupied by the personal driver of the State Security Minister, so it was
closed to us. For some time we rented a tiny flat on Malo-Podvalna Street,
and then moved to a semi-basement of the writers' house in Lenin Street.
This semi-basement was soon occupied by three professors' families.

To me, our flat in that semi-basement looked like a palace after the
tiny flat we had rented on Malo-Podvalna immediately after evacuation.
There were seven of us living there, and our "family" comprised a unique
combination of nations, cultures and post-war lives.

The second wife of my father's father, Anton Drobyazko, stayed in Kiev
during the war to wait for her husband. She hoped he would not be shot by
the KGB. She was left alone in a three-room flat. But she was afraid to
live alone, so she allowed her laundress to live with her. Her laundress
brought her own sister to live with them. After the war, her sister's
husband, who had lost a leg in the war, returned to her, and so all four of
them lived in those three rooms. In 1945 someone remembered that
grandfather Anton's wife was "an enemy of the people" and was supposed to
be thrown out of Kiev. She was spared only due to her old age. But she and
her three "guests" were left to live only in one room, while two bigger
rooms were given to the chief of the house management department. And a
month later we arrived. In the small room we slept like this: grandmother
on one bed, the invalid and his wife on another bed; the laundress on the
floor between the two beds, while my parents and I slept under the table.
We lived like that until 1949. The strange thing is that the atmosphere in
that flat was quiet and, I can even say, friendly. Even the anti-Semitic
excesses of the invalid did not break the peace, though sometimes he would
get drunk and threaten to "get even with all the Jews". By the way, when we
finally moved to the writers' house, he personally helped us to settle
there and fix all the wooden details of our new home, for we became his
"Jewish friends".

I can say that this was the first situation where I first realized I
was Jewish. But there was another side to that process. The school I was
transferred to in connection with moving to Lenin Street when I was already
in the sixth grade, was 80% Jewish. By that time I fully understood what
this could mean.

The 1950s were coming, and all of our many relatives from the Vaisblat
family had returned to Kiev. We had a lot of victims in the war. In the
beginning of 1950, apart from my mother and Aunt Genya, only two of their
brothers lived in Kiev - Solomon and Isaac, with their families.
Financially, they lived much better than we did. But I don't remember
receiving any considerable aid from them, probably because of the proud
nature of my mother.

In 1950, Uncle Yosif was suddenly arrested, which ruined my well-
measured life. It was a tragedy for our family. The tragedy was aggravated
by the fact that by that time, all of the surviving Vaisblats, except for
the sisters, had already joined the Communist Party. Moreover, all of them
were born into the family of a rabbi, and Vladimir and Isaac used to be
BUND2 members in the past. This combination was too hard to bear. So, all
the brother-Communists went to their party organizations and submitted a
written denial from their brother Yosif. It was the only way for them to
preserve their families, their careers, and their lives. My mother was the
only person who did not do it without risking the life of her family. She
wrote no denial because she was not a Communist, and because she was the
wife of a Soviet writer, that is, a man involved in the Soviet ideology. My
mother and father had two packed bags ready in case they would be arrested.
They expected to be arrested at any time, but fortunately, they never were.
My mother was the only person in that family, who sent regular letters and
packages to Uncle Yosif in prison. All of this changed the atmosphere in
our house and made me grow up faster. After finishing school and technical
college I tried to find a job in one of the highly controlled
organizations. That's where they found out the nationality of my mother -
and they immediately rejected me. The shock was especially great due to the
contrast with my last school and technical college, which were 80% Jewish.
We had both Jewish students and teachers, and Russian and Ukrainian
children felt comfortable only when they imitated our mentality, jokes,
pronunciation, etc. I never heard the word "kike"3 at school. I once
heard this word said against me when I went to the ninth grade, I believe,
and I beat up my offender within an inch of his life. Thus, anti-Semitism
became real for me, too. But neither my friends nor I had any parallels
with the fascists in our minds. I also had a way of escape, a certain
national niche, because I was first the son of a famous Ukrainian writer,
and only then the son of a Jewish mother. Being Jewish was a matter of
secondary importance when I went to school and to college.

Up to grade 8, I was an excellent student. And then my sphere of
interests changed radically and I did not want to study any more. I was
more interested in sports, friends and movies. We would go to movies and
watch every available one. But we did not go to watch any common movie in
any common cinema. The Writers' Union, where I could go with my father's
pass, showed so-called "closed" movies, which the general Soviet audience
was forbidden to see for a very long time. I finished school in 1954 with
not very good marks and certainly failed at the exams to enter the
architecture department of the Construction Institute. I worked for one
year, then tried to take the same exams again, and failed a second time.

After my second failure I tried to enroll in the architecture college,
but I could only enroll in the department of industrial and civil
construction. College saved me from mandatory army service, but gave me
nothing information-wise, having practically passed by me. I finally
finished my studies there in 1958 and received my diploma. It spoke nothing
to my heart or to my mind.

In order to avoid army service, I tried to find a job in military or
paramilitary organizations, but nobody wanted to take me due to the "bad"
last name of my mother, which showed that I was Jewish. Due to the common
efforts of our relatives and friends, such a job was finally found, and a
few years later the problem of my army service was no longer relevant,
because my parents retired on pension and I was their only provider. This
is when I finally got real work at the Academy of Architecture and began to
prepare for an institute. I entered the Construction Institute in 1960 at
the age of 23. At that time I was already married and had a young son. So,
naturally, I could study only at evening classes, combining work and
studies. Nevertheless, I was so eager to study that I graduated from the
Institute with honors.

I married at the age of 22. I met my future wife, Nelya Aronovna
Kantorovich, at a Komsomol4 meeting at the Academy of Architecture. She
was not even 20 at the time. However, our parents, both hers and mine,
received positively the news of our desire to marry so early.

But we had no place to stay. First, we rented two small rooms in
Klovsky Street, then at our house, from the writer Riva Balyasnaya, who
returned from the GULAG in 1962 just as many other residents of our
writers' house had. In the 1950s people were arrested from every family
that lived in that house. By the beginning of the 1960s, all those who
survived the camps and prisons, returned. There were not many. I remember
only three Jewish families who returned.

Nobody spoke about Israel at the time. Israel as a reality and as my
historical homeland was revealed to me only in 1969 due to the efforts of a
friend and colleague. But even prior to that, I was learning some Jewish
traditions and history through the family of my wife, starting from the
fact that we had an almost Jewish wedding: no chupa, of course, but a
Jewish orchestra in a restaurant. It was very seldom done in the 1960s and
required a lot of courage.

I should say that the national climate at my work and at my wife's
work was quite bearable. The next wave of anti-Semitism reached us through
our young son Alexey. I remember when he was six years old he ran to me at
the health center, and I first thought he was running because he missed me
so much. But as it turned out, he ran to me with the request to show my
passport to his friends and prove that I was not Jewish. When I was away,
his friends teased him as being a "kike." In general, judging from my son's
experience, I believe the anti-Semitism of the 1960s and 1970s was even
crueler, but the reaction of the Jewish youth was different. From about the
age of ten, Alexey has been wearing the Star of David (5x6 cm), thus far
from hiding, but actively demonstrating his Jewish identity. And certainly,
unlike me, he knew at a very young age what Babi Yar was all about.

I can say that the 1960s were the years of my Jewish self-
identification. And then the 1970s came with their official policy of anti-
Semitism, which was provoked, as I understand it now, by the changes in the
attitude of the Soviet government towards Israel. After the Six Day War,
Israel became not only a forbidden topic of discussion in Soviet society,
but also a country, which had to be reproached in every way possible. By
the end of the 1970s I was firmly convinced that I would move to Israel. I
delayed temporarily because I was waiting for my friends, who were serving
in the army or worked in secret establishments at the time. We were
planning to leave together with them some time later. Time passed by. Some
of my friends left. Not one of our relatives left, though - all of them had
pretty good lives here. Nelya and I also had no economic reasons to leave.
We had only ideological and emotional reasons. I was absolutely convinced
and sincerely believed that all the Jews should live in Israel. But I had
no real opportunity to leave then. My mother, who was surely Jewish in her
identification, categorically opposed all talks about emigration. She
believed her homeland was here. The enthusiasm of my wife also grew cold
with time.

In the 1990s, the priorities of my plans, as well as the plans of my
wife, were gradually moving towards our son, his interests and abilities.
He finished his studies at the sports boarding school and then at the
Institute of Physical Culture. For some time he was involved in big sports
(boat-racing), but had to quit for health reasons. For a while he had no
work and was very down morally. We were fearful for his future, but strange
as it may sound, it was the army service that I once tried to avoid that
helped him get up on his feet again. So, our son found his calling in the
army service as a paramedic. Genetics is a great thing! In the army he
worked in different offices as a paramedic. I believe this is what he
really liked in life. But he refused to study at the Medical Institute and
instead entered the modern business world. His national and social
orientation was moving constantly towards his Jewishness, and now his
friends are mostly Jewish. I don't exclude the possibility that this was
caused by former complexes and offences he experienced as a child. Even now
he wears a huge Star of David, given to him as a present by his gentile
wife. As far as I know, Alexey fully identifies himself with the Jews, but
economically, socially and morally he is rooted in this country, with its
difficulties and problems. Obviously, his view of this country's future is
more optimistic than mine.

Very recently I started thinking that maybe he is right. It happened
on Hanukkah in December 2001, while I was listening to my 4-year-old
granddaughter Zhenya, Alexey's daughter, reading a poem in Yiddish. First,
her parents (her Jewish father and gentile mother) brought her to the
artistic reading studio, and now my wife and I, her Jewish grandparents,
are taking her there. We are doing our best to inspire a love of reading in
her, so that she may inherit our library.

Our current activities are now very important to my wife and me. After
retiring on pension four years ago, we joined the Jewish Studies Institute.
I am now working on the history of Jewish writers in Ukraine, while my wife
is working on the history of Jewish theaters.

Glossary

1 Babiy Yar - the location of the first mass shooting of the Jewish
population, carried out openly by the Germans on September 29-30, 1941, in
Kiev. After the war, people spoke in whispers about Jewish murders, because
according to the official version of the Soviet government, the German
Nazis killed Soviet people of different nationalities in equal portions.
Whoever expressed another opinion risked being thrown into prison.

Zsuzsa Kobstein
Budapest
Hungary
Interviewers: Dora Sardi, Eszter Andor

I was born in the winter of 1920 in a hospital in Budapest. My parents
lived in Pilisvorosvar. It was such a cold winter that my father couldn't
get to Budapest. So, a telegram was sent to him saying, "Zsuzsa is born."

My father was also born in Pilisvorosvar in 1876. He was called Lipot
Maszler. He was an only son. His parents died before I was born. I don't
know anything about them. My father had another wife, but she died in
childbirth in 1916. Some time after that, he went with a friend to a dinner
with my mother's family. My mother and her sisters and brothers and her
parents sat on one side of the table and my father on the other side. My
mother sat across from him. When dinner was over, my father asked my mother
to marry him. They got married shortly after, in Obuda, and moved to
Pilisvorosvar. They lived in the house my father inherited from his
parents.

My mother, Margit Krausz, was born in 1890. She had 10 brothers and
sisters. My grandparents were quite religious, but my grandmother didn't
wear a shaytl. My grandfather had two kosher butcher shops in Obuda, but I
don't know where. I never saw them. One of my uncles also became a kosher
butcher. Sewing runs in the family. Three of my mother's relatives were
tailors or dressmakers, and Mother also loved to sew and do needlework. All
her brothers and sisters lived in Budapest, so they all survived the
Holocaust. We used to get together for big family occasions, but everybody
celebrated Jewish holidays separately in their homes.

Our house was on the main street of Pilisvorosvar. It was nicely furnished.
We had two big rooms, a kitchen and a huge garden. In the winter, we only
used the bedroom where we had heat. But from spring to autumn, we spent a
lot of time in the garden. We used to do our homework there and play with
other children from school and the neighborhood. We had Christian friends
as well. There wasn't this hatred at that time, in the 1920s. We got on
well with the Christians. We met our Jewish friends on Saturday in
synagogue or in the garden of the synagogue. My headmaster came to see
Mother often, and they would chat and my mother would teach her various
tricks in needlework. Our Christian friends invited us and my parents over
at Christmas to look at their Christmas tree, and they would send us a live
chicken for the holidays. My mother would send them matzot at Pesach.

My father worked as a business agent in the local coal mine. His job was to
collect orders from Budapest. My mother didn't work. She looked after us
and kept the household. She had a young Christian servant. Mother did a lot
of needlework, and she made most of our clothes.

My father went to synagogue every Friday, but on Saturdays he had to work.
But if he was free on Saturday, he went to shul and took us along. My
mother made challah on Friday and she taught us how to light the [Sabbath]
candles and what brochas to say. I still remember some of them. My mother
also made cholent, and we girls had to take it to a nearby Christian baker
and bring it home for Sabbath lunch. Many Jews did the same in
Pilisvorosvar. Every Saturday night, somebody from the community went
around to the Jewish families and told them where they could buy kosher
meet. So, the next day my mother would go and buy meat for the whole week
and put it in ice in the cellar to keep it fresh. We raised chickens at
home, and we would take some to the shochet every week.

We didn't go on holiday, but we often went on excursions on the weekends.
Sometimes all of us went, but often only my sister, I and my father went,
and Mother stayed at home. She would do some needlework and socialize with
her friends. My father was on very good terms with the local rabbi and the
Jewish pharmacist, and they would often pop in to chat with him.

My sister and I went to the local elementary school. It was a mixed school,
with Jews and Gentiles alike. We often went on excursions with the class
and we had many friends from school who came to play with us in our big
garden. It wasn't an Orthodox community, so we went to school on Saturday
and even wrote on that day. After elementary school, we went to the middle
school. But I only went for two years. I became very seriously ill and I
spent a long time in hospital and sanatorium.

When I recovered, I learned to sew. I became an apprentice in a little
dressmaking salon in Budapest and I worked there for two to three years.
Then, one day, my mother saw an advertisement in the newspaper from the
Berta Neumann salon. She went to see the owner and asked her to take my
sister and me on as dressmakers. We worked there until the German
occupation of Hungary.

We made beautiful dresses at the Berta Neumann salon, in the center of
Pest, for countesses and famous artists, like Katalin Karady. We had to get
up at 5 every morning and leave at 6. The train arrived in Nyugati station
at half-past 6. From there we took a tram and then walked. We had to change
into our elegant working clothes - a blue gown with a white collar. At 8
sharp, the manager of the workshop said: "Young ladies, it is time to
start." At half-past 9, the first table could take a break for 10 minutes.
Then the next table. We worked until 1 and then we had a two-hour lunch
break. The girls who lived outside Budapest brought their lunch with them.
There was a small stove and we could heat our lunch on it. In the summer,
we went for a walk during the lunch break or we sat in the Gerbeaud, a
patisserie. Then we worked until 6; we arrived home around 7. We envied
those who lived in Pest because they could go to the movies or go out. We
had to go home to Pilisvorosvar.

In 1942, the doctor told my parents that we should get out of the house in
Pilisvorosvar because it was bad for my health. This is why we moved to
Budapest. Mother went to see the rabbi of Obuda and asked him to give us a
flat. We got a one-room flat in the community building, which also housed
the Jewish elementary school. The rabbi arranged for my father to work in
the community. We enjoyed living in Budapest. For the first time since we
started to work in the Neumann salon, we didn't have to get up so early and
we had free time to go to the movies after work.

There were 50 to 60 girls in the workshop, many of them Jewish. But we had
to work Saturday mornings as well. We got our weekly pay at the end of the
workday on Saturday. On my way home, I'd buy candy, and I would give my
salary and the candy to my mother. After the German occupation of Hungary,
and only three days after a fashion show in the salon, it was confiscated,
together with the dresses, machines - everything.

I met my husband, Odon Kobstein, in our building. He and some other Jewish
boys who were in forced labor units were put up there for the night. During
the day they worked in a factory near Budapest. They would often come and
talk with us, and they helped us move to the cellar when there was an air
raid. In July 1944 as we were preparing to celebrate my mother's birthday,
she said to me, "We will make a big celebration, my dear." I asked her why,
and she told me that I would be engaged to Odon. He already had asked my
parents for my hand. I was very happy, but I didn't want to get married
yet, because we had nowhere to go.

When the Hungarian fascists took over the power in October 1944, we were
taken to the brick factory of Obuda. The older people were later sent off
to the ghetto in Pest, and we young people were marched to one of the train
stations, crammed into wagons and sent off to Ravensbruck. We arrived at
the beginning of December and stayed there about 5 weeks. Then those who
were in a condition to work were taken to the Messerschmitt factory. My
sister and I worked in the turnery until the middle of April. Then we were
deported, weak and ill with typhoid, to Mauthausen, and we were already
standing in front of the gas chambers, naked, with the dog tags around our
necks, when somebody came running and shouting, "Hey, Hungarians, we are
liberated!"

After our liberation, we spent three months in a hospital in Guzen. We left
the hospital when the Russians took it over from the Americans. We arrived
home in the summer of 1945. We found our parents in the old flat in Obuda.
My dear husband, my fiancé at that time, visited my parents every Sunday.
We arrived on a Sunday and he opened the door. "Zsuzsa," he said, "Where
have you been?!"

We married in 1947. We did not have a religious wedding, only a civil
ceremony. We moved into a small flat in Budapest and we found a small place
to set up a mechanics workshop. It was never nationalized because it was
small and we had no employees. My husband repaired only three things:
motorbikes, bicycles and sewing machines. At first, I wanted to go back to
dressmaking, but he asked me to help in the shop. So I was there all day,
and I used to sew. When people came in, they asked me if I would make
clothes for them as well. But I told them that I only sew for my husband. I
could never have any children because of the illness I had as an 8-year-old
child. But my dear husband told me that he loved me all the same.

My sister Judit married in 1948. She has a son, Gyuri. When he was at
university, he went to Japan to study Chinese and Japanese, and he never
came back. He lives in Australia. But he comes quite often and he also
calls me.

Dina Kuremaa
Tallinn
Estonia
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya
Date of Interview: September 2005

I met Dina Kuremaa in the Jewish Community of Estonia 1, but the interview was conducted in the hotel, where I was staying. Dina is a slender, rather short woman. She is very feminine and charming. Dina's hair is curly, of auburn color. She looks much younger than her age, perhaps because she smiles often. Dina likes jokes and laughter. She is very sociable and easy-going.

Family background
Growing up
During the War
After the War
Glossary: 

Family background

My father, Ezekiel Neimark, is from Poland. He was born in 1889 in a small town called Koden [170 km from Warsaw]. I know that my father's birthday was always marked in March. I know nothing about Father's family. All my father's kin remained in Poland and I never saw them. Father said that his family was very religious. They strictly observed traditions and lead a Jewish way of life. Father went to cheder. Besides, he obtained education in a Jewish elementary school. He finished four or five grades, I don't remember for sure. My father's mother tongue was Yiddish.

I don't know why Father decided to leave Poland and his family. He never mentioned it. At any rate, in 1918 he came to Estonia and settled in Tallinn. Here he met my mother. When Father became an Estonian citizen, they entered the name Kissel in his passport. His Jewish name Izekiel was written in the synagogue records. Father's name was also a little bit changed. It was written Naimark instead of Neimark.

Mother's family lived in Estonia, in a small town called Paljasmaa [about 80 km from Tallinn]. My maternal grandfather, Leizer-Ber Aizman, was born in Tartu. Grandmother's name was Ella. I don't know her maiden name. Grandmother was born in Paljasmaa and my grandparents moved there after the wedding. Grandmother was a housewife.

All their children were born in Paljasmaa. The family was large. They had 13 children. I knew only five out of them: Mother and four of her sisters. They lived in Estonia. The rest of the children lived in different parts of the world. Mother's elder sister Ida and younger brother left for America in the 1900s. Other siblings lived in Russia. I knew only Anna, who lived in Leningrad with her family. Mother's sister Reize, Roche and Fanny lived in Estonia. My mother Berta was one of the youngest children in the family. She was born in 1892.

None of the children of the Aizman family obtained a good education. My mother finished three grades of Jewish elementary school. I think that another four children had approximately the same education. The family was religious. Jewish traditions were observed. Sabbath and Jewish holidays were marked at home. Grandfather went to the prayer house on Sabbath and on Jewish holidays. Yiddish was spoken at home.

Grandfather died in the 1910s. There was no Jewish cemetery in Paljasmaa, so he was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Tartu.

The children grew up and flew out of the nest in different directions. All of them had families. Anna married a certain Feitelson. They had one son. Reize married Mayzel. They had two sons, Ber and Abram, and three daughters: Zelda, Raya, and I don't remember their third daughter's name. Both Reize's sons immigrated to Palestine in the 1930s. Rebecca married a certain Dantsig. They had a son, Abram, and a daughter, Dina. Roche Strazh had two children: daughter Dina and son Abram. Fanny married Olei. They had only one child- son Bernchard. Having got married all of my mother's sisters became housewives.

When Mother grew up, she left Paljasmaa and moved to Tallinn to look for a job. Her married friend lived there and Mother moved in with her. Mother didn't have education, so she started working as a sales assistant in a kiosk on the market. She sold buttons, threads and all kinds of small paraphernalia for tailors. One day Father came by to get buttons. That was the way my parents met. Mother was a beautiful girl and Father had a crush on her. Mother was tall and buxom. Father was small and slim. They started seeing each other and in 1919 they got married. They had a traditional Jewish wedding with a lot of guests. It was very mirthful. Mother often told us about it.

When my parents got married they rented an apartment. It was located on Kompasi Street. I don't remember that apartment. After their children were born, my parents moved to a more spacious apartment, consisting of five rooms. We lived there until evacuation. I remember that place very well. It was a two-storied log house. It is no longer there. A multi-storied building is in its place now. There were two apartments on each floor of our house. We lived on the first floor. Our neighbors were an Estonian family. The second floor was occupied by a Jewish family. My parents were friends with them. Each apartment consisted of four rooms, a kitchen and a poky room for the maids.

Growing up

Our family was Jewish and all the children got Jewish names. My elder sister, Ente-Zelda, was born in 1920. She was called Zelda at home. The second sister, Chaya-Miriam, was born in 1921. She was called Miriam. The third sister, Roche-Leya, was just called Roche. She was born in 1924. I was born in 1927. I was called Libe-Dina. I was called Dina at home. In 1933 my brother Zelek-Michl was born. Father was happy to have a son. My brother went through his brit milah. I remember that event as we, children were treated to sweets.

Father had his own shop. He obtained a state patent for private entrepreneurs. His workshop produced half-finished patterns of the upper part of shoes. Shoemakers purchased those materials from Father. Mother was a housewife. My maternal grandmother moved into our place when my parents got married. Grandfather had died a long time ago and she remained by herself. I remember Grandmother very well. She looked beautiful even at an elderly age.

We also had a maid, an Estonian lady called Anna. She was a very good lady. We loved her a lot. Anna mostly took care of children. She cooked hardly anything as Mother didn't let her do that. Mother cooked everything by herself. We only had kosher food, therefore Mother didn't trust the cooking of an Estonian lady. The only thing Anna did in the kitchen was cleaning or warming up dishes on Sabbath. Mother cooked everything on the eve of Sabbath, so the maid had to warm and serve the food.

The children were brought up in a strict way in the family. Of course, we were not chastised. Of course, sometimes when Mother was angry, she could spank someone, but Father's strictest punishment was to tell the disobedient one to stand in the corner. However, it did not happen often. Father never let us be frolicsome at the table and pick favorite dishes. There was a strict order: the whole family got together at the table. When Father finished eating, the meal was over for everybody and Mother started clearing the table. Nobody was allowed to stay at the table.

I remember one incident very vividly. I was not older than five. Father had stomach problems and he underwent surgery. That is why Mother always made oatmeal for breakfast. Not only Father ate it, but everybody else too. I didn't like it very much. I didn't even start eating my oat porridge as I couldn't make myself eat that. Father finished his food, left and Mother started clearing the table. I stayed hungry before lunch. At lunch I was given the oatmeal, which I hadn't eaten for breakfast. After that, I started eating everything Mother cooked. I think that this kind of upbringing was fruitful. All of us were raised to be unpretentious, conscientious and responsible.

We were not very wealthy. My parents didn't pamper us. I was the fourth daughter in the family, and I had to wear hand-me-downs after my sisters. I wasn't given new dresses and I felt very offended with that. My brother was the only boy in the family and they always bought him new clothes of course. They didn't buy any new pieces for me. I got new clothes only after the Great Patriotic War 2, when I started working.

My parents were very religious, especially Father. Mother was not as pious. Still, she strictly observed all Jewish traditions. Maybe she did so because of our father. Father said that one of his relatives in Poland was a rabbi. It seems that Father's whole family was religious. He was raised in a religious spirit since childhood. Kashrut was strictly observed at home. Mother had two sets of dishes: separate dishes for dairy products and for meat. Mother strictly followed that. Once, one of her children confused the dishes and Mother took the cinder from the stove and koshered the dishes with that. There was a shochet in Tallinn. Chicken purchased on the market was taken to the shochet. Once mother took me to the shochet. I still remember how frightened I was. When I saw blood, I was screaming so bad that I could hardly be cooled down.

There was a very beautiful synagogue in Tallinn 3. The Germans destroyed it during the war. Men were downstairs and women were on the balcony. Every year father paid for his seat in the synagogue as well as Mother's and Grandmother's seat. Seats were not to be bought for children as they sat next to the parents. My parents didn't always take us to the synagogue on Sabbath. The whole family went there during Jewish holidays. They even took my younger brother with them. There were a lot of Jews in Tallinn. The synagogue was very large and it was always full of people. There was a very good rabbi in Tallinn, Doctor Aba Gomer 4, and a wonderful chazzan, Gourevich.

Mother didn't bake bread. She bought it. She always baked Sabbath challot, though. On Sabbath she always cooked gefilte fish and carrot tsimes. I remember we didn't really enjoy that as there was a lot of goose fat in it. Mother cooked all food beforehand. Her festive dishes were ready by sun- set. Mother lit candles and prayed over them. Then we sat down at the table. After dinner she didn't do any work about the house. Our maid Anna turned the light on, stoked the stove and washed up.

We observed Jewish holidays with all rules being observed. We bought matzah on Pesach. There wasn't a single slice of bread in the entire Paschal period. We ate matzah at that time. Mother had Paschal dishes, which were kept in the box in the kitchen cupboard for the whole year. It was taken out of the box only on Pesach, when everyday dishes were not used.

Father always carried out paschal seder. I vividly remember him in white attire sitting and reclining on pillows. All rules were observed. Father read from the Haggadah, hid the afikoman - a piece of matzah, which one of the children was supposed to steal and return to Father for redemption. A goblet with wine for the prophet Eliagu was put on the table. The door was kept open for Eliagu to come into the house and bless it.

On Yom Kippur my parents and elder sisters fasted. My brother and I were taken to our neighbors, a Jewish family, living on the second floor. They gave us something to eat. On Yom Kippur my parents spent the whole day in the synagogue and prayed until the vesper. They could have dinner in the evening when they came back from the synagogue. Father contributed money to the synagogue. The Jewish community collected money to help poor families.

My brother and I went to the Jewish kindergarten, though Mother didn't work. We had a maid, who took care of us. The matter is that Father wanted us to go to the Jewish lyceum 5 with teaching in Ivrit. There were two Jewish lyceums in one building. That building is currently occupied by the Jewish community of Estonia and the Tallinn Jewish school. All subjects were taught in Ivrit in one of the lyceums and in the other one - in Yiddish. When my elder sisters were studying in the Ivrit lyceum, most subjects were taught in Russian, and gradually the teaching was being switched to Ivrit. That is why there was no need for them to attend kindergarten where children where taught the rudiments of Ivrit.

By the time when I was supposed to go to school, they began teaching Ivrit since the first grade. My cousin Bernhard, the son of Mother's sister Fanny, was in one class with me. Yiddish was spoken in my kindergarten. At home we spoke Yiddish as well as Ivrit. We took walks, played games, had music, drawing and reading classes. I don't remember how much time we spent in the kindergarten. I don't think it was for the whole day. I think we stayed there until lunch and then went home.

I went to the first class of the Ivrit lyceum when I was seven. I cannot say that I was a very good student, maybe I was a mediocre one. I wasn't good at mathematics. Sometimes I got bad marks. Usually I got good marks and rarely excellent marks. From the 1st till the 6th grade I studied in the lyceum free of charge, and from the 7th grade my parents had to pay tuition.

My elder sisters Zelda and Miriam did not do very well at school. They finished the 6th grade. Father said if they could not study, they should work. He was not going to waste money on them. My eldest sister, Zelda, worked in Father's workshop. In accordance with his patent he could keep one worker and one apprentice. Thus Zelda became his apprentice and then a worker. My second sister, Miriam, worked at the spinnery until evacuation. A Jew was the owner of the factory. The third sister, Rocha, kept on studying in the lyceum.

When I went to lyceum, uniforms were introduced. The everyday uniform consisted of a navy blue dress with a white collar and cuffs and a navy blue cap with a white rim. There was also a festive uniform: a navy blue skirt and white blouse. We wore it on Jewish holidays and Estonian state holidays.

We studied two foreign languages at the lyceum - German and Russian. My father spoke broken Russian, Mother spoke no Russian. I spoke pretty good German, but Russian was hard for me. Many students in our lyceum were the members of children's Zionist organizations. There were three of them in Tallinn: Betar 6, Hashomer Hatzair 7 and Maccabi 8. My elder sisters were members of Maccabi. I didn't join any Zionist organization. I don't even remember why.

There was no anti-Semitism in Estonia. Neither I nor my kin felt anti- Semitism in every-day situations or on the state level. Estonian Jews exercised the same rights as Estonians and it was absolutely natural for us.

In 1936 my father, mother and elder sisters went to Poland to visit Father's relatives. My paternal grandmother wanted to see her daughter-in- law and her grandchildren, whom she had never seen before. She wanted to do that before she died. I and my younger brother weren't taken on the trip. We stayed with Grandmother and our maid Anna. I was so upset that I even cried on the day of their departure. My granny decided to distract me from that and took me and my brother to the photo studio. Such events took place rather rarely in our family, so soon I forgot about my worries.

My parents came back from Poland after a month. They told us about Father's family, the places they visited. I didn't listen to their talks as I must have envied the sisters. Thus, I cannot recall anything they told me about their trip. My grandmother Ella died shortly after they came back. She was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Tallinn according to the Jewish rite, the way it was supposed to.

Each summer Mother and we, the children, left town and went to Nömme. She rented a house there for the entire summer. Many of our acquaintances were on recreation in Nömme with their children. Grandmother, Anna and Father came in the evening after work and on the weekend. We lived in Nömme in summer 1940, when Estonia became a Soviet Republic [see Occupation of the Baltic Republics] 9. Then I was told how Soviet troops entered Tallinn, but I didn't see that myself. I remember only how my mother unexpectedly packed our things and we left Tallinn in early August. I remember I was surprised to see very many militaries in uniforms unfamiliar to me, walking around on the streets of Tallinn.

When the Soviet regime came to power in Estonia, our life changed. Our Jewish lyceum was closed down and remade into a Jewish school with the teaching in Yiddish. All of us became pioneers 10. At that time I didn't quite understand what it was all about. I did what others did and became a pioneer like others. The new-comers from the Soviet Union were housed in the apartments of other people, but it didn't happen with us, maybe they didn't have time for it.

My father's workshop was nationalized and turned into a cobblers' artel 11. Father transferred all equipment to the artel and kept on working there. Strange as it may be our family avoided deportation, carried out by the Soviet regime on 14th June 1941 12. A lot of people who used to own stores and workshops were exiled to Siberia from Estonia within one day. Men were sent to the Gulag 13, and their families were exiled. Now I wonder how come our family was not touched. Maybe several stages of deportation were planned and the unleashed war was in the way of that process.

We got to know that Hitler's troops unleashed war in 1939, when fascists attacked Poland 14. At that time Father was corresponding with his relatives in Poland. They fled to Soviet Ukraine, when the German troops entered Poland. At that time fugitives were let in there. When they wrote to us from Ukraine, Father wanted them to come to us Tallinn. I don't know why they didn't come at once. Then the Germans captured Estonia, and we got evacuated. That was all we knew about Father's relatives. All of them must have perished.

Even when Hitler attacked Poland, there was no fear. The Soviet army crushed the German troops and we believed that Germany would not like to be at war with the Soviet Union. After Hitler's troops having been crushed, a non-aggression pact was signed between Germany and the USSR [the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact] 15. Everybody hoped that there would be peace when the agreement was signed. We were frightened when on 22nd June 1941 we found out from Molotov's speech 16 on the radio that German troops had attacked the Soviet Union, gone into action in Belarus and Ukraine.

During the War

Father said at once that we had to leave Estonia as soon as possible. Mother always listened to Father, but still we didn't pack as quickly as we should have and we took the last train departing from Tallinn on 9th June 1941. Many people managed to get evacuated, but unfortunately many more Jews stayed in Estonia. After deportations just one week before the war, people feared Bolsheviks 17 more than Germans.

The only thing we knew was that we were heading somewhere far in Russia. Nobody told us about the final destination. As I mentioned we took the last train. It was necessary to cross the bridge over the Narva River in order to leave Estonia. German planes were constantly bombing that bridge. Hardly had we crossed the bridge, was it blown up. My cousin Dina Dantsig worked for the government, and they were evacuated in a ship, since there was no train communication. Their ship was hit by a German bomb, but the passengers were rescued from the sinking ship.

It was a long way to go, and finally we arrived in Kazan [about 900 km from Moscow], wherefrom some people were sent to Chelyabinsk, but our family stayed in Tataria. Kolkhoz people on carts met the evacuees at the train station in Kazan and took them to the kolkhozes 18. Nobody was left in Kazan. The militaries had the lists of evacuees and supervised the allocation. Our family was sent to the kolkhoz Shura, not far from Kazan. One more family of Estonian evacuees went with us.

We were taken to the kolkhoz and housed in a vacated house. There was one room and a kitchen. There was a large Russian stove 19 in the wall between the rooms. It was used for heating the house and cooking. There was no furniture. The chairman of the kolkhoz sent a carpenter to us, who made big bunks along the wall for us. They gave us empty sacks. We put straw in there and used them as mattresses. Mother had brought along pillows and blankets for us. There weren't enough blankets for everybody, so one blanket was used for two people.

We had a hard living. The second family, which came with us, shortly after left Shura and moved to Kirov. Father was not willing to go. Our large family had no place to go. We thought that the war would end in half a year, or in a year in the worst case scenario, and we would be able to go back home. We didn't have many things with us. Mother took winter coats, underwear and a little bit of gold. When a baby was born in our family, Father always gave Mother some golden jewelry: a ring or ear-rings. That gold was of big help for us at the beginning of the war. Mother exchanged gold for products. Unfortunately, we ran out of the gold pieces pretty quickly.

We hardly had any clothes. We had winter coats, but we had neither hats nor boots. Mother exchanged some of the things for secondhand woolen kerchiefs and felt boots, valenki. They were worn out very quickly and we tied the soles that started to come off with ropes. We didn't have stockings, so we used rags instead. The winters were severe, about 40° ? below zero.

Father and my sisters worked in the kolkhoz. Sometimes I also was involved in weeding and mowing. We were not given food cards 20, but got some products for a day of work in the kolkhoz, namely flour and potatoes. After work, Father fixed shoes for local people and they paid him with flour and grain. Life was hard on us. We didn't even think of kashrut. During our stay in evacuation we had forgotten the taste of milk and meat.

The local people were Tartars, Muslims. They treated Father very well, but the rest of us were ignored. All of us starved, but it was the hardest for my father. He often couldn't eat anything, as he had problems with his stomach and he had to be on a special diet. The food we ate was not good for him. Father was getting weaker and in 1943 he died from emaciation. We wrapped his body in the tallit, taken by him into evacuation, and some sheet on top of that. There was no coffin.

Father was buried by local Tartars. They wanted everything done in accordance with their rite. We knew that it was customary for them to bury the deceased in a sitting position. Mother pled that Father should be buried in a lying position, but she could not control whether it would be done that way. My brother came back and said that Father was buried in a lying position. Then a board with Father's name was put on the mound. After the war we went there, intending to set up a monument for him, but could not find his grave.

It was even harder for us after Father's death. Local people cut us dead. Nobody cared whether we were alive or not, whether we had something to eat. When Father was alive, we ate almost every day. When he died, there were times when we had nothing to eat for several days. Then it became easier. We went to the forest, picked berries and roots, and mushrooms, growing on the trees. They were very hard, almost as hard as wood, so we could not just boil or fry them. We peeled those mushrooms, pestled them in a mortar and poured boiling water over that powder. Of course, we cooked all food without salt. We didn't see salt in the four years of our stay in evacuation.

My brother went to the kolkhoz field to pick up remaining frozen potatoes and brought them home. It was impossible to boil them as after heating they turned into mucus. We washed and baked them. It tasted awful, but we didn't pay attention to trifles like that. In any case, this food didn't last very long. The chairman of the kolkhoz was very stringent. Once he nabbed my brother while he was digging potatoes. He called a militiaman and threatened that he would be imprisoned for stealing kolkhoz belongings. The militiaman turned out to be a kind man. He took my brother home and told Mother not to let him in the field. Then he started whispering some things in her ear. Later Mother said that he told her what to do: if going in the field, it should be only at the nighttime out of sight of the chairman. The chairman said if he caught my brother another time, he would sue him in court.

Of course, we were scared, but we had no other way out. My brother and I went in the field at night: he was digging and I was on the vigil. It was funky, but God was protecting us. We were not caught. We didn't have potatoes every day. We drank a lot of hot water every day to quench our starvation, which created the illusion of being sate for a while. All of us looked like skeletons. My mother was stout before the war. She weighed more than 90 kilos when we were leaving for evacuation. Her weight was 48 kilos when we came back. I don't know how we could possibly get over that starvation.

That was the way we lived for a while. Our neighbor, an elderly Tartar, had pity on us. She started stopping by at our place and bringing us food stealthily from her husband. Sometimes, she brought us potato peelings. Mother washed them thoroughly and cooked soup from them. My elder sisters Miriam and Rocha left Shura. Miriam went to Kazan, and found a job there as a spinner at the spinnery. Rocha left for Tambov. She was the only one, who finished school. She entered medical school and began studies to become a nurse.

The four of us stayed - Mother, Zelda, my brother and I. A funny story happened to us. We had playing cards, and sometimes we played at night. Once our neighbor saw cards in Zelda's hands and asked if my sister knew how to read cards. My sister was very witty and replied at once that she could. Of course, she didn't know how to read cards, but she knew all inhabitants of the village, whose relatives were in the lines, and who out of them was alive. She started spreading cards and telling what she knew. Local citizens took it at face value and starting coming to Zelda for her to read cards. My sister didn't take money. They paid her with food. Some of them brought bread, others flour. It helped us a lot to survive evacuation.

My cousin Dina Dantsig, who lived in Chelyabinsk, wrote that she would send an invitation for us to come there. I don't know what was in the way, but we didn't get the invitation.

I spoke broken Russian. I could hardly say simple things, so I didn't go to school. I managed to finish seven grades before evacuation, and I didn't study in the evacuation.

In 1942-43 the situation on the front was very tense, and it affected peoples' attitude to us. We were the only Jewish evacuees, the foreigners. Tartars were looking forward for Germans to come. I don't know what they expected from them, but they constantly were talking about it, and we felt ourselves ill at ease. When Soviet troops started attacking, the air was cleared. It was rather scary before that. There was a radio in the village, where we were constantly listening to round-ups from the front. We followed military actions of the Soviet army: where they attacked, and which cities they liberated. The closer Soviet troops were getting to Estonia, the more optimistic we were about the future.

We scraped through the dreadful year of 1944. In fall 1944 Estonia was liberated, and people started getting back home. We left for home in the middle of November. We were on the road for one month. We didn't have any food with us, and we had no things to exchange at the stations. One local woman gave me a loaf of bread at the station not far from the Estonian border. We cut it in tiny pieces and ate it on our way. When the train arrived in Narva, we were given food straight at the station. It was such an indescribable feast for us.

After the War

We headed for Tallinn from Narva. Mother's sister Rocha and her daughter Dina were already there. Our apartment was occupied by strangers, so we stayed with Aunt Rocha. We came there on my birthday, and I got a pretzel made from rye flour for my birthday. Aunt baked it herself. It was so scrumptious! They boiled a large pot of potatoes for our arrival and we pounced on the food. Aunts Rocha and Dina looked at us with their eyes full of tears and told us to take our time and eat normally as nobody was going to take the food away from us. I still remember that.

Today, my daughter and granddaughter cannot get why my fridge is always filled up, and why I should always have bread. I am 79, and I have never thrown away a single slice of bread. If there is stale bread, I warm it up in the microwave and eat it. I cannot make myself throw away even a crust. I have kept that rule since evacuation. It is hard for young people to understand that, as they didn't go through that.

Almost all of our relatives survived the war and were in evacuation. Only Mother's sister Reize and her three daughters didn't manage to leave. When the Germans entered Estonia, all of them were taken to a concentration camp - I don't remember exactly where, either to Latvia or Lithuania - and were executed there. Mother's sister Anna, who had lived with her family in Leningrad, came to Tallinn after the war. She lost her husband and son during the siege of Leningrad 21. She wasn't willing to stay in Leningrad by herself and settled in Tallinn.

My brother Zelek-Michl survived all horrors of evacuation and died when we came back to Tallinn. We arrived in Tallinn on 15th January and my brother went to school almost right away. On 23rd February, Soviet Army Day 22, his class went to congratulate the veterans of the war. At that time we were living with my aunt, as our apartment had not been returned to us yet. He had to take a train to get to school from Aunt's house. The tram took a turn near school, and slowed down the speed. At that time, the doors to the tram could be opened by people, without the driver's help. My brother decided not to go until the stop, but jump from the tram on the turn to school. He jumped out and was hit by a car, which was moving alongside the tram. Zelek-Michl died at once. He perished on the spot. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Tallinn, not far from Grandmother's grave. It took all of us long to get over that tribulation.

We had stayed with Aunt Rocha for less than a year before moving to our apartment. We addressed all authorities and finally we were given two rooms out of our five-room apartment. The other three rooms were occupied by our neighbors. We had no idea about communal apartments 23. Even in evacuation we lived in a separate house, without neighbors. Only walls and a sofa were left from our apartment. That was it.

The parcels sent by American Jews after the war were very handy. All Jews, who returned from evacuation, were given such parcels with clothes, food concentrates and canned products. They were of big help for a while. Gradually we started working, and getting things we needed.

Miriam was the first out of my sisters who got married. Her wedding was in August 1945. She married a Jew, Naum Shpolyanskiy, who came to Tallinn from Ukraine. Eldest sister Zelda married a Lett and moved to his place in Riga. Her married name was Putte. Rocha did not change her maiden name and remained Naimark.

I understood that it was not the right time for studies. I had to work as postwar times were hard. I went into evacuation at the age of 14 and came back when I was 18. I didn't grow up. I was tiny and lean and could easily wear the dresses that I used to put on when I was 14. My cousin Dina Dantsig worked for the Council of the Ministers of Estonia and helped me get a job there. On 25th January 1945 I was employed by the gas and water supply trust by Tallinn Ispolkom 24. In May 1945 I got my first salary and ordered my first dress from a milliner. It was a memorable event for me.

First I worked as an assistant to the secretary, then as an assistant to the accountant, then as a bookkeeper. I didn't work there for a long time, I changed my working place. I went to work for the Ministry of the State Planning. In 1952 I got an offer from the Russian Drama Theater in Tallinn. I worked there all my life: 48 years out of the 50 I was a chief accountant of the theater. Life got my easier when I started working. We received food cards right upon our return. When I got my first salary, we could afford some products from the market. We had enough to eat; we were not famished.

When I came to work for the theater, I already had experience in working as an accountant. I didn't have a specialized education, I learned on spot. People treated me very well, and tried helping me. The theater paid for my education and after work I attended classes at financial college. I studied there for about three years and obtained a diploma of an accountant, a professional secondary education.

Rocha had a diploma of a nurse. She worked for a hospital and entered the evening Pharmaceutical Department of Tallinn University. Rocha was the only one in the family, who got higher education. Upon graduation she went to work as a pharmacist, then she was the head of the pharmacy.

When campaigns against cosmopolitans 25 were held in the USSR, most Estonian citizens learned about them from papers. We didn't feel it. When I was working for the Ministry of State Planning, I didn't remember a single case, when a Jew was fired. There were other things happening in Estonia - recurrent exile of those, who managed to come back after deportation of 1941. In spite of the fact that those people came back on an absolutely legitimate ground, without being in hiding, they were arrested and exiled in the previous place. Of course, we were lucky, as the new leaders of Estonia were loyal to us. My sister Zelda, who was living in Latvia, said that there was tension there and sometimes she had to conceal that she was a Jew.

When the Doctors' Plot 26 commenced in January 1953, Estonian Jews also felt that. Every day there were radio programs, where people were told how Jewish doctors tried to poison Stalin, and we could feel that anti-Semitism was streamlined. We lived in fear. I knew that the management of the theater was given the task to make a list of Jews employees. There were a lot of Jews among the actors as well as among the employees of the theater. The chief producer was also a Jew. Such lists were definitely made in other institutions too. Our HR manager, Scherbatova, came to Estonia from Russia. She got those lists ready. I think if Stalin had not died in March, all of us would have gone to Siberia. We were living in constant fear. We had stocks of tinned food, rusks in case NKVD 27 officers came to us to send us in exile. Thanks God, Stalin died and our stored up things were not needed.

There was turmoil in the theater, when we found out about Stalin's death. We found his bust and put it in the foyer. There were a lot of mirrors and all of them were to be covered with black cloth and flowers put next to each of them. The mourning in the theater lasted for about a week. I didn't take Stalin's death as a grief, on the contrary I felt alleviation - there was no more fear. Aboriginal inhabitants had a different reaction. I remember the HR manager, Scherbakova, was in tears beating her head against the wall and crying, 'How will we be living!' I didn't have thoughts like that. We lived without Stalin, and our life was good. It was not as easy during his reign. We were always scared, were afraid of stooges. There was no fear under the regime of Khrushchev 28, and then Brezhnev 29. We felt more liberty.

Anti-Semitism was displayed under the Soviet regime in Estonia. I never felt it at work. In general, I could feel that people didn't like Jews that much, but it was not coming from the local people, only from those, who arrived from the USSR. They got used to anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union and passed that feeling on here. In fact, they felt themselves the hosts of Estonia. Of course, Estonian was not banned, but Russian was the state language and everything was in Russian, beginning from the documents and up to the street signs.

When Father died, we gradually started speaking Estonian, not Yiddish. Mother spoke Yiddish, and my sisters and I mostly spoke Estonian. Mother kept Jewish traditions. It was hard. There was no place to buy kosher food, we had to stand in a long line even to get ordinary food. There were times, when there was no place to buy matzah for Pesach and we baked it ourselves. Then the municipal authorities gave the community a small wooden house, which was turned into a synagogue or, more precisely, a prayer house. Matzah was sold there.

On Friday Mother always marked Sabbath in accordance with the tradition: lit candles and prayed over them. Mother was the only one who was able not to work on Saturday. At that time Saturday was an official working day and people had to go to work. We tried to mark Jewish holidays the best way we could. Mother loved cooking Jewish dishes and taught me how to cook them. Even now I often cook such dishes as gefilte fish, tsimes, salted beef tongue and others. My family likes them a lot. We always fasted on Yom Kippur. Almost every Sabbath, Mother went to the synagogue. All of us went there on Jewish holidays - my mother, sisters and I.

There wasn't such a tough struggle against religion 30 in Estonia, as it was in the Soviet Union. It was safe only for elderly people to go to the synagogue there. If it was found out that a working person went to the synagogue, he could be fired. Nothing like that happened here. All of us were working and were not afraid to go to the synagogue. I went there, even when I was a party member.

In two years, after I was assigned chief accountant of the theater I had to enter the Party. At that time the Central Committee of the Party of the Soviet Union demanded that people who had leading positions in the company join the Party. The management changed very often in the theater. Our political officer became the director of the theater. He called me and said that I had a choice - to join the Party or to resign. I wasn't willing to quit my job, so I joined the Party. It was a mere formality for me and for the party bureau. I didn't even know the statutes of the Party. The political officer advised me to read today's paper in case someone would ask about global events. I did what he told me and became a party member. When perestroika 31 broke out, I left the Party.

We didn't mark Soviet holidays. They were just extra days-off for us. The only exception was New Year's Day, when the whole family came to Mother. This family reunion was a tradition. Of course, I had to attend demonstrations with other employees of the theater. It was obligatory in Soviet times. People got together in the morning with the posters and with the flags. We marched in lines along the street and went home after the demonstration. In the event we didn't attend the demonstration, we would be reprimanded or deprived of our bonus.

In the late 1940s Mother started working at the market. She bought some things and resold them on the market. When my sisters and I became independent and started making pretty good money, we didn't let our mother work as we could provide for her ourselves. First Mother and I lived together. When I got married, Mother moved to my elder sister Rocha. Our family was on good terms. Everybody helped Mother. My mother died in 1962. She was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Tallinn.

I got married in 1956. I met my future husband, Raymond Kuremaa, with the help of my neighbors, an Estonian family. Raymond was their relative. On 31st December 1945 he came to congratulate his relatives on New Year. He rang the bell, and I opened the door. He looked at me and asked who I was. I said that I had lived there since my arrival from evacuation. He introduced himself and said that he had come to see his relatives. Then my neighbor came up to me and said that Raymond wanted to congratulate me on New Year. That was the way we met. From time to time we saw each other, went for a walk, to the cinema. I had known Raymond for eleven years before we got married. We were just friends. If someone told me about our getting married, I would only laugh.

Raymond was born in a hamlet in Raplass district of Estonia in 1924. His parents owned a farm, cultivated land and bred cows. When Estonia became Soviet, all property of Raymond's parents was taken over by a kolkhoz. Raymond's elder brother, who was 18 in 1941, was in hiding in the forest, when the Germans came to Estonia - he was not willing to join the German army. Then he came home to his parents, and someone told on him to the NKVD. When they came to arrest him, they found a rifle in his house. He was sentenced to 25 years and nobody believed that he was fighting against Soviet troops, and he was given an additional five years for keeping a weapon. He spent almost ten years in the Gulag, somewhere in Kolyma 32. Only after Stalin's death, when the commission on retrial of the convicts' cases considered his case, he was released since there was no corpus delicti. He came back home in 1956 and attended our wedding.

Raymond wanted to become an actor. He came to Tallinn upon finishing school. He became a very good actor. When he finished drama school he worked in drama theater for a while. Then a puppet theater was founded in Tallinn. Raymond found it interesting to start working with the puppets and he went to work for the puppet theater. He worked there all his life. Raymond was considered to be one of the best actors in Estonia. He always took part in the festivals, in the contests. He won prizes.

In 1956 Raymond invited me to spend a vacation with him and go to his parents. There was a group of young people with him, so I didn't mind going. We came to the farmstead. There was a very beautiful forest nearby. We took a walk in the forest. In the evening we made a fire. That evening Raymond proposed to me. I took it as a joke and said that I agreed. When we came back home, Raymond reminded me of taking our applications to the marriage register.

My mother wasn't against our wedding. During the Soviet regime, she changed her outlook, and didn't take the marriage with a non-Jew as tolerantly as it was in prewar times. On 19th August 1956 we submitted our applications in the marriage register and on 8th September we got our marriage registered. We had a very modest wedding party, only for the closest relatives.

Raymond was a very good husband. I've never heard a bad word spoken by him. He respected my observance of the Jewish traditions. On Jewish holidays we always came to my mother for celebration. Our daughter Ruth was born in 1958. When my husband and I were trying to choose her name, we wanted it to be both Jewish and Estonian. Raymond loved our daughter very much and paid a lot of attention to her. Of course, Ruth knew that she was half-Jewish. I never concealed that from her.

Our daughter was raised Estonian. She went to an Estonian school and spoke Estonian. Having finished school Ruth was willing to enter the Polytechnic University, but she didn't get the right score. Then she entered the Tallinn College of Municipal Economy. She did well and finished college with a distinction. She couldn't find a job in her specialty and came to work for the Russian drama theater. She worked there for 25 years. First she was an assistant to the decorator, then she started working as a supplier.

At that time directors constantly changed. I had worked there for 48 years, and there were 12 directors within this period of time. A new director cut the position of a supplier. Every department got the money to get necessary things and then submitted expense reports. The former director of our theater was the director of the Russian cultural center at that time and he offered a job to Ruth. She is currently working there as director of the administrative department. She is loved and valued there. She has a pretty good salary. She is happy with her job.

Ruth's first husband Unts Pegel was an artist. He was much older than Ruth. Their daughter Pirit was born in 1980. When Pirit was four, Ruth and Unts divorced. Ruth got married for the second time. Her second husband, Ronal Ruuk, raised Pirit like his own daughter. Ronald is also much older than Ruth. He was born in Tallinn in 1939. Ruth and Ronald have been together for 21 years and they are very happy. I think my son-in-law is wonderful. Ronald is working in the advertisement business. He is a very smart and capable person.

Starting in the 1970s many Jews left Estonia for Israel. I wasn't going to immigrate, partly because of my husband, but mostly because of my being conservative. It turned out so that I had lived in one street all life long and had worked in one place almost all life long. It is hard for me to imagine that I could change not only the apartment, but the city and the country. Many of my friends left. I was very worried about them and wrote letters. I would definitely like to visit Israel, to see this wonderful country and meet people I love. It would probably remain my dream. I cannot leave for places too far away and change climate because of my health. In 2002 my nephew Charvy, the son of my sister Rocha, left for Israel. He likes it very much. Charvy calls me every month and invites me to come over for a visit.

First I didn't take perestroika seriously. Then I felt how much easier it was for me to live. Maybe it was harder on me from a materialistic point of view, but I felt free. It was officially allowed to go abroad, correspond with people from different countries, to say unfalteringly what you wish in any company. We had feared that for years. We were afraid to tell a joke, speak our minds on the articles we read on events. We have dreaded that since 1940 and it seems to me that we got so used to that we didn't even notice that we were deprived of liberty.

Estonia was revived during Gorbachev 33. Jewish life flourished. Our Jewish community of Estonia was founded when he was at power. I think perestroika has brought a lot of positive into our lives. I don't regret the breakup of the Soviet Union and Estonia becoming independent. Frankly speaking, I didn't have a bad life during the Soviet regime. I was lucky to have a good job and team, to have money, have enough to eat, friends - in a word - there was nothing I lacked. I have lived 50 out of my 79 years in Soviet times and I am really used to all conventionalisms and restrictions that I could not even picture that it might be different. I was just used to this life. Estonia regained its independence in 1991 34. It's a pity it has not happened earlier. I had a happy childhood in independent Estonia, and I am happy that I spend my old years in a free country.

Our Jewish community got stronger during the years of independence. During the Soviet times they didn't let us forget that we were Jews - anti- Semitists were constantly reminding us of that. But still they tried to squeeze out Jewry from us. Now I feel myself a Jew owing to our community.

My husband died in 1993. He had renal cancer. He was operated on, but he died shortly after that, when all his diseases were acute. I felt very lonely after he died. The community filled that void and gave me a chance to communicate with people. The Jewish community treats old people very well and takes good care of us. The needy are given lunches, products free of charge. Some people get partially reimbursed for their utilities and heating payment.

I get enough to get by with my pension. The government classified those who were in evacuation in the category of the repressed. Now I am getting an additional amount of money to my pension. In spite of the fact that our utilities are very expensive I have enough money to buy anything I need. I am even helping my granddaughter. The Jewish school is open again for the first time in postwar Tallinn. It is a pity that my granddaughter is grown- up. I would have talked my daughter into having her daughter study there.

Our state takes care of us. I get the necessary medicine at a discount. Ambulance is free. We just have to pay to see specialized doctors. Now we have benefits and the state pays our medical insurance. We have to pay private doctors though. Recently I was operated on a knee joint in a private clinic. My daughter didn't want me to go home. I live by myself. My daughter is very good, but I want to be independent. My daughter and son-in- law help me a lot. When I couldn't walk for a month after operation, I lived with my daughter. My son-in-law looked after me. There are some sons who wouldn't take such care of their mothers. Now I am OK. My son-in-law doesn't let me carry heavy things. He buys anything I need and brings it to me. I gladly cook something for them. My daughter works for the whole day, but I have a lot of spare time. We are a very closely-knit family.

I don't mark Sabbath at home, but I obligatorily mark all Jewish holidays. My daughter and her husband come to see me on holidays. On Pesach I don't keep bread, only matzah. I fast on Yom Kippur. I started fasting after the war. Now my daughter is trying to convince me not to fast. I have to take pills all the time. I don't think there will be too much trouble if I miss one day. I have to do it stealthily for my daughter not to scold me. I attend the celebrations of all holidays in the community. I was there on Pesach and on Sukkot. It is so good that we have a synagogue and a rabbi. I go to the synagogue twice a year - on Rosh Hashanah and on Yom Kippur.

The Estonian government treats our community fairly. Often the president of Estonia visits our community on Jewish holidays. He even came to the community on Chanukkah and lit the chanukkiyah. Every year we commemorate the Holocaust. We go to the memorial dedicated to the former concentration camp Klooga 35. The president of Estonia comes to Klooga on that day and holds a speech. On our state holiday - Independence Day on 24th February - the president of Estonia gives a reception and invites the chairman of the community, the rabbi and his wife. That holiday is broadcast on television.

When I hear, how Jews are treated lets say in Russia, I cannot even think of such things. Let God every Jew to have such a life like Estonian Jews have here in Estonia. Our community is a member of the council of the president, our opinion is counted. Our chairwoman of the community, Tsili Laud, takes credit for that. She does a great job. Now a new synagogue is being built in the yard of the community, Tsili also takes credit for that. I am trying to help the community the best way I can. I have been elected the chief` auditor for the third time, so I am a member of the audit commission.

My sisters Zelda and Rocha lived to see Estonia independent. They also were members of the community. Miriam died in 1979 at the age of 58. Rocha died in 1993 at the age of 69 and Zelda in 2001, when she turned 81. All of them were buried in the Jewish cemetery in Tallinn. All Mother's sisters were buried there. It is very important for me to be buried in the Jewish cemetery in accordance with the Jewish rite. My parents were Jewish, but to my regret, I didn't live like a Jew during the Soviet regime. I'm not very religious, but I am trying to stick to the traditions. I don't know how long I am to live, but I have my daughter's word that I will be buried in strict compliance with the Jewish rite.

Glossary:

Isaac Rozenfain
Kishinev
Moldova
Interviewer: Nathalia Fomina
Date of interview: September, November 2004

Isaac Rozenfain is a lean man of medium height with fine features. He has a moustache and combs his hair back, giving way to his large forehead. He wears glasses with obscure glass. When talking he looks at you intently, but at times he seems to drift off into his own world, recalling something deeply personal, and is in no hurry to share what is on his mind. Isaac and I had a meeting at the Jewish municipal library. Isaac is a very nice, intelligent man with impeccable manners and a sense of dignity. However, he is rather taciturn and reserved: there are subjects he never discusses, subjects that he determined for himself based on his sad experiences in life. Therefore, he often used phrases such as 'I don't know' or 'I don't remember', particularly when it came to politics.

My family background
Growing up
During the War
Post-war
Glossary

My family background

Unfortunately, I know nothing about my father's parents. I didn't know them and never saw photographs of them either. All I know is that my paternal grandfather's name was Moisey Rozenfain and he lived in Nevel [a district town in Vitebsk province, 980 km from Kishinev]. We lived in Bessarabia 1, and Nevel belonged to the USSR [during the Soviet regime Nevel was in Pskov region, today Russia]"and my father's relatives never traveled to Kishinev. My father may have spoken about his parents, when I was small, but I can't remember anything. I have no doubts that my grandfather and grandmother were religious since my father was given a traditional Jewish education. I don't know how many sisters or brothers my father had. I met only one of his brothers, who visited us in Nevel after the Great Patriotic War 2. I have a photo taken on this occasion, but unfortunately I cannot remember my uncle's name.

My father, Wolf Rozenfain, was born in Nevel in 1888. He must have had education in addition to cheder since he knew Hebrew. They didn't learn Hebrew properly in cheder, and my father knew Hebrew to such an extent, that he simply couldn't just have learned it in cheder. He also spoke fluent Russian. My father must have moved to Kishinev before 1918, before Bessarabia was annexed to Romania [see Annexation of Bessarabia to Romania] 3. I don't know what my father was doing then. My parents met in Kishinev, but I don't know any details in this regard. My parents got married in 1920.

My maternal grandfather, Israel Kesselman, came from some place near Kiev. I don't know my grandmother's name. My grandfather and grandmother died before I was born. I know that they had to leave their hometown near Kiev due to the resettlement of Jews within the [Jewish] Pale of Settlement 4. The family moved to the village of Eskipolos [today Glubokoye, Ukraine] near Tatarbunar in Bessarabia province [650 km from Kiev].

I remember that my mother's sister Mania Shusterman [nee Kesselman] lived in Eskipolos. Aunt Mania was the oldest of the siblings. She was a housewife. I don't remember her husband. Her son Abram, my cousin brother, was about 20 years older than me and always patronized me. Abram was a Revisionist Zionist [see Revisionist Zionism] 5, and a rather adamant one. He was one of the leaders of Betar 6 in Bessarabia, on an official basis: he was paid for his work; he was an employee of Betar. He was an engineer by vocation. He passed his tests extramurally in Paris. Abram had a hearing problem, which was the result of lightning that struck their house in Eskipolos in his childhood. It killed Abram's sister, whose name I can't remember. She had two children: Izia and Nelia, my nephew and niece.

Mama also had two brothers, whose names I don't remember. One of them lived in Galaz in Romania. He died before World War II. The second brother moved to South America at the beginning of the century. He lived in Buenos Aires. I remember that my parents corresponded with him. My uncle had a big family: a son, Izia, named after grandfather Israel Kesselman, and three daughters: Sarita, Dorita and Berthidalia, in the local manner. Their Jewish names were Sarah, Dora and Bertha. I never met them, but I remember their rather unusual names. My uncle must have been a wealthy man. I was supposed to move to America to continue my education after finishing the technical school. Later, my family decided I should continue my education in Civitavecchia near Rome [Italy] and my uncle was to pay for it. My uncle died after the war, in the late 1950s, early 1960s. I didn't correspond with my cousins. [The interviewee is referring to the fact that it was dangerous to keep in touch with relatives abroad] 7.

My mother, Fania Rozenfain, nee Kesselman, was born near Kiev in 1890. She lived in Tatarbunari before she moved to Kishinev. She must have finished a school of 'assistant doctors' there. [Editor's note: In Russian the term 'assistant doctor' (from the German 'Feldscher') is the equivalent of medical nurse. As a rule men were feldschers and women were nurses.] Mama got married at the age of almost 30, and I guess hers was a prearranged marriage.

Growing up

After the wedding my parents settled down in a one-storied house with a verandah on Alexandrovskaya Street [today Stefan cel Mare Street] in Kishinev, where I was born on 28th October 1921. I remember this house very well. My mother showed it to me when I grew older. Later we moved to 29, Kupecheskaya Street [today Negruzzi Street]. We always rented two-bedroom apartments, but I don't remember the details of this apartment. From Kupecheskaya we moved to Mikhailovskaya on the corner of Sadovaya Street.

My father was the director of the Jewish elementary school of the Society of Sale Clerks for Cooperation [founded in 1886] on Irinopolskaya Street. He taught Hebrew and mathematics at school. My father was short and wore glasses. When he returned home from work he enjoyed reading Jewish and Russian newspapers. My father subscribed to the Jewish paper 'Undzere Zeit' [Yiddish for 'Our Time']. We had a collection of books in Hebrew and Russian at home. However, the books in Hebrew were philosophical works and fiction rather than religious ones. We spoke Russian at home. Mama and Papa occasionally spoke Yiddish, but my mother's Yiddish was much poorer than my father's. Mama worked as an assistant doctor in a private clinic. She knew no Romanian and for this reason couldn't find a job in a state-run clinic. Mama was tall and stately. She had thick, long hair that she wore in plaits crowning her head. Mama's friend Manechka, a Jewish woman and a morphine- addict, who also worked in this clinic, had an affair with the chief doctor. For some reason I remember this, though I was just six or seven years old then. We occasionally had guests, but I don't remember any other of my parents' friends.

We always had meals together at the same time. Papa sat at the head of the table. Mama laid the table. She cooked gefilte fish, chicken broth with home-made noodles, and potato pancakes [latkes]. The food was delicious. Mama was really good at cooking. Our family wasn't extremely religious. I wouldn't say that we followed all rules at Sabbath, though Papa certainly didn't work on this day. Papa went to the synagogue on holidays, but he didn't have his own seat there. I went to the synagogue with him. We celebrated Jewish holidays. I remember Easter. [Editor's note: Mr. Rozenfain speaks Russian. In Russian the words 'Pesach' and 'Paskha' (Christian term) are very similar and Russian-speaking Jews often use 'Paskha' instead of 'Pesach'.] We had special fancy crockery. Papa conducted the seder according to the rules. He reclined on cushions at the head of the table. There was no bread in the house during the holiday [mitzvah of biur chametz]. When I was five or six years old I looked for the afikoman, but I don't remember any details. They say childhood events imprint on the memory, but that's not the case with me. We had Easter celebrations till the beginning of the war, but I don't remember myself during seder, when I was in my teens.

I must have been given some money on Chanukkah [the traditional Chanukkah gelt], but I don't remember. On Purim Mama made hamantashen and fluden with honey and nuts. I also remember how we took shelakhmones to our acquaintances on Purim [mishlo'ah manot, sending of gifts to one another]. We didn't make a sukkah [at Sukkot] and neither did any of our acquaintances, so I didn't see one in my childhood.

Most of my friends were Jews, but when we moved to Mikhailovskaya Street I met Shurka Kapevar, a Russian boy, who became my very close friend. His maternal grandfather was a priest. Shurka showed me records of Shaliapin [Shaliapin, Fyodor Ivanovich (1873-1938): famous Russian bass singer], with the singer's personal dedication to Shurka's mother. When I grew older I incidentally heard that she had had an affair with Shaliapin when she was young.

My parents and I often spent our summer vacations with Aunt Mania in Eskipolos on the Black Sea firth. We went by train to Arciz [180 km from Kishinev], which took a few hours, and from there we rode for some more hours on a horse-drawn wagon. There was a lovely beach there with fine yellow sand. I enjoyed lying in the sun. I learned to swim and used to swim far into the sea and sway lying on my back on the waves. I also enjoyed spending time with my cousin Abram, whom I loved dearly. He often traveled to Kishinev on Betar business.

I went to the Jewish school where my father was director. We studied most subjects in Romanian, but we also studied Hebrew and Jewish history in Hebrew. Regretfully, I don't remember any Hebrew. After successfully finishing elementary school, I entered the Aleku Russo boys' gymnasium [named after Russo, Aleku (1781-1859), Romanian writer and essayist]. This building on the corner of Pushkin and Pirogov Streets houses one of the university faculties now. This was the only gymnasium in Kishinev, which exercised the five percent quota 8 for Jewish students. [Editor's note: as the five percent quota existed in Russia before 1917 it is possible that it also existed in some schools in Romania.] However, my father decided I should only go there - that's how good it was. Our Jewish neighbors' son, who was about three years older than me, studied there and my parents decided I should try.

There were Romanian and Russian boys in my class, but only three Jewish boys: Kryuk, Balter and I. We had very good teachers. I remember Skodigora, our teacher of mathematics. His brother taught us natural sciences. Our Romanian teacher was Usatiuk, a member of the Iron Guard 9. There were fascists in Romania at that time. Usatiuk gave me a '9' - we had marks from 1 [worst] to 10 [best] - for the Romanian language in the 2nd or 3rd grade, and this was a high mark, and he hardly ever gave such a high mark to anybody else. This was quite a surprise for me.

Once I faced the hidden antipathy of my peers. I can still remember this very well. One day in spring we played 'oina,' a Romanian ball game. Two players standing in front of each other try to strike the third player running from one to the other with a ball. I stood with my back to a window of the gymnasium. The ball broke the window, but it was obviously not my doing considering that I was standing with my back to the window. Anyway, when the janitor came by, the other boys stated unanimously that I hade done it. Besides punishment, the one to blame was to pay for the broken window. I felt like crying. This actually showed they disliked Jews in my view. We weren't allowed to speak Russian in the gymnasium. [Editor's note: The reason for this was to introduce the Romanian language publicly as well as at higher educational institutions in the formerly Russian province.] Since we often spoke Russian at home I switched to it in the gymnasium. My classmate Dolumansi often threatened, 'I will show you how to speak Russian!' By the way, he was a Gagauz 10, I'd say.

I had moderate success at the gymnasium, but I was fond of sports like everybody else. I went to play ping-pong at the gym of the Jewish sports society Maccabi 11 on Harlampievskaya Street. I also played volley-ball for the team of our gymnasium. There were competitions between the town gymnasiums for boys. They were named after Romanian and Moldovan writers: Bogdan Hasdeu [Hasdeu, Bogdan Petreceicu (1838-1907): Romanian scholar, writer, historian and essayist], Alexandru Donici [Donici, Alexandru (1806- 1865): Moldovan writer, translator, the creator of the Moldovan national fable], Eminescu 12; by the way this latter gymnasium was called Jewish in the town, as many Jewish students studied there.

The Kishinev of my youth wasn't a very big town. It had a population of about 100,000 people. [According to the all-Russian census of 1897, Kishinev had 108,483 residents, 50,237 of who were Jews.] The only three- storied building was on Alexandrovskaya Street on the corner of Kupecheskaya Street: its owner was Barbalat, who also owned a big clothes store. There was a tram running along Armianskaya, Pushkin and Alexandrovskaya Streets. One of the brightest memories of this time I have is of two dead bodies on the corner of Alexandrovskaya and Pushkin Streets, guarded by a policeman. This happened in the late 1930s, when the Iron Guards killed the Prime Minister of Romania [Armand Calinescu, Premier of Romania, was murdered in September 1939.] King Carol II 13 ordered the carrying out of demonstrative executions of leaders of the Iron Guard in big towns in Romania. In our town the spot for this was across the street from the 'Children's World' store, and people passed this location hurriedly or preferred to avoid it at all.

I loved cinema and wanted to become a film director. I often went to the Orpheum on the corner of Alexandrovskaya and Pushkin Streets, the Coliseum on Podolskaya Street, and the Odeon cinema. I didn't want to miss a single movie. However, this was a problem. We weren't really wealthy and a ticket cost 16 Lei [the price of a tram ticket was 30 Ban (0,3 Leu)], which was rather sufficient for a gymnasium student. I remember movies with Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo. I particularly liked step dance and never missed one movie with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

The gymnasium students liked walking along Alexandrovskaya Street, the Broadway of our town. We walked from Gogol to Sinadinovskaya Street, on the right side of the railway station. We made acquaintances, walked and talked. This love of walking played an evil trick on me. One afternoon, when I was supposed to be in class, I was noticed by a gymnasium tutor, who was to watch over the students. I was walking with a girl and I was smoking a cigarette. I was 15 or 16 years. I was immediately expelled from the gymnasium, and my father's attempts to restore me there failed.

The family council decided that I should go to a technical school. I entered the construction technical school on the corner of Zhukovskaya and Lyovskaya Streets. My sad experience changed my attitude towards my studies and I became one of the best students in the technical school. This school was owned by a priest. Architect Merz, a German, was the best teacher. The recruitment age to the Romanian army was 20 and I didn't have to go to the army before 1940. I was born the same year as the son of Karl II, Mihay [King Michael] 14. This was supposed to release me from the army service, and also, I guess the month and the date had to coincide. I also remember the rumors that Mihay wounded his father's lover and that she was a Jew. The situation for Jews got much worse then. I remember the New Year [Christian] celebration when Antonescu 15 was the ruler. There was the threat of pogroms and the celebration was very quiet. I don't know how serious this threat really was, but the feeling of fear prevailed. I don't remember whether they introduced any anti-Jewish laws in Romania 16 at that time, but there was this kind of spirit in the air.

During the War

Perhaps for this reason we welcomed the Soviet forces, entering the town on 29th June 1940 [see Annexation of Bessarabia to the USSR] 17. People were waiting for them all night long. I stood on the corner of Armianskaya and Alexandrovskaya Streets. There were crowds of people around. At 4am the first tanks entered the town. The tank men stopped their tanks and came out hugging people. When the Soviet rule was established, teaching at the technical school continued, only the priest stopped being its owner. Our teachers stayed. They knew Russian very well and started teaching us in Russian. A few other boys and I repaired two rooms in a building to house the district Komsomol 18 committee. We plastered and whitewashed the walls. I joined the Komsomol sincerely and with all my heart. I liked the meetings, discussions and Subbotniks 19, when we planted trees.

Then wealthier people began to be deported from Kishinev. The parents of one of my mates were deported, but he was allowed to stay in the town and continue his studies. The Stalin principle of children not being responsible for their fathers was in force ['A son is not responsible for his father', I.V. Stalin, 1935]. Once, this student whose Russian was poor asked me to help him write a request to Stalin to release his parents. We were sitting in the classroom writing this letter, when the secretary of the Komsomol unit came in and asked what we were doing. I explained and he left the classroom without saying a word. Some time later I was summoned to the Komsomol committee and expelled from the Komsomol at a Komsomol meeting. Then there was the town Komsomol committee meeting that I still remember at which I was expelled. I couldn't understand why they expelled me, when I was just willing to help someone. 'How could you help an enemy of the people 20?' I had tears in my eyes. I sincerely wanted to help a person and they shut the door in my face.

The Germans attacked the USSR in 1941 and Kishinev was bombed at 4am on 22nd June. One bomb hit a radio station antenna post in a yard on the corner of Pushkin and Sadovaya Streets. At first I thought it was a practice alarm. A few days later Mama said their hospital was receiving the wounded from the front line. We lived two blocks away from the hospital, and I rushed there to help carry the patients inside. Kishinev was bombed every day at about 11am.

I finished the technical school on 24th June. The school issued interim certificates instead of diplomas because of the wartime. I got an assignment [see mandatory job assignment in the USSR] 21 to Kalarash [50 km from Kishinev]. I took a train to the town and went to the house maintenance department. There was a note on the door: 'All gone to the front.' I went back to Kishinev on a horse-drawn wagon. I arrived in the early morning. A militiaman halted me on the corner of Armianskaya and Lenin Streets. He checked my documents and let me go. This was 6th July and on the following day I was summoned to the military registry office that was forming groups of young guys to be sent to the Dnestr in the east. In Tiraspol we joined a local unit and moved up the Dnestr. My former co- students and friends Lyodik [short for Leonid] Dobrowski and Ioska [short for Iosif] Muntian and I stayed together. We crossed the Dnestr south of Dubossary. German bombers were fiercely bombing the crossing. We arrived at a German colony 22 in Odessa region where we stayed a few days. Then we joined another group from Tiraspol and moved on. On our way we mainly got food from locals.

One night, we arrived at Kirovograd [350 km from Kishinev, today Ukraine] where a restaurant was opened for us and we were given enough food to eat to our hearts' content. Then we were accommodated in the cultural center. We had enough hours of sleep for the first time in many days. On Sunday young local people came to dance in the yard. A few of us joined them. I asked a pretty girl to dance, but she refused. I asked another girl, but she refused, too. When the third girl refused to dance with me, I asked her 'Why?' and she replied, 'because you are retreating.'

The next morning we got going. For two months we were retreating from the front line. At times we took a train, but mainly we went on foot. We arrived at a kolkhoz 23 in Martynnovskiy district, Rostov region. We stayed there for a month. I went to work as assistant accountant. Throughout this time I was dreaming about joining the army. Dreaming! In October, when the front line approached, we were summoned to the military registry office and then were assigned to the army. Lyodik, Ioska and I remembered that we were Bessarabians [the Soviet commandment generally didn't conscript Bessarabians, former Romanian nationals], since we came from Tiraspol, another Soviet town, we kept silent about it; we wanted to join the army!

Ioska and I were assigned to the front line forces and Lyodik joined a construction battalion. Construction battalions constructed and repaired bridges and crossings. After the war I got to know that Ioska survived and Lyodik perished. I was sent to Armavir [today Russia]. We received uniforms: shirts, breeches, caps and helmets. We also received boots with foot wrappings that were to be wrapped around the calves, but then they slid down causing much discomfort. We received rifles and were shown how to use them. After a short training period I was assigned to an infantry regiment, mine mortar battalion, where I became number six in a mortar crew consisting of the commander, gun layer, loader and three mine carriers. A mine weighed 16 kilos: so it was heavy and for this reason three carriers were required. Some time later I was promoted to the commander of a crew since I had vocational secondary education. Our battery commanding officer was Captain Sidorov, a nice Russian guy of about 30 years of age. It may seem strange, but I have rather dim memories about my service in the front line forces. It's like all memories have been erased!

In 1942 I was wounded in my arm near Temriuk [Krasnodarskiy Krai, today Russia]. I was taken to a hospital in Anapa. Six weeks later I returned to the army forces. However, I didn't return to my unit. Instead, I was sent to a training tank regiment in Armavir where I was trained to shoot and operate a tank. I could move a tank out of the battlefield if a mechanic was wounded. All crew members were supposed to know how to do this. A tank crew consists of four members: commander, loader in the tower, a mechanic on the left and a radio operator and a gunman/radio operator on the right at the bottom of the tank. The radio operator receives orders and shots. The commander of the tank fires the tower gun. I was the loader, 'the tower commander', as tank men used to call this position. Tank units sent their representatives to pick new crew members to join front line forces and replace the ones they had lost: 'sales agents' as we called them.

I was assigned to a tank regiment near Novorossiysk. The commander of my tank, Lieutenant Omelchenko, was two or three years older than me. He had finished a tank school shortly before the war. The tank and radio operators were sergeants and I was a private: we were the same age. They were experienced tank men and had taken part in a number of battles compared to me. Omelchenko was Ukrainian and the two others were Russian. At first I noticed that the others were somewhat suspicious of me, but then they understood I was no different from them. We were in the same 'box' and we got along well. I was afraid before the first combat action, but I didn't show it so that I wouldn't give them a chance to say: 'Hey, the Jew is frightened'. I didn't notice anything during the first battle since all I did was load the shells to support non-stop shooting. I was standing and placed the shells into the breech, heard the click of an empty shell and loaded the next one. All I heard was roaring, this maddening roaring. I might have got deaf if it hadn't been for the helmet. The battle ended all of a sudden, and it all went very quiet. I don't know who won, but the Germans had gone. When we were on our way back to our original position, the manhole was up and we were getting off the tank. I heard the sound of a shot and fell.

The bullet hit me in my lower belly and passed right through my hip. I was taken to the medical battalion where they wanted to give me food, but I knew that I wasn't supposed to eat being wounded in my belly - I knew from Mama, who was a medical nurse. The doctor examining me decided he knew me. He thought I had been his neighbor in Odessa. I was taken to the rear hospital in Grozny by plane. This was a 'corn plane' [agricultural plane], as people called it, and the wounded were placed in a cradle fixture underneath the plane. I remember that the hospital accommodated in the house of culture [alternative name for cultural center], was overcrowded and the patients were even lying on the floor. I was put on a bed since I was severely wounded. A few days later I got up at night and went to the toilet. I started walking and was on my way to recovery. After the hospital I was sent to a recreation center where Shulzhenko gave a concert on the second floor. [Shulzhenko, Claudia Ivanovna (1906-1984): Soviet pop singer, whose name is associated with the start of Soviet pop singing] I went to the second floor. I can still remember the stage and Shulzhenko in a long concert gown. She sang all these popular songs and one of them was 'The blue shawl' [one of the most popular wartime songs]. There was a storm of applause!

I received my first letter from Central Asia from my girlfriend whom I had met in Kishinev before the war. Her name was Neta [Anneta]. She somehow managed to get to know my field address. Neta also gave me my parents' address. She wrote in her first letter that my parents had evacuated to Central Asia and were staying in Kokand, Uzbekistan. Mama worked as an assistant doctor and Papa was a teacher of mathematics at a local school. They wrote to me once a month. The field post service was reliable. At least, the letters made it to me wherever I was. A postman was always waited for at the front line. I don't know about censorship, but I wrote what I wanted. My parents described their life in evacuation. When Kishinev was liberated in 1944, they returned to Moldova. Neta and I corresponded, and I visited her when I returned after the war, but I was already married by then.

When I recovered I was assigned to a reserve tank regiment. I stayed there a month before I was 'purchased'. We were to line up, when 'purchasers' visited us and once I heard Kusailo saying, 'this zhyd [abusive of Jew] will never join a tank unit,' but I did, and he and I were in the same SAM [mobile artillery regiment] unit where I stayed for over a year. A mobile artillery unit is very much like a tank, but it has no circulating tower on top of it. It was a 76-mobile unit with a 76-mm mortar. This was one of the first models of mobile units. Lieutenant Chemodanov was my commanding officer. I have very nice memories about this crew and our friendship. I was wounded again and followed the same chain of events: hospital, reserve unit and then front line unit again.

In summer 1943 I joined the [Communist] Party. The admission ceremony was literally under a bush: the party meeting was conducted on a clearing in the wood. I think it was at that time that I got an offer from the special department to work for SMERSH 24. I'd rather not talk about it. Actually, there is nothing to talk about. As far as I can remember, I provoked this myself. I always said I was interested in intelligence work. I was young and must have been attracted by the adventurous side of this profession. This must have been heard by the relevant people. I was given a task: two soldiers had disappeared from our unit and I was supposed to detain them, if I ever met them... This didn't last more than a year, but I must say that spies are quite common during the war. No war can do without intelligence people.

I served in the 84th separate tank regiment for the last two years of the war. I joined it in late 1943, when the Transcaucasian front was disbanded and we were assigned to the 4th Ukrainian front. We had T-34 tanks that excelled German tanks by their features. I was an experienced tank man. We were very proud of being tank men. Air Force and tanks made up the elite of the army. Tank men usually stayed in the near front areas and were accommodated in the nearby settlements. During offensives we moved to the initial positions from where we went into attacks. Sometimes tanks went into attacks with infantry, but we didn't know those infantry men. My tank was hit several times, but fortunately there was no fire. Perhaps, I'm wrong here and other tank men would disagree, but I think if there was an experienced commander of the tank, the tank had a chance to avoid being set on fire. The thing is: if a tank is set on fire, what's most important is to get out of the tank. The manhole was supposed to be closed and the latch was to be locked and this latch might get stuck. We closed the manhole, but never locked it. On the one hand it was dangerous, but on the other, it made it easier to get out of the tank, if necessary. The tank might turn into a coffin if the latch got stuck. Germans shot bullets at us and we believed that if we heard a bullet flying by, the next one was to hit our tank. Then we evacuated from the tank and crawled aside before the tank became a convenient target or hid behind the tank, if there was no time left to crawl to a hiding.

I had a friend who was a loader in another crew. I don't remember his name, but I remember him well. He was Russian. When we were fighting in Ukraine he perished in a battle, when we were approaching Moldova. Some time later his mother, who was a military correspondent, visited us to hear how he had perished. She found me since he must have mentioned my name in his letters. When she started asking me the details, I was shocked knowing that she specifically arrived to hear the details of his death. In 1944, when our regiment was fighting within the 4th Ukrainian Front, the Soviet army entered Moldova. I had very special feelings about my homeland. I knew Romanian, and when we were in the woods the others sent me to nearby villages to exchange gas oil for wine. Gas oil was our tank fuel. The villagers were happy to have it for their kerosene lamps. And we were twice as happy since Moldova was known for making good wine.

Major Trubetzkoy, chief of headquarters of our regiment, perished in Moldova. He was everybody's favorite in the regiment. He was young, 29 years old, brave and good to his subordinates. He was cultured and rather aristocratic, I'd say. I even think, he must have come from the family of Trubetskoy. [Editor's note: The Trubetskoy family, an old family of Russian princes (14th-20th century), gave birth to many outstanding statesmen and scientists.] He was killed by a German sniper when he was riding his motorcycle going to the headquarters. He had all of his awards on though he had never worn them all before. Colonel Chelhovskoy, our regiment commander, followed the tanks on the battlefield on his motorcycle. The commander of the regiment intelligence was Captain Dyomin. Our regiment was involved in the Iasi/Kishinev operation [From 20th-29th August 1944 the Soviet troops liberated Moldova and Eastern Romania. Romania came out of action and on 24th August its new government declared war to fascist Germany.] All types of forces were involved in this operation. Our tank regiment passed Kishinev and its suburbs, and we could see how ruined the town was.

After the Iasi/Kishinev operation we entered Bulgaria via Romania. People welcomed us as liberators. On 24th September 1944 we arrived in the town of Lom. It was hot and I jumped out of the tank without my shirt on. A bunch of Bulgarian girls surrounded me. One of them gave me a bunch of field flowers. Then the bravest of them, Katia, asked me to get photographed with them. Her boyfriend took a photo of us. I gave Katia the address of my parents at their evacuation spot and she sent them the photo. From Bulgaria we moved on to Hungary across Romania. In Hungary our tank regiment was involved in battles near Szekesfehervar and Dunaujvaros on the Danube River. Our crew changed within a couple of days: someone was wounded or killed, a commander or radio operator. I only remember Nikolai, the tank operator. I remember the names of our regiment commander or chief of staff, but not of those who were with me in the tank: this is strange, but that's how it happened. In 1945 we moved on to Czechoslovakia and then returned. It should be noted that we were given a warm welcome in Czechoslovakia, but they were also happy to see us leaving again. Or at least that's the impression I got.

In Hungary I was slightly wounded again and that's when I met my future wife Lidia Zherdeva in the hospital. She was a medical nurse in the army. Lidia came from Kharkov [today Ukraine]. Her mother stayed on occupied territory during the war. Her mother was mentally ill and Lidia thought she had perished, when one day, shortly before demobilization, she heard from her mother. She felt like putting an end to her life because it was extremely hard for her to live with her insane mother. She took morphine, but the doctors rescued her. We were together, though we weren't officially married. It was a common thing at the front line. Occasionally there were orders issued in the regiment and that was it about the official part.

I celebrated the victory in Nagykoros, a small town near Budapest. We actually expected it... In the morning of 9th May we were told that the war was over. What joy this was! I cannot describe it. We didn't shoot in the air since we had no guns, only carbines in tanks, but we hugged each other and sang! In the evening we drank a lot. Our regiment was accommodated in Budapest. Our radio operator, mechanic and I were accommodated in one woman's house. The Hungarians were good to us, particularly the women. The Hungarian language is difficult and we mainly used sign language. One of us had a better conduct of Hungarian than the others and translated for us.

In late 1945 demobilization began. There was an order issued to demobilize those who had vocational secondary education first. I was a construction man and had a certificate on the basis of which I was demobilized in January 1946. Lidia and I moved to Kishinev. My parents were back home and my father taught mathematics at school. They lived in a small room on Sadovaya Street. I went to the executive committee to ask them about a job and some accommodation, but they replied, 'there are thousands like you. And there are also invalids.' One of my father's former students left Kishinev, and my wife and I moved into his hut on Schusev Street. Later we obtained a permit to stay there. This former student's father was working in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Moldova and helped me to get employed by the industrial construction trust. In February 1946 I was already working as a foreman at the construction of a shoe factory on Bolgarskaya Street. In 1949 my mother died. We buried her in the Jewish cemetery, but not according to the Jewish ritual from what I remember.

In 1944 my cousin brother Abram Shusterman returned from evacuation. He had been in Central Asia with his mother and nephews. Some time later Abram was exiled to the North: he told a joke about the government and someone reported on him to the KGB 25. Later he was allowed to settle down in Central Asia. After Stalin's death [5th March 1953], he and his wife visited us in Kishinev. They had no children. He was my only relative, who thought he had to take care of me. I have no other relatives. He died in Central Asia, but I don't remember in what year.

Post-war

I didn't live long with my first wife. I fell in love with Lubov Berezovskaya. She was an accountant in our construction department. I think she was the most beautiful woman I've ever met in my life. I was offered the position of site superintendent at the construction of a food factory in Orhei. At first I refused, but when I heard that Berezovskaya was going there to work as an accountant, I changed my mind. We moved to Orhei together and got married in 1947. Our son Sergei was born there. My second wife was Russian. She was born in Kharkov in 1925. She moved to Kishinev after the war with her mother, Olga Antonovna Chumak. Her father, Boris Berezovskiy, died before the war. Olga Antonovna was a worker at the shoe factory in Kishinev. When we met, Lubov only had secondary education, but later she graduated from the Faculty of Economics of Kishinev University. She was promoted to chief accountant of the construction department.

There was a building frame on the construction site. Our office was accommodated in a small building next to it. In August 1950 the director of the construction department organized a meeting dedicated to Kotovsky 26. I went to Kishinev at this time. We were driving on a truck and I was struck by the color of the sky over Orhei: it was unusually green. My co- traveler from a village said, 'I've never seen a sky of this color before.' When I arrived at the construction department in Kishinev the people had scared expressions on their faces. It turned out that after I left Orhei a storm broke and the frame of this building collapsed over the office. I rushed back to Orhei. When I arrived, I asked, 'Are there any victims?' 'Fifteen.' Later a commission identified that this was a natural force majeure and this was the end of it. The director of the factory, a former KGB officer, resigned and went back to work at the KGB office.

In December this same year the chairman of the Trade Union Committee of the Light Industry reported this accident at the USSR trade union council plenary meeting in Moscow. There was the question: 'Was anybody punished?' 'No.' A week later I was summoned by the prosecutor and didn't return home. I was interrogated for a day, and in the evening I was put in prison. They shaved my head before taking me to jail. I remember entering the cell: 25 inmates, two-tier plank beds. I was so exhausted that I just fell onto the bed and fell asleep. A few days later I was appointed crew leader for the repairs in prison. About two weeks later I was released. The Light Industry Minister, Mikhail Nikitich Dyomin, helped me. He knew everything about the construction of this food factory, and construction men called him a foreman. I remember going home from prison on New Year's Eve with my head shaved.

In April 1951 I was summoned to the Prosecutor's Office. I said to my wife, 'Look, I'll probably need an extra pair of underwear.' This happened to be true. There was a trial. I was convicted and sentenced to three years in jail for the violation of safety rules, and the construction chief engineer, Mikhail Weintraub, was sentenced to three years in jail as well. It turned out I wasn't supposed to allow them to conduct the meeting in this annex. Dyomin arranged for us to be assigned to the construction of the Volga-Don channel [the Volga-Don channel, named after Lenin, connecting the Volga and the Don near the town of Kalach, opened in 1952]. There were mainly prisoners working on the construction of this channel. We lived in barracks for 20-30 inmates.

Since I was a foreman and supposed to move around visiting the sites, I was released from the convoy. I could move around within an area of 80 kilometers. I could also stay overnight in a guard house on the construction site. My wife often visited me. Fortunately, the chief engineer of the district knew me from back in Moldova. He worked at the construction of the Dubossary power plant and we met in Kishinev. When Lubov came to visit me she stayed in a room in his apartment for a month. A year later I was released, the conviction was annulled and I was awarded a medal 'For outstanding performance.' When I came back home, I was sent to work at the CD-8 [construction department]. However, when I wanted to restore my membership in the party, I was told: 'You can join the party again, but you can't restore your membership.' This hurt me and I gave up. I didn't avoid the war or prison in my life...

I was arrested at the time of the campaign against 'cosmopolitans' 27, but I don't think that Mikhail or I fell victim to this campaign. The period of the Doctors' Plot 28 started in 1953, when I returned to Kishinev. I heard talks that Jews were bad and would kill, poison people etc., but there were no official actions of this kind. I can't say whether any doctors were fired at that time.

I remember Stalin's death well. I cried. I heard it either early in the morning or in the evening, because it was dark, when I was at home. Our friends felt the same. At war the infantry went into attacks shouting, 'For Stalin! For the Motherland!' I didn't believe what I heard during the Twentieth Party Congress 29 in 1956, when Khrushchev 30 reported facts that we had never known about. I don't think I believe it even today. I cannot believe it, it's hard to believe, you know. When a person has faith in something it's hard to change what he believes in. If I had seen it with my own eyes..., but I only know what I heard. It's hard to change what one believes. I still have an ambiguous attitude to it.

In 1954 our second son, Oleg, was born. When we moved back from Orhei we received a two-bedroom apartment. We bought our first TV set, 'Temp', with a built-in tape recorder and a wireless. I was offered a plot of land to build a house, but neither my wife nor I wanted it. My mother-in-law lived in a one-bedroom apartment. We exchanged her one-bedroom and our two- bedroom apartment for a three-bedroom apartment in Botanica [a district in Kishinev]. My mother-in-law lived with us, helping us about the house and with the children. We hardly observed any Jewish traditions in our family. I entered the extramural Faculty of Industrial and Civil Construction of Moscow Construction College. I defended my diploma in Moscow. By the time of finishing the college I was a construction site superintendent. A construction site included two to three sites. I was in charge of the construction of a few apartment buildings, kindergartens, a shoe factory, a leather factory, a factory in Orhei and a fur factory in Belzi. Occasionally, when walking across town I think: this is mine and this one as well.

After my mother died my father married his former student. I don't even want to bring her name back to my memory. I thought this was an abuse of my mother's memory, and I kept in touch with them just for the sake of my father. Though my father's second wife was a Jew, I don't think they observed any Jewish traditions. I don't think my father went to the synagogue after the war, not even at Yom Kippur, but we lived separately and I cannot say for sure. My father died in 1961. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery, but I cannot find his grave there.

Our family was very close. Our sons got along well. In 1954 Sergei went to the first grade. He studied in a general secondary school. Oleg was seven years younger and Sergei always patronized him. He was in the seventh grade, when Oleg started school. After school Sergei finished the Electrotechnical and Oleg the Construction Faculty of the Polytechnic College. My sons adopted my wife's surname of Berezovskiy. They are Russian and there was no pressure on my wife's side about this. I gave my consent willingly since it was easier to enter a higher educational institution with the surname of Berezovskiy rather than Rozenfain. As for me, I never faced any anti-Semitism at work. Everything was just fine at my workplace. Always!

My wife Lubov was a kind person. She was always kind to people. We lived almost 50 years together and not a single swearword passed her lips. We never had any rows and I believe I had a happy family life. We spent vacations separately. Starting in 1959 I went to recreation centers and sanatoriums and the costs were covered by trade unions at work. My wife also went to recreation centers, but not as often as I did. I traveled to Odessa, Truskavets, Zheleznovodsk. I also went to Kagul, Karalash and Kamenka recreation homes in Moldova. My wife and I went to the cinema together and never missed a new movie. I knew a lot about Soviet movies and knew the creative works of Soviet actors and producers. I liked reading Soviet and foreign classical literature. I had a collection of fiction: I still have over two thousand volumes. I liked Theodore Dreiser [1871-1945, American novelist]: 'The Financier', 'Titan', 'Stoic' and I often reread these novels. I never took any interest in samizdat [literature] 31. Once I read Solzhenitsyn 32, The Gulag Archipelago, but I didn't like it. Now I read detective stories! I like Marinina [Marinina, Alexandra (born 1957): Lvov-born, contemporary Russian detective writer], but I prefer Chaze [Chaze, Lewis Elliott (1915-1990): American writer].

We celebrated all Soviet holidays at home. We went to parades on October Revolution Day 33, and on 1st May, and we had guests at home. We celebrated 8th March [International Women's Day] at work. We gave flowers and gifts to women and had drinking parties. I congratulated my wife at home. Of course, we celebrated birthdays. We invited friends. There were gatherings of about ten of us when we were younger. The older we got, the fewer of us got together. Some died and some moved to other places. I sympathized with those who left the country in the 1970s. In 1948 when newspapers published articles about the establishment of Israel I felt very excited and really proud. I always watched the news about Israel. I admired the victory of Israel in the Six-Day-War 34. It was just incredible that such a small state defeated so many enemies. I considered moving to Israel during the mass departure, but it wasn't very serious. If I had given it more serious thought, I would have left. I had all possibilities, but I didn't move there because I had a Russian wife.

In the 1970s, when I worked at the construction of a factory of leatherette in Kishinev, I went to Leningrad [today St. Petersburg] on business twice a month. The factory was designed by the Leningrad Design Institute. By the way, Chernoswartz, our chief construction engineer, was a Jew. He moved to Israel in the 1990s with his daughter. His wife had died before. He was ten years older than me and I don't think he is still alive. I love Leningrad and always have. Not only for its beautiful architecture, but also for its residents. I think they are particularly noble and intelligent. This horrible siege [see Blockade of Leningrad] 35 that they suffered! They used to say in Leningrad: you are not a real Leningrad resident if you haven't lived through the siege. They are such good people, really! And its theaters! Once I went to the BDT [Bolshoi Drama Theater] 36, where the chief producer was Tovstonogov [Tovstonogov, Georgiy Alexandrovich (1913- 1989): outstanding Soviet artist], a Jew by origin. When I came to the theater there were no tickets left. I was eager to watch this performance; I don't even remember what it was. It didn't take me long to decide to go to see Tovstonogov himself. I explained who I was and where I came from. He gave me a complimentary ticket. I remember this.

I had a friend in Leningrad. His name was Nikolai Yablokov. He was the most handsome man I've ever seen. He was deputy chief of the Leningradstroy [construction department]. I met the Yablokov family in the 1950s when I was working at the factory construction in Orhei. Nikolai's wife worked on our site in Orhei and he joined her. I met him at the trust and we liked each other. We became friends though we didn't see each other often. He was probably my only close friend in many years. He was a good person, I think. I always met with Nikolai when I went to Leningrad. He knew many actors. One night we had dinner at a restaurant on the last day of my business trip and went for a walk to the Nevskiy [Nevskiy Prospekt, main avenue of St. Petersburg]. This was the time of the White Nights when Leningrad is particularly beautiful. I left and one day later I was notified that Nikolai had died. [White Nights normally last from 11th June to 2nd July in St. Petersburg, due to its geographical location (59' 57'' North, roughly on the same latitude as Oslo, Norway, or Seward, Alaska). At such high latitude the sun does not go under the horizon deep enough for the sky to get dark on these days.]

Some time after Nikolai's death I got a job offer from Leningrad. My application letter was signed up and we were to receive an apartment in Pushkino, but my wife and I decided to stay in Kishinev after we discussed this issue. Everything here was familiar: our apartment, the town, the people we knew, and our sons. Sergei worked at the Giprostroy design institute [State Institute of Town Planning] and Oleg worked at the Giproprom design institute [State Institute of Industry Planning]. My sons got married. My daughters-in-law are Russian: Svetlana, my older son's wife, and Tamara, the younger one's wife. In 1969 my first granddaughter, Yelena, was born, the daughter of Sergei and Svetlana. Then Galina and Tatiana were born. I have five granddaughters. Oleg had two more daughters: Yekaterina and Olga. I worked at the factory of leatherette for 43 years: I worked at its construction and then became chief of the department of capital construction and I still work there.

When perestroika 37 began in the 1980s, I took no interest in politics living my own life. I had no expectations about it. I didn't care about whether it was Gorbachev 38 or somebody else in rule. After the break up of the Soviet Union nothing changed. I kept working, but the procedure was changing. We used to receive all design documents within two to three weeks and we didn't have to pay for them, but now it takes about two years to prepare all documents for the design, longer than designing itself. It also costs a lot. One of my acquaintances, a very smart man, who had worked in the Gorstroy, wrote a very detailed report where he described what needed to be done to return to the appropriate system of document preparation. [Editor's note: Gorstroy is the Russian abbreviation for 'gorodskoye stroitelstvo,' literally 'city building/construction,' a municipal organization responsible for construction at the city level.] He was fired within a month. I receive a pension and salary. So, I'm a 'wealthy' man. However, to be honest, my older son supports me a lot. Half of my income comes from him.

My wife died in 1998. After she died, my younger son Oleg, his family and I prepared to move to Israel. We had our documents ready when he died all of a sudden [2000] and we stayed, of course. I sold my apartment and moved in with my daughter-in-law and granddaughters to support them. My granddaughters are in Israel now and are doing well. Yekaterina, the older one, lives near Tel Aviv, she's served in Zahal [Israel Defense Forces]. Olga moved there last summer [2003]; she lives in the south and studies. They are single. Another tragedy struck our family in 2002: Galina, Sergei's second oldest daughter, committed suicide. Yelena, the older daughter, is a doctor. She lives in Rybniza with her husband. She is a gastroenterologist. Tatiana, the younger daughter, is finishing the Polytechnic College. I have my older son left: he is everything I have in life. He is an electric engineer and a very skilled specialist. He has worked in the Giprostroy design institute for over 20 years. When he travels on business I cannot wait till he calls.

Unfortunately, I know little about the Jewish life in Kishinev today. However, I'm deputy chairman of the Council of Veterans of the War of the Jewish Cultural Society. We, veterans, have meetings and discussions in a warm house... We usually sit at a table, and the lady of the 'warm house' receives food products for such parties from Hesed 39. We are close with regards to character and have common interests. I enjoy these meetings. Hesed provides assistance to me like it does to all Jews. I receive food parcels once a month and this is very good for me; this assistance constitutes 20-30 percent of my family budget. Hesed also pays 50 Lei for my medications. I can also have new glasses once a year. I'm very grateful to international Jewish organizations for this.

Glossary

ISRAELIS LEMPERTAS
Vilnius
Lietuva

Sutikau Israelį Lempertą Lietuvos žydų bendruomenėje ir jis iškart sutiko duoti interviu. Jis buvo labai užsiėmęs, taigi negalėjo skirti man pakankamai dėmesio. Pasiūliau paimti interviu jo namuose, tačiau jis atsisakė, teigdamas, kad žmona serga, todėl susitarėme susitikti bendruomenės namuose kai tik jis galės. Israelis – neaukštas, sportiško sudėjimo vyras papurusiais žilais plaukais, atrodo rimtas, subtilus ir protingas. Jaučiu, kad pokalbis jam nėra lengvas. Israeliui sunku kalbėti apie savo vaikystę, žuvusius tėvą ir brolį, todėl jis daug nepasakoja apie savo šeimą ir aš nenoriu jo skaudinti papildomais klausimais.

Mano šeimos istorija
Kaip augau
Karo metai
Po karo
Žodynėlis

Mano šeimos istorija

Gimiau Lietuvos pasienio mieste Mažeikiuose, 250 kilometrų į šiaurės vakarus nuo Vilniaus, netoli Latvijos sienos. Mažeikiuose gyveno maždaug 5-7 tūkstančiai žmonių. Žydų buvo apie 700 – 800. Aš beveik nieko nežinau apie savo protėvius. Daug dauguma jaunuolių, jaunystėje visai nesidomėjau praeitimi, turėjau galvoti apie išsilavinimą, darbą ir šeimą. Dabar jau norėčiau sužinoti giminės istoriją, bet nebėra gyvųjų, kurių galėčiau paklausti. Kiek žinau, motinos giminės yra iš Mažeikių. Prisimenu senelį iš motinos pusės Faivušą Levinsoną. Manau, jis gimė 1860-siais. Senelis buvo melamedas chederyje. Nepamenu jo dėvint kipą ar kepurę. Iš nuotraukų sprendžiant, galvos jis niekad nedengė.

Nieko nežinau apie močiutę iš motinos pusės. Ji mirė gerokai prieš man gimstant. Neprisimenu jokių pasakojimų apie ją. Netgi nežinau jos vardo. Prasidėjus Pirmajam Pasauliniam karui, žydai, gyvenantys prie fronto linijos, ypač iš Kauno apskrities, įskaitant šiai apskričiai priklausiusius Mažeikius, buvo išsiųsti į tolimus Rusijos rajonus. Antisemitiškai nusiteikę caro karinės valdžios atstovai galvojo, kad jidiš ir vokiečių kalbų giminingumas, žydų išvaizdos ir gyvenimo būdo skirtumai, lyginant su kitais vietos gyventojais, paskatints žydus užsiimti šnipinėjimu. Daug žydų šeimų iš Baltijos šalių buvo ištremti. Mano mamos šeimą ištrėmė į Berdianską, šiltą Ukrainos miestą Azovo jūros pakrantėje (1000 kilometrų į pietus nuo Kijevo). Lietuvai atgavus nepriklausomybę 1, beveik visi žydai grįžo į tėvynę. Grįžo ir Faivušo Levinsono šeima. Nežinau, ar močiutė tada buvo gyva. Kiek prisimenu, senelis Faivušas gyveno vienos iš mano tetų namuose. Jis mirė 1933 metais ir palaidotas Mažeikių žydų kapinėse laikantis žydiško ritualo. Jo laidotuvėse nedalyvavau. Žydams nebuvo įprasta vestis vaikus į giminaičių laidotuves.

Faivušas turėjo daug vaikų. Mano mamos broliai išvyko į Ameriką 1920-jų pradžioje. Žinau tik jų vardus – Luji ir Beniamin ir kad jie buvo vedę ir turėjo vaikų. Nežinau jų likimo. Dar buvo penkios dukterys, įskaitant mano mamą, gimusią 1897 metais. Vyriausia sesuo, keliais metais vyresnė už mano mamą, turėjo dvigubą vardą – Roza ir Šifra. Šeimoje ją vadino Šifra. Jos vyras Aba Mets neturėjo nuolatinio darbo ir užsiiminėjo atsitiktiniais darbais. Šifra ir Aba turėjo du sūnus – Rafaelį, keturiais metais vyresnį už mane, ir mano bendraamžį Nachmaną. Prasidėjus Didžiajam Tėvynės karui 2 mes pabėgome su tetos Šifros šeima. Jos vyras Aba iš pradžių buvo darbo fronte 3. Jis dirbo karinėje gamykloje Sibire. Paskui jį pašaukė į kariuomenę ir jis tarnavo 1943 metais suformuotoje Šešioliktoje lietuviškoje divizijoje [batalionas vadinamas lietuvišku, nes buvo suformuotas daugiausiai iš buvusių Lietuvos piliečių, kurie buvo savanoriai, evakuotieji ar tarnavo darbo fronte]. Aba neilgai trukus žuvo mūšyje 1943 metais. Tuo metu jis jau nebuvo jaunuolis. Šifra su berniukais grįžo į Lietuvą ir įsikūrė Vilniuje. Maždaug po 20 metų ji ir jos vaikai išvyko į Izraelį. Šifra nugyveno ilgą gyvenimą ir mirė 1990-jų pradžioje. Jos sūnūs sėkmingai tebegyvena Izraelyje.

Dvi mamos seserys gyveno Tarybų Sąjungoje. Lija, vyresnė už mano mamą metais ar dviem, išvyko į Baku, Azerbaidžaną, kur gyveno jos vyras. Nežinau, kaip jie susipažino. Jie karštai mylėjo vienas kitą. Lijos vyras buvo rusas ir tai buvo viena iš priežasčių, kodėl ji išvažiavo iš Lietuvos. Tuo metu skirtingų tautybių žmonių vedybos nebuvo priimtinos. Ištekėjusi Lija tapo Zimnikova. Ji buvo namų šeimininkė, o jos vyras, kurio vardo neprisimenu, užėmė įvairias pareigas Azerbaidžano vyriausybėje. Jie turėjo vienintelę dukrą Viktoriją. Persikėlusi į SSSR, Lija liovėsi susirašinėjusi su giminėmis Lietuvoje, nes tai buvo laikoma pavojinga ir SSSR persekiojama veikla [palaikyti ryšius su giminėmis užsienyje] 4. Tuo labiau, kad Lijos vyras priklausė vyriausybei. Neprisimenu, kur Lija ir jos dukra Viktorija buvo per Antrąjį Pasaulinį karą. Po karo Viktorija ištekėjo už mano draugo ir jie persikėlė į Vilnių. Kai Lija ir jos vyras paseno, jie persikėlė pas dukrą Viktoriją į Vilnių ir gyveno čia iki mirties. Teta Lija mirė 1970-jų pabaigoje.

Prieš išvažiuojant į Rusiją, mano mamos antroji sesuo Anna (taip ją vadino sovietiniais laikais, o jos tikrasis žydiškas vardas nežinomas), jaunesnė už ją 2 metais, dirbo kvalifikuota aukle Mažeikių žydų vaikų darželyje. 1920-jų pradžioje Anna slapta pabėgo iš Maskvos, SSSR, kartu su savo žydu vyru Kabo. Iki Lietuvos aneksijos prie SSSR 1940 metais 5, mama nepalaikė jokių ryšių su seserimis. Vėliau ji pradėjo su jomis susirašinėti. 1941 metų rudenį, kai fašistinė kariuomenė artėjo prie Maskvos, Anna ir jos dukra Riva nusprendė evakuotis ir atvykti pas mus į Kirovo sritį. Po karo Anna ir Riva grįžo į Maskvą. Anna mirė 1980-siais, o Riva dabar gyvena Maskvoje.

Mamos jauniausios sesers, gimusios 1910 metais, likimas yra tragiškas. Rachilė ištekėjo už išlepusio dykaduonio Rygos žydo Jakobo Rier. Prasidėjus Antrajam Pasauliniam karui, Rachilės dukrai Rozai buvo treji. Rachilė ir Jakobas su dukra antrąją karo dieną atvyko į Mažeikius. Kai mūsų šeima atsidūrė Rygoje, Jakobas labai norėjo su savo šeima nuvažiuoti pas giminaičius Salaspilyje, „pailsėti“, jo žodžiais tariant. Mes jau ruošėmės išvažiuoti, tačiau Rachilės šeima liko okupacijoje. Pagal archyvinius dokumentus, kuriuos suradau po karo, Rachilės šeima žuvo vienoje iš baisiausių Salaspilio naikinimo stovyklų. 6.

Mano mama Liuba Levinson buvo mokoma namuose. Neprisimenu, kad ji sakytų ėjusi į gimnaziją. Senelis Faivušas mokė vaikus pats. Jidiš buvo mamos gimtoji kalba. Gimusi ir paauglystę praleidusi carinėje Rusijoje, ji gerai mokėjo kalbėti ir rašyti rusiškai. Lietuviškai ji kalbėjo su stipriu akcentu, kaip ir dauguma žydų. Kaip daugelis žydžių moterų, mama jaunystėje nedirbo. Ji gyveno tėvų namuose ir padėjo močiutei namų ruošoje. Nežinau, kaip mano tėvai susitiko. Gal tai buvo iš anksto sutartos žydiškos vedybos. Jie susituokė 1920-jų pradžioje.

Nedaug ką žinau apie savo tėvo šeimą. Prisimenu, kad senelis Davidas Lempertas gyveno Latvijoje, Daugpilio mieste, bet nežinau ar ten jis ir gimė. Tėvo žodžiais, Davidas gimė XIX amžiaus viduryje. Tėvas pasakojo, kad senelis Davidas turėjo medienos verslą ir buvo gana pasiturintis. Sprendžiant pagal namuose kabėjusį Davido portretą su barzda ir kipa ant galvos, iš gąsdinančių tėvo pasakojimų, galiu pasakyti, kad senelis buvo religingas žydas. Per Pirmąjį Pasaulinį karą tėvo šeima taip pat buvo ištremta. Tėvo žodžiais, senelis atsisakė gyventi Charkove (Ukraina, 440 kilometrų nuo Kijevo), kur jis dirbo keliose Sovietų Armijos kontorose. Karui pasibaigus, šeima grįžo į Lietuvą. Negaliu pasakyti, kada senelis Davidas mirė. Manau, tai įvyko dar prieš šeimai sugrįžtant prie Baltijos. Senelė iš motinos pusės, maža liesa moteriškė visad uždengta galva, gyveno su mumis. Neprisimenu netgi jos vardo. Ji buvo silpnos sveikatos ir daugiausiai gulėjo lovoje savo kambaryje. Mes ją vadinome tiesiog močiute. Pamenu, kaip ji uždegdavo žvakes Šabo išvakarėse. Ji skaitydavo savo storą apdrįskusią maldaknygę, kol dar galėjo matyti. Kai buvau penkerių, t.y. 1930 metais, močiutė mirė. Ją palaidojo pagal žydiškas tradicijas Mažeikių žydų kapinėse. Nieko nežinau apie tėvo brolius ar seseris. Manau, jis buvo vienintelis sūnus. Aš bent jau neprisimenu jokių kalbų apie brolius ar seseris.

Mano tėvas Itšokas Lempertas gimė 1887 metais. Nežinau jo gimimo vietos. Tėvas buvo labai išsilavinęs žmogus. Jis baigė gimnaziją ir, greičiausiai, dar kažkokią mokymo įstaigą. Be gimtosios jidiš kalbos, laisvai kalbėjo rusiškai. Nežinau, kaip gerai jis kalbėjo lietuviškai, bet tikrai geriau nei mama. Tėvą atleido nuo tarnavimo carinėje armijoje dėl myopia alta – aukštos trumparegystės. Mažeikiuose tėvas buvo labai gerbiamas. Jis dirbo vyriausiu buhalteriu Mažeikių žydų banke, buvo labai patyręs apskaitininkas ir netgi turėjo studentų. Jie ateidavo pas tėvą į manus ir jis duodavo jiems privačias sąskaitybos pamokas. Be buhalterijos ir mokymo, tėvas dar dalyvavo visuomeninėje veikloje.

Tėvai susituokė Mažeikiuose. Nežinau, ar vestuvės buvo žydiškos, nes jie abu, ypač tėvas, nebuvo religingi. Galbūt jie laikėsi tradicijų ir tuokėsi po chupa tiesiog iš pagarbos giminaičiams. 1923 metais gimė mano vyresnysis brolis. Jis gavo dvigubą Mikhl-Duvid vardą. Jį pavadino Duvidu senelio garbei, bet nežinau antrojo, Mikhl, vardo priežasties. Namuose brolį vadinome Duvidu. Aš gimiau 1925 metų lapkričio 17 dieną. Mane pavadino Israeliu vieno iš mano prosenelių, nežinau, iš tėvo ar motinos pusės, garbei. Mano tėvo ir senelio pavardė buvo Lempert. Gimiau nepriklausomoje Lietuvoje, taigi gimimo liudijime buvo įrašytas lietuviškas mano žydiško vardo variantas, būtent Lempertas [vardų sulietuvinimas] 7. Aš vis dar nešioju šią pavardę.

Kaip augau

Mūsų šeima neturėjo jokios nuosavybės ir tėvai visada nuomavosi būstą. Nieko ypatingo neprisimenu. Dažniausiai tai būdavo 3 kambarių butas su virtuve, be patogumų (tualetas buvo lauke). Tėvas buvo užsiėmęs darbe ir visuomeninėje veikloje ir negalėjo daug laiko praleisti su vaikais. Daugiausiai mumis rūpinosi mama. Namų atmosfera ir svečių pokalbiai, dažniausiai jidiš kalba, darė įtaką mūsų ugdymuisi. Mama buvo namų šeimininkė, tačiau ji tik prižiūrėjo namus, o ruošos darbus atlikdavo kiti. Mes visada turėjome tarnaitę – tylią ir darbščią lietuvę. Pagal mamos nurodymus ji gamino maistą, tvarkė namus ir skalbė. Tėvai nebuvo religingi. Jie bandė laikytis žydiškų tradicijų kol su mumis gyvenusi močiutė ir senelis Faivušas buvo gyvi. Bent jau, gaminant maistą, buvo laikomasi pagrindinių kašruto taisyklių. Namuose buvo atskiri indai pienui ir mėsai – nuo porceliano servizo iki puodų, keptuvių ir pjaustymo lentų. Mėsą pirkdavo specialioje žydų parduotuvėje, prekiavusioje tiktai košerine mėsa. Vienas butas, kuriame gyvenome ilgą laiką, priklausė košerinės parduotuvės savininkams. Buvo trys parduotuvės savininkai – du broliai Glikai ir jų našlė sesuo Mendelevič. Naminius paukščius pirkdavome parduotuvėje ir nešdavome pas skerdiką. Ankstyvoje vaikystėje mama mane vesdavosi pas skerdiką. Prisimenu jo mažą namelį ir pašiūrę kieme. Visada stovėdavo žydžių moterų eilė su kudakuojančiais paukščiais. Kol močiutė buvo gyva, namuose nebūdavo kiaulienos. Pentadieniais ji arba mama uždegdavo Šabo žvakes. Tik tiek ir buvo, jokių kitų pasiruošimų Šabui – neruošdavo skanėstų, nekepdavo chalų. Lyginant su kitais žydais, tokių dalykų mūsų namuose nebuvo. Šabo dieną tėvas nedirbdavo. Žydų bankas, kaip ir žydų mokyklos, šeštadieniais buvo uždarytas. Tėvas iki vėlumas skaitydavo ir rašydavo prie rašomojo stalo ir, manau, pažeisdavo Šabo tradicijas.

Mes neminėjome žydiškų švenčių. Senelis Faivušas ateidavo pas mus ir atlikdavo Pesacho sederį. Senelis sėsdavo stalo gale, apsirengęs šventiniais drabužiais, su kipa. Gabaliukas macos – afikoman‘ būdavo slepiamas po jo pagalve. Man reikėdavo jo ieškoti. Paprastai Duvidas užduodavo seneliui keturis tradicinius klausimus apie šventės kilmę. [Redaktoriaus pastaba: Paprastai klausimus užduoda jauniausias sūnus, taigi, pagal tradiciją, taip daryti turėjo Israelis.] Taip pat prisimenu Chanuką. Bulves tešloje dažniausiai kepdavo mūsų namuose.Vaikai dažniausiai žaisdavo su sukučiu. Senelis Faivušas duodavo mums Chanukos pinigų. Neprisimenu kaip švęsdavome kitas šventes. Seneliui Faivušui mirus, liovėmės švęsti netgi šias šventes. Ne todėl, kad tingėjome, bet dėl mano tėvo ateistinių principų. Būtent dėl to nei aš, nei mano brolis Duvidas nepraėjome bar-micvos.

Nei tėvas, nei motina nevaikščiojo į sinagogą. Didelė dviaukštė sinagoga buvo netoli mūsų buto. Rabinas Mamjoffe buvo labai gerbiamas žmogus. Jis gerai sutarė su mano tėvu ir lankydavo pas mus. Tėvas ir rabinas ilgai šnekėdavosi prie arbatos puodelio. Manau, tai buvo teologiniai ir filosofiniais pokalbiai. Mamjoffe pavardė buvo parašyta mano gimimo liudijime ir aš gerai prisimenu jo įmantrų parašą. Rabinas Mamjoffe buvo žiauriai Hitlerio kareivių nužudytas pirmosiomis okupacijos dienomis. Po karo, dirbdamas su istoriniais archyvais, aš dar kartą aptikau jo parašą ir vaikystės prisiminimai mane sukrėtė. Žinojau daug žmonių, kurie buvo nužudyti – gimnazijos bendraklasiai ir tėvų draugai. Tačiau tai buvo atsitiktinės pažintys ir manęs taip giliai nesujaudino. Išlikęs Mamjoffe parašas sujaudino mane iki širdies gelmių. Kai prisimenu šį žmogų, pradedu ašaroti.

Be sinagogos, buvo ir daugiau žydiškų institucijų. Netoli sinagogos buvo mikva, bet mūsų šeima ten nėjo. Buvo labdaros organizacijos, tokios kaip žydų vaikų darželis, valgykla skurstantiems. Mūsų šeima priklausė vidurinei klasei, nebuvome turtuoliai. Knygos ir laikraščiai, kuriuos tėvas prenumeravo, mūsų namuose buvo svarbiausi. Nuo pat vaikystės juos skaitydavome. 1930-siais turėjome radiją. Tais laikais jis buvo retas ir brangus dalykas. Mano broliui ir man padovanojo dviratį. Nedaug žydų vaikų turėjo dviračius ir tai buvo savotiška prabanga. Vasarą važiuodavome į vasarnamį, kurį tėvai nuomavo mažame Lietuvos kaimelyje. Mama mus vesdavosi pasivaikščioti miške, bet mes su broliu ilgėjomės namų ir draugų. Kaimelyje mes nuobodžiavome. Šeimos pragyvenimo pajamos buvo gana kuklios. Dauguma žydų buvo gerokai neturtingesni. Tarp žydų buvo ir daug turtingų žmonių. Dažniausiai tai buvo verslininkai, parduotuvių savininkai, žydų gydytojai ir teisininkai. Neprisimenu jų vardų. Žinau tiek, kad parduotuvės miesto centre priklausė daugiausiai žydams.

Vienas iš vietinių žydų, Tulia, turėjo namą. Pirmasis mūsų nuomotas butas buvo jo name. Tulia turėjo didelį kiaušinių sandėlį. Jis užsiiminėjo didmenine kiaušinių prekyba ir net eksportavo juos į Angliją. Nepatekau į gimnaziją per vieną iš jo dukterų. Mano vyresnis brolis Duvidas lankė hebrajų gimnaziją. Palaipsniui mokinių skaičius buvo sumažintas ir ji sunyko. Brolis tos gimnazijos nebaigė ir vėliau mokėsi darbo organizacijos amatų mokykloje Kaune. Mažeikiuose buvo žydų pradžios mokykla. Prasimokiau joje keletą mėnesių ir susirgau. Mane mokė tėvas, o gimnazijos egzaminams ruošė ateinantis korepetitorius. Įstojau į lietuviškos pradžios mokyklos trečią klasę. Pabaigęs, laikiau stojamuosius egzaminus į valstybinę lietuvišką gimnaziją. Vienas iš stojamųjų egzaminų buvo Biblijos išmanymas. Aš beveik susikirtau, vos gavau patenkinamą pažymį. Mokytoja, egzaminavusi iš Biblijos, buvo rabino Mamjoffe dukra. Neradusi manęs priimtų mokinių sąraše, Mamjoffe dukra atbėgo pas mano mamą atgailaudama ir kaltindama save. Ji galvojo, kad manęs nepriėmė todėl, kad ji parašė man blogą pažymį. Dvi Tulia dukros buvo priimtųjų į gimnaziją sąraše. Jų žinios nebuvo puikios ir jos taip pat gavo patenkinamus pažymius per stojamuosius egzaminus. Tulia tiesiog papirko gimnazijos direktorių, organizuodamas vakarėlius jo garbei. Mokiausi lietuviškos pradžios mokyklos 4-je klasėje ir po metų sugebėjau įstoti į antrą gimnazijos klasę. Taip aš atsidūriau vienoje klasėje su Tulia dukromis. Jos buvo geros mergaitės. Susidraugavome ir aš padėdavau joms ruošti namų darbus. Apskritai, dauguma bendraklasių, žydų, buvo mano draugai. Prisimenu Borią Mendelevičių, mėsinės savininko sūnų, Jakobą Gusevą, Meiškę Mitskievičių. Visi jie žuvo per okupaciją.

Iki 1938 metų klasėje buvo lietuvių mokinių. Mes su jais sutarėme. Bendrai paėmus, Lietuvoje buvo labai nedaug antisemitų. Manau, Lietuva buvo šalis, kur antisemitizmas menkai pasireiškė, lyginant su kitomis šalimis, ypač 1930-jų viduryje. Iki 1924 metų žydams Lietuvoje buvo „aukso amžius“. Žydai niekaip nebuvo spaudžiami. Parlamente buvo žydų 8, kai 1926 metais Lietuvoje įvyko perversmas 9 ir į valdžią atėjo tautininkai – tai buvo demokratijos pabaiga. Komunistų partiją, kurios 60% narių buvo žydai, uždraudė. Žydus išvarė iš parlamento ir iš aukščiausių valstybės postų. Bet tai dar ne viskas. Diktatorius Smetona 10 atėjo į valdžią ir manė, kad vadovais turi būti lietuviai, o visi kiti turi tylėti ir padėti lietuviams kurti laimingą valstybę. Tačiau Smetona su žydais elgėsi gana gerai ir mes praktiškai nejutome jokio antisemitizmo. Aišku, kasdieniniame gyvenime antisemitizmas pasireikšdavo įvairiais būdais. Prisimenu, kaip kartą lietuviai berniukai pradžios mokykloje bandė užtepti kiaulės taukų ant žydų berniukų lūpų. Bet tai buvo vaikiška nepiktybiška išdaiga. Vaikai tikriausiai nesuprato, ką daro. Susidūriau su tikru antisemitizmu 1930-jų pabaigoje. Tuo metu neturėjau jokių konkrečių politinių interesų. Klausydavausi tėvo ir jo draugų pokalbių ir vėliau supratau, kad tėvas nepriklausė jokiai partijai – nei komunistams, nei kitai. Jis turėjo savo pažiūras, „kairiąsias“ pažiūras. Mieste buvo sionistų organizacijos, įskaitant Betar 11 ir Makabi 12. Nesigilinau į politiką. Įstojau į „Makabi“, kur žaidžiau stalo tenisą ir susitikdavau su bendraamžiais.

1938 – 1939 metais Lietuvoje pasijautė organizuota pro-nacistinė viešoji nuomonė. Dailės mokytojas, lietuvis, propagavo fašizmą jaunimo tarpe. Nežinau, kas taip darė, bet kiekvieną rytą gimnazijos vestibiulyje atsirasdavo antisemitiniai plakatai, būtent, žydas su kumpa nosimi, peisais, susikuitęs, netvarkingais drabužiais, kuprotas. Plakatus nuimdavo, bet kitą rytą jie vėl atsirasdavo. Tikrai žinau, kad du šios grupelės vaikinai šaudė žydus, tame tarpe ir savo klasės draugus, 1941 metais, vienos Hitlerio akcijos metu. Mūsų klasėje buvo labai graži mergaitė, žydų banko direktoriaus Kock Glikmano duktė. Daug vaikinų buvo ją įsižiūrėję, įskaitant vieną iš tų vaikinų. Ji nenorėjo su juo susitikinėti ir jis pats nušovė ją per vieną akciją 1941 metais. Daug žmonių, bent jau mano šeima, suprato, kad fašizmas atneš didžiulę nelaimę mūsų šaliai ir daugelis žmonių žvalgėsi į SSSR. Nesu tikras, kad mano tėvas žinojo apie politinius procesus ir represijas, Stalino vykdomas SSSR [Didysis teroras] 13. Jis niekad su manim apie tai nekalbėjo.

Karo metai

Kai sovietų kareiviai įžengė į mūsų miestą 1940 metų birželį, daug žmonių juos sveikino, tikėdamiesi geresnio gyvenimo. [Redaktoriaus pastaba: iš tikrųjų, tik nedaugelis sveikino okupacinę Raudonąją armiją Lietuvoje. Daugiau kaip 50 metų sovietinė propaganda vadino Baltijos valstybių okupaciją „išlaisvinimu“, kaip ir jaučiasi šiame epizode.] Buvo traukinys su sovietų kariškiais ir keletas tankų. Prisimenu, kad aš su kitais berniukais nubėgome tenai, apstojome kareivius ir bandėme su jais kalbėtis rusiškai, nors nedaug ką mokėjome. Daug vaikinų gyrėsi piločių žvaigždėmis, kurias jiems davė kareiviai. Iš pradžių visi buvome euforijoje. Pirmą dieną centrinėje aikštėje įvyko mitingas. Mano tėvas pasakė kalbą. Jis pasveikino sovietų kareivius savo gimtaja jidiš kalba. Pirmą kartą per daug metų Mažeikiuose iš tribūnos skambėjo jidiš. Po to mitingai vyko beveik kiekvieną savaitę ir beveik visas miestas rinkdavosi paklausyti kalbėtojų. Euforiją keitė nusivylimas. Daugelis produktų dingo nuo prekystalių. Liko tik vienos rūšies prastos kokybės duona. Nebuvo pramoninių prekių, įskaitant muilą ir servetėles. Prasidėjo nacionalizacija. Bankas, kuriame dirbo tėvas, buvo nacionalizuotas, bet tėvas ir toliau jame dirbo. Žmonės, kurie turėjo kokią nors nuosavybę ar samdė darbininkus, buvo areštuojami ir tremiami į Sibirą [deportacijos iš Baltijos šalių] 14. Tulia ir jo šeima buvo ištremti ir daug kitų. Tulia mirė Sibiro stovykloje. Jo žmona mirė tremtyje, tačiau dukros sugebėjo grįžti atgal į gimtąjį miestą 1970-jų viduryje, jau suaugusios. Jos ilgai neužtruko Lietuvoje ir išvyko į Izraelį.

Mūsų gimnazija buvo pervadinta vidurine mokykla ir 7-ta gimnazijos klasė tapo 9-ta mokyklos klase. Visi kiti dalykai liko tokie patys. Įstojau į komjaunimo organizaciją 15. Buvau gana aktyvus – vedžiau susirinkimus, kviečiau žmones palaikyti sovietų režimą, piešiau plakatus. Vieni sovietų valdžios metais prabėgo labai greitai. 1941 metų birželio 21 dieną mokykloje buvo išleistuvių šventė. Grįžau namo vėlai ir ilgai neguliau. Anksti ryte išgirdome lėktuvų gaudesį. Miestą pradėjo bombarduoti. Prasidėjo Didysis Tėvynės karas. Žmonės paniškai bandė bėgti, palikdami namus. Kai kurie žydai galvojo, kad vokiečiai nieko blogo jiems nedarys ir nusprendė pasilikti. Mūsų šeima nesirinko – pasilikti ar nepasilikti. Sekmadienio, birželio 22 dienos vakare mes pėsčiomis išėjome iš miesto. Mūsų buvo keturi – tetos Šifros ir mamos jaunesnės sesers Rachilės šeimos. Žmonės bėgo. Kelyje buvo minios pabėgėlių su lagaminais, kuprinėmis ir ryšuliais. Kelią bombardavo ir aš pirmą kartą pamačiau mirtį. Ne visi žmonės pakildavo bombardavimui pasibaigus. Atsitraukiantys sovietų armijos būriai ėjo su mumis. Ėjome keletą dienų, kol pasiekėme Latvijos sieną ir porą dienų stovėjome kažkokioje geležinkelio stotyje Latvijoje laukdami traukinio. Trūko maisto. Nepasiėmėme daug išeidami ir greitai maistą pabaigėme. Tėvas ir dėdė Aba Metz keitė mūsų daiktus į produktus ir šeima sugebėjo išsiversti keletą dienų. Tada sugebėjome įsėsti į traukinį, važiuojantį į Rygą. Atvykusius, mus apgyvendino mokykloje, kurioje buvo organizuotas evakuacinis punktas. Miegojome didelėje salėje ant grindų. Dieną evakuotieji gaudavo sriubos arba košės su duona. Švelniai tariant, situacija buvo neįprasta. Iki 1940 metų mes gyvenome buržuazinėje Lietuvoje ir buvome pripratę prie santykinio komforto. Nusprendėme laikytis kartu, nes buvo lengviau įveikti vargus su giminės pagalba, kuri buvo tikrai vertinga tomis aplinkybėmis. Po dienos ar dviejų, Jakobas Rier, tetos Rachilės vyras, užsispyrė, kad mes sustotume Sauspilse ir pailsėtume pas jo giminaičius ir palauktume, kol šis sąmyšis baigsis. Jis nebuvo pratęs prie sunkumų, o teta Rachilė vyrui nusileisdavo. Atsisveikinome su ja ir mažąja Rozočka. Tuo metu nežinojome, kad jau niekad jų nepamatysime.

Pajudėjome toliau maždaug po dešimties dienų. Sėdome į traukinį, kuris buvo skirtas evakuoti kažkokią gamyklą. Keletas tuščių platformų būdavo prikabinamos prie traukinių, kad pabėgėliai galėtų įsitaisyti. Labai trūko vietos. Traukinys pajudėjo. Išbuvome kelyje ne mažiau kaip tris savaites. Prieš įlipant į traukinį, tėvas gavo truputį [maisto] produktų mainais už daiktus. Evakuaciniame punkte mums išdalino sausą davinį – džiūvėsius. Pradžioje alkio nejautėme. Produktams pasibaigus, ėmėme badauti. Traukiniui sustojus, tėvas ir vyresnis brolis išlipdavo ieškoti maisto. Kartais gaudavome maisto iš vietinių žmonių mainydamiesi, o kartais jie sugebėdavo gauti puodą sriubos, kurią dalindavo evakuotiesiems stotyse. Kelią nuolat bombarduodavo ir traukinys dažnai stodavo. Tada evakuotieji išsibėgiodavo skirtingomis kryptimis slėpdamiesi natūraliose priedangose. Mačiau daug mirčių, tačiau prie to neįmanoma priprasti.

Atvykome į Kirovo miestą [850 kilometrų į rytus nuo Maskvos]. Iš pradžių įsikūrėme evakuaciniame punkte. Jame mus laikė keletą dienų. Atėjo taip vadinami „pirkėjai“ – kolūkio 16 pirmininkas ir statybų meistrai. Kaip taisyklė, jie rinkosi jaunus žmones. Po kurio laiko mes ir tetos Šifros šeima buvome pasiųsti į vieną Kirovo srities kolūkį. Mane iš pradžių paskyrė prie žemės ūkio darbų, vėliau tapau dailide. Tėvas nusilpo dėl ligos ir bado ir mirė 1941 metų pabaigoje. Tuo metu iš Maskvos atvyko teta Anna ir Rina. Ji taip pat pradėjo dirbti kolūkyje. Visi gyvenome viename kambaryje vietinio kolūkiečio name. Jie su mumis elgėsi tikrai gerai, bet maisto katastrofiškai trūko, nors aš gaudavau darbadienius 17 ir maisto davinį, mama gaudavo menką išlaikytinio maisto davinį. Nepaisant karo, svajojau apie mokslą. Vis dar galvijau stoti į institutą. Kai Maskvos Mokytojų rengimo institutas buvo evakuotas į Kirovą, mane įtraukė į fizikos ir matematikos fakulteto pirmakursių sąrašą. Tai nebuvo visiškai tai, apie ką svajojau – tapti istoriku arba filosofu, bet pasirinkimo neturėjau. Gyvenau instituto bendrabutyje Kirove. Mama tikrai kentėjo tėvui mirus. Ji dažnai nesveikuodavo. Sugebėjau susitarti, kad mama gautų kambarį mano bendrabutyje. Ją pasamdė dirbti valytoja ir suteikė kambarį. Ji taip pat budėjo bendrabutyje. Mano studentiškas gyvenimas bėgo greitai. Studijuoti man buvo lengva ir aš gerai mokiausi. Gyvenome šaltame bendrabutyje kaip viena šeima ir dalinomės viskuo, ką turėjome. Kiekvieną dieną, užgniaužę kvapą, klausydavomės žinių apžvalgos iš fronto. Su manimi mokėsi įvairių tautybių jaunuoliai, bet mūsų draugystę sustiprino bendra nelaimė. Vaidų nebuvo. Mokiausi tik pusantrų metų. 1943 metų pradžioje mano brolis ir aš buvome pašaukti į frontą. Brolis visą laiką dirbo vienoje karinėje gamykloje ir daug kartų ėjo į karinio šaukimo skyrių, bet pašauktas nebuvo, ir štai atėjo laikas.

Mus pasiuntė į naujai suformuotą Šešioliktąją lietuviškąją diviziją 18, stovinčią Balakhnos mieste, Nižnij Novgorode. Mama pasiliko Kirove ir mes susitarėme, kad ji visą laiką pasiliks institute, kad mums būtų lengviau ją surasti po karo. Tuo metu situacija fronte ženkliai pasikeitė – po fašistų sutriuškinimo prie Stalingrado [Stalingrado mūšis] 19, niekas neabejojo dėl Sovietų armijos pergalės. Mano brolis ir aš atsidūrėme skirtingose vietose. Aš praleidau porą mėnesių mokymuose ir netrukus buvau išsiųstas į frontą. Deja, brolis ilgai fronte neišbuvo. Jis žuvo mūšyje netrukus po pašaukimo į priešakines linijas.

1943 metų vasarą atsidūriau mūšio lauke. Buvau pėstininkų eilinis. Tai sunkiausia ir pavojingiausia karinė profesija. Mes visada pirmieji susidurdavome su priešu akis į akį. Mūsų divizija priklausė Pirmajam Pabaltijo frontui 20. Greitai judėjome Rusijos, paskui Ukrainos teritorija ir tolyn į Vakarus. Armijoje mus gerai maitino. Pirmą kartą per visus karo metus aš buvau sotus. Aišku, gyvenimo sąlygos buvo apgailėtinos. Miegojome blindažuose. Kartais įsikurdavome namuose išlaisvintuose kaimuose, taigi galėjome išsimiegoti šilumoje ir išsimaudyti pirtyje. Tačiau taip būdavo retai. Nebuvau bailys, pirmas puldavau į ataką. Prieš vieną iš didžiausių mūšių įstojau į Komunistų partiją. Padariau tai sąmoningai ir apgalvotai. Fronte visi norintys būdavo priimami į partiją be biurokratinių formalumų. Taigi, mane priėmė į Sovietų Sąjungos Komunistų partiją. Prisimenu, kad dažnai kildavome į ataką su Stalino vardu lūpose ir darėme tai savo noru. Buvome įsitikinę, kad šis žmogus mus drąsina ir įkvepia pergalei. Taip mes buvome auklėti. Pačio sunkiausio mūšio metu atsidūriau priešakyje. Įšokau į priešo apkasus ir nušoviau ten buvusius fašistus. Kaip vėliau pasirodė, mano žygdarbis lemiamas išvaduojant kaimą, kurį atakavome. Dabar neprisimenu jo pavadinimo, jis buvo ant Rusijos ir Baltarusijos sienos. Po mūšio vadas įtraukė mane į apdovanojimų sąrašą. Keistai pasijaučiau. Buvau kuklus ir nemaniau, kad elgiuosi išskirtinai. Atėjo nutarimas apdovanoti mane Šlovės ordinu 21. Greitai mane išrinko būrio komjaunimo vadovu, tapau politruko padėjėju 22. Turėjau sekti suvestines iš frontų ir vertinti politinę situaciją. Beje, laikraščiai buvo pristatomi kiekvieną dieną, taip pat vyko politiniai užsiėmimai su kareiviais, kai nebuvo mūšių. Karas ėjo į pabaigą, frontas artėjo prie SSSR vakarinės sienos.

1944 metų vasarą mano tėvynė Lietuva buvo išlaisvinta. Visada susirašinėjau su motina. Kaip ir sutarėm, ji liko dirbti Mokytojų rengimo instituto bendrabutyje. Kartu su institutu ją evakavo į Maskvą. Mama prašė manęs saugotis, nelįsti po kulkomis, bet aš niekad nebuvau bailys. Gali pasirodyti keista, bet man fronte sunkiausia buvo be patogumų, be galimybės nusiprausti veidą, išsimaudyti, pasikeisti drabužius, o ne dėl fašistų kulkų ar dėl baimės žūti bet kurią minutę. Pelkės, purvas, uodai ir miego trūkumas labiausiai slėgė mane. Mano charakteris netiko karinei tarnybai, nors, būdamas drąsus kareivis, aš gerai kovojau. 1944 metų pabaigoje į mūsų pulką atėjo kvietimas į karininkų kursus. Buvo pasiūlyta mano kandidatūra. Nenorėjau būti karjeros kareiviu, nemėgau karinės tarnybos. Norėjau tęsti mokslus institute. Supratau, kad karas baigiasi ir vargu ar aš būsiu demobilizuotas su karininko laipsniu. Tačiau aš sutikau, net nežinau, kodėl. Tikriausiai todėl, kad buvau labai atsakingas. Išvykau į trijų mėnesių kursus. Tai buvo Pirmojo Pabaltijo fronto karininkų kursai. Jie prasidėjo kaip tik po Lietuvos išlaisvinimo. Mes įsikūrėme Rygoje. Karas ėjo į pabaigą ir kursus nuolatos prailgindavo, stengiantis išsaugoti kaip galima daugiau karininkų. Kai frontas perėjo į Rytų Prūsiją, mus išsiuntė į anksčiau Vokietijai priklausiusią Kaliningrado sritį 23, kurią išlaisvino sovietinė kariuomenė. Čia ir sutikome pergalę. Visi buvome susijaudinę. Buvome tokie laimingi, kad karas baigėsi ir atėjo laikas galvoti apie ateitį.

Po karo

Mes jau gavome karininko laipsnį ir aš tapau jaunesniuoju leitenantu. Netrukus po pergalės mus paskyrė į skirtingus karinius dalinius. Mane išsiuntė į Vilnių ir paskyrė 249 pulko, kuriame tarnavau, komjaunimo organizatoriumi. Pradžioje gyvenau kareivinėse su visais. Mūsų pulkas stovėjo Šiauriniame miestelyje, tai vienas iš Vilniaus priemiesčių. Mama dar pasiliko Maskvoje. Jai reikėjo gauti leidimą persikelti į Vilnių. Kai išrūpinau tokį leidimą, nuvykau į Maskvą parsivežti mamos. Maskvoje susitikau su teta Anna ir pussesere Rina. Tuo laiku jos jau buvo grįžusios iš Kirovo srities, kur gyveno karo metais. Iš pradžių mes su mama nuomavom būstą Vilniuje. Tai buvo mažas kambarys be patogumų. 1946 metais daug žmonių išvyko iš Vilniaus į Lenkiją ir daug butų stovėjo tušti. [1946 metais sovietų valdžia leido išvykti žmonėms, gimusiems 1939-40 metais SSSR aneksuotose teritorijose.] Man davė mažą dviejų kambarių butą su virtuve, bet be patogumų. Galiausiai mes turėjome savo namus ir įsikūrėme su mama. Rašiau prašymus demobilizuotis, bet jie grįždavo neatsakyti.

Mane demobilizavo tik 1947 metais. Buvau laimingas. Dabar reikėjo tik rasti darbą ir vėl lankyti institutą. Prasidėjo tikri mano gyvenimo sunkumai. Tuo metu Lietuvoje, kaip ir visoje SSSR, vešėjo antisemitizmas [kampanija prieš „kosmopolitus“]. Susidūriau su juo ieškodamas darbo institute. Buvau baigęs pusantrų metų kursą tokiu metu, kai daugelis žmonių net nebuvo baigę 10 klasių. To pakako rasti darbą. Be to, buvau gimęs Lietuvoje, kovojau fronte, turėjau apdovanojimų, buvau Komunistų partijos narys, o tai buvo reta. Norėjau būti lektoriumi. Įgijau tokios patirties tarnaudamas pulke ir gerai sutariau su žmonėmis. Niekas nepavyko. Pirmiausiai kreipiausi į „Žinijos“ švietimo draugiją [Znaniye – visasąjunginė draugija, viešoji švietimo agentūra, palaikanti mokslo ir politikos žinių sklaidą.]. Man buvo pasiūlytas sąskaitininko darbas, kurio patirties visai neturėjau. Tada, respublikos Centrinio komjaunimo komiteto antrasis sekretorius, mano karo draugas, rekomendavo mane dirbti Centrinio komjaunimo komiteto pirmojo sekretoriaus padėjėju. Aišku, man nepavyko. Kreipiausi į kitas organizacijas. Iš pradžių mane gerai sutikdavo, nes neatrodžiau kaip tipiškas žydas, bet perskaitę dokumentuose mano pavardę, kadrų skyriaus viršininkai rasdavo priežastį man atsakyti. Aišku, jie nesakydavo tikrosios priežasties – kad esu žydas. Galiausiai, vienas geras karo metų draugas padėjo man rasti literatūrinio darbuotojo vietą laikraštyje „Sovietskaja Litva“ [rusų kalba leidžiamas Lietuvos laikraštis. 1944-1990 išeidavo šešis kartus per savaitę 70000 egzempliorių kasdien (1975)].

Tais pačiais 1947 metais pateikiau dokumentus į Vilniaus universiteto Fizikos ir matematikos fakultetą. Už akademines studijas atsakingas prorektorius, užkietėjęs antisemitas, pasakė man: „Studijavote Mokytojų rengimo institute. Bandykite dar kartą“. Bet man padėjo iš Mažeikių kilęs universiteto partinis vadovas. Jis gerai pažinojo mano tėvą ir teigė, kad mane būtina priimti į antrą kursą, nes esu partijos narys ir kariavau fronte. Studentai tais laikas nebuvo panašūs į dabartinius studentus. Mes buvome suaugę, karą praėję žmonės. Buvau atsakingas ir už savo motiną. Ji nebegalėjo dirbti, taigi aš buvau vienintelis maitintojas. Būnant trečiame kurse, mane įdarbino dėstytojo padėjėju marksizmo- leninizmo katedroje. Lietuvoje trūko socialinių mokslų dėstytojų, gerai mokančių lietuvių ir rusų kalbas. Trečiame kurse mane paskyrė marksizmo – leninizmo dėstytojo padėjėju. Visame universitete buvo trys studentai – dėstytojai, įskaitant mane. Aš sėkmingai apsigyniau diplominį darbą ir galėjau nesijaudinti dėl privalomo darbo paskyrimo 25. Manęs net neklausė, ką norėčiau veikti. Likau dėstytojauti universitete.

Aš nesiejau valstybinio antisemitizmo, pasireiškusio žymaus žydų aktoriaus Michoelso 26 nužudymu, Žydų antifašistinio komiteto sunaikinimu 27 ir pasibaigusio absurdišku vadinamuoju „gydytojų sąmokslu“ 28, su Stalino vardu. Maniau, kad vietiniai valdžios aktyvistai stengiasi pasirodyti prieš aukščiausią sąjunginę valdžią. Sakyčiau, manęs asmeniškai antisemitinės kampanijos nepalietė. Toliau sėkmingai dėstytojavau. Sprendžiant iš to, kaip su manimi elgėsi vadovai ir studentai, buvau gerbiamas. Stalino mirtis 1953 metais man buvo smūgis. Palaipsniui, aš supratau jo tikrąjį vaidmenį ir kultą nuvainikuojančio partijos suvažiavimo 29 nutarimus priėmiau kaip logiškus ir būtinus. Tiesa buvo atskleista. Tik dabar, po perestroikos 30, mes beveik viską sužinojome apie sovietinio režimo ir Stalino nusikaltimus.

Dirbau universitete iki 1989 metų, iki perestroikos pradžios. Apgyniau kandidatinę disertaciją [sovietinis/ Rusijos mokslų daktaro laipsnis] 31. Atkūrus Lietuvos nepriklausomybę 32 pasitvirtinau mokslinį vardą. Dabar esu istorijos mokslų daktaras. Turiu pasakyti, kad perestroiką priėmiau ne iš karto. Man buvo sunku paneigti visas tas idėjas, kuriomis tikėjau – socializmo ir komunizmo idėjas. Gimęs Lietuvoje, labai gerai supratau, kad Maskva yra svetima mūsų šaliai. Dabar aš visiškai sutinku su terminu „sovietinė okupacija“, kai kalbama apie sovietinį režimą. Palaikau savo šalies nepriklausomybę, jos narystę Europos Sąjungoje. Tikiuosi, kad Lietuva įveiks laikinas kliūtis ir taps klestinčia Europos šalimi.

Mano asmeninis gyvenimas yra laimingas. Universitete sutikau puikią žydę merginą. Polina Aibinder buvo medicinos fakulteto studentė. Mus daug kas siejo. Abu gimėme mažuose Lietuvos miesteliuose. Ji gimė Kupiškyje 1930 metais. Jos tėvas Zelikas Aibinderis buvo siuvėjas, mama – namų šeimininkė. Polina turėjo seserį Rozą Aibinder. 1941 metais ji nesugebėjo išvykti į evakuaciją ir iškentė visą Vilniaus geto siaubą 33. Roza išgyveno. Netrukus po karo ji išvyko į Izraelį, kur iki šiol gyvena. 1941 metais Polina su tėvais pabėgo iš miesto ir buvo evakuota į Čiuvašiją. Grįžus, Polinos šeima įsikūrė Vilniuje. Pradėjau susitikinėti su Polina. 1951 metais mes susituokėme. Vestuvės buvo labai kuklios. Užregistravome santuoką vietiniame civilinės metrikacijos biure ir atšventėme su artimiausiais draugais tetos bute, nes mūsų bute nebuvo vietos. Apsigyvenome mano mamos bute. 1952 metais gimė mūsų vyresnysis sūnus. Pavadinome jį Davidu mano brolio garbei. Antrasis sūnus Ilja gimė 1957 metais.

Mūsų šeima gyveno kaip ir visos paprastos sovietinės šeimos – nuo algos iki algos. Neturėjome turtų, bet gyvenome visai padoriai. Mano žmona dirbo gydytoja. Vaikai ėjo į darželį, paskui į mokyklą. Mama padėjo mums kaip galėdama. 1960-jų pradžioje ji pradėjo vis labiau negaluoti. Ji gulėjo ant patalo ir 1965 metais mirė. Palaidojome ją kapinių žydiškoje dalyje 34, bet be žydiškų ritualų. Kiekvienais metais važinėjome atostogauti, kartais su vaikais. Kaip dauguma vilniečių, važiuodavome į sanatorijas [poilsio centrai SSSR] 35 Palangoje [populiarus Lietuvos kurortas prie Baltijos jūros]. Gaudavome profsąjungų kelialapius ir turėjome mokėti tik 30% kelionės kainos, taigi galėjome sau leisti atostogauti kiekvienais metais. Vaikai vyko į pionierių stovyklas Lietuvoje. 1970-jų pradžioje nusipirkome automobilį ir pradėjome keliauti po Lietuvą. Nuvažiavome į Krymą ir Karpatus Ukrainoje. Po poros metų gavau žemės plotą sodui. Tuo metu buvo plačiai paplitę kolektyviniai sodai ir žmonės gaudavo 600 kvadratinių metrų sklypus. Sklypas buvo mažas, o namelis negalėjo viršyti 32 kvadratinių metrų. Mums patiko rūpintis sodu, daržu ir gėlynu. Visi sutilpome name – mes, vaikai, anūkai. Kai namo dydžio apribojimai buvo atšaukti, namelį padidinau. Dabar mes turime padorų šildomą vasarnamį.

Davidas baigė Vilniaus universiteto matematikos fakultetą. Jis puikiai mokėsi, bet vistiek dėl darbo kilo problemų. Jis gavo privalomą darbo paskyrimą dirbti matematikos mokytoju pagrindinėje mokykloje, nors buvo antras pagal pažangumą studentas ir svajojo apie mokslinį darbą. Galiausiai, aš suradau jam darbo vietą – tiriamąjį darbą Universitete, bet Davidas buvo nusivylęs: atlyginimas buvo menkas, jokių karjeros galimybių, jokio savarankiško darbo. Jis turėjo šeimą – žmoną Lizą, žydę, ji dirbo sąskaitininke, ir dvi dukras Eleną ir Anną, gimusias pamečiui 1982 ir 1983 metais. 1990-jų pradžioje Davidas su šeima išvyko į Izraelį. Jam ten gerai sekasi. Jis matematikas/ programuotojas. Žmona dirba sąskaitininke. Mano mylimos anūkės atitarnavo privalomą tarnybos laiką Izraelio armijoje. Dabar abi studijuoja Haifos universitete. Sūnaus šeima gyvena Petakh Tikvah. Buvau pas juos keletą kartų. Džiaugiuosi, kad sūnus sugebėjo pasiekti savo tikslus.

Jaunesnysis sūnus Ilja taip pat baigė Vilniaus Universitetą. Jis istorikas. Jo žmona Larisa yra Ukrainos žydė. Sovietinės santvarkos metais ji, kaip daugelis jaunų žydų, atvyko į Vilnių stoti į aukštąją mokyklą, nes Lietuvoje tai buvo daug lengviau nei kitose respublikose. [Lietuvoje buvo santykinai mažesnė žydų diskriminacija stojant į aukštąsias mokyklas nei likusioje Sovietų Sąjungoje.] Larisa baigė universiteto rusų kalbos fakultetą, apsigynė kandidatinę disertaciją. Larisa dabar užsiiminėja judaika. Ilja turi du vaikus – vyresnioji Olga, gimusi 1986 metais, įstojo į Maskvos Universiteto Judaikos fakultetą. Ji studijuoja žydų filologiją. Mano vienintelis anūkas Aleksandras, kurį vadinu Šašenka – visus savo anūkus vadinu mažybiniais vardais: Lenočka, Anečka, Olenka [rušiski mažybiniai Elenos, Annos ir Olgos vardai] – gimė 1989 metais ir baigia šiais metais Vilniaus žydų mokyklą. Beje, Vilniaus žydų mokykla yra valstybinė, ne privati.

Kitas, žydams tikriausiai pats svarbiausias dalykas, yra žydiško gyvenimo atsigavimas, įmanomu tapęs po perestroikos ir Lietuvos nepriklausomybės. Dabar grįžtu į gyvenimą, prie kurio buvau pratęs prieš daug daug metų. Tuo metu, kai susikūrė Izraelio valstybė, kai ji kariavo – Šešių dienų karą 36, Yom Kipuro karą 37 ir pan., aš, kaip ir daugelis kitų, negalėjau nesižavėti Izraeliu. Daug žmonių demonstravo solidarumą su Izraelio tauta. Aš tylėjau per partinius susirinkimus, kai mano žmonės buvo niekinami. Dabar aš didžiuojuosi Izraeliu ir esu laimingas, kad mano sūnus tenai gyvena. Negalvoju apie išvykimą. Negaliu padalinti savęs kiekvienam savo sūnui ir kiekvienai savo tėvynei. Palikime taip, kaip yra. Be to, mano Polina labai silpna. Prieš keletą metų dėl jos ligos turėjau išeiti į pensiją. Dabar ji retai išeina iš namų.

Kai atsistatydinau iš universiteto, įsidarbinau universiteto psichologinėje laboratorijoje, tyrinėjančioje švietimo temas. Tuo pat metu neseniai atsidariusi žydų mokykla man pasiūlė dėstyti žydų istoriją. Pasirodė, kad aš mokausi kartu su savo mokiniais, tiesiog vienoje klasėje aukščiau. Vaikystėje ir paauglystėje nesimokiau žydų istorijos ir dabar atvėriau sau šį nuostabų istorijos pasaulį. Dirbau iki 2004 metų ir jau metai, kaip ilsiuosi. Nors negalėčiau to vadinti poilsiu. Anksčiau, kai mano jaunesnysis sūnus labai susidomėjo Holokaustu, pradėjau rinkti medžiagą apie šį siaubingą žydų istorijos puslapį ir supratau, kaip mane traukia žydų gyvenimas ir bendruomenė. Tikriausiai, tai buvo vidinis postūmis daryti viską įmanomą ir neįmanomą, kad Lietuvos žydija atsigautų. Dabar esu Lietuvos žydų bendruomenės tarybos narys ir galiu dėti visas pastangas dėl bendruomenės. Netapau religingu; mano šeima mini žydiškas šventes ir laikosi privalomo pasninko per Yom Kipurą, pagerbdami protėvius ir milijonus žuvusiųjų.

Labai myliu Lietuvą. Dabar man patinka dalykai, kurių iš karto nepriėmiau – žlugusi sovietinė santvarka buvo tarsi šviežio oro gūsis, kurio būtinai reikėjo mano šalies egzistavimui, tačiau Lietuvos politikoje yra dalykų, kuriems nepritariu, t.y. atmetimas visų dalykų, susijusių su SSSR. Nemanau, kad taip elgtis yra teisinga. Man nepatinka neigiamas požiūris į pergalę prieš fašizmą. Daug žmonių čia galvoja, kad mes turėjome kovoti kartu su Hitleriu prieš SSSR. Aš griežtai prieš tokią nuomonę. Hitleris užgrobė pusę Europos, pavergė ir sunaikino milijonus žmonių. Buvau fronte ir žinau: bendromis pastangomis mes pasiekėme pergalę prieš fašizmą ir neturime to pamiršti. Tikiuosi, kad mano šalis su metais įveiks sunkumus.

ŽODYNĖLIS:

Baby Pisetskaya
Odessa
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ada Goldferb
Date of interview: June 2003

Baby Pisetskaya, an old gray-haired woman of average stature lives alone in a two-bedroom apartment on the 9th floor in a new building in a new district called Kotovski, about 20 kilometers from Odessa city center. There was a fire in the building back in 1992, while she was in hospital. Her apartment was severely damaged and there are still pieces of wallpaper hanging from the walls, broken tiles on the floor and cracked ceilings. All furniture, but a wardrobe and a floor mirror, burned during the fire. Few books were spared by the fire. Now there are a few pieces of old furniture some relatives gave Baby that they failed to sell before moving abroad. The plant where Baby had worked, also gave her a few pieces of furniture. Within the past ten years Baby lost her two children: her son Vladimir perished during the fire and her daughter Flora died in 2002. Despite her dispirited condition Baby talked very vividly about the life of her family that was once big and close to her.

My paternal grandfather Menachem-Nuchem Pisetski was born to a wealthy family in Odessa in 1878. I know for sure that my grandfather had a sister and a brother. His brother Max lived in London. I don't know how he happened to get there, but I remember that he always sent us parcels with matzah before Pesach. The boxes were labeled 'kosher le-Pesach' ['kosher for Pesach' in Hebrew]. He also sent tea and fabrics from there. I have no information about my grandfather's sister Rachil. My grandfather told me that his family was very religious: they followed the kashrut and observed all Jewish holidays. My grandfather attended cheder. Since my grandfather was a tailor he went to the synagogue for tailors located in Remeslennaya Street in the center of Odessa. Shlyoma Karasyov, my maternal great- grandfather, worked as a shammash in that synagogue. Most likely, it was my great-grandfather Shlyoma who introduced my grandfather to my grandmother.

My grandmother Riva-Zelda Pisetskaya, nee Karasyova, was one year older than my grandfather. She was born in Odessa in 1877. My grandmother's sister Minia was married to Chaim Berinski, a tailor. Minia, her husband and their three children Motl, Favel and Chovele were killed by fascists in Odessa in 1941, during the Great Patriotic War 1. Their older son Misha, who was at the front, was the only survivor in their family. After the war Misha lived in Sverdlovsk. My grandmother also had another brother: Iosif Karasyov who lived in Uspenskaya Street in the center of town with his wife and three children: Mera, Beba and Naum. I know that they lived a long life in Odessa. My grandmother and grandfather got married in 1898. They had a happy marriage: in the first three years their first three children were born: Yakov, my father Fridel and Betia.

In 1905 my grandfather, grandmother and their three children moved to Uman, a small provincial town in the west of Ukraine, escaping from the terrible Odessa pogrom 2 that year. [Uman was a district town in Kiev province; according to the poll of 1897 the population of Uman was 31,016 and 17,945 of them were Jews.] Uman was located in the Volyn-Podolsk Hills on the banks of the Umanka and Kamenka Rivers. It was a small town with one- storied buildings. There was a substantial Jewish population in the town at the beginning of the 20th century. They were involved in commerce and crafts. There were tailors, barbers and shoemakers among the Jewish population. There were a few synagogues and a shochet in town. There is a popular park called Sophievka in Uman, it was founded by Count Felix Pototsky at the end of the 18th century.

My grandfather bought a big and beautiful house with columns in the center of the town and opened a garment shop. His clients were wealthy ladies. There was a big room in the front part of the house where my grandfather received his clients. It also served as a shop as such; there were assistant tailors sitting at their desks, mannequins and two sewing machines in this same room. The next room was a big living room where our family got together at Sabbath and on Jewish holidays. There was a big table covered with a velvet tablecloth with tassels, chairs and a big oak cupboard with fancy china in it. On holidays we ate from this china crockery with silver tableware: forks, knives and spoons. There were eight rooms altogether in the house. My grandfather sold two of them to a confectioner called Galetka, maybe for his business, who owned an ice-cream cafe across the street from the town garden. There were annex buildings near the house that were leased to some Jews.

I remember my grandfather very well: he was of average height, baldish, had a moustache, but no beard. My grandmother was very beautiful; she had very thick long hair that she combed with a metal comb. She wore a lace shawl. She also wore hats. My grandparents had six more children in Uman. In total, they had nine children. They were all raised religiously and spoke Yiddish. All boys studied in cheder and the girls were educated at home.

My father's older brother Yakov was born in Odessa in 1899. In 1917, after the October Revolution [see Russian Revolution of 1917] 3. Yakov was attracted by communist ideas. He became a communist. He married Milia, a Jewish girl, in Uman. They moved to Kharkov in 1920. They weren't religious. Yakov worked in the All-Russian Central Executive Committee - I don't have any details about the position he held there. His daughter Luba was born in 1920 and his second daughter Flora followed in 1924. During the Great Patriotic War they were all evacuated to Tashkent [today Uzbekistan]. Uncle Yakov was released from military service since the thumb of his right hand was deformed.

After the war the family returned to Kharkov. Their older daughter Luba and her husband Michael Gorwitz moved to Kiev. Her husband was a chief architect in Kiev. They had two children. Michael died in the 1970s and Luba and her son moved to Luba's daughter in Moscow. Yakov's younger daughter Flora was single. She lived with her parents in Kharkov. Uncle Yakov died in 1988 and aunt Milia passed away shortly afterwards. After her parents died Aunt Flora moved to her sister Luba in Moscow. Luba, her children and their families and Flora moved to Austria in 1998. That's all the information I have about them.

My father's sister Betia was born in Odessa in 1903. She married a Jewish shoemaker called Pinchus Skliar in 1924. They lived in a room in my grandfather's house: Pinchus made shoes and there was always the smell of leather in their room. Their son Syoma was born in 1925. In 1929 they moved to Odessa where their daughter Rosa was born in 1937. Betia's husband went to the front in 1941. He perished that same year. Betia, her children and my grandparents evacuated to Tashkent.

After the war Betia returned to Odessa with her children. They lived in Uspenskaya Street in the center of town. Aunt Betia died in 1978. Betia's son Syoma got married. His wife Fira was a Jew. They both worked, but I don't have any information about their jobs. Syoma died in 1971. His daughter Rosa married Misha Zelener, a Jewish man. In the late 1950s their two children were born: a boy and a girl. Rosa and her family moved to Germany in the 1990s.

My father's younger brother Semyon was born in Uman in 1905. He married Rosa, a Jewish girl, in 1925. I don't know what he did for a living. He and Rosa lived across the street from where we lived. Their son Mitia was born in 1927 and Lyolia followed in 1929. In 1932 they moved to Moscow. During the Great Patriotic War Semyon was at the front and his wife and their children were in Moscow. Semyon returned home after the war. He died after an eye surgery in the late 1970s. There happened to be a tumor in his eye. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Moscow. Rosa died in the 1980s in Moscow and is buried near her husband.

Their son Mitia was the director of the photo laboratory of Moscow State University. His wife's name was Ida. She was a Jew. They had children and grandchildren. There was a tragic accident in their family: their daughter gave her child a pill, the child choked and died. Mitia's daughter moved somewhere abroad. I don't know where exactly she moved to. Mitia died in 1999. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Moscow. Lyolia went in for weight lifting. He was a coach at the sports association called Spartak. Lyolia was married to Rosa. They had children and grandchildren. Lyolia died recently, sometime around 2000, but I don't know when exactly. I don't know where he was buried, either. His wife Rosa died a long while ago. Lyolia's daughter lives in Germany.

My father's younger sister Manya was born in Uman in 1907. She married David Kalika in 1929. David was the son of the chazzan of the Berla Kalika synagogue in Uman. Manya and David moved to Kharkov in 1930. David worked at the Kharkov tractor plant. They had two children: Busia and Arkadi. During the Great Patriotic War David, his wife and children evacuated to Tashkent where they survived the war. David Kalika's family perished in Uman. When the Germans came to Uman they lined up all Jews in a column headed by Lusik Brozer, the retarded son of the pharmacist, who carried a red flag. The Germans forced David's brother Samuel, a Jewish actor, to sing a song and the Jews marched to the spot where they were shot. They were killed near the railway station. We got to know this from our neighbors in the 1960s.

After the war Manya and David stayed in Tashkent. David died in Tashkent in 1972 and Manya died in 1977. Their daughter Busia finished a college of foreign languages and became an English teacher. She married an Uzbek man who became a professor at polytechnic college. Their daughter Rimma died of brain growth in 1987. Busia moved to the USA in 1990. Her husband stayed in Tashkent. Busia's brother Arkadi died of a heart attack in Tashkent in 1976. He had a wife Nelia and a daughter Marina. Marina got married and had a son. She died at the age of 21, when her son was three years old. Nelia, Arkadi's widow, and her grandson moved to the USA.

My father's younger brother Izia was born in Uman in 1909. Izia served in the army in Nikolaev. I remember that my grandmother visited him there. After he returned home Izia got married. His wife was Jewish. Her name was Manya. They lived in Odessa. They had three children: the oldest, Beba, was born in 1930, and the twins Polia and Sopha were born in 1937. They said in the family that Izia finished the Mikhoels 4 drama school and worked at the Jewish Theater in Odessa. During the Great Patriotic War he was at the front. He had many decorations. Manya and her children were in evacuation in Tashkent.

After the war they returned to Odessa. Izia worked at the Jewish Theater until it was closed in 1948. Izia went to work at the Philharmonic. In 1953, during the time of the Doctors' Plot 5, he was arrested as an 'enemy of the people' 6 and sentenced to ten years in Norilsk, Krasnoyarsk region. He was released after five years of imprisonment when Khrushchev 7 came to power. He had all his war decorations returned to him [see Rehabilitation in the Soviet Union] 8. The authorities sent him to a recreation center for two months to improve his health. After returning from exile he went to work as administrator with the Odessa Philharmonic. He died in 1971. His wife Manya and her daughters Beba, Polia and Sopha moved to the USA in the late 1970s. Manya and Sopha have already died and I've lost contact with the others.

My father's sister Ida was born in Uman in 1911. She finished a secondary school. She moved to Odessa with my grandfather in 1929. In 1935 she married Isaac Konstantinovski, a Jewish man. Their daughter Sopha was born in 1936. At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War Isaac went to the front and perished. Ida and her daughter Sopha evacuated to Tashkent. After the war Ida worked as a shop assistant in a food store until the elderly age of 81. Her daughter Sopha was married and had two children. Aunt Ida died in 1993. Sopha died of diabetes in 1999.

My father's younger brother Isaac was born in Uman in 1913. I don't know where he studied or what he did for a living. He lived in Odessa from 1929. He got married before the Great Patriotic War. His wife's name was Riva. They had two children: Gisia and Abrasha. During the war he went to the front where he perished. Riva and the children evacuated to Tashkent. After the war Riva worked at the tea-packing factory in Odessa. I don't know any details about what she was doing there. Gisia married Aby, a Jewish man. They had two sons. After her mother died - I don't know in what year - she, her husband and their children moved to Israel. I have no more information about her. Abrasha was single. He passed away in Odessa. I don't remember when or of what he died.

My father's youngest sister Chaya was born in 1919. She finished a lower secondary school in Odessa. Chaya married Israel Meyerson, a Jewish man, in 1936. They had a Jewish wedding with a chuppah. There was a big wedding party. All her brothers and sisters and their families from Kharkov, Moscow and Kursk came to her wedding in Odessa. The wedding was in my grandparents' home. There was even an article about this wedding in a Jewish newspaper - I don't remember, which newspaper it was, but my father told me that there was even a photo of our family published. Chaya and Israel had a son called Senia. When the Great Patriotic War began Chaya and her family evacuated to Tashkent. Israel went to the front and in 1943 his family received the notification of his death.

After the war Chaya worked in a catering company. My grandparents helped her to raise her son. Her son got married and moved to Baku. Later he emigrated to the USA with his family. He was supposed to take his mother there, but then he divorced his wife and remarried. His mother stayed at home. Chaya was going to move to Israel in the year 2000. She even bought a ticket, but a few days before her departure she died of extensive myocardial infarction.

My father Fridel Pisetski was born in Odessa in 1901. In 1905 he moved to Uman with his parents. He studied in cheder. Then my grandfather sent him to learn the barber's profession. My father was 17 when the October Revolution took place. In 1919 he was mobilized to the Red army. He served in a military unit that fought against gangs 9 in Ukraine. Their unit was near Gaisin where he met his future wife, my mother.

I know little about my maternal grandmother Beila Gabova, nee Yasinova. I don't know where or when she was born or who her parents were. All I know is that she lived in Ternovka, Gaisin district, Podolsk province. My grandmother's brother was a communist. He was the chairman of Ternovka village council and was killed by bandits in his own office in 1919.

My maternal grandfather Yakov Grabov was born in Ternovka in the 1870s. He was a blacksmith. He was religious. He finished cheder. My grandfather was a gabbai at the synagogue. My grandparents got married in 1901. Grandmother gave birth to five children. My grandfather told me that his family followed the kashrut, observed all Jewish holidays and fasted. In 1914 my grandfather Yakov was mobilized to serve in World War I. He was captured by Austrians and spent two years in captivity. He returned home in 1917 and began to build a house with Grandmother Beila.

My grandmother Beila died in Ternovka in 1917. In 1919 my grandfather married Sara, the widow of Grandmother Beila's brother. Grandfather Yakov loved his second wife very much. Sara was a convinced communist and he even got adjusted to her views. Sara had a son from her first marriage: Chaim. She had a daughter Shelia and a son Lyova born from her second marriage with Grandfather Yakov. In the 1930s, when the Jewish autonomous region [Birobidzhan] 10 was established, at the initiative of grandmother Sara, they moved to Birobidzhan with their younger children: Rosa, Luba, Shelia and Lyova. They were accommodated in a barrack at first and later they received an apartment. My grandfather was old when they moved and I don't know whether he still worked there. Grandmother Sara went to work, but I don't know any details.

My grandfather didn't tell me about their life in Birobidzhan. I know that their son Lyova drowned before the Great Patriotic War. He was 13. Grandfather Yakov visited us in Kursk. During the war he also visited us in Kazakhstan. After the Great Patriotic War my grandfather and Grandmother Sara moved to Chaim, Sara's son from her first marriage, in Boguslav, Kiev region. Grandfather Yakov died of throat cancer in 1948. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Boguslav. After he died Grandmother Sara and her daughter Shelia moved to Lugansk. She died there at an old age in the 1960s.

My mother's brother Foma was born in Ternovka in 1904. Uncle Foma lived with his Jewish wife Genia in Kursk. Their daughter Asia was born in 1934. They observed all Jewish holidays. Foma and his father-in-law owned a confectionary. He worked as a confectioner until the Great Patriotic War. In late 1941 he and my father went to the front. Foma perished in 1942 and my father saw him dying. His wife Genia and their daughter Asia, born in 1938, evacuated, but I don't know where they were in evacuation. Asia got lost on the way and was sent to a children's home. She was found promptly. After the war they returned to their house in Kursk. Genia worked as a shop assistant after the war. I don't remember when she died. Asia finished the faculty of foreign languages at some pedagogical college. She married a Russian man. They had two sons: Igor and Oleg. Asia and her husband moved to Germany in 2001.

My mother's sister Rachil was born in Ternovka in 1908. She married David Shwartz, a Jewish man, in 1929. They lived in Kzyl-Orda. I don't know what profession Rachil's husband had. Their son Boria was born in 1930, and a few years later they moved to Kursk. Their daughter Ania was born in 1938. Rachil had another son, who died in infancy. Before the war Rachil was selling beer in a kiosk. They observed all Jewish holidays. During the war they evacuated to Tashkent where Rachil's husband died of tuberculosis in 1942. Rachil and her children returned to Kursk after the war and then, in 1948, they moved to Odessa. She worked as a shop assistant in a bakery store in the center of town. I don't remember when Rachil died. Her son Boris and his family left for the USA in 1998. Boris had heart problems and when the plane landed he died at the airport. Rachil's daughter Ania and her family moved to Germany in 1999.

My mother's sister Rosa was born in 1910 as far as I know. Rosa lived in Birobidzhan. She married Michael Olchedoevski there. Michael was at the front during the war. They had two children. Later they all moved to Khabarovsk. I don't know when they died since we didn't communicate with them.

My mother's younger sister Luba was born in 1913. I don't know where she studied. She moved to Birobidzhan with my maternal grandparents. There she married Michael Khotimski, a Jewish man. He was 30 years older than Luba. He finished a grammar school and was the director of a suitcase factory. They didn't have any children. In the early 1930s they moved to Kursk where Luba's husband became the director of a brewery. They had a house in Yamskaya Sloboda in the suburb of the town. Michael's mother lived with them. She was religious and observed all Jewish traditions. When the Great Patriotic War began Luba and her family evacuated to the village of Antonovka, Sarkansk district in Kazakhstan. Luba's mother-in-law died on the way to evacuation. After the Great Patriotic War they returned to Kursk and later they moved to Rostov. Many years later Michael died of throat cancer and Luba moved to Kiev. Her cousin Fima acquainted her with his wife's relative. Luba had diabetes. She had her leg amputated. She died in Kiev in the late 1990s.

My mother's half-sister Shelia was born in 1924. She left for Birobidzhan with her parents. She finished a Jewish school and a college there. She was the director of a shoe factory. After the Great Patriotic War she moved to Boguslav with her parents. Her stepbrother Chaim lived there and worked in a barbershop. He made wigs. Later he moved to Darnitsa in Kiev where he had a house. After my maternal grandfather Yakov died in 1948 Shelia and her mother moved to Lugansk. Shelia still lives there today.

My mother Sonia Grabova was born in Ternovka in 1902, although her documents stated that she was born in 1904. My mother studied in cheder for girls 11. She spoke fluent Yiddish. My mother was 15 when Grandmother Beila died, but until then my grandmother managed to teach my mother many things. My mother was good at housekeeping, knew all Jewish traditions and could cook traditional Jewish food. At the age of 17 my mother met my father. This happened near Gaisin in 1919. The Red army military unit in which my father served stopped there. The local population sympathized with the Red army that protected them from bandits. They shared their food, however little they had, with the military. My mother also brought food to this unit.

My parents got married in 1920. They had a Jewish wedding in Uman. After the wedding they moved into my grandfather Menachem's house in Uman. Their son Syoma was born in 1921. My father's military unit was sent to fight with basmach [anti-Soviet rebel in Central Asia, 1920s. Supposedly from Uzbek word, 'basmachi'] gangs in the town of Verny [today Alma-Ata] in Middle Asia. My brother was nine months old when my mother took him to the railway station from where my father was departing. Syoma caught a cold and died of diphtheria. My mother continued living in Grandfather Menachem's house. She was much loved there. She waited for my father for about three years. My father returned in 1923. Grandfather Menachem was a wealthy man. When my father returned to Uman my grandfather gave him money to buy a barbershop in Sadovaya Street in the center of Uman.

I was born on 16th May 1924 and my younger sister Shelia was born on 13th April 1926. I have bright memories about the years that we spent in Uman. We all lived in Grandfather Menachem's house. Daughters and daughters-in- law helped my grandmother with the cooking, and my grandmother also had housemaids to help her around the house. I remember one called Nastia and another one called Asia; they were Ukrainian girls. The family always got together on Jewish holidays. At Sabbath my mother baked challah. My grandparents had special crockery for Pesach. My grandmother made ground horseradish and cooked geese for the seder. I also remember that at the beginning of the seder at Pesach my grandfather put the afikoman under a pillow and I had to find it. I was too small then to remember more details about it. At Chanukkah my grandfather made little bags into which he put golden coins and hung those bags around our necks.

Grandfather Menachem went to the synagogue regularly. I remember that he put on his tallit and tefillin when he prayed at home. I was five then and remember that I stood beside him and kissed the cubes - tefillin, and my grandfather kissed the edges of his tallit.

There was a hotel near my grandfather's house. It collapsed during an earthquake in 1932. Actors of the Jewish Musical Comedy Theater of Fischson stayed in this hotel when the theater was on tour in Uman. I still have the paper with the advertisement about it. Clara Yung and Beba Yunesca, actresses of this theater, used to rehearse in a big room in my grandfather's house. We had no piano at home and a violinist came with them. I was five years old then and attended all their rehearsals. Then we organized family concerts at home for ourselves where I sang arias from musicals. Our family was fond of music and we always had a lot of fun at home.

In 1929 my grandmother, grandfather and the younger children Izia, Ida, Isaac and Chaya moved to Odessa. By 1929 the NEP 12 was almost done with due to galloping taxes that made it impossible to keep smaller stores and shops. There were no other jobs in smaller towns and for this reason my grandparents moved to Odessa where they stayed in a two-bedroom apartment on the first floor in the center of town. My grandfather was a skilled tailor. He had apprentices and numerous clients. When the Great Patriotic War began my grandparents evacuated to Tashkent with their daughters, daughters-in-law and grandchildren.

When my grandparents moved to Odessa, we stayed in my grandfather's house. I remember going to the Sophievka park in Uman with my parents and Shelia. My father also took us to Puscha-Voditsa in Kiev where I saw a train for the first time in my life. I went to a Ukrainian school in the center of town in 1930 at the age of six. I became a Young Octobrist 13 at this school. In 1933, during the period of the famine 14, I fell ill with typhoid. To be able to buy medicines and more food for me, my parents took their silverware to the Torgsin store 15. My father had to give his barbershop to the state. He couldn't keep it because of the high taxes. Then my mother had twisted bowels. She had a surgery and had to stay in hospital for a long while. In 1934 my father took my mother to the Kuyalnik 16 recreation center in Odessa. My sister Shelia and I stayed with my mother's sisters Rachil and Luba who lived in Kursk.

In 1935 my parents sold their house in Uman and we moved to Kursk. Kursk was an industrial town near Moscow. There were one and two-storied buildings in town. There are two rivers near Kursk: the Seyn and the Tuskar river; and there are mixed woods around the town. Many Jews lived in Kursk before the war. There was a synagogue in town. My parents bought a one- bedroom apartment on the second floor near the railroad spur in the center of town. There was a stove stoked with coal and wood. There was a table and chairs in the center of the room, a big wardrobe with a mirror by the wall and a desk where Shelia and I did our homework. There was also a nickel- plated bed on which my parents slept. There was a screen and two beds behind it where Shelia and I slept. My father was the first one in town to learn to make permanent wave and I remember that his clients - the most elegant women of Kursk - came to our house to have their hair done before holidays.

My sister and I studied in a secondary school. My sister studied French and I studied German at school. We also passed our tests for GTO [ready for labor and defense] and 'Voroshylov 17 rifle shooter' badges. I attended an artistic embroidery club and wrote poems. I was a pioneer and attended a club in the House of Pioneers. I sang with a string orchestra. I liked singing and got invitations to sing on the radio and in concerts. Our string orchestra gave concerts at kolkhozes and factories. I sang songs from the repertory of Claudia Shulzhenko. [Claudia Ivanovna Shulzhenko, 1906-1984, a Soviet pop singer, whose name is associated with the start of Soviet pop singing.] In 1939 I took part in the children's radio festival dedicated to the 22nd anniversary of the October Revolution where I was awarded the first prize. I still have this award. There were newspaper publications about me and I kept these articles. In 1939, when the Finnish campaign [see Soviet-Finnish War] 18 began, our school was transformed into a hospital and we moved to another school. We gave concerts in hospitals.

In 1940 I was awarded a trip to Sochi on the Black Sea for my successful studies. I went with Abdulla Yusupov, a Tatar boy from another school. This was an unforgettable tour: we went mountaineering and bathed in the sea. We had bus tours to the towns of Adler and Chosta. We went to places of interest and took a drive on the funicular.

Shelia and I had many Jewish and Russian friends. We didn't care about nationality: there was no anti-Semitism in Kursk before the war. My sister and I and our friends went to swim in the river, celebrated Soviet holidays and went to parades. There were many gatherings in our apartment. My friends from the orchestra visited me. We sang, danced and had a lot of fun.

We observed the main Jewish holidays in the family of my mother's sister Luba, whose husband was the director of a brewery. They had a big house that could easily accommodate all members of our big family: my mother's brother Foma, his wife Genia and daughter Asia, Aunt Rachil, her husband David and their children, Boris and Ania, and us. At Pesach my mother baked matzah, cooked gefilte fish and chicken broth and made keyzele [matzah pudding], and brought it all to Luba. We spent the seder, led by Luba's husband Michael, all together.

I joined the Komsomol 19 when I was in the 10th grade. I finished school with honors in 1941. On 21st June 1941 we had a prom. According to school traditions we went for a walk in the woods after the prom. On 22nd June we heard that the Great Patriotic War had begun. I managed to submit my documents to Voronezh Aviation College and was admitted without exams. Schools in Kursk were transformed into hospitals. Our orchestra gave concerts in hospitals and to the military units leaving for the front. I sang the 'Katyusha' song by Blanter, which was always a big success. [Blanter, Matvey Isaacovich, 1903-1991, popular Soviet composer.] At one of those concerts Blanter gave me the notes of this song.

One night in November 1941 we were moving toward the front line. It was cold and dark when all of a sudden rockets lit our column and German planes began to drop metal barrels on us. One barrel fell onto my legs and I fainted. When I regained consciousness, it turned out that I had a fracture of a cannon bone in one leg and a bruise on another leg. I was taken to a hospital in Kursk where I had a cast applied on my leg and another leg was fixed on a support. My ward was on the second floor. At night the first bombardment of Kursk began. I was thrown into the corridor by the blast wave. All other patients were running downstairs and nobody paid any attention to me. Then another patient grabbed me and dragged me outside where we found shelter in a trench. We stayed there until morning. When I was taken back to my ward on stretches I heard that many people had been killed or wounded that night.

In late 1941 my father and my mother's brother Foma went to the front. I had got a little better by then and my mother and aunts began to prepare for evacuation. There were freight carriages for transportation of horses on the railroad spur. Our neighbors helped us to clean up all manure from one carriage. I was taken there on stretches and my mother, my sister Shelia, Aunt Luba, her husband and his mother, Aunt Rachil and her children also got into this carriage. We reached Kuibyshev [present-day Samara]. The trip was long and exhausting. There were air raids and many carriages burnt down.

In Kuibyshev we changed trains and moved on. At one station my mother got off the train to get some food when our train moved to another track. We got so scared that my mother wouldn't find us when the train moved back and all ended well. Aunt Luba's mother-in-law died on the way. She was old and traveling was too much for her. We reached Maaly station in Alma-Ata region, Kazakhstan. Representatives of authorities inspected the train to identify the wounded or ill passengers. I and a distant relative of ours were taken on a truck to a hospital in Sarkand on the border with China. I saw Kazakh people, mountains topped with snow, beautiful landscapes and a donkey for the first time in my life. My mother, sister and other relatives were taken to a kolkhoz 20 in the village of Antonovka. My mother was very worried that I was in a different place, but when I got better I was released from hospital and joined my family. My mother and other relatives did miscellaneous work in the kolkhoz. Luba's husband Michael was a secretary at the village council. Besides, he was responsible for aryk wells. When I came to Antonovka I was given two bulls and a wagon to transport kok-sagyz [a plant] - raw material for rubber manufacturing. We got lodging in a house and the local population treated us nicely, but I could hardly bear the local climate and was allergic to water.

In 1942 my father got into encirclement. He was wounded and was lying on a cart when a German soldier shot him into his belly. The bullet got stuck in his pelvis. At that moment a cannon shell exploded nearby. The horses got scared and bolted off. This saved my father's life. When his military unit got out of this encirclement my father got into hospital. He was treated in Makhachkala and then transferred to Kirovograd. When he recovered he was demobilized from the army.

My father got our address from our relatives who lived in Moscow during the Great Patriotic War and then he came to Antonovka. He worked in a shop that made valenki boots [traditional Russian felt boots] for the front. To refresh my knowledge of school subjects I went to the 10th grade at the local school for the second time. My sister Shelia also went to the local school. There was a frontier military unit near the village where we stayed and they began to invite me to give concerts to the military. The military helped me to find out via the evacuation agency in Buguruslan that my college was evacuated to Tashkent. [Editor's note: The evacuation agency in Buguruslan, Orenburg region, was an inquiry office that collected information about people, institutions and enterprises.] My father's parents Riva and Menachem and their children were in evacuation there. Uzbek people were very friendly with those who came to their towns during evacuation. I arrived in Tashkent in 1942. I passed my exams for the first year of studies at college and became a 2nd-year student at the Faculty of Aircraft Building. I attended classes and in the evening my fellow students and I unloaded bread. My parents sent me parcels with food every now and then.

In 1943 Kursk was liberated and my father came to Tashkent to pick me up. I finished three years in college. The villagers liked my mother a lot. She was awarded a piglet for her good work. We returned to Kursk within a month after it was liberated. There were other tenants in our apartment and there were no belongings left. We turned to the court and were issued a positive decision. We moved back into our apartment. I began to work in the Paris Commune shop.

In late 1943 the district Komsomol committee gave me the task to teach people about defense of chemical weapons. I lived in Prokhorovka station in the building that housed the telegraph office during the Kursk battle 21. I didn't really have time to do any training. There were anti-tank mines everywhere and I followed field engineers clearing fields from mines and installing signs saying 'clear of mines'. Then women wearing worn out clothes and bast shoes came onto the fields to plough the soil covered with many splinters from cannon shells. I stayed there until late 1944. After returning to Kursk I worked as a corrector with Kurskaya Pravda [Kursk Truth], a Soviet daily newspaper, and studied in an evening music school. I was an active Komsomol member and was elected as a delegate to the 3rd district conference of the Komsomol in Kursk.

In 1944 I married Pavel Glukhov, a Russian man. He was born in Ulianovsk. He was one year older than I. He finished a flying school and went to the front. He was wounded in 1943 and sent to hospital in Kursk where I met him. After we got married he continued to serve in his Air Force military unit. I remember, that when I was pregnant my mother forced me to fast at Yom Kippur: my parents continued to observe some Jewish traditions. My son Vladimir was born on 21st January 1946. We named him after Vladimir Illich Lenin since that year was an anniversary of his death. 1946 was a difficult year: there was a lack of food in the country. As a corrector with the Kurskaya Pravda newspaper, I received food coupons. In 1947 my husband and I separated - he was a womanizer. I haven't heard about him ever since.

Life was hard in Kursk after the war. There were many criminal gangs in the town; one of them was called 'Black Cat'. In June 1947 my father, mother, my sister Shelia, my son and I moved to Odessa to my father's grandparents Menachem-Nuchem and Riva-Zelda. We lived in a small two-bedroom apartment on the first floor of a house in the center of town. There was an outside toilet in the yard near our apartment. My father's brother Izia and his family lived with us. Grandfather and grandmother lived with their daughter Ida in her prewar apartment in Ostrovidova Street in the center of town. My father's younger sister Chaya and her son Senia lived there, too.

My father went to work as a barber. He was chairman of the barbers' guild. Our district Komsomol committee appointed me as deputy director at the recreation center of the Kinap plant, but it was a seasonal job. In 1948 I went to work at the Sanitas shop that manufactured lighters, powder compacts, cigarette cases and other haberdashery. I was a stamp operator. In this shop I met my second husband Misha Tetelman, a Jewish man.

Misha was born in Voznesensk, Nikolaev region, in 1914. He was ten years older than I and he wasn't religious at all. Misha was an engraver, but he had a job as a press operator in this shop. During the war he was a tank man at the front. I don't know exactly in what location at the front he was, but he had many decorations.

We got married in 1948. We had a civil wedding. By that time my father had bought an apartment in the basement of the house where Aunt Ida lived. There were two rooms, a kitchen and a big hallway in this apartment. My husband and I lived there with my parents. There was a stove stoked with coal and wood. It was hard to buy anything in stores after the war. My mother made curtains with frills from gauze to somehow decorate the apartment.

My daughter Flora was born in 1949. I quit my job to take care of the children. We were a big and nice family. My grandfather, grandmother, aunt Ida and aunt Chaya lived in the same building and we saw each other frequently. Besides, all our relatives who lived in Odessa came to celebrate Soviet and Jewish holidays and birthdays with us. My mother and I cooked delicious food. We often had guests and life was fun. We helped and supported each other. When our relatives' children were getting married we went to their wedding parties.

However little space we had to live we supported and helped each other. My grandfather was rather old, but he continued sewing. He still had many private clients. My grandmother did all the housekeeping. On Jewish holidays they put on their fancy clothes and went to the synagogue. My grandmother had a brain tumor, but she ignored it for a long time. It turned out to be malignant. My grandmother Riva died in 1953. She had a Jewish funeral and was buried in the Jewish cemetery. Since neither my father nor Uncle Izia could pray there was a man invited to recite the Kaddish and my mother sat shivah. After my grandmother died I began to escort my grandfather to the synagogue. My mother stayed at home to look after the children. My grandfather took his tallit and tefillin in a bag to the synagogue with him. In 1954 my grandfather got into a car accident when crossing a street alone. He died. He had a Jewish funeral and was buried near my grandmother's grave. The Kaddish was recited by a Jew invited from the Jewish cemetery.

On 5th March 1953 Stalin died. I was raised in Stalin's era. I was a member of the Komsomol and believed in Stalin enormously. I grieved a lot after him.

My sister Shelia finished a course of post office employees after the war. Then she took a course of advanced training in Kishinev. She was head of department of mail shipments at the Central Post Office in Odessa. Shelia remained single for a long time. In 1962 she went to visit my father's younger brother Semyon in Moscow and he acquainted her with his co-tenant Boris Rodinski. Boris was Russian. They got married and in 1963 their son Sergei was born. Then Shelia, her husband and their son moved to Odessa. Sergei was six years old when my sister died suddenly of breast cancer. Shortly afterward Boris married a woman from Bershad'. His second wife was kind to her stepson. The three of them moved to Israel in 1990. We corresponded until 1993. Now I have no contact with Sergei any more.

My second husband got fond of drinking and life with him became unbearable. When Flora went to school in 1956 I divorced my husband. Misha died of cerebral hemorrhage in 1967. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery. After we divorced I went to work as commodity manager at the diner and restaurant trust. Then I became diner director at the Epsilon plant. The diner was awarded the title of a model diner. When there was a cholera epidemic in Odessa in 1970 I quit my job. I got another job offer at the quality assurance department of the plant. Later I worked as logistics supervisor at the plant. My department was responsible for non-ferrous metal supplies. I still took part in the amateur art club, where I sang. We gave concerts in Berdiansk and Leningrad. Flora and I lived in our old apartment and my father received a new apartment in Tiraspolskaya Street nearby.

My son Vladimir lived with my parents. They loved him dearly and created all conditions for his studies. He studied well at school and had many friends of various nationalities. He didn't face any anti-Semitism at school. After finishing the 8th grade in 1962 he went to work at the Poligraphmach plant. He finished an evening secondary school and entered a machine tool manufacture college. After finishing it he was summoned to the army. Vladimir served in an Air Force unit in Nizhneudinsk, Irkutsk region not far from the border with China. I was very concerned about him during the 'Chinese events'. [Editor's note: The interviewee is referring to the Great Proletarian Culture Revolution in China, 1966-1969. The Chinese were alarmed by steady Soviet military build-ups along their common border. The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 heightened Chinese apprehensions. In March 1969 Chinese and Soviet troops clashed on Zhenbao Island (known to the Soviets as Damanskiy Island) in the disputed Wusuli Jiang (Ussuri River) border area.] In 1967 Vladimir got a 24-day leave for excellent performance. He came to Odessa where he married Ida, a Jewish girl, whom he knew from the time before he went to the army. Shortly afterward his regiment relocated to Vyshniy Volochek. There he finished a school of sergeants and was sent to the town of Karakalpakiya in Uzbekistan. His wife Ida stayed with her parents in Odessa. She gave birth to a son in 1968. He was named Viacheslav. I got along well with her and my grandson. After the army Vladimir was a production engineer at the plant of radial drilling units. His marriage failed and in 1970 they divorced. Ida and her son moved to the USA in the 1980s.

After they divorced my son moved in with my parents into their one-bedroom apartment in Tairovo district of Odessa that my father received in 1972 as an invalid of the Great Patriotic War. My father worked in a barbershop in the center of Odessa his whole life. He died in 1973. My mother and my son lived in that same apartment by themselves. In 1980 my mother died and my son had to go to court to prove his right of ownership for this apartment. In 1982 Vladimir went on business to a plant in Leningrad where he met his future wife Rita. They got married shortly afterward and Rita moved in with Vladimir. I helped them to do repairs in this one-bedroom apartment and bought them new furniture on installments. In 1983 their son Felix was born. My son was happy with his second wife and had a good job.

In the 1970s many Jews began to move to Israel. The situation was hard; there were meetings where anti-Semitic speeches were made. I believed everything that was said at such meetings. I had a negative attitude toward departure and I still do, as a matter of fact. I'm sure that this country, Ukraine, is my only motherland.

My daughter Flora finished school in 1967. She went to work as a quality controller at the resistance unit plant. Later she came to work at the Epsilon plant. In 1973 Flora married a Russian man. They didn't have any children. Their marriage failed and they got divorced. Flora never remarried. In 1978 I received a two-bedroom apartment on the ninth floor in a house in Bocharov Street in Kotovskiy district of Odessa. Flora and I moved there. We both worked at the Epsilon plant. We had good salaries and bought new furniture, a TV set and a fridge on installments. When I went on business trips I always bought books: in the 1970s and 1980s there were better supplies of Russian fiction and books by foreign authors to provincial towns. Flora and I loved each other dearly. She was a wonderful daughter. Our friends, relatives, my son, my daughter-in-law Rita and my grandson Felix often came to see us. I got along well with Rita and I loved my grandson. I spent my vacations in recreation centers in the Caucasus. I bought vacations at the plant that were mostly paid by the trade union. I went to resorts such as Pitsunda, Gagry, Sochi, Adler and Kobuleti.

In 1992 I fell severely ill and had to go to hospital. My daughter Flora spent most of her time taking care of me in hospital. Vladimir came to visit me and on such days he stayed in our apartment. One night my son choked to death due to the smoke during a fire in an apartment on our floor. After he died Rita and Felix moved to Leningrad. We used to correspond at the beginning, but then she stopped writing. I heard they moved abroad: to the USA, I believe.

Vladimir's death was a hard blow to me and Flora. I turned 70 in 1994. I retired. My health condition was poor. Flora had diabetes and the level of sugar in her blood increased dramatically. A few years later doctors diagnosed a cyst and she had a surgery in 1995. After the surgery her diabetes got worse and Flora began to lose sight. In January 2002 she was taken to the endocrinological department of a regional hospital with acute diabetes. She had to stay in hospital for two months. Then she was released. She was feeling better. On 16th May, on my birthday, my friends came to congratulate me. Flora felt very well and looked bright and we received our guests together. At 2am she got worse and when the ambulance arrived there was nothing they could do to help her.

Here I am: alone, lonely, weak and in a terrible physical and moral condition at my old age of 79. I feel so bad that I never leave home now. My grandchildren live in the USA, but I have no contact with them. I don't even know in what town they live. Since my daughter's death a social employee of Hesed helps me. I'm so grateful to her that she cleans my apartment and brings me medications and food products. I think it is so good that we have Hesed. I appreciate what they are doing. In 1991 the Jewish life began to revive in Odessa: they restored the synagogue in Remeslennaya Street [Osipov Street at present] where my grandfather Menachem and great-grandfather Shlyoma once used to go. But I can't go there since I'm too weak.

Glossary

Vera Tomanic
Belgrade
Serbia
Interviewer: Klara Azulaj

I was born in 1917 in Bistrinci, near Osijek, Croatia. My father, Pavao
Bluhm, was born in 1887 in Kiskoros, Hungary, and my mother, Elza Bluhm
(nee Grunwald), was born in 1895 in Bistrinci.

When I was born, we lived in Bistrinci, but we soon moved to Belisce, where
my father found work with the Jewish family Guttman, originally from
Hungary. That family bore the title of Baron. The Guttman family owned the
Slavonian-Podravian railroad, and they had a wood processing factory where
they also made tannin, a mixture exported to England for leather
processing.

The village of Belisce was an industrial area whose residents were all
workers and clerks employed by the Guttman family. We were given a
pleasant, spacious apartment. The problem was that it did not have its own
bathroom. In the entire settlement there was no plumbing, but they
installed special communal facilities, one for workers and one for clerks.

We had a small garden, which my mother took care of as a hobby, not out of
necessity. We had a servant for the household upkeep. At home we spoke
Croatian, Hungarian and German.

My father, Pavao, was very religious. Every morning he put on tefillin
(phylacteries) and prayed. My mother Elza was not religious to the same
degree, but our family marked all the Jewish holidays, and every Friday we
lit candles. We lived a real Jewish life because the Guttman family, which
was very religious, made it possible. Many Jews worked on the construction
of the railroad and in their factory. Besides my family, about 30 other
Jewish families lived in Belisce. We enjoyed a peaceful, harmonious life.

When it was time for me to start elementary school, I had to enroll in the
state school, because in Belisce there was no Jewish elementary school.
However, after school we had regular religion classes. Our teacher, Ankica
Stein, came twice a week from Osijek. So from a young age I was religiously
educated.

My father's parents, my grandfather Herman Bluhm and my grandmother Salli
Bluhm (whose maiden name I cannot remember), were Orthodox. They lived in
Kiskoros, Hungary. Grandfather Herman had two butcher shops: one kosher,
and one non-kosher. In their house, they kept kosher. My father's whole
family was very religious and strictly maintained all the religious
traditions. Grandfather and Grandmother Bluhm had seventeen children, but
not all of them survived. I remember six of my father's siblings: Ignac,
who was a clerk; Jocko and Feri, who were butchers; Miksa and Panni,
merchants; and Roza, a housewife. Unfortunately, only Jocko and Panni
survived World War Two. The others were killed in Auschwitz.

My aunt Panni married a merchant and remained in Kiskoros . We children
especially liked to go to her place, because she had a grocery store where,
among other things, she sold ice cream. Every summer we spent at least a
month with my father's family, and during the year, when it was convenient
for them, they came to visit us in Belisce.

Everyone in our family, from my mother's side and from my father's side,
were very close to one another. We liked to spend as much time together as
possible. And today, the few of us who survived get along very well.

My father's parents' home was a typical small village house. In the yard
they had cattle and poultry. As long as Grandfather Herman worked as a
butcher, Grandmother Salli took care of the house and raising the children.
Every Friday she took food to the bakery, and Saturdays she brought it back
so it would be warm, because on Saturday she would not light a fire.

My father finished elementary school in Kiskoros and continued his
schooling in Budapest at the Commercial Academy. Since his parents were
poor, during his schooling he ate with various Jewish families. When he was
not sure if the meat for lunch was kosher, he took a small piece and when
no one was looking he hid it in his handkerchief and later threw it away.
After finishing the Commercial Academy in 1915, my father went to Belisce
to work at the Guttman family's railroad. He got the work easily because he
spoke Hungarian and he was qualified. He started working as the director of
a sector. Father only learned Croatian in Belisce. My mother Elza lived in
Bistrinci, literally the neighborhood next to Belisce. Through fortunate
circumstances, Mother and Father met and married in 1916.

My mother's parents, Marko Grunwald and Eleonora Grunwald (nee Spiezer)
regularly went to synagogue and observed all the holidays, but Grandmother
Eleonora did not keep a kosher kitchen. Grandmother and Grandfather had
three children, Elza, Berta and Felix. Grandfather Marko was born in 1861
in Marijanci, near Osijek. In Bistrinci he had a mixed-good store. He died
in 1917. Grandmother Eleonora was born in 1871 in Barcs, Hungary. When she
married my grandfather, she helped him run the store. After his death, she
moved, with her daughter Berta, to our apartment.

Her youngest child, my uncle Felix, enlisted in the army in Bistrinci in
1915 while still a minor. When he understood that this had been a mistake,
he deserted, and went by boat to America. There he trained to be a butcher
and opened a butcher shop. In 1935, for the first time after deserting, he
came to visit his family again. I remember how harshly he criticized the
way our butcher shops processed poultry. After America, the work here
looked crude. He died in Cleveland in 1954.

Because of my enrollment in the gymnasium, my family moved to Osijek in
1929. I enrolled in the women's gymnasium. It was not a Jewish school, but
at the time I started there the director was a Mr. Herschl, and many of the
teachers were Jewish. I remember Professor Polak, and the German teacher,
Mrs. Fischer. As soon as we got to Osijek, I joined the Jewish youth there.

My parents bought a house at 18 Zagreb Street, and my mother opened a shop
which sold food out of our home. She had two salespeople, and she herself
worked the cash register. My grandmother Eleonora and my aunt Berta, who
continued to live with us even after we moved to Osijek, took care of my
younger sister Lilie, who was born in 1923, and me.

In 1930, together with his Jewish friend Miroslav Adler, my father opened a
big textile store that sold fabric by the meter. It was on the street with
the most traffic. In the store were four full-time, permanent employees,
and one cashier.

Around 2,000 Jews lived in Osijek. There were two synagogues, one in the
upper part of the city and the other in the lower part. We had our own
rabbi, cantor and shochet (kosher butcher). The rabbi was Dr. Ungar, a very
well-educated man. The temple was well-attended, big and beautiful. Every
Friday night, even the young people would go to the temple. No one forced
us to go, it was in our upbringing, and out of our own personal need.

In addition to the temple we had a place for socializing, performances and
lectures. The Jewish community was big, very active and religious. I
remember Hana Levi, who worked in the Osijek elementary school. She was
brought from Israel to teach Hebrew to the children. In Osijek lived the
very well-known Dr. Weissman, who had a sanatorium. He was famous for the
fact that he treated the poor in Osijek free of charge, regardless of
whether they were Jews or not.

I became actively involved in Hashomer Hatzair. This was a left-leaning
Zionist group that supported the idea that Israel should be built based on
kibbutzim (collective settlements), without the need for force and weapons,
in a peaceful manner. Our goal was to go to Israel one day and cultivate
the land. We had good instructors. Among the first settlers in Israel were
Jews from Osijek.

The most active members of Hashomer Hatzair were Ruzica and Josha Indig,
Zora and Zlata Glid, and Heda Maller. Many of the members went to Israel,
and there they established Kibbutz Shaar Hamakir, which still exists today.
Later on, they established Kibbutz Gat. At the meetings we received
information about what was happening in Israel and about the Zionist
movement. My group was called Kadima and many girls from it went to Israel.
I remember Lea Rosezweig , Mira Maller, Hilda Goltlieb, Magda Beitl, Zlata
Stein. There were 50 or 60 girls and boys in Hashomer Hatzair. My younger
sister Lilie was also active. Every summer we went on a joint summer
holiday. There was Vico, the women's Zionist society, which raised money to
buy land from the Arabs and to open hospitals and old age homes in Israel.

Saturdays at 11 there were special services for the youth held by a Dr.
Freiberger. The Jews helped one another a lot, especially the rich helped
the poor. Many children from elsewhere went to school in Osijek. Since
there was no organized cafeteria, these children ate with Jewish families.
One boy came to my house every day for lunch.

After finishing gymnasium, for health reasons I did not continue with my
studies. I intended to later, but my life story took another direction. I
met my future husband, Milorad Tomanic, and because of him I neither went
to Israel nor continued my studies.

Milorad was an active officer in the Yugoslav army stationed in Osijek when
we met. He was only granted permission to marry once he became a
lieutenant, so the two of us dated for four years. In the beginning, my
parents were not thrilled that I was dating a non-Jew, but over time they
learned to like him and we married in 1939. He grew very close to my
parents and they saw that he honored and had a positive attitude towards
Judaism. He was so tolerant that we celebrated all Jewish holidays in my
house. Our children and even our grandchildren were brought up to be proud
of the fact that they are Jews, and he supported me in this.

For professional reasons my husband had to move to Belgrade and enroll in
Faculty of Mechanics; these studies were financed by the state. Upon
arriving in Belgrade, I gradually made new friends. In the beginning I
socialized only with the family of Regina Alfandari and with my mother's
distant relative, Aunt Olga. With regular visits to the synagogue, which
was on Kosmaj Street, my circle of friends grew to include the Krauss and
Kresic families.

In the beginning we lived as tenants. My parents helped us a lot
financially, and we had my husband's stipend. We frequently went to Osijek
for the weekend to visit my family, because I missed them very much, and my
sister Lilie often came to visit us.

1941 arrived and one could simply feel in the air that something terrible
was stirring. Fear grew in Jewish circles as news arrived about the events
throughout Europe. People still hoped that nothing would happen. My husband
abandoned his studies because he was mobilized, and I remained alone in my
seventh month of pregnancy. On April 6th, Belgrade was bombed. Regina
Anfandari's family arrived to help me. They took me to their apartment.
Together we decided to leave Belgrade. We started off towards Kaludjerica
on foot, but after two days we all returned to our own apartments. Belgrade
was full of debris, and on April 9, 1941, I resolved to make my way back to
Osijek to my parents.

My mother fainted when I appeared at the door, because until then they
didn't know what had happened to me. They had only heard about the bombing.
They told me that the same day, the Independent State of Croatia had been
declared. The next day, news arrived that the synagogue in Osijek had been
burned. We were all shocked and we no longer went out on the street. My
father did not open his shop. Every day, new limitations on Jews were
announced: forbidding our movement, instituting a curfew, confiscating
shops, banning us from using public transportation. We could not even go to
the vegetable market in the morning, but only just before it closed. A new
Jewish community was formed and we all had to register. In the community
they gave us a little bit of help in the form of food.

On July 10, 1941, the first 50 Jews and the first 50 Serbs were arrested.
We Jews each received a yellow armband with numbers, and a little Star of
David which we had to wear on our arms. In some respects, the Croatian
Ustache (a political and military organization of Croatian nationalists
before and during World War Two who supported the Nazis) were worse than
the Germans.

On July 2, 1941 I gave birth to my daughter Mirjana. I was in the hospital
when they announced that Slavko Kvaternik (a Croatian politician and
nationalist during World War Two, who was declared a war criminal after the
war) would arrive in Osijek over the weekend. A decree stated that from 11
on Saturday to 11 on Sunday, Jews and Serbs were not permitted to appear on
the streets. A big rally was supposed to be held.

I asked the doctor to let me go home, because I did not want to be
separated from my parents. They let me go. At the rally, they carried
coffins and burned Jewish books, while yelling anti-Jewish slogans. After a
few days, a group of Ustache raided our house with the intent of taking
anything they wanted from it. My mother recognized one of them and
courageously told him: "Can't you see that this woman just gave birth to a
baby? Are you going to take the bed she is lying on, too?" As if she could
feel something terrible happening, my baby began to cry with all her might.
The one that my mother recognized flew out of the room and screamed to the
others: "Can't you hear how that baby is crying? Let's get out of here."
And they collected themselves and left. So we were saved, but from the
great fear I lost my milk and was no longer able to breastfeed my baby.

Soon a decree came that several Jewish families would need to live
together, and a Ms. Papo came to live with us.

In the village of Tenja, Jewish youth began building a camp for Jews.
Osijek Jews were expected to come up with 2 million dinars for security
that nothing would happen to them. They were barely able to collect this
money. The youth built barracks in the Tenja camp where we were supposed to
live, as if to await the end of the war in peace.

Returning from work one day, our youth ran into a group of German youth and
it quickly came to a brawl. Kalman Weiss, a boxer, was in our group. He had
an iron fist and he beat a number of Germans, so they ran away. We knew
that there would be retaliation for this incident. All of our group decided
that we would illegally leave Osijek.

They especially wanted Kalman. They caught him, but he jumped out of the
truck where they had put him and ran away.

In the meantime the camp in Djakovo was constructed, especially for women
and children. The women from Vinkovac, Slavonski Brod and Vukovar were
taken there. The first two months the Osijek Jewish community provided food
for the camp. The Ustache government allowed each family to take one child
from the camp and take care of him. My family took care of a 12-year-old
boy whose name I cannot remember, and a 4-year-old girl named Zuza from
Vinkovac, whose mother remained in the Djakovo camp and whose father, we
found out later, was killed in Auschwitz. It was clear to everyone that
there was no future for Jews, and many tried to flee to Dalmatia. My father
wanted us to try and reach Hungary, but my mother Elza began to panic
because she feared we would not have anything to live on there. Grandmother
Eleonora said that she was too old and could not run, and Aunt Berta did
not want to go without her mother.

From April 10, 1941 to May 15, 1942, I illegally went to Belgrade a few
times, with permission slips written under another name. I went to check on
my apartment and to see if there was any news from my husband. And I tried
to find something to do because I did not have any income.

In Serbia they issued a law that Jewish women would not be taken to camps,
so I managed to get documents from the Germans that I could continue to
live in Belgrade. However, they did not give me documents for my child. On
the 15th of May 1942 I stayed to live in Belgrade. After my departure, my
parents tried to flee. They paid a local German named Rot to smuggle them
to Hungary. Rot turned out to be a swindler, and instead of sending them,
he handed them over to the Ustache police.

Rot survived the war, and my sister Lilie and I testified against him in
1945. However, he managed to run away and escape the trial.

In June, 1942, my parents, my aunt, and my grandmother were taken to the
Tenja camp. In the camp were about three and a half thousand people. From
Tenja they were sent to Auschwitz. My father was taken to the Jasenovac
camp and my mother to the Stara Gradiska camp, while Grandmother Eleonora
and Aunt Berta were kept in Auschwitz. None of them returned.

In the meantime I learned that my sister had managed to get to Budapest.
The grandmother of little Zuza, the girl who was staying with my family,
sent a man to smuggle her granddaughter and my sister across the Danube on
a small boat to Subotica, Hungary, where she herself lived. The escape
succeeded. My sister awaited liberation in Budapest, living under the name
Magda Sipos. This identity was obtained for her by our father's distant
relatives, with whom she made contact in Budapest.

I lived under very difficult conditions in Belgrade. I survived by selling
things from my apartment. Officially, I received 200 grams of corn bread,
and that was only under my name since my daughter Mirjana did not have
documents. Later I was able to regulate all of my documents on account of
the fact that my husband, Milorad Tomanic, was an active military officer
in captivity. At that point I fell under the protection of the Red Cross.

My husband regularly contacted me from captivity. He changed camps many
times. Among those camps were Nuremberg and Osnabrueck. In Osnsabrueck
there were two camps one next to the other. One was for officers and the
other for communists and Jews. Some of my relatives were in the other one.
Since my husband was able to receive packages, for Purim I made kindle,
which he smuggled in to my cousin Mark Spiezer and to his brother who was
imprisoned as a communist in the other camp. Through my husband, I kept in
touch with them and with my sister Lilie. She wrote to him, and he sent me
news about her, and her, news about me.

1945 arrived, and with it, liberation. Now I needed to be patient to see
who would return. I was sure that my aunt Berta, who was very beautiful,
had survived. I knew that the Germans had houses for their entertainment. I
thought that maybe she had reached one of those houses and in that manner
would have been saved, but she did not. She was killed in 1942 in
Auschwitz.

I did not have the patience to wait for news from my sister, so I left my
daughter with my cousin Olga, and went to Subotica where there was a
reception camp for those that had returned from Hungary. They were unable
to give me any information, and I went towards Budapest with two Jews who
had returned from forced labor in the Bor copper mines and had family in
Hungary. We started off in a truck driven by a Russian who agreed to take
us for free. On the way I bought food and other necessities for my sister.

In Budapest I inquired at the military mission and received information
about my sister. You can imagine how excited we were to see one another.
However, she was unable to return immediately with me. She had to wait for
a regular transport so that she could receive the necessary documents. I
returned to Belgrade. On May 1st my sister and her good friend Vilma
arrived. They stayed with me in my apartment. Very quickly I found work,
and soon my husband arrived from captivity. The first thing my child said
when she saw her father was: "This is my father from the picture." While
the other members of the household worked outside the house, I became a
classic housewife. I cooked and cleaned for all of us. Soon Lilie and Vilma
moved out and got married, Lilie to a Jew named Djordje Alpar, Vilma to a
Serb. My husband was employed by the military, because while he was in the
camp he was active in anti-fascist work.

After liberation I was very active in the women's anti-fascist movement. In
1945 in the journal Politika there was an ad asking Jews who survived the
war to register. I immediately registered and began helping in the
community, forming a kitchen and a reception center. We cooked and did
laundry for those who returned from various camps and from the Bor mines.

Life returned to some sort of normalcy. In 1948 I gave birth to a son,
Rodoljub. However, my brother-in-law Djordje Alpar was arrested as a
follower of Stalin (editor's note: Tito and Stalin had their famous falling
out in 1948 and Yugoslavs turned to those who seemed to side with the
Soviets). My husband and I took care of my sister and her daughter up to
the moment when they arrested my husband. They imprisoned him because he
was a follower of Cominform, a political organization of the communist
countries, under the control of the USSR; and also because he believed that
Tito and Yugoslavia should accept all of Stalin's positions. To make
matters worse, my husband stated at a meeting that the construction of Novi
Belgrade could not be completed as established in the first five-year plan.
He was an engineer by profession and he knew the terrain on which they were
building Novi Belgrade. It was sandy and needed a lot of preliminary work.
He also complained that the government was confiscating wheat from the
peasants. One of his biggest sins was that he did not denounce his brother-
in-law Alpar when they charged him, and moreover, he took care of Alpar's
daughter and wife. They gave him a three year prison sentence.

Again my sister Lilie and I lived without means. Luckily some distant
relatives from Israel sent us packages, so we were able to survive by
selling the things from these packages: chewing gum, combs. My husband was
released in 1954. I became active in the work of the women's section of the
Jewish community. Still, I mostly concerned myself with taking care of my
family. I educated my two children. Now my daughter Mirjana is a doctor and
my son Rodoljub is an engineer. Unfortunately, my husband Milorad died in
1998.

Now I am already very old. I do not often go to the Jewish community, but I
raised my children and my grandchildren in a Jewish spirit and they
continue on in the way that I showed them.

Agnessa Margolina
Uzhgorod
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya
Date of interview: April 2003

Agnessa Margolina lives alone in a standard five-storied 1970s apartment building in a new district of Uzhgorod. She has a one-bedroom apartment. Her furniture was also built back in the 1970s. Agnessa is fond of growing room plants. She has pots with plants everywhere; on the windowsill, on the table and on specially manufactured stands. Agnessa is a short, slim and very vivid woman. She looks young for her age. She wears her gray hair in a knot. Agnessa is a witty woman. She likes joking and laughing. She still finds life interesting. She has bookcases full of books in the room. Most of them are books by Russian classic writers and books by Jewish writers and poets; classics by Sholem Aleichem 1, Peretz Markish 2 and others, and modern authors. There are many photographs on the walls and on the bookshelves. Agnessa is very sociable. She spends most of her time at home, but she is constantly on the phone talking to her acquaintances and neighbors. They call to discuss the latest news or daily life matters. When Hesed opened she made many new friends. She doesn't feel lonely.

My family backgrownd

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family backgrownd

My paternal grandfather, Boruch Margolin, was born in a village in Kiev region in the 1860s. I don't know where exactly he was born. My grandfather died long before I was born. I have no information about his family either. Of all my grandfather's relatives I only met his younger sister Hana once. She lived with her husband and son in Kiev. All I know about her is that she refused to evacuate from Kiev during the Great Patriotic War 3. On 30th September 1941 she was shot in Babi Yar 4 along with many other Jews from Kiev. My paternal grandmother's name was Cherna. I don't know her maiden name. My grandmother was born in Borispol village, about 30 kilometers from Kiev, in the 1860s. After he got married my grandfather moved to Borispol. He rented a mill and worked at it. My grandmother was a housewife. I heard that my grandfather was a big tall man. My grandmother was short and slim and she was very pretty when she was young. I cannot tell you about Borispol. I've never been there and my father didn't tell me about their town or house.

There were seven children in the family. They were all born in Borispol. I don't know their dates of birth, but I can tell who was older or younger than my father. Rosa was the oldest. Then came two daughters, Sima and Nenia. Then my father Khaskel was born and then came his brothers Peretz and Shaya. The youngest was Beila, born in 1900. I don't even know my father's correct date of birth. His documents say he was born in 1894, but my father once told me that he was significantly older than what was written in his documents. This had something to do with recruitment to the army, but I don't know any details. My father hardly ever spoke to me about his childhood. I have no information about his family life or religiosity either.

I cannot tell how my father's brothers and sister lived before the Revolution of 1917 5. I only know that during World War I my grandfather sent my father's younger brother to the USA to save him from the army. I don't know how my father began to work.

The Revolution of 1917 brought changes into the life of my father's family. Borispol isn't far from Kiev. The Civil War 6 following the Revolution came to Borispol. The power in Kiev switched from one group to another. There were gangs 7 coming to town. Once a gang came to Borispol in 1918. I don't know any details. All I know is that the family failed to hide away. Bandits came to their house demanding food and money. Before they left they shot grandfather and my father's younger brother, Shaya. My grandfather and Shaya were buried in the Jewish cemetery in Borispol. Shortly afterwards the family left Borispol. My grandmother and her daughters moved to Kiev and my father, who was already married, went to Sumy.

My father's older sister Rosa married Avraam Stoyanovski, a Jewish man from Borispol. I don't know what Avraam did for a living. Rosa was a housewife. They had three children: two daughters, Fenia and Ida, and a son, Semyon. Rosa's family moved to Kiev in 1918. That year Rosa's husband died of typhoid. She had to raise her three children alone. She worked very hard all her life. She was a seamstress in the garment factory in Kiev. Rosa's older daughter became a teacher of history and her younger daughter became a teacher of the Ukrainian language and literature. They married Jewish men and had daughters. Semyon is a sculptor. He is a laureate of a state award. During the war their family was in evacuation in Ufa where both daughters worked as teachers. They returned to Kiev in 1944. Rosa wasn't religious after the Revolution. She didn't observe any Jewish traditions. Rosa died in Kiev in the 1970s at the age of over 80. She was buried in the Jewish section of a town cemetery. Her children still live in Kiev. I keep in touch with them. They sometimes visit me.

Sima married Samuel Shevtsov, a Jewish man from Kiev. They had two children: Sarra and Boris After she got married Sarra finished medical college and worked as a speech therapist in the children's hospital. Sima's family didn't observe any Jewish traditions or celebrate Jewish holidays. Sima's son died in a car accident at the age of about seven. He was hit by a car. Sima died of malaria in evacuation in the town of Nukha, Azerbaijan, in 1942. Sara and her family live in the USA. I have no information about them.

My father's sister Nenia was a dressmaker. She was married and her last name in marriage was Freidina. Nenia's family wasn't religious after the Revolution, but they always celebrated Jewish holidays. They lived in Kiev. Nenia had two children: Ludmila and Boris. During the war they were in evacuation in Middle Asia and after the war they returned to Kiev. Aunt Nenia died in Kiev in the 1960s. I have no information about her children.

My father's younger sister Beila got married in Kiev in 1931. I don't remember what her last name in marriage was. Her older daughter, Fania, was born in 1932 and her son, Boris, was born in 1937. Beila didn't work after she got married. I don't remember her husband. Beila wasn't religious and her family didn't celebrate Jewish holidays or observe Jewish traditions. During the war she and her children were in evacuation in Nukha with us. After the war her family returned to Kiev. In 1989 Beila emigrated to Israel with her son's family. She died there in 1995.

I didn't know my mother's parents. Her father's name was Juda Efest. As for my mother's mother I don't know anything about her. My mother's parents died during an epidemic of Spanish influenza in 1903. I don't know where my mother was born. There were many children in the family. I never met any of my mother's sisters or brothers, but I heard about them. My mother's sister Sonia and her brothers Nisl and Gersh were older than her. My mother also had a younger brother named Leib. This is all I know about them. My mother Golda was born in 1896. After their parents died the children were taken to my grandparents numerous relatives' families living in various towns.

My mother was raised in the family of my grandmother's sister Shyfra, who lived in Borispol. I met her when I was a child. She had a hard life. She married a widower that had children. Grandmother Shyfra didn't have children of her own. She raised stepchildren. Grandmother Shyfra was a very kind and caring woman. She also looked after me later. She died in 1928. I don't know anything about my mother's childhood. I was too small to ask questions and when I grew up there was nobody to ask.

My parents lived in the same street in Borispol and knew each other since childhood. They got married in 1917. I don't know whether they had a traditional Jewish wedding. They were both beautiful. My father had a small thoroughly trimmed beard. He didn't have payes. He wore dark suits, light shirts and ties. He wore a hat outside and a yarmulka at home. My mother didn't wear a wig and she didn't wear a shawl either. She had beautiful thick hair that she wore in a knot. She wore common clothes. My parents lived with Grandmother Shyfra and her husband in their house in Borispol. Their children had their own families at that time and left their parents' home. I never met any of them.

After bandits attacked them and killed my grandfather and my father's brother Shaya my parents didn't want to stay in Borispol and moved to Sumy, a town in the northeast of Ukraine,about 350 kilometers from Kiev. They decided for Sumy since some relatives of my mother lived in this town, but I didn't know any of them. I cannot say what my father did for a living in Sumy, either. I was born in Sumy on 17th November 1920. At birth I was named Gnesia and this is the name written in my documents. When I went to school everybody began to call me Agnessa, a Russian name [common name] 8. My family spoke Yiddish at home, I said my first words in Yiddish as well. I can vaguely remember my mother. When I was a bit over three years old she died at childbirth. This happened on 6th April 1924. The baby was stillborn. They were both buried in the Jewish cemetery in Sumy.

I stayed in our neighbor's home during the funeral and thus cannot say anything about the funeral itself. My father's older sister Sima came to Sumy to take us to Kiev. I was taken to Cherna, my father's mother. She lived in a big four-storied building on Kontraktovaya Square in Podol 9, an old district of Kiev. My grandmother lived in a room in a crowded communal apartment 10 on the fourth floor and Aunt Rosa and her family lived on the second floor of this building. My father didn't live with us. Nobody told me where he lived and I still don't know where he lived all this time. I lived with my grandmother for a whole year without seeing my father. Nobody told me that my mother had died and I kept crying asking them to take me to my mother.

I remember my grandmother Cherna. She was a short woman. She didn't wear a wig or a shawl. She had thick curly hair. It was gray. She wore casual clothes in the fashion of that time. She liked dark skirts and white blouses with laces or embroidery. The only language my grandmother spoke was Yiddish and I never heard her say one word in Russian.

A year passed and then my father's sister Nenia took me to my father, who lived in Brovary, in the suburbs of Kiev. Nenia told me that I would have a new mother. That way I found out that my father had remarried. His second wife's name was Rasia. I don't remember her maiden name. Rasia was much younger than my father. She was born in 1902. Later I got to know that my grandmother Cherna, who was Rasia's mother's distant relative, arranged for them to meet. My father and Rasia had a Jewish wedding. Brovary was a small provincial town and there was no synagogue there. My father and Rasia had their wedding in the synagogue on Schekavitskaya Street in Podol, Kiev.

They settled down in the big two-storied brick house of Rasia's parents. There were ten rooms in the house. There was a stove for heating the house. There was no running water and the water was fetched from a well in the street. There was a small backyard with two apple trees, and a toilet made from planks. Rasia had four sisters and two brothers. The brothers were married and lived with their families elsewhere. The sisters were single. They lived in their parents' house. We had two rooms: one bigger room with a table, a wardrobe, two armchairs, a sofa where I slept and a smaller room that served as my father and Rasia's bedroom.

We lived from hand-to-mouth. My father was an accountant at the district consumer union, but he probably earned very little there. My stepmother had to go to work. She worked for a shop making gloves. She took work home. She had a sewing machine and she made these gloves working from morning till night. It was hard work and she rubbed her hands sore with that rough cloth. Neither my father nor stepmother had time to spend with me.

I remember Grandfather Avraam, Rasia's father, very well. He was very old and very kind. Adults didn't treat me like somebody important and always commented, 'She is just a child', while my grandfather understood that I was lonely and sad. He always had time and a kind word for me. I always tried to be where he was and he was very pleased that I could speak Yiddish. In the family of my stepmother only her parents spoke Yiddish. Rasia, her brothers and her sisters spoke Ukrainian. My grandfather began to teach me how to read and write in Yiddish and I learned a few letters. My grandfather wore a big black silk yarmulka and a black woolen hat when going out. He had a small gray beard, but no payes. He died in his sleep in 1926. He was buried in accordance with Jewish rules in the Jewish section of the town cemetery. I wasn't allowed to go to the cemetery since it was located rather far away and I was too small to walk there. I remember that my grandfather was lying covered with a sheet on some straw on the floor in a room. My grandmother and the daughters wore black gowns were sitting around him and lamenting. My grandfather was taken to the cemetery on a horse-driven cart. That's all I remember.

My father was religious. At that time Soviet authorities began to persecute religion 11. Propagandists came to houses to tell religious people that there was no God and that before the Revolution religion helped rich people to exploit the poor by promising them paradise after death. People like my father, who worked in state institutions, weren't allowed to go to synagogues or churches. They could even lose their jobs if they did. My father continued observing Jewish traditions regardless. He went to the synagogue on Jewish holidays or on the date of my mother's death. He prayed at home every day. I remember that I sometimes asked my stepmother where my father was and she said that he wasn't to be bothered since he was praying. Rasia didn't approve of his religiosity. She thought that if they lived during the Soviet regime they were to follow its rules.

I don't remember whether we celebrated Sabbath at home, but we celebrated Jewish holidays; that I remember well. Those were hard years and I remember holidays since we could eat more delicious food than ever. Rasia's mother took responsibility for the preparations for holidays. On Pesach the house was always thoroughly cleaned and washed. Window frames and doors were painted. I was to look for breadcrumbs in the house that were then burned. Before Pesach my grandmother and her daughters made matzah. There was always a lot of matzah made to last throughout Pesach. On the first day of Pesach all my grandmother's children got together in her home. Married sons brought their families with them. The oldest son conducted the seder. There were silver wine glasses for adults and little cups for children on the table. Everybody, even children, drank wine this evening. There was an extra glass with wine in the center of the table. My father explained to me that it was a glass for Elijah the Prophet 12, who came to each Jewish home that evening. I remember my cousins and I waited for Elijah to come to the house. Sometimes it even seemed that the wine stirred a little in the glass. I also remember Yom Kippur when children and adults fasted for 24 hours. My grandmother baked hamantashen on Purim. I learned the story of Purim from Rasia's father, my grandfather. The heroes of the story are Esther, a beautiful young Jewish woman living in Persia, and her cousin Mordecai, who saved the Jewish people, Ahasuerus, King of Persia, and evil Haman, the arrogant, egotistical advisor to the king.

I also liked Chanukkah for getting some money from all visitors on this day. Later I bought fruit drops and sunflower seeds for this money. I don't remember other holidays. Probably, there were no celebrations on other holidays.

My brother Boris was born in 1926. His Jewish name was Boruch. He was named after my grandfather, who was killed by bandits. My younger brother, Shaya, named after my father's younger brother, who was also killed, was born in 1928. They were circumcised on the eight day after their birth. I remember that quite a few old Jews with long beards and wearing black clothes and black hats attended this ritual. I think they were my father and stepmother's relatives from other towns. After the ritual they had a meal in a big room. A rabbi from Kiev sat at the head of the table.

Even after my brothers were born my stepmother still had to go to work. My father became rather sickly and often missed work. My stepmother actually was the breadwinner in the family. I became a baby-sitter for my brothers at the age of six. I was looking after them doing everything necessary. Both brothers called their mother 'Aunt Rasia' like I did. I'm used to calling them 'kids' and even now it's hard for me to call them 'brothers'. They are my 'kids'. I can't say that I didn't get along with my stepmother, but my childhood was very hard. I felt lack of motherly love and care and Rasia either didn't want or couldn't give these to me. She treated me like a servant that had to work off the food that she ate.

I went to the first grade at the age of eight. There was no Jewish school in Brovary and I went to a Ukrainian elementary school. I don't remember whether there were Jewish children in our class. At that time the national policy of the USSR propagated that there were no nationalities in the Soviet Union. There was only one nation: Soviet people. The issue of nationality was of no significance. I don't remember any anti-Semitism. I had no problems studying in a Ukrainian school since I was used to talking Ukrainian with my stepmother.

Growing up

I finished my first year at school in Brovary. In 1929 my father got a job as an accountant at the knitwear factory in Kiev and we moved there. My father got two rooms in a communal apartment in an old two-storied house in Kurenyovka, a workers' district in Kiev. Six other families lived in this apartment. Three of them were Jewish families. All tenants got along well and tried to support and help each other. Children played together in the yard. There was a common kitchen with primus stoves on tables, stools and windowsill. There was always the smell of kerosene in the kitchen. There was a long hallway with many doors to all rooms. There was no running water in the apartment and we fetched water from a pump in the yard. There was a toilet in the yard. The rooms were heated with wood-stoked stoves because wood was less expensive than coal. There was a tiled stove in each room. There were dim bulbs with cloth shades. We moved our furniture into this apartment from Brovary.

My stepmother went to work at a garment shop located near the house. The shop made working clothes. My stepmother brought cuts to put them together at home. She worked at the sewing machine from morning till night. My father also worked a lot and came home late at night. I had to look after my brothers again since there was nobody else to do it. When I had to go to school my brothers went to kindergarten and elementary school. I went to the Ukrainian lower secondary school in the house next to ours. Almost half of my classmates were Jewish. There were also Jewish teachers. I had no opportunity to do homework at home. After classes I had work to do: take my brothers from elementary school and kindergarten, give them lunch and look after them. I also had to wash dishes and clean the apartment. There was hardly any time left to do homework.

I liked literature at school. We didn't have books at home and I borrowed some from the school library. I also liked mathematics. I studied well at school. I was a sociable girl and had many friends. I didn't chose my friends according to their nationality, but somehow most of my friends happened to be Jewish. I liked singing and joined the school choir when I was in the 2nd grade. We learned songs praising the Party and Stalin, in which children thanked them for our happy childhood. These songs called Lenin and Stalin 'Grannies'. We sincerely believed in all this. When I was in the 4th grade I went to a dance club. We danced Russian, Ukrainian, Moldavian and Polish folk dances.

I became a pioneer in the 4th grade. I was very excited about it. I was afraid they wouldn't admit me since I wasn't among the best in our studies. However, we were all admitted. I remember the ceremony. We were lined up in the schoolyard and the senior pioneer tutor recited the oath of young Leninists that we repeated after her. Then Komsomol 13 members tied red neckties on us and gave each of us a book. I got a 'Pioneer Hero' book about a pioneer that saved kolkhoz crops from fire.

When I became a pioneer I began to conduct anti-religious propaganda at home. At school we were told that we had to teach our retrograde parents that there was no God and that all about him was a fantasy. My father came home late from work and I waited for him on purpose to explain to him how wrong he was. My father got angry and argued with me, but since then he stopped praying at home or he did it when I didn't see. Now with regret and shame I can say that we, pioneers, were taught to be informers. Our idol was Pavlik Morozov 14. Perhaps, my father was just afraid that I would tell someone at school about his religiosity and he would have problems at work. We didn't celebrate Jewish holidays at home any more. We celebrated Soviet holidays at school. On 1st May and 7th November [October Revolution Day] 15 schoolchildren and the school administration went to a parade in the morning and then came back to school. We prepared a concert to which we invited our parents and relatives. We tried to perform as best as we could.

My grandmother Cherna celebrated Jewish holidays at home. Although her daughters, who lived in Kiev, didn't celebrate any Jewish holidays at home and were far from observing Jewish traditions they visited my grandmother with their families on Jewish holidays. Only Nenia was religious. I remember my brothers and me visiting my grandmother on Pesach when she treated us to matzah. I didn't eat it and didn't allow my brothers to eat matzah. I explained to them that it was a religious holiday and Soviet schoolchildren weren't supposed to participate in it. I was an extremist, maybe because of my age.

My brothers went to a Jewish school in Podol that had just opened then. It was far from where we lived, but we could take a tram to get there. The language of teaching was Yiddish, but that was the only difference to any other Soviet school. The school curriculum was the same for all schools. My brothers studied well. They had time to do their homework, which I didn't. They had almost all excellent marks in their school record book. At home we spoke Ukrainian.

I remember the famine in 1932-33 16. My father worked at the factory where employees often received food packages. My stepmother also got food instead of money as payment for her work. The food stores were empty. Even when they were selling something there were long lines to get food. Villagers came to Kiev looking for jobs and food. People were dying in the streets. I remember once standing in line for bread. A woman standing before me fell. I tried to support her, but saw that she had stopped breathing. Many people died, but our family managed through this time somehow.

In summer 1934 I finished the 7th grade. I didn't have an opportunity to continue my studies since I had to take care of my brothers. I went to work as an accounting clerk at a shop making sheepskin coats. It was in Darnitsa, in the left bank district in Kiev. Commuting there was difficult especially in winter. I didn't have proper clothes and got cold. I worked there for three years until the father of my friend Feldman, who was the director of the Leather and Shoe Technical School at the shoe factory, offered me work at the factory. He said I could study at the school in the evening. I was eager to study and I went to work as an apprentice to a worker preparing raw work pieces. Employees of the factory could enter school without exams and I entered the Faculty of Shoe Production. There were many Jewish employees in the factory and many Jewish students in the school. I made friends at school. I rarely met with my former schoolmates. Many of them studied in colleges. They had new friends and new interests in life.

I joined the Komsomol League at the Technical School. I was a good student and a good employee. The Komsomol committee of the factory gave me a recommendation and I obtained my Komsomol membership certificate at the district Komsomol committee. I believed that since I had become a Komsomol member I had to improve my studies and work.

My family didn't suffer during the period of arrests that began in 1936 and lasted until the war began [the so-called Great Terror] 17. However, I couldn't help noticing that some of our neighbors and some of my colleagues disappeared, but we didn't discuss any of these subjects at home. The moment someone mentioned that somebody was arrested my stepmother cut off the discussion. She was afraid that our neighbors might hear.

I somehow didn't give a thought to Hitler's rise to power. I was probably not smart enough to understand what it meant. Later I heard that Hitler was exterminating Jews in Germany. My friends and I often went to the cinema where they often showed films about fascism in Germany. There was a film called Professor Mamlock 18. I don't remember any details, but I remember that it was about the persecution of Jews. I had some idea of what was going on. When Hitler attacked Poland we began to have military training at work. We were taught how to use gas masks, provide first aid to the wounded and take necessary measures during a chemical attack. However, I didn't think that a war could come to our country. We often got together at my colleague Ida Ginsburg's home. There were Jewish guys in this group of about 20-22 years of age. They often said that the war was inevitable and I was trying to convince them that our army was the strongest in the world and Hitler wouldn't dare to attack us. I was sure that it was true; I didn't have the slightest idea what a war was like.

My father got very ill in 1938. He couldn't go to work. He had severe heart problems. He died in 1939. My grandmother Cherna insisted that he was buried in Lukianovka Jewish cemetery 19 in Kiev in accordance with Jewish traditions. Nenia's husband recited the Kaddish for him. Nobody sat shivah for my father. In the 1960s this cemetery was closed and a TV tower was built on the site. We moved my father's ashes to the Jewish section of a new town cemetery.

During the war

In June 1941 I passed my last exams at the Technical School. On 30th June we were to have the ceremony of receiving diplomas, and a prom. My brothers were on vacation. Boris finished the 7th grade and Shaya the 6th grade at school. On Sunday morning, 22nd June 1941, my friend and I went to the cinema. The film had just started when all lights went out. We thought this was due to a technical problem, but over a loud speaker they announced that Kiev was being bombed by the Germans. We were asked to go home and listen to the news on the radio. I don't remember how I managed to get home. I heard the roar of explosions in the distance. There was only one radio in an apartment in our house. All tenants got together in this apartment. At noon we heard the speech by Molotov 20. He announced that fascist Germany had started to attack the Soviet Union without declaring a war. Then Stalin spoke. He said that we would win and we were convinced that it would be so.

Panic began on the first days of the war. People bought up all products in stores. There were long lines in all stores. I kept going to work. Our factory began to manufacture boots for the front. My brothers joined a pioneer unit. Pioneers patrolled streets taking people to bomb shelters during air raids. I was very concerned about my brothers. We didn't think about evacuation. We believed that our army would beat the enemy in the near future: we were raised this way and that's what we were told all the time. In late July there were rumors that evacuation would begin in Kiev. Then there were announcements on posts which said that those that weren't evacuating with their enterprises were to receive evacuation papers in their residential agencies. I stood in line a whole day to receive an evacuation paper for our family: it was on a cigarette paper and we could hardly read our names.

In August 1941 enterprises began to evacuate. They evacuated their employees and equipment. We went into evacuation by ourselves. Grandmother Cherna, my father's sisters Sima and Beila and their three children were going with us. We couldn't take much luggage with us, but some food. Boris, Beila's younger son, was just four years old. I carried him and my stepmother carried a suitcase with clothes. My brothers had some textbooks for their next year at school. We boarded a cattle freight train at the railway station. There were three-tier plank beds along the walls in the carriage. People crowded in the passage and on the platform. There were no toilets. When we were leaving Kiev was being bombed. We were bombed on the way, too. Then the train stopped and people scattered around hiding under carriages. When the planes left we returned to our carriages and the train moved on. Some people got killed and wounded during air raids.

We didn't know our point of destination. When the train stopped at stations we could get off to get some water or go to the toilet. We were scared to get off the train not knowing when it was going to move again. Sometimes we could buy some food from locals at stations. I don't remember how long our trip lasted, but it was very long. We reached Krasnodar [a town about 1,000 km from Kiev]. We were accommodated in the evacuation office of a school building. There were mattresses on the floor where people slept side by side. We got a meal twice a day: some soup and cereal. We were glad to get at least this miserable food. All of us, except for old people and children, were taken to work in a nearby kolkhoz 21. It was harvest season and grain had to be removed so that Germans wouldn't get it. We worked very hard. 50-kilo-bags of grain were loaded at the threshing floor and we had to carry them over a distance of about 200 meters where they were loaded onto trucks. My stepmother, brothers and aunts went to work. My grandmother and the little ones stayed in the evacuation office.

When the harvesting was over I went to work as an attendant in a hospital. Hospitals for the badly wounded were usually based in the rear. I believed that it was my duty as a Komsomol member to help the wounded. I washed and fed the patients and read books to them. I begged them to eat and it was like feeding little children. Sometimes I was given a piece of bread that I took home to the children. We stayed there for over a year. Then we were told that Germans were approaching Krasnodar and we had to move on. It was March 1942. I remember the train going past trains with wounded people. When our train stopped we often got some bread or a bowl of soup from a sanitary train. They didn't have enough food themselves, but they wanted to share it with poor refugees. We got to Makhachkala, a town in Azerbaijan [about 2000 km from Kiev] and from there we went to Nukha town, about 150 kilometers from Makhachkala by boat, across the Caspian Sea. We stayed there until 1944.

Nukha was a small town at the Caspian Sea. The local population was Azerbaijani and there were a few Russians. There were no Jews. There was a silk and garment factory. The local population was poor. There were small plots of land near their the houses, but since the soil was salty they could hardly grow anything. Drinking water from wells was also a bit salty. Although locals were forced to give accommodation to those that came into evacuation, they were sympathetic and friendly with us. I don't remember one single case of anti-Semitism or rude or irritable attitudes throughout the whole time of our life in Nukha. Local people tried to help and support us. They shared with us whatever little they had.

As soon as we got off the boat in Nukha we were sent to a sauna. Our clothes were disinfected. Perhaps this helped to avoid typhoid in Nukha. My grandmother, my father's sisters and their children and we got accommodation in the house of a local woman. She had an airbrick house [bricks made from cut straw mixed with clay and dried in the sun]. She gave us two small rooms: one for my stepmother, my grandmother, my brothers and me and another one for Sima and Beila and their children. The owner of the house gave us what she could. There was a clay floor in the house. She gave us woven rugs to put on the floor, bed sheets and some crockery. We got planks at the evacuation agency and made trestle beds, stools and a table. We didn't have any warm clothes with us. We were lucky that winters in Nukha were mild. We got jobs at the evacuation office. They asked me whether I could count. I thought they were asking about mathematics that we had studied at school and said that I could. I was sent to work at the accounting office of the local silk factory. Their employee - a man - received a call-up from a military registry office. He was allowed to train a replacement at work for two months before going to the front. I had to work and learn simultaneously. Of course, I made mistakes since I had never dealt with accounting before, but I grasped things quickly and two months later I became chief accountant.

My older brother, Boris, went to work as a weaver in this factory and my younger brother, Shaya, was a courier for the director of the factory. He had problems sometimes since the director of the factory didn't speak a word of Russian while we didn't know Azerbaijani. Shaya had to ask a secretary to help him. She spoke a little Russian. We picked up some Azerbaijani soon, though. A local sovkhoz bred silkworms and supplied cocoons to the factory. They were dipped in special solutions in shops to get a thin silk thread from them. These threads were woven and the silk fabric was taken to a garment factory where they made underwear for pilots that was light and warm. Therefore, the factory was on the list of military enterprises. We received bread coupons at the factory and got a hot meal at the canteen. We got some soup and cereal. Sometimes we got a 50-gram cube of bread, as big as half a matchbox. My brothers and I tried to save this bread for my stepmother and grandmother. I also took my soup home. My stepmother couldn't get a job. She stayed at home looking after our grandmother and the little ones. We didn't observe any Jewish traditions in evacuation. We didn't celebrate any Jewish holidays and following the kashrut was out of the question considering the circumstances. We ate what we could get. We didn't celebrate Soviet holidays either.

In the evening when I came home I was almost dead on my feet. Sima and Beila got a job in a kolkhoz, 50 kilometers from town. They worked six days a week and had a day off on Sunday. They received food as payment for their work. My stepmother decided to go to the kolkhoz. She took my younger brother Shaya with her. The kolkhoz was located in a swampy lowland area. There were many malaria mosquitoes and the death rate from malaria was very high. After a couple of months my stepmother and Shaya fell ill with malaria. I heard about it and went to the kolkhoz to take them home. The chairman of the kolkhoz gave me a donkey-driven cart to take them back to Nukha. They were taken to the local hospital. My stepmother died within a week, in October 1942. My father's sister Sima contracted malaria. She died ten days after my stepmother died and a week later my grandmother passed away. There was no Jewish cemetery in Nukha since there was no local Jewish population in the town. The leader of the party unit of the factory, he was a Muslim, told me that he knew prayers and that Jews and Muslims had similar rituals. He conducted the funerals of my stepmother, Sima and my grandmother. I don't know what prayers he recited since he did it in Azerbaijani. Beila kept Sima's children. 22 years ago, in 1980, my brother Shaya was on a business trip in Azerbaijan. He went to Nukha to go to the cemetery. Local residents helped him to find the house where we had lived during evacuation. The owner of the house recognized my brother and invited him to come in. It turned out that he and his family had been looking after the graves of our dear ones throughout all these years.

My brother was the only survivor of all members of our family that had malaria. He was very ill and had a high fever. I came to hospital after work and stayed there overnight. My brother was afraid of being alone. I was very happy that he survived. Unfortunately, this illness had a severe impact on his health condition. Malaria affected his heart. Shaya was often ill and had heart problems lateron. He was sickly and physically weak.

There was only an Azerbaijani school in Nukha when we arrived there. Later, when so many people came into evacuation, the town administration opened a Russian lower secondary school. My brothers went to school in the evening and in June 1944 they finished lower secondary school.

In August 1944 we heard that Soviet troops had liberated Kiev. We decided to go home. We didn't have money to buy tickets. We traveled on the roof of a carriage. There were seven of us: my brothers and I and Beila with three children. Before our departure the owner of the house where we lived went hunting and brought a deer home. His wife fried meat and gave it to us preserved in fat. This was our food during the trip. It was a cold fall. I found a worn and torn military coat and it served us as a blanket and coat for a long time.

When we arrived Kiev we stayed at the railway station overnight. Our house was ruined. In the morning I told my brothers to go to medical school. They wanted to become doctors, but since they only had lower secondary education they couldn't enter Medical College. My brothers met with Ivan Pevtsov, the deputy director of the school. They were admitted without exams. They returned and told me to go see Pevtsov as well. He asked me what I could do. When he heard that I had worked as an accountant he offered me a job at his accounting office.

We received two small rooms: four and two square meters. They were a former shower and restrooms. There was a steel bed in the bigger room where we slept. We had one blanket for the three of us. We received bread coupons. Shaya went to get bread on the first day and somebody stole it from him. We didn't have any food whatsoever. We tried to move as little as possible staying in bed exhausted. When Pevtsov found out that I didn't come to work he came to see me. He lost his leg after he had been wounded at the front. When we told him about what had happened he gave us his bread coupon and some money. I got 400 grams of millet and we were happy about it. We picked potato peels from a garbage bin near the canteen. In the daytime we went to see where they were and in the evening, when it got dark, we went to pick them. This saved us from starvation. In September 1944 school began and my brothers were happy to study.

I met my future husband at the home of my former school friend. I bumped into her on the street in 1944. I was very glad to see her again. I came to see her after work sometimes. On one of those evenings she introduced me to Israel Katz, a Jew and student at the Military Medical Academy. Israel was born in the town of Krasnoye, Vinnitsa region [about 200 kilometers from Kiev] in 1921. His father, Solomon Katz, was a member of the Party and an NKVD 22 officer. During the Civil War he volunteered to the Red Army and went to the front. When the Civil War was over he was offered to work with the NKVD. His mother's name was Maria. Israel's younger brother, Grigori, was born in 1924. When Israel was ten his mother left the family. Solomon was never at home and she got tired of it. Solomon remarried and had two daughters with his second wife, but Israel never talked about them. When the war began Solomon went to the army and perished during the defense of Kiev in 1941.

In 1939 after finishing school Israel entered Kiev Military Medical Academy. When the Great Patriotic War began the academy evacuated to Middle Asia. Israel was there, too. The Academy returned to Kiev in 1944 and so did Israel.

After the war

Israel finished the academy in February 1945. We got married a few days before he graduated. We just had a civil ceremony in a registry office. My husband got a job assignment as a military doctor in a division in Budapest. He left. I couldn't follow him since my brothers hadn't finished school and I didn't want to leave them. My older brother, Boris, was rather sickly after evacuation. I stayed with my brothers. My husband came to see me about twice a year. My brothers finished school in May 1946 and received their [mandatory] job assignments 23 in Uzhgorod, where they were to work as assistant doctors. My brothers left there. They got accommodation in a room in a hostel.

My husband wrote me that their regiment was moving to Kiev. A few people from that regiment came to Kiev to make accommodation arrangements for officers. They brought me a letter from my husband and a food parcel. Later they told me that my husband's regiment reached the Soviet border from where it was sent back to Budapest. My husband's friends were going back to join their regiment and I decided to go with them. In Chop, a town on the border with Hungary, I had to get off the train. I stayed in the waiting room at the railway station. My husband came to pick me up after two days. He was transferred to Austria. He had an invitation letter for me to serve as an official permit. I only needed to have it stamped in Uzhgorod. I was glad to have this opportunity to see my brothers in Uzhgorod. In Uzhgorod we went to the military office and it turned out that on that day they received an order forbidding military officers to take their wives abroad with them. We were late. We walked in the town and I was crying. We were to be separated again. We went to see my brothers in the hostel. They were very happy to see me. I was like a mother for them. We lived in my brothers' room in the hostel for a week before my husband left. When he left I thought that I didn't want to go back to Kiev. My brothers were in Uzhgorod and in Kiev I was alone. I stayed in Uzhgorod.

Uzhgorod is a very beautiful town: it's clean and nice. There are beautiful houses in town. People in Uzhgorod are nice and friendly. There was a Hungarian, Ukrainian, Czech and Jewish population in Uzhgorod. The Jewish population was numerous. People were tolerant and friendly. There was a synagogue and a Jewish school. Neither my brothers nor I were religious. It was the way we were raised, but I liked it when religious people could go to the synagogue freely and celebrate Jewish holidays openly without hiding like my father had to.

I began to look for a job. I got an offer: there was a vacancy of an accountant at the forestry office. I was happy to get this job. I lived with my brothers in their room in the hostel. In January 1947 my son Semyon was born. After he was born my brothers and I moved to a small dark room in a communal apartment that we received from the health department. We repaired and refurbished it. There was a kitchen, bathroom, running water and toilet in the apartment that we were very happy about. I corresponded with my husband.

Two months after my son was born I had to go back to work. I got a job as a nurse in the same nursery where my two-month-old son went. When my son went to kindergarten I got a job as an accountant at the canteen there and later I became the director of this canteen. When my son went to school I went to work at the accounting office of a printing house. I worked there until I retired. Many of my colleagues were Jewish. I never faced any anti-Semitism at work.

I led a closed life. I had few friends and they were my Jewish colleagues for the most part. After work I rushed home where my son and brothers waited for me. We were rather hard up. We couldn't afford any entertainment. We didn't celebrate Jewish holidays. We only celebrated our birthdays at home. We had celebrations at work on Soviet holidays.

My marriage failed. My husband was on military service abroad and couldn't visit me often. I couldn't go to see him either. We met twice a year maximum. After a few years he suggested that we should divorce. I was so used to my status of a loner that I agreed. We got divorced. He supported me sending money until our son grew up. He sometimes came to see our son. That's all I can tell about him. I don't know what happened to him afterwards. I don't even know if he's still alive. It's sad, but what can one do about things...

My brothers completed their mandatory two-year assignment and entered the Medical Faculty of Uzhgorod University in 1948. They graduated from there successfully. My younger brother was the best student in his group; the older one had problems. He was often ill and missed classes. My younger brother's professor wanted him to continue his studies at the post-graduate school. Shaya was to receive a 'red diploma' [diploma with a red cover issued to graduates that had all excellent marks. Other diplomas had a blue cover]. After passing his state exams he went to the dean's office where he signed up for the receipt of a red diploma and then, a few hours later, he received a diploma in a blue cover at the ceremony. Someone in the management didn't like the idea of a Jewish post-graduate student. I remember Shaya coming home that evening. He threw his diploma on the table angrily. This was one of the very few cases in my life when I faced anti- Semitism. Both of my brothers received a job assignment in Subcarpathia: my older brother was to work in Uzhgorod and my younger brother in Irshava town, 120 kilometers from Uzhgorod.

My brother Boris died in Uzhgorod on 30th May 1955 at the age of 29. He died of a heart attack. He had a weak heart due to the malaria that he had in evacuation. We buried him in the Jewish section of the town cemetery. His colleagues and former fellow students came to the funeral.

My younger brother, Shaya, lived his life in Irshava. He was a well-known and respected doctor. Shaya married Galia Bezuglaya, a local Ukrainian girl, in 1957. I was very upset that my brother was marrying a non-Jewish girl. I was afraid that if there was an argument, which wasn't an unusual thing in a family, my brother's wife might say an anti-Semitic word. Fortunately, it didn't happen. My wife's brother and I became very close in the flow of years. Their son Boris, named after Shaya's older brother, was born in 1960. After finishing school Boris decided to become a doctor. He finished a Medical College in Uzhgorod. He works as a doctor in Irshava. Boris is married and has a wonderful daughter. For his achievements in healthcare Shaya was awarded the order of the Red Labor Banner. He died in Irshava in 1992. Shaya was buried in the common cemetery in Irshava. I keep in touch with his wife and his son's family. They sometimes visit me.

In January 1953 the time of the Doctors' Plot 24 began. This was the first time in my life when I doubted that officials were telling us the truth. I lived in a communal apartment. One of our neighbors was a military man and his family. We were the same age and they were our friends. My son and their daughters were also friends. When the Doctors' Plot began he came home one evening and had a long discussion with his wife. When she came to the kitchen she said, 'These Jewish doctors should have been smothered in their mother's wombs'. They knew that I was a Jew and we got along well with them and I was surprised to hear from her that doctors would poison Stalin. Even a bigger surprise for me was that she emphasized that they were Jewish doctors. They were friendly as usual, but my attitude changed. This phrase was like a splinter in my memory and I couldn't forget it. I couldn't believe in their sincerity any more. I didn't believe what newspapers wrote about doctors, but I couldn't even imagine that this lie was one of Stalin's doings. He had been an idol for me since I was a child.

On 5th March 1953 Stalin died. I remember those horrible days. People cried without trying to hide their tears. I also cried after him like I didn't cry after my close ones. Everybody said the same: how we were going to live when he wasn't there and what was going to happen to the country and people. It took me some time to believe what Khrushchev 25 said about Stalin at the Twentieth Party Congress 26. At first I thought it was slander that Khrushchev needed to stand out and he chose this way to do it. I lived with this conviction many years. Only during perestroika 27 when many books, films and performances about that time were published I came to understanding many things. Many years had to pass before I began to understand.

My son Semyon studied at a secondary school and a music school. He was good at music, but he lost interest in what he was doing quickly. I had to force him to play. He finished seven years of music school with honors and seven years of secondary school. Semyon went in for sports. He was a candidate for a master of sports in gymnastics. I wished he went to study at a medical school, but he had no interest in medicine. After finishing a higher secondary school he entered the extramural department of Lvov Road College. By the end of his studies he became chief engineer of the regional road transport department. Upon graduation Semyon went to the army in the rank of an officer. After his service in the army he returned to Uzhgorod and went to work.

My son married Nina Mirmelshtein, a Jewish girl, in 1976. She was born in Uzhgorod in 1950. Her parents are doctors. She graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at Uzhgorod University and went to work in a village, 150 kilometers from Uzhgorod. She was a teacher at school. Upon completion of her two-year assignment Nina returned to Uzhgorod. She couldn't find work at school and went to work as an economist at the Machine Building Plant. My son didn't have a Jewish wedding.

My older granddaughter, Julia, was born in 1977, and the younger one, Evgenia, in 1981. My son and his family came to see me. I was so happy to see my granddaughters. I helped my daughter-in-law with what I could. The girls had many interests in life. They were healthy girls. My older granddaughter was learning to play chess. In 1989 she took the first place among schoolchildren of Subcarpathia. My younger granddaughter was fond of sports. They also studied music and foreign languages.

After my son got married I received a one-bedroom apartment in a new house that the printing house built for its employees. We came to work at the construction site at weekends to do some cleaning. My son and his wife also received a two-bedroom apartment. I have a one-bedroom apartment with all comforts and a telephone.

I never joined the Communist Party, but I was a Soviet person with a Soviet mentality. When Jews began to move to Israel in the 1970s I was indignant about it. Of course, I didn't even consider this option. I couldn't understand my acquaintances or friends that submitted their documents to obtain a permit for departure. I didn't know how they could leave their country to go to Israel where everything was so different.

I also felt negative about perestroika. I thought it was wrong and that private entrepreneurship was not a good idea and there could be no capitalism in our country. Later a change for the better became obvious. The fall of the Iron Curtain 28, which separated the USSR from the rest of the world, was one example of such improvement.

My son and his family decided to move to Israel in 1990. Nina's parents were going with them. My son tried to convince me to go with them, but I decided to stay here. I was 70 and this wasn't the age to start a new life. Semyon settled down in Ramla. My son and his wife work twelve hours a day, but they are happy. My older granddaughter, Julia, went to the army after finishing school. After her military service she returned home and entered the Faculty of Mathematics at Tel Aviv University. The younger one, Evgenia, finished school and is in the army now. I visited them in 1995 and in 2000. I liked Israel, though I felt a little constraint without speaking Ivrit. It's a beautiful country. My heart sinks when I think that there is a war and people die. I liked the young people in Israel. They are so different from us. They are so free and self-confident. They love their country and are proud that their fathers and grandfathers built it. My granddaughters took me around. We went to other towns, museums and theaters. I enjoyed these trips, but even after I visited Israel, I didn't want to move there. I'm 80 already. It isn't the age to begin a new life.

In 1999 Hesed was established in Uzhgorod. This organization supports the revival of the Jewish way of life in Ukraine. We, old people, are very happy about it. When we retire we have to face loneliness and helplessness. We suffer much about lack of communication. Hesed has changed this situation. Volunteers visit old people and talk to them. They deliver delicious food to us. There are clubs in Hesed. They have interesting programs and we can get together there. Every Sunday we attend performances of the drama studio of Hesed. They stage Sholem Aleichem plays. I like theater and enjoy every performance to the utmost. We celebrate Jewish traditions in Hesed. I've become closer to Jewish traditions and am happy about it. I speak Yiddish with my new friends at Hesed. It's very pleasant for me. I'm very much interested in such things. I have a visiting nurse at home. She's become close to me. She brings me Jewish newspapers and magazines from Hesed. I have new friends and my life has become full, thanks to Hesed.

Glossary

Efim Pisarenko
Chernovtsy
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya
Date of interview: June 2002

My name is Efim Pisarenko. I was born in Gomel, Belarus, on 10th July 1937. I come from a Belarus Jewish family. Efim is my name in as it's written in my birth certificate. My real name, given to me by my father and mother is Haim-Gedalie. My father's name was E'Kusiel Pisarenko. They called him Kusha in the family. He was born in the village of Rechitsa, Gomel region, Belarus, in 1898 ????. My mother, Basia Pisarenko [nee Shulkina], was born in Gomel in 1900.

Before telling you about my family I would like to explain the origin of my last name. Sometimes people ask me why a purely Jewish family has a typical Ukrainian name. My father told me that my ancestors got this name during the reign of Peter I [Peter the Great] 1. There was a man called Aizek in a town in Southern Belarus. He could read and write in Yiddish, Hebrew and Russian. He was the only educated man in his town. He worked as a writing clerk in the town council. In Russian the word 'write' sounds like 'pisat'. His children were called Pisaryonok, which means 'children of the writing clerk' in Russian. Later that became Pisarenko. Aizek had a big family and many children. Life in that little town was miserable, and bored and young people always wanted to have a different life. This was at the time of Empress Ekaterina Catherine II [Catherine the Great] 2. During her reign the Russian army liberated a bigger part of the Crimea - it was called Tavria at the time - from Tatars and this became the new territory of the Russian Empire. CatherineEkaterina let gave big privileges to those willing to move there and start farming. They were tax exempt for 25 years and received money from the Treasury to start their own farming business. They got as much land as they could manage to till. The climate there was favorable.

This was a big temptation for a young man from a small Belarus town, whose ancestors were trying to grow their crops on a little plot of land and led a hand-to-mouth life. One of Aizek's sons decided to move to the Crimea. He received a plot of land in Kherson. He started the family branch of Pisarenko in Kherson. I met one of the family members in the 1960s. Somebody introduced him to me and we found out that we had a similar last name. I asked about his nationality, and he said he was a Jew. And I said to him that two Jews with the last name of Pisarenko, who both lived in Ukraine, simply must have been relatives. With my mother's help we found out that he was a successor of Aizek's son. And that's how I found out that our last name goes back to the period of Catherine IIEkaterina.

Avrum Pisarenko, my grandfather on my father's side, was born in the 1850s and lived in the village of Rechitsa near Gomel. Several generations of his ancestors had lived there, too. Jews constituted about half of the population of Rechitsa. The main business of the inhabitants of Rechitsa, both Jewish and Belarus, was farming and crafts. They didn't have a lot of land, and it wasn't possible to buy someextra land because there was none left. Therefore those who couldn't provide for their families by farming took to crafts. All tailors and shoemakers in Rechitsa were Jews. There were also tinsmiths and carpenters. They were mostly paid with food products. My grandfather liked farming and breeding cattle. He couldn't afford to buy cows, so he borrowed eight cows from a farmer to run his dairy business. The whole family was involved in work somehow, even the youngest children. My grandmother's name was Broha-Shyma. I know very little about her life before she got married. I know that she came from Belarus. She was born in 1855. After they got married my grandfather and grandmother lived in Rechitsa for the rest of their lives. They had a big family - 12 or 13 children. I knew some of them. Their children helped them with their dairy work. They milked the cows early in the morning, and then they took them to the shepherd. The girls helped my grandmother to make cottage cheese, sour cream and butter. The boys took these products to Gomel to sell them there. The family had its own customers, and the boys delivered their orders to their homes. By the way, my father delivered the products to the family of a carpenter called Shulkin. This carpenter had a beautiful daughter, Basia, my future mother. The family had a lot of work to do. In the evening they made products for the following morning. They made preparations to make cottage cheese and sour cream in the morning. This was hard work, but it gave them the opportunity to provide for themselves. They weren't rich, but they weren't poor either. My grandmother tenderly called her cows 'food providers'. My grandparents only bought clothes for the older children. The younger ones wore what the older ones had grown out of. However, once a year, on Pesach, all the children got new clothes.

My father's parents had a wooden house with three rooms. There weren't many furnishings in the house, but they had everything they needed. One room was for the parents, another one for the sons and the third one for the daughters. They also had an annex with a cellar where they stored dairy products. There was a small orchard with a few fruit trees and a shed where they kept cows. My grandfather had inherited this house from his parents.

People in Rechitsa got along well with each other. Belarus and Jews were good neighbors. There were no nationality conflicts between them. There was a synagogue and a Christian church in the main square of the town. My father told me that their Belarus neighbors treated them to Easter bread and painted eggs, and when my grandmother made most delicious strudels with raisins, jam and nuts and stuffed fish, she used to take some to their neighbors. My grandparents' family was religious. They strictly observed all Jewish traditions. On Fridays my grandmother lit candles and the family got together at the table, which was covered with a white table clothtablecloth. In the afternoon she made chicken broth in ceramic pots and cholent. Cholent was a dish made from beans, potatoes and meat. The pots were left in the oven so that the food stayed warm until Saturday, when it wasn't allowed to work to do. Our Belarus neighbor came to light the candles on Saturday. The family strictly observed the kashrut. My grandmother had different dishes for milk and meat products, and the children learned about this tradition from an early age.

My grandparents went to the synagogue every week. My grandfather wore a kippah at home and a hat when he went out. My grandmother wore a shawl and long black gowns in all seasons. My father said that there was a relic in the family - a big bronze chanukkiyah. On Chanukkah they lit one candle in it everyper day. [Editor's note: In fact at Channukah, one candle is lit on the first day, two on the second and so on until 8 candles are lit on the last day of the holiday.] He also remembered Chanukkah because the children received some money, some Chanukkah gelt, on that holiday. The children hardly ever had any pocket money and therefore always looked forward to Chanukkah.

My father had the greatest memories of Pesach. The family prepared for it in advance. My grandmother chose some geese at her neighbor's farm, and he fed them specifically for her. Before Pesach tThey took the geese to the shocihet, and my grandmother melted the fat in a big pot. The house had to be cleaned to be all clean and all the children took part in the process. They swept and burned all garbage, even breadcrumbs, and brought special Pesach dishes down from the attic. There was a bakery, managed run by the synagogue, and my grandparents brought matzah from there. The family was big and they usually bought a few bags of it. Then my grandmother and her daughters began to cook stuffed fish, chicken broth with dumplings made from matzah and stuffed chicken necks. Papa didn't remember all the dishes, but there was a lot of food different from their everyday meals. The boys made flour from matzah and Granny made sponge cakes from it. She tried to make this holiday an event to be remembered.

The boys studied in cheder and the girls were educated at home. They had private teachers come to their home to teach them how to write and read as well as foreign languages and good manners.

However, life in Rechitsa wasn't always quiet. Since 1910 pogroms 3 swept over Gomel and the surrounding towns and villages, including Rechitsa. They lasted until after the Revolution of 1917 4. The gangs swooped down the town, robbed and killed people and disappeared. One of my father's older brothers organized a Jewish self-defense movement 5 in 1912. It included a group of young Jewish men that were protecting people in Rechitsa from pogroms. As far as I know, nobody from my parents' families suffered from these pogroms. But it had their affected on their further life in a way. I remember an incident from the 1960s. My mother's neighbors renovated their house and rolled an empty barrel down the stairs past her apartment. It made such a noise that my mother screamed, 'Pogrom!'. The fear of pogroms was somehow in their blood forever.

The self-defense group chased the gangs away from the village several time. At that time, in 1912, my father's brother was 18. Later he had to run away from the town to avoid revenge from the bandits. In the 1920s he left for America and changed his name to Fisher. He lived in Philadelphia and then in Baltimore. In the 1930s we received a letter from him via the Red Cross. At that time it was dangerous to receive a letter from relatives abroad 6. My family put the letter away and then it got lost somehow. We've had no contact with my uncle ever since. Two of my father's brothers died from spotted fever in the 1920s, during the Civil War 7. I don't know their names or the ones of the other sisters and brothers. I only knew one uncle on personally: Juda Pisarenko, born in 1894. He lived in Voronezh before the war and had three sons. His sons became doctors. In the early 1970s my uncle's family emigrated to the USA, and I've had no information about them ever since.

My grandfather Avrum died in 1915, and my grandmother Broha-Shyma died a year later.

I will tell you about my mother's family. HerMy mother came from athe family with many children just like my father. Her father, Moishe Shulkin, was born in Gomel in 1879. My grandfather was a very good cabinet maker. He was married twice. His first wife was Broha Shulkina, my mother's mother. Grandmother Broha was born in Gomel in 1879. I don't know her nee maiden name or what kind of family she came from. My grandparents had two daughters. My mother's younger sister, Golda [Shulkina], was born in 1902. My grandmother Broha died in an accident in 1905. A year later my grandfather got married for the second time. I remember my mother's stepmother, Hena. She was a very nice woman. My grandfather and her had six children: five daughters and a son.

I wouldn't say that my mother's father and stepmother were extremely religious. They led a secular life. My grandfather took an active part in the underground movement and was a member of the Social-Democratic Party. He had an underground publishing house in the basement of his house where they published a Bolshevik newspaper for a long time. I read that in a party history textbook somewhere. He published a newspaper and also continued making furniture. My grandmother was responsible for the housekeeping. I'm not aware of any persecution of my grandfather in regards to this publishing house. He was a convinced revolutionary and communist. He might have followed into the footsteps of many revolutionaries during the period of the Stalinist repression [the so-called Great Terror] 8, but he died before, in 1933. My grandfather was a member of the Russian Social-Democratic Party, but that didn't mean that the family didn't remember that they were Jews. During Chanukkah they lit the chanukkiyah at home; they had a mezuzah on the door and my grandmother lit candles on Saturdays.

My grandparents didn't go to the synagogue. They observed Jewish traditions in the family and celebrated holidays. The children were given Jewish names. Boys were circumcised. They spoke Yiddish in the family. As far as I remember my grandmother Hena didn't follow the kashrut. She died in March 1941.

My grandparents' children helped my grandmother with the housework. The older children looked after the younger ones. The girls helped with the laundry and cleaning and the boys helped my grandfather with the carpentry. So everybody was busy doing something. The children didn't get any education. My mother learned how to read and write after the Revolution.

My mother's sister Golda lived a long life. She was single and didn't have any education. She was a laborer at a factory. She lived in Moscow from 1922 until her death in 1983.

My grandfather had a daughter with his second wife. Her name was Musia. She was born in 1907, lived in Gomel and was married. Her husband's last name was Kantorov. They had three sons. In the 1970s Musia and her family emigrated to the USA. She died there in the 1980s.

Sonia, the next sister, was born in 1909. I knew her when she was already an elderly and very sickly woman. She had three sons. Her husband perished at the front in the 1940s. Her family lived in Gomel. Aunt Sonia worked as a cleaning woman. Her children emigrated to the USA in the early 1970s. Aunt Sonia moved in with us in Chernovtsy. She died here in the 1970s. Her sons Marat, Israil and Ruvik live in Brooklyn, New York.

Rosa was born in 1910. She was married and her name after her husband was Kapustina. They lived in Moldavia and had five children. Her husband perished at the front. After the war Aunt Rosa and her children moved to Chernovtsy. She was a blood donor and was paid for it. She raised her children with that money. When she grew older, she generated so much blood that she had to donor it otherwise she fell ill. She died in 1960 and is buried in Chernovtsy. Her older daughter still lives in Chernovtsy, and her other children live in Toronto, Canada.

Klara was born in 1912. She got married, lived in Gomel and worked as a seamstress at a factory. She had a son. Her husband died in the 1970s, and Klara and her son emigrated to America. She died there in the 1980s.

My grandparents' only son, Yuzik, was born in 1913. He emigrated to America in the late 1920s. He got married there and had two sons. He didn't keep in touch with our family.

The youngest girl, Haya-Rohl, was born in 1914. Aunt Haya lived with us until she got married to Isaak Shapiro. He was a very nice man. He was a locomotive operator. He was an orphan and grew up in a children's home. They had three daughters. In June 1941 Haya was pregnant again. We knew that she had her fourth child on 22nd June 1941 [the beginning of the Great Patriotic War] 9, when Germans were already in Gomel. Isaak happened to be on a business trip that day. When he returned there were Germans in Gomel. He couldn't get home. He managed to obtain a certificate stating that he was Ivan Petrovich Pisarenko, a Russian. He lived in the underground and blasted two German trains. Once, when he was in the sauna, his companion figured out that he was a Jew. Isaak ran away and joined the partisans. We have articles from newspapers about Isaak's heroic deeds during the war. After the war he was trying to find his family and found out that they had all been taken to Treblinka or Auschwitz and exterminated. He was alone and came to us looking for a shelter. He married my older sister, Broha. They lived together for 54 years. They have a son and a daughter.

My parents got married in 1917. They had a Jewish wedding with a chuppah. Their parents insisted on having a religious ceremony. In 1917 this was still a tradition. I don't think my parents could have imagined at that time that it could ever be different. That only happened later when religious traditions were persecuted [during the struggle against religion] 10. My father joined a Red revolutionary unit during the Civil War almost immediately after he got married. He returned in 1919. My older sister, Broha, was born on 31st December 1921. She got her name after our grandmother. Misha was born at the beginning of 1924, Lisa in 1926, Abram in 1928 and I in 1937. My younger sister, Zhenia, followed in 1939.

My father got a job of as a plumber, and later, as a locksmith at the Gomel Plant of Agricultural Equipment. There were four children in the family at that time, but they didn't have a place to live. There were other families without homes, too. They got together, contributed the money that they had, the plant added some, too, and they built a spacious house for four families. Our family got one of the four apartments in this house. My mother was a housewife. She got a cow and chickens and worked in her small vegetable garden. This vegetable garden and the cow rescued our family from starving to death in 1932-33 [during the famine in Ukraine] 11. Mama took her younger sister, Haya, to live with us during those terrible years. We survived, but Grandfatherny Moishe starved to death in 1933. He gave everything he earned in those years to his grandchildren. Grandmother Hena died in March 1941.

Our family suffered at the beginning of 1932. My father was a member of the Communist Party. One day somebody whispered to him to stay away from home, because the militia might come to arrest him. He came home in the afternoon to tell Mama that he might not be home that night. He also told her to ask no questions. He left, presumably for Moscow. A day or two later some people came to our house asking about my father. Mama told them she didn't know where he was. In Moscow my father didn't mention anything to anybody. He went to work as a plumber. He made roofs. He sent Mama money via one of his relatives. Four years went by and the situation calmed down. My father returned home. He was no longer a member of the Party. He found a job. He didn't suffer during the arrests of 1937 or in the following years [during the so-called Great Terror]. I, Haim-Gedalie, was born in 1937 and my sister Gelda, Zhenia, was born in 1939.

We talked Yiddish in the family. We also knew Russian, of course, but we preferred to communicate in Yiddish. We observed Jewish traditions, observed Sabbath and celebrated Jewish holidays. I remember my mother lighting candles on Sabbath. I liked it a lot. I also recall fancy dishes we had on some high holiday - it must have been Pesach - and a lot of delicious food. I can't remember what kind of food it was, but it was very delicious. We didn't go to the synagogue, though.

From what my parents told me there was no anti-Semitism then. No one took any interest in other people's nationality. I can't remember these happy days because I was too young. In 1933 Hitler came to power in Germany. My father saw Germans during World War I and thought they were civilized people. My mother was afraid of Germans nonetheless. She was sure that if there was a war they would castrate Jewish boys. My father laughed at her. Nobody considered the possibility of a war with Germany, even after Germans occupied Poland. Nobody had any premonition of the war. Life was beginning to improve. In 1941 Misha and Broha finished the 10th grade at a Jewish school and were thinking of continuing their studies. My father had only studied at cheder and was very happy that his children would get a higher education. Everybody had great expectations of the future.

I was a very vivid boy and interfered with Misha and Broha when they prepared for their exams. In May 1941 Mama sent me and my older sister Lisa to Aunt Musia Musia in Moldavia. Aunt Musia. Her husband and daughter lived in the town of Bershad. This was a Jewish town. There wasA at least 80% of the Jewish population was Jewish. I was three and a half years old, Lisa was 16. She was a very beautiful girl.

On 22nd June 1941 the war began. I didn't understand what it meant. Aunt Rosa's husband was summoned to the army. Soon Bershad was occupied by Germans. They sent all Jews of the town to a the camp. Adults went on foot and children on carts. I had never seen horses before and was impressed. The camp was a part of the town fenced with barbed wire. It was guarded by Romanian gendarmes. There was one gate and the guards standing there were armed with automatic guns. Police dogs were running along the fence. My sister, me, Aunt Rosa and her daughter shared a room with a few other families. We slept on the floor cuddling each other.

Lisa worked at the butter creamery. A Romanian guard fell in love with her and allowed her to take some pressed wastes with her. This was our food. In summer we collected the seeds of some plant, I don't know which one. We also ate goose-foot and hawthorn. It caused a headache, but it didn't stop us from eating it. Every now and then there were raids in the streets, and the captives were either shot or sent to death camps. The Romanian guard told Lisa beforehand on what street there was going to be another raid. He saved our lives. Once he gave me a toffee. My mouth still waters when I recall how good it tasted.

There were many children in the camp. Policemen used to make the rounds of the houses and shoot the children they found. Adults sent us, children, to the nearby ravine to hide - this was within the ghetto area - and told us to hide in the bushes if we saw somebody wearing a black uniform. We played there and it was our escape spot. There was a small wheat field within the barbed wire fencing where we looked for spikelets. There were sugar beets on another field. We dug themit out and ate them. But the best thing was a carrot that we found once.

We weren't allowed to cross the barbed wire fence. Such was our life. In the evening we came back home. I remember one day when we stayed in the house. It must have been in winter or maybe the weather was just really nasty, something like that. Drunken soldiers and policemen were shooting through the windows. Adults told us to hide behind the oven. They [the soldiers] went to the neighboring house, grabbed Rosa, the a 14- year old girl, by her hair and pulled her out somewhere. Later she was found dead. [Editor's note: That was all Efim would tell us about the camp - he said he didn't want to repeat what he had said in his interview with the Shoah Visual History Foundation.]

In 1945 the Soviet army liberated us. We didn't know where to go. There were many people from Chernovtsy that said it was possible to find a place to live in Chernovtsy. We went there. Lisa wrote a letter to our address in Gomel. Our house in Gomel was bombed and destroyed. Our neighbor got this letter. She met aunt Musia at the market and gave her the letter. Aunt Musia wrote Mama that we were alive. Lisa wrote Mama that it was possible to find an apartment in Chernovtsy. This was in 1946 and we lived together ever since. At the beginning of the war my father was summoned to the front. Misha finished secondary school and submitted his documents to the Medical Academy in Leningrad. He went to the front instead and perished there. He was a tankman and had a platoon under his command. Almost all his classmates perished, none of the boys returned from the front. Almost all girls from the class, in which Misha and Broha studied, also perished. Some of them were nurses or radio operators on the front. The rest of them perished during the occupation.

All other members of our family - Mama, Broha, Abram and Zhenia - were in evacuation in Stary Sultanbek village, Bashkiria. My mother's sisters Rosa, Golda and Sonia and their children were there, too. Their husbands were at the front. In 1943 mMy father visited them. He was wounded in 1942. He fell ill with tuberculosis in hospital. He had only half of his lung left afterwards and was released from the army. He became an invalid. My father was a tinsmith and got a job to provide for the family. Their life in Bashkiria became a little bit easier.

In 1945 the Soviet army liberated us [from the camp]. We didn't know where to go. There were many people from Chernovtsy who said it was possible to find a place to live there. We went to Chernovtsy. Lisa wrote a letter to our parents' place in Gomel. Our house in Gomel had been bombed and destroyed. Our neighbor got the letter. She met Aunt Musia at the market and gave the letter to her. Aunt Musia wrote to Mama that we were alive. Lisa told Mama that it was possible to find an apartment in Chernovtsy.

We found an empty house in Klokuchka on the outskirts of Chernovtsy. This was in 1946. We've lived there ever since. There was only one room, a closet and a kitchen in the house, but it seemed like a palace to us. There were two plum trees in the yard and plums on the ground. I couldn't imagine anything like that in the beginning! During our whole time in the camp I had two plums and one apple, which I got from the Romanian guard and shared with my sister.

Chernovtsy was a Jewish town. People talked in Yiddish in the streets and called one another by their Jewish names. 60 percent of the population was Jewish, there were quite a few synagogues, Jewish schools and theaters. Chernovtsy was annexed to the USSR in 1939. The Jews in Chernovtsy survived the Holocaust because it was mainly a Romanian occupation zone. There was no anti-Semitism in Chernovtsy at that time. Chernovtsy had historically been a town where people of various nationalities lived.

In 1945 I went to the Ukrainian school. I studied there for two years. I remember my first teacher Nadezhda Alexandrovna. We liked her a lot. She told us about Lenin1. In the 1st form I became a young Octobrist2, and wore my star badge proudly. After I finished the 2nd form separate educational system for boys and girls was introduced and boys went to school # 5. It was a Russian school for boys. In our class there were 28 Jews of 32 children. It was easier for us to talk Yiddish than Russian. Besides, half of our teachers were Jews. In the 3rd form I became a pioneer. The mother of Zoya Kosmodemianskaya, the famous partisan, said a speech calling us to bear the title of the pioneer with honor. We celebrated the Soviet holidays - the 1st of May and the 7th of November - at school We went to the parades and then came back to school for the meeting and a concert. After the parade were could have an ice-cream that was an event in itself for us considering that this was the period of lack of food. We didn't celebrate Soviet holidays at home. We were very poor. My father was severely ill with tuberculosis. We often starved. My father couldn't go to work due to his illness, and my mother had to stay at home to look after him. My father received an invalid pension, but it was a very insignificant amount of money.

We didn't forget that we were Jews. We didn't eat pork. Mama always took her chickens to the shochet to have them slaughtered. I still remember Mama's Jewish food. Papa told me about the 9th of Av and why we had to fast on Yom Kippur. He told me about Purim and read the Haggadah [at Pesach]. We only went to the synagogue on Yom Kippur. From 1948 [when the campaign against 'cosmopolitans started] 12 this was almost forbidden. Mama didn't light Saturday candles, but she always tried to arrange for a festive Pesach. She saved money for a whole year for this holiday. She bought chicken and fish and tried to get some matzah. I went to get matzah with her. We couldn't do it openly in those years. We went to a house in Nalyvaiko street. We were to say the password and gave them a bag of flour. In the evening ewe returned to the same house, paid money and picked up our matzah. There wasn't enough matzah for the whole holiday. We ate it on the first, second and the last day of Pesach. We didn't have special Pesach dishes, but Mama thoroughly koshered our everyday dishes. We had chicken, stuffed fish and matzah bakeries on Pesach - all traditional food. The family got together at the table, and Mama's sisters came with their families. On Chanukkah the chanukkiyah was lit in the house. To make the long story short I'd say this - we didn't forget that we were Jews. We didn't eat pork. Mama always took her chickens to the shoihet to slaughter them. I still remember Mama's Jewish food. Papa told me about the 9th ava and why we had to fast at iom-Kipur. He told me about Purim and read Agada. We went to the synagogue only at Iom-Kipur. From 1948 this was almost forbidden.

I went to the Ukrainian school in Chernovtsy in 1945. I studied there for two years. I remember my first teacher, Nadezhda Alexandrovna. We liked her a lot. She told us about Lenin. In the 1st grade I became a Young Octobrist 13 and proudly wore my star badge. After I finished the 2nd grade a separate educational system for boys and girls was introduced, and boys went to a Russian school. There were 28 Jews out of 32 children in our class. It was easier for us to talk in Yiddish than in Russian. Besides, half of our teachers were Jews. In the 3rd grade I became a pioneer. We celebrated Soviet holidays at school: 1st May and 7th November [October Revolution Day] 14. We went to the parades and then came back to school for a meeting and a concert. After the parade we had ice cream, which was an event in itself for us, considering that this was the period of lack of food. We didn't celebrate Soviet holidays at home.

In the 5th grade we got a new class tutor, Artyom Terentievich Molchanov. He was Byelarus, a retired military, and married to a Jewish woman. We all remember him with respect and love. He ignored mandatory political information requirements, but each week one of us had to prepare a report about an interesting historical event that happened during that week in the past. These reports taught us how to use the library and work with historical data. We also learned to speak in front of the an audience and keep them interested.

In the 8th grade I became a Komsomol 15 member. I had been looking forward to it. I believed that my life would change and become more interesting. After I had been a member for some time I realized that two copeckthe two-copeck fee per month I paid was all that it was about it. When I was a student at university I 'lost' my membership card with all my great pleasure.

Many children in our class went in for sports. I couldn't catch up with them. I was weaker than the others due to the years I spent in the fascist camp. Therefore So, I had very little interest in sports. I read and was fond of theater instead. They established a people's theater in the Jewish theater. Mihail Loev, the producer at the Jewish theater, was its director. I took part in their performances and continued, even later when I became a school teacherschoolteacher.

In 1948 I was 11. I remember the campaign against cosmopolitism, although it didn't touch our family. I was the only boy in our class that had a father. The others perished at the front. Other boys had only mothers that were working hard to raise their children. Accordingly, none of them had anything to do with ideology. I remember that our deputy director Maria Abramovna Levina lost her position. She worked as a chemistry teacher. I was too young then to understand what was going on. There was no real anti-Semitism at school, but I remember one incident. In 1954, when we were in the 10th grade, one boy called another boy 'zhyd' [kike] because that other boy didn't let him rewrite something in mathematics. We didn't beat him. We knew that we couldn't use physical strength. We had a Komsomol meeting where everyone spoke. That boy felt that everyone despised him for what he had done and left our school.

In 1948 we heard that Israel was being established. My family and friends were enthusiastic about it. We, boys, were thinking of what we could do for this country. At first we wanted to collect some money, but how much could we have possibly collected? Then my friends started talking about running away to Israel. But how would we have managed to do that? And what could I have done alone, without my father and mother, without knowing the language? There were too many questions and no answers, so we decided to run away later, after finishing school.

I remember the campaign against cosmopolitans, although it didn't affect our family. I was the only boy in our class who still had a father. The fathers of the other children had all perished at the front. Other boys had only mothers who were working hard to raise their children. Accordingly, none of them had anything to do with ideology. I remember that our deputy director, Maria Abramovna Levina, lost her position. She worked as a chemistry teacher. I was too young then to understand what was going on. I remember the beginning of 1953 - the 'case of the doctors-murderers' [the so-called Doctors' Plot] 16. I was in the 9th grade. We were talking about it once, and one boy said that in any nation there were bad people and Jews weren't an exception. His companion slapped him on the face and said, 'Don't you see: It's the Beilis' case!' 17

At about the same time people began to talk about the deportation of Jews [to Birobidzhan] 18. We knew that these weren't just rumors. Broha's husband was a railway worker and he said there were trains at the station ready to leave. My father packed our suitcases with all necessary things to be ready in case of a deportation. Stalin's death in 1953 saved us from this lot. At that time I didn't understand many things. Stalin's death was a shock for me. I wore a red arm bandarmband with a black stripe. I didn't know at all how to go on living without Stalin. My parents took the news very calmly. My father understood a lot, but he kept silent. I don't know whether he knew the whole truth.

I studied well. My father wanted me to go to a trade school to learn some profession after I finished seven years at school. He was very ill, and he wanted to be sure that there would be someone to support the family once he would 'leave' us. But I was eager to study. I knew that I had to work and support my family, but I couldn't imagine leaving school before finishing it. When I was in the 7th grade I began to give private classes. My first student was from the 5th grade. His parents didn't pay me but they gave me food. My second student paid me 3 rubles per lesson. It wasn't just the money that attracted me but also the possibility to be a teacher. My father told me that I had been named in honor of one of his relatives, who was a teacher at cheder, and joked that I probably also borrowed his vocation. My parents gave me the opportunity to finish secondary school. My father died in 1957, and my mother died in 1977.

In our family only Isaak, Broha's husband, could read and write in Yiddish. There was no radio or TV and he used to read the books of Sholem Aleichem 19 to us in Yiddish in the evenings. We knew the language. But I wanted to learn how to read. I began to learn from the books of Sholem Aleichem. It took me two years and I had to learn each and every letter, but I managed. Later on I had no problems with reading in Yiddish.

At that time anti-Semitism on the state level was at its height in Chernovtsy. I tried to enter the university in Chernovtsy, although I knew what rector Leutskiy had said, 'There will be as many Jews at university as on the virgin lands'. [Editor's note: The rector was referring to the virgin lands in Kazakhstan, where historically there were no Jews.] At that time the Soviet power started another utopian project - the development of the virgin lands of Kazakhstan, although this was saline land and nothing could grow there if there was no irrigation. At my entrance exams I got a '5' for composition, but a '3' in history, although history was my favorite subject and this was evidently a prejudiced attitude. I failed to enter university, and I couldn't depend on my mother any longer, so and I went to the virgin lands. I worked there for a year. Then I decided to try again in Vologda. In 1955 my brother Abram lived there. Anti-Semitism in the far- away land wasn't as pronouncedexpressed as in Ukraine, probably because there were fewer Jews there. I entered the Department of Physics at Vologda University. I didn't face any anti-Semitism in my daily life. I studied well. Money was always a problem. I always passed my exams in winter in advance so that I'd be able to work at the wood cutting site. It was hard but well-paid work. My earnings for a month or a month and a half lasted me until summer. I went to Chernovtsy in summer. I worked at the children's summer camp where I had meals and earned some money. And I could see my mother, my father and my friends.

TThere were expressions of anti-Semitism in the pioneer camp. I remember one Sunday, the day when parents could visit their children. The family of one of my pupils called me. His father was an actor at the former Jewish theater. They complained thatto one of the children called their son 'zhyd' [kike] and asked me what I could do to punish this child. And I, a 20 year old20-year-old young man at the time, said to his father, 'Do you want me to send that boy home from the camp? That's impossible. Or beat him? I can't. You are the father and it's all up to you. I don't know who you are, but you must help your son. He will be facing this kind of thing in the future, too. He must learn how to deal with it. He was called zhyd and that means Jew. He is a Jew, and he must be proud of it. You must tell him about Jews and their history and traditions.'. The boy's father liked my response very much.

After university I got a job assignment in a Moldavian village and worked there for two years as a teacher of physics. Afterwards I and returned to Chernovtsy. It was hard to get a job there - my Jewish nationality was a problem. I got a part-time job first and then became a full-time teacher of physics. I worked for 36 years. I was also was a class tutor, a hiking club chief and a producer of school performances. Besides, I also acted in performances of the theatrical studio at the House of Teachers. There was a lot of work at school that took up my spare time - political information hours, meetings, etc. All children had to go to parades on Soviet holidays. They were bored and didn't want to go there, but they all went if I promised that we would go to the woods afterwards and bake potatoes. Hiking was our favorite hobby. We traveled all over Bukovina. My former pupils still visit me, and we recall our evenings by the fire. I liked children and they liked me in return.

I've never been a Pparty member, and after the Twentieth Party?? Congress 20 it was out of the question for me.

I've been married twice. I first got married in 1961. The mother of my future wife, Svetlana Krasilschikova, was my mother's friend. They werehad an absolutely assimilated Jewish family. They didn't have a feeling of their Jewish roots and didn't remember their origin. At that time Svetlana was working after in the Geography Department of Astrakhan University in Russia. We weare the same age. She came to visit her mother, and that's when we met. We got married soon and Svetlana moved to Chernovtsy. We didn't have a wedding party. We had a civil ceremony and a dinner at her home attended by about 20 relatives and closest friends.

Svetlana got a job asof a a statistics specialist, but she didn't like it. We had two sons. Alexandr was born in 1963 and Konstantin in 1976. Svetlana didn't accept me the way I was. She didn't like a life with a school teacherschoolteacher with a big work-load and a small salary. She didn't accept my Jewish identity, although she was a Jew herself. We lived together 16 years before we got separated. She moved to Lvov with our sons and defended her thesis there. She is a professor and Doctor of Sciences now. They all live in Lvov. Our son Alexandr works at a company. He is married and has two daughters, Katia and Olga. One studies at the Polytechnic Institute and the other one is in the 11th grade at school. Konstantin is significantly younger. He finished the Law Department of the Ukrainian Institute of International Rrelations and is a post-graduate student now. He is married but has no children as yet. Regretfully, my both my sons married Ukrainian girls. I like my daughters-in-law, though. We get along well. But it's sad to think that I'm the last of kin. My granddaughters don't identify themselves as Jews.

I got married for the second time in 1978. My second wife's name is Inna Bogomolnaya. She is a Jew. Our son Ruvim was born in 1979. Inna is much younger than me; she was born in 1956. Perhaps, that's why our marriage didn't last long. Inna and Ruvim are in Israel now. My son served in the army and now he studies at university. I met with him when I went to Israel.

My brother Abram entered Military College in Lvov and was moving all over the country after graduation. He was a professional military. He married a very nice Jewish girl called Bella after his graduation. She came from Beltsy, a Moldavian town. Bella graduated from Medical University and became a doctor. Abram and his wife lived in Vologda for some time. When I studied at university in Vologda I lived with his family. I'm grateful to my brother that he gave me an opportunity to study. Abram and Bella have a son. When Abram retired he had the rank of a colonel. In 1979 he emigrated to Israel with his family.

My sister Broha finished the Oil College in Bashkiria. She couldn't find an adequate job with her profession in Chernovtsy and had to work as a shop assistant to support her family. In 1947 she married Isaak Shapiro, who was a widower after his wife Haya died. Broha lives with her children in Rostov, Russia now.

Lisa was an apprentice at the weaving factory. After a year she finished a course in accounting and became an accountant at the same factory. She married Aron Muravin, a Jew and former school friend. They loved each other, and my parents gave their consent to the marriage. Lisa and her husband had two daughters. Regretfully the time in the camp during the war affected Lisa's health and she died young, in 1966.

My youngest sister, Zhenia, finished a Ukrainian school and studied at the College of Finance and Economy. Zhenia got married; her name after her husband is Teleshevskaya. She had two daughters. Zhenia worked as logistics manager at the Metallist plant. Her husband worked there, too. In 1991 they decided to move to Israel. Her husband died before their departure. Now my sister and her children live in Tel-Aviv. We haven't had any mixed marriages in our family, and all marriages were successful.

When people began to move to Israel in the 1970s I got very enthusiastic about it. But my first wife didn't want to come along. After our divorce I told her that I wanted to go. She told me that she would give me her permission if I paid her the total amount of the alimony for both sons until they came of age. I have never had that much money. I didn't condemn the people who left. Vice versa - I envied them.

After Ukraine gained independence in 1991 many Jewish organizations opened in Chernovtsy. I was retired. I became a volunteer. There were 12 of us. We had to make lists of needy and elderly people and think of how to help them. Then there was a vacancy for a social worker. I got the job. I received a salary equivalent to US$ 15. In due time I founded the Jewish Charity Committee. I'm its director now. We look for opportunities to help needy and ill people. I find sponsors. We have a canteen where we provide meals for 60 people. The food comesd from a restaurant, and it's very delicious. During the meal I read a Jewish newspaper to the people. We discuss Jewish subjects and other issues.

We have 25 children on our lists. Once every month and a half we send them food, clothes and medication. They are children with cerebral palsy, children of single mothers and orphans. We can also send a family 50 hrivna for medication, repairs in the apartment or for them to pay off their debts. I feel that people need me and that I can help them.

But that's not all. I realized that people need communication and culture besides physical survival. With the help of sponsors we established a round club. This club is open twice a week - one day for older and the other day for younger people. We discuss the Jewish subjects and sing Jewish songs. Housewives share secrets of the Jewish cuisine. This is a little bit different from what I expected it to be. I thought people would be sitting at the tables rather than sitting at one long table. But we couldn't afford it. In any case - it's still an interesting pastime.

I live here, in Ukraine, and this committee is my creation. I've been in Israel three times. I like it there, but I'm busy here. I know that if I emigrated to Israel I would be sitting at home thinking, 'Well, where does it ache today?'. Whereas here I'm busy and have no possibility to get ill. I have a son, a sister and a brother in Israel, but I'm still here. I know that if I leave I will loose my contacts that I've established over the past 10 years. My assistant is learning how to work. But as it's my 'child' I'm reluctant to leave it in somebody else's hands, even the most caring ones. It's most important that my people live and remember the place where we grew up. And that we know who we are, why we are here and what we are to do.

Glossary

Abraham Pressburger
Omer
Israel
Interviewer: Martin Korcok
Date of interview: October 2004 - March 2005

The phenomenon of Central European Jewry rests in the fact that most Jews who were born in this region live in foreign lands. It is no different with Jews that come from today's Slovakia. One of them is Mr. Abraham Pressburger, who was born in Bratislava. He currently lives in the Israeli city of Omer. This interview is also different in the fact that in its contents it stands apart from other testimony gained in Slovakia. It tells of Judaism in this region with a certain amount of dispassion and detachment. At the same time, it encompasses the whole colorful spectrum of pre- and post-war Jewry - from Orthodox Judaism to Zionism.

My family background
Growing up
During the War
Post-war
Glossary

My family background

My testimony about the past of the Pressburger family is based on a document that was written by my father [Alexander Pressburger], most likely shortly before he died in the year 1976. He was then 82 years old. He wanted to preserve what his family had told him and what he hadn't had time to verbally pass on. Towards the end I added information about my generation. My father divided his document into four generations starting from the year 1810.

The first generation starts approximately in 1810. Akiva Pressburger, my father's grandfather, was born in the town of Cifer. This is a small town near the city of Trnava. He's also buried there. According to my grandfather, most of the Pressburgers came from the town of Cifer. His wife Zelda was named Wetzler before she was married. She was born in Galanta and died there at the age of 91 in the year 1901. She's buried in Galanta. They had two sons, Yisrael and Moshe Cvi.

The second generation of the Pressburger family, Yisrael Pressburger, my grandfather's brother, was born in Cifer. He died at fifty of tuberculosis. He is buried in Galanta. His wife Kati, nee Messinger, died at the age of 75, and is buried in Galanta. They had one son, Max, and five daughters, Roza, Fanci, Janka, Etel and Malvin, who died at the age of 16. Max died at 62. He had two daughters, Ilonka and Erzsi, but had no male descendant who would further carry the Pressburger name. Max is also buried in Galanta. Kati became a widow at the age of 48. She had no property or pension. Her son Max took care of her very conscientiously up until he died, and he even saw to it that his four sisters were married off.

Yisrael's brother was Moshe Cvi Pressburger; he was actually my grandfather. He was born in Cifer in the year 1850 and died in the year 1938, the 28th of Nisan, at the age of 88. [Editor's note: Nisan is the seventh month in the Hebrew calendar, the Gregorian calendar equivalent is March-April.] His wife was named Liebele, nee Messinger. She was the sister of Kati, Yisrael's wife. She was born in Galanta in the year 1853 and died in Galanta in the year 1927 at the age of 74. They had seven children. Five sons: Max, Filip, Jakob, Sandor, Jeno, and two daughters: Janka and Fina.

The third generation is the generation of my father [Alexander Pressburger]. His oldest brother, Max Pressburger, Jewish name Mordechai ben Moshe Cvi, was born in the year 1879. He lived his whole life in Galanta. He was the town's chazzan, shochet, plus he was also on the board of a large insurance company. He had a very beautiful and richly furnished house. His wife was named Julca [Julia], nee Friedman. She was born in Galanta in the year 1882. She died in Budapest, after the war, but is buried in Galanta. They had seven children: the sons Simon, Bebi, Oskar, Bubi and Jeno, and two daughters, Aranka and Ela. The whole family, except for Simon, including Simon's wife and their two small children, were deported in 1944, when they were taking Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz and 17 of them were gassed. The only one to survive was Simon.

The second oldest son in the third generation, the grandson of Moshe ben Cvi, was Jakob Pressburger. His Jewish name was Jakov ben Moshe Cvi. He was born in the year 1889 in Galanta. He died in 1944 in the Sered labor camp 1. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Sered. His wife, Kity [Katarina], nee Weiss, came from Bratislava. She was born there in 1897. She was deported to Auschwitz in 1944 during the Slovak Uprising 2, and died there at the age of 47. They had five daughters: Any, Alis, Herta, Vali, the fifth name I unfortunately don't remember, and one son, Hans. Only Any and Herta survived the Holocaust. Hans also died in the Sered camp and is buried together with his father.

The third son, Sandor, in Slovak Alexander, was my father. His Jewish name was Shimon ben Moshe Cvi. He was born on 28th March 1894 in Galanta. He died on 17th January 1976 and is buried in Haifa. His wife was Frida, nee Weiss, the sister of Jakov's wife Kity. She was born on 16th October 1898 in Bratislava. She died on 13th May 1960 in Haifa. They had three children. A son, Heinz - that's actually me, now my name is Abraham Jindrich, but my father named me Heinz. That's what they called me at home. And my Jewish name is Josef Chaim. My two sisters were named Any and Lucy. In 1942 Any was jailed at the train station in Bratislava and deported on the first girls' transport to Auschwitz, where she lasted only a very short while. Lucy survived and after the war started a family in Bratislava. Her husband was named Josef Arimovicz.

Another of my father's brothers, Filip, was born in 1886, and died in 1920. He wasn't married. He lived to be 34 years old and died of tuberculosis.

Jeno was the fifth son. He was born in the year 1896 in Galanta, and died in a Hungarian labor camp during the Holocaust. It's not known where he's buried. His wife was named Manci [nee Weisz], she was born in Budapest. They had six children: Richard, Tomi, Trude, Tamara, Judit and Lia. Tomi, Tamara and Judit were triplets. Judit drowned in a garden swimming pool. She was two years old. The whole family, except for the father, survived in Budapest. After the war they moved to Israel, where they started families. The oldest son, Richard, became a high-ranking officer in the Israeli army. He also ran as a candidate for mayor of Jerusalem.

My father's sister Janka was married; I don't remember their family name. They lived in Vienna. They had one son, Emil. When Hitler came to Austria [see Anschluss] 3, they escaped to Belgium. Emil survived and then lived in the USA. His parents didn't survive the war. The other sister, Fina, married this one very rich industrialist. She had one son, Kurt. They lived in Croatia, in Novy Vrbas, where they were murdered by Croatian fascists.

The fourth generation, that's the generation of my contemporaries. We'll start with the children of my father's oldest brother, Max. The oldest, Simon, born in 1904 in Galanta, was deported at the beginning of 1945 and returned in the same year. He died in 1997 in Tel Aviv. His wife Ela Rosenblum was born in Bratislava. They had two children. In 1945, at the ages of seven and eight, they were deported to Auschwitz and didn't return. Shimon remarried in Israel. His wife is named Margot. They have a child named Ariel together.

Max's second son was named Bebi. He was born in Galanta in the year 1905. He married his brother Simon's wife's sister. She was named Lili Rosenblum. Both were deported to Auschwitz and never returned. Max's third son, Oskar, was born in 1906 in Galanta. He was married and childless. Deported in 1944, and never returned. The fourth son, Bubi, was born in 1910. Deported in 1944, wasn't married, didn't return. The last, fifth, son, Jeno, was born in the year 1915. His fate was the same as that of Bubi.

Max also had two daughters. Aranka was born in 1912 in Galanta. She was married and had two children. They led them away to the concentration camp at the ages of four and five. No one in the family survived the Holocaust. The second daughter, Ela, was also born in Galanta. I remember her wedding, which was at the Reduta in Bratislava. [Editor's note: the Reduta building, today the home of the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, belongs among the most significant historical socio-cultural representative buildings of the historical city center in Bratislava.] There were about a thousand people there. I was six years old at the time. It was a very luxurious wedding with an orchestra. It was characteristic of my Uncle Max's social standing. After the wedding Ela lived in Galanta, had two children and was deported with her husband in 1944, and they never returned.

Now about the children of my father's second brother, Jakob, who survived. Any, born in 1920 in Bratislava, married a doctor, Dr. Otto Lederer in 1941, who had been in Bratislava shortly, and they left via illegal transport to Palestine. The British intercepted their ship and transported them to Mauritius, where they lived out the war. They then lived in the Israeli city of Gedera. They had two children, Dany and Aliska. Jakob's second daughter who survived the Shoah was named Herta, born in 1924 in Bratislava. She was married in the Sered camp to Mr. Tomas. They had a child that was named Akiva. Herta managed to hide the child with one farmer's family in Slovakia. She was deported to Auschwitz together with her husband. She survived, her husband died. Herta married again in Israel, and she had another three children, Shoshana, Piny and Aliska. She left Israel and today lives in the USA.

Now I want to cross over to my mother's family. While my father's family has its roots in and around Galanta, my mother's family is strongly rooted in Bratislava, or in Pressburg, as the city was named up to the year 1918. My mother's father was named Hermann Weiss. He was the oldest of three brothers. Hermann was born in the year 1865. His wife, who died young, was born Goldberg. I will again return to this family. I don't know her first name. Hermann and his wife had six children. They were my mother's siblings. Etel was born in the year 1890, her husband was Yisrael Gross from Sered. They had children, first was Erik, who was born in 1924. Erik fought in Israel during the war for liberation in 1948 and fell fighting the Arabs. Chana was born in 1928. She died in the year 2000. She lived in Natania, and was a school principal.

My mother's sister Katarina [Kity] was born in 1895. Her husband was Jakob Pressburger, the brother of my father Alexander Pressburger, who married Katarina's sister. Next was her brother Max Weiss, who died in the Shoah. Erzsi was his wife, she died of natural causes: she succumbed to some disease in 1936. They had two children who survived the Holocaust: Theodor, born in 1930, and Hary, born in 1932. Both lived in America, Hary has since died.

The next of my mother's sisters, Lili, was born in the year 1900. Her husband died in the Shoah. I think in Auschwitz. They used to live in Surany and had three children who survived: Erko, Any and Gerti. Any and Gerti live in Israel to this day. Erko died, also in Israel.

My mother's youngest brother, Yisrael, was born in 1901. He was a big Zionist idealist. Already in 1918 he left for Israel [then Palestine] as a halutz [halutz - Hebrew vanguard, halutzim - pioneers, trailblazers. Jews trained mainly in Europe and America, mostly as farmers, to be prepared for emigration to Palestine] and was one of the founders of the Heftziba kibbutz. I've forgotten the name of his wife, but I think that she was a daughter of the Herskowitz family. I'm not sure, but I know that her father had a bakery in Bratislava. They had three children. A son, whose name I've forgotten, and two daughters, Ziva and Chana. The three children live in Israel, but they didn't stay in the kibbutz.

Now I'm going to return to the siblings of my grandfather on my mother's side, Hermann Weiss. He had two younger brothers. Sigmund Weiss was born in Bratislava in the year 1872. His wife was named Ernestine Langer. It's interesting, that on her mother's side she came from the Pressburger family from Trnava. It's possible that that family was related to our Pressburger family, because Cifer, where we have roots, is close to Trnava. The son of Mrs. Langer was the very famous director Emerich Pressburger. He for example directed the film The Red Shoes. It was at the beginning of the color film era. Besides this, his father Arnold Pressburger [Arnold Pressburger: 1885 Bratislava/Pressburg - 1951, Hamburg] was very active in theatrical life in Vienna. In those days Vienna and Paris were the centers of European cultural life. Arnold Pressburger belonged to the same circle of friends as Johann Strauss and many singers and actors in Vienna.

The youngest brother, Max Weiss, was born around the year 1880. According to information he was six to eight years younger than Sigmund Weiss. This Max Weiss lived with this one Christian woman. He had three children with her, but he didn't marry her. The reasons aren't known. We can only guess that in those days in Bratislava it was unacceptable on both sides for a Jew to marry a Christian woman.

There was a quite large difference in attitudes between the Bratislava family and the Galanta family. Galanta was a very Jewish town, I don't know if it's true, but my father used to tell me that up to World War I, Jews made up more than half of the town's population. [Editor's note: according to the 1919 census the town had 3,654 inhabitants. Of that, 2,447 were Roman Catholic, 1,136 Jewish, 48 Protestant, 13 Reformed, 7 Greek Orthodox, 3 other. 98% of the stores in Galanta were at that time owned by Jewish businessmen.] When I was a child there were two Orthodox communities 4 - kehilot there. One had a head rabbi by the name of Buxbaum [Jakov Buxbaum], the second a head rabbi named Seidl [Bernard Seidl]. Each of them had a large, beautiful synagogue and courtyard with Jewish and educational institutions. Both of them placed an emphasis on religious education. There were three levels of education. The basic level, which was named Yesoide Toire [Sade Toire, or Yesoide Toire are slang names for Yesode Torah, from Hebrew for the foundations of the Torah. Otherwise an elementary school for teaching of the Torah], an intermediate level, which was named Talmud Torah, and advanced education, which was named Yeshivah. I think that Seidl was a little more progressive, and my family belonged to him. Buxbaum was the bigger, recognized theological expert, according to my father.

Now on to my family's educational level. Here I'd like to distinguish between the Galanta and Bratislava families. The education of the Galanta family, up to my father's generation I think, was at the elementary school level and perhaps one year of council school. They knew how to read and managed basic arithmetical tasks. The knowledge of the Torah was higher. They all finished Yesoide Toire, as they called it, and perhaps partly Talmud Toire [Talmud Torah], and were familiar with the basic halakhah writings. My father's generation was still brought up in this way. The standard of education of my mother's family was higher and more progressive.

I would say that at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, my ancestors in Bratislava and Galanta spoke the same language. Jews used the German language, it wasn't Yiddish but it definitely was colored by Yiddish. My father's generation that lived at the beginning of the 20th century also spoke Hungarian. Slovak was quite foreign to them, and they perhaps didn't even learn it until after the founding of the Czechoslovak state [see First Czechoslovak Republic] 5, and only very superficially. The rabbi's sermon in the synagogue was always in German. To illustrate what the coloring sounded like, I'll tell you something that has stuck in my head. Once on Schondorf, today's Obchodnej Street, Bratislava, some woman fainted and many people gathered around. And one man, a non-Jew was asking one Jewish boy what had happened. He answered, 'Gar nichts. A goyte ist schicker.' That means, nothing's happened, one goyte - non-Jewish woman - is drunk. Words like 'oylem goylem,' that the world is stupid, or that all are 'ganoven' - thieves, that was that coloring in the German language that was used. But all in all, it wasn't Yiddish.

When my father was still very young, perhaps twelve years old, they sent him off to be an apprentice in a textile store in Trnava. In those days it was the custom for students to live at their master's. So all week he wasn't at home and worked there. The length of the workday was for sure not limited in any way. His life's story is typical for the other family members of that generation. When he finished his apprenticeship, he moved to Vienna and was a sales clerk in one very well-known store. When after World War I, during which he had been in the army for four years, and fought in Italy and Yugoslavia, when after this war he returned, he settled in Bratislava. He became a traveling salesman for the company 'Kann und Stahler.' They had a huge warehouse and large store in the center of Namesti Republiky [Republic Square]. There he also met my mother, who worked there as a clerk. In the beginning, he did his business travel by train, but later, from the year 1927, he had the use of a car and driver, which in those days was considered to be a respectable position. Especially we children were thrilled by this. The chauffeur would visit us and once in a while would take us for a short drive around Bratislava.

My grandfather, Moshe Cvi Pressburger, was very poor. He had a small dairy. I think that he also delivered milk. He raised seven children in very modest circumstances. The apartment was very small, and the seven children slept in one or two rooms. On the contrary, my father's generation, those seven children all already lived a middle-class lifestyle. All had apartments with several rooms, where the children and parents slept separately. All of my father's brothers worked as businessmen. The oldest brother, my grandfather's first child, Max, had a leading position in the religious community in Galanta. He was also very rich. At the beginning of the 1930s my father and a partner opened up a very nice store on Schondorf, today's Obchodnej Street in Bratislava. The store was named Stocking Palace and had I think eight employees. In those days that street was the main shopping street, there was no streetcar on it like there is today, and it had many beautiful stores.

As an illustration of life in Galanta I'd like to now describe an experience of mine from Galanta. I'd like to present here how Galanta has remained in my memories. It was an unforgettable month that I had spent at my grandfather's, when I was six or seven years old. It was an unusually beautiful month, according to how I remember it. I spent about six weeks there. I was living with him in his small house. It had two rooms and one small kitchen. With him lived my aunt Fina, my father's sister. From our beautiful four-room apartment in Bratislava I came to grandfather's poor and cozy apartment. In Bratislava we had a washroom with hot water, and as I said, four large rooms. Here I was in an apartment with two rooms. We washed ourselves in a washbasin and would pour water into it from a pitcher. The basin was made of enameled metal, about 50 centimeters in diameter. We drew water from a well in the courtyard with a bucket, which was lowered by hand into the depths on a rope. The toilets were also in the courtyard, they were wooden latrines. We brought very good drinking water in pitchers from an artesian well on the main square that naturally ran without stopping. The other inhabitants also got their excellent drinking water there.

As I said, it was a beautiful month. I had a scooter and ran about Galanta, here and there, free as a bird. I mainly 'scootered' two, three streets away to my uncle Max's, who lived there with some of his grown children who hadn't yet left home. In those days my grandfather was 80 years old. Often he sat outside on the street on a stool, looking around and smoking a cigarette. Once in a while he'd send me off to bring him one. On Saturday I would walk with him to the synagogue. His son Max prayed there, he sang beautifully and often three of his sons would accompany him as a choir. Kurt, the son of Fina, Fina neni as we used to call her, at that time also lived in the house with my grandfather. During the year he lived with my father's other sister Janka in Vienna, because he studied there. In the summer, when school ended, he was also in Galanta. I would go with him to the synagogue courtyard, where often they would be playing soccer or other games. During the soccer games I would watch the other boys play. They were older than I, and I was overjoyed when they would sometimes take mercy on me and put me in goal.

Just a little more about where my grandfather lived. It was a strange house that had two apartments. One belonged to my grandfather and the second belonged to the Markstein family. They even had a pub there. The courtyard was very large. All week there would be chickens and ducks running about, like in a farmyard. When there was a market, a large number of horse-drawn wagons, maybe ten to twenty, would appear there. The wagon drivers would go sit in the pub and they would give their horses food in this bag that hung about their necks, and of course also drew water from the well so the horses could drink.

One more experience from Galanta. There was a brit milah at that time, and my grandfather was sitting with Grandfather Markstein, and the two old men were talking, and we overheard the conversation in which my grandfather asked Mr. Markstein, 'How do you do, Mr. Markstein?' And he answered, 'I'm fine, but I can barely see any more.' So my grandfather said to him, 'What more do you want to see? Haven't you seen enough?' And among other things he said to him, 'You know, you could be dead, and now you would have a name.' Because according to the Jewish religion during the brit milah a Jewish name from a dead ancestor is given. So he said to him, 'You could have had a name, and what do you have now, nothing!'

My mother's family, just like me, we're connected to the city of Bratislava. I more or less know my mother's family history from the second half of the 19th century. My grandfather and grandmother on my mother's side were born in Bratislava. I would say that the Bratislava family was more modern than the one from Galanta. The education of my mother's siblings was more worldly, not religious and higher than that of those from Galanta in this respect. My mother finished high school, and as a pretty young girl - she was very pretty - was a secretary at the company 'Kann und Stahler.' Her brother Max had a university education. On my mother's father's side, there were three brothers; they distanced themselves a bit from Orthodox Judaism, at least in concept. Although they belonged to the Orthodox religious community. Their concept of life and world view seemed to me similar to the ideals of some sort of mafia, I don't know how I should describe it. Their ideals of honor, affiliation and to a certain degree patriotism, give me that feeling.

The middle brother, Sigmund Weiss, worked his way up to become a factory owner. He had a clothing factory. He was the first to move out of the Kapucinska Street neighborhood and had a nice apartment in a modern building in the city center. He employed my grandfather, but they eventually had disagreements and parted ways, and my grandfather didn't work for him any more. I don't know how at that time he made a living to support five small children, he had at home without their mother, because she died when the children were still small.

The youngest brother, Max Weiss, lived a reprehensible life for the times. He lived with one Christian woman, with whom he had three children. As I've said, he didn't marry her and the family apparently kept it all a secret, so it seems that the news media in those days weren't as evolved as they are today, and that sort of secrecy was maybe possible.

My mother's mother [? Weiss, nee Goldberg] died when her children were still small. The Goldbergs were completely conservatively Orthodox, both by their behavior and by their appearance. Generally they had beards and some of them also had payes. In the Goldbergs' apartment on Kapucinska Street, they had a quite large apartment, there was a small synagogue with a Torah cabinet and every day they prayed shacharit and ma'ariv [Editor's note: during the day Jews recite the Amidah prayer while standing. The Amidah is recited there times a day, in the morning (shachrit), after dinner (mincha) and in the evening (ma'ariv)].

Besides this the Goldbergs were rich merchants. The Goldberg that I remember had a large, well-known second-hand shop at the beginning of Kapucinska Street, where they sold cheap clothes, suits, coats. That store was always full of shoppers. When the Germans occupied the Czech lands and gave Slovakia independence, Goldberg, who had that store, was the first who the Germans and Hlinka-Guards 6 jailed and claimed he was a typical exploiter of the people. They said that he was the most typical and worst exploiter of ordinary people, because he was stealing from them in that store. He was jailed for about a week, or two weeks, I don't know exactly, and then they let him go home for a short time. But when they were looking for him again, he and his entire family, with his children - he had four or five children - disappeared and made it all the way to New York.

I don't know how he managed it all - that whole trip to America. Later he also got two of Max's sons [Max was the brother of Frida Weiss, mother of Abraham Pressburger] over to America. Max and his wife didn't survive the Holocaust, but two of his children did somehow. One was named Hary, the second Tedi [Theodor], and he brought them to America. I would also like to remind you, as I've already described, that my mother's youngest brother, Geza [later renamed Yisrael] left in 1918, right after World War I, for Eretz Yisrael and was among the founders of the Heftziba commune. He was a Zionist, a committed halutz [khalutz - Hebrew pioneer, khalutzim - pioneers, trailblazers. Jews trained mainly in Europe and America, mostly as farmers, to prepare them for emigration to Palestine - Editor's note]. In 1918 he walked about the city in short pants and the family was very ashamed of him.

Growing up

And now I'd like to shortly describe my own youth. I was born in Bratislava, on Panenska Street, if I'm not mistaken it was number 17. I was the second, the middle, of three children. All three children were born at home and not in a hospital. When I was six, we moved to Spitalska Street, close to Marianska Street, into a four-story building. You entered the building through a large gate. The building was at the end of a large courtyard that was about 60 meters long. We lived on the 3rd floor. The apartment was large: it had four very large rooms. Today I'd estimate it at maybe 200 square meters. There was a large kitchen, washroom and balcony. Besides our father, mother and us three children, a maid also lived with us, who worked for us for eight years, and one Jewish governess who we called Fraulein. The three children slept together in one room, and Fraulein in the closest one to us.

Fraulein took us for walks in the park, usually behind the palace [today's Presidential Palace], in which later Tiso 7 also lived. In those days the army headquarters of Slovakia were located there, and a general by the name of Snejdarek lived there. On 28th October he would always observe on a horse the army formation on the square, which has since been built over. On Sunday there would be concerts in that park. So usually we went there, or to Petrzalka, or to the banks of the Danube, where in those days there was quite a nice park. Or we would also go to the mountain park, which was almost endless, because it continued on into the Small Carpathian Mountains. In those days the mountain park already began at the Jewish hospital.

The Frauleins usually stayed with us for only a short time. About a half year to a year. They were Jewish girls. They came from surrounding towns and considered it to be transitional employment. The servant, who was named Mariska, and as I said, was with us for eight years - we learned Hungarian from her, because it was the only language that she spoke. She slept in the kitchen and had Sunday off. Because she had been with us for a long time, she was like a member of the family. We would learn Hungarian folk songs from her. We enjoyed playing with her and liked her very much.

In Bratislava, Jewish children usually attended Jewish elementary schools. My elementary school was on Zochova Street. When you went up the street, at the beginning there was this 'realka' [technical high school]. The realka, as opposed to the gymnasium [general high school] had seven grades and focused more on mathematics, while in our high school we had Latin almost every day. Next to the building of the Technical High School, on the left, was a Neolog 8 elementary school. During the winter they usually poured out water and you could skate. That Neolog school was German. Then there was an Orthodox German elementary school with five grades. Close by was a hospital, a maternity ward where childbirths took place. I'm describing this so that you know how busy that street was. Across from these four institutions, the technical high school, two German Jewish elementary schools and the hospital, was a big, long building, also with three or four stories, in which were the offices of the Orthodox community. The community president had his office there as well, I think, and there was also a Slovak Orthodox elementary school and council school there. I attended an Orthodox school.

For four grades I attended a German school. In fact, in the first grade, according to my father's tradition, I attended Sade Toire. Sade Toire was this elementary school where we learned Mishnah, as it was called. For a six-year-old child that's a quite incomprehensible set of laws and Jewish regulations. Every Saturday we would have an exam, where several rabbis with beards would sit and ask us about what we were studying. I have to admit that I wasn't very good at it. After one year, my father, who was becoming less and less religious, at least not extremely religious, allowed me to discontinue my Sade Toire studies.

In the first grade I had a teacher named Buxbaum, Weiner in the second grade, Seidl in the third grade, and Einhorn in the fourth grade. When I was in the fourth grade of the Orthodox German school, that was in 1934, Hitler had already been in power in Germany for a year. Anti-Semitism started to spread, especially in the German part of the population of Bratislava. My parents decided that I have to learn Slovak. They hired a teacher for me, who taught me together with other children whose parents had decided similarly. We studied Slovak for almost a whole year. At the end of the year we transferred to a Slovak school, where a teacher by the name of Gero taught. At that time, in that year, he also prepared me for the entrance exam for technical high school. At the end of the fifth grade I began studying at the technical high school on Grosslingova Street, which was named the Technical High School of Tomas Garrigue Masaryk 9. I'd like to note that at the high school there were only men teachers. There wasn't even one woman teacher at the Jewish Orthodox High School.

In high school most of the teachers were also men, but there were exceptions where women also taught. In high school there were about forty students to a class, of which about ten were Jews. We had to go to school on Saturday as well, but we were allowed to not write on Saturday. Sometimes we made use of this, but it wasn't to our advantage. So we rather wrote. Religion was also taught. Catholics had religion during normal class time, one hour of religion, I think twice a week, and Jews and Protestants had to go after lunch for an hour or two of religious studies.

A person could register in those days as having no religious affiliation and they would then free him from religious studies. But I don't think we had even one case of those without affiliation in our class. While the Catholics had their hour of religion before lunch, we were free and almost always we went a few streets away to this one small playground, where we played soccer, Jews against Protestants. Or other times we were divided according to fans of two leading clubs in Czechoslovakia, young people in those days were always divided into fans of Sparta 10 and Slavia 11. One of my home room teachers was Professor Sykora, who at the beginning of the Communist regime, or after the liberation of Czechoslovakia, was responsible for education in the Slovak autonomous government.

Practically my entire childhood is tied to Bratislava. But it was my Bratislava, I'm saying mine, for mine was different than today's. As far as I know, today Bratislava has more than half a million inhabitants [according to the 1995 census Bratislava had 452,053 inhabitants], in those days it had 140,000 [according to the 1921 census Bratislava had 122,201 inhabitants]. A beautiful city. Bratislava was only on the left bank of the Danube, in it Germans, Hungarians, Slovaks, Czechs, Jews lived in peace. On the opposite bank was the town of Petrzalka, but it was quite distant from the river. By the riverbanks there were only fields, a park and a large swimming pool that was named Lido.

There were 20,000 Jews in Bratislava [according to statistics in 1940 there were 15,102 persons of Jewish faith living in Bratislava], about 15 percent of the inhabitants. As I've already mentioned, the city was on one side of the Danube, on the other was Petrzalka [today a part of the city of Bratislava]. By the Danube there was a beautiful, huge park, similar to Stromovka in Prague, something similar. A person could either get from Petrzalka to Bratislava across the one bridge that at that time spanned the Danube. It had a steel frame, but a wooden floor. Besides this you could get from one side of the Danube to the other on a small boat. It was a steamboat, which would always, when it filled up with people, cross over to the other side. It traveled in this arc, because it went against the river's current, and always actually ended up directly across. The boat was named Propeller.

There were soccer fields in Petrzalka, and when soccer was being played, the bridge was completely overflowing. Also the boats were completely packed; they almost sank in the water. The biggest field belonged to SK Bratislava 12. Slovan didn't yet exist in those days, and their field had room for 10,000 people. It often filled up. Once, SK Bratislava made it into the finals. There was a very tense atmosphere during the matches, derbies or how they're called, with the Bratislava team named PTE - Pozsony Torna Egyesulet, that was a Hungarian soccer team that competed with SK Bratislava. The Maccabi 13 also had its soccer team, and I remember that I played in it, and so did my cousin Bubi Pressburger from Galanta, who was about 15 years older than I.

There was also a beautiful swimming pool named the Lido on the banks of the Danube. SK Bar Kochba Bratislava 14, who were the swimming champions of Czechoslovakia, trained there. It had 60 percent of all swimming records. There were famous swimmers like Foldes, Baderle, Dr. Steiner, who was the head of the club. He was a medical doctor. We young ones also trained there. In the year 1936, Bar Kochba received a penalty. For a year it couldn't compete, because it had refused to go to the Olympics in Berlin, where it had been supposed to represent Czechoslovakia as the best swimming club.

Our situation at home was, up to the occupation of the Czech lands by the Germans, up to the creation of the Protectorate [of Bohemia and Moravia] 15 and the creation of the Slovak State [see Slovakia] 16, good. After the creation of the Slovak State they closed our store [see Jewish Codex] 17, the Stocking Palace. We owned it together with the Morgenstern family from Brno. There were two stores, one in Brno and one in Bratislava. When the occupation happened, both stores were closed and at that time our father began to live from savings or by doing business in other ways. Our, young people's, reaction to Nazism and to what was happening in Germany and events that followed, such as for example the occupation of Austria and later mobilization and almost beginning of war between Czechoslovakia and Germany was that we became more conscious of our Jewishness. Generally, young Jews, Jewish youth in those days joined organized Zionist youth movements.

When I was 15 we were actually thrown out of the schools. But before we start on this, I would like to talk a bit about religious life in Bratislava, which seems to me to be important to describe the environment in which I grew up. Although we weren't very religious, Orthodox, there was a certain influence. Even though in the end I became a non-religious person, experiences from childhood have their influence on one's world- view.

There were three large synagogues in Bratislava. One of them was the main Orthodox one, which was on the road to the castle [Zamecka Street]. The castle was closed to the public in those days. The second synagogue was on a street parallel to Spitalska Street, I think it was named Preiss Schul; it was also a large synagogue. The third large synagogue was a Neolog one, on Rybni Square. That Rybni Square was at the entrance to Zidovska [Jewish] Street. The rabbis were Rabbi Schreiber, who was the fourth generation to have inherited the Chief Rabbinate in Bratislava after Chatam Sofer 18. Rabbi Schreiber was a recognized authority. The most respected rabbi at that time in Bratislava, due to his knowledge and due to the religious writings that he left behind, was Rabbi Vesely. I don't know what his fate was. The chief rabbi of the Neolog synagogue was Dr. Munk. My father liked go listen to his sermons on Saturdays, though he claimed that he wasn't completely normal: 'Der ist ein meschugener.' Rabbi Vesely had only a small synagogue on Zidovska Street, which was also his yeshivah. There were many minyanim, many small synagogues, and each synagogue had its own rabbi. My uncle, my father's brother, used to go to visit the various minyanim, and sometimes he took me with him.

I would just like to note that the position of Chief Rabbi was hereditary. The chief rabbi in Bratislava in the Orthodox kehila [community] was to be the oldest son of the reigning rabbi. It was like a monarchy, the chief rabbinate was inherited from the father and so Chatam Sofer was the first, and Schreiber, who had the position during my childhood, was the fourth after him.

During the War

Now back to the position of Jewish youth in the pre-war period. I had joined the Maccabi Hatzair. In those days that movement, as a youth aliyah, created training centers: they were named Miha, Mitl Hachsharah, and one such was in Liptovsky Mikulas, in which I was as well. I developed a lot there. It was a beautiful life. Forty young people. A time of my first love, but also a time of getting to know many ideologies, many dogmas. It was the year 1939. After being there several months, I returned home. One small group really did leave for Israel. In those days I was greatly influenced by the ideal of socialism and I saw in the Soviet Union an ideal, classless society, which would in the end defeat Hitler and ensure that the world would be beautiful. When I was 16, I joined the underground Communist Party, the Communist Youth. It was organized into cells of three people that knew each other, and always one of them had a connection to another three, with another such illegal cell. The purpose of this type of organization was that if they caught and jailed someone, that they couldn't catch everyone all at once.

I remember one time, when I was 16, we were putting up illegal posters in the dark. We didn't live in our apartment any more, which we had had to move out of, according to Nazi regulations, and had to move into this one small house at the beginning of the mountain park, on a road that led to Zelezna Studienka. There I used to go home by bus. We didn't feel very good there at night, because there were Germans living in the area, and at night they would throw rocks at our windows, and we had to put boards in the space between the two windows so that the rocks wouldn't injure us. At that time Jews were forbidden to go out after 6pm. I remember that I returned home at 11pm. My father, completely beside himself, stood in the doorway, upset, tense, wondering where I had been. Of course I didn't talk to my parents about my activities. But when I entered the house, my father in his agitated state gave me a big slap on the face, and that was the first time, perhaps the only time, that I remember him hitting me like this. I think that I deserved it.

Then some from that underground organization were arrested, including one of my connections, and I was very afraid that I'd be arrested. At that time I talked about it at home, and together we searched for everything that could be used against me, and in the end my parents arranged for me to leave home if they would come looking for me. The underground organization sent me to Hashomer Hatzair 19, so I could organize additional boys into an underground organization, but the result was that in time it all fell apart, and I became a very good and dedicated member of Hashomer Hatzair. In Hashomer Hatzair there were young people of my age, many of my friends, who are friends to this day. We formed a group and decided to teach ourselves various high school subjects, history, literature, mathematics. Each one of us took it upon himself to prepare a lecture from textbooks. Every day we met, and studied together.

My father was in a work camp, from which he came home every week. He was doing manual labor. His co-workers elected him to represent them before the government and before the Jewish organization, before the Jewish Center. And so my father began his career, if you could call it that, as a public servant. In 1942 they proposed to my father that he transfer along with his family to the Sered camp, so he could take over responsibility for the purchase of food for that labor camp. That labor camp, as it later turned out, was built as a way station, from which transports left for Poland. So in 1942 our family moved - at that time I was already 18 - to that labor camp. I did manual labor. My father and mother had positions of responsibility there. My oldest sister, Any, didn't come with us. In 1942 she was among the first to be caught in Bratislava and sent to Auschwitz, where she died soon after. [Editor's note: on Saturday 27th March 1942 at 6:55 pm the first transport with Jewish women left Bratislava for Auschwitz.] How, we never found out. Some people told us that she was executed. The thing is, at that time I don't think the gas chambers even existed yet.

The Sered camp is in itself one broad topic for discussion; in any case, my father became the chairman of the Jewish Council there. He got this position before the end of the transports to Auschwitz. [Editor's note: on 20th October 1942, the last transport left the territory of the Slovak State. According to available sources, in 1942 around 58,000 Jews were deported from the Slovak State, so about 65 percent of Jewish souls that inhabited the territory of Slovakia on the eve of the deportations. The deportations were on hold up to the outbreak of the Slovak National Uprising, on 20th August 1944. After the suppression of the uprising they were renewed once again, with the difference that they were no longer governed by Slovak but by German authorities.] My father was chairman of the Jewish Council at a time when life was easier and I think that his position saved my life. When I had pneumonia, my father even arranged that I was with Rabbi Frieder in Nove Mesto nad Vahom for a month, and then even for a month in the High Tatras. In those days it was believed that mountain air helps pulmonary diseases.

The Jewish Council in the Sered camp was composed of six or eight functionaries, each of which was responsible for something. One for supplies, another for work groups. There was for example a large woodworking shop, a third one was responsible for the police and so on. In the beginning my father belonged to the Jewish Council as the one responsible for supplying the camp with food. That was very important, for there were a thousand people there, who every day got dinner and supper, and cooking was done centrally. You stood in a long front and everyone got their dinner, just like in the army. In 1943 my father became chairman of the Jewish Council. I think that he was named by the Bratislava Jewish Center 20, where he had contacts with Dr. Winterstein, Oskar Neuman and Rabbi Frieder. As I've already mentioned, there was a certain time during which I even spent a month with Rabbi Frieder after being sick. My father was popular in the camp, and I think that he was named chairman of the Jewish Council because of the fact that he was popular.

The task of the Jewish Council was to on the one hand help the camp's organizers. On the other hand it was to try as much as possible to lighten the burden of the camp's occupants. It's too bad that no one's written a more detailed treatise on Sered. I only watched it from afar and wasn't too interested in the details. I would say that there were debates within the Jewish Council. The conditions in the Sered camp in 1943 and at the beginning of 1944 were good. A swimming pool was even built and races were held. My father was well-liked, as I've said, and what happened in that Jewish Council I don't know. But for sure there were also battles for positions there, and it's strange that even during the Holocaust and in all places these battles for positions always took place, despite the fact that the situation was so horrible. But no one ever talked about my father's position, that it should be changed.

During the years 1943 and 1944, when conditions in the camp were more or less good, people learned what was happening in Poland, those horrible things. At that time people already knew about it and were preparing themselves for the transports to begin again. Generally they were looking for some sort of hiding place, if it was to get worse. My father found a hiding place in one of the villages near Sered, with this one farmer from whom he was purchasing food for the camp. And when during the uprising the camp gates were opened, my father along with my mother, my sister Lucy and her boyfriend, who later became her husband, hid there. The men were hidden in the barn under some hay, and my mother and sister were hidden upstairs in the house, under the roof.

After about two months that farmer - I don't remember his name - came to see my father and told him that he's putting himself in great danger. In order for him to keep on doing it, he had to get some money for it. At that time my father had no money, and so he sent him to a Czech friend of his, who had at one time had a store beside my father's store. The store was called Prvodev. I don't remember the man's name, but in any case my father sent that farmer to him with a letter and pleaded with him to help him with money, saying that the farmer didn't want to hide him any more without being paid for it. That friend gave the farmer quite a nice sum, so in fact this friend saved the family. He helped to save the family. The strange thing is that near the end of the war that Czech friend committed suicide. The cause of the suicide was strange. It was said that they had found out that he was in some way collaborating with the enemy and was about to be arrested. Rather than let himself be tortured to death, he committed suicide. But I don't know if it's the truth and if that's the real reason.

After the war, as soon as my parents returned they lived in one small apartment, at first they rented a room in a hotel and Joint 21 gave them money for it, then they found some small apartment in the Old Town, and then they found quite a nice apartment on Rybne Namesti, a large apartment, with several rooms. In fact they started to run a business in part of the apartment, from which they then lived, the whole family: my sister, her boyfriend and my parents. My father continued being publicly active. Immediately after the war, he and Rabbi Frieder and Dr. Winterstein went to see the president, Dr. Benes 22, as a delegation of Jews that had returned. Benes told them that he would help in having their property returned. But at that time he requested for Jews to not speak German in public, because there was a severe anti-German mood. After a certain time my father even became the head of the Jewish religious community in Bratislava, for a short time. Then he resigned, because he wanted to devote himself to business. He stayed in the Jewish religious community committee and very actively participated in public life. Their economic situation was good. The business was going very well. They went on vacations to Karlovy Vary 23 and lived very well after the war, both my parents and my sister. I remained living on my own.

I didn't live with my parents in the Sered camp. We had dormitories, where there were 20 to 30 people. Of that number there were seven of us boys of the same age from Hashomer Hatzair. We arranged it so that we were all in the same room. So we shared everything and lived as a commune. When I was in the High Tatras for a month, I discovered a source of weapons. I brought revolvers and all sorts of other weapons to the Sered camp. That was a very adventurous, risky trip, and we prepared ourselves that if necessary we were going to defend ourselves, and had weapons there. In the year 1944, during the Slovak National Rebellion the camp gates were opened. I wasn't in the camp when the gates opened, but in Nove Mesto nad Vahom. I and a few of my friends were building an old-age home for Jews there. We had it prepared ahead of time that we'd join the partisans. I was a partisan in Liptovsky Mikulas.

Partisanship, that's a long story. As I've already said, I became a member of Hashomer Hatzair. This movement wasn't liquidated, even during the war. People remained in contact. We tried to organize and help each other during the war's entire duration. For example at a certain time ways to escape to Hungary were found, where it all didn't begin until 1944, and members of Hashomer Hatzair would help each other by exchanging information and so on. You could leave the Sered camp on a so-called permit, but these were rare. We taught ourselves to forge permits and climbed over the fence. The forgery was more for the event that if we were asked for papers outside, we wouldn't be caught. I was even at the theater in Bratislava once with such a permit. At other times we would meet with former members of Hashomer Hatzair.

In 1943 we organized a meeting of active Hashomer Hatzair members at the apartment of Bertold Klug in Sered. We went over the fence to his apartment and there we met. Bertold Klug was later also with us in Sered; he himself was a member of Hashomer Hatzair. His parents had a large hardware store in Sered, which had of course been Aryanized, but they still were involved in some way. In the end his parents died in Auschwitz. Berci [Bertold] and his sister survived. During this meeting we agreed on several things for the future. We discussed obtaining forged documents for everyone, in case we were to escape from the camp. We also agreed that two would escape from the camp and that they would prepare bunkers in the mountains in case the situation got worse and the transports began again. So we discussed that we'd escape and hole up in the mountains. And we also agreed on what to do if a rebellion broke out in Slovakia. We said that in that case we'd join the uprising collectively, as one whole group. For this purpose we arranged a rendezvous on one bridge on the Vah River. I think that we discussed the bridge in Nove Mesto nad Vahom. That we'd all meet there on the bridge at 6 in the evening. When the uprising began the plan wasn't realized. It became apparent that it wasn't realistic and only two people arrived at the bridge. We ourselves didn't arrive there, you see, the uprising caused such nervousness that some plan of a calm meeting on the bridge was unrealistic.

At the time of the outbreak of the uprising I was in Nove Mesto nad Vahom. The army in Nove Mesto nad Vahom joined the uprising. A sign of this was for example that the soldiers took off their ties. In those days Slovak soldiers were required to wear ties. They had unbuttoned shirts and open jackets and rolled-up sleeves, and that was a signal that it was actually a revolutionary army. Generally the army in Slovakia joined the uprising, in the beginning, the first few days. We thought - I was with Berci Klug - that the simplest thing would be to immediately join the army. So we went to the Nove Mesto barracks. We announced our intentions, they accepted us. They were already preparing uniforms for us, and when we were already dressed and sitting on our beds, a soldier came up to us and said: 'Guys, run away as fast as you can, because our commander has decided to not join the uprising, and has decided to hand both of you over to the Germans.' We ran away as fast as we could, over the fence and escaped from the barracks. It was evening.

We spent the night in the forest. The next day we decided to set out on the road to Liptovsky Mikulas where our friend Gabi Oren lived. He was named Gabi Eichler in those days, he's renamed himself to the Hebrew name Gabi Oren. He's still alive, and lives in Naharia. He's 83 years old, but is sick and has Alzheimer's. But back then he was a big hero. I'll be talking more about his heroic acts. He lived in Liptovsky Mikulas with the Schon family, this one Jewish family, because the daughter of that family was his lover and later his wife. And he used to go alone into the forest; he'd go quite far, several hours' worth. He also had some quite huge and adventurous experiences. I can't talk about all of it, but he built a bunker there, and had some non-perishable food supplies there and a place to sleep. This was planned still before the uprising, so that when times would be bad we'd hide there. We set out by train. The train traveled through the region where the uprising was taking place. We passed through the Novaky camp 24, where we slept over and finally we got to Liptovsky Mikulas.

We gathered in Liptovsky Mikulas: there was Otto Simko, who was the only one of us to stay in Slovakia after the war. He's a lawyer and lives in Bratislava. Berci Klug, who became a doctor and lives in Australia, was there. Jano Rosenblum, who later lived in Paris, was also there and of course Gabi and I. At the Schon's we found out that staying in the next village, whose name I don't remember any more, was a squad of partisans. So we all went there to join up. We got weapons. In brief I would say that there were two combat missions - once we attacked an airport not far from Liptovsky Mikulas. Then once we attacked a German army garrison near Liptovsky Mikulas.

Otherwise we moved about here and there. We guarded those towns. Neither the Slovak army nor the German army was in those towns. They were ruled by the partisans. The result of partisan activities was that the villages around Liptovsky Mikulas were in many cases under partisan control, and the Germans didn't enter them, and neither did the Slovak army. In one such town, which was on the border with the German army, Gabi Eichler and I were stationed as this advance guard, so we could warn if the Germans were approaching. Of our own initiative we actually decided to carry out an assassination. The need to prove to ourselves that we won't constantly be only the victims of persecution, insults, beatings, but that we will also participate in the fight against the Germans, was very strong in us. Gabi had a huge hatred towards Germans, because he felt the need to revenge himself for the fact that they had murdered his entire family, leaving only him alive. Gabi was very strong, tall, handsome, and brave, unusually brave. I would say a heroic type, and also otherwise very moral, with strong character.

So we decided to assassinate the German commander. We found out where he lived. We found out when he left home and that this one photographer lived across the street from him. We went to see that photographer, who was a deaf-mute, and had him take our pictures. We told him that we were waiting for someone else, so that he would let us sit by the window. As we were sitting and looking out the window, we saw the commander with his bodyguard coming out of his house and approaching the photographer's house. When he was close to the house, we ran out, shot at him and began our escape. As we were making our escape, his bodyguard was shooting at us. We ran from one courtyard to another. We were jumping over fences, and during my last jump from a high wall, I broke my leg. I tried to keep running further through a plowed field, and in that moment my left leg broke completely apart. The lower part of the leg completely broke, as if a new knee had been formed.

I remained lying there and called out, 'Gabi, I'm hurt.' During the first few moments I thought that I had been shot in the leg, because they had been shooting at us. Gabi stopped. He was about 20 meters ahead of me, turned around. Maybe he hesitated a bit, whether he should keep running further, or what he should do, but he returned to me and took me on his back. He was very strong, unusually strong, and he ran carrying me. I myself was 180 centimeters tall, I weighed about 75 kilos, and luckily at that moment there was a horse-drawn wagon approaching from the mountains. Gabi pulled his revolver on the driver. He forced him to turn the horses around, put me on the wagon and on it we escaped to the mountains.

They brought me a doctor, who made a mixture out of plaster. He straightened my leg and wrapped it in the plaster. The result is that my left leg is three centimeters shorter. Later the cast that he made got wet in the snow and fell apart. So they had to put my leg between two narrow boards, wrapped it in a bandage and the leg slowly mended. For a long time I walked on crutches. During that time, probably due to several partisan acts, the Germans began to be more active, they went to villages and performed searches, to see if there weren't Jews hiding there and also whether there weren't partisans there.

My friends put me up with one family, and when the Germans started performing searches in that town, they took me away on a horse. Again it was Gabi, who held the horse and led it. It was quite risky and not an easy task. It's interesting, that the commander of our partisan squad, Mr. Feltscher, who was from Poprad, always disappeared for a few days when the Germans attacked us. I think that after the war he was even put on trial as a spy, as a traitor. He collaborated with the Germans. The worst time was when our squad was moving to a cabin high in the mountains, somewhere around the mountain Banikov above the village Konske. Feltscher wasn't with us, and the Germans attacked the cabin. So it seems that they knew where we were. First they shot at the cabin with cannons. They were careful; they didn't want to enter into personal combat. Then they burst into the cabin and murdered everyone that was still in there. I on my crutches and my two friends, Otto Simko and Jano Rosenblum managed to escape. We escaped in the direction of the mountains above the cabin. It was the right decision, because the Germans, when they entered the cabin, didn't continue further into the mountains. We went over a high mountain that was completely covered in snow. We slept in the snow; I on crutches and on one leg. We walked in the forest for two days, and then we got to one village, and this is where the odyssey started.

Once we also slept at some gypsies', and the gypsies, when we were sleeping there told us in the morning that we had to leave, because they had got a report saying that the Germans were coming to cut their hair. They used to shave the gypsies' heads. In the evening those that I was hiding with brought me to the mayor, and there was a big discussion whether they should give me to the Germans. I was sitting on a bench in the corner, and suddenly a Russian scout squad came into the room. The Russian army was already close to Liptovsky Mikulas, and so sent out scouts behind German lines, across the Slovak mountains, which wasn't difficult. When they came in to see the mayor, the unit's commander saw me. They were about five soldiers. The commander of the scout squad came over to me and asked me in Yiddish: 'A Yid? - Jew?' And he asks, 'what are you doing here?' So I told him what was going on. First he gave me all cans of food, everything he had, everything he could, what he thought could help me. Then he turned to the mayor and said, 'Be careful, nothing's allowed to happen to this young man. We'll come to check if he's all right. We're going to come here, and the first place we're coming to is here, and if something happens to him, I'll burn this entire house down.'

Then my friends found me again. Simko and Klug had been captured. They managed to escape. They made it to Bratislava and survived on false papers until the end of the war. Jano Rosenblum, Gabi and I stayed in the mountains together with two Jewish families that were hiding there. Gabi and Jano Rosenblum would go down to the villages and bring food so we would have something to live on. I with my leg didn't do much walking any more. In February 1945 the Russian army advanced through our position. I got into the hospital in Presov, so they could fix up my leg, but there wasn't anything more to be done. It was already mended. It's not that bad, you almost can't see it. Gabi was mobilized into the Czechoslovak army, which was there together with the Russian army at that time. He was even wounded in fighting in Poland and ended up in a hospital in Kiev. Actually all of us that had been partisans there, survived.

During the war I had two encounters that had a great influence on my partisan activities: two encounters, in which I received information about what was really happening in Poland. The first encounter: once I got a message in Sered from a friend in Hashomer Hatzair, saying that several young people had come to northern Slovakia, who had survived the uprising in the Vilno [Vilnius] ghetto 25. I met these people, and heard about the horrible things happening there. The second encounter was with my best friend from my high school days, when we'd seen each other every day. It was Rudo [Rudolf] Vrba, one of six that had escaped from Auschwitz. As far as I know, only six people managed to escape from Auschwitz. Rudo and another young man named Wetzler escaped from Auschwitz. When he got to Slovakia, he sent me a message to the Sered camp that he'd escaped and that he'd like to meet up with me. I went with a forged permit and Rudolf Vrba, who up to then had been known to me as Walter Rosenberg, told me horrible details of what was happening in Auschwitz.

I got out of the Presov hospital quickly. I passed the entrance exam for the eighth grade of high school and I also graduated there. I lived in a Protestant student residence. That was in February of 1945. Bratislava hadn't been liberated yet. After Bratislava's liberation I had the opportunity to get from Presov to Bratislava in a car, when one of my friends told me that he was going there and that he had one free place left in a small car. There wasn't any public transport yet. I began to look for my family. At first I looked for them in Sered. In Sered they told me that they're alive and that they had gone to Trnava. In Trnava they told me that they had already left for Bratislava. In Bratislava I went to Joint and asked whether they knew anything about Mr. Pressburger and they told me that he had just been there. So I ran down into the street. Almost a year after the Slovak National Uprising I met my father. He didn't know whether I was alive, neither did I, and it was a meeting that isn't easily described.

Post-war

How did I feel in Bratislava, when I returned from the Shoah, the war? Of course I found a different Bratislava. The Bratislava of my youth exists in my memories. It was, today I say, it was my Bratislava. My relationship to Bratislava is of course subjective, not objective. Without a doubt there were problems there, but their analysis isn't the subject of our interview. I only want to say: my grandfather, when he talked about Austro-Hungary, about the Austro-Hungarian era, up to the year 1918, when he was 68 years old, when he reminisced after the war about the period from 1850 up to 1918, he always talked about the Friedenszeiten [German for 'time of peace']. 'Ja in den Friedenszeiten,' he would say. I would describe the years in Bratislava from the year of my birth in 1924 up to 1938, when very bad times began for us in exactly the same way, as the time of my Bratislava. While remembering Bratislava, various images appear to me, one that I recall: when as a small child I was standing on Zidovska Street, it was Purim and a carnival procession was going down the street. In front on a fat horse sat young Muhlrat. The Muhlrat family were movers, furniture movers, and had a large wagon pulled by four horses and on it was written in large letters: 'Muhlrat Moving.' That young Muhlrat sat in front on one of the horses, dressed like King Ahasveros and behind him, in the coach the beautiful Queen Ester and behind her in tattered clothing, pulled along on a rope Haman as prisoner. Then there were the most varied costumes, a long parade, masses of people were standing on the sidewalks. Christians were watching how Jews celebrate Purim.

My Bratislava had an intensive Jewish life. Bratislava after the war was different. People were happy that the war had ended, because everyone suffered in it, but hatred, vengefulness dominated. Thirty thousand Germans were moved out, Hungarians had to be disowned as well, and mainly after the extermination of the Jewish inhabitants, the city became foreign. It's no wonder that a large portion of the Jewish population moved away after the war, because for them life in Bratislava really began to be life in a foreign city. Just like in any other city in the world. Later, I don't think that I regretted leaving, though I was often homesick for that beautiful countryside, for Slovakia and for a certain atmosphere that was completely different here. But I didn't regret it, because here [Israel] a new society was formed, and what was happening under the Communist regime in Slovakia is something I really didn't envy the people that lived there.

I returned from Bratislava to Presov. I intended to go to university, but then the worldwide leadership of Hashomer Hatzair discovered me. They gave me quite a large sum of money and asked me - actually they convinced me - to found a home for children that had returned without their parents, from the ages of 14 to 18. And in that home they would study for a half day and work for a half day, and we would prepare them for the trip to Israel, to a kibbutz.

I really did found such a home in one old Jewish school in Kosice. I ran it together with one chavera [female comrade] from Hashomer Hatzair. She was named Miriam Weinfeld. We were very successful. There were 40 children there. Among them were also children from families where the father and mother had also returned, but were convinced that the right thing to now do was to leave for Eretz Yisrael. In those days it was also a battle. It was a time of debates as to how to deal with the problem in Palestine. There wasn't peace in Palestine, but everyone hoped that a Jewish state would be founded there. With this I have to note that Hashomer Hatzair founded three such homes in Slovakia. One was in Bratislava, one was in Nitra and one was in Kosice. Besides this there were also other organizations, Maccabi Hatzair and Mizrachi. Mizrachi was a religious Zionist organization, which founded a similar home in Kosice.

The Czechoslovak Hashomer Hatzair was a very beautiful time of my life. There was a certain hierarchy in Hashomer Hatzair. There was the so-called main leadership. Then there were regional leaders. Then there were madrichim, who each were either in charge of one town or organized youths in small groups with which we then worked. The atmosphere was very idealistic. We believed in complete equality. Property was supposed to be completely the same among people. There were certain ideals that were of course valid only during that period. We organized summer camps for all the young people in Czechoslovakia; summer and winter camps. During winter camp there was skiing. It was a very intensive life.

There was also a special summer camp for madrichim, which I led in 1947. There I instituted a principle that I won't give orders, but that instructions were going to be given in a new spirit. Certain work would be announced and it would for example be said, 'It's necessary to do this and this...' and people would volunteer for the given work. For example, it's necessary to sweep the courtyard, or take out the trash, or cook something, or prepare a party, various tasks that existed, you weren't supposed to say, 'You and you do it!' you were supposed to say, 'It should be done.' And right away there have to be volunteers that sign up to do it. One comrade, chaver, who had been head of the leadership before me, took a stand against this. That we can't do this, because it doesn't teach people to deal with real life. We had a debate where he represented his opinion and I represented my opinion. In the end we voted and my opinion was accepted 80 percent against 20 percent. So that was the atmosphere in Hashomer Hatzair.

In 1948 the world congress of Hashomer Hatzair took place in Prague. Actually, the world leadership of Hashomer Hatzair had been founded in Prague. One very well-known official from the Merchavia kibbutz, where many of the Hashomer Hatzair leadership lived, came there. He was named Jakov Maius. Hashomer Hatzair wasn't that strong in the Western states outside of Central Europe. There were mainly members from Poland, Hungary, Austria, Germany and Romania, where the movement was very strong, so European members. One or two were from France, I think that that was it. In any case, each movement gave a report as to what was happening there, how it was progressing. I made the report for the Czechoslovak movement. I think that that report was very interesting. It had a different character than the others. I concerned myself with experiences with education in youth homes. I expressed the opinion that all teaching is actually self-teaching, while the task of the teachers is to help each person self-teach. Without self-teaching there is no teaching. It seems that it made a good impression. It had a cultured aspect to it, and the world leadership thought that my attitude and relationship to things was very suited for the atmosphere of French youth. That's why Jakov Maius suggested to me after the congress that I fulfill my mission in France, and for me to not leave for Israel yet. I laid down the condition that I was willing to go to France only if Eva Ginzova, who was my girlfriend, joined me as well.

So we actually spent a beautiful year in France together. At first we were in Vienna for a month, because there was a certain problem with our French visas. The movement issued visas to France and it took about a month before we got them. In Vienna we participated in the movement's activities. There was a camp of Polish refugees that were waiting for the aliyah to Israel. They were gathered in the Rothschild hospital. It was a very large hospital and there were many people there. We often joined them, we often talked with them. All in all, the position that I had in Hashomer Hatzair usually provided us very comfortable accommodations in hotels. They were paying us; we had some truly wonderful times.

Across Europe in the subsequent months and years, thousands and tens of thousands of people gathered, who were prepared to leave for today's Israel. To Eretz Yisrael, there were illegal boats going there. We were somehow a part of it all, in that we prepared the youth for the trip. The creation of the state of Israel was a great joy for us. A big concern of course, because the Arab states attacked the young Israeli state, but we did celebrate it very much. There were public celebrations as well. One was in the National Theater in Bratislava, which I attended, and one was upon the proclamation of the Jewish state in the Reduta where I also gave a speech in the name of the youth, because I was the youth delegate in the central leadership of the Zionist organization whose chairman at that time was Dr. Winterstein and members were among others Mr. Krasnansky and Oskar Neuman. I spoke beside Mr. Husak 26. I expressed what, in my opinion, was the meaning of the creation of the Jewish state for Jewish youth in Europe. In those days Czechoslovakia very much supported the creation of the Israeli state. Mainly Haganah [Haganah - defense, Jewish defensive armed forces. In 1948 it was absorbed by the Israeli Armed Forces] got weapons from Czechoslovakia and Czechoslovakia also trained the first pilots of the Israeli army. When the Israeli state was founded, it was publicly celebrated.

I think that in the post-war atmosphere there were no expressions of antagonism between Zionists and Orthodox Jews in the wider circles of the general Jewish public; we didn't feel it. Maybe in certain positions of leadership in religious communities, that had begun to reorganize. Maybe there was opposition between religious Zionists and Orthodox Jews, who viewed Zionism quite negatively in those days. But even this negative attitude of Orthodox Jews to Zionism changed a lot over the years, mainly after the founding of the Jewish state, except for some isolated cases. There were various supporters of completely anti-Zionistic rabbis, but in general we didn't feel it. There was quite a unified Jewish atmosphere.

After completing my tasks in Czechoslovakia, I was sent by the world leadership of Hashomer Hatzair to France for one year. I went to France with my future wife, the 18-year-old Eva Ginzova. We were together for several months in Paris, Strasbourg, and in the summer of 1949 in the French Alps. A summer camp of the French organization was being held there. In September of 1949 we 'aliyahed' [emigrated] to Israel, to the Shomrat kibbutz. We were in the kibbutz for only three months, and left it. One of the reasons was that my wife didn't see in it the life that she would have chosen. I, on the other hand, justified my leaving in that I didn't accept the ideology of Hashomer Hatzair, that my opinions had changed, because Hashomer Hatzair at that time believed in Communism in a very orthodox fashion, and believed in Stalin, for example. One of the debates that I had was about Stalin. I claimed that Stalin was no personage, that he was a murderer and ignoramus - claims that in their eyes completely discredited me.

Another thing that I criticized was the so-called collective ideal. Whoever doesn't have this collective ideal, can't be a member of a Hashomer Hatzair kibbutz. Later it of course developed a bit, but in those days it was quite orthodox. Actually in those days children didn't yet sleep at their parents', but in a collective home and all sorts of things that changed in time, but my main claim was that where there wasn't freedom, there wasn't development and there wasn't creativity. I also doubted that war would end when the proletariat rules the world; I said that Russia would be the first to start some war. All sorts of things like that, which were completely unacceptable for them. I and the leaders of the kibbutz had a very long discussion at that time. All night long they asked me questions, and I them. In the end we mutually said goodbye.

My wife comes from Prague. Her father is of Jewish origin, her mother of Czech origin. Her mother, when she married her father, converted to the Jewish faith and led the household in a Jewish spirit. Her brother had a bar mitzvah. They observed Jewish holidays. The children fasted at Yom Kippur. During holidays they went to the synagogue. According to my wife's opinion, they ate kosher.

After my wife's return from Terezin 27, she registered at the age of fifteen in high school in Prague. I met her when she was in her eighth [final] year. At that time she came to the Hashomer Hatzair winter camp in the High Tatras. I saw her in that winter camp. I recall that people were skiing on a meadow and only she kept on climbing to the top of one nearby hill and skied down in nice serpentine turns. The rest of us were practicing on the meadow below. So I went up to her and said, 'Girlfriend, chavera, don't you think that your an egotist? You're such a good skier and here everyone's just learning. Come on, and be their teacher.'

Later, when I stayed for a few weeks at the Hashomer Hatzair agricultural training center in Unhost, near Prague, I often had rendezvous with her. We grew close and became a couple. She was 17 and I was between 22 and 23. I have to say that these sorts of boy-girl pairs often formed in Hashomer Hatzair. It used to be said about them that they were zug, in Hebrew it means a couple. But they were almost platonic relationships, because in Hashomer Hatzair we were officially against raw sexuality. We were of the opinion that sexuality should be postponed, because it was completely openly proclaimed that the sublimation of sexual energy leads to higher culture, a higher level of humanity. We didn't get our official wedding certificate from the rabbinate until we were in Israel, in the kibbutz. There, in the kibbutz it was the custom that when a boy and girl decided to become husband and wife, there was a big celebration. It was a real wedding, but the official marriage document was made once in a while, when there were already ten such cases. They brought in a rabbi and one pair after another went under the chuppah and underwent the so-called official wedding. I was the only one who had a wedding ring and that wedding ring made the rounds from one to the next, when one pair was leaving the chuppah, the next pair would enter the chuppah and I always gave the ring to the pair that was going into the chuppah.

Besides studying at high school, my wife attended a school of applied arts in Prague. Later, when we had been in Paris for almost a year, she also studied painting there. She also improved by studying under various artists in Israel. In the beginning she worked for a while as a technical graphic artist, and that only so we could make ends meet. Later she became quite a famous Israeli painter. She had a lot of exhibitions. She taught at an art school, which received university status a few years ago. She taught painting there.

Her brother, Petr Ginz, became quite well-known, because in the Terezin ghetto he edited a youth magazine which was preserved and was published in book form. Petr had a great talent for drawing. Later he died in Auschwitz, but many of his drawings were preserved, and are kept in the Yad Vashem 28 museum. One of his friends that survived brought them there. It was also later partly supplemented by his parents with drawings that they had in their possession. His parents survived. His father was protected for quite a while by the fact that his wife wasn't of Jewish origin. In the end he also ended up in Terezin, but the parents survived the Holocaust, the Shoah. One of Petr's drawings got to Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut, who died tragically. The way it got to him was that he approached Yad Vashem saying that as the first Israeli astronaut, he would like to take into space with him various things that symbolize Jewish history and have a certain significance in Jewish life. He approached Yad Vashem with a plea for something that symbolizes Shoah. Yad Vashem picked a drawing by Petr Gizn, my wife's brother, which showed a view of the earth from the moon. It's interesting what fantasy and thoughts Petr had in such horrible conditions.

In Israel I in the beginning did heavy physical labor, in various jobs, so we could support ourselves. At night after work I studied as an external student at the British Institute of Engineering Technology, which had a branch in Jerusalem. After three years of studies I passed my exams and became an associate member of the Institute of Engineering Technology. In Israel it allowed me to pursue an engineering career. And I also had a very nice engineering career. First I worked for six years in one chemical factory in Haifa. Later I was an engineer at a company that worked in various branches of industry. It was by far the largest company in the construction field in Israel. I think that it had more than a thousand employees and I was the head engineer for the south of the country. I also had a very central position during the construction of the nuclear reactor in Dimon, where I led the technical department that prepared detailed plans. About 250 of our firm's employees worked there.

Then one other engineer and I had our own firm. My partner was a native Israeli. For interest's sake, when he was studying, he got to Prague as the representative of the Israeli student youth organization and at that time debated with Yasser Arafat about the rights of Jews and Palestinians in the country.

For organizational and archival purposes we numbered our projects. From the year 1968 until the year 2000, when we closed shop, because I had turned 76, we completed 1,370 projects. Most of them weren't very large. Among them, though, were large, notable projects, like for example the hospital in Ber Sheva. We also did the projects for many hotels in Eliat and by the Dead Sea. We did the project for a hotel for Christian pilgrims by Lake Kineret. The investments came from Germany.

We followed the Slansky trial 29 from Israel just like any other locals. That was an interesting trial. A lot was written about it in the newspapers. We saw in it a certain Communist anti-Semitism, and also the fact that Stalin actually wanted to get rid of everyone that knew how to think freely, in his own way. Later one of my former neighbors from Spitalska 29 in Bratislava came to Israel. His family, the Friedmans, lived on the ground floor and we on the third floor. Friedman had been in England during the war. The Communists jailed him a year before the Slansky trial began. He told me about how they jailed him, why they jailed him. They basically made an English spy out of him, because he lived in England during the war. Slansky 30 was in the top position as the secretary of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia when the Russians were already beginning to prepare his trial. Already almost two years before they arrested Slansky, he was being interrogated [the interviewee is referring to the interrogation of this former neighbor Friedman] by a Russian and a Czech, who because Friedman didn't know Russian very well, was translating. They asked him whether he had met with Slansky in London. Where had he met with Slansky? What did they talk about? In which café? Where did Slansky live there? Did they visit each other? When Slansky's trial was taking place, during the trial they asked Slansky: 'Did you meet on 22nd February 1943 in this or that café with the spy Friedman?' 'Yes.' He remembered. And you talked about this and that. So that was the evidence against Slansky.

How did we perceive those trials? Of course, for those that believed in communism and socialism it was a terrible disillusionment. You know, they also arrested some Hashomer Hatzair members, who used to go visit the Czechoslovak socialist state with great fondness. One of them was named Mordechai Oren and was jailed for several years with no cause. Mordechai Oren used to meet with communist representatives and tried to arrange cooperation between socialist states and Israel.

In Israel I had and have many relatives. I had various contacts with them. Relationships were always very good and at certain times very intensive with this one or that one. In the beginning, when we arrived, it was my uncle Yisrael, my mother's brother, who was in the Heftziba kibbutz, who certainly saw a personal victory in the fact that we were now coming to Israel after all these years, that his life's path had been correct. He helped us very much when the time came for us to buy an apartment. He arranged for the Heftziba kibbutz to give us a guarantee for a loan so that we could buy it.

Later I had very good relations with my cousin Shmuel Pressburger, who was a high-ranking officer in the Israeli army. He was one of the commanders during the liberation of the passengers on the airplane of the Belgian airline Sabena from the grip of terrorists. He also commanded a brigade in the Six-Day-War 31 with Egypt. He was also a prominent figure after the war ended. He ran for mayor of the city of Jerusalem. During the elections he ran as a candidate for the Likud party, in which I very much disagreed with him. When Sharon [Ariel Sharon] founded his own party, before Likud existed, my cousin was fourth in the candidates to the Israeli assembly, the Knesset. I also had a very good relationship with Simon [Pressburger], my cousin, who was twenty years older than me. He had a very good dental practice in Tel Aviv and he was also my dentist. He died in 1997. Lately my daughter and I have been planning to realize a worldwide reunion of the Pressburger family. If it will be successful, if we'll have enough energy for it, I don't know yet. In any case we've already sent out a notice of this idea of ours to various family members, and in general it has been well received.

Very few of my friends stayed in Czechoslovakia. The only one, who was a partisan with me - and after the partisanship period I wasn't in contact with him, but certainly those common experiences tie us together - was Otto Simko, the lawyer from Bratislava. A few years ago he was in Israel and visited us, but otherwise we didn't really keep in touch.

The situation in Czechoslovakia, that was always something close, important to us. Our roots are there, and we followed it mainly in the papers. We also had a lot of information from the Christian side of my wife's family, which had stayed in Prague and lived a completely normal, intensive life there. For example, my wife's cousin was the well-known actor Ota Sklencka: he acted in films as well as being an actor in the Vinohrady Theater. He also taught at an acting school and had the title of National Artist. There were other cousins and other relatives and uncles' wives. My wife and daughter were actually in Czechoslovakia, I think it was in 1972, before our daughter entered the army.

During the pre-war era in Bratislava, our father observed holidays in a very orthodox fashion. For Yom Kippur he fasted. During Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah he was in the synagogue, from morning, from 7am., until Neila [Neila - conclusion; the term for the ceremony that concludes public prayer during Yom Kippur], up to the last moment. During Sabbath he didn't always go to the synagogue, I would say at different times with different frequency. During the week he didn't go to the synagogue, as opposed to for example his brother, Jakob, who went daily, morning and evening.

I of course practice religion much more liberally, less strictly. I do it from tradition. Not long ago my very talented granddaughter asked me a question. We were writing letters to each other about it and I'd like to quote what I answered her. I wrote it like this, 'We were born into a Jewish family. We belong to a Jewish family, we belong to the Jewish nation, we belong to the Jewish religion. Man is a creature of belief. I am convinced that God, if there is a God, then there is only one God, and he's the same Christian god, the same Jewish god and the same Muslim god, and the same Buddhist god. But I like the Jewish tradition. I believe in the moral values that are contained in this tradition, and the values that make up the Jewish spirit.'

My family isn't religious, but we participate in Jewish holidays in Israel. Once in a while we go to the synagogue during holidays. However, the Jewish religion definitely has something to say to us, and is near and dear to us. Despite this we aren't religious, except for my daughter, who has somehow returned to that piety. She goes to the synagogue, keeps a very kosher household, observes holidays, and fasts at Yom Kippur. She was influenced by my father, whom she liked very much. It was her grandfather that taught her to pray every evening before bedtime. To this day, and she's already 50, every evening when she goes to bed she says the evening prayer. Her son had a very nice bar mitzvah and her daughter celebrated her bat mitzvah. Her daughter attends a conservatory in Jerusalem, and there, when they were supposed to sing some cantata, by Bach I think, that had a very religious theme and Jesus Christ appeared in it, my twelve-year-old granddaughter announced in school that she's not willing to participate in that singing. Though she had a very prominent place in that choir.

My parents died of natural causes in Israel. My mother was quite young; she got cancer. They found out about it very late, when she already had tumors in her entire body, and she died at the age of 62 in 1960 after an operation in the Rambam hospital in Haifa. My father lived to be 82; he also died in Israel, of lung cancer.

My wife and I have two children. Our daughter is named Tamar and our son Yoram. Tamar was born in 1954 in Haifa. Yoram was born in 1960. For the last fifteen years Yoram has been living in America, and Tamar in Israel since her birth; momentarily in Jerusalem. They were raised as Jews and identify themselves as such. When I was in the Six-Day-War, and my children were small, I was of the opinion that it was going to be the last war and that my children won't go into the army, that they won't have to fight in wars. But that wasn't the truth. Both of my children were in a war, both Tamar and Yoram, and now Tamar's son has joined up. He'll be serving in the army for three years.

I wanted my children to study the Arabic language as well, because I knew how important it is. I succeeded. There were three students for whom the school hired a private teacher and each day they had Arabic and then got diplomas in the Arabic language as well. It was made use of in the army as well, Tamar was in Sinai and her task was to listen to the Egyptian army's communications. She was also there during the Yom Kippur War 32. The Egyptians had it well planned out, how they're going to catch us with our pants down. At that time they gave my daughter leave to come home for Yom Kippur. I remember how they were calling her back to the army, and I was upset, because I thought that it wasn't serious, why were they disturbing her. Really, it was awful chaos and it was a very unpleasant surprise, that Yom Kippur War. In any case she served in Sinai in one very well-known place, in the Israeli counterintelligence service.

After the army Tamar studied at the university in Ber Sheva. Later she did a Master's and a PhD at the university in Jerusalem. She studied sociology, and works in one institute that's financed by the American Joint [American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee]. It's called the Brookdale Institute of Social Research. She's the head of one department there, which concerns itself with social conditions, education, mainly the education of backwards children and the education of homeless children. She does research in this. They did research into medical services in Israel, and she is often invited by various ministries to meetings where such problems are being dealt with.

My son Yoram was also in the army. He voluntarily signed up with the parachutists, which surprised us very much and didn't make us happy. In the end it all went well. He was even decorated. The unit to which he belonged - it was a reconnaissance squad of six soldiers - caught five terrorists that wanted to cross over from Lebanon to Israel. There was a battle between them; two they caught and three they shot in battle, but it really was one on one combat and he distinguished himself there.

Besides this he also took part in the Lebanese War [see 1982 Lebanon War] 33. We were in Germany at the time, where my wife had an exhibition in Frankfurt. We quickly returned home, right when he was leaving, when he was to go into service. He fought on the front lines and got all the way to Beirut. At that time I went to the Ber Sheva town offices, because I said to myself, that if Yoram survives, I'll give 50,000 Israeli liras - in those days it was liras, and not shekels - and 50,000 liras, that was quite a nice sum, I'll give it to the poor as thanks to God that he lived. They were very, very surprised, it was hard for them to grasp it, and I asked them to please divide up the money amongst poor people. So, one clerk whom I trusted took it upon himself. My condition was for those people to not know where the money came from.

After the army Yoram studied at the university in Ber Sheva. After his studies in Ber Sheva he was accepted in Rochester [USA], to do his Master's and PhD. He studied a specialized science called finite element analysis. This science can be performed only thanks to the fact that computers today make feasible certain calculations that would in the past have taken years and were in fact impossible. After his studies, when he got his doctorate, he was hired by one company that creates computer programs for use in 'finite element analysis' in the solution of complex practical problems such as for example the strength of airplane wings. This program is purchased and used by the largest companies, such as General Motors, Boeing, Airbus, Volkswagen and so on.

I have three grandchildren: two granddaughters and one grandson. Tamar has one daughter and one son. Her daughter is named Ela and her son Eden. Ela is especially talented. She was accepted to high school, a musical academy. She has perfect musical hearing, beautifully plays compositions for piano, for example Chopin and Bach. She has those long compositions memorized, and is also an excellent student in other subjects. She's not trying to be a virtuoso; she doesn't devote enough hours to it every day, because she has very broad interests. Eden is already six months in the army. He's in the tank corps; he's training to be a member of the tank corps. I hope that God will help him in that army and that there won't be a war and that he returns safe and sound. Yoram has a daughter named Narkis. Narkis is going to university to study psychology.

We go to Czechoslovakia often. In the last ten years, we've been in Prague twice a year on average, sometimes more. Mainly in the last year, when a book of Petr's [Petr Ginz], my wife's brother, was published, we've been there several times. Actually, a stamp was even published in Petr's memory. In fact, Petr has become very popular in the Czech Republic. So we go to Prague often. We also like Prague. We like to go to see theater performances in a language that we understand.

We've been to Bratislava only once, about a year after the regime changed. It was quite a difficult encounter for me. Bratislava, which I left fifty years ago, as I've reminisced, was different. Petrzalka is different, Zidovska Street disappeared, the main synagogue was torn down. The stores also functioned in a very communist fashion, they were dark. I got a very unpleasant feeling, though I tried to show my wife a little of Bratislava's beauty. We were at the castle, where I could never go in the past. During the First Republic, the first Czechoslovak Republic, the castle was closed. It wasn't open to the public. So after such a difficult impression nothing draws me to Bratislava any more. I really didn't have anyone in Bratislava, no one remained there, while in Prague there were relatives that accepted us warmly. Bratislava doesn't really entice me.

I'm giving this interview right after making good on my intentions to show Bratislava and Slovakia to my son and his family. It was an interesting and moving visit. Especially encounters with remnants of Jewish life there and outings in that beautiful countryside and a visit to the region of my partisanship. Bratislava is very different from my Bratislava. Somehow I didn't fall in love with the new one. Even the beautifully restored old town with countless restaurants failed to enthuse me. I think that everyone of my generation, when it comes to the question how Bratislava should have evolved to have stayed beautiful, pleasant and express its spirit, would agree that it should have been different.

My father, when the Czechoslovak state was created, once told me, 'You know, Heinz, the biggest misfortune was really the division of Austro- Hungary. Really, Austro-Hungary, there were various nations there. They could live together. It was a beautiful country. A large country. Why was it broken apart? They could have given all nations freedom, autonomy. Each one of them would have led themselves, but the state should have remained whole.' Really, Austro-Hungary already was that what Europe is trying to create today, it was already half complete. And when Czechoslovakia split up, I regretted it. It wasn't an intense experience for me, because I've been far away from Czechoslovakia quite a long time, but I regretted it a little that Czechoslovakia split up. I had the feeling that it belongs together, why not? But when the politicians saw it differently, I understood and accepted, though regretting it.

In Israel we went through many battles. I was in a war. My daughter was in the Yom Kippur War. My son was a parachutist in the war in Lebanon, and now my daughter's son has joined up. My Slovak citizenship was renewed in 1990, but to the question whether I would return the answer is of course negative. But it's a good feeling. It's the expression of a certain reality, because in a certain fashion I sometimes feel that I belong to both, to the Jewish state as well as to Slovakia.

Glossary:

Peter Rabtsevich
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Bronia Borodianskaya
Date of Interview: August 2002

My father's parents lived in the town of Lyubeshov, which belonged to Poland before 1939. Lyubeshov was a small town on the bank of the Stokhod River. The population of Lyubeshov was Polish, Russian, Jewish, Ukrainian and Lithuanian. There were no national conflicts and people respected each other. There was a synagogue and a Christian church in town. Jews were mainly tradesmen and craftsmen. All tinsmiths, carpenters and tailors in Lyubeshov were Jewish.

I know very little about my grandfather and grandmother on my father's side. My grandfather's name was Shleima Rabinov. I don't know my grandmother's first name. Her maiden name was Fridman. My grandfather and grandmother both came from Lyubeshov. They had seven children.

One of my father's brothers moved to America at the beginning of World War I. After the war he brought his parents, one of his sisters and two brothers over to the US, too. My grandfather and grandmother lived in New York. I don't know when my grandfather died. My grandmother died in 1939. In 1933 my father's sister that also lived in Lyubeshov emigrated to Israel. Three brothers lived in Poland: Kiva, who lived in Pinsk, Israel, who lived in Lodz with his family and my father, Ruvin Rabinov. Only Israel survived the war. He was in evacuation in Kazakhstan with his wife and three daughters; later they all emigrated to America. We corresponded for some time with his daughter Godl, but later she stopped writing to us. That's all I know about Israel's family.

I only knew Kiva, my father's older brother. Kiva finished heder and school and moved to the town of Pogost-Zagorodskiy. He got married there. His wife, Hava, came from this town and was born in 1887. They had five children. The oldest, Yankel, was born in 1915. In 1917 their daughter Riva followed. Then came Zeyer in 1919 and Leizer in 1921. Their youngest daughter, Hana, was born in 1924. Kiva was a shoemaker, and his family was very religious observing all traditions and celebrating holidays. In 1941 the Germans came to Pogost-Zagorodskiy and shot my uncle's family, every single one of them.

My father was born in Lyubeshov in 1890. He and his brothers studied in heder and later finished trade school. My father was a cheese maker.

My mother's parents lived in Lyubeshov. My grandfather was born in Lyubeshov in 1866. I have no information about his family. He was a craftsman, but I don't know what he was exactly doing for a living. My grandmother's name was Bella Korzh. She was born in Lyubomir (near Lyubeshov) in 1868. I don't know how many children they had. My mother never told me how many brothers and sisters she had. They were a religious family. They observed all Jewish traditions. My mother told me that they celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays and followed the kashrut. My grandfather, Fishel Korzh, used to read religious books in the evening. My grandfather died in Lyubeshov in 1914; my grandmother perished in the Jewish ghetto in Pinsk on 29th October 1942.

I knew my mother's older sister Sarrah and her brother Meyer. They lived in Drogitchyn. Sarrah's family name was Popinskaya. She was a housewife. She had two daughters. I don't know what Meyer was doing for a living. I knew his daughter Bella, my cousin. They perished in the ghetto in Pinsk on 29th October 1942.

My mother, Pesia Rabinova [nee Korzh], was born in Lyubeshov in 1892. I believe my mother received religious education, because she knew Hebrew well, and Yiddish was her mother tongue. My mother finished Jewish trade school. At that time quite a few girls studied in trade school, but very few of them worked later. Most of them became housewives after they got married.

My parents got married in Lyubeshov at the very beginning of World War I. They had a traditional Jewish wedding. After the wedding the newly-weds moved into my father's parents' house. My older sister, Esther, was born in Lyubeshov in 1914 and my brother, Lev, followed in 1916. In the same year, when the Germans were retreating, they moved many families from Lyubeshov away from military operation areas. My family moved to the town of Drogitchyn. My sister Riva was born in Drogitchyn in 1921, I followed on 25th May 1923. I was named Erukhim-Fishel at birth, after my mother's father Fishel. We lived in Drogitchyn until 1924. In 1924 my father was employed by a landlord called Orgi to work on his estate in Mokraya Dubrova, Brest province. My father was a Swiss cheese maker. My younger brothers were born in Mokraya Dubrova: David in 1925 and Aron in 1927.

We were the only Jewish family on the estate. Our family observed all Jewish traditions. Once a week my parents went to the market in Pinsk to buy kosher food and stored it in a box with ice in the cellar. There was no Jewish school nearby. We had a teacher of Hebrew, religion and Jewish history and culture. My older brother completed 8 years of grammar school in Pinsk. My sister Esther also studied at the grammar school in Pinsk for 8 years.

When I was growing up the financial situation in our family got worse. My parents couldn't afford to send me and my younger brothers to grammar school. But we needed to get education somewhere. There was no school on the estate. My parents rented a room from a Jewish family in the town of Logishyn [5 km from the estate], and my brothers and I went to a (7-year) Polish school. Our landlady cooked for us and looked after us. We went to school five days a week. Jewish schoolchildren had a separate teacher of Hebrew, Jewish culture and geography of Palestine. We had these classes on Sundays. There were classes on Saturday, but my brothers and I didn't attend them. We spent Saturdays in the synagogue and had Jewish classes in our school on Sunday. Or parents wanted us to study Hebrew to be able to read the Torah, the Talmud and other sources of Jewish culture. There were about 200 Jewish families in Logishyn. There were three synagogues there, and the local Jews followed all Jewish traditions, including kashrut. There were two shochetim in town.

My parents spent all holidays in Logishyn, because the synagogue there was the closest to their house. So, we spent Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Pesach, Sukkot and Purim together. On Saturdays in summer we walked to our parents' home, on Saturdays in winter our parents visited us. My sisters and my older brother stayed at home on these days. My mother used to bring stuffed fish, challah and chicken, and we celebrated Sabbath in Logishyn. My mother lit two Sabbath candles, we said a prayer and after the prayer we welcomed 'Queen Saturday'. We left the door open to let Saturday in. We sat at the table and enjoyed the meals prepared by our mother. I remember Pesach celebrations in Logishyn. My mother came in advance to cook traditional food. We bought a lot of matzah in the synagogue. All breadcrumbs were removed from the house and burnt. My mother bought special Pesach dishes that we kept in Logishyn. We kept them in the attic, and our mother used to take them from there before Pesach. My mother cooked stuffed fish on holidays and whenever she visited us. She always took chickens to the shochet at the market in Logishyn not far from our house. She made clear soup with dumplings and stuffed chicken necks with chicken liver and fried flour. They were delicious. She also made potato and matzah puddings, sponge cakes and strudels from matzah flour.

My brother and I fasted on Yom Kippur. The children in our family began to fast when they were 5 years old. Before Sukkot our landlords' family made a sukkah in their yard, and our family also could have meals there. My mother and father came and cooked traditional food, and we had meals together with our landlord in the sukkah. At Purim my mother made hamantashen, triangle pies with poppy seeds. All children walked around with wooden rattles. Their sound was supposed to scare away the evil-doer Haman. People disguised themselves in costumes of the Purim-shpil characters: Mordecai, King Ahasuerus, Queen Esther and evil-doer Haman, of course. They walked into every Jewish house where they got small treats: sweets and some change.

I finished school in 1936 and went to study at the Jewish trade school in the town of Pinsk. Our parents rented a room for us from a Jewish family. I studied at trade school, and my brothers, David and Aron, were studying at the Sniftarbut Jewish school (this school got its name from the owner of the school, a Jew called Sniftarbut). Our older sister, Esther, moved in with us. Esther did the cooking and laundry. We kept observing all Jewish traditions that we had learned from our parents.

Jews constituted about 75% of the population in Pinsk. There were 29,000 Jews and 7,000Christians in town. People had a peaceful life. Once members of some gangs 1 arrived at the railway station in Pinsk. Their intention must have been to make a pogrom. The local cab drivers - there were Jewish, Russian and Polish people among them - didn't let them leave the station, and they had to retreat. The police didn't interfere. There were quite a few Jewish secondary schools in Pinsk. There were also two Jewish grammar schools: the Sniftarbut and the Chechik grammar school, named after its owner and director. In the Sniftarbut all subjects were taught in Hebrew - Polish was taught as a foreign language. In the Chechik grammar school all subjects were taught in Polish. It was convenient for Jewish students who wanted to continue their education in Polish universities, but there were special seats for Jewish students in Polish universities. Sitting separately from other students was disgraceful. Besides, it was very difficult for a Jew to enter university - very few Jews were admitted to higher educational institutions at the time. There was a yeshivah in Pinsk. Students had to complete their education in a higher theological school in Vilno to become rabbis. Therefore, Jews went to study abroad, either to Austria or Hungary. But only wealthier people could afford to send their children abroad.

There were a few synagogues in Pinsk. On Saturday and Jewish holidays we went to the smaller synagogue near our house. There were also a few Jewish cinemas where we could watch movies in Yiddish. I remember two movies. One of them, Der Dibuk 2 was based on religious motives. The other one, Mamele 3 was about events that happened during World War I.

My older brother, Lev, went to the army in 1934. He was recruited to a cavalry unit, but he had secondary education, so he was sent to study at a medical school. After finishing it he returned to the army and became a doctor in a cavalry unit. He stayed there until the end of his service term. My sister Riva finished a Polish lower secondary school. She didn't want to continue her studies and stayed with our parents in Mokraya Dubrova to help our mother about the house.

In 1938 landlord Orga sold his estate to farmers. There were 32 families of support staff on his estate, and they were all fired. They lost their jobs, because the new owners didn't need any support staff. Our father was among those that lost their jobs. My parents moved to Pinsk and rented a two- bedroom apartment. Riva found a job as a shop assistant at the Feldman store in the Schmidt house, the biggest store in town. My mother found a job as a seamstress. My father couldn't find a job. My mother and sister earned enough money to pay the rent and buy food for the family. I had to pay 10 zlotys monthly for my studies in the trade school, and this was a big amount for us, about one third of the family budget. My parents couldn't afford to pay for it. The Custodial Council of the school exempted me from payment of this fee because I studied very well. I had to work at the school shop during vacations in return.

In 1937 Lev returned from the army. He couldn't find a job as an assistant doctor. There were no vacancies at the medical institutions in Pinsk. He went to work at the Luriye plywood factory. He got married in 1938. His wife Haya [nee Levzina] came from Pinsk. She was a Jewish woman and a couple of years younger than Lev. She owned a small food store at the Luriye factory. They had a traditional Jewish wedding. They rented a canteen at the factory for their wedding party. They had a crew of cooks that made kosher food for the party and many guests. There was a chuppah at the wedding and a rabbi.

In 1938 my sister Esther married Abraham Warshavskiy from Pinsk. He owned a garment store. They had a traditional Jewish wedding party in a café that lasted a few days. There was a chuppah, a rabbi and klezmer musicians. There were many guests at the wedding: relatives and friends. Abram had a small apartment in the same building where he had his store, and the newly- weds moved in there. Abram worked at the store, Esther was a housewife.

There were Jewish youth Zionist organizations in Pinsk, Hashomer Haolami, Hashomer Hatzair and the Bund 4. There was one more organization, but I don't remember its name. We attended the Haolami club - it was a leftist movement. We usually attended this club on Saturday afternoons. In this club we were lectured on Jewish history. The foundation of a Jewish state was our dream. We studied and communicated in Yiddish. There was no anti- Semitism in Poland during the rule of [Jozef] Pilsudzki, the head of country, who died in 1935. There were Jewish students in all Polish schools. In 1935 two anti-Semitic organizations, Moda Polska and Ozone, were founded or probably they had existed before as underground organizations. Members of these organizations boycotted Jewish stores and Jewish institutions.

In 1938, upon the Anschluss 5, Hitler demanded the annexation of Danzig 6, and it became clear to us that war was close. In March 1939 the first mobilization to the army in Poland was announced. My older brother Lev was recruited to the army.

I finished trade school in 1939. I became an electrician. I couldn't find a job and began to assist my father in the orchard (growing apples, pears, plums and cherries). My father took care of the orchard paying a purely symbolic rental fee. We often went there on hot days to rest in the cool shade of fruit trees. My younger brothers, David and Aron, finished school. David became a shop assistant in Abraham Warshavskiy's store. We were all very concerned. The Polish authorities requested assistance from the population: contributions for the purchase of ammunition for the army, especially for air defense purposes. People began to make shelters in their gardens.

After the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact 7 between Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939, the war in Poland began. In early December trains with the wounded began to arrive in Pinsk. A hospital was arranged in the Jesuit church. Our father and we went to look for our brother in this hospital. We just thought he might happen to be among the wounded, or we just hoped to get word of him from those that might have met him at the front. Many refugees were coming to Pinsk from other districts of Poland. On 17th September 1939 the Soviet army crossed the Polish-Soviet border and on 20th September they were in Pinsk. The Polish power was suppressed. Soon all synagogues and Jewish schools, public and private, were closed. The Jewish population was happier to have the Soviet army in power than the Germans. We were aware of the German attitude towards Jews.

In November 1939 I went to work at the Western River Transport Agency. I got a job as a communications mechanic. Riva became an accountant at the Food Trade Agency. My younger brothers went to the Jewish school. They studied Yiddish as well as Russian and Belarus.

We didn't know anything about our brother Lev. He came home in 1940. He had escaped from German captivity and walked as far as Brest. He was kept in the Brest fortress for over a month while the Soviet military collected all necessary information about him. They released him and he came home. His wife, Haya, gave birth to their daughter Dina shortly afterwards. Lev went to work at the town hospital and studied at the Medical College in Pinsk.

In 1941 the Soviet authorities began to deport wealthier families to Siberia 8. Refugees from Poland were also 'hostile elements' and deported to Siberia in their majority. By 21st June 1941, 900 families of refugees remained in Pinsk.

The last time our family was together was on 22nd June 1941 9. This was the first day of the war. On this day only the husband of Abraham's sister was away. He was summoned to the military training course at the Brest fortress. Riva came to visit us on this day. She worked as a planner on the field aerodrome construction site. Lev was summoned to the military registration office, Riva went back to work and so did I. There was no certainty about what was going to happen. Panic started in town on the night of 24th June. It was caused by the explosion of the gunpowder storage facilities of the former Polish Infantry Regiment 84. People started running across the bridge to the right bank of the Pina River in the direction of David-Gorodok. My brothers and I also left town. On the 3rd day we reached the former Soviet-Polish border, but we didn't have pass permits and the Soviet military didn't let us cross it. We returned to Pinsk. I went back to work. The management left Pinsk on a truck on 24th June. The commandant of the Dnieper Fleet was the only authority left in town.

The Germans entered Pinsk and their major goal was to exterminate all Jews. 30 Jewish men were shot in Pinsk on the first day of occupation. One of them was a barber from Logishyn. He fell in the pit and the Germans thought he was dead. After the Germans left he got out of the pit and returned home. In 1942, when this man was in the ghetto, a German policeman found a piece of bread that he had with him, when returning to the ghetto from work, and shot him.

On 9th August 1941, 10,000 Jewish men were shot in Pinsk. The youngest were 6 year-old boys. My brothers David and Aron were among the ones shot on this day. I survived, because when the Germans came to our house I was in the toilet in the yard. My father also survived hiding in the attic. He was hiding because on 7th August the German commandant of Pinsk issued an order saying that all unemployed Jews had to come to the railway station to be sent to work. On 8th August a few hundred men went to the station. They were taken to a potato field and shot. A few people survived and returned to town. The news spread very fast, and on 9th August nobody went to the railway station. The Germans swooped on the town, and captives were shot in the woods near the village of Kozliakovichi. On the same day the Germans demanded that Jews turn in their gold, silver and copper. They stated that if they didn't do it the result would be a second round of shooting.

When the Germans arrived in town I was offered to resume my former job. They probably didn't have a replacement. I continued working as a communications mechanic at the River Transport Agency. Our manager, Malinovskiy, employed three more Jews called Botvinnik, Epshtein and Radkevich. The four of us survived the shooting on 9th August 1941. In September the town council in Pinsk issued yellow German identity cards, with a stamp reading 'Jew' on the front page, to all Jews.

Jewish people could stay in their apartments, but they weren't allowed to walk on pavements, talk to non-Jewish men or go to the market. On 1st May 1942 we were taken to the fenced ghetto. Zavalnaya, Logishynskaya, Gorky and Sovietskaya streets formed the borderline of this ghetto, fencing about 250 buildings within the ghetto. The Jewish cemetery was also within the ghetto. Our family lived in a 6 square meter room in the ghetto. There were six of us: my father, my mother, my sister Esther, her husband Abraham Warshavskiy, their daughter, who was born in 1939, and I. Abraham had escaped from German captivity in Czechoslovakia and returned to Pinsk in December 1941.

Conditions in the ghetto were terrible. Those who worked were allowed to leave the ghetto and they could exchange their clothing for food. It was forbidden to bring food into the ghetto. If the policemen found any food at the entrance gate they shot people immediately. It wasn't allowed to walk in the ghetto before 7am. If somebody went out to fetch some water from the pump before 7am he was shot. People in the ghetto ate anything they could find and many of them, especially older people and children, were dying from dysentery, dystrophy and other diseases. Initially there were about 28,000 people in the ghetto. Many Jews came to Pinsk from surrounding towns and villages trying to escape from shootings and thus increasing the number of the Jewish population.

There were weekly supplies of bread to the ghetto. Employed Jews received 200 grams, children 120 grams, and those who didn't go to work 80 grams of bread. But anyway, the bread they supplied was only sufficient for 150-200 families, and there were over 3,000 families there.

In May 1942 a new manager was appointed at the Department of River Transport in Pinsk. His name was Gunter Krull. My supervisor sent me to his office to do some work. All inmates in the ghetto were wearing round yellow cloth sewn on the front and back of our clothes. We had the stamps of our offices on these yellow pieces that served as our identity cards. I came to Krull's office, and he told me to remove the yellow pieces. He said I wasn't to be humiliated by wearing them. I explained to him that it was my identity card, and that I couldn't remove it because I might be shot. Then Krull told me to take off my over-clothes while working in his office. He also asked me about my family. I told him about our life conditions; that we were paid 50% of what we were earning at work and that we weren't allowed to go to the canteen. On the following day Botvinnik, Radkevich and I received coupons for meals at the canteen. Once a week a German soldier escorted us to the ghetto so that we could take some food there. It was nice of Gunter Krull to help us.

In August 1942 rumors about the extermination of the Jewish population spread. Krull told me that he wanted to rescue us, but that he didn't yet know how to do it. He told me about his family. His father was a surgeon in Berlin, and his brother was a surgeon in the German army. Krull told me that he helped his two Jewish friends to leave Berlin and that he wished he could rescue all Jews, but that it was impossible.

In September 1942 Corporal Frioff brought his maintenance crew to Pinsk from Kiev. Krull asked Frioff to pull strings for me and ask communication manager Shtoide to employ me in Kiev. Frioff knew that I was a Jew. Our company, Field Department of Water Transport, could send us to do work in smaller towns, but Krull thought that I would have better chances to 'get lost' in a bigger town.

It was so hard to tell my mother that Krull was going to rescue me, that I had an opportunity to survive. At last, when I mustered the courage to ask my mother what she thought about this possibility she said, 'We are clutching at straws. Go for it. If you survive you have to tell the others what these rascals did to us'. My mother packed a few photographs, some underwear, a towel and a spoon. I took this package to work. Every night the Germans took 300 hostages. They also shot a whole family and all hostages, if one member of the family didn't return from work to the ghetto. Therefore, I couldn't leave Pinsk. There was a synagogue in the ghetto where we celebrated Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Nobody went to work on these days. We all prayed because we knew that this was probably our last holiday together.

Krull issued me a night-shift permit to enable me to leave the ghetto at night. I had an excuse to work night-shift. Power was turned on at night, and my responsibility was to charge the electric power accumulator. I worked about ten night shifts. Throughout this period I returned home in the morning and said farewell to my family every night before going to work. At about 5am, on the morning of 29th October, I heard gunshots and dogs barking. The ghetto was located about 800 meters from where I worked. Krull took me to his home.

I stayed in Krull's house from 29th October till 22nd November. On 22nd November we received a letter from the Field Department of River Transport No. 2 requesting me to come to work there. Krull gave me an identity card, which had the name Peter Rabtsevich and a different place of birth on it. I also had my business certificate saying that I had to go to Kiev to see Shtoide. Krull told me to go in a carriage for Germans and stay at waiting rooms for Germans at the railway stations. I wasn't supposed to ask the way to my office in Kiev. And what was most important - I wasn't to avoid the police. My life was in his hands now. He told me that the ghetto in Pinsk had been eliminated on 29th October. All inmates were taken to the village of Galevo [5 km from Pinsk] and shot. My mother, my father, my sister Esther, her husband Abraham and their daughter Gita, my brother Lev's wife Haya and their daughter Dina were killed on that day. My family, my acquaintances and my life perished along with them.

In the evening of 22nd November 1942 Krull saw me off to the railway station, and I boarded a train to Brest. I arrived in Kiev on 28th November and spent my first night at the railway station. The police first didn't allow me to stay in the waiting room for Germans. I addressed the gendarmerie showing them my identity card, and they allowed me to stay in the waiting room. In the morning I went to the office of my company. The guard showed me into Shtoide's office. Shtoide allowed me to come in and sit on the sofa. I fell asleep right away because I hadn't slept for six nights.

Shtoide, Krull's acquaintance, woke me up at 9am and took me to the staff administration of Field Department No. 2 in Podol 10. I went to the human resources office to have my employment documentation processed. The human resources manager said that it was bad that they were sending employees in the Eastern direction when they were supposed to be sending them to the West. I told her that I came where my job assignment was and if she needed further clarification she should address Mr. Shtoide. I obtained my identity card and was told to go to the employment office to obtain my work certificate. Officials there started asking me questions about me being sent to the East. I addressed a German man. I spoke German with no accent. I also had fluent Polish and Russian. I didn't look like a Jew either. The German ordered them to issue my work certificate. This work certificate served as a permit to stay in town. Every Saturday they stamped it, and if the police stopped somebody to check his work certificate and there was no stamp for the previous week this person was subject to go to work in Germany.

I settled down in a hostel. I needed to have a passport to obtain my residence permit. Krull had foreseen this and said that he had my passport in the office in Pinsk and would mail it, if necessary, but I knew that my passport had been burnt in Krull's stove. The authorities in Kiev sent a request for my passport to be mailed. Krull wrote them a letter saying that he had done that already. After a month I received a certificate at work saying that my passport had been lost. On the basis of this certificate and the documents that Krull gave me in Pinsk, I received a passport under the name of Peter Romanovich Rabtsevich, nationality Russian, at the Podol Department.

In May 1943 I turned 20. Young people of this age were to be sent to work in Germany. The problem was that I had to undergo a medical check-up. I was circumcised and just couldn't have them find out that I was a Jew. I spent a few hours at the employment office and noticed that quite a few young people told the commission that they had no health problems and volunteered to go to Germany. I decided to do the same. They told me to show my hands and feet, checked my eyes and issued all necessary documents for me to go to Germany. This was all I needed. These documents were a permit to stay in Kiev, because my work at Field Department No. 2 released me from the obligation to go to Germany. Krull supported me in Kiev in 1943. Corporal Frioff once brought me a pack of matches; I could exchange one box of matches for half a loaf of bread. In 1943 Krull came to Kiev and we saw each other in a place where nobody would notice us. We saw each other from a distance standing on the opposite sites of a street.

I only had winter clothes when I came to Kiev. When summer approached Frioff bought me shoes for 400 karbovantsy. It was a lot of money for me. My salary was 700 karbovantsy. I received a meal at the canteen six days a week. I also received one loaf of bread made from millet bran a week. It was impossible to eat this bread when it turned stale.

In August 1943, along with the retreat of the Germans, Field Department No. 2 evacuated from Kiev. They offered me to evacuate with them. There was panic in the city. I was captured during a German raid on the way from the hostel to work. All captives were escorted to the railway station to be sent to Germany. I stayed at the railway station overnight, and in the morning I showed my documents to a German military telling him where I worked and that I was going to evacuate with my company. They let me go. I came to work, but there was nobody left - everybody had evacuated.

In August 1943 I went around the surrounding villages looking for work and food. On 6th November 1943 Kiev was liberated. I returned to the city and went to work at the Dneprovskoye Military Water Transport Department. I had to submit my CV and questionnaire to get employed. I wrote my true story and told the human resources manager that I wanted to get my real name back. His name was Rodman, and he was a Jew. He said that he understood and sympathized with me, but that he couldn't do anything about it. He told me to address the prosecutor's office or the militia. I went to the Water Transport prosecutor's office. They told me that if I changed my name at that time it would mean that I wanted to conceal my past and that I might be arrested. In November I was to be recruited to the army, but my work in the transport system released me from my service duty.

In 1944 Pinsk was liberated. I wrote a letter to our acquaintances in Kovnyatin village. My brother Lev also wrote a letter to this village from the army. He served at the 2nd Belarus front. We found each other and felt better from a moral point of view. We wrote to each other. My brother was wounded on his lung and sent to a hospital in Moscow. There he met a nurse that was looking after him. Her name was Tamara. She came from Moscow and was half-Russian, half-Georgian. They got married. In 1959 Tamara gave birth to a girl. After the war Lev graduated from the Moscow Medical Institute and worked as a doctor. He was a surgeon in Balashyha. He died in March 2001. His daughter and her family live in Balashyha.

Tamara had relatives in Kiev. In 1944 she came to Kiev to meet me, and when she saw me she insisted that I moved in with her relatives. I stayed with them over five years until I got married. I got married on 31st December 1949. I met my future wife, Evgenia Siderman, at work. She was a Jew and worked as an accountant. Evgenia was born in Kiev in 1926. She finished lower secondary school and an accounting school. Her father came from Rzhyschev. His father died before the revolution when my wife's father was in his teens. He became a clerk at the Crystal store. Evgenia's mother came from Mogilyov. Evgania's grandfather died when she was a child, and her grandmother gave her children to her relatives. My mother-in-law happened to live at her aunt's in Kiev. She finished Jewish trade school. My wife's parents got married when they were young. They had three children. Their older son Ilia perished in the Babi Yar 11. His wife was Polish and she convinced him to stay at home rather than run away. The Germans shot them both. My wife's older sister moved to Israel with her family in the 1990s. Evgenia and her parents were in evacuation in Kazakhstan during the war. They returned to Kiev in August 1944. Evgenia was a Komsomol 12 activist and secretary of the Komsomol unit. Later she was elected chairman of the audit commission of the Podolsk district Komsomol committee.

We didn't have a wedding party - life was too hard at the time. I moved in with my wife. Later I received a room in a communal apartment. There were two other families living there, Russians, but we got along very well. Our daughter, Polina, was born in 1952. We named her after my mother. In 1959 I received a two-bedroom apartment. There were two rooms, a kitchen and a shower, located in the kitchen. Our son, Ilia, was born in this apartment in 1959. He was named after my wife's brother who was killed at the Babi Yar. After our daughter was born my wife quit her job. When our youngest child went to school she went to work as an accountant at the kindergarten department of the river port.

From 1944 there was only one synagogue left in Podol. Almost all Jews came to the synagogue to pray on holidays. They crowded in the street at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. There was a radio installed in the synagogue and people outside could hear the singing and praying. In 1946 the authorities closed this radio office, but people still crowded near the synagogue. Many people didn't have prayer books, but they wanted to pay tribute to the past and remember that they were Jews.

There were no Jewish schools after the war. The only place where Hebrew was taught was the Christian theological school in St. Andrew's Church. Its students studied Hebrew to be able to read holy books in the original language. There was a group of students officially studying Hebrew at the university. It wasn't allowed to study Hebrew or Yiddish at home. If somebody at work or educational institutions had found out anything about it, it might have resulted in problems, including firing. The only magazine issued in Yiddish was the Birobidyan Heymland, the Land of Birobidjan 13, that described the happy life of the Jews in the USSR. I read this magazine throughout all those years just to remember the language. Jewish theaters were closed. There was a Jewish singer, Tamara Hanum, but she vanished later. In 1950 I went to the concert of Alexandrovich, a Lithuanian Jew. He sang Jewish songs. The media called him a cantor and propagandist of Zionism.

There were many Jews in our navigation office. Zhelezniak, a Jew, was first deputy director of our office until the fight against cosmopolites 14 began. He was appointed by the Moscow management, but the Ukrainian central committee never approved the position. About ten other supervisors in our office were Jewish.

In 1948 the struggle against cosmopolites began. It was similar to German nazism to me. Many Jews lost their managing positions, but they stayed at their workplaces as deputy managers or got lower positions. Many writers and artists took pseudonyms because they were Jews. There were publications in newspapers revealing their actual names and stating that they were doing a lot of harm to the Soviet state by working under pseudonyms. In 1953 the Doctors' Plot 15 began. The wife of the Minister of Health at the time was a Jewish woman, and he lost his job because he didn't want to denounce and leave her.

Our human resources manager, Platonov, had a Jewish wife, too. He told me that he was summoned to the party committee. They told him to divorce his wife if he wanted to keep his position. He refused to leave his family and was fired. He moved to Novosibirsk and worked as a lecturer at the River Institute. Later he became Rector, and then Dean at the Leningrad Institute of Water-Transport Engineers. This was the third time I faced anti-Semitism in my life: the first time was polonization and open anti-Semitism, the second time was the public extermination of Jews by the Germans, and the third time was Soviet anti-Semitism.

Children of our friends and acquaintances had studied well at school, but they were not admitted to higher educational institutions. The nationality in my passport was 'Russian' until 1959, but I never concealed the fact that I was a Jew. In my birth certificate that was reissued I legalized the name of Rabtsevich because this name saved my life. In my passport I have the name of Peter Ruvinovich Rabtsevich, a Jew.

In March 1953 Stalin died. People were crying, because their 'father' had passed away. They were feeling confused and uncertain about their future. But life became easier. While Stalin was alive all managers had to stay late at work. Meetings sometimes lasted until 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. But Khruschev 16 changed this procedure and fixed an 8-hour working day. After Stalin died doctors were rehabilitated. The rehabilitation of political prisoners also began. Khrushchev denounced the cult of Stalin at the 20th Party Congress 17.

I have always valued my past. I have never forgotten that I'm a Jew. I have always celebrated Jewish holidays, although they were always working days, and it was impossible to go to the synagogue in the afternoon. I always went to the synagogue in the evening after work. On the Jahrzeit of the death of my family I went to the synagogue before work to order mourning prayers. There were 33 members in my family. And there are only three survivors: my brother Lev, my sister Riva and I.

After the war I worked as a technician, then I became a site manager, and later I was promoted to the position of a leading engineer. I studied at the Communications Faculty of the Kiev Institute of Water-Transport Engineers by correspondence. I graduated in 1959 and received my diploma. I developed some technical ideas, and my work was displayed at the Exhibition of Achievements of Public Economy in Moscow and Kiev. I developed a radio facility that allowed contacting any telephone from a boat. Other improvements were related to automated telephone stations and long distance communication lines. I had a high salary and regular bonuses. Besides, I didn't have to buy clothes because I wore a military uniform at work.

The attitude towards those that were under occupation during the war was prejudiced. It was particularly difficult for Jews because people believed that if a Jew survived it was because he cooperated with the fascists. The first question people often asked was: 'How did you survive?'. I faced this attitude many times, especially from my supervisors. I didn't try to explain how I survived. I was a highly qualified employee and paid no attention to any abuse. When Pinsk was liberated I sent a request to the management for my transfer to Pinsk, but they declined.

My brother and I found our sister Riva in 1950. She lived in Priluki, Chernigov region. During the war Riva was a combat engineer. She was in Berlin at the end of the war, and after the war her military unit was transferred to Novocherkassk in the Caucasus. After the war Riva took part in the mine clearing of the Black Sea coast. While in the army Riva married her fellow military Kotov, a Russian man. Upon demobilization her husband got a job assignment with the district party committee in Priluki, and Riva became a controller at the local bank in town. She studied at the Belostok Business College by correspondence and became an accountant. Her husband went on business to Moscow and got Lev's address in the military party archives. He met Lev, and my brother informed me by cable that Riva had been found. My wife and I went to Priluki. My sister had two sons and four grandchildren. She died in February 2002. Her older son died in 2000. Her younger son is a retired colonel and lives in Krasnoyarsk.

My daughter, Polina, graduated from the Electric Engineering Faculty at the Institute of Water-Transport Engineers. She is an engineer at the Glavrechflot design office. My son, Ilia, finished the Kiev River School and works at the navigation agency. My children weren't raised Jewish, but they identify themselves as Jews and feel proud of it. I worked in the river transport for over 50 years and my wife for over 30 years. I retired in 1990, my wife retired a few years before.

My son and daughter are married. My son has four children: two sons and two daughters. My older grandson is 22. He is married and has a daughter. My daughter has two sons: Vladislav and Vladimir Khmelnitskiy. Her older son cannot find a job. Vladimir studies at the Design Faculty of the Light Industry Academy. He's a good artist.

In recent years Jewish life has revived. We celebrate Jewish holidays in our family. Of course, it's different from how our parents celebrated them. It's difficult to buy kosher food. Besides, we are getting old, but we try to have traditional celebrations. I go to the synagogue, but it's difficult for me to walk. Hesed helps us a lot. I like to read Jewish newspapers and magazines.

Every year we go to Pinsk, where our dear ones are buried. Our children and grandchildren know the history of our family. I told them about the man that rescued me. My son goes to Pinsk every year. I couldn't go there last year due to my illness, and he went alone. There are graves of three families related to us.

I have always tried to find my rescuer. I even wrote to the Embassy of Germany, but there were no results. I was trying to find Krull, Frioff and Shtoide but the officials replied that Germans had never rescued Jews, and our officials told me that it was 'politically incorrect' to be looking for a German friend.

In 1996 inmates from ghettos in Warsaw and Krakow invited Jewish ghetto and camp inmates from Kiev to visit their towns. This visit was sponsored by the Maximilian Kolbe Werk. [This is a German charity organization supporting former concentration camp prisoners and trying to bring about reconciliation.] I was in one of the groups. In Warsaw we were met by the representatives of the Polish ghetto inmates and Margaret and Werner Muller, a German couple from Cologne. I talked to the Mullers about my rescuer and asked them if they could help me find him or his relatives. I also told them that there were two more rescuers that had helped me. It was difficult to speak German. I hadn't spoken it for 54 years, and the German I spoke was closer to Yiddish.

On 14th November 1996 the Mullers called me from Cologne and said that they had received some information from the military archives. Krull died at the age of 62 in 1979. Shtoide was missing. Krull's wife Christine and their daughter Janine knew that Krull had rescued a certain Rabinov in the ghetto in Pinsk and wanted to meet with me. Margaret and Werner Muller sponsored my wife's and my trip to Germany. We stayed with the Mullers in Cologne, and they paid all our expenses. We visited the grave of Krull in Dusseldorf, and his wife Christine Krull. We met Krull's daughter Janine in Dusseldorf. I told her about the children of the ghetto who knew that they were going to die. We both cried. In 1997 my story was placed in the Yad Vashem museum 18 in Jerusalem. On 10th January 1999 my German rescuer, Gunter Krull, was awarded the title of the Righteous Among the Nations' 19 posthumously. On 3rd February 2002 Werner Muller found Hans-Joachim Shtoide, who had supported me in Kiev at the request of Gunter Krull. I talked with him on the phone. The first thing he said was how glad he was that I survived.

Muller wrote a book about my rescuers. It was published in German and Belarus. [The German version of the book was published by the Dittrich Verlag, Cologne, under the title Aus dem Feuer gerissen. Die Geschichte des Pjotr Ruwinowitsch Rabzewitsch aus Pinsk in 2001.] I think that this book is a monument to my family and to all Jews of Pinsk exterminated in the ghetto, a condemnation of fascism and a monument to Gunter Krull, Mr. Shtoide, corporal Frioff and to my dear friends Margaret and Werner Muller, who dedicated five years of their lives to find my rescuers.

Regretfully, I haven't been in Israel, but I do hope to have a chance to go to this holy land. I hope that politicians will be wise enough to put an end to fighting and establish peace in this country.

Glossary

Esiah Kleiman
Chernovtsy
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya
Date of interview: February 2002

Esiah Kleiman and his wife, Fenia Kleiman, live in a spacious apartment in a building that was constructed in the center of Chernovtsy in the 1920s. Their apartment is comfortable and cozy. They have a big collection of books in Russian, Yiddish and Hebrew. Esiah is a tall big man with a loud voice. He is full of energy. People come to ask Esiah's advice in case they have problems or just need to talk about everyday issues. During the interview Esiah recited prayers in Hebrew, which he has known since his childhood. Esiah and Fenia have no children, but they have many friends. One can tell that they care about one another a lot.

My family background
Growing up
During the War
After the War
Glossary

My family background 

My father's parents lived in the town of Vad-Rashkov, Tzaruk district, Bessarabia 1. Bessarabia belonged to Russia before 1918 and was then given to Romania. The majority of the population of Vad-Rashkov was Jewish. Jewish families resided in the center of Vad-Rashkov. Streets in the town were named after professions, like Tailor, Locksmith or Shoemaker Street. The Jews were craftsmen and merchants for the most part. There were also some involved in farming but not very many. There were a few wealthy families and a number of poor Jews. Married women were housewives. Besides the Jewish population there were also Russian, Moldavian and Ukrainian inhabitants. There were no conflicts between members of different nationalities. The atmosphere in town was friendly.

There was a big Jewish community in Vad-Rashkov. Wealthier Jews made donations to support sick and poor Jews. There were also volunteers, mainly middle-aged men, who brought food and clothing to poor families. The community funded a Jewish hospital, a Jewish elementary school and a Jewish library. All subjects in the school were taught in Yiddish. Besides general subjects schoolchildren studied Hebrew, Jewish literature, history and religion. It was a small school and there weren't many pupils. This had to do with children's further education. After finishing this school they had to continue their education in a Romanian school anyway. Therefore, many Jewish families wanted their children to go to a Romanian elementary school to avoid the problem of language barriers. After finishing the Jewish elementary school children had to improve their Romanian, which took some time.

There was a small library at school with religious and secular books in Yiddish and Hebrew. Children could borrow books to read them at home. There was also a box with a Star of David for donations for Palestine in every house. [The interviewee is probably referring to the so-called blue boxes of the Keren Kayemet Leisrael.] 2 Several times a year members of the organization collected these donations. I don't know how many employees they had. One and the same man came to our home to collect our donations each year. Every family gave donations depending on their income. I don't know how much money my parents put into that box or how often they did it. The collector opened the lid of the box and took the money out without counting it. I guess they counted it afterwards.

The association also sold plots of land in Palestine, and my father had a stamped certificate which was a confirmation of his ownership of a plot of land in Palestine. My father took the whole thing with humor and jokingly said that he would become the master of an estate in Palestine soon. I don't think that any of the owners of certificates took it seriously. I believe the collectors of the donations were just stimulating people to donate more that way.

There were four big two-storied Orthodox synagogues in the center of town and several smaller, one-storied ones for poorer Jews on the outskirts of town. Those smaller synagogues were called after the professional groups that attended them: tailors, shoemakers, roofers, etc. There was a rabbi at each synagogue. There was also a big house in the center of town, where rabbis and their families lived. Before World War I there were no conflicts between the different nationalities or pogroms in Vad-Rashkov. It was a quiet town.

My paternal grandfather, Shaya Kleiman, was born in Vad-Rashkov in 1857. He finished cheder. He came from a poor family with many children. I don't know how my grandfather earned his living in his younger years, but in his thirties he was the manager of a few haberdashery stores in Vad-Rashkov, which belonged to a wealthy Jew. My grandfather was married twice. He had five children in his first marriage. They were my father's stepbrothers and stepsister.

The oldest son, Pinia, whose common name 3 was Filip emigrated to America in the 1900s, where he graduated from university and got married. Pinia owned a network of pharmacies. He died in 1940 when he was in his fifties. Another son named Leepei also died young. I have no information about him. The third child in the family was my father's stepsister Esther, born in 1885. She married and became a housewife. I don't remember her husband. She died in 1916 after her daughter was born. Esther's child was raised by her husband's relatives.

Mordekhai, whose common name was Mark, was born in 1890. He studied in Russia and stayed in the USSR after 1918 since he couldn't come back to Bessarabia because it belonged to Romania then. He was married and had two sons. Mordekhai died in evacuation in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan, in 1943. One of his sons lives in Tula, Russia, and the other one emigrated to Germany in the late 1980s.

Nahman, the youngest of my father's stepbrothers, was a very rich man. After Bessarabia joined the USSR in 1940 the Soviet authorities nationalized his property. To avoid arrest he escaped to Kishinev where he hoped to be able to hide, but living in constant fear was too stressful for him, and he died of an infarction in 1940. Nahman's wife, Taibl, and their four children - Ida, born in 1918, Rachel, born in 1920, Leo, born in 1925 and David, born in 1927 - stayed in Vad-Rashkov. At the beginning of the war they didn't evacuate and were killed by the Germans in Kodyma village in 1941.

The story of my grandfather's second marriage is very interesting. My grandfather had a brother whose name I don't remember. He was a Hasid 4. After he got married he lived in the house of his in-laws. My grandfather's brother and his wife had several children. One of them was my future grandmother, Beila Kleiman, born in 1877. Once my grandfather's brother and his father-in-law argued about some religious issue. I don't know any details, but as a result my grandfather's brother had to leave his in-laws' house. My grandfather's brother moved to Palestine and his ex-wife remarried shortly afterwards. I don't know why she didn't want to keep her children, perhaps, her husband was against it. All I know is that her children were raised by relatives. My grandfather and his wife adopted one of the girls. That was how my future grandmother Beila happened to live with the family of my grandfather Shaya from the age of 7. When my grandfather's wife died - he was in his forties then - he married his niece Beila, who was 18. She was younger than his children, but they got along well and had a loving relationship. They had three children. The oldest was my father David, born in 1896. The next one was Maika, born in 1898, and the youngest, Solomon, was born in 1900.

I have dim memories of my grandparents' home. I only remember that it was a pretty big stone house. My grandfather provided well for the family, and my grandmother was a housewife. I'm sure that their family was religious because my father was raised religiously and kept his faith until the end of his life. Besides all Jewish families were religious at that time. They observed Jewish traditions and attended the synagogue.

My father and his brother studied in cheder and at the Jewish secondary school. Maika was educated at home. She had classes with a teacher every day. He taught her to write and read in Yiddish and Hebrew, prayers, the Torah, history and about the religion of the Jewish people. They spoke Yiddish in the family, but they were also fluent in Russian and Romanian.

My grandparents died before I was born. Grandfather Shaya died in 1927 at the age of 70, and Grandmother Beila died in 1928. I don't know why she died. My mother told me that she missed my grandfather a lot. They were buried according to Jewish traditions in the Jewish cemetery in Vad- Rashkov.

Maika married a local Jewish man called Iosif Nusimovich one year before my grandfather died. They had four children: Moisey, born in 1927, Beila, who was named after my grandmother, born in 1929, Khaim Shaya, born in 1933 and Noah, born in 1939. The whole family perished during the Great Patriotic War 5. Maika's husband and her son Moisey were shot by the Germans in Kodyma village. Maika and her other three children perished on the way to the ghetto near Kodyma village.

My father's younger brother, Solomon, emigrated to America in 1921 where he got married. He died a few years ago. His four children live in the USA. They are doing very well there. My father corresponded with his brother before 1940. When the Soviet power was established in Bessarabia they stopped corresponding. It wasn't safe for Soviet people to keep in touch with their relatives abroad 6 or receive parcels from them. Only in the middle of the 1980s, when perestroika began, did we manage to find our relatives. Since then we've kept in touch with my uncle and cousins.

My mother's family lived in the town of Chinisheutsi, Rezin district [30 km from Vad-Rashkov]. Now Chinisheutsi cannot be found on any map any more, just like so many small towns. The city of Rezin was under construction after the war, and many small villages around it became part of the city. My grandfather, Teviye Uchitel, was born in Chinisheutsi in the 1870s, and so was my grandmother Sarah-Khona.

I remember very little about the town. I only visited my grandparents on vacations. My mother told me that there were many Jewish families in town. Like in all other small towns Jews were involved in crafts and trade for the most part. There were only a few wealthier families; the majority was poor. There was a synagogue and a cheder in Chinisheutsi. There was no Jewish elementary school. My grandparent's house was surrounded by hills. There were four houses in that spot: my grandparents' house and the houses of their sons and their families. I remember my grandparents' house because my sister and I used to spend our summer vacation there. It was a big stone house with several rooms. There was heavy solid oak furniture, carpets and pictures. There were also guest rooms, which were used when children and grandchildren were visiting. There were bookcases stuffed with books in the living room. There was no running water in the house. Water was fetched from a well in the yard. There were stoves stoked with wood and used for heating and cooking.

There were five children in the family. My mother Golda, born in 1898, was the oldest. The next one was her sister Mariam, born in 1899, Genia followed in 1902, Aron in 1905 and the youngest son, Meyer, in 1908.

Grandfather Teviye owned a big timber storehouse. He provided well for the family. My grandmother was a housewife. She was a short, plump woman. She always had her hair neatly done and wore elegant secular clothes. My grandmother didn't wear traditional long and dark clothes. I never saw her wearing a kerchief either. My grandfather wore elegant suits, light shirts and ties and casual hats. He didn't cover his head at home but put on his hat when going out. He had a small well-groomed beard. They spoke Yiddish in the house but were also fluent in Russian and Romanian. They observed Jewish traditions, but to a smaller extent than my father's family. My father felt the need to observe all religious traditions while in my mother's family religiosity was a mere tribute to traditions. They just observed traditions so they wouldn't be different from their surrounding.

Grandfather Teviye went to a nearby synagogue on Saturday and on holidays. I don't remember if my grandmother went to the synagogue. Since I only visited them in the summer I don't know how they celebrated Jewish holidays. I don't know what kind of education my grandparents had, but they were fairly intelligent people. They had a collection of books in Hebrew, Yiddish and Russian. There were religious books in Hebrew, and the rest of them were secular books. They paid much attention to providing education for their children. All children studied Hebrew, Jewish culture and history. Their teachers taught them at home. My mother and her sisters and brothers also finished a grammar school. My mother studied at the Russian grammar school in the town of Orgeyev, Bessarabia. It was easier to enter grammar school in Orgeyev. It was tsarist Russia. My mother spoke fluent Russian.

Grandfather Teviye died in 1937. He was buried in accordance with the Jewish traditions in the Jewish cemetery in Chinisheutsi. Grandmother Sarah- Khona lived the rest of her life alone in their house. She, her brothers and their families decided to stay there. Local bandits killed them in 1941 before the Germans arrived in Chinisheutsi.

Mariam finished school with a silver medal. There was a standard rate for medals: one golden and one silver medal per class. A priest's daughter was awarded the golden medal and Mariam received the silver one. She spoke fluent French. Mariam was fond of biology. She had a collection of dried butterflies in her room. From what I remember she always had a net to catch insects that she used to dissect. After finishing grammar school Mariam entered the Faculty of Biology of Odessa University. She came home for vacations after her first year. In summer 1918 Bessarabia became a part of Romania. Romanian troops came into the town and Mariam couldn't go back to Odessa. Her parents hired a Romanian officer to teach her Romanian. She picked up the language easily and continued her studies at the university in Iasi, Romania. Upon graduation from university, she got a job at a Romanian grammar school in Iasi. She earned good money. She didn't get married. She was devoted to entomology.

In the mid-1930s the pro-fascist Iron Guard 7, the Cuzists 8 and other movements appeared. Jews were forbidden to work in state institutions. Mariam lost her job and got a new one in a private grammar school in Bolgrad, Ukraine, where she worked until the Soviet power was established in 1940. Since Mariam had a good conduct of Russian she was offered a position as a Russian teacher in a higher secondary school in Orgeyev. She was a very accurate and disciplined employee and was doing very well at her new job. She didn't observe Jewish traditions.

My mother's second sister, Genia, also finished a Russian grammar school and married a Jewish man from Chinisheutsi. Genia didn't observe Jewish traditions and distanced herself from her Jewish identity. She was a housewife. During the war her husband was on the front, and Genia and her daughter were in evacuation in Middle Asia. Genia's husband returned from the front, and they settled down in Chernovtsy. Genia died of cancer in 1961. Her daughter moved to Israel in the 1970s. She has passed away by now, too.

Aron, my mother's brother, studied with a melamed at home. He studied a lot more than other children. He was a convinced Jew, the only one of all the children, and spent a lot of time studying religion, reading the Torah and Talmud. He spoke Yiddish for the most part and Russian with an accent. When Mariam came on vacation from Iasi she told my grandparents that this might spoil his career unless he was going to become a rabbi. After that my grandfather hired a private teacher who corrected Aron's pronunciation in Russian. My grandfather wanted to send Aron to a Russian grammar school, too, but he was too old to go to the 1st grade. So my grandfather hired a teacher to prepare him for the exam that would enable him to attend the class that corresponded to his age. Aron passed the exam and was admitted. After finishing grammar school Aron went to Bucharest and entered the Pharmaceutical Faculty at Bucharest University.

After Bessarabia came under Romanian rule anti-Semitism could be felt. In Romania anti-Semitism was initiated by the intelligentsia, poets and artists, while common people were quite loyal to Jews. Aron was at the university at that time. My mother told me about an incident showing how objective lecturers were to Jewish students during the period of state anti- Semitism. There was a National 9 Democratic Party lead by Cuza. Either his son or his son-in-law, an adamant anti-Semite, lectured pharmacology at the university. He happened to be Aron's examiner. Aron had a typical Jewish appearance and last name, but he nevertheless got the highest grade at the exam. This shows that those lecturers valued truth more than their personal ambitions and convictions. Aron graduated from the university with honors and got married. His wife was the daughter of a Moldavian Zionist called Baltsan. Perhaps it was under his influence that Aron and his wife decided to move to Palestine, where Aron opened a pharmacy. His name is still on the sign of this pharmacy in Haifa. Aron passed away a long time ago, and so did his wife. His son is a professor in America.

My mother's youngest brother, Meyer, finished grammar school and took over the timber storehouse from his father, which he owned until 1940 when the Soviet power was established. Meyer married a Jewish girl. They had a traditional Jewish wedding. They had a child. Meyer and his family moved to Tyrnovo, a Moldavian village, in 1940. In 1941, after the Great Patriotic War began, the three of them were sent to Transnistria 10, to the ghetto in Obodovka village, Vinnitsa region, where they starved to death in 1942.

I don't know how my parents met. It might well be that they were introduced to each other by matchmakers, which was common in Jewish communities at that time. They got married after the mourning period over my father's parents was over in 1930. They had a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah in my mother's house in Chinisheutsi. My parents lived in my father's home in Vad-Rashkov in the beginning. My father was a very intelligent and smart man. At 30 he had a house and owned a grocery store, which was located in his house. We lived there before the war. Like all other houses in this town their house was narrow. The biggest room in the house was for the grocery store. My father worked in the store, and my mother helped him, when there were more customers in the store. There were five other rooms in the house: two rooms for the children, my parents' bedroom and a dining room. There was big kitchen with a Russian stove 11 that served for cooking and heating the house. There was a front and a back door to the house. There was a big flower garden and an orchard in the back. My mother did all the housekeeping herself.

Growing up

I was born in 1931. I was named after my deceased grandfather Shaya. My sister Beila was born in 1933. She was named after my father's mother.

I guess the store was quite profitable since we were a wealthy family. My parents were moderately religious. They wore worldly clothes. My mother and father liked fashionable clothes. My father never wore anything specifically traditional Jewish. My mother always had her hair neatly done. She didn't wear a wig; she only wore a shawl or a kerchief when she went to the synagogue. My father was more religious than my mother. On holidays they went to the synagogue together and on Saturdays my father went alone. He took me with him when I grew older. He had a prayer book, tallit and tefillin and prayed at home every day.

On Fridays my mother made food for two days. She kept Jewish meat stewed with tomato paste and jam, and cholent in pots in the oven. We bought challah for Sabbath at a Jewish bakery. On Friday evenings my mother lit the candles and said a prayer, and my father said a blessing for the house and the children. After the prayer we had a festive dinner. My parents didn't work on Saturday, but I don't remember if they followed all rules so strictly as to not turn on lights or stoke a stove. Sometimes my parents' friends came to see them, and then my father read a part from the Torah to them.

I remember Pesach best of all. There were preparations in the house beforehand. No bread or even breadcrumbs were allowed to be in the house. We bought enough matzah for the eight days of the holiday. Every Jewish family had special fancy utensils and dishes for Pesach that were passed from one generation to the next. On the eve of Pesach these utensils were taken down from the attic. If there weren't enough utensils, everyday dishes were treated in such a manner as to be ready for use on Pesach. They were to be washed with floating water, scrubbed with sand and boiled in the water with small stones before they could be used on Pesach.

My mother made traditional food: chicken broth, gefilte fish, chicken necks stuffed with fried onions and giblets, puddings from matzah and eggs. She also made strudels with nuts and raisins, honey cakes and a special Star of David or magen David shaped cookies. In the evening my father conducted the seder. After he said a prayer I posed the traditional 'four questions' [the mah nishtanah] to him in Hebrew. My father sang beautifully. He taught my sister and me Hatikvah, and we sang it together. At dinner one had to drink four glasses of wine. My father and mother drank wine, and my sister and I had water with a few drops of wine. During dinner the family had to keep the front door open for Elijah the Prophet to come in. An extra glass of wine was poured for him. My father said a prayer, and my sister and I were looking at the door to see if Elijah would come in. Sometimes Romanians or Moldavians, who wanted to play a joke, waited until the doors opened and let a cat or a dog in. Anyway, they weren't wicked jokes. We sang lots of beautiful Jewish songs until morning.

We also celebrated Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. My parents fasted on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but they didn't force us to fast. On these holidays my parents spent a whole day at the synagogue. We sat down for dinner after they returned. On Purim my mother made hamantashen. On this holiday Jewish traditions required to bring shelakhmones to one's relatives and friends, and there were many Jewish children taking trays with sweets from one house to another on this day. For Sukkot my father made a big sukkah in the yard of our house and we decorated it with green branches and color ribbons. We had meals in it for a whole week. Chanukkah was a joyful holiday. Children were given some money and spinning tops [dreidel]. At home candles were lit in a chanukkiyah every day.

On the eve of religious holidays rabbis invited Jewish families to a festive meal in their house. My father was a respectable man and always got an invitation. I went with him. It was a common Jewish belief that if a rabbi took a piece from a dish, the rest of the food would heal those that ate it. And the moment a rabbi took a piece other Jews pounced upon the rest of food. I remember my father giving me a piece of something saying, 'Take this, it's sacred'.

Yiddish is my mother tongue. I spoke my first words in Yiddish. When I turned 4 my father insisted that I studied Hebrew. My sister didn't study Hebrew. I had a teacher of Hebrew at home. He was a teacher from cheder. When I misbehaved he complained to my father about it. I studied the grammar and pronunciation of Hebrew as it's spoken in Israel. At 5 I began to study the Torah with my teacher. I didn't go to cheder.

At 6 I was to go to a Romanian elementary school. My father believed that after finishing a Romanian school I would have no problems entering a university. However, I wasn't admitted to a Romanian school because I hadn't reached the age of 8 yet. My father sent me to the 1st grade of a Jewish school. We studied all subjects in Romanian and had classes of Yiddish and Hebrew. After the 1st grade I passed exams for the Romanian school and was admitted to the 2nd grade. When I went to the Romanian school my Hebrew teacher gave me classes at home in the afternoon. We studied Hebrew, Jewish history and the Torah. In the evening my father tested me. He never punished me for making mistakes, but he made me learn until I knew the subject to his satisfaction. My teacher stopped giving me classes when I turned 9. I still remember everything I learned, but my vocabulary is rather poor now due to lack of practice.

There were many Jewish children in the Romanian school. I studied successfully and had no problems at school. There was no anti-Semitism. Sometimes other children jokingly touched the lips of a Jewish child with a slice of pork fat because they knew that Jews didn't eat pork, but these were just harmless shenanigans. I had Romanian and Jewish friends at school. We didn't care about nationality then. After school I used to play with Jewish children who lived in my neighborhood. We visited one another and did our homework together.

My mother took me and my sister to our grandparents' for our summer vacations. We went there in a horse-driven coach. My father stayed in Vad- Rashkov because he couldn't leave his store. My mother stayed with her parents a few days and left for home afterwards. My sister and I sometimes spent the whole summer with our grandparents. There was a forest near their house. We went there with our local friends. We also went to swim in the river and played games.

There was a very poor family in our neighborhood. My sister ate very little, and my mother often invited children from this family to keep my sister company at meals. My parents always tried to help less fortunate families.

In 1940 the Soviet Union declared an ultimatum to Romania demanding that Moldavia and Bessarabia be returned to the Soviet Union. Our town was located at the border of Romania with the USSR. We were separated by the Dnestr River. The majority of the population spoke good Russian since it was only 22 years before when this area belonged to Russia. They remembered the language well. People believed the Soviet propaganda and thought that the USSR was the country where people were equal, regardless of their nationality, and that there was no anti-Semitism. Even wealthier people thought that life would be good once the Soviet regime was established. My parents also believed it.

We used to swim in the river on our side of the border while there was restricted access to the riverbank on the Soviet side. There was a frontier line with military posts. Nobody ever approached the border on the opposite bank of the river, but there were electric lights and music there in the evening. Loudspeakers broadcast programs in Russian and Romanian: concerts and news and other propaganda programs - as I understand now - could be heard on our side of the border. Sometimes people wanted to cross the border and swam across the river - the Romanian side of the border was guarded poorly. As soon as such turncoats reached the Soviet territory they were arrested and sent to exile in Siberia. I got to know about it after the war. People who were in exile in Siberia told me about it.

On 28th June 1940 Soviet troops entered Bessarabia. People came into the streets to greet them. Many went to the bank of the river. Many of them had relatives in the Soviet Union they hadn't seen for 22 years. People on the opposite bank were shouting and asking for clothes, shoes and fabrics. We couldn't understand what it might mean, but when we saw the poverty of the Soviet reality we understood. How ignorant we were thinking that justice ruled the Soviet country!

The wealthiest families were arrested on the first days of the Soviet regime. My great-uncle Mayer Uchitel, who lived in Chinisheutsi, was a very wealthy man. He was deprived of his property and sent into exile in Siberia for six years. His wife and son, who was an engineer, stayed in Chinisheutsi. His daughter lived in Kishinev. Regretfully, I don't remember their names. She managed to evacuate at the beginning of the war, but Mayer's wife and son were killed by the Germans at the very beginning of the war. My grandmother's brother was a skilled businessman and even in exile he was responsible for accounting in prison. He returned after his term of exile was over.

My father wasn't considered rich. He didn't have any employees in his store, but did all work himself and the Soviet authorities didn't consider him an 'exploiter'. Rich people owned a lot more than my father, who just worked to provide for his family. The exchange rate was 1 ruble for 40 lei. The income of locals dropped dramatically, but the newcomers bought everything they saw in stores. We were surprised when they asked, 'Have you got more of it?' We couldn't understand. My parents were surprised that goods that hadn't been in demand in the past couple of years were sold out in an instant. Within two weeks the store and the storehouses were empty. My father used to purchase goods in Budapest and Bucharest, but he didn't have this opportunity any longer. My father and many other owners of stores went bankrupt. Every now and then the military announced a training alarm including the evacuation of the public. They took away goods from stores and never returned them. There were lines in stores - something that we had never seen before.

I finished the 3rd grade in 1940, but in September of the same year I had to go to the 3rd grade of a Russian school. That was a new order established by the Soviet power. My sister went to the 1st grade.

During the War

On 22nd June 1941 the Great Patriotic War began. My sister Beila, who had finished the 1st grade, was spending her vacation with Grandmother Sarah- Khona in Chinisheutsi. Aunt Mariam also went there on vacation. We didn't have any information about the situation in Europe. Very few people had radios, and newspapers published false information for the most part. During the first days of the war newspapers wrote that the Soviet troops had advanced as far as Bucharest. We believed that the Soviet army was undefeatable, and it never occurred to us that they would be leaving town after town with little resistance. We also heard the sounds of bombardment and explosions.

Mariam came to see us in July 1941 and told us that we had to leave as soon as possible. She suggested that she would take Beila and that we should all meet in Odessa where she had acquaintances. The official information claimed that the situation was stable and that the Soviet troops were advancing to the West. We believed it. Mariam and my sister left. They got to Rostov, where Mariam got a job in a school and Beila went to the 2nd grade. We heard about their fate after the war from survivors. They told us that Mariam wanted to leave when the Germans approached Rostov in 1942, but the school management told her that she had no right to leave the school until the official evacuation was announced. The management left, and she stayed behind. She and my sister were captured by the Germans. That's all we know. They must have been shot along with many other Jews in Rostov.

Air raids began in our town at the end of July, although there were no military faculties in town. We heard the roar of the approaching frontline. Evacuation began. A ferry, pulled by a motorboat, came to the bank of the Dnestr at night. People boarded it to be taken to the opposite bank to Rashkov village. We evacuated as well: my father, my mother and I, my father's sister Maika and her four children and Taibl, the wife of my father's stepbrother, and her four children. From Rashkov we headed to Kodyma, Odessa region, where we hoped to catch a train. My father went back to Vad-Rashkov to pick up our belongings. We were to wait for him in Kodyma. When we arrived in Kodyma the railway station was on fire, and there were no trains. We got accommodation in the house of a local woman. On the next day the Germans arrived in the village.

On the first days of the war the Germans ordered to keep houses unlocked. They robbed people who came to the houses at any time of the day. They only took valuables. They took away my father's gold watch and his raccoon fur coat. Jews were ordered to have a Star of David attached to their chest and back. Later they were ordered to replace them with yellow stars.

After a few days a unit of German militaries in black uniforms broke into the Jewish neighborhood. They ordered men and 14-15 year-old boys to come out of their houses. They took them to the vicinity of Kodyma. My father was still in Vad-Rashkov, and his absence saved his life. On that day more than a hundred men were shot. Maika's husband, Iosif Naumovich, her son Moisey and Taibl's sons, Leo and David, were among them. The rest of the men were kept hostages. The Germans tortured them for a few days before they shot them, too.

An acquaintance of my parents' was rescued by a German officer. When the hostages were taken into the street before their execution the German officer gave this man a bucket and ordered him to fetch some water. When he returned with the water the German yelled at him, turned over the bucket with water and told him to go fetch some water again. When the scene repeated itself the man understood that the German gave him a chance to escape. He hid in the forest. Later he stayed with a Ukrainian family. He told us his story after the war.

After her sons were shot Aunt Taibl decided to get out of Kodyma with her daughters and went to a village on the bank of the river where she had an acquaintance. She did so, but soon afterwards we heard that the locals drowned all Jews of the village in the river. I don't remember the name of this village. Shortly afterwards my father came to Kodyma.

The Germans issued an order for all evacuated Jews to return to their homes at the end of August 1941. We headed in the direction of Rashkov, but we weren't allowed to cross the river to Vad-Rashkov. Instead, we were taken to Kamenka town, Vinnitsa region, about 200 kilometers from home. We were accommodated in the house of a local Jewish family. We were guarded by Romanian gendarmes and local policemen. We stayed there for two months until the end of November 1941. The situation was really scary: people were beaten, robbed and shot. It happened several times that Jews were taken to work and drowned in the Dnestr River at the end of the day.

On 7th November all Jews in Kamenka were ordered to leave their houses and taken in the direction of Rashkov. They were convoyed by gendarmes, who shot those that couldn't catch up with the others. Later this road was called death march. We walked in the daytime and stayed wherever we were during the night. We passed Kodyma, Sloboda, Abomelnikov and Borschi. On the way we were joined by other Jews from the locations we passed, but there were fewer and fewer of us and dead bodies were left on the road. One day Aunt Maika and her two daughters perished. Our convoy kept it no secret that we were being taken away to be shot.

Once we stayed in a cowshed in Gvozdovka village overnight, which was full of dead bodies from a previous death march. Policemen told us that we were going to be shot in the village of Kriva, which we reached at the end of December. My parents, another family of four people and two men decided to escape. We managed to escape when the policemen weren't around and headed to a village across a forest. The winter of 1942 was very cold. We stayed close to villages and went to houses begging for something to eat. It also happened that people invited us to come into their houses for a rest. Many people let us into their houses, gave us food and let us stay until we got warm. We stayed overnight in fields, haystacks or half-ruined houses. Once we stayed in an abandoned house with broken windows and doors in the vicinity of Kruchinov village. Villagers brought us food and fixed the windows and doors. They offered us that we could stay there and brought us food and wood for a month.

In February 1942 policemen found us. We were beaten and thrown into the street. One man was killed. We got on our way again, and again, kind people helped us to survive. Some advised us to go to Babka-Diva village, where Adventists resided. These people were hiding us in the building of the village executive office and provided us with food. They never turned us in to the police. They went around the nearby ghettos to look for a better place for us because it was dangerous for them to hide us. They advised us to go to the ghetto in Peschana village, Odessa region, where the situation was not as tense as in other ghettos. When it got warmer in spring they wrapped us in winter coats and took us to Peschana on a coach.

We stayed in the ghetto several days and then we got into a group of Jews that were to be taken to Dzhurin village. Fortunately we were taken back to Peschana. There were no mass shootings in Peschana, and locals were sympathetic. We were also given food. We settled down in an abandoned shed. The inmates of the ghetto were taken to work, but we were given meals, which was different from other ghettos. My mother and father did miscellaneous work, helped local people in their kitchen gardens or did housework. They got food for their work. We weren't starving, but of course the inmates of the ghetto suffered from hunger, diseases and unsanitary conditions. But at least there were no mass shootings in this ghetto in Peschana. My father observed Jewish traditions in the ghetto. He prayed every day. My parents celebrated Pesach even then. There was no food, but my father conducted the seder according to the rules.

In the middle of 1943 we heard rumors that some ghetto had been liquidated. This meant that its inmates had been exterminated. These rumors almost always turned out to be true, and we began to prepare for the worst. Then we heard rumors that the war had come to its turning point and that the Soviet troops were advancing. In March 1944 Soviet tanks came to the territory of the ghetto in Peschana. The Gendarmes and the policemen had run away the day before. We were free! We hugged and kissed our rescuers. Of all the 14 people of our family, who had left Vad-Rashkov for Kodyma in July 1941, only three of us survived: my parents and I. We decided to go home. We were actually following the frontline. We walked and sometimes villagers gave us a lift on their coaches. When we reached Vad-Rashkov we didn't recognize it. In 1941 Romanians, Soviets and locals had burned down our neighborhood. We couldn't even find the location where our house used to be. Grandfather Shaya's house had also been burned down. The locals told us that the Germans had killed all rabbis.

After the War

We stayed with our acquaintance in Vad-Rashkov until my parents received a letter from Aunt Genia, who settled down in Chernovtsy after the war. She wrote to our old address hoping that we were back. Genia wrote that apartments were available in Chernovtsy and that the town hadn't been destroyed during the war. We moved to Chernovtsy and got a two-bedroom apartment after a little while. There were many vacant apartments in Chernovtsy from the locals who had left for Romania. I went to school, my father worked in a store and my mother was a housewife.

We felt at home in Chernovtsy. Before the war Jews constituted 60% of its population. After the war the number dropped dramatically, but one could still hear Yiddish in the streets. There was a Jewish school, a Jewish theater and synagogues in town. Of course, there were no charity organizations during the Soviet period. Jews knew and supported each other. If somebody was having a difficult time people collected money and helped their neighbors as much as they could. Local people told us that there were demonstrations of anti-Semitism after the war that hadn't been there before the war. A person could be abused or humiliated just because he was a Jew. To be frank, this was mostly done by those who came to Chernovtsy from the USSR. But I think that in a way anti-Semitism has always existed. State anti-Semitism started with the campaign against 'cosmopolitans' 12 in 1948.

There were at least five synagogues in Chernovtsy before 1948. My father was very happy about it. He prayed at home every day and went to the synagogue after work on Saturdays. My mother joined him on Jewish holidays. We celebrated all Jewish holidays but my father didn't make a sukkah in the yard of our crowded house. On Purim my mother made hamantashen and sent shelakhmones to our relatives and acquaintances. My parents fasted on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and celebrated Pesach. My father conducted the seder according to all rules. My parents and I liked going to the Jewish theater. When I was 13 I had my bar mitzvah.

Matzah was sold in bakeries and synagogues before 1948, but then the Jewish school and theater were closed. There was only one synagogue left, and it became difficult to get matzah. I remember that there was an underground bakery. If the Soviet authorities had found it, they would have closed it for sure. My parents picked up matzah at night as well. We always had matzah on Pesach and ate no bread. My mother was ill in the last years of her life and couldn't eat matzah - she had mamaliga instead.

I went to the 6th grade in Chernovtsy, although I had only studied three years before the war, but pupils were admitted to the classes that corresponded to their age. There were many Jewish children at school and in my class. There were also Jewish teachers. I was fond of physics and mathematics. I became a pioneer and took an active part in pioneer activities: I was the pioneer leader of a group of Young Octobrists 13 and took part in the collection of scrap. In the 8th grade I became a Komsomol 14 member.

I was in the 10th grade in 1948, during the period of the campaign against cosmopolitans. Actually it was a veiled struggle against Jews and people realized it. Newspaper publications blamed 'rootless cosmopolitans' and disclosed the Jewish names of scientists and art activists that had taken on Russian pseudonyms [in fact common names]. Many Jewish artists and poets took Russian names as pseudonyms because those who had Jewish names had fewer chances to become known: Jewish actors didn't get parts in theater productions, writers didn't get their work published. They didn't change their actual name; it was still used in their passports.

State anti-Semitism was openly expressed. My family didn't face any anti- Semitism, but we heard stories from our friends and acquaintances. I drew back from religion. I was a pioneer and a Komsomol member and used to a somewhat critical attitude towards God. My parents observed traditions and nothing changed at home. I was with my family during all activities, but I didn't tell my friends about it. I finished school in 1949. I knew there were restrictions for the admission of Jews to higher educational institutions, but I submitted my documents to the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at Chernovtsy University anyway, passed my entrance exams and was admitted. I was lucky, though. My future wife, Fenia Trachtenbroit, also took exams at Chernovtsy University. She passed them with the highest grades. Yet she was not admitted, just like so many other Jews. If any of them went to complain that Ukrainian nationals were admitted even though they only had satisfactory grades, they were offered to attend lectures as candidates to students - with the possibility to be enrolled if another student was expelled. This was no guarantee of admission, but it was a chance. My future wife became a student even before the first term was over. Fenia and I were successful students and lecturers treated us well.

Fenia was born in the Bessarabian town of Brinceni in 1931. She was the only child in a religious Jewish family. Her father, Aron Trachtenbroit, was an accountant and her mother, Mina Trachtenbroit [nee Zilberman], a housewife. Fenia had a happy childhood until the Germans occupied Brinceni at the beginning of the war. All Jews of the town were taken to Transnistria. Fenia and her parents stayed in the ghetto of Kopaigorod, Vinnitsa region, until 1944. It was a miracle that they survived. They had typhoid in the ghetto. They lost about 15 close relatives to the war. After they were liberated in March 1944, Fenia and her parents returned to Brinceni where Fenia finished a secondary school. We met at the entrance exams for Chernovtsy University and have been together ever since.

In January 1953 the Doctors' Plot 15 began. Students at the Faculty of Mathematics didn't believe the official explanation, which was that Jewish doctors intended to poison comrade Stalin. We didn't share our thoughts though because there was a KGB informer in each group. We knew who it was in our group, and he knew that we knew. This student was involved with the KGB somehow, but we knew that he didn't report on us because he understood it was dirty business. I don't remember how we found out that he was working for the KGB; students just told each other to be quiet in his presence. We treated him loyally. The Doctors' Plot had no impact on my family. There were rumors that all Jews were to be deported to Birobidzhan 16. It might have happened, if Stalin hadn't died in 1953. He was announced to be ill on 1st March and died on 5th March. Jews used to say, 'See, it's God's will that he died on that day'. I was one of the few who were glad that he passed away.

We got married in 1954 when we were in our final year at university. We had a civil ceremony in the district registry office. We didn't have a Jewish wedding because it was a hard and complicated time and authorities might have punished us if we had had a Jewish religious ceremony. My mother cooked a wedding dinner for members of the family and our closest friends. Upon graduation my wife and I got mandatory job assignments 17 and went to a small village in Chernovtsy region to work as teachers of mathematics.

After the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party 18, where Khrushchev 19 made a speech denouncing the cult of Stalin, I was full of hope about a happier life. I believed that the truth had finally won and that we would have a decent life, but things continued like before.

Two years later, when our assignment was over, we decided to return to Chernovtsy, but we couldn't find any vacancies at schools. There were vacancies for teachers of physics and mathematics in a Moldavian school on the outskirts of Chernovtsy. My wife and I spoke fluent Moldavian and got employed at that school. It took us several years to find a job in Chernovtsy. I finally got a job at a secondary school in Chernovtsy in 1971 and worked there until I retired in 1992.

I didn't face any anti-Semitism at work. I still keep in touch with my former colleagues, Jewish and non-Jewish. I value people for their human qualities. I did suffer from state anti-Semitism. When I was awarded a title for my achievements in education, my documents were submitted to the Ministry of Education four times before they gave their approval. At school I was head of the school trade union committee for 24 years and people brought their issues and problems forward to me.

My wife and I spoke Yiddish at home. We didn't celebrate holidays at home because teachers were referred to as 'ideological workers'. We weren't allowed to discuss religious issues with our pupils, or be religious ourselves. The practice of religion was outlawed in the USSR. However, we visited my parents to celebrate with them. We always took part when my father conducted the seder on Pesach. The only thing my wife and I could observe was fasting. We celebrated Soviet holidays at work - teachers and pupils just had to take part in the parades, and then there were concerts at school where schoolchildren performed. Afterwards teachers got together at a table to celebrate.

We lived in a room in a communal apartment 20 with a number of other tenants. Despite all discomforts we often had guests: our former fellow students, classmates and colleagues. Most of them were Jews, but not all of them. Our childhood friends were all Jews. My wife and I had long summer vacations, which lasted for two months. We usually visited our parents. Sometimes we spent our vacations elsewhere; at the seashore or traveling to other towns. We visited Moscow, Kiev and Leningrad.

We were very concerned about the wars in Israel in 1967 [the Six-Day-War] 21 and 1973 [the Yom Kippur War] 22. Of course, we all hoped that Israel would win. We were distressed about the violation of diplomatic relations between the USSR and Israel, but we weren't surprised. This was the typical policy of the USSR - the violation of relations with disobedient parties, that is, with those who didn't follow the communist way of progress.

My wife and I sympathized with the Jews that moved to Israel in the 1970s. We couldn't move there. My parents and my wife's parents weren't well. They couldn't move and didn't want to. Then we grew older. If we had children we would move to give them an opportunity to have a decent life, but we have no children, due to the hard years in the ghetto, and we are afraid to start a new life at our age.

My father died in 1975. We buried him in accordance with Jewish traditions in the Jewish cemetery. There were two rabbis at his funeral - I invited one, and the other one came when he heard about my father's death. My father was buried wrapped in a shroud. I recited the required prayers [the Kaddish]. He was a respected man among Jews in Chernovtsy and many of them came to his funeral. After the funeral my wife and I couldn't observe all Jewish traditions: we worked and couldn't even leave work for a week. My mother died in 1983. Since I had worked at school for a long time my colleagues were supposed to come to the funeral. It wasn't safe to have a traditional religious funeral with teachers involved because they were responsible for the education of the young generation. There were no colleagues and pupils of ours at my father's funeral, but they came to my mother's funeral. A religious teacher would have lost his job in an instant. The funeral was to be in the afternoon, and we had a religious ritual completed in the morning. We buried her without a prayer, but in a shroud as required, in the Jewish cemetery beside my father's grave.

I was rather skeptical about perestroika, which began in 1986. I thought it was another 'activity' of the Communist Party. After some time I saw that things began to change for the better. Newspapers became more interesting, and books, which had been banned in the past, were published. The first steps of the restoration of the Jewish spirituality and culture were made at that time, and I became actively involved in this movement. I was chairman of the Jewish charity committee that was established during the Soviet regime in 1988. Many problems that had made our life difficult before perestroika were eliminated. Religion, although it wasn't officially acknowledged by the state, wasn't forbidden any more. The attitude towards Jews changed for the better. Jewish writers began to have their books published, which hadn't happened before. A Jewish association of culture and a public cultural fund were established in that period. I participated in both organizations. Jewish life began to revive even before Ukraine declared its independence in 1991. Jewish organizations, theaters and art collectives were established. People visited Jewish exhibitions. A Jewish library and school were opened in Chernovtsy.

When Hesed was established in independent Ukraine I became chairman of the Board of Hesed. This organization supports older people and helps them to communicate and satisfy their spiritual needs. I'm the chief editor of Hesed News, the newspaper published by Hesed. I do this work for free. My wife and I receive a pension given to former inmates of ghettos. We can manage with what we receive, and when somebody needs help we are always happy to provide assistance. I go to the synagogue on Jewish holidays and on the death anniversaries [Jahrzeit] of members of my family. My wife and I celebrate Jewish holidays and Sabbath at home. We have lived a difficult, but interesting life. I'm grateful that we've found each other in this big world.

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