Travel

Mendel Kreimer
Kishinev
Moldova
Interviewer: Nathalia Fomina
Date of interview: May 2004

Mendel Kelmanovich Kreimer is a tall gray-haired old man wearing thick-lens glasses. He is intelligent, bilious and short-tempered. He has a hearing problem and speaks loudly for this reason, and bangs his fist on the table to get attention. He often asks me to turn off my tape-recorder for unknown reasons. He doesn't remember much about his relatives, but he has very sweet memories of them. When he talks about his wife Enna, his face softens and that's when one can tell how much kindness his stern appearance hides. He carefully keeps the rare photographs of his dear ones in a thick album. He didn't agree to give us some of them for scanning. I could hardly manage to convince him to be photographed. Mendel hardly gets along with his daughter-in-law and grandson. He didn't even want to tell me their names. He lives alone in a one-bedroom apartment in a small building, hidden in a yard on Stefan cel Mare Street. His apartment is rather plainly furnished. However, his spacious and bright room is ideally clean.

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

My family background

My maternal grandfather, Shlomo Tzalik, came from a Cohanite family [Descendants of Aaron, the high priest in ancient Israel, bearing specific roles in the synagogue service]. He was born in Bessarabia 1, in Kishinev in 1862. During the Romanian rule [see Annexation of Bessarabia to Romania] 2 my grandfather was a grocer. He was very religious. He had a big white beard and moustache, wore a black kitel and a hat and was very tidy. My grandfather went to the synagogue, and also prayed at home with his tallit and tefillin on. I loved him dearly and went to the synagogue and prayed for him. I stopped going there after his death in 1932. I remember how we all went to Grandfather Shlomo's place for the seder on Pesach: there were about forty relatives who got together. We enjoyed it greatly. My grandfather spread his spiritual strength on us.

My maternal grandmother Beila [Tzalik] was very kind and sweet. She was a housewife like all the Jewish women of the time. We have none of my grandmother's photographs: actually, photographing wasn't a custom with Jews. I know that my grandfather's family suffered from the 1903 pogrom [see Kishinev pogrom of 1903] 3: their house was ruined and their belongings were stolen. After the pogrom my grandfather's family rented an apartment. Anti-Semitism was rather strong at this time in Russia, and the government was aware of pogroms. The government's position was that if two people fight and the third one wins - divide and rule. The government supported the Black Hundred 4 fighters unofficially during this horrific pogrom. When the Jews saw that they had nobody to count on, they organized Jewish self-defense units [see Jewish self-defense movement] 5: they were butchers at first, and began to kill these bandits. The tsarist police had to interfere and stop this pogrom.

My grandfather died in 1932 at the age of 70. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery and later, some time in the 1960s, a part of the Jewish cemetery was removed to make a park. We moved the gravestones, and my grandfather lies near my grandmother, and some other members of our family. My grandparents had five children. My mother's older brother Yefim Tzalik and his family moved to Buenos Aires from tsarist Russia. This might have happened after the pogrom. All I remember about him is that his son was a notary in Brazil. We corresponded with him before World War I. Another brother, Solomon [Tzalik] was a bachelor. He lived in Kishinev and died before the war.

My mother's older sister Esphir was married to Iosif Vyvartsev. They moved to Kishinev from Russia. I don't remember what he did for a living. Esphir was a housewife. They had two children: Fenia and Lyonia [affectionate for Leonid]. Lyonia was ten years older than me. Fenia was his older sister. She married Shafir, a doctor from Kishinev. He studied medicine at the Petersburg University. When the revolution began in 1917 [see Russian Revolution of 1917] 6, he moved to Sorbonne in France. Later, he became a well-known therapist in Kishinev. Lyonia got married in 1939. I attended his wedding. There were many other relatives there. It was a traditional Jewish wedding, but it didn't prevent Lyonia from divorcing his wife later. During the Great Patriotic War 7 Esphir and Iosif stayed in Kishinev and were killed. Fenia and her husband evacuated to Alma-Ata [today Kazakhstan]. Lyonia was at the front. After the war they lived in Kishinev. Lyonia remarried a few times. We kept in touch with them. They have both passed away.

My mother's sister Lisa was married. Her family name was Lembritskaya. She had no children. Aunt Lisa was an assistant doctor. She fell ill with cancer. I remember that she stayed in our home and my mother looked after her till her last day. Aunt Lisa died in 1940.

My mother, Surah Kreimer [nee Tzalik] was born in 1892. My mother didn't get any education. She could hardly write her name. She was very religious having been raised in a Cohanite family with very strict religious rules. My mother was very good and nice. I never asked her how she and my father met or whether theirs was a love or arranged marriage.

My paternal grandfather, Berl Kreimer, also came from Kishinev. Grandfather Berl served in the tsarist army and took part in the Russian-Turkish war [1877-1878] 8. My grandfather told me there was a Territorial Army formed then to liberate Bulgaria from the Turks [see Liberation of Bulgaria from the Ottoman Rule] 9. In tsarist Russia my grandfather was a timber dealer. He rented forest areas, hired people to cut the trees to sell wood. During the Romanian rule after 1918 he owned a Laundromat. My father's mother died long before I was born. I don't remember her name. My grandfather remarried. His second wife, Inda, must have been very pretty, when she was young. She came from a village. Her brother owned a tavern in a village near Kishinev. Inda and my grandfather had a son and a daughter: they were my father's stepbrother and stepsister, Isaac and Mania. Grandfather Berl died before Grandfather Shlomo. I don't remember his funeral. My father also had a brother and a sister. His older brother Leizer and his wife moved to Argentina. They had no children. We lost contact with him before the war.

My father's older sister Basia [Brihtan, nee Kreimer] finished a gymnasium in tsarist Russia. Her husband Mendel Brihtan was a journalist in Kishinev. His father, Izko Brihtan, was a merchant of the first or second guild [see Guild I] 10 in Kishinev. They had two children: Mikhail and Dina. I have a table economic calendar of Bessarabia with an inquiry section and an address-calendar issued in Kishinev in 1895. Mendel Brihtan wrote about Pushkin 11 in Kishinev in this calendar. Mendel Brihtom also debated with Krushevan, the first anti-Semite in Kishinev [Krushevan: editor of an anti- Semitic newspaper, leader of the Black Hundred 'Union of Russian people' in Kishinev], in mass media. Before the 1903 pogrom, Brihtan and his family left Kishinev for America to save their lives. They had a very hard life there for a long time, but they must have managed in the end, considering that they could afford to give their children a good education. Dina was an English teacher and Mendel owned a printing house. My father corresponded with them before World War I, but I failed to restore communication after the war.

My grandfather Berl sent my father's younger brother Moisey to study engineering in Germany. When he was a third-year student, Moisey became fond of social democratic ideas, and got actively involved in politics and gave up his studies. My grandfather was very angry about it: he had wasted his money. In 1919, after Bessarabia was annexed to Romania, Moisey ran away to Russia. He was a brilliant mathematician and lectured in Odessa. This is all I know about him.

My father's stepbrother Isaac graduated from the Medical Faculty of Odessa University. During World War I he was at the front where he gained medical experience. After the war he worked in Kishinev as a dentist for Kogan, a female dentist. He had three children: David, Zina and Bella. David and Zina were doctors. Zina worked at the ambulance. Uncle Isaac's wife, whose name I don't remember, died in evacuation in Central Asia during the war. Uncle Isaac died in Kishinev in the 1960s. I kept in touch with his children after the war. My father's stepsister Mania Kreimer and her mother lived with us. During the war they stayed in Kishinev and were killed.

Growing up

My father, Kelman Kreimer, was born in Kishinev in 1886. My father was six years older than my mother. He finished elementary school in Kishinev. Before World War I my father served in the tsarist army. He had beautiful handwriting and served as a writing clerk. His military service was in Poland which belonged to the tsarist Russia then. Their military unit was located near the hunting ground which belonged to a tsarist family. When the family came to hunt, the soldiers were taught to hunt wild boars. They also had to learn safety rules to be on the safe side. This is what my father told me about his service. My father got married in the 1910s after the army. I never asked him about the wedding, but I'm sure it was a Jewish wedding. It couldn't have been otherwise at that time. I know that my parents' first daughter was born soon after their wedding and died in infancy. I don't even know her name. My second sister, Dina, was born in 1914. I was born seven years later, on 21st July 1921.

My father owned a leather goods store at the time. He purchased leather goods from manufactures in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Germany paying cash for them. He also arranged railroad shipments. My father got broke during the inflation in Germany. He kept all his cash in German Marks. When I was small I saw a whole heap of Mark notes in the wardrobe. My father lost such a whole lot of money: he was so shocked that he even wanted to commit suicide, but my mother managed to calm him down. She was a strong and intelligent woman. My father had no employment for a year or two. My sister Dina and I had lunches at our Grandfather Shlomo and Grandmother Beila's house, and my parents had meals at Grandfather Berl's house. We survived through those hard years.

My sister Dina completed elementary school and four years of secondary school. Since my father couldn't afford to pay for her further education, Dina was sent to ORT 12. It was a Jewish organization where children from poor families studied different professions. Dina studied sewing. Later, my father managed to get a job as a financial controller in a joint-stock company. This transportation company arranged passenger transportations by the following routes: Kishinev-Orgeyev, Kishinev-Gonchesti, Kishinev- Kreuleni, and Kishinev-Leovo. My father was smart and honest. He managed to increase the company profit significantly within two months and his salary doubled. He told me that their drivers were mainly children of wealthy parents who had escaped from the revolution in Russia in 1917. Many of them owned their own vehicles. My father had to work a lot: almost twelve hours per day and had no days off. In winter he often had to walk to the town since vehicles would get stuck in deep snow. My father only had a day off on Yom Kippur and Pesach, when he went to the synagogue and took me with him.

My mother made sure that we observed all Jewish traditions. We spoke Yiddish at home. All Jews observed all rules during capitalism in Bessarabia. [The interviewee means before Bessarabia/Moldova became a part of the Soviet Union in 1940.] Religion saved our people from disappearing since mixed marriages were forbidden. Judaism is actually the only mono- national religion, the one nation's religion. Pesach was the main and most favored holiday. We went to Grandfather Shlomo's house for the first and second seder. [Pesach, like all Jewish holidays lasts two days outside the Holy Land.] Grandfather always conducted seder. There was only family there. Each relative had a seat assigned to him. The youngest kids were to steal the afikoman - a piece of matzah, that grandfather hid away. Everybody had wine and there was a full glass for Prophet Elijah. The door was kept open for him. We observed these rituals accurately. We also sang Pesach songs. I remember a special feeling of joy that I had never felt before.

We fasted on Yom Kippur. I fasted after the age of 13. Frankly speaking, I only managed half the day. When I went into the yard with grapes, my mother would scream, 'God help us!', fearing that the neighbors would see this disgrace.

It's impossible to forget Chanukkah! All children went around to their relatives collecting Chanukkah gelt. Chanukkah gelt meant getting sweets and other joys of life. Chanukkah was a joyful feast. We, boys, also played with the dreidel. There were special games and special rules.

On Purim, my mother made hamantashen and fluden. For fluden she bought special patterned waffles and boiled nuts in honey for filling. There was also baklava. I have vague memories about them, but there were performances: purimspiels presenting Mordechai, Esther and Ahasuerus. I don't remember whether I went to the synagogue to listen to the Scroll of Esther [Megillat Ester]. If Grandfather Shlomo had lived with us I would have remembered more about rituals. After he died in 1932, I stopped going to the synagogue.

My father sent me to the elementary school in Kishinev: 'Magen David Jewish gymnasium for boys.' There was Hebrew taught there and a few Judaism- related subjects in Hebrew. When I finished four grades, my father realized that he couldn't afford to educate me any further. He decided a man had to learn a profession and sent me to a commercial school. This was the way it happened during capitalism: how the human mind worked. I had to pass the exams in the Romanian elementary school in order to enter this commercial school. I need to say that my generation of young people in Kishinev was lucky to have great teachers. They were the best lecturers of Russia who had escaped from the revolution of 1917, and King Ferdinand I 13 of Romania gave them shelter. After Bessarabia was annexed to Romania in 1918 they taught Russian in gymnasiums for five or six years before they learned sufficient Romanian to teach in it. They were well-educated and good people. I must say, I had some talents, but I didn't care about studying. Eberwei, the director of our gymnasium, was a German teacher. Eberwei and Scheibler were authors of all German textbooks in Romania. Scheibler was our English teacher. We also studied French.

My father sometimes failed to pay school fees on time. One day I got expelled from school. However, working for his transportation company he managed to resolve this problem. Romanian authorities censored all mailings. Bessarabian Christian clergymen had confidential correspondence. For example, when Christian priest Orgievskiy wanted to send a letter to the Bessarabian metropolitan in Kishinev past the Romanian censors writing about the monastery profits, etc., he asked my father to transport such letters. I delivered those letters to their addresses at night. This was my income. Our class tutor, Zubkov, was also an accountant for the Orthodox Church Bank of Bessarabia. [Editor's note: There is no evidence available for such a bank in Moldova and it is unlikely that the Orthodox Church had its own bank. Probably Zubkov worked at the office of the Bessarabian Metropolitan.] My father requested one of the clergymen to pull strings for our family to pay half the school fees. It worked out well. Zubkov called me and said, 'You must receive at least seven to eight marks.' We had a ten- point system. 'If it is below seven, you will have no indulgences'. I tried my best and had some success.

Kishinev was a small town, the majority of its population, which was 50,000 or 60,000, if my memory doesn't fail me, was Jewish [According to the all- Russian census of 1897, in Kishinev there were 108,483 residents, 50,237 Jews among them.] Jews resided in various districts of the town wherever they could afford, but tried to have Jewish neighbors around to feel safer. The locals respected Jews who believed in God and respected other religions. There were Russians and Bulgarians in Kishinev. Romanians believed all Bessarabians to be too Russified and had little trust in us. Bessarabia was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire for 300 years and then there were 108 years of the Russian tsarist rule. Of course, we were more attached to the Russian culture, though the Romanian culture also had its positive sides, but still they are so different, these two cultures.

I realized that one had to be strong to stand for oneself, when I was young. My friend Ardelianu's father, a Romanian, served in the fire brigade on Sadovaya Street, and his mother was German. They were a very decent family. Ardelianu and I went to the town gym where we had to pay a fee: this wasn't the Soviet way where everything was free of charge. When I worked at night for my father: delivering letters, there was always a risk of attacks by hooligans and I had brass knuckles with me. This was dangerous, but I didn't care. I could fight and had no problems in this regard. I could walk with a girlfriend in a park at night and she would be safe with me. I was in love with a Jewish girl, Clara Stiglitz. She studied at the Jeanne D'Arc gymnasium. I had a close friend whose name was Ilia Barenstein. Ilia came from a traditional Jewish family. We met at a New Year's party. I had only Jewish friends and we got together at parties. I often visited Clara Stiglitz and once I met her friend Enna Goldstein, a short pretty girl. It would have never occurred to me that many years later Enna would become my second wife.

During the War

When Cuzists 14 came to power, my German teacher Schreiber, who had pro- fascist ideas, became mayor of the town. Two months later the Iron Guard 15 fighters, who were worse than Hitler's forces, killed Armand Calinescu, Minister of Home Affairs of Romania. [Armand Calinescu, Premier of Romania was murdered in September 1939.] This happened approximately in 1938. Karl II, the King of Romania [see King Carol II] 16, ordered to kill one or two activists of the Iron Guard in bigger towns. Here, in Kishinev, on the corner of Pushkinskaya Street and Alexandrovskiy Avenue, where there is a newspaper kiosk now, a gendarme guarded the bodies of two sentenced Iron Guard fighters. There was a note in Romanian: 'This will happen to every traitor of the state.' Later, my gymnasium fellow student told me that the Germans had killed Schreiber during the war. They said that he simultaneously served the German and English intelligence.

My older sister Dina became a dressmaker after finishing a sewing school. She did very well and very soon she had her own circle of customers. She earned well. She also helped my mother a lot with running the house. My mother had a severe gynecological surgery and couldn't lift any weights. I also tried to make her life easier and did my own laundry. We cared a lot about each other in the family. My parents supported each other. Theirs was a hard life. My father was well-read and knew many interesting things and I enjoyed talking to him, when he was free. In 1939 Dina got married. She had a big wedding party with a chuppah and a rabbi. Unfortunately, I can't remember her husband's first name. His last name was Villerman.

In May 1940 I successfully passed the exams for a Bachelor's degree. Our examiners were teachers from out and we had to know everything by heart and demonstrate good intellectual skills. At this time the Soviet troops came to Bessarabia [also see Annexation of Bessarabia to the Soviet Union] 17 and I went to work as an accountant in the Border Forces Construction Agency on the bank of the Prut River, the new borderline between Romania and the USSR. This was construction site 12 of the Kiev military department of the NKVD 18 USSR. This organization was responsible for the construction of barracks and fortifications. They paid well and offered good working conditions. There was an earthquake in 1940 in Kishinev. It destroyed the roof of the neighboring two-storied house and ruined the ceiling in our house. I requested my boss Zyrianskiy, also a Jew, to help me repair our house. Stalin issued an order about providing assistance to civilians after the earthquake and my boss promised to help. Two weeks later our roof was repaired. He kept his word: only the best, very decent and honest people served in the frontier troops at that time. In spring 1941, I had a free two week vacation in the central trade union recreation home in Odessa. I was accompanied by an NKVD employee since Bessarabians weren't allowed entry into the USSR, so that they didn't know what was actually happening there. I saw the reality for the first time: lines for sugar and calico. They artificially created a paradise in Bessarabia with plenty of goods and low prices. The Soviet power was good at making this sham, and my father used to say that the Soviet power was a purimspiel.

When the war began on 22nd June 1941, the military office mobilized me and my friend Ilia Barenstein for grain harvesting on the bank of the Dnestr. We were taught to mow and harvest and to leave no crops for the enemy. Later, we were taken to dig tank ditches near Odessa. The soil there was like stone! However, I was used to hard labor since childhood, and it was no problem for me. There was a Soviet slogan: 'who works not for us, works for the enemy!', and it was mandatory to fulfill the standard scopes. Stronger guys helped those who failed to complete their scopes. Then Stalin issued an order that he had no trust in Bessarabians, and we were sent away! German troops were approaching Nikolaev and Odessa region. Ilia and I walked to the east.

I was thinking of getting to the town of Chkalov in Orenburg region, where we had distant relatives and I expected to hear about my parents. Field kitchens left everything behind them in a hurry: I remember cabbages on the sides of roads. Then a column of vehicles from the construction organization caught up with us. The driver recognized me and stopped and when Zyrianskiy, my former boss, heard that we had no documents, he said he could take us to Dzhankoy in the Crimea. He gave us food and helped us to obtain an evacuation certificate from the town executive committee in Nikolaev. Also Zyriansky offered his warranty for me to obtain 500 rubles allowance. We said our 'good byes' in Dzhankoy. After the war, when I worked as an accountant at the furniture factory in Kishinev, our chief engineer's name was also Zyrianskiy. We talked and he said, 'This was my uncle. He perished in the Crimea.'

From there we took freight trains moving in whatever direction. There was no sufficient food. At railway stations we got some hot meals: a kind of soup, at evacuation points. We arrived at a station near Stalingrad on the Volga and from there went to Ulianovsk up the river by boat. From there we went to Orenburg in the Ural. We found my distant relatives, but they weren't happy to see us. They had no information about my parents, or sister. Winter was coming and it was getting cold. What were we to do? We went to Central Asia in the south. On the way Ilia and I lost each other. I arrived at Fergana [today Uzbekistan] and went to the evacuation office. It sent me to the nearest kolkhoz 19 to work as an assistant accountant. They gave me a warm welcome, accommodated me in the kolkhoz office and provided food: Uzbek people are very hospitable. They grew cotton. I collected data about cotton quantities from accounting clerks of crews and sent it to the district executive committee.

In autumn, when it often rained, the crews had to dry cotton before shipping it to storage, and I couldn't check the accuracy of the data received from the accounting clerks. They happened to cheat me. I talked to the chairman of the kolkhoz: 'The accounting clerks cheat me and I send the wrong data to the district executive committee, but I don't want to cheat on the Soviet power.' He replied, 'We've created all conditions for you and we give you food. What else do you want?' and I said, 'I want to work honestly and not cheat. I'll complain to the district executive committee.' The next morning I went to the district town. After I had covered eight kilometers the chairman caught up with me riding his horse. He began to threaten me with his whip, 'I'll kill you!' I replied, 'So what? I'm not scared. I've seen worse things.' He growled, 'What do you want?' I told him that I wanted to work honestly. I didn't want to send fictitious data to the district executive committee. He asked me if I would go to a tractor operator training course. I said that I'd love to, as long as I would work honestly. I studied there for three months before I fell ill with spotted fever. I was taken to the district hospital. I was unconscious for ten days, but I was strong and recovered. I could hardly walk with a stick as I felt so exhausted. I returned to the kolkhoz, but I couldn't work any longer and they fired me giving me food and money for my work. I sold some food products there.

I kept thinking about my parents and sister. I decided to look for them in the Caucasus. I arrived at Krasnovodsk [today Turkmenistan], and wanted to cross the Caspian Sea to get to Makhachkala [today Russia], but I couldn't get a ticket without a pass. Fortunately, I met Polish Jews who had evacuated from former Polish territories [see Annexation of Eastern Poland] 20. We talked in Yiddish. By the way, I think Yiddish needs to be preserved as a language since it gave the opportunity to American and European Jews to understand each other. These Poles worked as loaders in the dock. They offered me to help me get on a boat illegally, but I didn't want any problems and refused. I told them my story and they offered me to work with them as a loader. Krasnovodsk was a seaport, there was a desert around it, and tankers shipped fresh water from Makhachkala. Dockers and railroad people constituted its main population. They helped me to get a job as a loader and accommodated me in their hostel. I'm still grateful to them for their assistance. I was so happy to have a clean bed. I washed myself and felt human again.

The Poles did my work for me at first: I couldn't lift a spade to load sand or mortar. It lasted a week. They found a vacancy for me: housing and utility assistant manager. My boss Lapin drank all day long. I was to process all accommodation and housing registration documents, but I wasn't materially responsible. I gave Lapin all monthly payments I received from tenants and he kept all the receipts. A month later, the accounting office called me and declared there was about two thousand rubles missing. I told them that I had given all the money to my boss, but they didn't listen to me. In the evening I told my friends and started crying. They calmed me down: 'Don't worry, we saw the receipts in the toilets.' I went to a militia office and told them I'd seen the receipts in the pits. They hired janitors who picked these receipts and cleaned them. When they inspected the receipts, they fired Lapin and wanted to appoint me as the manager, but I refused: 'I shall not work with you. If you suspected me, I have no trust in you either.'

Through this whole time I studied Russian which I'd never learned at school. I went to the library on weekends where I read books and newspapers. Once I saw an announcement in a newspaper about an accounting course in Ashgabat [today Turkmenistan] for those who knew Moldovan, to work as chief accountants in Moldova after the war. I sent my documents there and received an invitation. Soviet laws encouraged studying and nobody would have stopped a person going to study. I was accommodated in a good hostel. There were experienced trainers evacuated with the Kharkov Financial Economic College. I finished this course with honors in 1943 and was sent to work as assistant chief accountant in the Raypotrebsoyuz which was a district consumption office, in Molotov region, Charjou district [today Turkmenistan]. I tried to do my work well.

Half a year later, I did an audit in a village and met my future wife Ludmila Zaitseva, who was Russian. She came from Belgorod [today Russia]. She was two years younger than me. Ludmila finished a midwife course in Kharkov and was sent to work in Central Asia [see mandatory job assignment in the USSR] 21. I walked to her covering eight kilometers to the village. I stayed overnight with her and went to work in the morning. I covered 16 kilometers every day, but it wasn't a problem for me: I was young. Our feelings were what mattered. Then my chief accountant invited me to his office and said that his niece had fallen in love with me. He tried to slander Ludmila: 'She is this and that...' Her sin was that she dared to wash in the aryk wearing her swimming suit. This was something outstanding to do in Uzbekistan. I stopped him: 'I don't care about her past. I love her'. And we got married.

The chief accountant couldn't help taking revenge: he demoted me and reduced my salary. I was assigned as an accountant in a grain stocks office. I complained to the HR department in the Oblpotrebsoyuz, which was the regional consumption office. They assigned me as chief accountant in the Raypotrebsoyuz on the border with Afghanistan. My wife and I received a small room with a stove and a bed: this was the wartime and any luxuries were out of the question. We were very happy. In this area they grew silkworms. All district leaders wore silk shirts, but the workers couldn't afford them. I established the procedure to deliver silk to stores past the district officials. The officials didn't like this, of course. They wanted to send me to the army, but I was rather short-sighted. Besides, the first secretary of the district committee supported me. He was a decent Turkmen. I was a diligent employee, and the chief accountant of the Oblpotrebsoyuz, a woman, made me her assistant in Charjou. My wife and I moved to Charjou. I received a furnished apartment. Our son was born in 1944, in March. We named him Valeriy after Valeriy Chkalov 22.

I went to do audits. In one district I discovered about 99,000 rubles in cash: this was an unrealistic amount for them, it couldn't be true. I went to talk with the chairman of the Oblpotrebsoyuz: 'What a shock - they steal industrial goods and food products during the war, this mustn't happen!' He replied, 'They told you to go to the base and take whatever you want. You refused, but the regional officials didn't, and we can't live otherwise. If you make much ado about it, they will send you to the army.' I received a notice and was sent to a reserve regiment in Kattakurgan, an artillery management platoon where they trained march companies to the front within three months: this was March 1945. Three months later, at the target shooting I was aiming at the target with my left eye, though I was required to do this with my right eye. I could see better with my left eye and I hit it!

The regiment commander approached me, and I stood up with excitement: 'Why are you aiming with your left eye?' I told him that I could see better with my left eye, and I had succeeded. He said, 'You aren't subject to regular service and they had no right to train you for it.' He sent me to the commission that confirmed that I wasn't subject to regular service. I was made a writing clerk in the food logistical service. I tried to help my former fellow comrades by providing them with more food. Two months later I fell ill with hepatitis. We were staying in mud huts and there were rats in them. I had to stay in hospital for a month. Then I got a two-week vacation and went to see my wife and son. This was summer and we had won the war, but there was still war with Japan 23, and our companies were sent to the Far East. After the victory over Japan our regiment was liquidated and I went back home to Kishinev.

Post-war

We arrived in Kishinev in 1946. My parents' home was ruined by bombing. I didn't find any neighbors. My cousin Fenia Shafir had returned from evacuation in Alma-Ata. She told me that my parents, my sister Dina and her husband had perished during evacuation. She didn't give me any details, though. I still think that Fenia had some information of their death, but never told me anything. At first my wife, my son and I stayed in a hotel on Mikhailovskaya Street. I used the money I had received at demobilization. I could get a job in Kishinev, but no apartment. I became chief accountant of a catering trust. We moved to Beltsy. My wife went to work as an assistant obstetrician in the maternity hospital. I worked honestly, but honesty had no way in the Soviet Union. The director of the trust, Burlachenko, didn't like it when I fired the senior accountant of a commercial 'chaynaya' for breach of trust. [Editor's note: 'chay': tea in Russian. In the 1950s, in the USSR cafes they served tea, snacks and vodka.] He issued an order appointing me the senior accountant of this 'chaynaya.' I understood that there was nothing else to complain about.

A few years later, I was transferred to the Kishinev saw mill and received an apartment in a new two-storied building on Kuibyshev Street. I moved there alone, and later my wife obtained a certificate that I had a job in Kishinev. She needed it to resign from work at the maternity hospital. The next day I received a telegram from our neighbor in Beltsy: 'I've got the keys to your apartment. Your wife and son have left.' This came to me as a surprise. My wife and I never had any conflicts. I had a heart attack at work on hearing this, though I was a healthy man. Later, I found out that she had met a Russian man, quite a drunkard. This was an unexpected blow. I didn't think I deserved it. A year later I bumped into my prewar girlfriend Clara Stiglitz, who said that Enna Goldstein was also in Kishinev. I was very happy to hear this. I knew Enna well, her house, her upbringing and human qualities. We began to see each other.

Enna was born into a wealthy Jewish family in Kishinev in 1921. Her father, Shopse Goldstein, owned a house on Kagulskaya Street. He was a tradesman. He also worked as a lab assistant in the Kogan mill, a big enterprise in Kishinev. Her mother, Leya Goldstein, was a housewife. Leya always supported her poor neighbors giving them potatoes or wood, etc. Enna followed into her mother's footsteps. Enna had a younger sister named Mera. They both studied in the French gymnasium named after Jeanne D'Arc. Enna finished the gymnasium. Shopse was a very smart and enterprising man. A few days before the Soviet rule was to be established he told the bank employees, 'You can have this money to remove me from the list of big clients.' When the Soviet power was established, he gave two of his six rooms to the passport office manager, which helped him to avoid nationalization of his house and save his family from exile to Siberia like many other wealthy families in Bessarabia. However, his wife and daughter had the following entries in their passports: wife of a businessman, and daughter of a businessman.

When the war began, Shopse arranged for his wife and daughters to evacuate. He bought a pair of horses and a wagon, loaded his best belongings on the wagon and moved after his family. In the Caucasus, when the frontline was approaching and Shopse started on his way to escape, his landlord went with him. He killed Shopse on the way and took possession over his property. The mother and the daughters dropped their passports stating that they were the family of a businessman into the Dnestr after they crossed the river over a pontoon bridge in Dubossary. They only had birth certificates left: they'd lost their other documents. They stayed in Central Asia, some place in the Kokand region [today Uzbekistan] during the war. They had a very hard life like everybody else. Enna learned to make brynza: the sheep cheese, from the local elders. She picked up Uzbek within half a year, and the locals respected her a lot for doing this. Enna had a good conduct of German and went to teach German in a local school. After the war Shopse's younger brother, who was raised in his brother's family after their parents died, sent them an invitation letter to go to Chernovtsy [today Ukraine]. He graduated from a Medical College in Chernovtsy. He lived in a very small room where they all stayed. Enna worked as a shop assistant in a bookstore and Mera was a medical nurse in an eye clinic. Mera married Izia Averbukh from Chernovtsy. They had a son. She worked as a surgery nurse in this eye clinic for 30 years. They still live there.

In the early 1950s Enna decided to go back to Kishinev where she had friends. She finished a course for medical nurses and went to work at a nursery school. That was when we met. In 1953 I divorced my first wife officially and my son stayed with her following the decision of the court. In 1954 Enna and I got married. We had a small wedding dinner that was quite customary in those years and had a good life together.

The attitude towards Jews changed radically in the country after the war. In my opinion Stalin borrowed some anti-Semitic ideas from Hitler after the war. Where did it start? They closed Jewish schools, though in big towns only a few Jewish families sent their children to Jewish schools, but in smaller ones they still taught and spoke Yiddish. In 1949 Mikhoels 24 was murdered. They feigned a car accident where he died. They also closed Jewish theaters and the last synagogues, taking away everything related to religion. In early 1953 the so-called Doctors' Plot 25 began, potted of lies from the beginning to the end. However, I grieved when Stalin died in 1953: I was devoted to the Soviet power. I sincerely believed in justice, friendship of people and all those principles that the Soviet power only declared on paper. Enna used to say: 'You don't know them while I happened to make a closer acquaintance with them.' However, I didn't give up my faith. I witnessed many misdoings at work, but I always believed there were decent people holding higher posts.

My son wrote to me that his stepfather didn't want him to live with them and that they beat and tortured him. His mother dictated Valeriy on purpose. She didn't want him and wanted him to live with me. I remember how sorry I felt for him and cried: he was my dear son! When Ludmila brought Valeriy, I was happy. Enna said, 'I'm raising other children, and I will manage with your own son.' Enna treated Valeriy even better than I did. She spoiled him. She said, 'I don't want him to feel that I'm his stepmother. I must treat him so that he can never tell that I'm not his own mother.' For this reason she didn't want her own children to avoid division on one's own and somebody else's. I often argued with her about it, but she was insistent and even had abortions. I'm particularly sorry about it now. Three years later, Valeriy's mother came to visit Valeriy. She already had a daughter with her second husband. A year later her brother who was on vacation in Odessa came to see me. He probably wanted Ludmila and me to make up, but I told him that there was no forgiveness for the betrayal. Then he said that Enna was a great woman and I was lucky to have her. I knew it very well!

Valeriy was an average pupil at school. He also studied music. I wanted him to learn to play the accordion at the music school, but at that time the memory of cosmopolitism [see Campaign against 'cosmopolitans'] 26 was still fresh and he was enlisted in the 'bayan' [Russian folk accordion] class. That was a more Russian version of an accordion. Valeriy had a good ear and I spent a lot of time teaching him at home. I wanted him to grow up a developed and understanding man. Studying music also develops work skills: I raised Valeriy to be a hardworking man. During the elections there were electoral offices at schools, and Valeriy's school invited him to play at concerts arranged for attracting voters. He also played at school parties. All young people had fun and danced while he played. He wasn't comfortable with it though.

Enna was a kind and sensitive person. I would like to mention one event. In the early 1950s, when she worked at the nursery school, young mothers came to the school to breastfeed their babies. One young mother was always very nervous about missing work and she had problems with breast milk. She was also always hungry. She was desperate. Enna calmed her down, offered her some food and said, 'It's all right, if you come to work half an hour later. Your baby is what matters.' The woman calmed down and had milk to feed the baby. Enna supported her a lot. That young woman, I've forgotten her surname, was Moldovan. She worked as a seamstress in garment shops. One day, about eight or ten years later she came to see my wife: 'I'm doing very well now. I sew in a special garment shop for the Central Committee employees. I can't forget what you've done for me and want to do you a favor.' She took my wife's and my measurements and made her a lovely dress and a nice suit for me. Later, she worked as a fabric and garment foreign purchasing representative of Vneshtorg of Moldova. After that she went to work in Moscow. Her son graduated from a medical college and had a baby and she requested Enna to stay with them in Moscow for at least a year to nurse the baby, but Enna refused: 'I have a family, and I can't afford to leave them for that long.'

Enna was a skilled medical nurse and could replace a doctor. Parents weren't concerned about leaving their kids in her care. They knew that Enna would take care of them, if they had fever or diarrhea. She was also a great housewife. She liked cooking and having guests. She did it well and our friends liked getting together in our home. She always bought the best and fresh food for such parties, got up at 4am and took a few days to do the cooking. The guests always praised her talents while I used to tell her off for wasting her energy. We celebrated Soviet holidays: 1st May, October Revolution Day 27, New Year, and gathered together during Jewish holidays with our Jewish friends.

I used to buy matzah for Pesach from the synagogue. Enna liked matzah and matzah dishes. The synagogue also sold matzah flour. We had special crockery for Pesach and a special samovar. We followed the kashrut and didn't eat pork. Enna was great at making traditional Jewish food! She made terrific gefilte fish. Her father liked her cooking gefilte fish before the war. This dish took a lot of time and energy to prepare. She usually picked a pike or a carp for this dish. She also made tsimes with beans and sweet and sour stew. She exchanged recipes with other housewives. She used to say that 'the way to a man's heart lies through his stomach.' She was a wise woman and said to me, 'Why do you fight with those directors and are always changing jobs? Do you want to change the Soviet power? You need to understand what I mean: one doesn't have to be intelligent to tell the truth while one does to tell a lie and make other people believe it, and one doesn't need to be very intelligent to be telling the truth like you do.'

Valeriy finished school and I wanted him to continue his musical education. He went to take exams at a music school in Slobodzeya. However, this wasn't what he wanted to do, and he made a poor performance on purpose not to be admitted there. He said, 'I don't feel like entertaining people.' He liked spending time in the shed crafting and drilling, and I realized this was what he wanted to do. At that time I worked as a chief accountant at a nail forming plant. They had the best crew of tool mechanics there. The first director of our plant was Butman, a Jewish man, who managed to hire the best specialists. I asked my son, 'So, what do you want to do?' and he told me that wanted to work at my plant. I told him, 'I can't pull strings for you. You are a Komsomol 28 member. Go to the town committee and obtain a request for a job interview at the plant. I'll arrange for a skilled worker to train you at the plant.' Basically, I managed to encourage my son to get a good job.

However, I had conflicts with both the chief engineer and shop superintendent. They issued fictitious innovation proposals to receive bonuses and they were based on fictitious estimations of saving materials and salaries. I had to review these proposals to make sure there were real advantages in them. I had enemies and they put obstacles on the way for my son: he couldn't receive a grade for a long time. However, he learned the profession and read reference manuals and they had to award him a category [professional grade] six months later. He liked this job and was doing well at it.

One year later Valeriy was recruited to the army. He served in the rocket forces in Zaporozhiye. They often went on training to Siberia. One day we received a letter from his commandment expressing their gratitude for his good service and fair labor. Valeriy was responsible for the radio station of the regiment commander. My wife and I visited him there. At school Valeriy had a very nice Jewish girlfriend. She had all excellent marks. I've forgotten her name. My wife liked her a lot. She went to see Valeriy in his military unit on vacations, but her father was against their marriage: Valeriy's mother was Russian, and he had no higher education. They loved each other, but, regretfully, she couldn't disobey her father. Two years later Valeriy's friends introduced him to a Russian girl. They got married. Their son was born in 1972. I don't want to talk about it.

Valeriy worked as leader of a crew of tool mechanics for 40 years. A year ago he went to work at another plant. His previous director was an anti- Semite and Valeriy suffered such abuses that he had to quit this job. He got a job at the electric machine plant. He is valued here and has good work conditions. He says, 'It's like paradise. I'm sorry I didn't listen to you.' I had told him for three years, 'Just move away from this anti- Semite.'

When Gorbachev 29 came to power and perestroika 30 began, I accepted it with all my heart hoping for improvement and more democracy. I think Gorbachev made many mistakes. He had to remove Soviet forces from Germany, Poland and other countries, members of the Warsaw Pact under the condition that they undertook an obligation to enter any military block, NATO or others. The Soviet forces left barracks and houses in these countries. They should have built houses and barracks in the USSR so that the military had lodgings, when they returned. However, Yeltsin let us down the most. When the Presidents of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia discussed the independence of their countries in Bielovezhskaya Puscha [Belarus national park, where Yeltsin signed the break-up of the Soviet Union with the Ukraine and Belarus] in 1991, this was actually a coup since the population voted for the USSR at the referendum before. Yeltsin was to get a bullet in his forehead for this. One must call a spade a spade. This is my vision of those events.

During perestroika I received my pension, but still worked at the 'Medpribor' plant. This plant provided services to almost all medical institutions repairing medical equipment. There was a lot of room for machinations of all kinds. All medical institutions of Moldova were to send their used X-Ray tapes to the plant where they extracted silver from them and burned the tapes in incineration units. The silver was supplied to the mint in Leningrad. There were many problems, but I managed to disclose all machinations. In order to do this I studied the operations process. I believe an accountant must know the production processes in order to adjust the accounting process of the production for the good of business.

My wife Enna died in December 1996. We lived together for over 40 years. Enna was very smart and we had a good life. She never allowed any conflicts. If we had arguments, she never left them last till evening. She used to say, 'Life is short, and we mustn't waste it arguing.' Our neighbors used to stop talking for months, but Enna said, 'I can't afford such luxury'. She always tried to find humor with me. I also did my best. I saw how devoted she was to me, and this is so rare in our days. I feel sorry I didn't value her as she deserved. Only when one loses something, one realizes what he had and what he lost. When Enna was alive, work was number one in my life, and my family came second.

Today I have a decent life thanks to Hesed 25 and our religion obliging Jews to support each other. I don't have to search garbage pans like other old people. I'm proud that many people envy us, and that we get assistance and are provided for. A visiting nurse cleans, cooks and does my laundry twice a week. I also try to do some work. I try not to make her feel like a housemaid. I try to have no conflicts with her. If I want something, I ask for it politely. I understand that when we grow older our drawbacks grow stronger. Twice a month I get a ride to the Hesed Day Center Yehuda where I stay all day long. We have breakfast and then they measure our blood pressure, tell us what's going on in Israel, and around the world: a sort of political hour. We then have amateur groups sing us songs and perform for us. I enjoy talking to people and having discussions.

I don't go to the synagogue: it's hard for me to walk. Besides, I don't think our rabbi was right giving no opportunity for many Jews to move to Israel. I understand the rule that only those having Jewish mothers are believed to be Jews, but the Israeli army accepts not only Jews to serve in it, and they defend the country and don't deserve to be considered different. They need to take into consideration that Arabs have five to six times a higher birth rate than Jews, and this factor will impact the future of Israel. I follow up news from Israel. I watch television programs from Israel or America. I listen to all parties to be able to make conclusions. Enna and I always wanted to move to Israel, but she didn't want to leave her Valeriy behind. When my son was offered to take his wife with him his wife replied, 'The Jews have bored me here and you think I will go there?'

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:

When Marina Sineokaya opened the door, I was about to say that I was invited by her mother as Marina didn’t look like a lady over 80 years old. Marina is a tall woman with an excellent posture wearing trousers and a jumper. Her hair is put in a French roll. Her hair is still black and there is hardly any grey hair. Her eyes are young and bright and her smile is very affable. Marina’s gait is light and brisk. She doesn’t look more than 60. When I asked Marina to tell me the secret of her looking so young, she said it was to love and to live with a loving husband. Unfortunately, her husband died in 1977, and since then she has lived in a one-room apartment of a new building in the center of Moscow. The apartment is very cozy. Beautiful modern furniture is adorned with Marina’s handmade decorative covers on the cushions of the sofa and eccentric covers on the armchairs. An abundance of books is the first thing you notice in the apartment. Marina is well-read. She prefers to read the world classics and history books on World War II, and the history of the Jewish people. Marina is sociable and has many friends.

My family background

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family background

My father’s family lived in Moscow. In spite of the Jewish Pale of Settlement 1 in tsarist Russia, and the ban for Jews to live in big cities, my grandfather, Moses Yanov, was granted that right. He was a soldier, a cantonist 2. I don’t know where he was born, or the family he came from. All I know is that he had served in the tsarist army for 25 years. When the term of the service of cantonists was over, they were permitted to settle in any place they chose. The government gave them monetary assistance so they could start their own business. Of course, my grandfather got married, not at a young age, after he had served a full term in the army. My grandmother, Sarah, was at least ten years younger than my grandfather. I don’t know where my grandmother was born.

My grandfather was granted a rather large amount of money by the government and a plot of land. He started his own business of leasing carriages. He built a house for the family and a premise for the carriages. His business was very profitable. My grandmother was a housewife. My grandparents had six children. My grandfather passed away in 1922, shortly before I was born. He was buried in the Jewish Vostryakovskiy cemetery in Moscow. After my grandfather’s death, my grandmother lived with the family of her eldest son Ion. She died in 1935. She was buried next to my grandfather in accordance with the Jewish rites. This was the first time I attended a traditional Jewish funeral. She was buried in a shroud, not in a coffin. There were many people at the cemetery. An elderly Jew, clad in a frock coat and a hat, was reading a long prayer. Everyone was listening to him very attentively and repeating certain words of the prayer after him. The women were crying. After the funeral we didn’t observe mourning in our house. The graves of my grandparents are still there.

Apart from my father I knew only three children of my grandparents. Ion was my father’s eldest brother. Then his sister Anna, and brother Jacob were born. I don’t even know the names of the other two brothers of my father. My father didn’t mention anything about them. My father, Abel Yanov, was born in 1888. My father’s eldest brother Ion was 16 years older than my father. Before the revolution [see Russian Revolution of 1917] 3 my father took the Russian name Vladimir [common name] 4, which was later written in his documents.

I hardly know anything about my father’s life before I was born. I don’t know whether my father or his brothers got Jewish education. I assume they did, as my grandparents were very religious people. My father told me that my grandfather always used to wear a kippah. This is the only thing I can tell for sure. I didn’t know my grandfather as he died before I was born. When my father’s eldest brother grew up, he started assisting my grandfather with his business. My father went to a Realschule 5. When World War I was unleashed, my father was drafted into the army. He was a signalman. He came back in 1918 and found a job as a bookkeeper. Soon after, he married my mother.

I don’t know for sure what kind of profession my father’s elder brother Ion had. I think he was an officer in a sort of bureau, but I don’t know the details. Ion was married to a splendid Jewish woman. I don’t know her maiden name, but we called her Fenya or Fenechka, and loved her very much. Fenya was a small plump woman with dimples in her cheeks when she smiled. She smiled a lot. Fenya was very energetic and was able to do many things at one time. She was the heart and soul of her big family. The family was really large. Ion and Fenya had seven children. I can’t say that I was friends with the elder children as they were much older than me, but I was friends with their grandchildren and we remained friends all our lives.

Ion’s eldest son, Efim, graduated from the Moscow Medical Institute. Before the war, he was the chief of department in a hospital and was a very good doctor. Ion’s daughter, Evgenia, was married. She died of tuberculosis at a young age. The second daughter, Elena, was also married and had a son called Victor. He immigrated to the USA after the war. Elena died in the early 1950s. Two of Ion’s sons, Vladimir and Iosif, were drafted to the front at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War 6 and both of them perished. When Iosif went to the front, his wife was pregnant and in her fourth month. Iosif never saw his son Boris, who was born in evacuation. Now Boris lives in the USA. Vladimir had a daughter called Irina. We’ve been friends for ever.

I was also friends with the last but one daughter of Ion, Rozalia. The youngest daughter, Sarah, was a weak and sick child from birth and she died at a young age. Ion passed away in evacuation, in Sverdlovsk, during the war. His wife died in the 1960s in Moscow. All Ion’s children were atheists, but all of them celebrated religious holidays with their parents. I remember Ion’s apartment. All of his married and single children lived there except Iosif. There was one large drawing room in the apartment, about 30 square meters. There was a large table there. The whole family including wives, husbands and children used to sit at that table during holidays. It was fun, that was a wonderful, exceptionally friendly and loving family, and it was rare.

Ion was the closest to us out of all father’s kin. Father’s sister, Anna, also lived in Moscow. She was married to Semion Sorokin, who was a Jew in spite of a truly Russian name. Anna had a son. His name was Boris and he was older than me. I have little information about my father’s brother, Jacob. He lived in Leningrad with his family and we didn’t keep in touch that much. In my parents’ words his life wasn’t a very happy one. I don’t know what happened to him, but my parents used to say that he came down in the world, lived in indigence, and had a lot of children. I know for sure he had many children, but I don’t know exactly how many, and what their names were.

My mother’s family lived in the Ukrainian city Nikolayev. My grandfather’s name was Mikhail Ogranovich. His Jewish name was Mendel. My grandmother’s maiden name was Rahil Kazhdan. My mother told me the romantic story of how my grandparents got married. My grandfather was a common worker at the mill. My grandmother was married before she met my grandfather. She was very beautiful, but she came from a very large and poor family. She had a prearranged marriage to a wealthy man, who was much older than her. The first time she saw her husband was under the chuppah as her parents and matchmakers had arranged everything. My grandmother had a hard nuptial life.

She didn’t love her husband, and his family didn’t have a good attitude towards her as she was poor and without dowry. She gave birth to two children – a son who was called Naum, and a daughter who was called Genya. I don’t know how my grandmother met my grandfather as she was married and the mother of two children. They fell in love with each other, and grandmother didn’t care that she was married and had two small children. She trespassed all social laws and rites, took her two children, and moved in with her beloved. From the standpoint of society at that time it was an improbable action. The children from the first marriage lived with them, and my grandfather treated them as his own. Besides, my grandmother gave birth to six more children in her second marriage.

One of the children died an infant; I knew the rest of them. The eldest was the only son. His name was David. Then, my mother Maria was born in 1894. Her sisters Revekka, Matilda and Ekaterina followed. I don’t remember when they were born, I only remember the succession. I don’t know whether my mother or her sisters had Jewish names. They might have had Jewish names, but they weren’t used in the family. My grandparents were religious. Jewish traditions were kept in the family. Sabbath and Jewish holidays were celebrated. While the children were small, they took part in the religious life of the family, and when they grew up they became atheists. Of course, all of them went to their parents’ place for Jewish holidays, but they just merely paid a tribute to the tradition.

In spite of the fact that my grandfather was a common worker, he wanted his children to get a good education. All of them went to a Russian lyceum, as there were no Jewish lyceums at that time. The eldest son, David, acquired musical education after finishing the lyceum. He played the violin very well and played in the orchestra of the Bolshoi Theater 7 all his life. The daughters didn’t go on with higher education after finishing the lyceum as they acquired such comprehensive and deep knowledge in the lyceum that it was enough to work in pretty serious positions. Revekka was the only one who left for the Latvian city Revel [the interviewee is talking about the Estonian capital, today’s Tallin] and entered a university there, but she left the university at the outbreak of World War I and went to the front field hospital as a nurse. After the war she returned to Nikolayev.

During the Civil War 8 there were pogroms [in Ukraine] 9 in Nikolayev. My mother told me those were horrible times. Once, my mother heard a noise. It came from the street. She looked out the window and saw a man with an axe chasing a Jew, trying to kill him. Of course, it was dreadful to stay in Nikolayev. My grandmother’s brother, Genrich Kazhdan, lived with his family in Moscow. My grandmother wrote to him and he suggested that the whole family should move in with him. My mother and Uncle David were the first to go. After that, my grandparents moved to Moscow with the rest of the children. Uncle David was offered a position in the orchestra of the Bolshoi Theater. He was given a room in a communal apartment 10, and he offered my mother to share his apartment.

My mother worked in an office as a typist. Some of Uncle David’s new acquaintances introduced my mother to my father. They fell in love with each other. My mother told me that they lived in different ends of the cities. There was no public transport and my father used to walk across the entire city to date my mother. In 1919 they got married. I don’t think they had a Jewish wedding. They probably didn’t have any wedding party, as it was at such a time where there wasn’t even enough bread to be full. I think the wedding party wasn’t the most important thing. My father was head over heels in love with my mother and he loved her all his life.

I didn’t know my mother’s stepbrother and stepsister. Naum was married. He lived in Moscow, but we saw each other very rarely. He died at the end of 1940. Genya got married and went to Kharkov with her husband. In the years of starvation she was afflicted with tuberculosis and died in the 1930s. Uncle David married a very beautiful girl, Augusta. She was German. I don’t remember her maiden name. In 1920 their daughter Margarita was born. Augusta had tuberculosis and died in 1925, when Margarita was little. David didn’t re-marry. He devoted himself to raising his daughter, and to work. 

Revekka was married to an officer, Mikhail Sevastopolskiy. They had a daughter called Sofia. Revekka was a housewife. She was a great cook, and an impeccable homemaker. She was over the hill when she died and she was the one who had the longest life. Matilda was married to a Russian man, Sobolevskiy. She worked in the Ministry of Foreign Trade. She processed the forms for equipment purchase overseas. Matilda had a son who was my age. I don’t remember his name. Matilda died in Moscow in 1960s. The younger sister, Ekaterina, was single. She worked with Matilda in the Ministry of Foreign Trade. Ekaterina died in Moscow in 1979. My grandfather Mikhail passed away at the end of 1930. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Moscow.

After getting married, my parents lived in the same house as my father’s brother Ion. One of the apartments close to Ion was vacant and Ispolkom 11 permitted my father to occupy it. My father worked as an accountant at an automobile plant. There was a small plant, not far from our house. It used to produce some parts for automobiles. The plant doesn’t exist any longer. My mother was a housewife.

Growing up

In 1921 my elder sister, Evgenia, was born. I was born in 1922. I was named Marina, a name with starting with the letter ‘M’, in honor of my recently deceased grandfather Moses. When my sister and I were small, my mother didn’t work and raised us. She started working when we went to school. She was employed at the publishing house ‘Goslitizdat’ [state literary publishing house]. She worked there until retirement. She started her career as a typist, and then she became the administrative secretary. She managed work of the editors, translators, typists, and distributed scripts. In general, she was responsible for the technical and organizational part of work.

My mother was acquainted with many writers and poets. Our home library mostly consists of the books given to my mother by the authors and translators. I keep a book given to me by Boris Pasternak 12. It was King Lear by William Shakespeare translated by Pasternak with the inscription: ‘If I were King Lear I would give you half of my kingdom. Now I am giving you my respect and love.’ Signed: ‘Pasternak.’ My mother was the most experienced employee of the publishing house, and when a new manager came, he directed people to my mother when they had certain issues to tackle.

Russian is the native tongue of my sister, my mother, and I. My parents spoke only Russian with us and between themselves. Of course, we heard Yiddish as it was spoken by my maternal grandparents, my father’s brother Ion, and his wife. My sister and I were raised in the spirit of internationalism. We knew that we were Soviet people and we had no idea about our nationality. [The interviewee is referring to the official ideology, propaganda and common belief in the Soviet Union that particular ethnic and national identities are about to be overcome with the further development of the communist state, that is by definition built on the ideals of equality, and the evolution of communist world alliance world-wide. Contrary to the official propaganda of proletarian internationalism ethnicity and national origin kept on playing a very important role in the every day life of Soviet people. Nationality was marked in passports and it provided for the abuse of the less favored nationalities -Jews, Germans, Tatars, Chechens, Ingushes etc. - by the state bureaucracy.]

Our parents were sincere patriots. They thought that Soviet life gave them everything. They knew about pogroms and the Jewish Pale of Settlement and other restrictions before the revolution. Soviet life made them equal citizens of the country. There was no anti-Semitism. My parents thought the Soviet regime to be the one they needed. We were raised as patriots of our country.

We didn’t adhere to Jewish traditions at home. Pesach was the only Jewish holiday I knew from my childhood. On Pesach we and all of my mother’s relatives went to my grandparents’ house. My maternal grandparents were religious and they marked all Jewish holidays. I don’t know if they went to the synagogue. At least they never discussed it with us or their children. According to tradition we visited my grandparents on the first pascal day. Of course, for young people the holiday in itself didn’t mean that much, the most important thing was a family reunion. My father’s brother Ion marked Jewish holidays. We lived in the same building. There was a large table in the room; a lot of people could sit at that table.

Ion’s wife, Aunt Fenya, cooked delicious Jewish dishes: golden chicken broth, gefilte fish, kishke, kneydlakh, casseroles, tasty strudels and honey cakes. Everything she cooked was really scrumptious. My sister and I enjoyed visiting Aunt Fenya and Uncle Ion. Neither our parents nor I took our get-togethers as celebration of religious holidays, for us it was merely seeing our dear relatives, who were always happy to see us and welcomed us with tasty food. We didn’t stick to any religious traditions and didn’t celebrate any Jewish holidays at home as my parents were atheists. We marked Soviet holidays at home such as 1st May and 7th November [see October Revolution Day] 13.

My mother cooked dinner and got together with friends. A separate table was laid for the children. The adults sang songs and danced. We had our own entertainment: played different games, sang Soviet songs in chorus, and recited verses. My mother wanted my sister and me to get a very good education. We weren’t very well-off; during our childhood my father was the only bread-winner of the family and his salary wasn’t very high. My mother hired a music teacher for my sister and I, but we didn’t meet her expectations, we weren’t interested in playing interminable gamut and spend hours at the piano. When my mother realized that we wouldn’t succeed in music, she found a German teacher for us. She was a German lady, who had lived in Russia for a while. She came to us and we weren’t allowed to speak Russian during our class, only German. Such a tough teaching method turned out to be very fruitful. Soon, my sister and I began to speak German fluently. The knowledge acquired from the German teacher was very useful to me in school and later on in the institute.

My sister went to a ten-year compulsory school. After a year I went to the same school. I was a good student. I was very good at liberal arts such as languages, literature and history. It was more complicated for me to study exact sciences though I received good marks for them as well. I became an Oktiabryonok [see Young Octobrist] 14 in the first grade, then I became a pioneer [see All-Union pioneer organization] 15, and then a Komsomol 16 member. I was an active girl and was eager to take part in all school events. I sincerely believed that I was supposed to be the best to set an example for the rest to follow. My parents nurtured a patriotic spirit in me. I believed in communist ideas. I was confident that the USSR was the best country in the world, and Soviet children had the happiest life due to Stalin, who was the idol of my generation. Maybe the adults had a different view of things, but I never discussed it with them.

Beside me there were other Jewish students in the class. Now I understand that at that time it wasn’t important for me what nationality my classmates were. My teachers didn’t pay attention to my nationality. There were a lot of Jews among the teachers as well. I think there was no anti-Semitism before the war; I can’t remember any manifestation of it.

During the war

God had saved us from repression starting in the 1930s [Great Terror] 17. Our family wasn’t touched, maybe for the reason that neither my father nor my mother were dignitaries. A common accountant was of no interest to anyone. Eminent people were arrested such as great military and political leaders. We found out about that in school, from newspapers and radio broadcasts. I didn’t doubt that those people were guilty and I was always happy that another plot against the Soviet regime had been divulged. I used to wonder how people could be pernicious towards their own country. There were some pupils in our class whose parents were repressed, the so-called enemy of the people. 18. There was a senior graduate who came from another school. He was very offish and reclusive. Some of the teachers asked us to be heedful and compassionate to him. His parents might have been repressed, but nobody could speak of it out loud. We could only make assumptions. We were very sympathetic with him and tried to support him the best way we could.

When in the year 1939, the annexation of Poland 19 to the USSR took place after the invasion of Poland 20 by Hitler’s troops, I strongly believed that the Polish people were to be thankful. They were released from usurpers and had the opportunity to become the citizens of the best country in the world. I had the same attitude towards the annexation of the Baltic countries [see occupation of the Baltic Republics] 21 to the USSR as I thought that those countries didn’t have very good living standards and were constantly suppressed and that we were the ones who gave them the freedom and the chance for a better living. Now I understand that the citizens of those countries treated us as occupants, though at that time I thought that we were doing good things by liberating those countries and widening our borders to the west. 

Of course we were scared that a war might be unleashed, and I was happy when the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact 22 was signed. I thought it was a good thing that Stalin was able to come to an agreement with Hitler and that there would be no war in our land. We didn’t know what had happened in Germany while Hitler was wielding the scepter. My aunt Matilda and her husband worked in the trade representative office in Germany. When Hitler came to power in 1933 they managed to leave Germany. They told us how fascists exterminated communists and Jews. I listened to their tales and thought how lucky we were for not having anything of the kind around here. I couldn’t picture that such atrocity or even fiercer atrocity was also happening in our country.

In 1940 I finished the tenth grade of school. During the last grade I also took private lessons of German apart from learning other subjects. When I was in the ninth grade, my parents asked me which institution I would like to enter and I said that I hadn’t made up my mind whether it would be the German or English department of the Institute of Foreign Languages. Then I heard from my mother that it would be better for me to study German in case we were to be at war with Germany. I didn’t take my mother’s words seriously at that time, but I remembered them. I didn’t manage to enter the Institute of Foreign Languages at the first attempt. My school friend, Veniamin Gubenko, was a connate architect, who was very good at drawing and painting. He plied me with love for architecture and talked me into entering the Moscow Engineering and Construction Institute though I didn’t have any propensity for drawing. He made some drawings for me to submit to the admission board and I took the entrance exams myself. Both of us were accepted.

On 1st September, I went to the classes and was surprised not to see Veniamin. I couldn’t imagine that he might have missed the first day of school. After classes I decided to call on him at his house. His sobbing mother opened the door. She told me that Veniamin had been arrested at night and nobody explained anything to her. What could a seventeen-year old boy have done for the NKVD

Mariann Szamosi
Budapest
Hungary
Interviewer: Klara Laszlo
Date of the Interview: February 2004

Mrs. Mariann Szamosi is a tall elderly lady in her mid-70s, who radiates understanding and warmth. Her tall figure retains marks from the experiments performed upon her while in the concentration camp during the Holocaust. But these limitations - difficulty walking - don't deter her from living an active and fruitful life. She still works to this day. She's lived in Kobanya, an outer district of Budapest, in a three-room apartment, in a block of flats built in the 1950s, for the last forty years, with her daughter, who is divorced. Mariann supports her daughter, who cannot work for psychological reasons. The furniture, pictures, and decorative objects that remain are appropriate to the apartment, once a bourgeois (middle class) home. Today, and every day, Mariann goes to her job, a responsible position as Managing Director at the Cicero book publisher in Ujlipotvaros (Budapest, 13th district). Humanism and care pervade her relationship with her co-workers.

​Family background
Growing up
During the war
Post war
Glossary

Family background

From family legend, I know that my great grandfather, my mother's maternal grandfather, was a schoolmaster known as Jozsef Schon, who is in the Jewish Lexicon ['Magyar Zsido Lexikon', Pallas Irodalmi és Nyomdai Reszvenytarsasag, Budapest, 1929], and was a textbook author and pedagogue in his time. I know that he was a very good man, and that he lost his wife young. He had two daughters, one was my grandmother, Hermina, the other was Szera, and I have very close relations with Aunt Szera's branch of the family. They played a very important role in my life. Especially, a long time ago in my childhood, but primarily when I lost my parents in the Holocaust, and was left an orphan. They loved me as my mother had. Aunt Szera married Jozsef Messinger, and their daughter was Erzsike [diminutive of Erzsebet (Elizabeth)], who later became Mrs. Andor Karman. Sadly, she's already dead. But I'm still in close contact today with her children, Gyuri Karman and Juli Karman, though I'm descended from the Hermina side.

I'd like to start with a few sentences about my maternal grandparents and the Neufeld branch. This is the male branch. My maternal grandfather was Mano Neufeld. They magyarized it to Sebestyen, but I don't know when. My maternal grandfather had six true, and six step-siblings. I only remember three of the daughters' names: Hanna, Frida and Terez. Of the true siblings, there was Aunt Hanna, who married Mano Alexander, and they lived in Satoraljaujhely. They had a lot of children. There was Odon, Sandor - whose wife's name I remember as Cora. Dudus [a nickname]- I don't recall what his other name was. Elza, Ilona - who lived in Szerencs and, if I remember correctly, her husband was a doctor - and finally Erno. Erno's wife, I believe was called Margit, and their son was Gyurika [diminutive of Gyorgy (George)]. We had a close, loving relationship with their family. You could say they were the most religious branch of the family.

Most of my grandfather's siblings' children went to America in the 1920's, so I don't know too much about them. I know two of all sibling's children: Iren, and Erzsi both emigrated to America and put down roots.

My grandfather, Mano Sebestyen married my grandmother, Hermina Schon, and she became Mrs. Hermina Sebestyen. I don't know when my grandfather was born, I only know that he died in 1933, when I was five. He was probably born in Homonna - in Slovakia now - but I'm not sure of that. My grandmother, Hermina Schon, was born in Veszprem in 1870. I don't know how they met. Their marriage probably took place in Budapest at the end of the 1800s, because their first child Erno was born in 1895.

My grandfather was the principal of a school of commerce for many decades, and at the same time, he was a court handwriting expert. I knew him from my early childhood. He was a very kind, good man. He loved me a lot, but I can't say much about him. I have more memories of my grandmother. I really had two mothers, my grandmother Hermina and her daughter Leonora. Grandmother lived with us.

My maternal grandparents had four children, none of them are still living. Though my grandmother had her teacher accreditation, she didn't work. Women traditionally took care of the raising of children then. In the 1920s, it was not an easy thing to raise four children from one income. My uncle, Erno Sebestyen was the oldest. He worked a bit as a lawyer and was able to live through the war with false documents, working in a factory. There was a pretty big age difference between Erno and their next child, Lilike [diminutive of Lili] who was born in 1901. She died young around 1930. The family never got over her death. It was a tragedy for us, she got blood poisoning and they couldn't cure her. Then came my mother, Leonora Sebestyen, born in 1904 and probably died in Ravensbruck 1. My mother spoke very eloquently and attended the acting school for a while. But nothing came of that, most likely, due to financial reasons, she had to quit. She became a housewife and lived at home.

My grandparents' youngest child, Lajos Sebestyen, was born in 1908. Both the boys, Erno and Lajos were trained as lawyers, and for my grandfather to afford that expense, his two daughters had to find husbands from wealthy families. That was the cost of educating the boys. The girls succeeded. Note well, that the boys couldn't really practice because, by the time they were qualified, the Jewish laws [numerus clausus]2 came in. The older brother, my uncle Erno Sebestyen, probably lawyered a little bit, but Lajos never did. Lajos got married in the early 1940s, to Magda Wollak. They had an tropical fruit grocery on Erkel street. Lajos died in a labor battalion 3 in the Ukraine. The last we heard from him was in 1943. I still have the letter, in which he wrote that in a few days, they're taking him with the 41st or 42nd battalion, and to try to help him, but we didn't succeed. The Arrow Cross 4 shot Magda into the Danube 5.

My paternal side is the Rosenfeld side. My grandfather was Miksa Rosenfeld, my father's father. The family was from Nagykoros, my grandfather was the founder and later the director of a fruit and vegetable distributor. I didn't know him personally. He died in 1928, just before my birth. I only knew my grandmother, Malvin Bruck. While we lived in Nagykoros, she lived in one house with her and one of my father's brothers, Pali [diminutive of Pal (Paul)] Rosenfeld. My grandmother was a very primitive, simple Jewish- peasant lady. I can't say too many nice things about her, nor bad things! Grandma Rosenfeld never acted like a grandmother to me. I never felt she was. She died soon after. In the early 1930s, I think in 1933, she died. I remember her funeral. It was a Jewish funeral, neolog 6.

My father had five brothers. He had a half-sister named Iren Rosenfeld, whose married name was Mrs. Herman Fabriczky. She lived in Pest [Budapest], and had a pickling business on Csaba street, where they produced kinds of pickled vegetables. I think her husband died young, and their two very masculine daughters took over the running of that business. After the war, I think they went abroad. They had no children. At that time, my uncle Imre Rosenfeld was a doctor in Nagykoros. He was the youngest, a bachelor. Except for his great generosity, he was really a grumpy guy, with a sullen manner, but he could play piano miraculously. He would put on the records of the best pianists and, with the windows open, he would play along with the record. Then there was my uncle Gyula Rosenfeld, a lawyer, he had a sweet daughter, Klarika [diminutive of Klara]. Klarika and her mother ended up in Auschwitz, and never came back. Then there was my father, Sandor Rosenfeld, who was a prisoner in World War I, and spent seven years in Siberia, in Krasnoyarsk. He married pretty late, I think he was 44 years old when I was born. His Christian wife had a boy named Imre at the last moment. When they took my uncle Pali to the ghetto in Kecskemet, the child was in his hands, his wife ran after and got the child from him. That's how Imre stayed alive. There was another brother, Istvan Rosenfeld, uncle Pisti, who lived in Fullopszallas. He had a general store, and very rarely appeared at our house. He had no children. They adopted a girl named Ibolyka [diminutive of Ibolya]. She and her mother died in deportation.

My father, Sandor Rosenfeld was born in Nagykoros in 1884. He magyarized his name to Acs in 1938. He was a lanky, thin man, not especially intelligent, not a reading man. He liked to play cards. But he was a good man. He loved me. Sometimes he'd take me to the theatre to see Uncle Lakner's performances[Artur Lakner (1893-1944) - Puppet master and founder of the twentieth century's most popular Hungarian children's theater], when we already lived in Budapest. Uncle Lakner had a children's theatre. He [father] was a little left out of the family. He took part in the writer's dinners my mother's friends organized, but he didn't really take to them.

After my grandfather's death, his two sons, Pali and my father, took over the running of the Nagykoros company. Their specialty was collecting lots of fruits and vegetables from around Nagykoros, then many, many women would pack them. They shipped them on refrigerated traincars to Germany, and I don't know where else. The refrigerated cars were white, they had a special color. My father went buying in the morning, and brought the produce by truck, where the women would already be in the courtyard working, so that the produce was taken to the train nearly the same day. They had to work quickly. Sometimes, the produce would arrive in an unacceptable condition, which led to arguments about price. I remember, their correspondence. They would write horribly angry letters, because if the produce wasn't good quality, they couldn't market it.

My uncle Pali was also a Jewish peasant, and my father was that type of man, too. My father worked very diligently in the company. At dawn, he would go to buy produce around the area, to Cegled, and the smaller villages. He was the main buyer, and oversaw the packaging, and shipping. Both my uncles, Erno and Lajos took part in the company's affairs, in that, they represented the business in Germany, where they shipped the fruits and vegetables. They met the shipment and took care of the business on that side. They also shipped to Switzerland. My mother also got involved in the joint stock company, and later became the family breadwinner. She had an agile character. Once in my childhood, I went with my mother to Switzerland, she took me with her, she had some business meeting, and we went. Just the two of us. I remember the snow and the gulls. And in the hotel, I ate butter for the first time in my life. They had such good buttered crescent rolls.

The business was successful up until 1941. Then the company went bankrupt. The competition ruined it. There was another wholesaler in Nagykoros, the Benedek company. This Benedek firm, who also wholesaled wine, ruined my father, when in one year that my father also sold wine, they let theirs go for such a low price that my father couldn't sell his, and they were left with all their wine. They lost everything. They had to auction off the house, the horses, the truck, everything we had.

My parents were probably recommended to each other. The marriage didn't come from passionate love or intimacy. It was an honorable, decent marriage. My father came back from detention after World War I, it had to be in 1925, then they were married in 1926. I was born in 1928. I lived in Nagykoros before my school years. I started at the Jewish grade school there.

The house in Nagykoros was a miracle of my childhood. It was pretty large, separated into two parts, the front part for my parents, and the rear part for uncle Pali and Grandma. In our part, there was a bedroom, a kid's room, a kind of salon and a big dining room, which we never used because it was very dark. Downstairs were the utility rooms: a big pantry, a big kitchen and a kind of maid's room. There were steps on the side of the house that led up to the bathroom. For that time, the furniture was modern, the windows were very pretty, with wild grape vines or proper grape vines covering the house. I remember you could open one of the windows and eat the grapes. There was a little flower garden with a tiny little pond, and fish in it. Great big trees, with turtle doves in them, and there were acacias, which we would breakfast underneath. The courtyard was paved all around, so you could ride a bicycle around the house. That was one of my favorite pastimes. There was a kind of warehouse, where the fruit-packing women worked, plus a big cellar where the barrels were kept. Life was pretty lively there.

Growing up

The house was in the center of Nagykoros, in a really good location, a very nice area. We lived there all the way up to 1941, when the business went completely bust due to a competing business. Then we moved to Budapest.

I remember we always went to temple in Nagykoros. I started at the Jewish school there. I really loved the teacher. His daughter was a good friend of my cousin, Klarika Rosenfeld. I went down to visit them a lot, even after we had no house there, anymore. In the summer, I stayed with them. And we went to temple, but we didn't pray, we just talked. My friends there were all Jewish. Life there was about going to the open spa together, a very good artesian spa, we took bicycle tours, and went to the cinema. Life was still nice and peaceful around 1935.

The Jews in the city lived all over. We didn't have too many connections with them, and I don't remember that they were particularly so religious. The Jewish school was next to the temple. I don't remember any other institution. I remember the teacher, but not the rabbi. And we had more connections with the secular, intellectual Jews, because one of my uncles, Imre Rosenfeld, was a doctor. He was a doctor for the peasants. He was the kind of man who would go on a motorcycle to different farms, and if the peasants didn't have money, he would buy them medicine. There was my uncle Gyula Rosenfeld, my favorite cousin Klarika, who was two years older than me. And her father, he was a lawyer. Pali Rosenfeld took a Christian woman, Margit for a wife in 1943, or 1944. They'd been lovers for a couple years. I remember there was a glazier, glass seller, or porcelain storeowner; they were the Hoffers. There was a spice merchant, Mr. Fenyves, whose daughter Zsuzsa Fenyves was my girlfriend. There was Mr. Lazar, a feather merchant. He had a lot of children, only one survived, Vera. The others were killed.

Summers were warm and happy. We were at the pool from morning to night, or at the rock garden. There was a very pretty forested park that we went out to, where the older and more clever kids played tennis. We just watched them. In the afternoons, we gathered together in some kind of big warehouse at the Lazars and played Twenty Questions. We went to the cinema. Sometimes we biked to Kecskemet, sometimes to Cegled. Life was happy.

When the business went under, we moved up here to Budapest, my mother and father and I. I continued my life here under the wing of my grandmother. The grandparents' Budapest house was a happy family nest up to the beginning of the war years. We lived at 119 Ulloi street [a main avenue in Budapest] in a four bedroom apartment, grandma and grandpa - while he was alive, my mother and father, me and my Uncle Lajos, until he got married. It was a family of love, music and literature. We weren't rich, in fact our life was rather troubled.

When my father's possibilities of putting bread on the table had already run low, my grandmother and mother started knitting. They primarily did needlework. Knit patterns were popular in the years up to the war, and they learned them well. That was the source of income. In fact, they even had people working for them. They sold the finished pieces to a shop on Vaci street [the most elegant promenade and shopping street of Budapest]. My father spent most of this time playing cards. I learned piano. I went to gymnasium [High School], read a lot. I didn't notice anything around me, but music and literature. My mother had a lot of nice friends, good people who visited us often. I would peek in from the curtained-off part, and listen to what they were talking about. I slept in one room with my mother and grandmother. I'd wake up Sunday mornings to them talking about some incomprehensible thing. It would turn out that they'd both read the same book and were discussing it.

We kept a modest house, but while it was still possible, we had hired help come in. Just one girl, plus the German fraulein who tutored me, and helped raise me. The maids were usually little Transylvanian girls who took part in the cleaning and cooking. [The previously Hungarian province of Transylvania was annexed to Romania in 1920. Many of the Transylvanian Hungarians found refuge in Hungary, especially in Budapest, in the interwar times.] Until the Jewish Law [anti-Jewish Laws]7 forbid it, then later we didn't have the money for them. In the later years, the maid's room was rented out.

The family wasn't religious. Except that grandma did light candles on Friday, and we fasted on Yom Kippur. That was all. There was some kind of esoteric faith within our family. My parents didn't go to temple. I went to religion class - since it was compulsory - at school. But we never got deeply involved. Our family had an enlightened, liberal view of the world. But naturally, we had feelings towards things Jewish. My grandmother had two siblings in Israel. [At the time, the area was called Palestine, and was under British authority.] It was hard then to keep in contact with them, but we did somehow.

We were a political family, enlightened in the ways of everything. So much so, that they even got me involved. I read the papers, and at family dinners these subjects always came up. I remember concretely how, in 1936, I heard about the Gombos funeral on a radio transmission, and how I already knew he'd been an evil man.8 There was an interesting occurrence to the polical side of that. My uncle, Erno Sebestyen, who'd been working in Germany in the 1930s, in the time of Hitler, as a commercial agent, was a little dazed by what the Germans were producing, Hitler's products. There were a lot of bloody arguments within the family because of that, they couldn't understand how a Jew could show appreciation for anything the Germans did.

Besides this, the family had a big social life, a lot of good friends. Among them, I'd say Gyorgy Szanto was the one who visited us most often. He was a painter before World War I, then he was blinded, and became a writer. Through him, my mother had a lot of writer friends, including Aron Tamasi [1897-1966, major Transylvanian, later Hungarian writer. ] who would stop by to see us. We had Christian contacts too, primarily from the business where my mother sold her goods. Even a couple of acquaintances from the building would drop by. I wouldn't say a lot, there was just one family we were in direct and good contact with. The lady, Mrs. Zoltan Kiss, lived on the same floor as us, and my mother gave her a lot of work.

I started grade school back in Nagykoros, but then continued here in Budapest, in the Prater Street grade school. I went to school, collected photos of film actors. I remember my first grade teacher from Prater street, Mrs. Antal Haros, who was a very kind, older teacher. School was already in progress when I got there. I don't remember much about the education from grade school. I had a really nice classmate, a very poor little girl, whose name was Ilona Veres. She played an important role in my life. At the beginning, we studied together, and that continued, so that very often she would stay over at our house. We almost became sisters. Eventually, she and her family gave us all the fake documents we used to go underground with, and to escape with.

I had a mix of girlfriends, probably more Christians than Jews. I probably had Jewish friends due to the fact that A and B class, all the Jews, had to go to one religion class. This gave us all some kind of connection. It's interesting that somehow I can always tell, and still can, if someone's Jewish. I can't explain it, I just get some kind of emotional connection with them, and that my children are just half-Jewish. My first husband was Christian.

I went to High School on Prater street. My favorite subjects were literature and grammar. And I was very weak in mathmatics. Singing, gymnastics, I always did well, when I took part in them. I didn't really feel a great interest in the arts. I was learning piano, I liked the piano, but I didn't feel I was so talented that it would be worth doing. I swam, and loved winter sports, especially skating at the Fradi [FTC, Ferenc City Sport Club, a major Budapest Club] rink. I went to dance school, too, but just in the later years. Once I had a big run-in with the German teacher, Mrs. Schultz. I wrote a note that said these kids are stealing and Schultz is disgusting. She caught me with it, and they almost threw me out. Then they changed their mind. I finished six grades there, because then came March 19, 1944, the German invasion 9. I didn't finish my sixth year of secondary school. From the time the Germans came, when I had to start wearing the yellow star, from then on, I couldn't go to school.

During the war

I felt the situation of Judaism in our family change, when the possiblities for survival thinned out considerably. For one, there was no man of the house, because my father couldn't do anything from the beginning of the1930s. And we listened to the radio, and checked around, and my parents read newspapers, and the interesting daily topic was always connected to questions about dealing with the Jews. Concretely, it was the Jewish Law that hit our family, when my uncles could no longer work. In school there were people we already knew to be sympathetic to the Arrow Cross. There were two boys in the building where we lived, called the Rostas brothers. We knew them to be Arrow Cross. They would never speak to me. They were older than I was. I couldn't say they ever directly harrassed me.

I remember the house-search we had. I was a dumb little kid then, some-teen years old, and I was scared they would take the food out of the cellar, so whatever I found there, I carried through the bathroom to the big room, and stuck the lentils under the quilt, and the beans. I took some out to the hallway, too. But I don't know why they were searching our house.

When the Germans came, we started thinking about survival. My mother was a pretty smart woman, and she decided we won't go into the yellow star 10 house. They took the furniture and belongings to the delegated place, her girlfriends house, if I recall, on Zoltan street. We went deep underground, instead. My mother had a Christian girlfriend named Mrs. Aniko Vertes. She offered to hide us. So when it was time to move to the star houses, it just looked like the four of us went there, we really went to 1 Hogyes Endre street, to Aunt Aniko's apartment. It was a groundfloor apartment, and she supported all of us. Cooked for us, shopped. We lived with the rollblinds down, and when the Americans carpetbombed, it was horribly frightening. Nevertheless, we didn't dare go down into the shelter. There was another person who had a significant role in our lives. He was a Christian boy named Bela Molnar who was a lot older than I was. He tried to help me when we had to move out of Ullo Street, by moving into our apartment with my girlfriend Ilonka, to save the apartment.

A month or two into the American carpetbombing, and the confinement took its toll on me. So he took me to his mother's house in Tata-Tovaros. I was there for about a month all alone. Aunt Margit, Bela Molnar's mother, knew I was Jewish, but supported me as if I was a refugee. A month after that, after going down to Tata, they bombed the Erzsebet Hospital next to the Hogyes Endre street house, and there was a huge debacle. In that, my parents got scared, and got on a train to come after me, to Tata-Tovaros. This also had an interesting sidelight. One stop before Tata is Vertesszolos. There, my mother got off the train for some reason, I don't know, probably to buy water and she didn't get back on. The train left with my grandmother and father on it. She met a miner named Tomasek that night by the tracks. But there was nothing really special about that then. The next train came and they came after us. Then the whole family was at Aunt Margit's. Everybody was there, as Transsylvanian refugees. We stayed there all the way up to October 15th [until the Arrow Cross came to power].

When the Horthy Proclamation 11 came out, the Arrow Cross government takeover, then everybody got scared, and my mom said we couldn't stay there any longer. Then she thought of the old man, Tomasek, the miner, and she went over to Vertesszolos, and then came the family. He was the third person to hide us, but the first who didn't know we were Jews. It's possible he knew, but he took us in, anyway. We stayed there until December 13th. My father couldn't do much there either, but the two women, grandma and mother again, and I, just started knitting. We knitted socks, and warm gloves. And we lived from that. I remember, one December day, probably the 13th, there was a sudden deluge of Arrow Cross, saying they were looking for Sandor Acs who goes by the name of Ferenc Veres, and Mrs. Sandor Acs, who goes by Mrs. Ferenc Veres, and Mariann Acs, who goes by Ilonka Veres. From that we knew they had come out because someone had turned us in. Our suspicion is that that certain Mrs. Zoltan Kiss, who lived in the house, had a brother who was Arrow Cross. They found us from his report. The problem had been that Mrs. Kiss knew where we were. Sometime somebody, either Ilonka or Bela, had told her. One of them could have accidentally given themselves away, and that's how Mrs. Kiss's brother moved into our flat. He probably wanted to make off with the whole thing, so he reported us.

That's how the Arrow Cross took us away in December of 1944 from Vertesszolos, from the Tomasek family, poor people who suffered for it too, because they were beaten badly, his wife as well. They even took him to Komarom, to the Csillag Fort. We stayed a night there in Vertesszolos, then they turned us over to three Hungarian constables 12. The three constables took us from Vertesszolos to Tata- a 5 km trip - on foot. My mother tried to convince them to let us go. It was very near the end of the war. She would testify, if they get in trouble, that they had let us go, let us escape. But no, they took us to Tata. It was either a constabulary or a military center, I don't know exactly, and a short time later, to the Komarom Csillag Fort. We were there for about eight days. My mother had a map which marked where the front was, that's how they knew where the Russians were, and how the Americans were coming across Sicily. I remember the scene, there in the jail, a lot of women, we could already hear the cannons, from above, and we hoped we might just make it. But we didn't.

They put us in train cars in Komarom and took us to Ravensbruck. My father was taken by another train, we can only guess that he went straight to Dachau, but maybe from Dachau he ended up in Auschwitz. The two trains went parallel. After a long freight train ride, we arrived in the village of Furstenberg on December 24th, where there was a concentration camp, Ravensbruck. They took us in to the camp when we arrived, we had a night of freedom, we slept on the ground. The next morning they took away every last little trinket we had. After a cold shower, we had to remove all our clothes, we got a kind of rag in place of them, and they took us to Barrack 31. We were there for two months. Every day, there were constant appeals for mercy, it was very difficult to bear, it was very cold. It's close to the Baltic Sea. My mother got very sick, either with kidney stones or cancer. A prisoner doctor examined her, talked to her. My seventy-five-year- old grandmother was in better condition. They sometimes took me out of the camp to do all kinds of nasty work, sometimes they didn't. When I could, I tried to conserve energy so I'd stay strong, it was frightening.

They were unnecessary jobs. They only took me to a place where I had to shovel sand, earth. Around and around, on top of the other, for no reason. I had a clever excuse. We were put in lines when they gave out the work, and once, when we started to go, I just did a 180 degree spin. They asked me how I got to go back. I said they didn't need me, and I came back. So I didn't have to do too much of such terrrible work, but stayed in the barrack. That was my occupation for the day.

My grandmother had a lot of spirit in her. There was a Czech prisonmate, who was a Jewish woman, a very upstanding woman, who encouraged us. It could have been at the beginning of March, when the evacuations started. They brought people from Auschwitz, there wasn't even an empty barrack for them, they just put them in something called a 'zeltlager' [tent camp in German]. It was a tent, in which there weren't even beds. The people layed on the ground and slept. I went over there, looking for acquaintances, and I found some, I think those people were in a horrible situation. There was an awful upheaval in the camp, one appel for the other, these groups, those groups.

One night, my mother said that they're only collecting young people, taking them, and they hid me under the bed. They went out and never came back. We never saw each other again. I was left there all alone. I was already in a terrible state, then they disappeared and I was worse. They put me in a different block, there I got some kind of skirt I had to throw away because it was so full of lice. In minus - I don't know - 10 or 15 degrees [Celsius], I would wrap myself in a plaid blanket instead of having some clothes on me. Then I wound up in another block. Then they took everybody to ditch digging work, everybody left inside. One time, I fell down on the way to work, and I couldn't get myself up. The 'Aufseherin' [overseer woman] set a dog on me, it grabbed my arm and pulled me after. The prisoners at these times always stepped in to help, lifted me up and carried me to the worksite. There, they stuck me in the corner of a ditch, then took me home, supporting me on either side. But I don't have to say, that when we got back in the evening, at the role call they discharged me from service. What they told us was that the sick and weak were taken to the so-called 'kinderlager'[children camp]. We didn't really know then what it was, we just guessed everything. We smelled the stink of burnt flesh. We just couldn't accept these monstrosities, plus I always hoped that I might get to go where my mother and grandmother were. The next morning they collected this group, I was one of them, to take them to the 'kinderlager'. I guess my lust for life was too great, I knew German, I went over to the German SS Head Supervisor woman and I told her that I'm sixteen years old, and I feel I'm capable of working, and to let me go back. She did. Well, I didn't work after that, because by evening I was even worse.

How I ended up in the 10th block, the 'revier' [hospital], I can't say, surely somebody helped me. The fact is, I woke up in the hospital. There was a kind of sham hospital. The mentally ill were there, the wretched who screamed hideously, occasionally they were taken away. And my great luck was, that I met Gracia Kerenyi there. She was a very religious Christian girl, who went from one prison to the next, eventually from Auschwitz to Ravensbruck, because at University she put up anti-German posters. Gracia was a language talent, who knew German and English. In the hospital there, she got a position of trust. She deloused and took temperatures. She was a year older than I was, we came from the same family background, and we became really good friends, and she helped me a lot. I had a fever once, I had banged my leg, they put me in an elimination group again, she came in, and got me out.

It was a sham hospital, and they did experimentations. They x-rayed me, and the doctor said I had tuberculosis, so they immediately pumped my lungs full of air. It was pretty painful. The doctor checked me, gave me everything. He did quite a lot of examining and watching us. Once he ordered me into the surgery. Surgery?! There was a small table, and a female soldier brought something red in on a tray, that looked like some kind of meat. They told me later it was a calf gland [thymus gland]. But I couldn't tell what it was. They cut my thigh open and sewed it into me. The International Red Cross examined it and said they had performed medical experiments on me. I had a lot of medical certifications about it, but I never understood a word of it. I was there in the hospital, laying on a bed with a gypsy woman, who died there next to me. That was about the middle to the end of April. And all at once, the Germans left. We stayed there for one or two days in complete stasis. The people who could walk broke into the warehouse, and found an incredible amount of Red Cross packages. They dumped the boxes into the main road; food, chocolate, milk powder, sardines, canned meats, and we ate that. I remember that I only ate chocolate, very carefully, so I didn't get sick. Two days later the Russians arrived.

It was miraculous! They came in two columns, hanging in bunches off the tanks, playing guitars. And those who were still in good shape, jumped up on the tanks. In an hour and a half, they had set up their goulash cannons [portable cooking vats], cooked soup and potatoes. They transferred us, those of us left, within a week, and turned the whole place into a Russian hospital. All at once, it was full of Russian doctors and nurses. They healed us. That was in the first days of May, and on the 22 of August 1945, they let us go. They healed the scar on my leg, I was still feverish, plus I had to fill out, I weighed 36 kilos [79lbs]. Then we left in Red Cross buses. We had no idea that we weren't going home. It never occurred to us that we're going somewhere else.

Once, a Red Cross bus or car had come, and they had wanted to take Gracia to Switzerland. Because her father, Karoly Kerenyi was a classics-philology expert, who had been living there for a long time. [Karoly Kerenyi (1897- 1973): classics-philologist and religion- historian, MTA (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) member. An internationally known expert on ancient religious history. He emigrated to Switzerland in 1943.] But it didn't work out, they didn't get her on the bus. Thomas Mann had also tried to save Gracia. They [the Germans] told him that she couldn't go because she knew a lot, and had seen a lot. So Gracia came home with us. Almost straight to the Budakeszi Sanitarium. When I came out of the sanitarium, I didn't move in with my uncle Erno Sebestyen, because they wouldn't have allowed it, so I moved in to 8 Bajcsy-Zsilinszky street, a one-room apartment, with my girlfriend, Ilona Veres. Ilona's stepfather was a printer. There were five of us in the one [bed]room flat. I lived with them for a long time.

Post war

I found out that my relatives from Szeged, the Karman family, were still alive, because they had been taken to Austria instead of Auschwitz, so I went down to Szeged, to their house. The relatives wanted me to start school again, but as a child in new surroundings, I was in no condition to do that for a long time. I accidentally bumped into a friend of mine from Nagykoros, Vera Lazar, we met while I was travelling. Her family still lived down in Nagykoros, but she was living in a student house in Pest. She convinced me to move up to Pest. The Karman's really didn't want me to, but nobody could stop me. That was in 1947, then I was just twenty years old. I had no plans, intentions. I stayed in the student house, a smaller house of Joint13 on Zoltan street, for university and academy students. I was learning violin with Tatrai, and I started playing piano again. [Vilmos Tatrai, violinist, founder and director of the Tatrai Quartet and Hungarian Chambermusic Orchestra.] Then I applied to the College of Humanities, for history and geography. But I didn't have my high school diploma, I should have matriculated already, but I couldn't decide. I half went to University, I hung around with the medical students and the humanities students, and I had to leave the student house. By then I hadn't applied anywhere. I left the student house, became a renter, moving from one flat to the next. In 1948, I completed a crash course. That came about when Vera Lazar was already in the Travelling Chorus, and she brought me along. It was a chorus of the [communist] movement, and there were a lot of decent people there. I suddenly got this chance, they sent me to a vocational course. I went for four months, but it was very far from my abilities, to have to learn accounting and auditing. But I finished it, and found a position at the Produce Distribution Enterprise, and worked there for a good while. They arranged produce acquisition courses, and sent me in my twenties, to be the school director. I worked in Nagyteteny, Monor, Tordas and various places. They brought in the bright peasant kids, and I taught them. I taught them orthography, gymnastics, that kind of stuff, up to the 1950s, when suddenly it comes out that I'm a Jew, and I come from the bourgeoisie. I wasn't allowed to do that anymore. They fired me without any reason, and put me on forced leave - I already had a good position at the Animal Distribution Enterprise, and had married in the meantime.

I met my first husband at one of the schools. He was a peasant kid who had finished three years of grammar school, he was a very brilliant man. His name was Gyorgy Popa. We were married in 1950, and when I wasn't allowed to go to the courses as the school director anymore, I got an idea - my interest in literature came up again. I read in the Literature News, that Gyorgy Mate was the director or party secretary, and like a naïve child I went to see him. I told him, I'm so and so, interested in literature, can he help me. He picked up the phone, called Marton Buza, who was the group director at the Szikra Books, and told him: "Marci, there's this so and so, try her out!" I went there, passed the interview, and they hired me at Szikra Books. That was in 1951. When I got into Szikra, my life consolidated. They were disciplined [communist] party members, you had to appear at the collective meetings, join the party, but it wasn't such a big drill.

Meanwhile, in 1946, I got connected with the Good Pastor Mission. There was a med student in the student house named Peter Fillenz. He had a cousin by the same name, with whom I somehow became friends, and he worked in the Good Pastor Mission. The Mission had two fantastic directors, Jozsef Elias, who was a protestant priest, and Imre Kadar. The Good Pastor Mission's mission was to convert Jews. And I didn't just fall under their spell, I really tried to believe in it, but it didn't ever work out. Many times I toyed with the idea believing in any kind of God, but I never could. However, they hired me as a typist. It was a decent atmosphere, they were good people, both Elias and Kadar. I only worked there a few months. For a while, when I was still living with the Veres's, we were pretty destitute, and at that time there wasn't any normal money yet, they paid in gold, and flour.

My first husband and I started our life on Szabadsag Hill. That happened because my girlfriend Vera Lazar married a boy named Tibor Szoke from the Travelling Chorus. He was with the interior ministry then, he'd been a partisan, and he knew of an apartment, that was available. I went there, and it was empty. That's how I got that apartment. We moved there in 1950. I had it in my head that I had to get him schooled, because he only had three years of elementary education. He eventually finished at the Agricultural College, and became an agronomist. He worked mostly in the countryside.

We had two daughters. They were not easy births - it's likely that due to the hormone treatments [from the concentration camp], I couldn't get pregnant, because my body changed. When I started gaining weight, I was skinny from the waist up, but gained weight from the waist down. It's possible, that the emotional element that comes with this, was the part of why I couldn't have kids for so long. So after a really long medical treatment, after six years of marriage, my first daughter Kati was born in 1956, and my second, Julia, was born in 1957. That's when I felt that I had a family again. I got back a reason to live. I was with the kids, my husband went from one place in the countryside to the next. It didn't matter that he got an education, that lifestyle of his, which he lived, and the one which I lived, couldn't be reconciled. So we got a nice, peaceful divorce. I think that was in 1962.

In 1956, there was the counter-revolution 14. We lived up on Szabadsag Hill, I was at home with my daughter, she was seven months old. They came in, these youngsters, and threatened us. There was a woman on the ground floor, whom I didn't even know, and had never seen, and they brought her up to my apartment, and this woman says that when Stalin died, I was crying on the street. They started prodding, questioning, it was a critical situation. The child was in my lap, and I pinched her bottom like this, pretty hard. She started screaming. The baby was screaming, and it was either this or something else, I don't know, but they left saying they'd be back. They didn't come back.

I worked at Szikra Books from 1951, but not for long, because after the events of 1956, they fired a lot of people, who they labeled revisionists. They let eighty of us go. The lucky thing was, that a couple of the agile and clever workers among them immediately started founding a new publishing house. And they did, that was Gondolat Publishers. I worked there until 1991.

I got married again in 1965 to Ivan Szamosi, who was a Jewish man. We lived for thirty one years in perfect understanding, in the middle of all those problems. In actuality, he's the real father of my daughters, they've also recognized this, my youngest girl Julia still views him as her father to this day. It caused a couple of difficulties that my husband had an ex-wife and a child, Zsuzsi. I think of her as my daughter, and her children as my grandchildren.

I met my husband through a mutual acquaintance. Only his mother and grandmother were alive when we got together. His father died of tuberculosis in 1945. His mother loved him, as he did her, she took good care of him. It was a Jewish family at heart, though they weren't especially religious, but the grandmother and my mother-in-law kept every Sabbath, on Friday evening they lit candles, and they celebrated Yom Kippur. How my mother-in-law made it through the war, during that particular march, they took her all the way to Hegyeshalom[on the Austrian border], where a nephew - who was some member of the Jewish Council - stepped in, and got her out of that march to Germany, and then they came home. This is how they lived through the liberation. My husband was in a labor battalion and [sent] to Bor 15. He was liberated there. The grandmother had a little tobbacconist's shop on a side street.

My husband first worked as a blue-collar worker. Next as a technician, then later found a position where he could do engineering work. My husband was a very kind, good-natured, funny, diligent, agile man, he was a qualified mechanic, but the first thing he did after we married was get a degree at the Kando Kalman College. [An electro-technical college in Budapest] Like all qualified mechanics then, he was also very poorly paid. We also had to pay his child support. So our life was pretty hard, and I had a way to make a little extra at the Gondolat Publishers. He also always tried to give our life a boost, by getting work abroad, so that for two or three years, he was in Syria and Iraq for a long time.

The apartment on Szabadsag hill, where I lived during my first marriage, wasn't really a comfortable place. It didn't have regular heating, or a normal kitchen. We exchanged it for a three-room apartment in Kobanya [Budapest, 10th district]. I moved here with my first husband, but I was living here with Ivan soon after. We took an acquaintance of ours with us to help out with the kids, Terez Kovacs, to this three-room place. We lived together for many years, she got married in the meantime, and her husband lived here, too. Then they moved out and we stayed here, where we're still living. I've been living in this apartment for close to forty years.

All three girls successfully got a college education. Two girls went to the Economics University, Zsuzsa and Juli. My daughter Juli also finished at the Theatre Arts College, in production management. She really didn't like foreign trade. Then she learned French, worked for a few years in foreign trade, but only to Arab countries, where it was easier for her. Then she got into film. She worked in the film industry for a long time, as an assistant, then as a substitute production manager. Until she met her husband Peter Szilagyi, who she worked with. My son-in-law is a film technician, he's got a company, and works with different groups and productions.

My daughter Kati finished a degree in English at the College of Humanities. She married Gyorgy Hajdu, who she knew from University, and quickly fell in love and got married. Katica [Kati] had already finished University, or it was her last year, when they got married. They are almost the same age. Gyorgy finished University also, in geophysics. Gyorgy's family lived in Budapest, but his mother and father are from Pecs. His father is totally Jewish, his mother half-Jewish. They lived with us for a good couple of years, then succeeded in buying a co-op apartment. My son-in-law worked in the countryside, very devotedly, to get the money together. They lived together for more than twenty years. They also divorced peacefully, certain ideological problems came up between them, which led them sadly to divorce. Kati has lived with me for four years now. She can't work, so I support her. From their marriage, they have a big, handsome boy, Tamas, who is already an adult. He's a programmer, a computer guy. He lives alone. I guess he'll get married in a couple years, but right now he just studies, he's very smart. He goes to the Information Technology College, works really hard to build his future.

Most of my extended family moved abroad. On my mother's side, the Neufeld side, I had relatives in Satoraljaujhely. They were deported, just two of them survived, Elza and Odi [Odon]. Both were deported but came home. They didn't have an easy life. Eventually, they went to Israel after 1956, because there were anti-Jewish incidents there. They got scared and went away. They lived and worked a pretty settled and subsistance-level life there, then Elza's husband died suddenly. Odi left for America, to his cousins, then went back to Israel to die.

Israel means a lot to me, the emotional ties are very strong. But, for me to go live there, I would never be able to! Naturally, I'm rooting for them, I watch the news, I despair when they are killed, I'm very sad that the world turned out this way. And the manifestations of anti-Semitism here are unbearable to me. I feel like I'm a Jew, and I also feel like I'm a Hungarian, if I hadn't felt I was a Hungarian, I could have left after 1956. I never moved to America. I met with my two cousins, who left in the 1920s, for the first time in my life in 1965 when they came to Hungary as tourists. For a second time, when I was in Los Angeles for official business. Of course, they asked me whether I wanted to go out[emigrate or not. I said no.

I can't say I was so happy about the political change [1989]. Those who weren't scared then, know today, that capitalism isn't an all peaches and cream kind of thing. The life of Gondolat Publishing - where I worked then - also transformed.

It started with the GMK [Gazdasagi Munka Kozosseg - Hungarian labor reform which allowed workers in big communist enterprises to work extra for money] around 1985. They had given us smaller printing jobs. We had to package books, there was a so-called Gondolat Friends Circle, and the director woman had us do the organization of it. After the death of Erno Havas, a great director, Margit Siklos came to head the publishing house. She was an old communist, incidentally also a Jewish lady, a very smart woman, and direct. She gave us work, and we were incredibly lucky with our first job. A letter came from a librarian in Mosonmagyarovar, who offered to put together a book on pastries. And we did that. Three companies ordered eighty thousand copies. We had negotiated with the author that half the profits would go to her, and the other half to us. That established our activity.

In 1991, we started the Cicero Publishing House. Our main profile was publishing children's books. But aside from that, we do informational books. Primarily hobby books for people in villages - things to do with various produce and fruits. We also put out classic literature, for example, Hasek's 'Svejk'. We have a schoolbook line we call 'Sulikonyvtar'[school library], in which we could put classic Hungarian literature, required reading for schools. Aron Tamasi's 'Abel', and KalmanMikszath's 'The Speaking Robe'. After eight years of survival, the publishing house hit hard times. Our distribution dropped. Since I had a lot of good contacts, for example, Tamas Foldes from Gondolat Publishing, who had become the head of Talentum Press, we chose him. We fused the companies. The most important thing was to keep everybody employed. He put our catalog on consignment, into his warehouse, and since then he's distributing us. Today, he owns sixty percent. And we didn't go under. I'm still working, at the age of seventy-six.

I was forced to be a capitalist, but emotionally I care nothing about money. I'm not saying that I don't need it, because in the end, I have children, one of which I must completely support, but I got a financial windfall. First, I inherited a little money from my cousin, who died in Israel. Secondly, because of the medical experiments, the International Red Cross gave me support, and not just once. The first time, after the war, was in 1962, and recently I got a larger sum. I successfully used the first one to help raise our standard of living at that time. I have no financial problems, I have a proper pension, and I also get a pension from my husband.

If I was physically stronger, I would travel more. I've had to say no to that, in the last few years. I've been to Germany a lot. I have a German publishing partner, Schafer. I went to the Frankfurt Bookfair many times, and met a lot of Germans. I never had any bad feelings. I know the Germans took it very seriously, they've processed the memory of the Jewish persecutions, they feel it. I went two times on a memorial trip.

The Hungarians didn't take the Holocaust, nor reparations for it, very seriously. Not just primarily, the monetary part, but the spiritual part is still not worked through, which is painful even today. Because as they usually put it, it was never a Hungarian problem. They don't consider it part of Hungarian history, it's a Jewish question, and they've never faced that certain part of their past, never accepted it. It's interesting that it was Zoltan Pokorni, one of the leaders of Fidesz 16 that recommended a Memorial day for the Holocaust. It was a pretty positive step on his part, and following through with it would be more positive. I'm happy that there's a Holocaust Museum and Documentation Center in Hungary, to which I could give such documents and photos, make them available, so people in the future can be assured physically of what happened. Showing them with our lives.

I am amazed at the rebirth of Jewish life. Even more so, because one of my nephews from the Karman family had a ritual [synagogue] marriage, which my children took part in, and found very interesting. My participation is limited to the very rare visit to the Balint House [Budapest Jewish community house].

One of my grandchildren, Sari, due to a girlfriend, wound up in the Szarvas Camp [Jewish youth camp] last summer. Her life changed to an enormous degree, and that has to be thanks to the life in the Szarvasi Camp. She got spiritually much closer to Judaism, and keeps contact with the friends she met there. Naturally, she'll be going again next summer. Luckily, she attends the Radnoti High School, where there is protection for this mentality. We'd like our littlest grandchild to attend there. To live in those surroundings, and be enriched by those social influences.

My oldest grandchild, Tamas is my daughter Kati's oldest. He studied to be a computer programmer, he has a very good job, he works very diligently, and attends the Information Technology College. He maintains a respectful relationship with his mother. My daughter Zsuzsa also has two children. Andris, the older, just matriculated, the younger, Kata, is in her third year of High School. I mainly have good contact with the little girl, the older one is a bit grouchy, he doesn't talk much.

I would love to tell them more about what I lived through in connection to Judaism, and if an opportunity appears, I'll do what I can. To a certain degree, there's some kind of hesitance in them. They're not very interested in the question. In my will, I've asked that, after my death, they play the film the Spielberg Foundation did with me for my children and my son-in- law. Also, at Christmas, I just gave my two daughters and my grandchildren the nobel prize-winning book by Imre Kertesz,'Fateless', in which I wrote them that they should read the book as if it was about my life.

GLOSSARY

Lev Galper
Moscow
Russia
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya
Date of interview: January 2005

Lev Galper talked to me at his home. Lev is a tall slim man with nicely cut grey hair and bright dark eyes. He is so handsome that his old age - he is 85 - is hard to believe. His speaking manner is easy and natural, with a touch of mild humor.

Lev lives with his wife, daughter and granddaughters in his three-room apartment in one of the new Moscow districts. The apartment is very comfortable, furnished and equipped with taste and love.

There are a lot of books, though Lev complains of being unable to read much because of his eye problems.

His wife Nina also looks younger than her age. They make a very handsome couple: tall, broad-shouldered Lev and his tiny, graceful wife. They are very considerate towards each other.

• My family background
• Growing up
• Our religious life
• My school years
• Anti-Semitic incidents
• During the war
• Post-war
• Married life
• Perestroika
• Glossary

• My family background

My father's family lived in the shtetl of Bykhov in Belarus [180 km from Minsk]. I cannot describe Bykhov as I have never been there and my father never told me about it. Father's parents, my grandfather Leib Galper and my grandmother, were born there. I don't know my grandmother's name though I met her several times. I never heard anyone calling her by name, only 'Grandma' or 'Mama.' I don't know their dates of birth either.

My grandfather was a hairdresser, and my grandmother was a housewife; she kept house and took care of the children. I only vaguely remember my grandmother: she was a short stout woman dressed in dark clothes and wearing a black kerchief on her head.

My grandparents had five children; I don't know their dates of birth. Beniamin was the eldest; then two daughters, Sura and Ita, were born. In 1888 my father was born. His common name 1 was Zinovy, while his Jewish name was Zalman. The youngest child in the family was Mikhail whose Jewish name was Meilakh.

My father's parents were religious. I don't know if my father had any Jewish education. Evidently, he had some elementary knowledge, as he could read Hebrew and knew how to pray. But he was unable to get a secular education. His family was very poor and the sons, at the age of eight, were sent to learn a trade. So they didn't have an opportunity to study. The eldest brother, Beniamin, became a tailor's apprentice. The two younger sons, my father and Meilakh, started learning the hairdresser's profession when they turned eight.

At first they were bottle-washers: they warmed water for shaving, had tools ready for the barbers, swept the floor and, at the same time, learned how to cut hair and shave. After two years, the apprentices were able to work on their own. Both worked at my grandfather's barber's shop. Certainly, it was not a 'salon,' but a small room with two or three working places. Before World War I, the whole family moved to Volchansk, the chief town of a district in Kharkov region [70 km from Kharkov and 450 km from Kiev]. They hoped to earn more there and to find a greater choice of marriageable young men for their daughters.

Volchansk used to be rather a large merchants' town [see Guild I] 2. It was located within the [Jewish] Pale of Settlement 3, so Jews were allowed to live there. Volchansk had a large Jewish community. The Jewish population made up about 40 percent of the town's residents. Besides Jews, there were also Russians, Ukrainians, and Poles there. Downtown houses were made of stone and had one or two stories. There even were several three- storied houses. Jews settled mainly in the central part of the town.

There were people representing the Jewish intelligentsia: doctors, lawyers, teachers. But, at the same time, there were a lot more poor people; those who could hardly make both ends meet. In the center of the town, houses were built close to each other because the land there was more expensive than on the outskirts. Those who lived on the outskirts fed the town. They were mostly involved in agriculture. Volchansk often hosted major wholesale fairs, and people used to come there from far away. In the center of Volchansk there was a big synagogue built with the money donated by rich Jewish merchants.

There were also smaller synagogues, and several prayer houses, and a cheder. Of course when the Soviet power came most of the synagogues were closed. The Soviet power started its struggle against religion 4. But the big downtown synagogue was left open, as well as the small house next door where the shochet worked.

Both my father's sisters got married in Volchansk. Certainly, they had traditional Jewish weddings: with the chuppah and with the rabbi - as it should be. I can hardly remember Ita: when she got married she left Volchansk and came to visit her relatives only a few times. She had two children, but I don't even remember their names. However, I knew well Sura, her husband Sakhne Kozin and their children: their daughters, Bella and Lyuba, and their son, Mikhail. After getting married, Sura became a housewife, and her husband was in commerce.

My father's elder brother, Beniamin, took a great interest in revolutionary ideas. At that time the Bolshevik 5 party was prohibited, and my uncle became a member of an underground revolutionary circle where they studied works by Marx and Engels 6. In 1915 my uncle joined the Bolshevik party. In the circle he met his future wife Manya. She was a Jewish girl who had come to Volchansk from a shtetl and worked as a dressmaker. They joined the party together and got married soon after that.

Naturally, they didn't have a Jewish wedding; communist ideas were incompatible with religion. The party division they belonged to sent them to Dnepropetrovsk [a city with a population of more than a million in the east of Ukraine, 420 km from Kiev]. Beniamin and Manya settled there, and both of them worked as dressmakers. They stayed in Dnepropetrovsk and never returned to Volchansk.
They had two children. They named their daughter Rosa after revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg 7, and their son was named Felix after Dzerzhinsky 8.

In Volchansk, my father got a job at a barber's shop. Of course, he had no money to start his own business, and, together with his brother Meilakh, he worked for their master.
Neither my father, nor Meilakh took an interest in politics, unlike their elder brother. They worked trying to save some money for getting married and buying a dwelling.

My mother's family lived in the small Belarus shtetl of Glusk, Mogilev region [120 km from Minsk]. I know almost nothing about my mother's parents. Grandfather Chaim Glukhovsky was a craftsman; Grandmother whose name I don't know was a housewife. My mother's parents were religious people, and they gave Jewish education to their numerous children. They had many children, but, besides my mother, I knew only one of her elder sisters, Nekhama. Two of mother's elder sisters immigrated to Denmark in 1904. Mother was in correspondence with them until the mid-1930s.

Once, in the middle of the 1920s, my mother's sisters even came to Volchansk to see us. They stayed for a few days and left. Then reprisals started [during the Great Terror] 9, and to keep in touch with relatives abroad 10 became dangerous, so mother ceased doing so. Three other sisters left for the USA during World War I. We never heard anything from them.

Three of my mother's brothers stayed in Belarus. Before the war mother occasionally corresponded with them, but during the war we lost touch with them. Since we failed to find them after the war and they never got in touch with us again, I think they all died during the Great Patriotic War 11. Germans organized mass shootings of Jews in Belarus. I believe that my mother's brothers and their families fell victims to these actions.

My mother was the youngest in the family. She was born in 1899. In her passport issued in the Soviet times, she had the Russian name of Eva. Her Jewish name was Iokha. I've never come across this name. I guess it was a diminutive for Iokheved.

During World War I my mother's family moved to Bobruisk, Mogilev Region [130 km from Minsk]. It was a big city for those days.
In Glusk people suffered from famine very much during the war. That was probably why they decided to move to Bobruisk.

My mother's elder sister Nekhama married Meishe Polyakov from Volchansk and after the wedding she went to Volchansk to live with her husband. My mother went to see them. And my father already lived in Volchansk at that time. So it was there where they met. They did without a traditional Jewish matchmaking; my father just asked my grandfather Chaim to bless their marriage.

My parents got married in Volchansk at the beginning of 1919. They had a traditional Jewish wedding. After the wedding they rented lodging from a Jewish family in the same street where Aunt Nekhama lived.

The [Russian] Revolution of 1917 12 in no way influenced my parents' way of life. The Soviet power took property from the rich and exiled them to Siberia, but nothing threatened my parents. My father continued to work as a hairdresser, and hairdressers are needed under any power. My mother didn't work after her marriage.     

• Growing up

I was their first child; I was born in late 1919. My paternal grandfather Leib had died not long before I was born, that is why I got his name. But in my documents I was registered under the Russian name of Lev. Grandfather was buried in the Volchansk Jewish cemetery; after his death my grandmother moved to Dnepropetrovsk to live with her eldest son Beniamin.

It was a very hard time, the time of the Civil War 13. People starved and suffered from terrible epidemics of different types of typhoid, which also killed a great number of victims. Besides, Jewish pogroms 14 often happened during the Civil War. Volchansk wasn't spared of them either. My mother used to tell me about the Jewish pogroms that started when Petliura's 15 troops came to Volchansk.

My parents' neighbors, Russian Orthodox believers, hid our family in the attic of their house. Mother said that she was most of all afraid that I would cry and gang 16 members would hear me crying, so she was holding her hand against my mouth all the time. But I was calm and none of Petliura's men suspected anything. After the Civil War, life straightened out little by little. My father earned enough by that time; at any rate we were well provided for. In 1921 my younger sister was born; her common name was Berta, but her Jewish name was Beba.

My mother's sister Nekhama, with her husband and two children, occupied a half of the house; the other half was inhabited by Yankel Polyakov, a cousin of Nekhama's husband Meishe. During the NEP 17 Yankel became a businessman and grew rich. When the NEP was over he was afraid that he would be arrested very soon if he stayed in Volchansk where everybody knew him. So he left Volchansk for some place in Donetsk region. He sold his half of the house to my parents. The house was big, made of wood covered with plaster. It had been built for two families, that is why it had two separate entrances and its two parts were isolated from each other.

Each half consisted of two rooms and a kitchen with a big Russian stove 18. My father did his best to make the house comfortable; he faced it with bricks and made a well in the yard so that my mother wouldn't have to fetch water from the street. The plot of land near the house was so small that there was no room for a kitchen garden. Mother planted some flowers there and she grew some greenery in a small bed for our meals.

In Volchansk Jews didn't live in one neighborhood, like they often did in other places. In our street there lived three or four Jewish families besides us and Nekhama's family. We had a good relationship with our Ukrainian neighbors. Jews didn't keep away from 'goyim,' and Ukrainians and Russians weren't anti-Semitic. In general, I think that before World War II there was no anti-Semitism, at least I never noticed any manifestations of anti-Semitism or heard about it from other Jews.

I would like to visit Volchansk very much. Unfortunately, I am already 85 and I'm afraid I'm not strong enough for such a trip. I remember quite well all our neighbors in our street, I remember our house. Though, the house doesn't exist any longer. In the 1970s, when the town started growing, they built a machine-building factory and houses for the factory employees right in our street.

They demolished all the old houses and built many-storied modern buildings in their place and broadened the street. I realize this is not my Volchansk any longer, I will just not recognize the places I knew in my childhood, but it is still my dream to go to Volchansk.

Having moved to Volchansk, my parents continued to observe Jewish traditions. Near the market place there worked a shochet. My mother always bought live hens and then sent me with them to the shochet. We observed the kashrut. Mother had separate crockery for meat and dairy meals. Saturday was a working day at that time. On Friday evening my mother lit the candles and prayed over them.

On Saturday my father went to work but mother tried not to do anything about the house before the first night star, when, according to the Jewish tradition, the next day began. Yiddish was spoken in our house; I used to know it well and I still remember it. But my sister who was just two years younger than me didn't know Yiddish; she spoke Russian.

• Our religious life

On Jewish holidays my parents always went to the synagogue. After I turned four my father used to take me to the synagogue with him. Mother sat upstairs, together with other women, and I was with my father downstairs, in the men's seats. At our home we also celebrated Jewish holidays according to all the rules. Before Pesach we baked matzot. Our relatives and Jewish women from our street came to our place.

We had a spacious kitchen and a big Russian stove. Some made dough; others rolled the dough out, while I had the most important job: I had to make small holes in the rolled dough with a special wheel made from the pinion of the big wall clock. It took us several days to bake the matzot, because there had to be enough matzot for all the families who took part in the baking. There was no bread in our house during all the days of the holiday; we ate only matzot.

Mother cooked various dishes for the holiday meals: chicken broth, boiled chickens, gefilte fish, cholent, tsimes 19, various baked puddings; she baked strudels of matzot flour stuffed with jam, nuts and raisins. On Pesach Eve we took a big wooden box with the Passover crockery down from the attic. On the first Passover night father held the Pesach Seder.

I used to ask him the traditional questions that I had learnt by heart. In the center of the table there was a beautiful gilded cup for Elijah the Prophet. I already knew that during Pesach the Prophet came to every Jewish house, blessed it and took a sip of wine from his cup. We left the front door open for the Prophet to come in. I always watched his cup very carefully and sometimes I was lucky to see the wine in the cup tremble for a moment.

Before Yom Kippur we always held the kapores ritual at home. Mother bought white hens for herself and for my sister and white cocks for my father and me. Father read aloud a prayer, and then each of us took his/her hen by its tied feet and twisted it above the head with the following words: 'Let you be my atonement.' Mother always cooked a square meal to be eaten before the fast. My parents fasted for 24 hours, but I and my sister were fed, as the fast wasn't obligatory for children. On the morning of Yom Kippur my parents went to the synagogue and stayed there till the night prayer.

Me and my sister were taken care of by a Ukrainian woman who lived next door. I also remember how everybody who came to our house during Chanukkah gave me and my sister coins. I don't remember any other holidays; after all about 80 years have passed since. And in the early 1930s the Soviet power intensified its struggle against religion. The only synagogue left by that time was closed, and people didn't celebrate Jewish holidays any longer.

During the NEP we were well-to-do though only my father worked. Later, when the NEP was forbidden and transition to the planned economy was under way, Cheka 20 started arresting people and taking their gold and other valuables. The wisest people managed to leave before the arrests began. Most of the Volchansk Jews were arrested no matter whether they had any valuables or not. For some reason the Cheka thought that all the Jews must have hidden at least something. My father was arrested, as well as his brother Meilach, and Uncle Meicha Polyakov, too. When chekists came to us to search the house they didn't find anything but still arrested my father.

My mother had a tsarist golden coin hidden somewhere; she was going to use it to have false teeth made for herself. She sewed it up into the belt of her skirt. She went to see my father in prison and was told that they would keep him until he handed over his gold. So mother brought them that coin and soon my father was released.

In 1932-33 there was a famine in Ukraine 21. We didn't starve only because there was a big oil-mill in Volchansk and we could buy there oil- cakes [pressed sunflower seeds with the husks]. Normally these oil-cakes were bought to feed cattle, but in those hard years we ate them ourselves. One couldn't eat much: they caused stomach ache, but we nibbled them little by little which saved us from the permanent hungry feeling. We are everything that was eatable; we gathered grass and roots and cooked soup with them. By and large, we survived somehow.

• My school years

In 1927 my parents sent me to a general education school. There were three schools in Volchansk: two of them provided a seven-grade education and one was a ten-year secondary school. Al those schools had been built by a rich merchant before the revolution. There was no Jewish school. I had known Ukrainian well since my childhood, so I was sent to the Ukrainian class. There were two Ukrainian classes and one Russian class where children from the nearby Russian villages studied. In my class there were almost no Jews. I didn't feel any anti-Semitism; the relationships among the school students and between teachers and students were absolutely even.

My favorite subjects were exact sciences: mathematics, physics. I had no problems with humanitarian subjects, but I cannot say I liked them very much. Over all the seven school years I was an excellent student. At school I joined the Young Octobrists 22, and then the pioneers [see All-Union pioneer organization] 23.

When I finished the 7th grade our school was closed and turned into a museum. Probably, there were not enough children in Volchansk to fill all the three schools. All the students from our school were transferred to the ten-year school. In the 8th grade I joined the Komsomol 24. The attitude towards me in the new school was good; they even elected me chairman of the school Komsomol committee. [Editor's note: Komsomol units existed at all educational and industrial enterprises. They were headed by Komsomol committees involved in organizational activities.] It meant a lot in Volchansk at that time.

At the new school I was also an excellent student. I had a lot of spare time and my mother insisted that I should study German. A teacher lived next door, she was a German, and she gave me lessons at her home. She mainly taught me communicative skills and correct pronunciation and didn't pay much attention to grammar.

• Anti-semitic incidents

I first felt anti-Semitism when I was in the 10th grade, when a new teacher of the Russian language and literature came to our school; her name was Dudina. She hated me and my sister who went to the same school. Maybe she was just a mean person, but I think that our Jewish background also played a part. Certainly, it was easier to deal with my sister: she came home in tears almost every day. The teacher picked on me all the time, but I was able to stand up for myself and other students saw that she was unfair towards me.

Once, six month before the graduation exams, she complained to the principal about me again, and the next day they held a class meeting where Dudina said that I didn't let her teach properly because I was smiling skeptically while she explained the lesson to us. Of course, that wasn't true, but the history teacher who was the chief of the school Communist Party division and a very unpleasant person, supported her. He said that my behavior was nothing else than the Trotskyist theory and I was a Trotsky 25 follower.

It was in 1937, in the heat of the reprisals and such an accusation was very dangerous for me. But I wasn't sitting on my hands waiting for my arrest. I was in good repute with the regional Komsomol committee, so I went there, told them about the meeting and asked them to transfer me to a suburban school, otherwise that couple would just eat me up. They reassured me at the regional committee and helped me to be moved to the only Russian class of our school where Dudina didn't teach. The Russian language and literature were taught there by another teacher, and I never had any disputes with her. However, Dudina was the teacher who examined me in literature during my graduation, and she gave me a 'good,' not an 'excellent' mark. Because of that, I failed to get a diploma with honors; but I didn't consider it very important: I was sure I would easily pass entrance exams to the institute.

During my school studies, I took up military training like many boys did at the time. There were many paramilitary circles. At first I joined the glider school and tried to fly. But nothing came out of it: when we were through with the theory and were about to start flying, the glider broke. Naturally, I attended the shooting circle. Every boy was eager to shoot real rifles; besides we were given special badges for good shooting. Certainly, we didn't hope to participate in real battles: we were brought up with the idea of our army being the strongest and invincible; we thought that no one would dare to attack us. We didn't doubt it.

Besides, Volchansk was an unusual town, it was a garrison town. It was not big, but there always were some troops deployed: a cavalry regiment, or an infantry regiment, or an air force corps. We loved our army, perhaps it was in the boys' blood. At that time conscription was looked upon in a different way than it is now: it was a matter of pride, we couldn't wait to be enlisted.

Reprisals that started in the middle of the 1930s affected our family, too. My uncle Beniamin, an old communist, lived in Dnepropetrovsk. He and his wife worked at a garment factory. His wife Manya had relatives in the USA who once sent her USD 5. My uncle didn't spend any of this money and immediately took it to the Defense Foundation.

After that both my uncle and aunt were expelled from the Party for having relatives abroad. It was a shock for them, a disaster beyond any comparison. Beniamin went to Moscow to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. He wanted to speak to a Central Committee officer and complain about the injustice. But they didn't even let him come in; a sentry told him to write an application and mail it.

My uncle's feelings were hurt very much: what is the Central Committee for if a party member cannot come there? He did write and mail the application, though without any effect. True, both of them remained free, which was of no small importance in those years.

Every day we learnt about new arrests. People whose names symbolized the Soviet power itself: major military leaders, high-ranking party officials and statesmen, became 'enemies of the people' 26. I couldn't believe that. Neither could I believe that the Soviet power appeared to have so many enemies all of a sudden. I thought: if there had been a conspiracy, it was aimed specifically at eliminating as many people devoted to the Soviet power as possible. Though I couldn't understand who needed that and what for. At least, my attitude was critical.

• During the war

We knew that in Germany Hitler had come to power; we knew about Nazi outrages and persecutions of Jews. In our movie theaters they showed anti- fascist films: 'Professor Mamlock' 27, 'The Oppenheim Family', and news- reels about the latest events in Germany. [Editor's note: 'The Oppenheim Family' devoted to the tragic fate of a Jewish family in the Nazi Germany was shot by Russian film director Grigoriy Roshal and released in 1939.] We believed that fascism would be defeated. But we didn't expect a war; we didn't think that this country would take part in it.

When I was still at school, the Volchansk Komsomol leader called me to the regional Komsomol committee and told me that young people were being recruited to the air force and the regional Komsomol committee had decided to send me to air-force courses. Of course, I agreed immediately. Right after finishing school I went to Kharkov. I went together with five other young men from our area. We came to the Culture Center of the Kharkov machine-building factory where the medical board was working.

All the doctors examined us and I was told that my anthropometry parameters didn't meet the requirements. I didn't weigh enough, and my weight deficiency was considerable. I was told that they would give me a recommendation for the military technical air-force school. I went home and started waiting for the invitation, but a month later I got a letter where they refused to admit me.

Entrance examinations in higher educational institutions were already under way, and I had to enter at least somewhere, so I went back to Kharkov. I tried to enter the military economics academy. I passed all the first exams; there were two days left before the last one, an exam in chemistry. I decided to go home for these two days and didn't have enough time to get ready for it. I got only 'satisfactory' in chemistry and I didn't have enough scores to enter the academy. I took my documents away from there.

In the street I saw a notice about admission to the Textile Institute. They took me considering the results of the exams I had passed at the academy. Thus, quite by chance, I became a textile-worker. I was given a place in the dormitory and on 1st September 1938 I started my studies.

There were quite a number of Jewish students in my group and at the institute. Others were very well disposed towards us. I studied well, studies were easy for me. I was considered a good student.

In 1939 Germany attacked Poland. After the involvement of the Soviet troops that war was over very soon; Hitler and Stalin began the partition of Poland [see Invasion of Poland] 28. The USSR got the western areas of Ukraine and a part of Belarus. I considered it right as I believed that the USSR had liberated the oppressed people of these countries. But I was surprised, like many people were, when after that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact 29 was signed and Germany changed from being our enemy to being our friend and ally. Though, I realized that it was just a political act: politics are made not to implement lofty ideas but to achieve practical goals. The pact must have been beneficial for the USSR...

When the war with Finland broke out [see Soviet-Finnish War] 30 I found myself a volunteer. It happened like this: one day when I came to the dorm my roommates told me that I had been enlisted as a volunteer to go to the Finnish front because I was a good skier. Since I couldn't ski at all I thought it was a joke. But the next day, in the institute entrance hall, I saw a poster reading 'Greetings to our Komsomol members who volunteered...' with a list of names including mine. I couldn't go to the Komsomol Committee and argue that I didn't know how to ski. I was too proud for that.

This happened during the midyear examinations. We had already passed three exams and had three more to take. All of us, volunteers, got excellent scores for the three other exams without even taking them. Then the institute rector organized a splendid farewell ceremony for us, with drinks and dances with a band.

After that we went to the recruiting office. We spent all day long there, and then we were told that everything was canceled and we could go home. And after the winter vacations nobody remembered about sending us to the front. The war in Finland somehow shook my belief in the invincibility of our army. I felt awkward about our army's great losses inflicted by a small country.

My sister also went to Kharkov after finishing school. She entered the Library Institute. I sometimes met with her; we used to go to theaters and museums. One day a Jewish theater from Lvov region came to Kharkov. My sister and I went there to watch a play, and I interpreted for her as she didn't know Yiddish.

When the Great Patriotic War broke out I was in Moscow. I had just finished my fourth year; we were sent to Moscow for a practical training. We learnt about the war from Molotov's 31 speech on the radio. Our practical training was over and we didn't know what to do: either to go back to Kharkov or to go home for vacations. But the main thing was to get out of Moscow. I came to Volchansk and at first began to wait for call-up papers from the recruiting office, but then I decided to go to Kharkov. They had arranged a military hospital at our institute, but the institute administration was still there. The head of the military registration office told me that nearly all of my co-students had volunteered for the front. At the recruiting office I was told that if I had no health problems I was to come to the assembly place the next day.

There were 23 people from our institute and a friend of mine from the Construction Institute. We were entrained and brought to Mariupol. I was enrolled in a special battalion of the 49th reserve rifle regiment. Guys with a secondary education or institute students were selected for that battalion, 1,200 people altogether. The battalion commander was a captain, and platoons were under the command of junior commanders, sergeants. Our training started. In the morning they woke us up and sent us for a run; they didn't even let us use the toilet. Then we washed ourselves, had breakfast and proceeded to combat training and line training. Our regiment commander hated us and we paid him back in his own coin. But he had more resources than we did and he punished us all the time. Extra duties came one after another.

On 1st October 1941 we were sent marching to a place over 100 kilometers away from Mariupol. Germans were approaching Mariupol and we were sent to dig trenches. We spent about a week there, and then we were ordered to come back to the camp. In Mariupol we were told that the next morning we were to leave, so we had to get ready: to take down our tents and to pack the equipment. After that we went, again on foot, but not to the front. We went northward, towards Donetsk. In the town of Sergo we stopped; we were quartered at a school. We spent a week there doing absolutely nothing.

Then we were formed up in ranks; those of us who had health problems were told to step out. They were taken somewhere; we didn't understand what it meant. We thought they would be sent home, but two days later they were formed up, given rifles and sent to the front. And we were sent eastward. At Likhaya station we were entrained and brought to Stalingrad. There they embarked us on a small steamer that took us up the Volga River, to Saratov. We disembarked on the left bank of the Volga and marched to the Volga-German Republic [see German ASSR] 32.

There we were taken on the staff of the 15th airborne brigade, the 4th parachute battalion. We were divided into platoons and our training began. We lived in the houses of the Volga Germans who had been evicted and deported to Siberia [see Forced deportation to Siberia] 33. We were quartered there in platoons. Germans had taken almost nothing with them: there were household utensils, furniture, and bed linen left in the houses; there were cows in the cattle- sheds. We slaughtered them and ate their meat; we even stored it up.

Time went by, and we still kept getting ready. Parachute training started, but there was only one parachute for the whole brigade. We were shown how to fold the parachute and then we started learning how to land after the jump. We jumped without the parachute from a height of five meters; we were explained that in that case our feet experienced the same push as during a parachute jump. We practiced every day, and time went by... It was late fall.

In late December 1941 we were put on troop-trains and brought to Moscow. We arrived in Moscow at night on 31st December. We were quartered in the Air- Force Academy on Leningradsky Avenue; we were given uniforms. And we started a totally different kind of training. Our brigade commander said that a good paratrooper must be able to cover a distance of 300 kilometers skiing. So we began training ourselves for ski marches. All of us had different training levels: I, for instance, had no idea of skiing at all. But we had to learn. We were woken up when it was still dark. For the first few days we left with our skis in the morning and came back in the evening. In the afternoon a field-kitchen came to feed us. Later we used to leave for a week; we spent nights in the wood, in the field - anywhere. We were fed two or three times a day.

The frost was bitter; in January the temperature was sometimes as low as -30°C [-22°F]. I would have never thought that I would be able to endure all that. True, we had warm clothing: wadded trousers and jackets, caps with earflaps and felt boots. But still it was cold to spend the night in the wood. We were allowed to break fir-tree branches and spread them on the snow. We used to make a fire and lie down around it, with our feet near the fire in the middle. One or two men stayed on duty to watch the fire, and then others took over from them.

When we came back we were made to wash the barracks, to clean the weapons; sometimes they took us to the movies or to an amateur concert. And then, at two or three in the morning, there came an alarm for instruction, and we had to go out, into the cold. They checked our clothing and footwear, made sure we had wrapped our feet in foot- bindings correctly, and off we went, again for a week. In April the snow began to melt and we had no more skiing.

Then we began to learn parachuting. We had already studied the parachute equipment; we knew how to fold a parachute. For jumping practice, we were given the TB-3 heavy bomber. We had to make our first jump on the ground. We were to take our seats in the plane, six people in each wing, and to jump from the plane that stood on the ground.

Our first real jump was scheduled for 6th April 1942. I was on the staff of the engineer/demolition combat platoon. We were the last to jump. We were put on board the plane; the weather was fine, with good visibility. We saw all the jumps made by the others. When the rifle company was jumping two of the riflemen had problems with their parachutes: their canopies were pulled out from the backpacks but didn't spread and couldn't hold the paratroopers. Both of them died.

Although one of them was the master sergeant who had enjoyed bullying the recruits, and the other was our former platoon commander Mamedov, the same commander who had not let us use the toilet in the morning. But all the same, when we saw their death we were not willing to get on the plane and jump ourselves. Though, it went all right, but for one thing: I lost my cap that I had forgotten to tie under my chin. I was not afraid during the jump; there was no time for fear. On the plane, I was watching the back of my mate; when the back disappeared it was my turn to jump. We had anchored parachutes. But of course, we had to pull the ring, in order to practice the skills. In this way we were trained until summer. And in summer we were sent to camps near Moscow. There we also practiced parachuting.

In July 1942, we were formed in lines, ordered to hand in our paratrooper's equipment and sent to Moscow. By order of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, our 7th airborne corps was transformed into the 34th Guards Airborne Rifle Division. Our corps commander Gubarevich was appointed division commander. Naturally, the re-forming process started because the corps structure is different from that of the division. There were four battalions in the airborne brigade, while the rifle regiment had only three rifle battalions.

Men from one of the rifle battalions were to be distributed among the other sub-units. I was in the engineer/demolition combat platoon of the rifle battalion; together with my friends from Kharkov, I was sent to the 46th Guards separate communications company. This specialized company was to provide for the communication between the division commander and regiment commanders. Since I was not a radio operator and I had nowhere to study I became a telephone operator holding the rank of senior sergeant.

We were sent to reinforce the 28th Army of the Stalingrad Front where the Stalingrad Battle 34 was already under way. The south of the Stalingrad Front, the Lower Volga and Astrakhan, appeared to be defenseless. So our 34th Guards Rifle Division was thrown there. We set up defenses 14 kilometers from Astrakhan, from the Volga. This was the beginning of the Great Patriotic War for us. We saw the first wounded who were transported from the 107th regiment to the medical battalion in Astrakhan through our position. We fought and moved forward. We were armed with carbines. In winter of 1942-43 the Soviet army won an important victory at the Stalingrad Front. Without waiting for the total defeat of the German troops, the headquarters moved our division westwards. We had the order to aim for Rostov and Bataisk. The march across the Kalmyk steppe was very hard. All the wells were poisoned because, as they said, the Kalmyks 35 were helping the Germans. We had a very hard time with water, or, to be more precise, without water. There were lakes around but the lake water was salty and bitter. We were very thirsty and sometimes took a few sips of that water; after that we became even thirstier. There was no fighting during the march, but the lack of water seemed harder than any battle for us. We were hungry, too, because our rear units had been left behind and trucks couldn't bring us food in time. The main food we had was fish, fresh fish from the Volga, but for some reason it was boiled without salt and that is why it was next to uneatable.

I had to work hard on that march. We moved rather fast and we had to provide for the communication on the way. I used to lay the line but soon I got an order to recover it. I had to pack the telephone sets, to reel the cable and, in doing so, not to lag behind the company. True, at that time we didn't have line breaks: we had no fights and that is why there was no broken cable. Actually, to be a telephone operator is one of the toughest jobs at the front. If the enemy opens fire, infantry lies down and nobody can raise these men. When a man is in a trench he is relatively safe and it is very hard to make him leave his trench and run under the blanketing machine-gun fire, or bombing or snipers' bullets. No one wants to die.

Sometimes, in order to raise one infantryman, two or three people with pistols used to stand over him; usually they were the company commander and the political officer 36. Though both the infantryman and those who were trying to make him stand up knew that they were not going to shoot at him; it was just a way of putting pressure on him. But if they managed to raise three or four men who ran ahead shouting 'Hurrah!' then the whole platoon followed them and there was no need to urge on each man individually. It was such a psychological phenomenon.

But as for signalmen, telephone operators, nobody stood over us threatening with pistols. They just told us, 'Communication!' and I had to take the end of the broken cable and run along the cable to find the breakdown and to fix it. That could happen anytime: during the lull or in the heat of the fight, in the sunshine or in the dark; communication had to be provided for. As a rule, breakdowns happened during the fight: the cable could be cut by a bullet or a splinter. Nobody considered us heroes; they seldom remembered about telephone operators when it came to awarding. We were just doing our work, so why award us?

We reached Bataisk, a city on the Don River, opposite Rostov. It is a big union station. Special trains with food that Hitler had sent to Stalingrad got stuck in Bataisk. They came as far as Bataisk and were stopped there. I was delayed because I had to reel the communications cable and came to Bataisk later than others. I found my comrades who had already searched the food carriages and were cooking a meal on the fire. Near Bataisk our platoon commander was wounded and sent to hospital. I learnt that the new commander had been waiting for me: he wanted me to go to the communications company at once to receive the equipment. They had found the German telephone equipment in the same carriages: cable and telephone sets.

We valued highly the German cable. Our cable was on big reels that we had to unreel while holding them in our hands. The German cable was on small drums to be carried in special mounts on one's back. They were not so heavy and the mounts made it easier to unreel and reel the cable. I was given a two-wheeled cart with a horse; the coachman was Ivan Kozlov, a friend of mine. We loaded everything we received at the company and started back. The cable mount must have slipped out of the cart on the way, because we came without it. The platoon commander went for me swearing and told me to go and look for the mount or he would shoot me. I came to the company again but there were no more mounts. I started back thinking, 'Let him shoot me.' But when I returned I discovered that the platoon had gone. While I was walking there and back the platoon rose and headed for Rostov. That meant I had to go there too.

I came to the Don River; Rostov was on the other bank. I started looking for a crossing and saw a line of soldiers lying on the bank. I asked them where they were from; they turned out to be from the 248th division. There was a fight in Rostov, our troops were trying to capture the city. The soldiers persuaded me to stay with them and to find my platoon when the battle was over. During the fight in the city it was impossible to find anybody: in the field or in the steppe one could see clearly where the Germans were and where the Russians were. But in a city, fighting took place in the streets, in the houses and it was impossible to tell who was where.

Together with that division, I crossed the ice of the frozen Don and participated in the fight for the city. At night, after the action, we came into an empty house, had dinner and went to bed. Germans had been driven out of the city and we could rest quietly. But in the morning we were woken up by shooting. We found out that a fight was going on not far from us. A wounded soldier was sitting on the stairs of our house. I looked out and saw a German near a low stone fence. I had no weapon with me; I had left it in the room. I took a carbine from the wounded soldier's hands, took aim and shot. The German fell down; I don't know whether I had killed him or not. I went out into the street holding the carbine in my hands but the fight was already far.

I came back to the house, returned the carbine to the wounded man and went to the military town major to find out where my division was at the moment. The town major told me to go with the motion picture cameramen, to do what they would tell me and after that he would let me know where my division was. The cameramen took me to the Operetta Theater, the tallest building in Rostov. I was supposed to mount a red flag on the roof, for the cameramen to film this episode. I crawled out onto the roof and somehow mounted the flag there.

The cameramen filmed it and then took me to the regional bank where the Germans had organized a labor registry office. I was to knock the German sign down with a machine carbine and to fix our flag instead of it. This was how I appeared in the news-reel, though I have never seen these shots. Only after that the film crew brought me to the town major and he told me where my division was located. I managed to find my platoon. The next day the rest of the Germans were dislodged from Rostov; we were sent from the front to be re-formed and to rest.

When we were still in Kalmykia, the natives gave us four camels. They had no horses and they gave us camels for load transportation. On the way three of the camels were killed; we had only one left. We even brought it to Rostov. The camel was a great help to us: it was able to carry any amount of load, it carried all the cables. True, it recognized only one of the signalmen as its cameleer, but it obeyed him absolutely. In August 1943, after the re-formation, we were supposed to go to Ukraine by troop trains.

The camel didn't like this idea and wouldn't get on the train at any price. We managed to bring it close to the carriage, but it jibbed and started spitting. There was a suggestion to slaughter the camel but our master sergeant refused flatly. Indeed, it was an unfailing vehicle, besides it didn't need gas and found food itself. We opened both doors of the carriage, put ropes round the camel, and all the men in our platoon pulled the camel in together. We somehow managed to get him on the train. Later when we traveled by trains the camel got accustomed to such means of transportation and took it easy.

In Zaporozhie we disembarked and headed for Tiraspol. We had to fight our way. I remember a very hard battle for the town of Apostolov? in southern Ukraine. We, telephone operators, were following the vanguard under the downpour and under the German fire. We were un-reeling the cable and laying the communication line. When we finished our work and made sure the line was in order we went back to the regiment position to dry ourselves a little. We came to a cave, lighted the stove to warm and began drying ourselves.

Suddenly there came an alarm ring which meant the cable was cut somewhere. By that time I was the communications chief. How could I send anyone out if my people were tired and cold? I had to go myself. I went out, took the cable end in my hand and went to look for the cut. Following the cable, I reached a spring across which we had laid the line, and crossed it. It was night time and it was dark. The other bank was steep. How was it possible to find the other end of the cable in the liquid dirt, under the cloudburst? And I couldn't throw the end I had in my hand because I was afraid to lose it. I rolled up my overcoat sleeves and spent a lot of time there searching in the dirt for the other end. At last I found it and joined both ends. But when I returned to our position we soon got the order to remove the line.

I also remember another case, it happened not far from Tiraspol. We laid the line across the bridge. During the fight the cable was cut somewhere by a splinter. I went to restore the line. I found the break was right on the bridge. Then I had to strip the wire in order to join the ends. We had the most reliable tool for stripping the wire: our own teeth. Well, I started skinning the wire standing on the bridge. Our telephone sets were of the induction type in those days: to induce the current in the line one had to spin its handle.

Someone in the headquarters spun the handle right at the moment when I was holding the wire in my teeth. The electric discharge from the inductor was so strong that I lost consciousness and fell from the bridge into the water. Fortunately, it wasn't deep there, and I neither hurt myself nor drowned. I came to myself, got out of the water and continued my work.

During the wartime, every soldier had to take care of his everyday amenities himself. Sometimes, when we were sent away from the front for rest or re-formation, we were given an opportunity to go to the bath, to undergo anti-lice treatment, to get clean underwear. But during the rest of the time every soldier had to take care of himself as well as he could.

Now and then they brought us soap, but there were times when we could not even wash ourselves. It was easier in winter: we washed ourselves with snow. But in summer we didn't always have enough water even to drink; one could only dream of a washing opportunity. All of us, without exception, were lice- ridden. We had nowhere to wash our clothes, so we 'fried' them: we made a fire, took off our clothes and held them over the fire to burn out the lice that lived in the seams.

Smokers suffered worst of all. When it was possible, we were brought makhorka [poor tobacco], but that seldom happened. A confirmed smoker suffers more from the absence of tobacco than from hunger. Sometimes we managed to get some makhorka or home-made tobacco in villages. When there was no tobacco at all people used to smoke even dry foliage or grass.

I had a captured pistol produced in Czechoslovakia; it was very small, not larger than my hand. When our division was leaving Astrakhan we met another division coming from the Caucasus. For some reason, they were provided for better than us: they had tobacco; they had vodka in small bottles, while we had run even out of salt by that time. So we decided that I would go to that division and offer them my pistol in exchange for something. Frankly speaking, I'm still sorry about that pistol, though I wouldn't have been able to keep it after the war because the SMERSH 37 people took away all the captured weapons.

was given three packages of tobacco and six 100- gram bottles of vodka for my pistol. Later people from other detachments used to come to us and ask for some salt or for tobacco to make a self-made cigarette. This was how we provided for our needs. We understood that the command had no time for such everyday routine: it was wartime. We had nobody to demand from. The commanders may have had all this but we understood that they wouldn't share it with us.

Once, during battles in Ukraine, we stopped near a big grain state farm. We hadn't received food supplies for a few days and we had to go and look for food ourselves. Not far from us there was a burnt oil-mill. Next to it we saw huge heaps of sunflower seeds. The upper layer of seeds was burnt in the fire, but it was possible to find good seeds underneath if we dug in the heap. We found a German helmet in the field, tore out its inside and used it to fry the seeds on the fire. We were gnawing the seeds for days and used to tie the telephone receiver to the head to free our hands.

In 1943, at the front, I joined the Party. I cannot say I dreamt of becoming a party member, but the party leader of the regiment came up to me and said that, according to his opinion, I was ready to join the party. Of course I couldn't tell him that I didn't want to: I would have immediately drawn the attention of the SMERSH people. They were in every unit. Perhaps, in theory they were supposed to catch German spies, but, evidently, there weren't enough spies for everybody.

That is why they undertook the same functions that were typical of the NKVD 37 in the time of peace, that is, to discover people who were displeased with something. They had their informers everywhere. They tried to recruit me, too. A SMERSH officer summoned me and invited me to help him: to inform him of all the talks in the regiment. I explained that I seldom was in the regiment and very rarely met with people; I was in charge of the communication and our communications company worked separately from the others. Perhaps, because of that he lost interest in me.

I was awarded twice for taking part in action. After the fights near Rostov I got a Medal for Military Merits 38, and after the action at Nikopol I got a Medal for Valor 39.

At the beginning of 1944 we maintained defense near Tiraspol. We had just provided communication for the commander's cave. I was testing the line from the telephone set in the cave while my subordinates were fixing the cable on the ground. At that moment they brought a captive German to the commander, and the regiment commander together with the reconnaissance chief started interrogating him. There was no interpreter and they had to use a conversation book. Of course it was painstaking. I listened to the interrogation for some time and then offered my help: I had known German since my childhood when my mother made me study it with the teacher. And I started interpreting for them. When the interrogation was over and the captive was taken away the commander jumped on me: why had I not told him that I was able to interpret? He had me transferred to the headquarters and made interpreter of the regiment headquarters.

It often happened that after an interrogation, captives were shot. Most officers treated them like their mortal enemies and hated them. But that wasn't the only reason. If a captive was left alive, he was to be guarded. At the front where each man counted, a commander had to find a guard on duty who would take care of the captive till it became possible to get him to the assembly place. That is why they usually shot captives after the interrogation just to avoid extra trouble.

For some reason, I didn't hate Germans. I understood that very few of them had gone to the front because of their convictions; the majority just couldn't disobey their orders: a soldier must obey his commander. Once I saved a captive's life. When we finished interrogating him I told the headquarters' chief that I would keep an eye on the captive and if he ran away then let them shoot me. I told the German that I had staked my life on him.
And the German, until he was sent to the assembly point, kept following me everywhere and tried to be in my sight all the time. He understood everything and was grateful.

Once I took a captive. My regimental comrade and I were going to the headquarters through the village where the battle had just finished. Suddenly I heard a bullet whistling right near my ear. We thought it was a sniper. We ran into the shed and there stumbled upon a German. Because of the surprise, both he and we were taken aback. Then we ordered him, 'Hande hoch!,' and he rose his hands up. We decided to take him to the headquarters. Actually, we were supposed to get awards for the captive, but we didn't think about that at the moment: we just couldn't leave him there, otherwise he would have shot at our soldiers.

While escorting him we passed by a group of servicemen standing on the porch of a house. They shouted, 'Get him here!' and took the captive from us. In this way we were left without awards. In spite of all the things commissars told us, in spite of everything we read in the papers, I didn't feel hostile towards them. There was just one case when I felt animosity: when a German aircraft was brought down and the pilot started firing back. Why did he shoot and kill instead of giving himself up? I felt animosity towards him, but that was the only such case.

I didn't feel anti-Semitism during the war. Though my family name is typically Jewish I never experienced any anti-Semitic attacks. Probably, in extreme situations minor issues hide behind the scenes. Nobody was interested to know the ethnic background of one's comrades. There were other criteria during the war, I mean just human criteria.

I had enough work while we interrogated captives. But when we liberated Tiraspol my knowledge of German wasn't needed. We were going through Romania and I didn't understand Romanian. The Romanians were peaceful towards us. My job was to negotiate with the headman in each village about providing horses for us. I spoke with them using a conversation book and we managed to understand each other somehow.

We reached Hungary. Our officers enjoyed the Hungarian wines. Since I drank next to nothing, I had to be on duty instead of everybody else. Then, quite unexpectedly, I got a new position. Two Hungarian battalions yielded themselves prisoners to us. They laid down arms saying they didn't want to fight any more. Two battalions: that's a lot of people. It was not quite clear what should be done with them, and I was appointed chief of the POW assembly point. I had to stay in that town while our division went further; I kept in touch with them only by phone. I had to receive the prisoners, to collect their weapons and sharp things, to take their money, to provide for guarding them.

The captive Hungarians were hard to deal with. They kept demanding wine and girls, as if they had been on a vacation and not in captivity. I was given guards; I collected the captives' arms and two sacks of Hungarian money. And then the division's reconnaissance company came, I handed over the prisoners and all the stuff and went to the division headquarters. There a telegram was waiting for me, with the order to the division commander to send me to Moscow to study at the Army Institute of Foreign Languages.

Our Joint Staff was getting ready to occupy the German and Austrian territories, and, evidently, there was a lack of interpreters. So everybody who knew the language at least to some extent was sent to be trained to Moscow. I had to go through Hungary and Romania. I had no money because I had handed in everything. Officers collected some money for me; I received the travel papers at the headquarters and set off for Moscow. It was the middle of December 1944. In Hungary there still were fruits on the trees while in Moscow there was a severe winter. I was wearing my summer uniform and field cap and was freezing. Besides, right at the train station I was detained by the military patrol who asked me why I was violating the order about changing into the winter uniform. I explained what the matter was and they let me go.

I was placed at the institute dorm; there were many other guys like me. We had to pass three exams, though it was a mere formality. I got an 'excellent' for the first exam; there were a few days left before the second one. We could freely move around the city and I often found myself at the commandant's office: they picked on me because of my summer uniform. But who could have given me a winter one? At last I was fed up with it and decided to return to the front: there I would be a respected person and not an order violator. I decided to fail the examinations in order to get back to the front. For my second exam I got a 'satisfactory' and I didn't come to take the third one at all. By that time I knew that I didn't want to study to become an interpreter and then sit in the commandant's office. But I made a mistake because they enrolled me all the same, but for the six- month courses instead four months. I studied for six months and got the rank of a junior lieutenant of administrative service, a German language interpreter.

When I was studying at the courses we were invited to the New Year's party at the Moscow Textile Institute. I decided to go. At the party I met with my former fellow students from the Kharkov Textile Institute. I learnt that when the Kharkov Institute had been evacuated they were invited to finish their studies in Moscow. We were happy to see each other.

My friends started persuading me to resume my studies at the institute: I had been taken to the army after my fourth year, so I would have to study just for one more year. I made up my mind to enter the correspondence department of the Institute after the courses. The war would be over some day and I had to think about a peaceful profession.

When I was leaving my regiment for the courses the regiment cryptographer asked me to deliver a letter to his sister in Moscow. Her husband and our cryptographer had been together at the beginning of the war, in the 7th airborne corps. When their corps was defeated, the paratroopers were distributed among different units including our division.

When I came to their place in Moscow the sister's husband, who was a lieutenant-general, was at home, too. They asked me different questions, offered me tea and when I was leaving the general told me to study and to serve and, if I ever needed help, not to hesitate to ask him.

• Post-war

I was still studying at the courses when the war was over. On 9th May 1945, we learnt from the radio about the complete and unconditional surrender of Germany. Those who had studied at the four-month courses were sent to the front and became interpreters at the headquarters in Germany and Austria. But for us the war was over and we got our appointments within the USSR. In June of 1945 I finished the courses with honors and was supposed to go to the Siberian Military District. I knew that in Siberia camps for captive SS- men were being created, while in the central part of Russia there were camps for captive German soldiers. Of course I didn't want to go to Siberia, so I had to ask the lieutenant-general for help. The next day I received a notice about changes in the order: I was to serve at the Moscow Military District. Certainly, it wasn't Germany or Austria, yet it wasn't Siberia.

I was sent to work as an interpreter at a captives' camp in Moscow. There were over 1000 German soldiers. The camp was called a 'separate POW working battalion'; officially it belonged to the Administration of Military Construction Works. There was an old unfinished factory near Moscow; actually, there were only walls and a chimney. The task was to prepare the site for building a factory for fixing military automobiles. The guarded Germans were led there in the morning and worked there all day long. The camp had a guards platoon, about 40 men strong. We had one civilian there: it was a representative of the Military Construction Administration; he was in charge of the technical issues, mainly the earthwork. We started building a branch road. The engineer brought the drawings and explained what and how it should be done. The next day a captive German came up to me and said he had another idea of building the road; then he drew a section of the roadway. He said, 'It will be an eternal road.' I tried to explain to him that we probably did not need an eternal road since the chief told us to build in a different way. By the German's perplexed face I understood that our chief was not a great expert. I informed him of the captive's proposal and got refused.

But that was not the worst. When the captives switched over to a new kind of work they also needed new tools. But the tools weren't brought in time and the workers stayed idle for some time. According to the order of the camp's chief, the prisoners' ration depended on their day-work: if a man did 50 percent of his day-work he was to get 50 percent of his daily ration. Earthwork is hard in general, it is difficult to reach the output rate, and here the people were dependent on the availability of the tools. The Germans were getting less and less food which caused dystrophy. People were literally swelling with hunger: the swellings were so bad that their skin just burst. Naturally, the weakened dystrophics were unable to fulfill their day-work and their rations were cut down again. The camp chief whom I informed of the situation said he had the order and he was going to obey the order and not to pity the Germans. I had to communicate with the Germans and they always complained of hunger. I was concerned about them and tried to get at least some food for them. I tried to explain that there was famine in the USSR; I didn't consider right what was going on but I wanted to give them some moral support. The Germans began dying of starvation. They were saved only thanks to the NKVD inspection.

I witnessed their conversation with the camp chief Tuzhilov. When he mentioned the order of the Defense Ministry, the inspectors started using such bad language that even I who had heard a lot at the front was surprised. It appeared that there was an order by the NKVD, different from that of the Defense Ministry, according to which POWs were supposed to get a complete set of food products, including even fruit and cigarettes. The inspectors obliged Tuzhilov to abide by that order under the fear of shooting. From that day on, the prisoners' life drastically changed. I even asked them for a cigarette sometimes. It is just a pity it happened too late, when some of the prisoners had already died. Germans are orderly people; they buried their dead beyond the camp area and put name boards above their graves. Later those name boards disappeared somewhere.

During the war I didn't know where my relatives were. When they evacuated they didn't know themselves where they were going. After traveling across the country they settled down in Kirgizia. When Volchansk was liberated I wrote a letter to my former history teacher who had accused me of Trotskyism. After the liberation of Volchansk he became the Secretary of the party regional organization. I asked him to let me know what had happened to my family, but he never replied. But I learnt about it from the letter sent to me by our neighbor, the Ukrainian woman; she gave me their address. After the war my parents and my sister came home. Our house was occupied by the regional judge, but when my parents came back he left the house at once. My sister resumed her studies at the Library Institute in Kharkov. My parents were left alone.

In September 1946 I became a 5th-year student of the correspondence department of the Moscow Textile Institute. They sent me teaching materials by mail, but to pass the exams I had to come to Moscow. In spring I started writing my senior thesis, and I had to come to the institute once a week for consultations with my thesis supervisor. Every time I had to ask Major Tuzhilov for permission to leave. Several times he didn't let me go explaining he couldn't do without an interpreter. When they reprimanded me at the Institute I explained my situation, and they promised to help me.

The rector wrote a letter to the personnel department of the Moscow Military District saying that the major was violating the decree of the Council of Ministers permitting students to leave for their studies. I was called to the personnel department; the department head asked me if I wanted to study. I had just two months left before defending my thesis. He left and soon came back with a letter saying, 'To the commander of the POW battalion. Send Lev Zinovievich Galper to the personnel department of the Moscow Military District for demobilization.' Demobilization took me unawares. It was a hard and hungry period, but, while in service, I got my money allowance and food ration. And when I was demobilized it was all finished. Besides, I had already been married and my wife was expecting a child. But I had no way back, and that was the end of my military career.

• Married life

I met my wife thanks to my fellow officer, the party leader of our battalion, Mikhail Bogomolsky. Out of the five guard officers there were two more Jews besides myself: Bogomolsky and Yuri Seriy. We were friends; Seriy and I even shared the room we rented in a village not far from the battalion. Bogomolsky lived in Lyublino, a Moscow suburb, together with his parents. One day he invited me and Seriy to his place where I met Vera Shtrom who, having graduated from the Moscow Medical Insitute, worked as a pediatrician at a Lyublino polyclinic, according to her [mandatory] job assignment 41.

Vera was born in 1923. I didn't know her parents: her mother had died before the war and her father died at the front. We started dating and soon got married. We had a very modest wedding: we got registered at the registry office, and in the evening we made a dinner to celebrate the event with our relatives and friends. My parents and my sister and our closest friends came to the wedding.

After demobilization, I found myself in a very tough situation. I hadn't got a diploma yet, so I couldn't find a job. The rector of our institute, Goldberg, a Jew and a very good man, learnt about my problems and offered me a job as an administrative rector assistant. Many students who studied by correspondence used to come to Moscow to take exams. They needed someone to provide them with lodging and with everything necessary.

That was my job. Besides, I was in charge of providing supplies for the staff: it was a hard time, the card system 42 still existed, I had to find the food and other things they needed. Having defended my diploma, I went to work to the Moscow cloth-mill as a foreman assistant. Frankly speaking, my idea of an engineer's job had been different. I wore dirty working clothes and dealt with adjustment and fixing of spinning machines. I worked like that for a year. I had no choice: I had to work and to provide for my family. In fall 1946 my son Mikhail was born.

I worked as a foreman assistant for a year. Then they summoned me to the managerial department and told me they had no right to leave me in the worker's position and offered me a post of the repairs-and-mechanics department head. Actually, my new job was no different from the previous one: I continued fixing the equipment myself. I didn't feel any anti- Semitism: workers treated me as their equal. I was given a room in a communal apartment 43 and we moved to live there. In 1952 my second son, Vladimir, was born.

I worked at the mill for five years; then I was transferred to the weaving mill outside of Moscow. I was appointed head of the repairs-and-mechanics department and later I became the production manager. We lived in Moscow and it was very hard to get to my work by a suburban train every day. I was given a room at a dormitory near the mill but my wife refused point-blank to leave Moscow. The mill where I worked as head of the repairs-and- mechanics department wasn't big. It produced low-quality blankets that were purchased for prisons and knitted kerchiefs made of goat down.

Those kerchiefs caused me some problems. Goat down is expensive; workers constantly stole that yarn. Naturally, there was some waste in the yarn production, but they used to steal the ready yarn. By the end of the shift, right near the mill there gathered people who wanted to buy the yarn from the workers. The guards weren't interested in catching the thieves because they paid the guards. That is why the guards searched the workers only conventionally.

I decided to stop the theft. I found out who was going to take the yarn out in the evening and demanded that the guard head searched those people. The thieves were caught and fired. But their friends who still worked at the mill started being ugly with me; they wrote anonymous letters against me. Inspections came one after another to check my job. Though, each inspection admitted that I worked well, all that was annoying and interfering. I quit working at the mill and got a job at the design department of the Heavy and Light Engineering Trust. They already knew me there, so I didn't have any problems in finding a job.

I didn't feel any anti-Semitism at my new place of work either. Though, I realized that anti-Semitism in the USSR had become a usual thing. It all started in 1948, with the anti-cosmopolitan trials [see campaign against cosmopolitans] 44. These proceedings were similar to the pre-war 'enemy of the people' trials, but for one thing: all the accused were Jewish. The accusations were the same: anti-Soviet activities, espionage in favor of any capitalist country and other absurdities.

Some people were arrested or exiled to the Gulag 45, others were killed like Mikhoels 46 was killed in a simulated automobile crash. Certainly, I didn't believe those people were guilty; all those cases aroused my protest. Maybe it was a sense of kinship... I don't know how to explain it. In my childhood there was a simple exclamation, 'Ours are being beaten!' All that was not just unpleasant. I and other Jews, my friends with whom I discussed it, felt there was a danger. They start with cosmopolitans and then they will reach for Galper and his kind. We realized it very clearly.

When the Doctors' Plot 47 started in January 1953 I understood that it was just another pre-planned step before the reprisals against all Jews. I think that only Stalin's death saved us from such reprisals. People wept when he died, but for me his death wasn't grief. Though, I was unaware of the real scale of his crimes. At that time only official information was available for me: newspapers, radio. I took it critically, sifted; the former absolute faith had gone.

When Khrushchev 48 disclosed the truth about Stalin's personality cult at the Twentieth Party Congress 49 I was happy to see the triumph of the truth. I know that it is customary today to criticize Khrushchev, but I believe that his speech at the 20th congress was a deed of greatest courage and wisdom. Though, I wasn't among the enthusiasts who expected a significant life improvement after that. But I'm grateful to Khrushchev for the truth.

In 1948 the state of Israel was founded; it was a great joy for me. I was proud that at last Jews had their own state, after thousands of years of wandering in strange and often hostile countries. And when Israel confidently defeated the Arab states, first in the Six-Day-War 50 and then in the Yom Kippur War 51, I admired the fact that Jews were able not only to create but also to defend their creations with weapons. It was a blow on the anti-Semites who said that Jews were unable to fight, that during World War II all of them had been evacuated instead of fighting in the army.

In 1960 my wife and I were divorced. Our sons, according to the Soviet laws, stayed with their mother, but I always took part in their life and met with them. But I lived alone. I met my second wife, Nina, quite by chance. I was sent on a business trip to Leningrad where, while I was waiting to be checked in at a hotel, I got to talk with two women who were from Moscow, like me, and also on a business trip in Leningrad. One of them was Nina Buyanova, my future wife. We didn't date in Leningrad; each of us was busy with his/her own work.

It happened so that I had to prolong my business trip. I ran out of money, and my company couldn't send me more money in due time. Nina offered to lend me money; we agreed to meet in Moscow for me to return the debt. On the day of our Moscow appointment I was to go to the reunion with my former fellow students. I was reluctant to go there alone, so I persuaded Nina to come with me. Then we began dating and soon got married.

Nina is Russian; she was born in Moscow in 1935. The life of her parent's family was hard, so after finishing school she had to start working. Nina got a job at the product-quality inspection of the Moscow optical-and- mechanical factory and worked there until her retirement. Before our marriage, I introduced Nina to my parents who liked her very much. We registered our marriage at the registry office; everything was very modest. I had left my apartment to my former wife and my children, and Nina had a room in a communal apartment where we started our family life.

In 1966 our only daughter Inna was born. My sons' attitude to Nina was very warm; she became their friend. They often came to see us and shared many of their secrets with her and not with me.

My elder son Mikhail, after finishing school, studied at the electrical communications faculty of the Moscow Electro-Technical Institute for Communications. After graduation he got a job at a company that dealt with security systems for banks and savings banks. Unfortunately, Mikhail got very sick with diabetes and spent more time in hospitals than at home. That is why he never had his own family and lived together with his mother. He died relatively young, in 1996.

My younger son Vladimir, after finishing school, entered the Moscow Road- Transport Institute. When in the 1970s mass Jewish emigration to Israel began Vladimir quit his studies after the fourth year and left for Israel. Later he moved to the United States, to San Francisco where he lives now with his family. Vladimir took up photography and is quite successful in this business. He married an emigre from the USSR, they have two daughters. Emily was born in 1993 and Eva was born in 2001. I keep in touch with him: we often exchange letters and talk over the phone. In summer Vladimir and his family come here to see us. My son is satisfied with his life and I'm glad things turned out well for him.

My younger sister Berta, after graduating from the Library Institute, couldn't find a job. My father's elder brother, Beniamin, who lived in Dnepropetrovsk, invited Berta to come and stay with him. He helped her to find a job at a library. Berta lived with him. In Dnepropetrovsk she met Anatoly Lyubchich, a Jew, and married him. It was Anatoly's second marriage; his children of the first marriage lived with his former wife. In 1948 Berta gave birth to her daughter Elena. When Elena finished school she entered the Dnepropetrovsk Medical Institute and after graduation worked as a pediatrician.

In 1970 my father got very ill. Berta came to Volchansk to take care of him. Father died in the same year. He was buried in the Volchansk Jewish cemetery. The funeral was common because at that time there was neither a rabbi, nor a synagogue in Volchansk. My mother was left alone in Volchansk. Berta stayed with her for some time, but then she had to return to Dnepropetrovsk. She sold the parents' house, and mother came to live with me. She lived with us till her death in 1978. We buried our mother in the Jewish plot of a Moscow cemetery. [Editor's note: In the USSR city cemeteries were territorially divided into sectors. Usually all city cemeteries have common land plots, plots for burying children, sectors for burying the titled militaries, a Jewish sector, land plots for the political leaders, etc. People were usually buried in accordance with the will of the relatives of the deceased or with the testament].

In the 1970s my sister and her family also left for Israel. They settled down in the town of Shlomi, on the border to Lebanon. Berta didn't work in Israel. She began suffering from a brain disease and was unable to work any longer. Elena couldn't work as a doctor and went to live in an agricultural kibbutz not far from Shlomi. There is a laboratory where they grow seedlings of date-palms. My niece likes this job. In Israel she married an emigre from the USSR and gave birth to her daughter Inna.

I didn't think about emigration. My wife is Russian and she didn't want to leave. And I would have never left alone, without my family. I had no grounds for emigration: I had a well-paid job; I didn't experience any oppression, besides I wasn't young. I understood quite well those who were leaving, but I wasn't going to leave myself.

We lived a life typical of many Soviet people. My wife and I worked, our daughter studied at school. At home we celebrated Soviet holidays: 1st May, 7th November [October Revolution Day] 52, Soviet Army Day 53, and Victory Day 54. On Victory Day we all used to go to the Eternal Flame and lay flowers at the Grave of the Unknown Soldier. In the evening we had guests. We also celebrated birthdays of all the family members. Neither my wife, nor I was religious.

My daughter studied well at school. She was a young Octobrist, a pioneer, a Komsomol member - like everybody else. After finishing school she entered the economics faculty of the Moscow Institute for Economics and Management. After graduation she worked as an accountant at a jewelry store for some time and then got a job at a publishing house. Now she is the editor-in- chief of the publishing house. Inna got married and took her husband's name. Her name in marriage is Yegorova. She has two daughters: Svetlana, born in 1986, and Yevgeniya, born in 1988. Inna divorced her husband and now she and her daughters live with us. Svetlana is finishing school this year and will continue her studies after school. Yevgeniya is still in high school.

In the 1970s I went to work at the Research Institute for Light and Food Industries. I was commissioned to develop a new direction in economy planning based on a completely automated planning system. Together with my chief, we wrote a book on the economy and planning in the confectionary industry. The book was a success with professionals; a couple of years later it was republished. A few more years passed and they suggested that I should write a dissertation on the basis of this book [see Soviet/Russian doctorate degrees] 55. I combined the work on my thesis with my main job. But I never defended it.

A scientific conflict occurred at my work. There was nothing personal, just a difference of opinions with the authorities. I was in charge of developing a system of standards: standards themselves, types of resources, the list of parameters and so on. When I was defending my project in the academic council of the institute, it was criticized. It is only natural, but most of the critical comments were groundless, people just didn't have a good understanding of the matter. The academic council stated that my work was unfinished and should be completed; it was natural, too. But when the institute director demanded that I should take into account all the comments, including the wrong ones, I started arguing with him.

When I saw that he wasn't going to agree with me I decided to retire. I was already old enough and had the right to retire. Though the director didn't want to let me go, I got my way. I spent a couple of months at home and felt bored. Then I was invited to work at the Oil Research Institute: they needed an expert in standards used in their industry. I worked there for several years till I felt it became hard for me to work.
In 1986 I finally retired.

• Perestroika

When in the late 1980s Mikhail Gorbachev 56 started perestroika 57 in the USSR, a new party course, I was delighted at first. At the beginning the perestroika spirit was really very evident. Freedom of the press and freedom of speech emerged. The Iron Curtain 58 fell; we got an opportunity to meet with our friends and relatives from abroad, to correspond with them, to visit other countries without fear of the KGB 59 that used to cut short any contacts of the Soviet citizens with foreigners before perestroika. All this was new and very enjoyable.

At the beginning of perestroika I went to Israel to see my sister. She was in very bad shape at that time, seldom regained her consciousness and couldn't recognize anybody. But even in such a poor condition she lived a few more years and passed away in 2003.

I saw Israel with my own eyes. I admire the people of Israel who managed to create a wonderful country within a relatively short period of time. It is a country where everything is at the service of its people. Everything in Israel is made properly. I saw clean towns and settlements all buried in flowers, I saw marvelous roads, I saw happy people. I admired their attitude towards the army: for Israelis, the army service is not a burdensome necessity, like here, where people try to avoid it by all means, but a point of honor for every Israeli citizen. Indeed, the army of Israel deserves admiration: the small country surrounded with hostile Arab states on all sides, is able to defend itself.

My niece and her husband drove me around the country and showed me places of interest. Everything was exciting. Elena and her husband who works at a factory are satisfied with their life and confident of their future. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same about Russia and its citizens. And I am indignant over the Russian policy regarding Israel. How can we sell weapons to the Arab countries? Isn't it clear how they are going to use them?

But then perestroika slowed down; and eventually all that turned into empty words and promises. And later it resulted in the disintegration of the USSR [1991]. I thought and I still think so now that it was a crime against Russia and the former constituent republics. Even now we are still suffering from the aftermath of the USSR's disintegration. Yes, there was Stalin in the USSR, and there were crimes of the Stalinist regime. But there also were a lot of good things. People were able to live on their salaries and on their pensions; there were firm social guarantees.

While now we are struggling to approach at least a little the life standards of the USSR. There was order, while now we live under the rule of lawlessness. I'm not speaking about myself: I am a war veteran and I get a good pension as compared to other people's pensions, I enjoy certain benefits. But the majority of old-age pensioners have just a scanty pension that is not enough even to subsist.

Many people are envious of Jews because we can leave this country and we are supported by numerous Jewish charity organizations. They really take good care of the old. I am a member of the Moscow Council of the Jewish War Veterans 60. True, I cannot take an active part in its work now; those who are younger work there. But when I feel well enough I always come to the meetings. Now our organization is getting ready to celebrate 60 years of the victory in the Great Patriotic War. They are going to arrange a big holiday for us, war veterans.

My family and I will go there without fail. I have not returned to the Jewish religion and traditions. Probably, I was a Communist Party member too long and now it's too late to change my convictions. But I'm happy to see the young people come to their roots and study the history and traditions of their nation.

• Glossary:

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

Fenia Kleiman and her husband Esiah live in a comfortable two-bedroom apartment in the center of Chernovtsy. Their apartment is shiningly clean and there are many plants around. They have heavy wooden furniture of light shades set against the background of light-colored walls. The apartment is very cozy and one can tell that Fenia takes good care of her home. She is a short and hot-tempered woman. She is very quick in her reactions. She looks small sitting beside her husband. Esiah is the chief editor at the Hesed newspaper office and Fenia assists him with his work. There is love and mutual respect between them. They are volunteers with Hesed visiting patients in hospital and at their homes. Fenia and her husband are very friendly and sociable. Their former pupils call and visit them, which shows their positive influence on people. It was difficult for Fenia to speak about her life in the ghetto. She gave a life history interview to the Spielberg Foundation as well.

Family background
Growing up
During the War
After the War
Glossary

Family background

My grandfather on my father's side, Pinkhas Trachtenbroit, was born in the town of Briceni, Bessarabia 1, which belonged to Russia before 1918 and then became part of Romania. My grandfather's father, Duvid-Leiba Trachtenbroit, had many children: 12 or maybe even more. I didn't know any of my grandfather's relatives. My grandfather was born in the 1860s. My grandmother, Motel Trachtenbroit, nee Broonshtein, was born in Mogilyov- Podolsk, Vinnitsa region, in the 1860s. Her father's name was Joseph. I didn't know any of my grandmother's relatives and I don't know how my grandparents met either.

Motel and Pinkhas had seven children: four sons and three daughters. I knew them all. Their older daughter Adel - her Jewish name was Eidl - was born in 1890. My father Aron followed in 1893. In 1895 the twins Jacob and Rieva were born. Tsylia followed in 1898. The next child, Grigory, was born in 1902, and the youngest, Abram, followed in 1905.

My father told me little about his childhood. His father owned a small stationery store. My grandmother was a housewife. My grandfather's store provided enough income for them to make their living and afford education for their children. The house was built with a narrow façade to save money. The front door of the house led to their store. Then there was a room occupied by Adel and Yuzik, another room was my grandparents' bedroom and then came a living room, where we had meals on Jewish holidays. The room next to that was a big kitchen, and there was a storeroom near the kitchen.

My grandparents' family was religious. I don't know whether my grandfather prayed at home since we didn't live with them, but on Saturdays and Jewish holidays my grandparents went to the synagogue. They celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays and followed the kashrut. The boys didn't study at cheder, but had a melamed, who came to teach them Hebrew, Yiddish, the Torah and the Talmud at home. The sons and daughters received Jewish education at home. They had another teacher that taught them Russian and mathematics. My grandfather wanted his children to get a good education. At the age of nine they went to a Russian grammar school, which they finished successfully.

After finishing grammar school Adel married Boris Fukelman, a Jewish man. Their son Joseph, who was called Yuzik in the family, was born in 1917. Adel had a hard life. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 2 Adel's husband left for Russia with Adel's younger sister Rieva. Since then nobody in the family was allowed to mention Rieva's name. Adel couldn't remarry since she wasn't divorced. Adel and her son lived with her parents. After finishing grammar school Yuzik became a violinist.

After finishing grammar school Jacob and Tsylia entered university in Odessa. The Revolution of 1917 divided the territory of Russia: Odessa was part of Russia and the place where we lived belonged to Romania. We couldn't correspond with them since Soviet authorities didn't allow correspondence with relatives abroad 3. We had no information about them until 1940 when Bessarabia joined the USSR. Jacob visited his parents. He worked as an engineer in the flour grinding industry. His wife's name was Esphir; they didn't have any children. Jacob didn't tell us about his life in the USSR. When Jacob left my grandparents gave him presents for his family.

It was a surprise for them to receive a letter from Dusia, the daughter of Rieva and Boris. She was asking them to send her some presents, since she was their granddaughter, too. The postman gave this letter to Adel. She read it and cried bitterly. My grandparents were sorry for her, but they sent Dusia presents, of course. After the Great Patriotic War 4 my father received a letter from Rieva, which he tore apart without even reading it. He couldn't forgive her for betraying her sister Adel. Rieva and her family lived in Odessa.

My father's brother Jacob and his sister Tsylia kept in touch with Rieva. Later they moved to Bobruysk. In 1949 my parents and I went to Odessa to visit our relatives. That's when I met my cousin Dusia. My father's sister Tsylia graduated from university. I don't know what profession she got, though. She was married. Her husband's name was Naum. They had two sons: Yuri and Felix. Unfortunately, we lost track of them.

My father's brother Grigoriy received commercial education in Yassy. After finishing his studies he returned to Briceni where he worked as an accountant and then as a cashier in the bank. After the Great Patriotic War he lived in Chernovsty. In the early 1970s he left for Israel where he died in 1980.

My father's younger brother, Abram, studied at university in Bucharest. His older brother supported him financially. Abram became an engineer. He worked in Bucharest. Abram married a Jewish girl. After 1940 we had no contacts with him since Soviet authorities didn't allow correspondence with relatives abroad. I don't know anything about his life. His son lives in Moscow. He is a Professor and Doctor of Technical Sciences. We keep in touch with him.

After finishing grammar school in 1907 my father volunteered to the tsarist army where he served for two years. I know that Adel's future husband, Boris Fukelman, was his fellow comrade. My father returned to Briceni and decided to continue his studies in Odessa. He entered the Medical Faculty at Odessa University.

I didn't know my mother's parents. They died before I was born. My grandfather's name was Khaskel Zilberman. He and my grandmother Feina - I was named after her - came from Briceni. My grandmother was born in 1868. We had portraits of her parents, my great-grandparents Moishe and Mindl. My grandfather Khaskel owned a wholesale fabric store. His family was wealthy. My grandmother Feina was a housewife. They had housemaids.

My grandparents had two children: Joseph, born in 1886, and my mother Mina, born in 1898. My mother only told me shortly before she died that Joseph was her stepbrother. His mother was my grandfather's first wife. Joseph was a shy and humble man.

My mother's family was religious. They celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays. My grandparents went to the synagogue on Saturdays and Jewish holidays. I know about it from my mother. The children were educated at home. My mother had fluent Hebrew so she could read the prayers. She could also read and write in Yiddish. They both finished grammar school. I don't know where Joseph continued his education. My mother studied at the high school for girls in Odessa. She met my father in Odessa in 1915. They both came from Briceni, but hadn't known each other before. They met by chance. Someone from Briceni came to Odessa. My father and mother's parents sent parcels for their children with him. He got in touch with my mother and father to tell them to pick up what he had for them. My parents came to see him in the hotel and that's where they met. They fell in love with one another. The Revolution brought an abrupt end to their studies and they returned to Briceni.

My father and my mother were dating for almost eight years. Grandmother Feina had breast cancer, so my mother couldn't get married because she had to take care of her mother. She loved her mother and wanted to spend as much time with her as possible. My father was a frequent guest in my mother's house. When her older brother got married my father was made responsible for the fluden because when fluden was made for a celebration, the proves had to be watched by a 'master of ceremony'. Joseph had a luxurious wedding. There were many guests that enjoyed themselves; they were dancing and singing while klezmer musicians were playing.

Grandmother Feina died in 1922. She was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Briceni. My parents got married after the traditional mourning of one year. They had a modest wedding. They got married under a chuppah at home. A rabbi conducted the wedding ceremony. There were only close friends and relatives at the wedding. My parents lived at my mother parents' home along with Joseph and his family.

Grandfather Khaskel died in 1929. He was buried in accordance with Jewish traditions in the Jewish cemetery. My mother and her brother divided the house in halves. Each family got four rooms and a kitchen. We had a door in our living room leading to Joseph's apartment. Joseph also inherited my grandfather's store. He turned it into a retail store.

My father worked as an accountant at the buttery. A few years later he became an accountant with the Jewish community where he worked until Bessarabia joined the USSR in 1940. My mother was a housewife. My father hired a housemaid called Olga, a Russian woman. She lived with our family until the Great Patriotic War.

Growing up

I was born on 3rd January 1931. My Jewish name is Feina. I was an only child. I was much loved and cared for. Joseph's older daughter was born shortly after grandmother Feina died. She was named Feina. His younger daughter, Sarah, was born one year after me. We were growing up together and lived as one big family.

The population of Briceni was about 10,000 people. There was a big Jewish community. There were about 6,000 Jews in town. The Jews were mostly involved in crafts and trades. There were no national conflicts or pogroms 5 in town.

There was a choral synagogue and a number of smaller synagogues in Briceni. My parents visited the choral synagogue. In the small synagogues there was a special area with a small window for women through which they could listen to the rabbi's sermon. There were a few shochetim in town. There was a shochet's house across the street from where we lived. His wife, Rivka Leibusha, was my mother's close friend. When my mother made pastries she always took some to Rivka's family. Rivka's husband worked as a shochet before Jewish holidays and for the rest of the year he was a chazzan. We liked to listen to him when he rehearsed his singing. His children were my friends. There were two other shochetim in town and people could also buy kosher meat from them.

There was a market in Briceni, but we never went there, so I don't know what it was like. We had a big balcony with two benches where my father liked to sit early in the morning when the farmers brought their products to the market. My father used to stop them to buy what he needed: onions, fruit and vegetables. He also bought bundles of bagels that he used to hang on a lamp.

I loved my grandparents on my father's side dearly. My grandfather Pinkhas was a short, slim man. He wore elegant suits, light shirts and ties. He wore a hat to go out. He worked at the store and I didn't see much of him. Grandmother Motel often came to see us. On Friday mornings she made challah and she always brought me one. I always looked forward to seeing my grandmother and ran to her to hug her as soon as I heard our housemaid opening the door. My grandmother loved my mother and me. She cared about my mother as much as she would have about her own daughter. My mother often had angina and Grandmother Motel stayed with us through the period of my mother's illness. She looked after my mother until she got well and slept on the sofa beside my mother's bed.

My grandmother didn't wear a shawl at home. She didn't have a wig either. She wore a shawl to go out. She wore long skirts and loose shirts: dark colors in winter and light ones in summer. In winter she wrapped herself in a thick woolen plaid instead of wearing a winter coat.

We celebrated Sabbath our own way at home. My mother lit candles and prayed in the evening. She knew all prayers in Hebrew by heart. We prayed for the health of the family members. Besides, my mother always recited the Kaddish for grandmother Feina, although, according to Jewish law, this must be done on death anniversaries. My mother said she felt the need to do it. We had a festive dinner: gefilte fish and challah. I can't remember if my parents strictly observed the law that says you're not allowed to work [on Sabbath]. Anyway, we had dinner cooked and lamps lit by the housemaids.

Before the Great Patriotic War we had kerosene lamps. Shortly before the war a small power plant was built in Briceni. Uncle Joseph had electric power supplied to his part of the house, but my parents couldn't afford it. Kerosene lamps required significant maintenance with cleaning and adding kerosene. This work was done by our housemaid.

We didn't follow the kashrut. My father even bought pork ham, which he liked a lot. My father's parents did follow the kashrut. Grandmother Motel knew that we didn't have kosher food and only ate cookies when she came to our house.

Pesach was my favorite holiday. We had a special set of dishes for Pesach in the cupboard and kitchen utensils in a box in the attic. We didn't have bread in the house throughout the eight days of Pesach. I remember matzah being brought to the house in a big basket. My mother made traditional pastries and bagels for Pesach, potato pancakes stuffed with ground meat - I make those, too - matzah pudding with eggs, chicken broth, which we had every day, meat stew and borscht.

My mother's brother Joseph conducted the seder and we joined their family for the seder. Grandfather Pinkhas and Grandmother Motel invited us for at least a second seder, but I preferred to have it with Uncle Joseph. I went there with a small pillow to sit on. It was marvelous to listen to my uncle saying prayers. I wish I had joined my grandfather's family for seder and heard my grandfather Pinkhas conducting it.

On Purim all my grandparents' children who lived in Briceni got together at their parents' home. My grandmother made delicious food. I had a moneybox where I saved money for Purim to give it to needy Jews. Purimshpil actors came to the houses to perform and they also received money for their performances. Later in the evening, when we sat down to have a Purim seudah [meal], musicians came to the house. I always looked forward to them.

We also celebrated Sukkot. We arranged a sukkah in the storeroom of our house. There was a folding ceiling in this room. On Sukkot we brought a table there and had meals.

On Rosh Hashanah my parents went to the synagogue, and on Yom Kippur they fasted and went to the synagogue for the whole day. We had guests and went to visit our relatives. Before Yom Kippur we conducted the kapores ritual. I had the kapores conducted for me by my mother. She turned a white hen over my head. This hen was given to a poor family afterwards. I had a white towel covering my head to avoid a 'chicken surprise'. Children didn't fast on Yom Kippur. As for Chanukkah, the only thing I remember was that my cousins and I got some money.

We spoke Russian in the family. I studied Yiddish from the age of five. I had a teacher of Yiddish and another teacher of Russian, who came to teach me at home. I had many Jewish friends just because we had Jewish neighbors. My cousin Sarah was my closest friend.

When I turned seven my mother refused to send me to school. She thought I was too young and tiny. My teacher of Russian began to teach me Romanian and mathematics. My teacher's brother ran a private Jewish grammar school. I passed exams for the 1st grade and became a pupil of the 2nd grade. After finishing the 2nd grade I went to a state-run Romanian school for boys and girls. My father believed that it would be easier for me to continue my education after finishing a Romanian school. Our housemaid Olga took me to school and stayed there until classes were over.

We studied general subjects in Romanian at school. Every morning before classes started, we said a prayer. There was a Christian icon in the corner of our classroom. All Christian children were on their knees while saying the Lord's Prayer. Jewish children kept sitting. We didn't go to school on Pesach or Easter, since the school was closed during Easter. On Pesach only Jewish children had holidays. The other children were jealous about this privilege we, Jewish children, had.

There was no anti-Semitism at school. I made friends with Russian children, too. I shared my desk with a Russian boy and we were friends. He visited me when I missed school and had tea with cookies or chocolate when he came to our house. I finished my 4th year at school in 1940.

In summer my parents rented a summerhouse with a garden and took me there for vacation. My mother stayed with me at the summerhouse. Olga made lunch and dinner and brought it to the house. My father worked during the day and only joined us in the evening. The last time we rented a summerhouse was in 1939. There was a radio there and we listened to programs from Moscow.

Uncle Grigory, who lived with his parents, got a radio around 1939. When I got the invitation for his son's birthday, Grigory promised to show me little men playing and singing inside the radio, and, I believed it was true. Adel's son Joseph sympathized with communists. He liked the idea of communism, but he didn't attend any political groups' meetings. He made a detector radio with headphones and also listened to programs from the Soviet Union. Soviet newspapers and magazines were sold in my grandfather's store. My parents also believed that there was a just and fair society in the USSR.

When we heard that the USSR demanded Bessarabia from the Romanian authorities we were very happy. We believed that we would live in a realm of justice and equal rights. When Soviet troops entered Briceni at the end of June 1940 people met them with flowers and great enthusiasm. My cousin Yuzik organized band rehearsals in my grandmother's dining room. They rehearsed The International to meet the Soviet troops. Grandfather Pinkhas hung up a portrait of Stalin in his shop window. Later people began to understand that things were different from how they were presented back then. The Soviet authorities didn't touch my grandfather or Uncle Joseph since they didn't have employees in their stores and weren't referred to as 'exploiters'. However, all goods in stores were sold out in no time and there were no new supplies. The storeowners used to purchase goods in Bucharest, but they weren't allowed to go there any longer. Stores were soon closed. Joseph got a new job as a janitor and my father became an accountant at the health department in Briceni.

Many wealthier people were arrested and exiled to Siberia. My father's cousin, Abram Trachtenbroit, was one of them. Abram owned fields and had employees working for him. When he was taken away from town many people came into streets and begged the authorities to let him go, but it was in vain. He returned home in 1946, but in 1948, during the campaign against 'cosmopolitans' 6 he got to know that the authorities were planning to arrest him again. He and his wife took poison to commit suicide, but they were rescued and sent into exile to Siberia anyway. They returned in the 1960s.

Our housemaid Olga spoke Ukrainian and I learned the language from her. She made traditional Ukrainian food at Easter and went to church. The Soviet authorities arranged a meeting for housemaids and servants and tried to explain to them that wealthy masters were their exploiters and that the Soviet power granted them freedom. Olga ignored what they said and stayed with us. She lived in our family until the Great Patriotic War began.

In September 1940 I went to the 4th grade of a Russian school. The Soviet authorities ordered that children went to the same class for another year to learn Russian. I liked studying in a Russian school. Since I was fluent in Russian I had no problems at school. I became a pioneer. We swore the pioneers' oath, got pioneer neckties and were greeted with flowers. I liked the ceremony. I also liked celebrating New Year's. We prepared a concert. I got a costume and recited a poem about winter. My parents were in the audience. We were applauded and called back on stage again and again.

During the War

In June 1941 we were planning to go to the summerhouse for vacation. When the Great Patriotic War began on 22nd June 1941 it divided our life into two periods: the one before and the one after the war. I remember refugees from Lipkani and Sekiryany, which were closer to the border with Romania, coming to Briceni on the first days of the war. People let them stay in their houses. Joseph's sister-in-law, Molka, and her children came to stay with us. During one air raid my parents hugged me and each other: they thought that if we were destined to die it was better to die together. Later we began to hide in the basement during air raids. One of the bombs fell near our house and when we came out of the basement I saw many splinters covering the area. That's all I experienced of the war. It went past our small town somehow.

We couldn't evacuate since we didn't have any transportation. Only my father's brother Grigory and his family managed to evacuate: he was chief cashier in the bank and they evacuated with the bank. He lived with his parents, but he left them in my parents' care. My parents also wanted to evacuate, but they were afraid to go with their old parents. We stayed in Briceni. Older people, who had survived World War I remembered Germans as civilized people and thought they weren't likely to do any harm. We didn't know what fascism was back then.

At the beginning of July Romanian troops came to Briceni. They declared that local people were given three days to rob and kill Jews. We locked our house and went to my father's cousin Isaac, who lived on the outskirts of town. He had cornfields near his house where we stayed for three days. After that we lived with Isaac. My mother only had a small purse with her into which she had put a thermometer, just in case I should get a fever, and a few pills. She also had her jewelry with her: diamond earrings, a golden watch and a golden chain that she had been given by her mother. My mother had thick hair that she wore plaited and she hid her jewelry in her hair.

About a hundred people were killed within these three days. Then the pogroms were over, but Romanian soldiers came to the houses demanding valuables. They came to Isaac's house, too. My father gave them his golden watch. My parents went to see what had happened to our house. There was nothing left there. Even the family photo albums were gone. We had a few photographs returned to us after the war.

About two weeks passed. In the middle of July 1941 the Romanian commandment ordered all Jews to come to the main square. My parents and I, my grandparents, Adel and her son Yuzik and my mother's brother Joseph, his wife and two daughters went there. All Jews were ordered to go in the direction of Sekiryany [50 km from Briceni]. My grandparents could hardly walk. It was hot and we were desperate of exhaustion and fear. In Sekiryany we were ordered to stay in abandoned houses. We stayed there for a while. My mother gave away her jewelry in exchange for food. Later we continued on our way until we reached Transnistria 7, across the Dnestr River. Joseph and his family happened to be in another group and we lost track of them. We only returned to Briceni in 1944, and a neighbor, who was in the same group of Jews as Joseph and his family, said that Joseph and his wife perished on the way to Kopaygorod and that their daughters died later. Nobody could tell us where and how.

My grandmother Motel died near the village of Vendichany. My father and two local villagers buried her on the roadside near Vendichany. My father made a note for himself about the place where my grandmother was buried, but when we went to Vendichany after the war the village was destroyed so much that it was impossible to find her grave.

We reached Kopaygorod, in Vinnitsa region, 150 kilometers from home. Many Jewish families lived in Kopaygorod, and we were put into the houses of local Jews. This area hadn't been turned into a ghetto at that time yet. There was no barbed wire, but we couldn't leave either because we were encircled by Romanian soldiers, who guarded us. Jews kept arriving and were accommodated in Jewish houses in Kopaygorod. We got accommodation in a room with three other families. I remember a little girl called Ada, the daughter of one of these families, who continuously repeated one phrase, 'Mama, Ada wants a piece of bread'. She was only silent when she slept. When I think about that period I recall her thin, monotonous voice.

I have dim memories of this period. The sanitary conditions were terrible. We didn't have water to wash ourselves. I had my hair shaved, but it didn't help against lice. We were starving. The only food we had were frozen beets. I can't remember where we got them from. The streets in Kopaygorod were patrolled by armed Romanian soldiers. People weren't allowed to leave the town and it was dangerous to even go out into the streets.

In summer 1942 we were taken to a forest along with local Jews. There was an area fenced with barbed wire where we stayed until fall, when groups of Jews were taken to the ghetto in Kopaygorod. We got a small room in the house of Leiba and Rivka Shnaiderman. A Romanian family by the name of Pasternak lived in another room of this house. When the owners of the house returned from the forest we moved into the even smaller kitchen. There was a stove and a bed on which we all slept. The owners of the house had some food stocks and I can still remember how dizzy I got when they made cereals.

There was a typhoid epidemic in the village. My mother fell ill and then my father and I got typhoid. There was no medication. Many people died. We had high fever. When we regained consciousness we were told that my grandfather Pinkhas and my father's sister Adel had died of typhoid. Every morning dead corpses were picked up and put onto a horse-driven cart. My grandfather and Aunt Adel were buried in a common grave and we don't know where it is. Yuzik, Adel's son, was with us.

The Romanians took the adults to work. My parents began to earn money by replacing shoemakers or tailors, who could make money working at home. These people paid other inmates 1 mark per day to replace them at work. Adel's son Yuzik also made money by replacing other inmates at work. In winter 1942 the Romanians were taking people to the wood-cutting site. Yuzik replaced another worker. When the workers returned to town after work, Yuzik was found frozen to death on a cart.

I had poor Yiddish before the war, but in the ghetto I became fluent in Yiddish. In 1943 a Jewish community began to operate in the ghetto. Its head was a very decent Jewish man called Orenshtein. He even opened a Jewish school. This wasn't an official school. We just came to his house secretly to have classes. There was one class of about ten Jewish children. They studied Yiddish and mathematics at this school. Our teacher of mathematics was a young engineer, a very nice person. He praised me for my success in mathematics. This school operated until the liberation.

I don't know what the criteria were to become a member of the Jewish community in the ghetto. Officially the community was responsible for the liaison of Romanians with inmates. Most of the inmates didn't celebrate Jewish holidays in the ghetto. The Romanians persecuted any demonstration of the Jewish way of life. However, some older Jews got together secretly in somebody's house for a minyan on Sabbath and Jewish holidays and prayed. I never saw it, but I once heard my parents talking about it.

By March 1944 the Romanians were prepared to leave. We were so scared that they might kill all the inmates of the ghetto before leaving. My father's friend Yanek, a young Jew from Chernovtsy, was in touch with the partisans. He told my father that the Soviet troops were close. My father shared his concerns with Yanek, but Yanek told him there was nothing to be afraid of since the partisans were on guard around the ghetto, and if they heard shooting, they would come to our rescue. I don't know whether this was true or not. One night the Romanians left quietly and in the morning Soviet tanks entered the ghetto. We were overwhelmed with joy. Perhaps, this feeling was similar to what a bird feels when it is released from a cage.

After the War

The three of us walked back to Briceni. We had survived and we believed it to be a miracle. Our house was there, but my parents didn't want to live in a place, where everything reminded them of Joseph and his family. They couldn't sell it either because it wasn't their property any longer: now it belonged to the state. We settled down in an outhouse with my mother's cousin. She had seen our family pictures and my grandmother Feina's picture in one of the houses. We demanded them back and we got them, but we didn't get back any of our belongings. We didn't have anything left. My mother bought an old uniform overcoat at the market. She altered it to make a coat for me. My father worked as an accountant in the district department of health and I went to school.

There were a few Jews left in Briceni but no synagogues. My school friend Benia's father, a tailor, arranged a prayer house in his home. They got together to pray on Sabbath and Jewish holidays. They made matzah on Pesach in this house. Baker Shymon baked matzah for those that brought him flour. Our neighbor was a militia officer, and my father couldn't take the risk of having matzah made for us. If that neighbor had noticed my father taking matzah home, we might have had problems with the authorities. Baker Shymon brought matzah to our house at night and stored bags in the shed pretending they were just some tools. When our neighbor went to work we took the bags with matzah home.

After the war we collected money to erect a gravestone for murdered Jews in Briceni. Non-Jews also gave money. Names of members of our family that perished during the Holocaust are also inscribed on the stone: Grandmother Motel and Grandfather Pinkhas, my father's sister Adel and her son Yuzik, my mother's brother Joseph, his wife and their two daughters. We don't know where their graves are, but this stone is our tribute of love and memory to them.

In those post war years I faced direct anti-Semitism at school. The senior pupils at school were to become Komsomol 8 members. I didn't feel the need to join the Komsomol league, but when I heard that only Komsomol members could enter university I submitted my application. I was one of the best pupils and had the highest grades in all subject so I didn't have any problems at school. After I was admitted I went to the district Komsomol committee to have an interview. They said to me, 'Your father owned a store, didn't he? He exploited working people'. They told me that I was a class alien [i.e. not a member of the working class or the peasantry of the Soviet Union]. I don't remember any details, but I remember that these accusations seemed to last forever. Of course, I was admitted in the end because they didn't make any exceptions and admitted everybody, but I felt hurt and was hysterical when I came home.

I was in the 10th grade during the period of the struggle against cosmopolitans. My friend's father and my father's acquaintances were sent into exile. Our neighbor's husband was arrested and sent into exile. Again our life was filled with fear. I remember that our neighbor once left her food in our cellar. One morning somebody knocked on our door and my father was putting on his clothes with trembling hands. It turned out our neighbor just wanted to pick up her food.

My mother and I went to Chernovtsy in 1949 where I was to take entrance exams to the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at Chernovtsy University. I had to take five exams. I passed them with good grades and went home to wait for the notification that I was admitted. I received such a notification before the final lists were issued, but when I saw the final lists I didn't find my name there. My mother and I went to find out what had happened. In the Dean's office I was asked who my father was. My mother said he was a clerk and they said that they preferred to admit children of workers and peasants. My mother and I understood what the real reason was [the real reason was that Fenia was Jewish] but what could we do? They advised me to agree to become a candidate of this faculty. Mathematics and physics were difficult subjects and children from villages often gave up their studies and then a candidate could take their place. I could attend lectures, but I had no right to even borrow textbooks from the university library. One of the students borrowed them for me. However, I studied well and was admitted even before the first semester was over. Our lecturers went to the Dean's office to ask for me. I lived in my Uncle Grigory's apartment. I didn't face any anti-Semitism at university. Students and lecturers treated me well. I received a small stipend and my parents supported me. My mother got a job as a receptionist in a polyclinic in Briceni in order to earn some money to support me with.

I met my husband, Esiah Kleiman, when I was a 1st-year student. He was my group mate. We fell in love and got married before graduation. My husband's Jewish name is Shaya. He was born in the small town of Vad-Rashkov in Bessarabia in 1931. His father, David Kleiman, owned a store before 1940. His mother, Golda Kleiman [nee Uchitel] was a housewife. My husband's younger sister, Beila, perished in Rostov during the war. Esiah and his parents were in the Jewish ghetto in Peschana, Odessa region, during the Great Patriotic War. After the war they stayed in Vad-Rashkov for a short while and then they moved to Chernovtsy. Esiah's father worked at a store. After finishing secondary school Esiah entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at Chernovtsy University. Before he began to study at university, he joined the Communist Party. At that time he strongly believed that the Party united the best individuals, people that had a strong commitment to give everything to restore the economy after the war and improve life. Later the feeling of disappointment replaced his previous faith in the Party.

Esiah and I had a civil ceremony and a small wedding party arranged in my husband's home. My parents came to the wedding from Briceni. We don't have children. Doctors said this was the consequence of the ghetto. It is such a shame to have no children.

When we were students at university the Doctors' Plot' 9 began. It was next to impossible to believe that the best doctors in the USSR, Jews, intended to poison Stalin, but there were people that did believe it. Patients didn't want to consult Jewish doctors. Many doctors lost their jobs. I know that an order was issued to fire my father from the district department of health in Briceni. I didn't know about it at that time. I think if Stalin hadn't died in March 1953 my father might have been fired. I'm ashamed to say it now, but when Stalin died I kept crying for five days in a row because I felt such strong grief. I was supposed to give a speech at the meeting of the association of mathematicians on 5th March. I was prepared to speak, but when I came to the blackboard I couldn't squeeze out a word. I was choking with tears. It took me quite an effort to pull myself together, but my speech was still interrupted by sobbing.

After the Twentieth Party Congress 10 I believed every word of Khrushchev 10 about the denunciation of the cult of Stalin. Esiah had always been critical about Stalin's personality and his actions, and he helped me to see the truth. If it hadn't been for my husband I wouldn't have believed Khrushchev.

I faced anti-Semitism again when I received a mandatory job assignment 12 upon graduation. I was the best student and lecturers kept telling me to stay for post-graduate studies, but during the process of issuing job assignments this wasn't even discussed. My husband and I were sent to work as teachers of mathematics at the secondary school in the Romanian village of Vanchikovtsy. We were teachers there for two years before we moved to the town of Yedintsy where we worked for twelve years before we received an apartment. My parents lived in Briceni and my husband's parents lived in Chernovtsy. They were getting older and we wanted them to be with us. We exchanged our apartment in Yedintsy to one room in a communal apartment 13 in Chernovtsy. My parents joined us there. Their house in Briceni was sold to be removed.

Just when we were planning to move to Chernovtsy our friends advised us to get information about vacancies, otherwise authorities would just tell us there were none. After we moved to Chernovtsy my husband made an appointment with the manager of the regional department of public education, who used to be a teacher of physics at the school where my husband worked. He pretended he didn't know my husband. Yet, his secretary registered all villagers, putting down their name and purpose of visit. So, when Esiah entered his office he was aware why he came to see him, but he asked Esiah about the purpose of his visit anyway. When my husband explained that we were teachers of physics and wished to get a job in Chernovtsy, the head of the department asked my husband about our nationality. Esiah's nationality was imprinted on his face, but he replied that we were Jews anyway. The head of the department said, 'You know, you and your wife will never get a job in Chernovtsy'. By the way, he is an old and sick man now and his granddaughter, who has nothing in common with Jews, studies in a Jewish school.

We were jobless for a year and lived on my parents' pension and our miserable savings until our friend from university helped my husband to get a job in a school in the village of Gorbovo, near Chernovtsy. I became a teacher in a cooperative company providing services to the population. My management didn't give me a single chance to work. They didn't send me any pupils and I put fictitious names in my records paying money for them. I received a salary nonetheless, but I just wished I had a chance to work and earn my living. Then I decided to bribe a receptionist - this was the first and the last time in my life that I did something like that. I promised her 5 rubles for each pupil she sent me. When I returned home two pupils were already waiting for me. They recommended me to their acquaintances, and soon I had so many students that I gave a few to my husband. I worked four times more than any teacher, but how I wanted to work in a school! Soon I got a chance to get a job at a school. There were a few teachers that fell ill in a Romanian school, and I was offered to replace them for a few months. I was so happy to get this job that I quit my job at the cooperative company. Later I became a full-time employee at the school when there was a vacancy. I worked at school for 11 years before I retired at the age of 51. Some time later my husband got a job at this school.

I retired in 1982. My work didn't give me any satisfaction. The children weren't interested in studying. They just wanted a certificate of secondary education. I didn't regret my decision to quit work. My husband worked until he turned 68. He had good relationships with his colleagues and they are still in touch.

We didn't celebrate any Jewish traditions. Teachers were ideological workers and weren't allowed to celebrate religious holidays or have anything to do with religion.

My parents celebrated Jewish holidays after the war. If we were on vacation at the time of any holiday we always tried to join our parents for a celebration. I remember Pesach in Briceni. There was an underground bakery in Briceni. My father didn't feel well and my mother went to get matzah at the bakery with my husband. When they were on their way back home my mother heard the voices of her colleagues. She and my husband hid round the corner, waiting until her colleagues passed by to continue on their way home. It was sad and humiliating that we had to keep our wish to lead a Jewish way of life a secret. In the evening we drew the curtains to sit at the table for dinner and seder on Pesach. We had matzah and traditional Jewish food. We also celebrated Soviet holidays, but it was just an occasion to get together with those we loved and were close with. We were sincerely happy to celebrate one holiday: Victory Day 14.

When Jews began to move to Israel in the 1970s my husband and I sympathized with them, but we didn't have any plans about leaving ourselves. We had to support our aging parents. They couldn't travel and we couldn't go and leave them behind. Besides, we were, and still are, very attached to our home and we were afraid of losing our surrounding and friends.

My father died in 1977 at the age of 84. Since we worked as teachers we couldn't have a Jewish funeral at the cemetery, but we buried him in accordance with Jewish traditions. We bought him a tallit - he didn't have a tallit after the war. We invited a chazzan from the synagogue to have all the prayers said as required. All rituals were conducted at my father's funeral. The Jewish cemetery was closed at that period, so we buried my father in the new cemetery. I need to mention that I wasn't embarrassed about having my father buried in this cemetery. Do people have things to be discontent about after they die?

My mother lived with a clear mind until the end of her days. In her last years she was confined to bed since she had her hip bone broken, but she read a lot and we discussed what she had read. On 19th May 2001 my mother celebrated her 104th birthday. She died on 27th May the same year. We buried her beside my father. On the day of the funeral we couldn't have Jewish funeral rituals performed because it happened to be on the day of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot. After the holiday we invited a rabbi to say a prayer at my mother's grave. My husband goes to the synagogue on the anniversaries of our parents' death. I make some special food for the mourning and my husband takes a bottle of vodka to commemorate our parents. He also recites the Kaddish.

We were skeptical about perestroika 15 in the USSR in the early 1980s. We remembered the period of 'thaw' after the Twentieth Party Congress and hopes that just faded away. But this time we saw actual changes in life. The Iron Curtain 16, which had separated the USSR from the rest of the world, fell. People had the freedom to travel and invite their relatives from abroad to visit them. Books by Solzhenitsyn 17, Bulgakov 18, etc. were published. We were bombarded with true information about our life and history. The attitude towards Jews began to change during the years of perestroika. I wouldn't say that anti-Semitism vanished, but at least newspapers and TV began to use the words 'Jews', Russian, Ukrainian, etc. Also, Jews don't have major problems with entering an institute or getting a job.

After Ukraine declared independence in 1991 our life changed even more. Jewish associations began to revive Jewish culture. It became particularly evident after Hesed was established. Old Jewish people found care and support. Hesed provides medication and food packages for old people. Volunteers from Hesed visit old people and help them about the house. There's a number of clubs for elderly people including a choir and dancing club. We celebrate Sabbath and Jewish holidays together. There's a Jewish school and a monthly TV program in Yiddish, broadcasted from Chernovtsy to several regions in Ukraine.

My husband and I didn't return to observing Jewish traditions, simply because we had never given them up. We just do openly now, what we used to do secretly before. We celebrate all Jewish holidays at home. On Chanukkah we have candles burning in the chanukkiyah. I cook all traditional food that I have been used to since my childhood. We observe traditions to honor the memory of our parents, who had observed Jewish traditions through whatever hardships.

My husband is the chief editor of the newspaper published by Hesed. It has issues about our life and activities. We publish articles about the war and the Holocaust. Those that survived will never forget this part of their life and their successors will remember. We write memoirs about the days we spent in the ghetto. These are hard memories, but we have no right to forget them. We need to remember in order to never let it happen again.

Glossary

Evgenia Galina
Uzhgorod
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya
Date of interview: April 2003

Evgenia Galina lives in a two-bedroom apartment in a five-storied apartment house built in the 1970s in a new district in Uzhgorod. Her son Michael and his family live in the same apartment building. Evgenia's apartment is impeccably clean and cozy. She has many books and photographs of her close ones on the bookshelves and on the walls. Evgenia is a short chubby woman. She has bright eyes and short dark hair with streaks of gray. She speaks slowly and distinctly as if considering each and every word - this must be a reflection of her teaching career. Evgenia holds herself up with dignity, but she is very friendly at the same time. She is a wonderful housewife and likes cooking, although this must be difficult for her now. Evgenia hasn't lost interest in life.

My family background
Growing up
My school years
During the war
Post-war
Married life
Glossary

My family background

My father's parents lived in the small village of Ivnitsa, Zhytomyr province [130 km from Kiev]. I can't say anything about Ivnitsa. I never visited this village in my childhood and my father never told me about the village or the house where he grew up. I can only guess that the Jewish population constituted some 30 to 50%. There were many similar villages in Ukraine. Ukrainian and Jewish families developed a friendly neighborhood, helped each other and respected each other's religion and traditions.

My paternal grandfather, Boruch Breizman, was born in Ivnitsa in the 1860s. I have no information about my his family. I don't know anything about my paternal grandmother either. She died when my father was just a child. I don't even know her name. My grandfather became a widower with two children. My father, Morduch, born in 1884, was the oldest child. The name Morduch was written in my father's documents. Later he was called with the Russian name of Matvey [common name] 1. His younger sister Sophia, Sosl in Yiddish, was born in 1886. When the mourning after his wife was over my grandfather remarried. I knew his second wife, Liebe, my father's stepmother.

Grandmother Liebe was over ten years younger than grandfather. They had five children. The oldest, Lisa, was born in 1892. My father's second stepsister, Riva, followed in 1895, then Clara, Chaya in Yiddish, in 1899. In 1908 another girl was born. She was named Sarra in Yiddish, Sophia in Russian. The youngest son, Naum, followed in 1910. His Jewish name was Nukhim. Sophia and Naum were born in Zhytomyr [150 km from Kiev], which means that the family moved to Zhytomyr sometime between 1899 and 1908. It was hard to get a job or education in the village. There were probably other reasons for moving that I don't know of.

Grandfather Boruch was a very educated and religious man. I remember my grandfather when he was an old man. He had gray hair and a big gray beard. He didn't wear payes. He wore a dark shirt and a dark jacket. He wore a hat when going out and a black kippah made of silk at home, only it wasn't a small kippah like they wear nowadays, but a bigger one that almost covered his ears. My grandfather was a melamed. I don't know if there was a cheder in Ivnitsa. Pupils came to my grandfather's home.

The family was poor. My grandfather apparently didn't earn enough to feed the family and Grandmother Liebe became the breadwinner. She was a very business-oriented woman. She began to bake bread and rolls at home. A window was kept open and my grandmother sold her bread, cakes and pastries through that window. Her business took her a lot of time and her children had to engage themselves. The older children took care of the younger ones. My grandfather was always absorbed in books. He read those Jewish books and took little interest in the surrounding. He also liked to write poems in Yiddish and Hebrew, but regretfully, they are all gone.

They observed Jewish traditions in the family. The boys were circumcised. All children got Jewish education. They didn't go to cheder; my grandfather taught them. My father and his sisters could read and write in Yiddish and knew the Torah and the Talmud. They knew all Jewish prayers by heart. Grandfather Boruch taught them the prayers and traditions. They celebrated Sabbath and all Jewish holidays. I don't know how often my grandfather and grandmother went to the synagogue in Ivnitsa. I don't even know whether there was a synagogue there at all. After they moved to Zhytomyr my grandfather went to the synagogue every day and my grandmother went there on Jewish holidays. They spoke Yiddish at home.

Zhytomyr is an old town in Ukraine. At the beginning of the 20th century it had a population of about 100,000 people. From the middle of the 16th century to the end of the 18th century Zhytomyr belonged to Poland and then it became a part of the Russian Empire. There was a significant number of Polish citizens in the town. Russians, Poles and Jews constituted the population of Zhytomyr. About 30% of the population was Jewish. There were brick houses in the center of the town. Jews were involved in crafts and commerce and some were intellectuals. The Russian and Polish population resided in the suburbs of the town for the most part. They were farmers. There were no nationality conflicts. There was a big Jewish community in Zhytomyr and several synagogues. Even after the Great Patriotic War 2 and the period of struggle against religion 3 in the 1930s there were still at least five synagogues left in Zhytomyr. There was a cheder and Jewish school in the town. The Jewish community supported the poor and handicapped. There was a Jewish orphanage and elderly people home and a Jewish hospital. During the Civil War 4 there were Jewish pogroms 5 in Zhytomyr. Gangs 6 and Denikin's 7 troops were involved in the pogroms. Local people often gave shelter to Jewish families during such pogroms.

After they moved to Zhytomyr my grandparents rented a small house in the center of Zhytomyr. Their wooden house was in the yard of a two-storied stone house where their landlords lived. There were several other wooden houses that their landlords rented out. They were Jews and preferred to lease their houses to Jewish families. After the family moved to Zhytomyr my grandfather began to work as a teacher in a state Jewish primary school. Besides he gave classes at home teaching Jewish children the cheder program. He also wrote poems that he sent to magazines and newspapers in Palestine. He even received royalties for them. It was little money, but still it helped. During the Soviet power this was out of the question and my grandfather began writing poems that he sent to newspapers before Soviet holidays. Those poems were published and my grandfather also received some money for them.

In the 1930s the Jewish school was closed and my grandfather lost his job. He continued studying and reading religious books at home, he could do it the whole day then. My grandfather couldn't get any job, so my grandmother began to sell her baked goods again. She sold it from a window in their house and her customers were the neighboring Jewish families. My grandmother worked 15 hours a day. She didn't have any time or strength left for religion. She had her hair cut short in stylish manner. She had thick wavy hair that looked very nice on her. She didn't wear a shawl.

My father started to work when he was young. He was the oldest in the family. Shortly after moving to Zhytomyr he became an apprentice to a watchmaker whose last name was Poliak. My father lived and had meals in his house. Poliak didn't charge them for education and accommodation, but my father had to work for him for free for two years. My father stayed in his shop after his training was over and worked there until he got married.

After they moved to Zhytomyr my father's sister Sophia had a row with their stepmother and left for Kiev. This happened shortly after World War I. In Kiev she married an ugly Jewish man whose last name was Katz. She didn't love him but married him to get a place to live. Sophia's husband was a shoemaker. They had a traditional Jewish wedding. Sophia had four children: three sons and a daughter. The name of her oldest son was Michael, then came Alexandr, whose Jewish name was Shaya, and the name of her youngest son was Boris. I don't remember her daughter's name. They were cheerful people. Sophia was a joyful woman, even though she had a hard life. I don't know how religious my aunt was. All I know is that they celebrated Jewish holidays. During the Great Patriotic War Sophia's sons went to the front. Michael was a marine and the two others were recruited to the front. The two older sons perished and Boris, the youngest, returned home. He lives in Canada with his family now. Sophia died in Kiev in the 1950s. Sophia's daughter lived in Kiev before the Great Patriotic War. I haven't been in contact with her. Perhaps, she still lives there.

My grandfather's daughters from his second marriage became Zionists. Before World War I they emigrated to Palestine. They took part in the struggle for the new state. They took part in the construction of a kibbutz and lived there the rest of their lives. They were single and had no children. Lisa Breizman, the older one, worked at the kibbutz, and the younger one, Riva Breizman, became a professor, a specialist in wine making. Her name is included in the 'Golden Book of Israel'. I've never met them. We've had no contacts. My father wanted to correspond with his sisters, but my mother didn't allow him to do so fearing for him, my brother and me. [She was afraid to keep in touch with relatives abroad.] 8 This relationship might have become an obstacle for us to enter college, and in 1936 and the following years it might have even become a reason for arrest. After the Great Patriotic War Lisa and Riva got an opportunity to see Grandmother Liebe. They came to the USSR on tour, but they weren't allowed to travel to Zhytomyr. They stayed in a hotel in Kiev where Grandmother Liebe went to see them. We didn't go to see them since my mother was afraid for us. They came again in the 1970s after Grandmother Liebe died. They were allowed to come to Zhytomyr then. They had a wonderful gravestone installed for my grandmother and grandfather, who perished at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. We lived in another town and didn't go to see the sisters. Both sisters passed away: Lisa died in the 1980s and Riva died in the early 1990s. We got to know about it in the 1990s after we sent an inquiry to Israel.

I don't know if my father's stepsister Clara studied at school or if my grandfather taught her. After the [Russian] Revolution of 1917 9 she entered the Stomatology Faculty of Medical College in Kharkov. After finishing it she became a dentist in Zhytomyr. She lived with her parents. Clara married a Ukrainian man. I don't remember his name. I don't know whether my grandfather was against Clara marrying a man of a different religion. It's quite likely that he didn't care much being too absorbed in his books. Grandmother Liebe was very positive about her daughter's marriage. She got along well with her son-in-law. Clara's husband was a nice man and earned well. They lived together. My grandmother took care of the housework and cooking.

Clara and her husband were atheists. Clara's husband had studied in Germany. He was a lecturer at the Pedagogical College in Zhytomyr. They had a son and a daughter. I don't remember their names or dates of birth. When the Great Patriotic War began Clara's husband was arrested and accused of being a German spy since he had once studied in Germany. We never saw him again. Clara was a helpless woman in everyday life. She was used to having her mother resolve all her problems. After the war she couldn't find a job of her qualification and went to work as a doctor at school. Sophia junior raised Clara's children. Her son lives in Lipetsk, Russia [about 500 km from Moscow]. He finished a college and became an engineer. Clara's daughter moved to Israel in the 1970s. We have no contact with them.

Sophia Breizman, the youngest sister, and I were friends. I loved her dearly. She had a hard life. When she was a child and then a teenager she had to work 12-14 hours a day helping her mother. She studied at a lower secondary school, but had to quit. She studied by herself and entered Pedagogical College in Zhytomyr in 1930. After finishing it she entered the Faculty of Philology at Kharkov University. She was expelled when she was a 3rd-year student. Another student that came from Zhytomyr wrote a report saying that she was an alien element since she wrote in her application form that her parents were poor people while her mother was a shopkeeper. She meant Grandmother Liebe, who baked bread. She didn't have a store and only sold bread that she made, but who would have believed that? There was a general meeting where Sophia was expelled from university where only children of proletariat could study. Sophia returned to Zhytomyr.

When the Great Patriotic War began Sophia, Grandmother Liebe, Clara and her children evacuated. After the war they returned home. Sophia lived with my grandmother and Clara's family. She went to work as a teacher of the Russian language and literature at school. Sophia wrote poems in Russian, but she didn't have an opportunity to publish them. Only occasionally a few were published in magazines. After she passed away her sisters published a book of her poems in Israel. Her private life was difficult, too. She dated a young man that was her neighbor in Zhytomyr. They loved each other and were going to get married.

In 1937 [during the Great Terror] 10 he was arrested - somebody reported on him - and exiled to Siberia. He stayed in camps for ten years and she was waiting for him. After he got released he wasn't allowed to go home. He had to stay in a town in Siberia. He married a woman there. After the Twentieth Party Congress 11 he was rehabilitated [Rehabilitation in the Soviet Union] 12 and came to Zhytomyr. He came to see Sophia. They spent a few days together. He didn't dare tell her that he was married. Only at the station, when he got on a train to go back to his family, he told her. It was a blow to her. When he left, Sophia didn't want to see anyone and was depressed. A few years later her colleague, a widower who was 20 years older than Sophia, proposed to her. He had a house. Clara's children grew up and the house became too small for so many tenants. Sophia married this man for his house. They didn't have any children. She put all her feelings into her poems that were not published. Unfortunately, I don't have them. Sophia died after a lingering disease in 1986. She was buried in the town cemetery in Zhytomyr. It wasn't a Jewish funeral.

The older sisters, their husbands and brother supported my father's younger brother Naum during his studies. He also worked to earn his living. When at school Naum was the head of the aviation modeling club. Afterwards he entered Polytechnic College in Kharkov. After finishing his first year he came to Zhytomyr and married a Jewish girl that he had been dating when at school. They had a traditional Jewish wedding. During the Great Patriotic War the College evacuated to Tashkent [Uzbekistan]. Naum finished college after the war. He had the choice of where to go: either work at a defense plant in Komi ASSR or to the front. Komi was in the North and winters are very cold there with - 40º? temperatures, but he went there nonetheless. After the war he came to Lipetsk with his wife and went to work. Their son, Boris, was born there.

Boris is very talented. After finishing school with a gold medal he entered Technical College of Physics in Moscow. Even before finishing his studies in college he entered post-graduate school. He became a professor. His works were published abroad, but he wasn't allowed to travel since he was a Jew. After the collapse of the USSR Boris went to the US to hold lectures in 1987. He stayed there. His family joined him in the US. Naum died in Lipetsk in 1992.

My mother's father died in 1905 when my mother was a child. All I know about him is that his name was Meyer Benderski. My maternal grandmother Pesia-Feiga was born in the village of Romanivka [210 km from Kiev, 60 km from Zhytomyr]. I knew my grandmother's two sisters: Leika and Hava. I don't remember their last names. Leika lived in Zhytomyr and Hava lived in a village near Zhytomyr. They were both married. Leika had twelve children: eleven sons and a daughter. Hava had two daughters; Ida and Tania. During the Great Patriotic War nine of Leika's sons perished at the front. After the war she used to say that she had one and a half sons left: one of her sons lost his legs at the front. Leika's daughter lived in Podolsk near Moscow after the Great Patriotic War.

After getting married my grandmother lived in Zhytomyr. She had four children when she became a widow. My mother, Basia, was the oldest. She was born in 1896. The second daughter, Freida, was born in 1900 and the youngest son Leibl in 1903. The last daughter, Mirra, was born in 1905 after grandfather died. A brother of my grandmother's father, Avrum- Faivish, lived in the village of Romanivka. He had four children. They were a wealthy family and he took my mother into his family. My mother's younger sisters, Freida and Mirra, stayed with my grandmother. Their brother Leibl went to the family of grandmother' sister Hana, whose husband was a tailor. He taught Leibl his profession.

My grandmother's uncle, Avrum-Faivish, owned a food store. His family helped him with work at the store. His wife was a very nice woman. She treated my mother like her own daughter. There was a grammar school for boys and another one for girls in Romanivka. All children of my grandmother's uncle studied in grammar school and he also paid for my mother's studies. However, my mother quit this school after finishing her 7th year. When I asked my mother why she didn't complete her studies she said there was a lot of work to do about the house and in the store and she felt like helping the family.

My mother told me that there was a big pogrom in Romanivka once. My grandmother in Zhytomyr got ill and my mother had to go there. At that time Petliura's 13 gang came to Romanivka. Avrum-Faivish's daughter and wife managed to find shelter while he and his sons failed to hide away. Petliura bandits beat him and his sons very hard and hit the oldest, Ruvim, with a sable. It wasn't a deadly wound, but there was a lot of blood around. That's the only pogrom my mother told me about.

My grandmother remarried. This happened at the time when my mother was still staying with my grandmother's uncle. There was a widower by the name of David Rakhlis who lived in Zhytomyr. His son's name was Motl. David was a glasscutter. David and my grandmother had known each other since they were children and David always liked my grandmother. He came to see her father, Nuchim-Faivish, to ask his consent to the marriage. Nuchim-Faivish had ten unmarried daughters. He said David could marry any of them, but if he wanted to marry a widow, my grandmother, he would have to pay back the amount that my grandmother's father gave her as a dowry. David didn't have the money and left. He began to save money and when he had the necessary amount he came to see Nuchim-Faivish again. David paid the money to my grandmother's father and married my grandmother. My grandmother went to live with him. David cared a lot about my grandmother. When she got osseous tuberculosis David paid for her to get medical treatment. When she couldn't walk he carried her around regardless of his neighbors teasing him about it. My grandmother recovered.

David had a big house with seven rooms in the center of Zhytomyr. There was a front and a back door in the house. My grandmother moved into this house with Freida and Mirra. David's son Motl lived there, too. In the early 1920s Motl emigrated to the US. We had no contact with him. My grandmother kept a cow and chicken in a shed in the yard. She didn't have housemaids. Freida and later my mother helped her about the house.

When my grandmother fell ill with tuberculosis they decided to have my mother married off as soon as possible so that she didn't have to depend on her relatives in case her mother died. This was in 1921. Romanivka was a Ukrainian village - there were few Jewish families. My grandmother turned to shadkhanim, matchmakers, that offered her to have my mother marry my future father. My grandmother called my mother to come to Zhytomyr where she announced that my mother was to meet a man. My mother met my father. They liked each other. My mother was a quiet, shy and pretty girl. My father was twelve years older. My mother didn't want to marry him. She cried and begged her mother to let her be, but my grandmother insisted that my mother obeyed her. My father was a decent man and had a profession. They got engaged and my mother stayed in Zhytomyr. They had a traditional Jewish wedding about a month later.

Growing up

After the wedding my mother and father rented a dwelling for some time, but then grandmother talked them into moving into David's house. They got a room of their own. Grandmother had her room and so did David. Mirra lived in the room that had an entrance from the front door. When she got married she lived there with her husband and son. Freida also had a room. There was a dining-room and two kitchens in the house. After Motl moved to the US one room and a kitchen were leased to a Jewish family. David also charged my parents rent. He gave the money to my grandmother for housekeeping and she returned the amount to my mother.

My father found a facility that he wanted to rent for his clock shop, but it turned out to be cold and wasn't appropriate for work. Besides, my father would have had to pay taxes on it. He went to work at another clock shop. He was very skillful and had a lot of work to do. When he returned home from work he continued working. He got orders from owners of clock shops that had nice facilities with fancy signboards, but they couldn't do the work. Those owners paid my father 50% of the cost of their orders. My father was a strong man, but the fact that he had to sit all the time had an impact on his health condition. My mother was a housewife. My father wanted to provide for the family and thought that he could afford to have my mother take care of the house and family.

My brother, Abram, was born in 1923. He was circumcised as required by the rules. I was born on 2nd March 1925. My parents named me Genia. At school I was called by my Russian name of Evgenia. Our parents loved us and created an atmosphere of love and respect in the family. There were no conflicts at home and they didn't tell us off or punish us. The most serious punishment for us was to hear that our father didn't approve of something we had done.

My father was an intelligent and advanced man. I don't know where he learned music. He had a Jewish friend that was a tuner. My father and his friend often played the violin and this tuner's daughter accompanied them on the piano. My father also read a lot. He read books in Yiddish that my grandfather had left him. We had many books at home: most of them were books in Yiddish and Hebrew. My mother and father went to see Jewish performances at the theater. The Jewish Theater from Kiev often came to the town on tour and my parents went to see their performances.

We spoke Russian at home. My father and mother spoke Yiddish sometimes, but they only communicated in Russian with my brother and me. My grandmother spoke Yiddish. She could speak a little Ukrainian, but she was illiterate and couldn't even write. I can speak a little Yiddish, but I cannot read or write in Yiddish.

My grandmother and David were very religious. My parents were religious, too. Of course, my father couldn't observe all Jewish traditions since he had to work on Saturday, but David didn't work on Saturday. There was a mezuzah on each door. The family followed the kashrut. My grandmother had a twig tray where she put meat to have all blood flow down to make it kosher meat.

David and grandmother went to the nearby synagogue on Sabbath and Jewish holidays. My brother and I went with them after we turned seven. Women sat on the second floor of the synagogue. My grandmother had the most expensive seat in the synagogue.

We celebrated Sabbath at home. My mother started cooking on Friday morning. There was a Russian stove 14 in the kitchen. My mother left food for Saturday in the oven to keep it warm. She was a great cook. She was especially good at making challah and gefilte fish. On Friday evening the table was covered with a white tablecloth. My grandmother lit the candles. On Saturday nobody did any work at home. David and my grandmother visited our numerous relatives. Even if it was a long distance my grandmother never took a tram on Sabbath. She walked, although she had problems with her legs. On Friday I turned on the light at home in the evening - children are allowed to do this. On Saturday Grandmother Liebe came to see us. Grandmother Pesia-Feiga was always angry that Grandmother Liebe visited on Saturday wearing no kerchief. She used to say, 'This grandmother with her hair cut is here...'. Grandmother Pesia-Feiga always wore a dark kerchief. I still have it. My grandmother left it to my mother and my mother gave it to me before she died. My parents went to the synagogue on Saturday evening after my father returned home from work. They also went to the synagogue on Jewish holidays. My father had a good voice and often sang at the synagogue.

The family started preparations for Pesach in advance. The house was thoroughly cleaned. It was a lot of fun. Grandmother's children brought flour into the house. We made matzah for four families: for David and my grandmother, for Leibl's family, for Mirra and her husband and for us, and after Freida got married also for her family. We baked matzah in our Russian stove. The women kneaded the dough, my father made holes and Leibl watched the oven. Everybody was busy. We made matzah for one family, then another. My grandmother sent me to the shochet to have him slaughter the chickens. There was a long line at his slaughterhouse before the holidays. The shochet slaughtered the chickens and my grandmother cut them into pieces at home. All everyday utensils and crockery were taken to the attic and fancy crockery and utensils that were only used at Pesach were taken down. We had chicken broth, boiled chicken and gefilte fish made. My grandmother had a copper mortar where we crushed matzah to add it to the chicken broth. We also ate matzah with milk. My grandmother made matzah meal - matzah flour - to bake strudels and cookies. There were two poor Jewish families living in our neighborhood. After the cooking for Pesach was done my grandmother always sent me to bring them fish, chicken, strudels - a little of everything that we had - for a meal. I also brought them some matzah. My grandmother did this on all holidays. She couldn't stand the thought that there was somebody who couldn't afford a decent meal.

My grandmother, David, Freida and Mirra's family had their own first seder and we conducted it separately from them. My mother put a white tablecloth on the table. She put bitter greenery, a saucer with salty water and hard boiled eggs on the table. There was also food: gefilte fish, chicken and potato and matzah puddings. There were silver glasses for wine. There was always one extra glass for Elijah the Prophet 15. I remember what a problem it was for me to wait until it got dark. I was hungry and even more so sleepy, but we had to wait until the first star appeared in the sky. Our father taught my brother to ask the four traditional questions in Hebrew that a son is supposed to pose to his father. [Editor's note: according to the rules the youngest child in the family must ask these questions, the so- called mah nishtanah.] My brother didn't know Hebrew and he just learned them by heart. I don't know how the seder ended since I always went to sleep before it was over.

At Yom Kippur all adults fasted. Even when my grandmother was severely ill at her old age she still fasted at Yom Kippur. My brother and I began to fast at the age of 13-14, but my mother was still worried about us when we didn't have anything to eat for a whole day. At Purim my mother made hamantashen and honey cakes. There were lots of pastries made at Purim since it was a tradition to take treats to relatives and friends. Sweets and pastries were put on a tray and covered with a white napkin. Children made the rounds of the houses. Of course, we couldn't help trying these delicacies. At Purim Purimshpils in disguise came to houses showing their short performances. They also got treats and some change. At Sukkoth David made a sukkah in the yard. We decorated it with ribbons and greenery. We had meals in it throughout the holiday. Grandfather David recited the prayers in the sukkah. There was always a big dish with fruit on the table. We, children, also played in the sukkah when adults were busy doing their own things.

In 1932 there was a famine 16 in Ukraine. My grandmother and David didn't suffer from it because my grandmother's sister Hava lived in a village. She had fields where she grew grain and vegetables. Hava always sent her some grain and food products. Hava supported all relatives. We didn't starve, but there wasn't enough food anyway. My grandmother always gave us some food. If we didn't have enough food we had boiled millet or something else.

Freida got married in 1932. David tried to convince my grandmother to postpone her wedding. He said it was going to be difficult to make food for the wedding, but my grandmother insisted that there was a wedding. Freida and her fiancé were engaged for a year and then they got married. They had a wedding in the house of my grandmother and David. A rabbi conducted the ceremony. There was a chuppah in the house. There were long tables in the big dining-room for the feast. After their wedding Freida and her husband stayed to live in David's house. I don't remember her husband's name. He was a product supplier at the shoe factory. Freida was a housewife. David didn't charge them for living in his house. My grandmother cooked for them.

Freida's son Michael - his Jewish name was Meyer - was born in 1933. Freida, her husband and son were in evacuation during the Great Patriotic War and after the war they returned to David's house. Later their son bought this house for them. Before the war Freida and her husband observed all Jewish traditions and celebrated holidays, but after the Great Patriotic War they just celebrated Jewish holidays. Freida and her family lived in Zhytomyr all their life. Freida's husband died in 1967. After her husband died Freida had a stroke. She became helpless and didn't understand what she was doing. My mother felt sorry for her sister and took her to live with her. Freida died in Zhytomyr in 1972, three years after my mother died. She was a helpless woman and after my mother's death the youngest sister, Mirra, nursed her. Freida was buried in the Jewish section of the town cemetery according to the Jewish tradition. I had no contact with her son.

My mother's brother, Leibl, married a Jewish girl from Zhytomyr in 1924. I don't remember her name. They also had a Jewish wedding. Their daughter Lisa was born in 1925. After Lisa was born Leibl's wife became ill. Lisa and I were close friends. Before the Great Patriotic War Leibl's family celebrated Jewish holidays. Leibl perished at the front in 1942. His wife and daughter were in evacuation and from there they returned to Zhytomyr. Leibl's wife died in the 1960s. Lisa finished Medical College in Ivano- Frankovsk. She worked as a doctor. Lisa got married. She has two daughters and three grandchildren. Lisa and her family moved to Israel in the 1970s. They live in Rehovot. Lisa is a pensioner now.

Mirra, the youngest in the family, was David's favorite. They were of the same kind. Mirra yelled and cursed, but David forgave her everything. He even bequeathed his house to her. Mirra got married in 1927. Her husband's last name was Haitin. He was an engineer. Her son Leonid was born in 1929. Mirra's husband died of a heart attack in a recreation center before the war. She never remarried. Mirra died in Zhytomyr in the 1980s. Her son lives in Germany.

My school years

My brother Abram started school in 1930 and I in 1932. We studied in a Russian secondary school. Boys and girls studied together. I was a sociable girl and had many friends at school. There were Russian and Jewish teachers in our school. Quite a few of my classmates were Jewish, too. I never faced any anti-Semitism at school. I don't believe there was any before the Great Patriotic War. My best friend was the daughter of a Christian priest. She was my classmate and lived nearby. My other friends were: Stasia, a Polish girl, Maria Frolova, a Russian girl and Sonia Milman, a Jewish girl. There were no specific attitudes towards Jewish children at school.

My favorite subjects at school were Russian and Ukrainian languages, literature and chemistry. My brother was fond of mathematic and physics. I became a pioneer when I was in the 4th grade. There was a plain ceremony in the vestibule at school where a bust of Lenin was installed. We recited the oath of pioneers and had red neckties tied around our necks. I cannot say that I was an active pioneer. I took part in parades on Soviet holidays and attended pioneer meetings. I didn't become a Komsomol 17 member at school since I finished the 9th grade in 1941.

The arrests that began in 1937 [during the Great Terror] didn't have an impact on our family. Some of our acquaintances were arrested. My father was worried about them. He was smart and understood what was going on. I remember when my father's acquaintance, who was a pharmacist, was arrested my father kept saying, 'What did he do? What was his fault?' My father didn't like Stalin. I remember him saying that in the early 1920s Stalin was fighting with Lenin for 'the stool' to sit on and my mother was horrified to hear this. Of course, our parents tried to avoid discussing these subjects in the presence of children, but we lived in the same room and often heard such discussions. I didn't quite understand what it was about at that time, but I recalled them many years later.

There were classes of military training for boys at school. Girls were trained to be medical nurses. We were taught to provide first aid to patients, apply bandages, immobilize an arm or leg. There were also political classes. We were told that the world bourgeoisie wanted to destroy the USSR and that we had to fight for the cause of Lenin and Stalin when we grew up. Religiosity was almost a crime. Pioneers and Komsomol members were told to fight about religiosity of their politically backward parents. My brother was a Komsomol member and had a hard time at home. We still celebrated Jewish holidays while at school he was told that it was in conflict with the title of a Soviet citizen. Also, people were stimulated to speak Russian rather than their native language: Yiddish, Ukrainian or any other.

When my brother was twelve my father asked Grandfather Boruch to teach Abram Yiddish. My grandfather taught him so he would be able to read, but my brother didn't want to continue his studies. Abram told our father that nobody in his class was learning Yiddish and that he didn't want to study it either. My grandfather once mentioned to my father that he was sorry that Abram gave up Yiddish since he was good and quick in his studies. Abram didn't have a bar mitzvah. My father dreamed about his bar mitzvah, but my brother didn't agree to do it.

When my brother became a Komsomol member our parents had matzah made for Pesach at a different family's place. My mother went to their house to bake matzah that she brought home wrapped in a white sheet. Once she met my brother when she was carrying matzah home and was very happy expecting that he would help her to carry it home, but my brother refused to help her. He said he would do any other work: fetch water or chop wood, but he wouldn't carry matzah for anything in the world. However, my brother always participated in the celebration of Jewish holidays. He took part in the seder and posed the four traditional questions to our father. We didn't celebrate Soviet holidays at home, but we took part in celebrations at school.

During the war

My brother finished school with a silver medal in 1940. He had the right to enter a college without taking entrance exams. My brother wanted to study in Moscow. He entered the Faculty of Mathematics in Moscow University. He lived in a hostel. Our parents supported him with some money and my brother received a stipend. He had all excellent marks. He passed his exams in late 1941 and we looked forward to his arrival home, but we didn't see him. On 22nd June 1941 we heard on the radio that Germany attacked the USSR and the war began.

We left Zhytomyr on 27th June 1941. My brother was sent to study in an artillery school in Podmoscoviye. Grandmother Pesia-Feiga, Freida and her son, Mirra and her son and our family evacuated from Zhytomyr. David refused to go with us. He said that he had seen the Germans during World War I and didn't think they could do Jews any harm. My grandmother was afraid for her children and grandchildren and decided to go with us. David evacuated from Zhytomyr a month later when he came to understand that the Germans and the fascists were two different pairs of shoes. He found my grandmother and joined us in Kuibyshev region. My father's relatives also evacuated. Grandmother Liebe, Clara and her children and Sophia left about a week after we evacuated.

We traveled in cattle transportation carriages. We had little luggage since we were allowed to have one small suitcase each. There were no benches in carriages. Travelers slept on the floor. We didn't know where we were going. We didn't have any food and tried to buy some food at stations. Our train was bombed on the way, but fortunately, we got out of it. I don't quite remember how long our trip lasted, but it seemed an eternity to me.

We reached Stalingrad [about 1,000 km southeast of Moscow]. There was an evacuation agency in the town. Grandmother, her daughters and grandchildren decided to go to Kuibyshev region and we decided to stay in Stalingrad. We got accommodation in a school building before we went to live with a family in their house. My father, mother and I lived in a small room. The owners of the house gave us some utensils, bed sheets and blankets. I went to the 10th grade at school. My father went to work in a clock repair shop. We stayed there until German troops began to approach Stalingrad in 1942. The Volga River was covered with ice and we crossed it to get to the opposite bank. We settled down in the village of Nikolevka and in a month we moved on to Kamyshin. From Kamyshin people were evacuated on tanks. We were taken to the nearest railway station where we boarded a train. We didn't know where it was heading, but we didn't care as long as it took us further and further away from the Germans.

We arrived in Pavlodar in Kazakhstan where we heard an announcement that there was a train to Middle Asia and that all people willing to go could travel on this train. We thought that it wouldn't be so hard to live through the winter in Middle Asia and chose to go there. Our trip lasted for about a month. There was no water or toilet in those freight carriages. When the train stopped at a station all passengers ran to the toilet. Local residents brought some food to the station. Many people fell ill and had lice. Many were dying and their bodies were taken off the train at stations. We finally reached Tashkent [2,600 km from Kiev] where we stayed overnight at the railway station. There were many people ill with spotted fever. They were lying on the floor and benches in the railway station building.

The next morning we got accommodation in the house of an old woman. It was a small pise-walled house with two rooms and a kitchen. We lived in one room. My father went to find out about a job. It turned out they needed a clock repair man badly. My father got a room to make into a shop. He went to get tools in some town. My mother fell ill with spotted fever at that time. She was taken to hospital. I was left alone with no money or food. The old woman taught me to pick turtle eggs in a sand pit in the suburb of the town. The old woman made me fried eggs every day. I visited my mother in hospital every day. Finally my father returned. He brought the tools that he needed and had a shop equipped. My mother returned from hospital.

My father received no money for his work as yet and my mother sold our bed sheets at the market. She was very weak after her illness and somebody snatched her purse. My mother returned home in tears. Later my father began to receive money and we could buy food. I went to work as an attendant at the hospital. However, I had to finish my studies at school. I studied in the 10th grade in Tashkent and was thinking of resuming my studies at school, when somebody told me that there was a Pedagogical College in Tashkent where they admitted students that had finished nine years at school. There weren't too many young people that wanted to study and they were admitted without entrance exams. I entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics and finished it before the end of the war. There were Russian, Crimean Tatar, Kirghiz and Jewish students in my group. There was no segregation regarding nationality. In June 1945 I received my diploma.

During the war following the kashrut was out of the question. We ate what we could get or buy per food coupons. However, my parents celebrated Pesach. My mother sold bread that she made at the market and bought flour to make matzah. We didn't eat any bread at Pesach. My parents fasted at Yom Kippur. I don't remember anything about celebrations of other Jewish holidays.

Since we left Zhytomyr we had no information about my father's relatives. My father wrote inquiries to a search service. When we were in Tashkent my father received a response saying that his parents were in Tashkent. There was their address in this letter. We were very happy to hear about them, but when my father found them he became very sad. Grandmother Liebe, Clara and her children and Sophia told my father that Grandfather Boruch refused to evacuate with them. When the war began he was about 80 years old. My grandfather felt tired of life. He said he wasn't going to leave with them. My father was very sorry that we hadn't taken my grandfather with us. My father believed that he would have convinced grandfather to join us. After we returned to Zhytomyr we got to know that the Germans had conducted mass shootings of the Jewish population and our grandfather perished at the very beginning. There are several common graves in Zhytomyr, but we don't even know where my grandfather's grave is.

Post-war

I remember the feeling of joy on 9th May 1945 [Victory Day] 18 when we heard on the radio that the war was over. People hugged and kissed each other in the streets. There were fireworks in the evening. We returned home to Zhytomyr. My grandmother, Freida, Mirra and their children were already home. David died in evacuation in 1944. My grandmother died in Zhytomyr in 1952. She was buried according to the Jewish tradition in the Jewish cemetery in Zhytomyr.

During the war we corresponded with my brother Abram. After finishing artillery school he went to the front. My brother was a mathematician and was very good at calculations that were necessary for artillery troopers. At 23 he was promoted to captain. Thank God he wasn't wounded at the front. He was slightly shell-shocked once, but it had no negative impact. After the war he returned to Moscow to continue his studies at university. His lecturer of mathematics, Berezanskaya, who was the author of a school textbook in mathematics, also taught at the postgraduate school where she took Abram after he graduated. He began to work at university and simultaneously studied at the postgraduate school.

In 1948, during the campaign against cosmopolitans 19 Berezanskaya lost her job - she was of the retirement age, as they explained to her - and my brother got a [mandatory job] assignment 20 to work in a village. He worked as a teacher of mathematics in a school in Kaluga region. He came to Zhytomyr on vacation and married a local Jewish woman that he had known before the war. His wife Rachil, nee Gotfrid, was an English teacher at school. Rachil followed Abram to Kaluga region and they worked at school. Their daughter, Alla, was born in 1953. Rachil's parents took the girl to Zhytomyr. Their twins, Alexandr and Boris, were born in 1956. My brother's assignment was over and they returned to Zhytomyr. They lived in a room in Rachil's parents home.

My brother couldn't find a job in Zhytomyr and went to work in a village in Zhytomyr region. He rented a room from an old woman. My brother sent his salary to Rachil in Zhytomyr. In due time an affiliate of Kiev College of Light Industry was open in Zhytomyr. The director of this affiliate liked my brother and employed him. Besides working at college he gave private lessons in mathematics. Abram had a good reputation as a teacher of mathematics, whose students entered colleges with no problems. Later he worked in senior classes at school. Alla finished Kiev College of Public Economy. The boys also got education. Alla got married in Zhytomyr in 1970. They had a Jewish wedding with a chuppah at home. There was Jewish food and music and guests danced Jewish dances.

My brother didn't want to go to Israel. He had three heart attacks and was very ill, but he understood that his children and grandchildren had no future in the USSR. In 1990 his family and Rachil's father moved to Israel. My brother's condition has improved significantly and his children are very happy to live there. They work. Alla has two children. They like Israel very much. Alla's older son volunteered to serve in landing troops. After his service in the army he entered a college. He is a 3rd-year student. Alexandr got married when they were in Zhytomyr. He went to Israel with his wife and daughter. They have a son that was born in Israel. He goes to school. Boris married an immigrant from the USSR. She is a nurse and has a son. Now she and Boris have another son. My brother and his wife are happy. They have loving and caring children.

We lived in our house after we returned to Zhytomyr in 1945. My parents didn't observe Jewish traditions as strictly as they used to before the war. We celebrated Pesach, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. We didn't celebrate Soviet holidays.

My father went to work at a clock repair shop. I began to look for a job. At first I got a job at a museum and then I went to work at school. I was a teacher at a primary school before I began to teach mathematics at a secondary school. There were many Jewish children at school. There was no anti-Semitism.

The struggle against cosmopolitism that began in 1948 didn't have an impact on us. My father was very upset about what was going on. He burned newspapers with articles about Jewish doctors that were accused of murder. He said that our people were vilified. About the Doctors' Plot' 21 that began in January 1953 my father said it was a lie. I believed him.

Stalin died in March 1953 and it was a tragedy for many people. It wasn't such for our family, but we tried to hide our feelings. Thanks to my father the speech of Khrushchev 22 at the Twentieth Party Congress wasn't as shocking for me as it was for many of my acquaintances. There are still people that don't believe that Stalin was guilty. I understood that Stalin was a cruel and powerful man who didn't stop doing evil. After the Twentieth Party Congress we all hoped that life in the country would change for the better, but there was anti-Semitism and a ban on religion, although the constitution guaranteed freedom of faith to every citizen. Any person could be accused of Zionism or even arrested for attending the synagogue.

Married life

I got married in 1953. My husband's mother was my mother's friend. My husband, Vladimir Galin, was born in Zhytomyr in 1929. His Jewish name was Volf. He didn't remember his father, Moisey Galin, who starved to death in 1933. Vladimir was the only child in the family. Vladimir's mother had no education. She was a seamstress at the garment factory. She was paid peanuts for her work, although she was an advanced employee. They were very poor. My mother-in-law was a strong healthy woman. She could have remarried, but she didn't want her son to be raised by a stepfather.

During the Great Patriotic War they were in evacuation in a distant village in Siberia. Vladimir went to work as a cart driver in a kolkhoz 23 at the age of twelve. After the war they returned to Zhytomyr. Vladimir finished a cinema school in Kiev, but he didn't like this profession. He went to the army and served in Uzhgorod [800 km from Kiev]. When his service term was over his officer offered him to continue on additional service. We met when Vladimir came to Zhytomyr on his first leave. When he left we corresponded and we got married when he came on the next leave. I was rather worried that I was four years older than he, but we lived in harmony. We had a civil ceremony in a registry office and in the evening we had a small wedding dinner. After the wedding I followed my husband to Uzhgorod.

Vladimir served as an ensign until he retired. His management valued him highly. When he retired he went to work at the regional military registry office. When in the army my husband joined the Party - it was mandatory.

At first we rented a very small room without windows or stove. Later my husband received a room and his mother came to live with us. Our son Michael was born in 1954. We named him after my husband's father. My mother- in-law helped me a lot and my mother came to visit us to help me. Shortly before my husband retired in the 1960s he received a two-bedroom apartment. My mother-in-law was confined to bed. She stayed in one room and the three of us shared the other one. After my husband retired we received a three- bedroom apartment, which was quite a surprise for us.

I couldn't find a job for a long time. I was told there were no vacancies at school. I was about to leave for Zhytomyr when I got a job in a kindergarten. At the end of each academic year I went to the district education agency to ask them for a job at school. The management at the kindergarten valued me. Finally I got an offer for a vacancy of a primary school teacher. I worked at this primary school until I retired.

We spoke Russian at home, but when we didn't want Michael to understand the subject of our discussion my mother-in-law and I switched to Yiddish. I had fluent Yiddish while my husband didn't know Yiddish. When my mother-in-law died I began to forget the language since I didn't practice it. Only when Hesed opened in the 1990s I got a nice opportunity to communicate in Yiddish. I enjoy speaking the language.

I cannot say that we raised our son Jewish. It was difficult at the time. My husband was a military and a member of the Party. He couldn't celebrate Jewish holidays or go to the synagogue. My mother-in-law and I celebrated Pesach at home. We didn't eat bread at Pesach. My mother-in-law made matzah or potato puddings. Those were hard years and we rarely had chicken or gefilte fish. My mother-in-law made matzah at home. Michael knew the traditions to be followed at Pesach. We celebrated Soviet holidays at home: 1st May, 7th November [October Revolution Day] 24, Soviet Army Day 25 and Victory Day. We also celebrated New Year. I always tried to cook something nice and prepare a small gift for every member of the family. We had guests in the evening. We enjoyed this celebration; it was a lot of fun.

Before my parents died we spent all vacations in Zhytomyr with them. Our son also spent his vacations with his grandparents. My father died in 1961. Shortly before he died he asked me to write to his sisters in Israel asking them to send him a tallit. A few days before his death my father received a parcel with a tallit. I don't know how it came that KGB 26 officers allowed this parcel to get delivered. They were checking all mail. They probably didn't understand what was in it. We buried my father according to the Jewish tradition in the Jewish cemetery in Zhytomyr. My mother died in 1969. We buried her according to Jewish traditions near our father's grave.

When Jews began to leave the country in the 1970s we didn't consider departure. Many of our friends left and we sincerely wished them to be happy, but we didn't dare to take this decision. Perhaps, we should have, but it's too late to change our life now.

Our son finished school and we thought where he should go to continue his studies. It was next to impossible for a Jew to enter a college in Ukraine due to strong anti-Semitism. It was also very hard to get job for Jew. My father's brother Naum advised Michael to go to Lipetsk. In Russia there was no segregation regarding nationality. I went to Lipetsk with Michael. My son entered the Machine Building Faculty at the Institute of Steel and Alloys. He passed his exams with excellent marks and became a student. After finishing this institute Michael got a job assignment at the machine building plant in Uzhgorod. He was an engineer there. During perestroika 27 the plant was closed.

Michael got married to a Jewish girl in 1980. His wife Inna, nee Rozenbloom, was born in Uzhgorod in 1958. Her mother, Tsylia Rozenbloom, is a doctor and her father, Moisey Rozenbloom, is a teacher. Inna finished the Mechanical Faculty of Optical Engineering College in Leningrad. She got a job assignment at the machine building plant where she worked as an engineer until perestroika. Now Inna works in the department of culture of the town administration. Michael and Inna have two sons. Leonid was born in 1982 and Dmitri was born in 1988. My older grandson is a 4th-year student at the Medical Faculty of Uzhgorod University. My younger grandson is at school.

When Michael lost his job he had a hard time. He couldn't provide for his family and we couldn't help it. At some point he worked for an entrepreneur. When Hesed was established in Uzhgorod in 1999 Michael was offered to become its director. Since then he has worked in Hesed. In 1996 my husband died. It was an irreplaceable loss for me. He did so much for me, so much! Even when he was dying he was thinking about me, saying, 'How are you going to live?' We buried my husband in accordance with Jewish traditions at the Jewish section of the town cemetery in Uzhgorod. Our son recited the Kaddish over his grave.

Perestroika didn't only bring trouble into our household. It also changed the attitude toward Jews in the society. State anti-Semitism mitigated. The Iron Curtain 28 separating us from the rest of the world fell. We got an opportunity to travel abroad or invite our friends to visit us. We couldn't even dream about that in the past. In 1996 I visited my brother in Jerusalem. I was afraid to travel to Israel due to my health condition, but my nephews and his sons insisted and I decided to visit him. We traveled a lot and I liked it there. I was happy to see my brother since there were only the two of us left of our big family. I admired the country so much! It's a blooming garden on stones created by beautiful and wonderful people.

Jewish life has changed a lot since the collapse of the USSR. Older people returned to their roots that they might have forgotten otherwise and young people learned many new things. Hesed does a lot for us. I like to attend concerts and lectures in Hesed. Everybody can find something interesting to do there. How wonderful are the celebrations of Jewish holidays in Hesed! Chanukkah and Purim were particularly interesting last time. At Chanukkah ten cars with huge chanukkiyahs with electric bulbs on top drove around town. There were crowds of people watching this show. The cars drove at low speed and the colorful chanukkiyahs seemed to be floating in the dark. There was an escort of traffic police clearing the way for the vehicles. At Purim there was a nice performance of Purimshpils staged by the local drama theater in the Philharmonic building that formerly housed a synagogue. Young people probably saw professional actors performing Purimshpils for the first time in their life. This was a beautiful, bright and brilliant show. Other Jewish holidays are also celebrated in a beautiful and interesting way.

Young people return to Jewish traditions. In our family the restoration of Jewish life started with my older grandson Leonid. He began to study Jewish traditions, religion and Hebrew at school. Leonid is the president of the Jewish youth club Gilel. He goes to the synagogue. Michael and my younger grandson Dmitri go to the synagogue with Leonid on Sabbath and Jewish holidays. At home they celebrate Sabbath and Jewish holidays. I join them for the celebration. My daughter-in-law lights candles and we say a prayer. I feel happy, it's as if I've returned to my own childhood.

Glossary

If not for the fatigue which could be seen in Alexandra Maksovna's face, nothing indicated that this person lived a very hard life, having experienced all states starting from happy childhood and ending with her parents' exile and life on occupied territory and in Siberia. Notwithstanding the constant unfortunate reality, Alexandra Maksovna is very responsive in conversation. Great love towards her forefathers sounded in her voice.

My family background

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family background

My memory often lets me down, but I remember my relatives. My maternal grandfather's name was Ziska Iosilev Ribush. In everyday life we called him Alexander Iosifovich [see common name] 1. I don't know when and where he was born. As a teenager he was sent to study at a cantonist 2 college. He graduated from the military cantonist college and was assigned to serve as a corps man in a regiment. Later he obtained medical education through military medical attendants' courses. There is a certificate, dated 1881, which proves that he graduated from the medical attendants' courses and was a certified regiment medical attendant. Upon finishing his military service he received a reference which stated that he was distinguished by excellent medical knowledge, showed effort in taking care of the patients and was recommended to the position of a zemsky [provincial] medical attendant. This certificate was dated 8th March 1883 and was signed by the officer of the 25th artillery brigade.

After allocation from the regiment he worked as a zemsky medical attendant. I don't know all his life's circumstances but I do know that as of 1905 grandpa lived and worked in Pskov. He was very famous in Pskov and had very extensive medical practice. He treated patients at home and also visited them. I still have a 'certificate', which proves that he was a district zemsky physician for the municipal medical station. The certificate was issued by the Pskov District Zemsky Council in 1918. My grandpa was remembered even in the 1950s, 25 years after his death. I overheard a conversation between two women in a Leningrad tram. They were scolding physicians who didn't treat patients properly and suddenly one woman told the other, 'We had a medical attendant in Pskov in the old times, his name was Ribush - and he was a real doctor, better than today's professors'.

My grandpa was a wealthy man. He owned a house in Pskov with a big yard. He also had a cart. There was a cook and another domestic worker, who helped in the household and raise the seven children. Grandpa was a very sociable person. He was much wealthier than his brothers were, thus some of his nephews often stayed with him. Grandpa had one brother named Natan, who lived in Pinsk with his family. His daughters Revekka and Dora visited Pskov very often. There were also other relatives but I don't remember them. My parents couldn't get me acquainted with the members of our family since they were subject to repression [during the so-called Great Terror] 3 and were imprisoned while I was a small girl. I know our relatives only from pictures which my mum collected when she came back from imprisonment.

Our family was very big, since there were a lot of children and many relatives came to stay. Grandpa was strict with the children. According to my mother, her brothers were very frisky and liked to banter and play tricks on people. Grandpa always took their tricks very seriously and scolded them severely. By the end of his life he started to limp and walked with a cane. I know about grandpa only from what my mother and grandma told me. He died in 1925, three years before I was born. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Pskov. A monument in the form of a sea-shell was placed on his grave. I don't know if the grave in Pskov is still there. Germans were on that territory and I doubt that the Jewish cemetery is still preserved today. I was told that grandpa's house is still there. My cousin Sarah Ribush, the daughter of my mother's brother Lazar, visited Pskov several times and told me that she had seen grandpa's house in front of Pogankin's Chambers, a stone building from the 17th century in the center of the city. However, when I visited Pskov with a bus tour in 1960, I couldn't find it.

Grandpa's first wife, my grandma, died of consumption in 1903, when my mother was born. I know almost nothing about her, not even her name. She gave birth to eight children. I know the names of six of them: Berta, born in 1880, Abram, born in the 1910s, Daniyl, born in the 1900s Lazar, born in the 1890s, Rosa, born in the 1890s and Berta, my mum. Two children died of consumption at a very early age. Six of them survived, but their lives took a very different course.

Grandpa got married for the second time in 1907. His second wife's name was Khaya Moiseyevna. She came from the Baltic countries, but I know nothing about her family. She raised all small kids and gave birth to Lyuba, her own daughter, in 1908. Much later, she finally raised me, too. I always considered her my grandma. She wasn't a blood relative of mine; she was better than that! She was very kind, very attentive and religious. After grandpa died in 1925, Khaya moved from Pskov to her mother's place in Leningrad. When my mother was arrested in 1937 she joined us in exile in Kazakhstan. She returned from exile to Leningrad and lived with her other daughter. She died in 1952.

Khaya spoke Russian with a very strong accent. Her mother tongue was Yiddish. She was religious, attended the synagogue regularly, observed holidays and knew Jewish cooking traditions. While in Leningrad grandma stopped to go to the synagogue in order not to put her daughters on the spot, since religiosity was persecuted [see struggle against religion] 4. However, when we left for Dzhankoy in Ukraine in summer, she began to attend the synagogue as soon as it became possible.

I have a picture of almost the complete family of my grandpa. The picture was taken in Pskov. On this picture are grandpa, Grandma Khaya, my mother Berta Alexandrovna and one of my mother's sisters and my grandma's daughter Lyuba. I still have her birth certificate, dated 1908 and issued by the rabbi of Pskov in 1915 to be submitted at school. There are also three of my grandpa's sons: Daniyl, Abram and Lazar. There is uncle Lazar's daughter Malvina, grandpa's first granddaughter. There is Malvina's mother, Tsilya Yakovlevna. There were two daughters besides these family members. One of them, Berta, died in the same year my mother was born. She died of tuberculosis and mum, the new-born, was given her name. The other daughter, Rosa, by the time this picture was taken, was already married and lived in Tallinn.

Grandpa's elder son Lazar died in 1924, before I was born, but I was on friendly terms with his wife Tsilya. She died a long time ago and her daughters Malvina and Sarah remain my closest relatives. When Malvina was born in 1919, the Civil War 5 was at its height and it wasn't possible to send telegrams. It was only allowed to send telegrams that informed someone about someone's arrival. So the relatives received the following telegram about her birth: 'Malvina Lazarevna arrived successfully'.

I don't know anything about Uncle Abram's destiny. As a child I heard that he converted to Christianity and was turned out of his parents' house. I was shocked when I heard that but I was too shy to ask about the details. After that he sort of became a member of the Communist Party. I never heard anything about him later.

Daniyl got married and left for Riga. He didn't have children of his own and they often took Allochka, Aunt Rosa's daughter, who lived in Tallinn, to stay with them. Daniyl perished in the concentration camp in Riga when the Germans came in 1941. I communicated closely with Aunt Lyuba, Khaya Moiseyevna's daughter. She didn't have children of her own and she loved me very much. I was also very attached to her. Lyuba wasn't religious, she didn't believe in God; moreover, she shared communist views.

My mother Berta Alexandrovna Ribush, was born in Pskov in 1903. She went to school from 1910 to 1917. It was a Russian school; I think, it was a girls' grammar school. In 1924 she moved to Leningrad to study and never returned to Pskov. She entered the Military Medical Academy in Leningrad, graduated from it and worked as an oculist up to 1937. She got acquainted with her future husband in 1925 in the Military Medical Academy. They were schoolmates. They had a common-law marriage, without any religious ceremonies and official registration. This was actually common in the young Soviet intellectual circles of the time. After my grandpa died my grandma moved to live with them. I don't remember my mother telling me about her childhood. I didn't live with her for a long time together, especially as a child; besides, I never asked her to tell me about her life.

My father, Maks Solomonovich Skoblo, came from Vitebsk, a provincal town in Belarus. His family lived there. He finished the Belarus national school in Vitebsk where he studied for 10 years, from 1906 to 1916. I know nothing about my paternal great-grandfather, except that he had three sons: Sander, affectionate for Alexander, Solomon, my grandfather, and a younger son, whose name I don't remember.

My grandpa Solomon owned a small store and sold ironmongery. He was a respected man at the local synagogue. He had a very big family. I cannot imagine how he supported the whole family. They weren't very well-to-do, I would say they lived quite modestly. My grandpa probably made some money on the side. He was a very pious man and always fulfilled various public tasks he received at the synagogue. For example, he collected notes that visitors wrote to the rabbi and read them to him after the prayer when everybody had left. He also collected money from idaka [a box for donations]. He had a place of his own there. In 1921 his son Abram took him away to England. Grandpa and Abram had problems with the Bolshevist power: they were against the Bolsheviks so they had to escape abroad to avoid a possible massacre.

Abram was engaged in the fur business in London. He also got married there. He and his wife were middle class, neither poor, nor rich. Abram's son, Max, became a physician and lived independently. We didn't keep in touch in the Soviet times, as it wasn't permitted [it was dangerous to keep in touch with relatives abroad] 6. Now none of his family is alive any more.

Grandma and grandpa approached their old age separately. Grandma didn't leave for England; she stayed with her children. Grandpa died in England after the war. His wife's name was Peisya Borisovna Skoblo, nee Sorkina. She was born in the 1870s. She took care of the house. She wasn't very religious, but very fussy; she was always busy with the store, while Solomon took his place at the synagogue. Peisya died of cancer in 1943, in Zlatoust, in the Urals, where she was in evacuation.

My grandparents had many children, but I only know the names of my father, Aunt Mira and my uncles Isaac and Abram. Their older daughter Rakhil died at a very young age. My father was offered a position at the department of neurosurgery at the Military Medical Academy after graduation. He got the degree of a professor very quickly and later became head of the Institute of Neurosurgery. Our family was absolutely non-religious. We didn't think about religion in those times. Although my father was a very educated man, knew Yiddish and Hebrew, and had his bar mitzvah as a child, he didn't pray or celebrate Jewish holidays as an adult during the Soviet times. He became an atheist and a communist.

We were rather well provided for. My father got a four-bedroom apartment in a big new building on 61, Lesnoy Prospect [The Specialists' House] in Leningrad. Our windows faced the prospect and the entrance was from the yard. I lived with my parents and I remember the apartment very well. It was a nice, modern apartment with central heating, a bathroom, and a telephone. It was equipped with antique furniture that my mother bought in commission stores. When my father was arrested in 1937, the furniture was confiscated.

However, my parents weren't rich. My father returned the bigger part of his income to the pay fund. As a communist he didn't have the right to earn more than the party-max [Party payment maximum limit], which was much less than his salary. For one, if the salary was 1,000 rubles and the party-max was 700 rubles, he returned 300 rubles in the form of a party fee. My father submitted an application to join the Party at the Leningrad Military Academy, but he had already been involved in some party activities in Vitebsk before he entered the academy. If he hadn't been a party member, it would have been impossible for him to take on the position of head of the Neurosurgery Institute. All top managers in any organization were trustworthy people and loyal to the Party. At those times we were absolutely sure that communists, members of the Communist Party, were worthy people, who were entrusted by the Party to fill such important posts.

Growing up

My parents went to work and my grandma maintained the household. Certainly she never let anyone disturb her solemn performance in the kitchen. There were two kids: myself and my brother Volodya, who was five years younger than me. I was born in 1928. We had a nanny. When I was small I had a nanny called Tanya. Later, when I grew up, she got married but continued to visit me from time to time. When my brother was born, we took another nanny, Lyuba. Both nannies were Russian.

My brother was born on 7th November 1933, October Revolution Day 7. He was named after V.I. Lenin, since our parents were Bolsheviks. My father was a member of the Communist Party, and he was a very sincere and convinced communist. My mother wasn't a party member, but she adhered to the same views. All official newspapers and other party publications were read in our family.

We only spoke Russian at home. My mother understood Yiddish, but she couldn't speak it. My father knew both Yiddish and Hebrew, but never used them in his day-to-day life. Besides, he had an excellent command of English and French. We didn't celebrate traditional Jewish holidays in the family. Well, maybe my grandma did, but not publicly. She observed everything; she found matzah somewhere, probably at the synagogue. It wasn't easy to procure matzah in those times. Since then I've always tried to buy matzah for Pesach, though we aren't really religious. However, what we always had in our family were Jewish savory dishes.

My grandma was good at cooking. I remember meals like teyglakh and tsimes. Teyglakh was flour balls mixed with sugar, walnut, almond and honey, roasted in oil. I remember these names from my childhood, though these dishes weren't 'officially' declared as Jewish food. My grandma cooked kosher food, but I didn't know it at the time. When I grew up I understood why grandma didn't mix dairy and meat products and understood that it was the kashrut requirement. But as I child I wasn't aware of that.

On days off my dad always took me somewhere. We tried to 'escape' so that my brother wouldn't be foisted off on us. He was small and it was no fun for my dad to spend time with him. Dad took me everywhere: to the zoo, to children's shows at the movie theater. Besides, I studied in a ballet group. When I was seven or eight years old, we left for Dzhankoy in summer and stayed with my dad's brother Isaac Solomonovich. I don't remember clearly, but it seems to me that Isaac was an atheist, he had a biological education. Dzhankoy is a town in the Crimea, now in Ukraine. He took three families with him and we rented a house together. Grandma Khaya could attend the synagogue freely to pray there.

In 1937 dad was arrested on the basis of slanderous denunciation. Mother was arrested right after him as the wife of an 'enemy of the people' 8. There existed this term: members of the parricides' families. They were accused of knowing, but not informing the authorities about the 'criminal design'. My mother stayed in prison for five years at Yaya station, as the wife of a repressed one; it was a wide spread phenomenon. After the camp she was forced to work as a physician for the Ministry of Internal Affairs [MIA]. After the arrest and the verdict my father stayed in prison for nine years; at first in a camp in Magadan, where he worked as a stoker in a bath- house. My father was a professor, a neurosurgeon, he knew several languages and got this job 'unofficially'. Those who fulfilled the required amount of work at the timber processing sites, basically didn't survive.

Once my father was absorbed in a book, a small and pathetic-looking English book. He read it in the light of the stove fire. He didn't hear the inspectors approach. When the supervisors arrived, he was punished immediately. First they threw him into the punishment-cell. Then they transferred him to the position of a grave-digger. He would have died for sure, if not for the new camp management. A new head was appointed, who believed that people should be evaluated properly or, at least, made reasonable use of. There were no good physicians in Magadan, so imprisoned doctors were assigned to work at the municipal hospital. They were taken to work under an escort.

Dad was a good doctor. He was later appointed head of the neural department of the municipal hospital. He was a prisoner, but treated all members of the camp and municipal management. At first we knew nothing about my father's destiny, but later my mother managed to find him and they kept in touch. When he returned after the war he told us in detail about his life in the camp. In 1946 my dad was released. He came to Tomsk and worked there for two years. He was arrested for the second time and exiled to the small station of Reshety near Kansk in Eastern Siberia. He was deprived of all rights and had to visit the MIA department every month for registration. He couldn't leave the place either. He lived and worked relatively freely and advised people. However, this routinely medical work at a tiny station didn't comply at all with the level and possibilities of a professor of medicine. In 1948, in the course of the second tide of Stalin's repressions, those who had been previously arrested, served their time in a camp and had been released, were imprisoned again based on new accusations. A lot of biologists were imprisoned in Tomsk at that time.

During the war

After my parents were arrested in 1937, my brother, my grandma and I were exiled from Leningrad. Grandma Khaya didn't let me and my brother be taken to a children's home, so we were banished. Nanny Lyuba didn't forsake us and joined us. We lived in Kazakhstan in a very small village called Dzharkul. We led a hard life. Grandma took a sewing-machine with her and sewed dresses for local citizens. She was paid in kind for this work, not money. There was never enough money. Uncle Isaac, my father's brother, as well as Aunt Lyuba, my mother's sister, sent us some money from time to time. This was how we survived in exile. Uncle Isaac never stopped soliciting for us. I still have some of the requests, which he submitted in order to get permission for us to return.

Grandma remained in exile and nanny brought me and my brother to Leningrad. The trip to Leningrad took place in fall 1937 because grandma was old and, being in exile, she wasn't able to take care of two children. Our father was imprisoned as well as our mother. So it was decided to distribute us among relatives, who were able to give us shelter. I lived with Uncle Isaac's family and went to school for some time. I only remember that time very vaguely; the school was a common Russian one. I had no friends, I was afraid to be chums with anyone. If asked, I wasn't allowed to tell anyone that my parents were 'enemies of the people' and in a camp. My brother Volodya was accepted by my mother's relative Grigory Moiseyevich Klouberman. I stayed in Leningrad and my brother was taken away to the town of Velikiye Luki. Grandma Khaya came back from exile to Leningrad in 1939 and stayed with her daughter Lyuba, who lived on the Petrograd Side.

In 1941 the war began [see Great Patriotic War] 9. Leningrad was besieged in September by the Germans [see Blockade of Leningrad] 10. The Klouberman family, with whom my brother lived, left Velikiye Luki for Zlatoust in the Urals. Grandma and Aunt Lyuba left for the same place. No one chose his place of evacuation. People simply went where the train took them. In 1942, during the blockade, Isaac Solomonovich's family was taken away into evacuation. There were six of us: Uncle Isaac, his wife Vera, their children Lyonya and Inna, Vera's mother and myself.

Aunt Vera worked at the 1st Medical Institute, which was evacuated to Kislovodsk. Unexpectedly we got into German occupation there. All adults were executed. The three of us, children, were saved by a Russian woman called Varvara Alekseyevna Tsvelenyova. I was 13 years old at the time. We lived in various apartments. Our landlady was a nice woman, but her husband and son were anti-Semites. They owned a house. Varvara Alekseyevna worked with Vera Isaacovna, the wife of dad's brother Isaac. She was evacuated from Leningrad along with the 1st Medical Institute. They were evacuated in the same train, in a heated goods' carriage. That's where they became friends. They hadn't known each other before. Varvara was very young; she was 27 years old and she wasn't married. Her brother was at the front. Varvara Alekseyevna came to Kislovodsk, which was occupied by the Germans, because of her old mother, who was in hospital. That's why she couldn't leave Kislovodsk on foot when the Germans approached the town. She was very young and didn't want to abandon her mother. When the Jews were gathered in Kislovodsk for execution, she took us to stay with her.

The Germans arrived in Kislovodsk on 11th August 1942. The first order issued by them was related to Jews: Jews were told to wear yellow stars. The second order said that all food products which had been stolen from the warehouses, were to be returned. At the beginning of September all Jews were ordered to gather at an appointed place at the railroad station. People were allowed to carry 20 kilograms of belongings and food with them. It was announced that everybody would be taken to unsettled areas in Ukraine. When the Germans announced this order we understood that we wouldn't be able to stay with our landlords. Aunt Varvara came and began to persuade Uncle Isaac and Aunt Vera to leave the children with her. They didn't want to do it, since they were really afraid for Varvara, as she could have been executed for that. However, she managed to persuade them.

The adults certainly suspected where they were really going to be taken. I, just a child back then, thought that they would be taken to the ghetto. Although we were just children we heard what the adults talked about and understood perfectly a lot of the things that were happening around us. We grew up at an early age. Of course it was impossible that they would be brought to some unsettled areas in Ukraine. When it was time to take our luggage and go to the appointed place, Inna, Leonid and myself went to Aunt Varvara's instead. All Jews were loaded onto the train, brought to Mineralny Vody and executed there. At first there were only rumors about it, but later on we found out that it was true. Later a monument was erected at that spot.

Employees of the 1st Medical Institute, who remained in Kislovodsk, had no means to live on. There was this professor Schaag, he was a German and he wasn't anti-Semitic. He obtained permission from the occupation officials to open a Medical Institute in Kislovodsk. A lot of young people were eager to attend paid studies. This was during the occupation. One of the buildings of the health center was meant for studies. There was a room in the building where Varvara hid us. Aunt Varvara lived in the laboratory, in which she worked. The laboratory was located in a big building. There was also one of these organizers of the NEMVAKHO Institute, who came from Leningrad, and worked with Schaag. He gave us this room for hiding. Varvara, her mother and the three of us lived in this room in the Medical Institute. We sold everything we had in order to buy food. It was my obligation to sell: I became a seller at the market place at the age of twelve. Later Aunt Varvara started to work at the Medical Institute and got a small salary. So there was a possibility to survive, however, we had to steal the firewood: we stole from the Germans and sawed dry trees, since there was something like a park near the health center.

I didn't look like a Jew when I was a little girl, so it wasn't difficult for me to go anywhere. Lyonya and Inna did look like Jews: their noses were long and hooked, their eyes were large, their skin was pale-blue and their hair was black and curly. Their faces and skull were of recognizable Jewish type. They were very small, so they stayed indoors all the time. Only late at night they could go for a walk in the nearest park. Besides, our main entertainment was to play upstairs in the mezzanine of 'our' one-and-a-half- storied health center. The mezzanine was made of colored glass and we spent almost all our time there. Of course, we understood the 'rules' perfectly. Once Inna went outside, drew squares on the ground and played hopscotch. A woman came up to her and asked her name. Inna told her as I had taught her to answer. So it turned out all right. After that she had no more conversations with anyone there.

We stayed at the health center until 11th January 1943. The Germans left Kislovodsk without any combat, the same way as they had occupied it. Two days after their retreat our [Soviet] army arrived and we started to look for a possibility to correspond with our mum. Mum should have already been freed from the camp by that time. Our aunt, my mother's cousin Grigory Moiseyevich Klouberman's wife, with whom my brother Volodya lived, received the first letter. They lived in Velikiye Luki first, later got evacuated to the Urals and lived in Chelyabinsk region. The town was named Tankograd during the war. She didn't know my mum's address at that time, because my mum had just been released from prison and was trying to get a job at the children's penal colony. The latter wrote to my mum and she found us.

Varvara Alekseyevna was a very kind woman; she tried to entertain and teach us. We didn't have any books, there were no libraries, so she narrated books to us, which she had read in her childhood. Kipling's Kim made an unforgettable impression on me back then. [Editor's note: Kipling, Rudyard (1865-1936): English short-story writer, poet and novelist.] I read it later, as an adult, and was quite disappointed. Varvara also narrated ancient Greek myths and different movies. She was a very educated woman. After we were released she came to Tomsk, too. There was an affiliate of the Leningrad Medical Institute. Those who got evacuated 'in a proper way', were taken to Tomsk, not to Kislovodsk. Aunt Varvara was offered a job there and she decided to stay. She was also offered a room. She worked there and defended her thesis later. In the last years of her life she lived in Leningrad and defended her thesis for a Doctor's degree. Before her retirement she left for the Far East, where she was offered another job. She lived in Vladivostok for six months. She never got married, but she had a son, who is still alive.

After the war

We knew everything about my father and received letters from him. We knew nothing about my mum for a long time, since she was in prison and was deprived of the right to correspond. Dad managed to send her a message about us by prisoners' mail. He told her that my brother and I were alive and lived with our relatives. After Kislovodsk was freed in January 1943 we and Varvara Alekseyevna wrote to all the addresses where our relatives had ever lived. This kind of chain method worked. My mother was told that we were alive, that the children were alive and that the adults had all perished. My mother worked as an oculist at the children's penal colony # 2 near Tomsk.

There were a lot of colonies and places of detention in that region. When colony inmates under age were released, they were sent home under an escort. There was this boy who was sent home to Kislovodsk. His convoy also took the three of us, children, Varvara Alekseyevna, her mother and another kid from a Cossack 11 village, not far from Kislovodsk, along with him. He brought us to the colony near Kislovodsk. That's how I met my mum for the first time after ten years of separation. Me, Leonid and Inna came to Tomsk. I remember how we first traveled by train, then on board a ship to the colony where my mum lived. When we met, we all cried: mum cried, I cried, everybody was so glad. My mother had changed a lot, she had grown old and all her hair was gray. I also cried because I realized that I hadn't seen my mother for ten years and I hadn't seen how she lived all that time without me. However, I always knew and believed that mum would be back and that she thought about me and my brother while she was gone.

My mother and father kept in touch from the moment my mum was released and appointed to work at the children's settlement. We came to Tomsk in 1943 and in 1946 my dad arrived. Thus we all met again. Grandma Khaya returned to Leningrad and lived with her daughter Lyuba. I changed schools of course because of the exile, moving and other military events. After I finished the 8th grade at the colony school, I had to go to Tomsk, because there was no possibility to receive higher education in the colony. I accomplished my education at school # 12 12 in Tomsk. I had to pass a lot of exams without attending studies. I finished the 4th, the 6th and the 8th grade. Teachers were always very friendly to me because studying came easily to me. I managed to do everything. My favorite subjects at school were physics and mathematics.

Best of all I remember our teacher of German. He was a very interesting person. His Russian name was Mikhail Ilyich. He was a Jew from Moldova. He had studied in France, had graduated from the Sorbonne [in France] and had come back to Moldova right before the war. He was immediately banished to Siberia. He came to Tomsk, not knowing the Russian language. We taught him Russian and he taught us German. There was the following incident: he read a book to us and couldn't translate something. We tried to explain to him the difference between a sheep and a harrow. He taught Latin and French at the Medical Institute and German in our school and in another school. Mikhail Ilyich devoted so much time and efforts to us! He arranged clubs, staged performances and so on. Teaching was separate at that time, so boys from the boys' school took part in performances.

Our teacher of history was also an interesting person, his name was Lechter and he was a Jew, too. One could read in his face that he was a Jew, besides, he couldn't pronounce the 'r' properly. He was an old Red Army man. He was all covered with scars, had a wooden leg, and a scar across his face. His understanding of history didn't comply with the views of Mikhail Ilyich, who had graduated from the faculty of history at the Sorbonne. We always eavesdropped on their disputes. They certainly chased us away, but we tried to grasp the core of their disputes pressing our ears to the door. Sometimes we succeeded. We listened to their mutual attacks with great interest. So, when perestroika 13 started I easily freed myself from propaganda phrases and official dogmas. We were very lucky to have such teachers.

I finished school in Tomsk in 1946. After school I entered Tomsk University, the faculty of physics. I had no problems with entering; problems only came later, in 1948. I wasn't expelled from university, but I didn't have the right to choose the department where I wanted to study. I studied at the physics/mathematics faculty, but the time came to choose a more narrow profession. I was offered only two specialties: at the solid- state physics subfaculty and at the subfaculty of electricity. They weren't deemed secret, military or interesting. All the rest - electromagnetic oscillations, optics - were prohibited for me. I chose solid-state physics. Now solid-state physics is the most secret field. At that time we dealt with the easiest issues.

At the end of the 1940s, beginning of the 1950s anti-Semitism increased a lot in the USSR. It revealed itself in official propaganda, staff policy, public opinion and in everyday life [see campaign against 'cosmopolitans'] 14. I didn't feel any anti-Semitism while in Siberia. I felt oppression because my father was declared an enemy of the people. I wasn't allowed to choose the profession I was interested in. I was accepted to the faculty where they didn't have enough students. I didn't get what I chose, but something I was allowed or assigned to. For instance: all my co-students at university went to do practical work at the Kuznetsk metallurgical combine. I wasn't allowed to go since the enterprise belonged to the 1st category of secrecy [see access to state secret] 15. So I had to do my practical work at a small mechanical plant in Tomsk.

When I graduated from university in 1951 I was deprived of the right to continue my post-graduate studies, as I was the daughter of an enemy of the people. The fact that I was a Jewess, my nationality, didn't mean anything: children of enemies of the people, who were Russian by nationality weren't accepted either, and literally weren't allowed to live a normal life. The 'enemy of the people' was not simply a national problem, but a social and a political one. I was assigned to work in a laboratory of the V.V. Kuibyshev heavy engineering plant in Irkutsk. There was no possibility to choose either. In general there was a wide choice, but I was only allowed to go to either Krasnoyarsk or Irkutsk. So I worked there up until 1958. It was a laboratory plant. I worked there as a senior engineer in the laboratory of the physical metallurgy. My responsibility was to determine solidity and durability. If something got broken because of some hidden flaw, I was supposed to detect the flaw.

I didn't feel humiliated for being a Jew. Four fifth of my friends were Russians. I still have friends from my student's years. Volodya Bordukhov came from the family of servicemen. He was born at Bolotnaya station in Siberia. Only military units were located there. He came to Tomsk to study and we met there. 30 years have passed since the moment he told me, 'You know, I always knew that it's bad to be a Jew, though I never knew any Jews. And here I am at the institute where I find a lot of great guys and girls, and they are Jews.' It was like a bomb exploding for him. Graduates from our university meet every five years. Our first gathering was arranged here, in Leningrad in 1966. It was the 15th anniversary of our graduation. After that we met regularly in Moscow and in Novosibirsk. Starting from the 25th anniversary we met every five years in Tomsk. I went there this year, too, and a lot of my university mates came. It's very expensive to go there. I am a blockade survivor and have the right to travel free of charge, so it would have been a sin not to go. It's very nice in Siberia in winter. I feel much better there than in Leningrad.

My husband is Russian; his name is Vasiliy Vladimirovich Kytmanov. He was born in Irkutsk in 1927. He speaks Russian, he is Russian by passport, though he comes from Ufa, on his mother's side. He also had Tatars as relatives on his father's side. His mother's last name was pure Russian: Yachkova. Her first name was Varvara Vladimirovna. His father's name was Kytmanov Vladimir Stepanovich. He died when my husband was 14 years old. His mother died before, when he was small. He was considered an orphan. His father got married for a second time and his wife didn't acknowledge his children; my husband has a younger brother, Gennadiy. That's why he lived with various aunts from his mother's side; they raised him jointly.

Vasiliy studied in an industrial school in Irkutsk and stayed there to work as a metal turner. He started to study there in 1942 after his father died. In 1955 he got transferred to the V.V. Kuibyshev heavy engineering plant, where I worked. We both went in for sports: I was fond of track and field athletics, and my husband liked rowing. There were competitions held in the city under the title 'Circle around the city', in which representatives of various kinds of sports took part. We got acquainted during one of those sports events and later we figured out that we worked at one and the same plant. We were in one sports team. There was this woman, Valentina Victorovna, who arranged all these competitions. She was called 'sports business organizer'. She was managing the sports department at the plant and we all hung out there often and got acquainted there. It also turned out that Valentina Victorovna was born on 9th December, just like me, as well as my husband, though he was born a year earlier than me. So we decided to celebrate our birthdays jointly with our sports team. We were placed at one table as the 'main characters' of the date. Since that time we've never parted.

My husband studied at a heavy engineering school before he started to work at the industrial school. Besides working at the plant he also studied at the mechanical department of the Agricultural Institute. He became a mechanical engineer after graduating from the institute in 1958. Our daughter Irina was born in 1958.

My husband's relatives were working class people. None of his brothers or sisters was subject to repressions. All his numerous uncles and aunties treated me like their own daughter. My husband and his relatives are real Russian people, though they don't attend the Russian Orthodox Church at all, so there were never any disagreements when it came to faith.

I didn't feel any anti-Semitism until I returned to Leningrad in 1958. When I arrived I started to work at the Arsenal plant. It's a secret artillery plant. Later the plant started to produce satellites. The attitude there was decent enough. However, when I decided to take a job at the Scientific and Research Institute, I was rejected as a Jew. I don't look like a Jew by appearance, but Jewish is stated as my nationality in my passport. Everything went well at the beginning, we even agreed upon the payroll. When I brought my passport to the manager, he looked at it and said: 'You know, this position is already taken'. I stayed at the plant and worked there until I retired in 1976. I retired very early. I had the right to retire at the age of 45, but did so when I was 50 something I think, I was 52 at that time. [Editor's note: Starting from the 1960s retirement age in the USSR was established 60 years for men and 55 years for women. Military men, also those who worked at hazardous production enterprises and people who worked in the utmost North retired at the age of 45.]

Later I returned a few times to the plant, when it had difficult, 'hot' times. As I said before, I don't really look like a typical Jew, so I never faced any hostility in everyday life. I was mostly surrounded by decent people. Though sometimes there were anti-Semitic hints. For instance, our household manager, when I asked for some materials for the laboratory, once told me, 'You are pestering me with requests like a Jewish woman'. And I replied, 'Why like? I am one.' She was close to dropping on her knees and began to beg for forgiveness.

In general I was always a very sociable person and I had a lot of Russian friends. We celebrated Soviet holidays together. My favorite holiday was New Year's, but not the Jewish New Year, I mean the one common to all mankind. I didn't celebrate Jewish holidays, I even forgot about them. I don't know where I got time and strength: Saturdays were working days, there was only one day off, on Sunday. And going to work by public transport required a lot of time. Our family never owned a car; that was a rarity and luxury we couldn't afford. I never had any spare time, as I was always a very active public person, a member of the YCL [Young Communist League] and a sportswoman. Actually I went to extremes. I went in for track and field athletics and free calisthenics simultaneously. A lot of young people were fond of sports in those years. Being young I was a true YCL member. I believed everything we were told about communism, the Soviet power, etc. I believed that God didn't exist and thought that only illiterate old people believed in Him.

First doubts came to my mind when I was a student at the institute. We studied Clause IV of the 'Short Historical Course of the All-Union Communist Party (b)'. The clause was related to the Marxism-Leninism philosophy. Our teacher very passionately told us that no one had been able to write such a Clause, so comrade Stalin had written it himself. He appeared to be the only decent man of all, concealed his authorship, never told anyone about it because he was very modest. Immediately a question arose for me. What kind of modest person could he be if he called himself the father of genius, etc. So these were the doubts I had. I at once recalled my school teachers' disputes, which we had overheard in our childhood. However, those doubts were quite vague, since I was absolutely Soviet. I believed that dad had been slandered and it had nothing to do with Stalin. The policy of the Party was quite definite but I knew that dad hadn't been able to act against the Party and I thought that he had been slandered. That was what I thought at that time, though later on I reached other conclusions.

When Stalin died in 1953 we were very young. I wasn't married at that time yet, lived in the dormitory and worked at the plant in Irkutsk. The country was in deep mourning, people were crying. I didn't cry. I hoped that since he had died, my parents would have an easier life. However, being an active YCL member, I stood guard of honor at the Stalin monument on the territory of the plant yard. Life was really so double-sided! We were one thing outwardly, but deep inside something different already started to ripen.

In 1948 my father was imprisoned and we lost touch with him; there was no information about him. In 1949 a group of physicians was sent from Tomsk to have a close look at prisons in Novosibirsk. One of the doctors recognized my dad, as she had met him before. He was in the prison hospital. She wasn't able to tell my mother since they weren't acquainted; she only knew my dad. She sent this information to me through her son, with whom I had gone in for sports in Tomsk. She said that my mother immediately had to go to a certain hospital in Novosibirsk, where my dad was staying at the time. My mum went there and had to visit all the managers until she finally obtained permission for my father to get smooth prison treatment. He was allowed to leave with my mum and was exiled to the town of Kansk.

Later my mother took my brother Volodya away from Tomsk. I studied in Irkutsk at the time. They lived together in Kansk up to 1951: my father, mother and Volodya. I kept in touch with them. My mother was free and my father had to go to the militia station to register in order to prove that he hadn't left or escaped. Volodya left to study at Irkutsk Polytechnic Institute in 1951.

After Stalin had died in 1953, my parents returned to Leningrad. They lived with my father's sister Mira. Later, in 1955, with the help of the district party committee they obtained an apartment. It was at a time when those who returned from imprisonment acquired apartments. My father was very sick and wasn't able to work properly, to his full capacity that is, so he worked as a consultant-neuropathologist at the Psychiatric Hospital #2. In 1958 me, my husband and our little daughter moved to Leningrad and lived with my parents in their two-bedroom apartment, so there were five of us: my dad, my mum, me, my husband and our daughter. My brother Volodya left for Ulan- Ude to work at that time. My husband transferred from the Irkutsk plant to the Leningrad plant, so he didn't have to look for a job. One of the plants was looking for exactly the specialist my husband was. My parents lived in Leningrad in their own apartment and I obtained an apartment from the plant I was working at. I lived there with my husband and our daughter. After the war my mother worked as an oculist at a clinic. She retired in 1963. My father retired in 1959. He died in 1963. We buried him in the Jewish cemetery in Leningrad. My mum died in 1971 and her grave is near my dad's.

The Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973 didn't really have any influence on me [see Six-Day War 16 and Yom Kippur War 17]. I simply didn't understand the core of the conflicts and the strife. I didn't know what kind of people these Arabs were. I didn't really care about it either. Later on I figured out a lot for myself. Last year my daughter visited Israel. She came back delighted, told me about the Wailing Wall, about the sanctuaries of our nation. She told me a lot and I began to understand what kind of country Israel, our historical motherland, was.

My world view changed bit by bit. By the time perestroika started I was almost completely disappointed in everything we had been taught, in every single dogma that had been imposed on us. When the democratic changes began in this country with Gorbachev 18, I was ready to accept the changes and stopped believing in communism being our bright future. After the country fell apart we at first trusted Gaidar's government reforms and believed that he would be able to do something. Later all those political games began to bore us. I ceased paying attention to them. I simply live today, the moment. I see my friends and relatives though our relations develop in different ways.

My husband and I were no friends with my younger brother Volodya. He was five years younger than me. We grew up separately. Volodya was three years old when my mum was arrested. He stayed with us in Kazakhstan. He finished ten years of school in Kansk and entered the Irkutsk Polytechnical Institute, subfaculty of geology. That was in 1951. I graduated from the institute at the time he entered it. However, after the 2nd year of his studies when our parents returned to Leningrad he moved in with them and continued to study at the Leningrad State University, at the faculty of geology, from 1952 to 1956. He was accepted to the previous year of study. After his graduation he stayed in Leningrad and started to work but he felt bored with it. In a year he got an assignment and left for Ulan-Ude and worked there until he retired. He defended a Ph.D. thesis there and became a candidate of geological science. After he retired he moved to Irkutsk. He was married and had a son, Sasha, born in 1958. Volodya's wife, Ninel Abramovna Lyanina is a half-Jew; her mother was Russian. She wasn't very religious. She got adapted to his temper. At first they lived in Ulan-Ude and then they moved to Irkutsk. They had a big apartment there. Volodya and Ninel lived in harmony until he died of a heart attack in 1999 in Irkutsk.

I always loved and still love my cousins, Lyonya and Inna, Uncle Isaac's children. We lived together before the war and were together on the occupied territory in Kislovodsk. I also keep contact with my cousins on my mother's side, Lazar and Tsilya's daughters. Sarah, who was born in 1925, lives in Leningrad. We meet often, though she cannot walk a lot and mostly stays at home. Her older sister Malvina, born in 1919, went to Wroclaw in Poland after her husband died. Her daughter Zhenya married a Pole in the 1950s and left for Poland with him. Malvina stayed in Leningrad. Her husband died last year and her daughter took her away. Malvina didn't want to leave, but their house is in the center of the city, near the Spartak movie theater, and some rich man purchased all apartments in this house. So she was forced to sell her apartment and leave. It isn't easy for her to live there, as she doesn't know Polish, and thus she cannot go anywhere alone. We talk on the phone, but not often because it's too expensive.

I also have another cousin, Maya Isaacovna Lanina Shifrina, who lives in America. She is the daughter of Mira's father's sister. She left twenty years ago. We are not great friends. She never invited me and I don't want to go for a visit.

I put all my hopes in my daughter Irina. We moved in with my husband in Leningrad in 1958. She grew up here, finished school and graduated from the Institute of Culture. She worked at the Academy of Arts and at the Institute of Culture. Now she works as head of library for the Scientific and Research Institute of the History of Art, located on Isaaciyevsky Square. She has a very interesting job, though her salary is very low. She was offered a job with a payroll of 300 USD, but she preferred to stay with her 700 rubles [20 USD]. She could afford to do so since she doesn't have a family of her own and lives with her mum and dad. Irina isn't married since she hasn't met a decent man. In 1995 she studied for five months in America, at the University of Champain [in Illinois]. She won the Soros 19 Fund grant for studying the newest librarian methods. Unfortunately, only a few of these novelties can be applied in our conditions. Everything new requires a lot of money and the institute doesn't even have funds to buy new books.

My daughter took part in many conferences: in Lithuania and in the Crimea. Last year she visited Israel and came back very delighted. She liked everything very much. Besides, she has a friend, who lives in Israel. They worked together. She came to visit him after the conference and he showed her many towns. You know, she is more Jewish than I am. She attends the synagogue and celebrates all Jewish holidays. She has a lot of friends, both Russian and Jewish. I'm very glad about her success.

Certainly at some times life was very difficult when it came to our financial situation. My pension is very small and we live poorly. It's good that the Jewish community provides help. As a member of the prisoner's society I receive parcels on a regular basis: every month. There is also other help: I wear glasses which I can buy at a very low price; I go to the theater and I went on a trip to Kronstadt. This is all thanks to the community. We also have meetings with the prisoners' society. We get together and stay in contact. We listen to lectures about Jewish traditions and read about the history and holiday customs in books, which are part of the holiday parcels. I would like to take a more active part in the life and work of this society, but haven't succeeded so far because I'm not used to active social and religious life. There always appears something more important for me in this life. Usually I spend my evenings with my husband.

I began to reflect on genuine values and the subject of eternity when I grew older. I began to understand that I was born a Jew and that there is a certain sense to it. I'm not really attracted by the religion but by the Jewish traditions and ceremonies, as well as everything else connected with the life of the Jews. This is ours, this is real, and all we were taught is just a husk. I'm trying to celebrate Jewish holidays. I'm trying to cook meals which are described in Jewish cooking books. I don't always succeed, but at least I try. It's important for me because my conscience tells me that I have to think about my soul and about the memories I will leave behind after I die.

Glossary:

Agi Sofferova
Znojmo
Czech Republic
Interviewer: Zuzana Strouhova
Date of interview: December 2005 - February 2006

Mrs. Agi Sofferova, née Kahan, is from Subcarpathian Ruthenia 1. She was born in Mukachevo in 1923, as the youngest of eight children. Mrs. Agi Sofferova married Josef Soffer, whose first wife and son did not survive the war. They then had two daughters, Ruzena and Vera. Mrs. Agi worked in a nursery school, and her younger daughter Vera, who until the revolution 2 worked as the principal of a nursery school in Znojmo, followed her in this occupation. After the revolution she started a business. Her older daughter Ruzena worked as a nurse her whole life, and after the revolution she commuted to work in Austria. Mrs. Agi currently lives in a house in Znojmo with her daughter Ruzena. She has five grandchildren and three great- grandchildren, and is in constant contact with the families of her siblings. For its part, the Soffer family has reunions where relatives from various corners of the world get together.

Family background">Family background

In light of the fact that I'm the youngest of eight children, and my father, Bence Kahan, was around 50 when I was born, I don't know much about his parents nor about the parents of my mother, Miriam. It's been so long, I don't remember them. At that time most of them weren't alive any more, and I don't even actually know when they died. We don't have any documents; everything was lost during the war. All I have left is my birth certificate.

My grandfather's surname must have been Kahan, because that was my father's name, but I don't know his first name. My father was from Máramoros Sziget [the Hungarian name for what is today the Romanian town of Signet Marmatiei] in Subcarpathian Ruthenia, and his parents most likely lived there their whole lives. My grandmother's name was Hana, I think. But I don't know anything else about them or their siblings, whether they had any, I don't know. And their education? What kind of an education could they have had back then? Just count how many years it's been, at least 150. Grandpa maybe had only Jewish schooling, cheder, as it's called. Their mother tongue was Yiddish.

My mother's parents were from Mukachevo, they were both born there and always lived there. Their mother tongue was Hungarian and back then people also spoke Yiddish in those parts. I don't remember Grandpa at all; I think that he was no longer alive when I was born. He was named Berger, I don't know his first name, nor anything about his education or work. He was probably a merchant, or had some sort of trade. I can't tell you anything about that.

I do remember my maternal grandmother. She died in 1933, I was ten, that's easy to calculate. Her maiden name was Hochman. The family had a bakery, they baked bread, but I don't know whether it belonged to her parents or her brother. I don't remember her first name, it's so terribly long ago now, 60 years. You really forget all sorts of things in that time. I should have made a family tree when I was younger, now I could use it, now it's lacking. Neither am I certain how many siblings Grandma had. She probably had a basic education, after all, what sort of education could people in Subcarpathian Ruthenia have had back then? And women in general didn't have much of an education.

All my grandparents definitely lived in a religious manner; there people observed everything. People attended synagogue, observed the Sabbath, observed holidays, everything. I'm sure they were no exception.

My father was named Bence, which is a Hungarian name, in Hebrew it's ben Zion, the Son of Zion. He was born in Máramoros Sziget. Today he'd be around 130 years old. When I was born, my mother was already over 40, and my father must have been around 50, so he was born around the year 1873. While he was still in Máramoros Sziget, he attended elementary school, back then it was a poor region, and they couldn't afford an education. Neither time-wise nor money-wise. His mother tongue was perhaps Yiddish, but he also spoke Hungarian, Hungarian was spoken in those parts. Later he left Máramoros Sziget for Mukachevo, and there he married my mother, Miriam. I don't know how they met. My father also died in Mukachevo, in 1939. So the war didn't affect him.

During World War I he was at the front, and caught a disease there, angina pectoris, so afterwards he didn't work much anymore. Before that he had been a merchant, selling all sorts of things, he had these stalls. According to what I've heard, during the war he served somewhere in Italy, but exactly where and during which years, that I don't know. But I do know that he fought. He wasn't in the infantry, perhaps he was with the artillery, because apparently he was somewhere on one of those wagons or whatnot, and some shrapnel fell on it, and he miraculously survived. He might have talked about his wartime experiences, but not with me. By the time I was a little more grown-up, he was already somewhat old.

My father observed Jewish traditions, he celebrated everything, attended synagogue, or more often went to prayer halls. He attended both morning and evening prayers, that was the custom in Mukachevo. Kashrut 3, as it's called, was observed at home. We had three sets of dishes. The Passover ones were kept up in the attic, and always at Easter it had to be brought down, they were decorated ceramic ones. Seder was always a big celebration, because the family would gather. You know, the kids that had already gone out into the wide world would return. That was always nice. Even Saturday was observed, and strictly. They wouldn't cook, wouldn't do anything.

I don't know how many siblings my father had. I think that there was a sister, I met her in the concentration camp, in Auschwitz. They arrived there from somewhere in Subcarpathian Ruthenia. I remember that I also met one of her daughters, in Auschwitz, and then also in Karlovy Vary 4 after the war. I've got this memory, my sister Rozika [Ruzena] had a baby in Terezin 5. Before the war she lived in Czechoslovakia, so she went from here. She gave birth to a child, and they picked her out for a transport to Auschwitz. So she sewed herself a big bag - she and another lady - put the baby to sleep, and took it onto that transport. In Auschwitz my father's sister also took care of the baby. But then they both went into the gas. So that's why I remember that my father had a sister, otherwise I maybe would not even have known about it.

My mother was named Miriam, née Berger. She was born in Mukachevo around the year 1882. I was born in 1923, and my mother was around 40 when I was born. Her mother tongue was Hungarian, and her education was most likely elementary. She didn't work, she was a housewife. She lived in Mukachevo her whole life, up until the transports. The transports went there very quickly. If the ghetto was there for a month... What here in Czech took them four years, they did in Mukachevo in a couple of months. In April of 1944, my mother and I left together for Auschwitz, where my mother died. My mother of course lived in a religious manner, she observed the kashrut, everything, and attended synagogue during the High Holidays. But women didn't attend synagogue very much, and what's more, they sat separately.

My mother had a brother, who soon after World War I, perhaps in the 1920s, wandered off to America. His name was Herbert Berger. He had a lot of children, perhaps eight, but we never had any contact with him. While my mother was alive he used to write, or send an occasional package. Then my mother also had three sisters, those I remember, those we used to see. One was named Mermelstein, the second was named Taube, but I don't remember her surname, and I don't remember the name of the third one either. All three were married and had children.

Mermelstein was a teacher at a Jewish school, at a cheder. They had a larger number of children together, five or seven. During the war almost all of them died in concentration camps, what else. One of their daughters survived, she lives in Israel, I ended up meeting her there later. And one son is in Uzhorod [today Ukraine].

What the other couples did, I don't know. I think Taube had one daughter, who then had five sons. By coincidence she then married my cousin, Weider, my father's nephew. During the war both died in a concentration camp, but all five of their sons survived. One lives in Belgium, he's the same age as me, another lives in Mukachevo. We don't write each other much anymore. My mother's third sister had a son, I think. But they're also not alive anymore. I don't know, maybe they died in a concentration camp.

As I've said, I'm one of eight children. My oldest brother was named Mendu, but used the name Ubul. Today he'd be over 100 years old. I was born in 1923, and he was definitely around 30 years older than I. He must have been born sometime at the end of the 19th century. He was a journalist. He definitely had some sort of education, probably high school, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to do that. Or maybe he only had talent. His mother tongue was Hungarian. He was born in Mukachevo, but lived in Uzhorod, where he got married. His wife was named Hermina. In 1944 she had a son, but they then went to a concentration camp, straight to Auschwitz. She survived, but the baby didn't, and neither did her husband, my brother. He probably died sometime in 1944 or 1945.

My second oldest sister was Jolan [Jolana]. She was born around 1903 in Mukachevo - she was about 20 years older than I - and then got married to some man named Fried in Nyirbator [a town in Hungary, located in Szabolcs - Szatmar - Bereg county], Moric Fried. She had two children with him and died together with them in Auschwitz. Their daughter was named Veruska [Vera], she was five or six when they went to the concentration camp. I don't remember the name of the little one-year-old boy anymore. Jolan was a housewife, and her husband was a horse-trader.

Next was my brother Jan. He was also born in Mukachevo, in 1905. He lived in Mukachevo, survived the concentration camp, returned to Mukachevo and died there. During the war he was in several concentration camps, because he fought in Spain 6. He went there in 1938 as a volunteer. He was in a prison in France, there they helped him get home illegally to Mukachevo. It was like a miracle, you know, there was an underground movement there, too. He got home, but he wasn't there for even an hour or two, and right away they came for him. They took him away to a concentration camp in Hungary. From there he went to Auschwitz. So he went through a lot, but returned and stayed in Mukachevo, where he died sometime in the 1980s. After the war he was in charge of some quilted blanket factory, or something like that, as in Spain he'd been on the side of the Communists, and then the Russians were in Mukachevo, so they let him run the factory. Jan was married, but had no children. His wife was named Moni [Monika].

Next was Rozika, Rozi. She was born in Mukachevo in 1907, but then moved to Znojmo. She bought some sort of business there, and made bras and garter belts. She met Emil Jocker there, who she married. He was also born in 1907. She had only one child, which was born in Terezin and died in Auschwitz. She herself also didn't survive the war, she most likely died in Auschwitz in 1945.

Then there was Kolja, who was also born in Mukachevo. He was born in 1913. He had two university degrees, and had a big talent for languages. His mother tongue was Hungarian, and he definitely also spoke Yiddish and German, and also Russian, English and French. He studied in Prague at Lingua, where he then taught languages. He was also in France at the Sorbonne, where he most likely also studied languages. In Prague he also studied law, he already had a JUDr. degree, and was only one exam short of his PhD. I don't know how he came to be in Prague, and how he managed it, I don't know, because he couldn't have gotten anything from home, as we were poor. Before the war he worked in Prague at an embassy, at the Polish one I think. Then he went further and further into the interior of the continent, he was an officer in the army, where thanks to his knowledge of languages he had a certain measure of freedom. But finally he ended up in a concentration camp in Russia, and sometime in 1944 or 1945 he died there. He was single and had no children. I don't know anything more about him. Though the age difference between us wasn't so large, he was away quite often.

My next brother was named Josef, or Joe. In 1939 or 1940 he made it over to England, where he was an aviation electrician in the Air Force. He was born in Mukachevo in 1916. After the war he made a living in England as an electrician, and got married to an Englishwoman, Margaret, who they called Peggy. They had four children together. One son is named George, he's in Canada. Then there's Mary, who lives in England. And then there's John, and then Peter, who lives in Scotland. Joe and Peggy lived in Orpington, which is a small town not far from London. When you take the train from the harbor to London, it stops in Orpington. Even during Communist times I would occasionally go to visit him, my brother always sent me an invitation and they would let me go. He didn't come over to visit us until after the revolution [1989]. He died not long ago, in 1998, also in Orpington. I was at his funeral with my granddaughter Magda.

My last sibling is Helena, who we call Ibi. She was born in 1919. Before the war she studied to be a teacher in Miskolce, and then taught in Uzhorod. She left for the concentration camp from Uzhorod, along with her students. She's still alive, in the Canadian city of Halifax; she's older than I, but is a chipper gal. After the war she married that Emil Jocker, the husband of her sister Ruzena who had died during the war. They lived in Znojmo, but right before the revolution [before 1989] they wandered off to Canada, where their daughter Jana, a doctor, had gotten married, and their son Pavel had also escaped to there. He works as a rep for some company in Canada. Groceries and so on, something like that. Right now he's in Prague, during the winter he works here, and in the spring returns to Canada. Back then Jana wanted to get out, and so married a man that lived in Canada. She emigrated when she was about 21, so it must have been sometime in 1970. Jana was born in 1949 in Znojmo. Pavel was younger, he was born in 1953, also in Znojmo. He emigrated two or three years later, along with his wife and children - they've got two sons, Tomas and Jan. At that time they left for Yugoslavia and never returned.

Growing up">Growing up

My name is Agi Sofferova, and I was born on 15th March 1923. When I came into the world, I was this ugly duckling, and my poor mother was embarrassed. Back then her neighbor said to her, 'Don't cry, Miriam, they'll all leave the nest and she'll be the only one to stay.' And it really did happen, they all left the nest and the two of us went onto the transport together.

My mother tongue is Hungarian. At home we spoke Hungarian, a little Yiddish, too, but mainly Hungarian. And I had Hebrew schooling. But over the years I've of course forgotten my Hebrew. There was no one to talk to, so I forgot. Here I adopted Czech. I also know German, and now also English. Once upon a time I also spoke Yiddish, I used that as a base for German, Yiddish is quite similar to German. So now I don't speak Yiddish, but German. Even though maybe I'd still be able to get along in Yiddish. I had four years of high school, but then I had to stop attending school, because in 1938 or 1939 the Hungarians arrived 7.

Up to the transport, I lived in Mukachevo. It was a large, beautiful modern city. Pavement, electricity, we had all that stuff. Mukachevo was built by the Czechs. [Editor's note: during the years 1918 - 1938, Mukachevo was part of the territory of the First Czechoslovak Republic. Most of the city's older buildings were built during this time period.] When they arrived, it was this no man's land. It had changed hands a lot, there were Romanians there, Hungarians and Ruthenians, and then in 1945 it was ceded to the Russians, so it became part of the Soviet Union, and we [the interviewee means Czechoslovakia] lost it. It used to be beautiful, fertile land, similar to here in Znojmo, grapes, apples, apricots. Then the Russians began mining salt there, and dug it up and ruined it all.

Half the population of Mukachevo was of Jewish origin. There was a Jewish street, but Jews were basically scattered over the whole town. Jews perhaps differed a bit in that they were more into business, they had these little shops. But often they were also tradesmen, cobblers, tailors and so on, all kinds. What were relations between Jews and Christians like? Well, life went on. Of course, when someone was rich, he was envied. But I grew up among Christians, and we always got along well with our neighbors. My friends tended to be Jewish, but where we lived there were also Christian families, and so we played with those children as well. I never met up with anti-Semitism.

The Jewish community in Mukachevo was varied. There were even a lot of Hasidic Jews 8 there. But we didn't have any friends or relations among these radical Jews, with their payes and caftans 9, even though in our family we also observed everything. There was a large synagogue there, and then small synagogues and these small prayer halls. They were everywhere, in every street, or in every other street. My father tended to rather go to the prayer halls. We perhaps only went to a synagogue for the High Holidays. My mother definitely used to go to a mikveh, which was also there.

All traditions were strictly observed in Mukachevo. The kashrut, everything. My favorite holiday was Passover. That was beautiful. Father would lead the seder, and the family would meet. The New Year [Rosh Hashanah] was also important. Those were probably the most important holidays. But my favorite was Passover, because by then it was already spring. I took the restrictions related to traditions simply as a matter of course. As I've said, Mukachevo was half Jewish, so there it was normal. But later we didn't observe it that much, young people didn't take it that seriously any more, on Saturday we would even turn on the lights. The older generation of course reacted badly to this, especially our father. Because his sons turned away from it quite a bit, they no longer believed like he did. He was still quite devout, and our mother too, but not the kids. My older sister Jolan, she observed a lot, everything, even after she got married. The other siblings, Rozi, Jan, Kolja, those not so much any more, I think. They may not have observed things, but they never disowned their origin. Neither did I.

We also had a lot of Jewish schools there, those cheders, a lot of kids attended them. In any case, there were several schools in Mukachevo, Russian schools, Ukrainian ones; I attended the Hebrew high school. It was quite far from our place, but of course there was nothing like bus service in those days. They walked me to school. Up to the age of ten I certainly didn't walk there alone. It really was quite far. The school itself didn't particularly stick in my memory. I think that we used to go places on trips.

We never went anywhere with our parents, as I say, there was no money for that. I only remember that we used to go into the forest, or swimming in the river, with our parents or also without them. On Saturday we used to go to synagogue, and then, as children, we'd play in the yard, and when we were older we had this group of friends and used to go for walks and so on. Mukachevo had beautiful parks, where we used to often go before the war came. We didn't do too many sports activities at home, my mother was already past 40 when I was born, my father was also older, and ill. But there were Jewish sports clubs; up to the war life in Mukachevo was basically normal. I didn't do much sports either.

There were wealthy people living in Mukachevo as well, but we didn't belong among them. I'm from a poor family, no servants or nannies, we never had anything like that. There, where we lived - it was this beautiful, large street - was this large courtyard and people lived on all sides of it. Rich people in Mukachevo had beautiful houses and everything. Besides Christian families, there were also a lot of Jews living in our neighborhood. We rented a two-room apartment with a small kitchen and front hall. The apartments didn't have too many amenities, we for example didn't have a bathroom. There was probably a small library, my mother for sure used to read. And my father used to go study the Torah. I also used to read a lot. When I grew up, I read literature, beautiful books. Romain Rolland [Rolland, Romain (1866-1944): French author, dramatist, musical historian and literary critic], Feuchtwanger 10 and so on. Beautiful books. I used to often say to myself: 'Dear God, don't let me die, so I can finish reading this.' When I then read the same books perhaps twenty years later, by then they made a different impression on me.

I was the youngest, so I then lived alone with my mother and father. Each of my siblings had already gone their own way. Then in 1939, my father died. It wasn't at all easy, my older sisters helped my mother, after all, the family had to somehow get by. You know, there weren't any pensions, nothing. I also made some money, as I knew how to sew a bit. I basically did what I could. For some time I lived with my sister Jolan. Those were hard times.

During the war">During the war

As I've said, the liquidation of Jews in Mukachevo was very quick. We had to go to the ghetto, but that was there barely a month. In April of 1944 my mother and I went on the transport to Auschwitz. My oldest sister, Jolana, went with two children in 1944 from Hungary, from Nyirbator, where she lived. Another sister, Helena, went from Uzhorod, where she worked as a teacher.

As I've said, Rozi lived in Znojmo, so she went to the concentration camp from Czechoslovakia. At first she was in Terezin, there she became pregnant and to punish her they sent her to Auschwitz, as I've already told you. Well, I hadn't even gone through the camp gates, and already some people I knew were there and told me, 'Your sister is there, your sister is there.' It hadn't even occurred to me that she could be there. And so we met there by the barbed wire, where she showed me her baby too. Rozi had it in her arms. When they were liquidating the family camp in Auschwitz, they picked the young people for work. And so she left for somewhere in Germany to work, where I don't know. She didn't survive the war.

From what I've been told, I know that they perhaps went on some sort of death march 11. Either she got some sort of poisoning, or was so weakened that she could no longer go on. That was probably sometime in 1945, when back then before the end of the war they were moving prisoners around. Apparently she wanted to return in this fashion. But she had bad luck, the poor thing. Those that were with her and survived, then told me about how good-natured she'd been, how she'd kept their spirits up, despite having it so hard, child and all. She had wanted a child so badly; if she hadn't gotten pregnant, she could have survived. But with a baby she had no chance. Also very few kids survived. Maybe still in Terezin, but in Auschwitz? And there were so many beautiful children there, who knows what they would have been like if they'd grown up. They were truly beautiful and talented.

When my mother and I went onto the transport, we could only take 20 kilos of luggage. Well, what could I have taken with me? It wasn't much, enough for few pieces of clothing and a bit of food. I remember that my mother forgot a cup or perhaps a small pot in the ghetto, and so returned, and some policeman pushed her, a Hungarian policeman. I can see it as if it was today. I stepped in front of her and said, 'That's my mother.' He was completely taken aback. We were all dragging those bags along with us, it was quite far, they were driving us along across the whole city to the brick factory. My poor mother, she was quite kosher, but when she saw that there wasn't anything, she bought me a piece of sausage. She herself didn't eat it, but bought it for me. Some things dig themselves down into your memory and you can't get them out. There was one father there, he was pulling his retarded daughter along on a wagon. An SS soldier told him to leave her there. He didn't want to. He of course shot the father. What happened to the child, I don't know, whether they also shot her, or left here there. But they didn't trouble themselves too much with these things.

In Auschwitz there was a crematorium, I don't know how many, and I don't know how many gas chambers. They gassed people wherever it was possible. Already in those wagons, when you were sitting there, you expected it... you heard things... at least I expected it. Well, and when we stepped out of the wagon, I said to my mother, 'Here nothing matters any more.' Because I saw those dogs and the Germans were shouting, 'Everyone out, everyone out' and you saw those chimneys smoking, and smelled it, and you knew that wasn't from a bakery or something. Well, and then on that ramp they separated us. To the right, to the left, as they used to say. I went to the right, my mother to the left. I never saw her again.

But what's interesting is that then the Hungarian transports arrived, people from Hungary, from Budapest, from Debrecin and around there, they thought that it was a bakery. And they said, 'Well, here we'll have it good. Here even lunatics are free to walk around.' They thought that those people with shaved heads in rags and wooden shoes were lunatics.

Not everyone was put to work, I was picked by chance, I was lucky. My sister-in-law was also there, the poor thing, she had a little child and they took it away from her. It went into the gas with its grandmother or someone. They were picking out workers that spoke German. And she could speak German. So she went where they kept records, because the Germans wrote it all down. They liked to have everything organized just so.

They were also picking out Jewish women for the kitchen. There was a large kitchen there, big kettles, and originally Polish women had been cooking there. Instead of them they picked us, among others. First they picked my older sister, and were tattooing her, and when I saw that, I had a fit. My sister didn't want us to be separated, so I worked in that kitchen. Apparently we were better than the Polish women, who were dirty. Though they were all dolled up, with makeup, sometimes with a dye job. One SS woman also mentioned that she had to admit that we were hard workers. We had to work hard, haul heavy things around. But perhaps we survived partly thanks to that. After all, a potato here and there, or a bit from some tin, or a larger piece of beet. A person occasionally came by something.

We worked there for a half year, up to 1945. On January 18th the Russians were approaching the camp. [Editor's note: The Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated by the Russian army on 27th January 1945.] The Germans wanted to blow it up, but somehow they didn't succeed. So they drove us off onto a death march. Helena and I experienced it together. Twice. If something had happened to one of us, the other wouldn't have survived either. You were at the end of your rope. So, the first march was in January. One hundred twenty kilometers in three days. We walked to Breslaw [in Polish Wroclaw], which was in Poland. There they loaded us onto open wagons and drove us to Ravensbrück 12. I remember how cold it was. We were sitting in open wagons, and then they left us outside in Breslaw all night.

The second march was in April. That one was perhaps worse than the one in the winter. The weather was beautiful, you walked and walked, you had to walk, because if you didn't, they would shoot at you and leave you lying there. But the survival instinct is strong. In that month of April they wanted to have us walk to Terezin, but that didn't happen, because the front was on all sides, and we couldn't go there. For a long time we walked here and there. The Germans drove the prisoners further west, because they wanted to be captured by Allied soldiers, the Americans. They were terribly afraid of the Russians. The SS women already had civilian clothing under their SS uniforms. They were horribly afraid of bombing.

One hundred twenty of us women remained. Somewhere in Germany, I don't exactly remember the name anymore, you know, it's long ago now, but it was somewhere by the Elbe, because we crossed the river there and then back again, and then burrowed under some hay in some stable. Even though that German, the owner, didn't want to let us in, that the horse has to have peace and quiet. There was also one SS soldier with us, he probably had something with one of the prisoners, so he stayed with us and protected us. We stayed under that hay, and then the next morning you could hear the scouts, Russian scouts. The second day, when there was shrapnel falling already, the owner of the horse was lying there, spread-eagled, dead. The Russians were fighting a little ways away from there. Well, and then the Russians liberated us.

What happened to the other German I don't know, after that we separated. Only ten or twelve of us that knew each other best went together. We confiscated a horse and wagon and on it made our way from Germany to Czech. I was so weakened that they sat me on the wagon, and my sister too. The horse took fright and the wagon turned over. That could have been it for us, but luckily nothing happened. Just Helena sprained her ankle, and nothing happened to me. We must have been close to the border, because we soon arrived in Usti nad Labem. But that trip was full of hardships. One Russian would give, another would take. And they wanted to rape us. We just barely managed to fend them off, really.

Post-war">Post-war

We then traveled by train from Usti nad Labem to Prague, where we arrived sometime at the end of May or beginning of June. Prague was beautiful. The city was all abuzz, the way Prague welcomed the prisoners, that was something. It was something amazing. That's something that one can't forget. There were three or five places where you could eat. They took care of you, clothed you, you had a place to sleep, you could take the streetcar for free. My sister was worried about not having a permit. But I said to her, I don't know if I anticipated it, but I said to her, 'Don't worry, you'll show your tattoo and you'll see.' And truly, it was enough to show your arm, and she rode around Prague in streetcars for free. Originally we'd already been sitting in a train to Mukachevo, when some woman we knew came by. 'You dummies,' she said, 'where are you going?' And lucky for us that we didn't go. Everything in Mukachevo was horrible, in chaos.

We were in Prague for a while, two or three weeks. But we had no time nor were we in the mood for sightseeing. You arrived weakened, hungry, lice- ridden. You know, in Auschwitz I worked in the kitchen and had this warm underwear there. That's where lice lived, lice and scabies. Despite the fact that you washed every day. There were these buckets in which we washed, though only with cold water, and I didn't get scabies, but lice I did get.

From Prague we arrived here in Znojmo. Before the war my older sister Rozika had lived here, the one that had that kid. We came here to look for her. But only her husband, Emil, survived, who then married my sister Helena. He took us in and we lived with him. In the meantime our younger brother Josef, a British soldier, had been looking for us. We met up here in Znojmo. He was always this calm type of person. When I saw him, I yelled up at my sister Helena, 'Ibi, Ibi' - that's a nickname - 'Ibi, Ibi, Josi is here,' And he said to me, 'Why are you yelling like that?' And that was after not seeing each other for so many years, and after the war.

After the war I remained in Znojmo, and only went to Mukachevo to have a look. None of my siblings had returned there, but I did have some friends and relatives there. For some time after the war, my brother Josef also lived in Czechoslovakia. He was given some store with electrical supplies in Marianske Lazne 13. His first son, George, was born in 1945 still back in England, but his daughter Mary was already born here in Karlovy Vary in 1947. In the 1950s, when those things began happening here, how they were attacking Westerners 14, those that had fought in England, and they went after them quite intensively, he left for England with the children.

After the war I didn't return to high school. I did a two-year nursery teachers' course in Boskovice. Back then, they let us study even without having finished high school, because they had a shortage of teachers. They formed two classes, because there was a lot of interest in that course. I did distance studies. Because in 1954, after I had children, I started work as a foster mother. And the course was from 1958 to 1960. I worked as a nursery school teacher until I retired, which was in 1978. But then I still worked a bit. They still needed me, so I still worked there. Not full time, but only part time. I could have retired at the age of 55, because I'd been in a concentration camp, but I worked longer.

My husband was named Josef Soffer. That's a Hebrew name. Soffer means scribe. He was quite a bit older than I; he was born in 1907 in Kravsko, which is here, a little ways away from Znojmo. His native tongue was Czech, and he always considered himself to be a Czech; he was a big patriot. He had moved to Znojmo with his parents as a kid and attended school here. He only had public school 15, but maybe then had some sort of mercantile school, the kind that shop assistants had. Before the war he had worked as a sales rep for a large company. He sold shirts and ties and was relatively successful. Well, and then he went to the concentration camp. He was in several camps, in Terezin, in Auschwitz. There he lost his first wife and child. His first wife was named Herta, the same as his sister. She was quite petite. His son Robert was only ten years younger than I. Herta wasn't old when she went into the gas, but mothers with children had no chance. From Auschwitz my husband then went to Germany to do work. I think that he was liberated while in Buchenwald 16.

My husband's parents were named Hynek and Anna. She was very kind, this small, petite lady. She was refined, from a good family. Their daughter Herta got them to Palestine in some fashion before the war, where they then lived together in a kibbutz. In 1947 they both returned here to Znojmo, and at one time lived with us. Because the Germans had nationalized their house before. But my husband got it back in restitution [Restitution: law regarding the return of property]. Before the war, my husband's father had had a store in the front, and in the back he had a cold box, as he was a butcher. He sold chickens, hens, geese, in short poultry. In 1948 his parents returned to Israel, and Grandma, my husband's mother, died there. So Grandpa returned to Znojmo again. I remember that when the children were ten, he lived here for some time. But then my husband paid for his trip and he returned to Israel, again to that kibbutz. He was always able to return there. Both of my husband's parents are buried in that kibbutz in Israel. His father died sometime in the 1980s.

My husband had three sisters, two older ones, Trude and Herta, and a younger one, Herma. Herta lived in Israel in a kibbutz, and died there. Trude, who was the oldest of the siblings, immigrated along with her husband to Chile, where they had three children. But then they also immigrated to Israel, and only their oldest daughter stayed in Chile. Trude died sometime in the 1990s. Then he also had a brother, but he died early on. He got to Israel, on that ship, the Patria, the one that the English didn't want to let in, they did something to the ship and it sank. He got some sort of disease from the water and died. [Editor's note: The Patria was a ship with Jewish refugees that on 25th November 1940 was sunk in the Haifa harbor, with around 267 people on board.]

My husband and I met here in Znojmo. He saw me, fell in love, and wouldn't be dissuaded. He was crazy about me. We got married in 1947. There was quite a large age difference between us, 17 years. At the time we were married he was 42 and I was 25. Today I wouldn't recommend it to a daughter of mine, but back then I let myself be persuaded. After the war a person felt uprooted, I was so in pain that I didn't want a Christian man for a husband. Nor was there an opportunity, to tell you the truth. My sister Helena also let herself be persuaded, she married that brother-in-law, our sister Rozika's husband, Emil. Because Jewish boys, the ones that returned, mostly married Christian women. They didn't care for us, and yet I wasn't ugly.

After the war my husband worked for Fruta [National enterprise Fruta Brno: a food company, which, for example, in 1968 produced the first Coca Cola beverage under license in Czechoslovakia]. At first as a warehouse employee and then as a buyer. He stayed there until retirement. He died in Znojmo, in 1999. All the same, he lasted a long time, considering what he'd gone through. He was over 90 when he died.

We had two children together: Ruzenka [Ruzena] and Veruska [Vera]. Our custom is to name people after the dead, not after the living. Ruzenka is named after my sister Rozika, and Vera after my niece, Jolana's daughter. We used to call her Pötyi, in Hungarian small, petite. She was beautiful, this clever, smart little girl. She didn't survive either. When my daughters had their own daughters, my wish was that they name them Miriam, after my mother. Well, they didn't listen to me. Both of our daughters were born in Znojmo, Ruzenka in 1948 and Veruska in 1950.

Right after the war we wanted to immigrate to Israel; we thought about it, but I became pregnant with Vera. Plus it was difficult. My husband didn't have any sort of trade. And he wasn't much good at languages either. So then we were afraid to go, and stayed here. But it would have all been different, because back then I still spoke Hebrew well, and knew how to sew a bit, that would have been useful. Well, but it was hard. If he'd been an electrician or carpenter, or something else. But a merchant... when you don't know the language, what would he have done? Plus my sister was here, I didn't want to leave her. But in the end she was the one to leave. So in the 1950s we considered it, but not later.

So we stayed in Znojmo and lived in a house in the old town, close to city hall. All the houses there have cellars, about three levels deep. Apparently they were all even somehow interconnected. We lived close to the entrances to the underground. But unfortunately the cellars were full of ground water. Then they repaired them, they made these 60 centimeter thick walls.

During our time off we used to go with the children to Vranov, which is about 20 kilometers from here. There, when they started giving out loans, we built a cottage, this log cabin. There we spent holidays with the kids. It was a beautiful cabin. In the beginning, when we didn't have a car, we used to take the train there, and walked. With knapsacks. It used to be nice there, sociable, with the neighbors and so on. We knew a lot of people around there. One of them started building a cottage, my husband saw it, and had to have one too. So during the summer we lived there. It was fun there, we made campfires, you could swim there, go picking mushrooms and raspberries in the woods. Our children grew up at that cottage.

Ruzena graduated from medical high school here in Znojmo and worked as a nurse for a general practitioner. In 1990 she went to Austria to work, to Sankt Pölten, which is about 90 kilometers from Znojmo. She didn't live there, she just commuted. She had an apartment in a dormitory for nurses, which she used when she had shifts or when she didn't go home. She used to work 12 hour shifts, and when she had two or three shifts, she then had three days off. She worked there until retirement, which was sometime last year or the year before that. There was some sort of law passed in Austria according to which she was able to retire earlier. Because she worked in intensive care, with little children, and so belonged among those with difficult jobs. Well, and when she was able to retire, she took advantage of it, because that commuting back and forth wasn't easy. It cost a lot of money, and she also suffered a lot from migraines. Since she stopped commuting, her migraines have eased off.

Ruzena married Karel Svoboda, who worked as an auto mechanic and then as a driver. Now he's retired. They've got two children together, Hana and Kajin [Karel]. Hana was also born in Znojmo, sometime in 1972. She lives in Znojmo and is a hairdresser. She's married; her husband is named Petr Vrabec. They have two little children, David and Vendulka. We call her son Kajin, so as not to confuse it with the name of his father, Ruzena's husband. He's named Karel Svoboda. Kajin is younger than Hana, he was born around 1975. He was also born in Znojmo and lives here. He's a cook by trade and has a pub here in Znojmo. He's not married and has no children.

Vera graduated from high school, and then did a second high school degree, so that she could work as a nursery school teacher. That she studied for about four years, distance learning. She then worked in Znojmo as the principal of a nursery school. After the revolution in 1990, she went into business. Along with my son-in-law - she married Pavel Sestak, a surveyor - she ran a fitness center. It also had a small restaurant, a cosmetic salon and a hair salon. Then she got divorced, and now she runs the fitness center by herself.

She's got three children, Magda, Pavlina and Petra. They were all born in Znojmo. Pavlina is 28 or 29 and Petr is 23. Magda is the same age as Kajin. Pavlina is married and works as a cosmetician. Petr is single and is studying Czech and education in Prague; he's going to be a teacher. He's got one more year to go. He interrupted his studies and was in England, where he worked a bit and learned English.

Similarly, Pavlina and Magda were also abroad. Magda studied in Israel, some theater or art school. She left for there right after graduating from high school, and was there for four or five years. She really wanted to go there, and wouldn't let herself be talked out of it. Then she was in America for a year, where she studied English and worked. I think she worked as an au pair. Now she's on maternity leave, but because she was self-employed and didn't have any health insurance, she has to support herself somehow. Now working part-time is allowed, so she works as an interpreter, for example at weddings, and translates, I think mostly from Hebrew.

When our daughters grew up, we split up our property among them. Ruzena got the house we had in the old town, and Vera got the cottage. But Vera needed money, so she sold it. And also because after the divorce she was alone, and a cottage needs a man to take care of it. Today she regrets it, but they're moving to Prague, so they wouldn't be able to go there anyways.

Ruzena also sold that house in the old part of town. They had always wanted a bungalow. So in the 1980s they sold it, and with the money bought this house and fixed it up. They took out a loan, back then they weren't as expensive, and put in an attic apartment - that wouldn't even have been possible in that old neighborhood. And there wasn't even gas there, here it's more modern. So upstairs they have a beautiful apartment. Downstairs we fixed it up, new doors, new windows. I lived here with my husband, and when I won't be here anymore, my granddaughter Hana will come here. And they'll fix it up how they want it.

During Communism I didn't have any big problems. Life of course was no rose garden. My salary wasn't very big, my husband also didn't make much. From a distance Communism didn't even look that bad, because I'm socially conscious, one didn't know about those atrocities. In the 1950s I was terribly shaken by the Slansky 17 affair 18 and so on, that I remember. But I personally didn't experience any oppression. I used to travel out of the country, I was in England several times, my brother always sent me an invitation. We would also get some money from him from time to time. He wasn't rich, but supported me you know, helped me. I think that he was also getting something from the Germans. But mainly he was frugal.

We also had a friend in Austria. He was from Znojmo, he had a wife here, but got divorced because she was good for nothing, and got married in Austria. He would always give us a thousand shillings, that was a thousand crowns [At the beginning of the 1960s the rate of exchange between the Czechoslovak crown and the Austrian schilling was 1:1. The last definition of the gold content of one crown was decreed by Act No. 41/1953 on monetary reform, when the gold content of the crown was set (unrealistically and without a wider context) at 0.123426 g of pure gold, which remained until the end of the 1980s - Editor's note]. And for a thousand shillings you could already buy all sorts of things. Back then there was nothing here, and when you saw those things there, those cheeses and meat and all, that was something. You had five pounds or something like that, here you paid tons of money for them, and there you imagined that you'd buy half of England for it. I remember that we brought back a TV, a microwave oven, some bedclothes. Well, we had all a huge load when we were returning, and the customs officials let us in without any problems. They were amazing. We didn't even have to hide anything. My husband and I were also in Vienna several times, because his sister Herma was there. That was also by invitation. Herma was originally perhaps a housewife there, but then she went to work. Somewhere where they package medicines. And her husband manufactured something. I also visited a relative of mine in Canada.

The Communists didn't even pressure me to join the Party. But they wanted my husband to inform on people. But that didn't even come into consideration. Our only problem with the Communists was that they didn't want to let my husband go to see his sister. He had a sister in Israel, and terribly wanted to go there. That's also a tragicomedy. When he could, when he had the money, they wouldn't allow it. He applied, several times he applied. The poor guy had everything, he would always bring them that invitation in his briefcase. But they didn't let him go. In 1977 we had two weddings. By then my husband was retired, but was working and so made some money on the side. Well, and the money that the poor guy had saved up, I took that from him for those two weddings. Well, and then, when he didn't have money, they gave him permission to go. And when they gave him that permission, and there would even have been enough money, he no longer had the strength. By then he was too old and ill. I was in Israel, but secretly, he didn't know about it, because if he had known, he'd have died.

I was in Israel once, not until after the revolution. Magda, my granddaughter, studied there, so she invited us. Ruzenka was working abroad, so she gave it to me as a Christmas present. And I had that brother in England, who helped me a lot, so I had a bit of money from him and could pay for things while there. I went there with my daughter Ruzena, and we lived with our granddaughter Magda in Jerusalem; she had an apartment there, so we didn't have to pay for accommodation. We were there for three weeks or a month.

I liked everything in Israel. I met up with my cousin's daughter there, she was my mother's sister's daughter, who lived in Israel, in a kibbutz. So I went to visit her. We usually don't keep in touch, but when I was there, I went to see her. She had it good in that kibbutz, she didn't have any complaints. I also met the daughter of my husband's sister Herta there, with Ruth. She also lived in a kibbutz. I could communicate well only with her husband, who was a Hungarian Jew, and spoke Hungarian.

We also went to have a look around Israel. We were in Natanya. My husband had a cousin there. The children still live there, and we keep in touch with them. We were also at the Dead Sea, at archaeological sites, we were at the Jordan River, I dipped my feet into the Jordan. That was also an experience, that Jordan. The water there is very dirty, and they even drank it. There was one woman there, she prayed, in Arabic I think, and then went into the water and her husband was washing her. I guess it was some sort of tour group, and we had happened along. You just stood and stared, when you saw them splashing about in that water. Then I also liked the crucifixion in church, the atmosphere also affected you there. There was a huge crowd of people there. Not that I liked or didn't like it, but that atmosphere, the fanaticism, it grips you. And by the Jordan as well. The Wailing Wall was also interesting, there it's also impressive. When you see how they pray there, and how they stick those little pieces of paper into it.

When the revolution came in 1989, I was in Austria at the time, for a week or so, to visit my husband's sister. And there we saw it on TV. The biggest influence it had on me was that I could then travel abroad without an invitation, and my daughter could go work outside, in Austria. The opportunity came along, and because she spoke German, she took it. Because when my husband and I didn't want the kids to understand what we were saying, we spoke German, and she caught on to it. She's got a talent for languages, she's probably got that from me, it runs in our family. The other daughter, Vera, is more into math. So Ruzenka applied and it's good that she did, because what she bought herself when she was working there, she wouldn't buy here if she lived another twenty years. You know, the difference was quite large. Even though commuting to work wasn't anything easy, nor was that work easy. But I was at home and could watch the children for her. That made it easier for her.

After the revolution we also found out that my husband had had his first wife insured for 20,000. I somehow found it out by coincidence, I hadn't even known about it. They had sent some papers from Bavorov. Back then some lawyer was taking care of it for old people. So they also sent me the papers, they thought that I didn't have anybody, and that they'd take care of it for me. But he took a large part of it. We didn't even know that, we found out about it through the computer. And we didn't even know that my husband had his wife insured for 20,000. So we got something, I don't know how much, a few dollars. I got half of that insurance, and the girls each a quarter. Well, you know that I gave it away. I'm not good at holding on to money.

Recently we were in Austria during the summertime, where we had a Soffer family reunion. Relatives from Austria met there, those were Herma's children, from Israel, and also from America - old Mr. Soffer had a sister there. Truda's entire family came from Israel, her son with his wife and children, from Herta there was only her son, Ruth didn't come, she had a child die of mushroom poisoning or something, and since then she hasn't been completely right. All told there might have been about 35, 40 of us. It was a very interesting reunion, we've got it recorded on DVD. It's got it all, the whole family and the whole reunion, supper and lunch and speeches and photos. It was organized by my niece's son. They wanted us to meet regularly, that we should put together I don't know how many euros, and pay for the trip to America, and that they'd then pay for things there. I said no, I'm 82 years old, and don't even have that sort of money. Maybe in two years the reunion will be in Prague, so that it would be held somewhere closer. If I'll still be here.

As far as religion goes, after the war my husband and I didn't observe it that much any more, perhaps certain holidays, Chanukkah, Passover and so on, but only half-heartedly. The kashrut, for example, where could you keep it here? That means you wouldn't be able to eat anything, meat, milk, that didn't exist at all here. Not until later, in Brno. Here in Znojmo there used to be a beautiful synagogue, but it was destroyed during the war. After the war, my husband then led the Jewish community's agenda here, but it then moved to Brno. So now I'm a member of the Brno Jewish community, I'm registered there, and pay the tax in Brno. I don't much observe either Christian nor Jewish holidays. Well, we do decorate a Christmas tree, and give each other gifts. But mainly for the children. You know, after the war it was tough. There were no Jewish children here, and the girls saw the trees, so we also had one. And today we again do it because of the little ones. You know, a person assimilated and after the war was sort of split down the middle.

But as I've said, I myself never felt any anti-Semitism. When someone called my kids names, I took care of it. Once, when the girls were in school, some little boy was calling them names. I grabbed him, squashed his mouth, and said to him, 'You say something to them one more time, and I'll whip your butt so that you won't sit down for a month.' And that was that.

Once I was in the hospital, they were doing heart surgery on me, and there was one lady from Znojmo there. I had these nice little washcloths there, disposable ones, that my daughter had brought me. When I was leaving the hospital to go home, I gave them to that lady. But when she left the room, the other lady said to me, 'Don't give them to her. She was bad-mouthing you.' I say to myself, what could she have said about me? She could have said that I'm a Jew. But I'd never deny that. That would be like denying my own mother. Why? Christians are no worse and no better. There are good and bad people among both. I've got it from my parents, I didn't pick it. If I had the opportunity to choose, that would be something different. Even though I don't observe holidays much, I'm a full-blooded Jewess; that's the way I feel.

With my children it's something different. You know, back then here, after the war, there wasn't the opportunity for them to marry Jewish boys. Because the Jewish boys were mostly marrying Christian girls, and we had to take it as it came. Both I and my daughters. When they were still young, they used to meet with Jewish boys in Brno, but those then left Brno. There wasn't the opportunity. There aren't, there weren't. In Znojmo not at all, and where should they go looking? None of my children or grandchildren keeps up traditions, only my granddaughter Magda, she's the only one.

So now Ruzena and I live in the same house. I live downstairs and she lives upstairs. The street here is beautiful, quiet and peaceful, but it's not far to the center of town. We've also got a garden, and now my daughter's built a swimming pool, her dream was to have a swimming pool. But I don't go out much anymore, I don't dare to by myself. Sometimes it's worse, sometimes it's better. When it's at number 3 [bio weather index, risk level number 3], I usually don't feel well.

Sometime after the revolution, when my daughter began with that fitness center, maybe because of the stress, they found out I have diabetes. I've been treated for years now, I was taking pills, and now it's about a year or three quarters, that I'm using insulin. My daughter injects it for me, and when she can't, I do it myself. Then I give myself bruises. But she's a nurse, so she's got a gentle touch. It doesn't hurt when she does it.

That diabetes is a louse, an insidious disease. Since I started injections, when I'm not careful it's very unpleasant. When you've got a higher level of sugar it's not as unpleasant as when it's low. At first you don't have any experience with it, once I injected myself and my sugar fell when I was in town, and boy, did I ever feel sick. Now I'm careful. The first thing is that I have to have breakfast. A slice of bread, coffee. And I've also got to watch my diet a little more. And I've also got a machine for my heart, a cardiostimulator. I had a weak heart attack, and I think it's back then that I got the machine. One thing follows another. Infected legs, spleen. Actually, at first the CT scan showed the pancreas. But luckily it wasn't the pancreas. But there was something on my spleen, so they removed it. You know, the years grow, but not health.

Glossary">Glossary

Ferenc Sandor
Budapest
Hungary
Interviewer: Dora Sardi and Eszter Andor

My great-grandmother Cili, Cecilia Rosenthal, was a great beauty even at
the age of 92. She had beautiful blue eyes and white hair, and her hands
were soft and warm ... and out of vanity she said she was younger than she
actually was. She knocked a few years off her age. Because only when she
passed away did it turn out that she was already 92, not 90. She was the
heart and soul of the family. She had a good sense of humor too.

Great-grandmother's sister, Aunt Fani, was a Jewish schoolteacher in Papa.
She had two sons, Geza and Miklos. Geza committed suicide. I do not know
why, and I have no more knowledge of him. Miklos was apparently gifted.
They apprenticed him to a bookbinder, but it was quite clear that his
ambition was to pursue further studies and that was what he did. For some
years he spent his summer holidays with my grandmother and grandfather in
Sopron. He told my grandfather, his uncle, that he would get a doctorate.
"If you get one," Grandfather said, "I'll get my head chopped off." So when
Miklos got his first doctorate, he said, "Uncle Ferenc, I am coming to chop
off your head." And when he got his second doctorate, he said, "Uncle, I am
coming to chop off your second head!"

Granny Cili's husband was Beno Fogel. They were miserably poor.

We could never stand the so-called Polish Jews, those "fin" folks with the
payot (sidelocks). (Interviewer's note: The Jews of northeast Hungary who
spoke Yiddish and followed the Orthodox tradition bore this nickname
because they twisted the Yiddish word fun, meaning "from, out of," into
fin). There were no such people in the entire family.

It is not easy to say what my great-grandfather did for a living, because
he worked at various jobs in various places. My grandmother was born in
Mezokovacshaza. In those days the family was so poor that they had to move
from village to village in the hope of earning a better living at a
different place. But by the time I was born, they owned a house and a small
store in Megyesegyhaza; later a tavern, too. Fourteen children were born to
them and nine lived to adulthood. Of the nine, three were boys.

Uncle Jeno magyarized his name to Fodor.

Another one was some kind of backward creature, yet an absolute genius at
fixing things. He lived in Megyesegyhaza, County Bekes. He had a motor
scooter, which was a very big deal at that time, and he held movie shows.

Then there was Andor Fogel, who magyarized his name to Andras Vago. He
fought in World War One.

The eldest child was Etelka, who later became a schoolteacher. She ended up
in a mental ward. She must have been quite a funny lady. I've got only the
faintest memories of her, maybe not even real memories, just from some
photo.

Then there was Rozsi. She lived in Mako with a husband who was a porter.
He once wrote in a letter, "I live in beautiful harmonium here with my dear
wife."

Then came Irma. Irma lived in Megyesegyhaza with her husband, whose name
was Guttman. They owned a store too. Later they had a tavern next to Great-
grandmother Celi and Great-grandfather Beno's. Their daughter Terez was an
extremely beautiful young lady. I was completely infatuated with her.

Then there was Mariska. Both of her sons suffered from hemophilia, and both
of them died later, I think during displacement.

Juliska, the youngest one, was so much younger than my grandmother that
Grandmother used to nurse her and change her diapers when she was a baby.

Ferenc Rosenthal, my grandfather, was a brother of Cecilia, my great
grandmother, and this rather unfortunate thing happened: he married his own
niece, my great grandmother's daughter, a very beautiful young girl. But
then my granddad was a full-fledged schoolteacher, and when he took fancy
to Janka, the 17-year-old niece of his, the poor creature was duly married
to the schoolteacher.

I never knew my grandfather because he was born in 1849 and he was sensible
enough to die in due course in 1913.

My grandparents married in 1893 in Sopron, and that's where they lived.
Only one child was born to them, my mother. It was a pretty unlucky kind of
business. The bridegroom was 25 years older than the bride. And
Grandmother wanted to kill herself, by jumping out of the window, on the
first night of her marriage.

It was typical of my grandfather, Ferenc Rosenthal, that in the Neolog
school where he worked, the word cheder (a Jewish religious primary school
attended only by the children of the Orthodox) was considered a dirty word.
In Sopron there was both a Neolog school and an Orthodox one. Well, some
supervisor remarked: "This is not a school, this is a cheder." A word of
abuse, it was. And so my Grandfather retorted: "Yes, schools will become
cheders if they have directorates like ours."

Grandfather was an orphan. He took an unusual career path to become a
schoolteacher. One year he would work regularly as a private tutor in the
service of a particular family. Then the following year he would study at
college.

They must have lived in extreme poverty when he was a child. He was raised
by his elder brother. As a young boy he was supposed to eat a variety of
foods, but they usually had nothing but bread. He would ask his brother,
"Please, give me something to eat!"

"You want bread and jam?"

"No, I don't want bread, give me something to eat." He was craving for
something, it could have been meat or fruit, I cannot tell, but he said:
"Give me something!"

"Bread and lard? You want bread and lard."

"Not bread, I want something to eat." He got nothing else.

He was twenty-four when he got his degree. The general nickname for
teachers in those days was "light," or "lamp." People called my grandfather
was that. He told my grandmother that he once met an upper class Jew who
remarked: "I wear velvet and you wear rags, yet you are the one called 'the
lamp!'"

Grandfather lived completely in the spirit of the Austro-Hungarian
monarchy. When Grandfather was about three or four years old, the Emperor
Franz Joseph stopped in Sopron on his way somewhere. They lifted him above
the crowd, and he yelled, "Uncle Emperor, Uncle Emperor!" The story goes
that Franz Josef even waved back to him, but, of course, one cannot be sure
of that.

My grandfather wrote reviews of performances staged at the theatre in
Sopron. I had the chance to read a few of them. And if the primadonna
happened to show her ankles in some performance, he went to see that play
thirty times in a row. He most have been a man of brains for sure.

They lived in comfort, had a fine house and were able to provide well for
their daughter, their only child.

My mother attended the upper middle school for girls in Sopron. Then her
parents registered her for a one-year course in a business school.

She found work as a clerk at the local administration center. Most of the
time I was looked after by my aunt, who moved in with us after my father
did not come back from the war. I was practically raised by her.

My father was called Vilmos Sandor. He magyarized his name from Spielman
before he married. That had to be done on account of his job, as he worked
for the Veszto office of the Bekes County Savings Bank. He had a high
school education. He met the young lady who became my mother on a train
trip. My mother was sitting in the train with my grandmother and he sat
beside them. That must have been in 1910 or 1911. Right there on the train
they decided to get married. The actual wedding ceremony in the temple
followed in 1912 in Sopron. After the wedding he immediately took my mother
to Veszto, where they lived in a family house, an official residence,
secured by the Savings Bank. He had previously run into debts, which were
then paid off from the dowry. As an unmarried man he had been accustomed to
leading an easy life. Most likely, he did not abstain from alcohol either.

There was a large Jewish community in Veszto. In my father's family alone
there were five brothers: Bari, Miksa, Jozsi, one whose name I forgot, and
Vilmos, my father. They all lived in Veszto. Most of them owned some kind
of store or other. Uncle Miksa had a grocery. After we moved to Budapest, I
spent my summer holidays at Uncle Miksa's. They were very religious and
kept kosher. My aunt Giza would definitely have had a stroke if she had
known I was offered bread and lard at Balint Torok's and ate it.

In World War One, my father was called up from Veszto to the Russian front.
Then he returned and spent some time at home, and had the chance to see me
as a baby of a few weeks old. I have no memories of him whatsoever. There
is only one thing I know. When he came home from the front he said that one
was not allowed to laugh any more. I have seen the postcard he sent home to
my mother. On it was written: "Don't cry, darling. The country must be
saved from the enemy." The poor fellow, he could not have suspected that
during a 1944 death march, my war-widow mother would helplessly fall victim
to this same country he was trying to save from the enemy.

I had an elder sister, Sari. She was born in 1913. There were eleven months
between us. Sari went to school downtown in the Vaci street gymnasium,
where she took her finals. Later she took a course where they learned how
to make corsets. Before that she worked as a typist, and as she earned some
money, we were able to move to Legrady Karoly Street, where we had a very
pretty little flat that consisted of one room, a foyer, and small room for
the house-maid.

Sari later married. My first brother-in-law, Laci Reisenfeld, died during
his forced labor service in 1944. He was born in 1902 and worked as a clerk
for the Goldberger Works. When Sari learned that he had died, she wanted to
kill herself. Then in 1944 she married a gentile, Laci Foldessy. She would
not have been able to cope with the prospect of having another husband get
killed. A daughter, Marika, was born to them, and the three of them fled to
Holland in 1957, shortly after the 1956 revolution when the borders were
open for some time. The borders had already been closed, but they managed
to smuggle themselves out. They passed their flat on to someone at the
Ministry of the Interior, so an eye was shut for them.

In 1916 the whole family-my mother, my grandmother, my sister and I-all
moved from Veszto to Budapest. We had a flat on Maria Valeria street. A
really decent fellow helped Mother get a very good job at the Central
Institute of Finances. Up to the last moment, as long as the anti-Jewish
laws permitted, she kept that job. She got a good salary, as the Central
Institute of Finances was the second biggest bank in the country. "That's
why I did not have to raise my two orphans in poverty," she often said.

My grandmother Janka drew a fairly good pension after my grandfather's
death. We had a huge family scattered throughout the country from Sopron to
Bekescsaba. We were the only ones who lived in Budapest, so we put up
everyone who came to Budapest from the countryside on any business.

In the apartment house where we lived, there was a front staircase, and a
back one, which was normally called the "servant staircase." We had to use
the back staircase, but all the same, we lived in a sunlit, airy apartment
on the third floor. The toilet was at the end of the corridor. For a time
we had a proper housemaid who lived with us. Later on, a cleaning lady came
regularly. The first housemaid, Roza, accompanied us when we moved to the
capital from Veszto. Later, when I spent my vacation with my uncle in
Veszto, I went to see her. She lived at the edge of the village in dire
poverty. In my mind's eye, I can still see her child, who suffered from
consumption, and whom she unwrapped as if it were some small bundle. The
housemaid was always a family member to us.

My mother had a colleague, Mr. Sziklai. This was a magyarized name, and
originally he was called Spisak. It was a great thing for me because he was
the only male role model for me to follow. He liked me too. Then when
Mother died I did not know how to relate to him any more.

I started high school at an orphanage for war orphans in Cegled. I was
completely crushed in that place in the second year. Broke my spine, so to
speak. There were a hundred of us there and only one other Jew, who was in
the seventh grade. I came second, a second grader. And ninety-eight
children teased me for a whole year because I was Jewish. When I managed to
get into the infirmary, that was a relief. I remember once it was really
cold outside and I was outdoors and did not feel like going in. A bunch of
these pests kept following me, and when the teacher noticed that it had
something to do with me, he told me off because I did not tell on them, I
did not inform him that they were pestering me. He put the responsibility
for that scene on me.

I was very bad at languages at school. Math was easier. In my free time I
went on rowing trips with my friends, or we went to a dance. I actually
learned dancing in the Czech lands. We were sent there to spend our summer
holidays as students on an exchange visit. We lived with Czech families,
and then Czech students visited us in return.

Hungarian poetry is very dear to me. I live in those poems, I practically
live for them, even if I only tell them to myself. I have performed a lot
of poetry recitals in my life; how well, I cannot say.

I used to be a boy scout too. We sang songs around the campfire late at
night and until daybreak. We never sang the same song twice.

My family never made a special issue out of the fact that we were Jewish.
I heard that my father was considering converting, but in 1915 he lost his
life at the Russian front.

At elementary school I received a Roman Catholic religious education. I
went to school on Cukor Street in downtown Budapest. Novitiates would
frequently come to us and visit, or do their teaching practice there. They
were very nice young men and I, for my part, was a hundred percent Roman
Catholic, duly making the sign of the cross. I had had my First Communion
and was on very good terms with God, asking Him for things now and then, as
was common in those days.

Then a really strange thing happened to me. A Hungarian law ruled that
children between six and eighteen were not allowed to change religion. And
now this very law became the reason for the fact that that I had to change
religion. I had received my registration card from the Roman Catholic
Church. The Church was not interested in how the state classified people in
terms of religion: it had its own rules and regulations. However, a state
law ruled the way I described before. It was discovered that the
authorities had failed to correct my birth certificate. According to my
documents, I was still a Jew, even though I was a Christian. At the home of
the war orphans in Cegled, this document business was taken rather
seriously, so they wouldn't acknowledge that I was a Catholic. I was
compelled to resume Judaism and attend Jewish religious education classes.
For me it was the most terrible split. In this little provincial town, the
way those Jewish people lived seemed utterly unkempt and messy. Not so very
civilized, so to speak. Otherwise they were very kind to me, inviting me to
join them for holidays and feasts such as Pesach.

I was twelve then, and I revolted. I insisted that I should be taken home
to my grandmother immediately. And so I was sent then to the school on
Barcsay Street, where the atmosphere was somewhat Jewish. As when we lived
on the Maria Valeria Street before, from our window if I leaned out a
little I could see the tower of the church were I was baptized. I also had
to go past the synagogue twice a day. Now, when I walked past the church,
if I did not remember to take my cap off, I was committing a sin, and a few
hundred meters further away, if I did the same-or the other way round-I
got completely confused. I looked up in the sky and wondered whether there
was someone up there watching what I was doing with my uniform cap. I
finally got over it somehow.

In that school I was accepted, because the headmaster, a young man of
Swabian origin, was a wonderful, kind person and loved me dearly. I was
almost like an adopted son to him. (Translator's note: Swabians were ethnic-
German farmers who had lived in Hungary since the 18th century.)

In our house we celebrated Christmas and Easter and we never observed any
Jewish holiday, at least I cannot recall any. In Veszto with Uncle Miksa,
everything was observed, but that's all I remember. Today I am deeply
irreligious.

I took my finals at secondary school in 1933. Not long before my exam I was
walking home - walking, because we did not normally take the tram: tickets
were expensive. I went past a newspaper stand and there I saw the news on
Hitler's takeover.

After my finals I wanted to go to university but I ended up at a printing
house. That's how I became a printer. I did lithography: paintings,
posters, color prints. That lasted until 1978, when I retired.

During the war, first I was sent to Gyongyos for forced labor service, then
to Vac, and following that I spent one and a half years in Sastov, Ukraine,
near Kiev. It was in August, 1942 when we went there. When full Jews were
ordered to be sent further away, I, as a war-orphan, was offered the chance
to stay in Vac. People who had Christian spouses were allowed to stay. They
were given white armbands. I was contemplating whether I should go or stay,
and in the end I decided to leave. But right then a guard kicked me back to
the line. He wouldn't let me leave. Thank God. Because less than fifty
percent of the company I was supposed to join ever returned. Later on, it
was our turn to be sent to Ukraine. My company was a wonderful unit, an
extraordinary group of people. Lots of medical doctors and lawyers among
them. At the beginning of 1944 we were disarmed. Then on May 20, 1944 I was
taken to Pecs, and from there to Szombathely. There I pulled the gold ring
off my finger because I knew it would be taken from me anyway. I gave it
away to someone in the street, so at least I gave it to someone I wanted
to. We worked at an airport in Szombathely.

A friend of mine had some work at the Bruck Textile Works, and he went
there time to time. That's where Zsuzsa, who later became my wife, worked.
Before Christmas, my friend told them we were throwing a party on New
Year's Eve, and he was in charge of inviting some nice girls. Zsuzsa would
have loved to come but her parents wouldn't let her. So the two of them
agreed that she would bring a girlfriend along who would look after her all
night. On that condition, the parents finally gave in. One afternoon a few
days before New Year's Eve, Zsuzsa and her friend came over to my flat to
check the place they were coming to. They found only my grandmother at
home, and they sorted everything out with her, as far as what to bring and
all. When I came home, my grandmother informed me about their visit and
said that a very pretty girl had visited us who was going to come to my New
Year's Eve party. Our wedding ceremony took place at the City Hall.

Ruzena Guttmannova
Bratislava
Slovakia

Growing up
During the war
Post-war
Glossary

Growing up

I was born in 1921 in Breznica, Eastern Slovakia, into a strictly Orthodox
family and have adhered to the Jewish traditions up until now.

My father, Aron Kleinmann, was born in 1880 in the town of Ladomirov, which
was in Austria-Hungary at the time. He owned a large estate in Breznica. We
had an inn, and in summer, we used to sit at the tables outside. I even
have a picture of this. We also used to congregate on a big porch in
summer. My father had a short beard and a moustache, always wore a cap, a
coat and a tie, and dressed in modern fashion.

My mother was born Ester Gruenwaldova in Breznica in 1882. She had two
brothers, Adolf and Toba. Malvina Gruenwaldova, who was born in Presov in
1907, is the daughter of one of my uncles. She was a housewife. My cousin
Malvina survived the Holocaust and died in Montreal, Canada, in 1980.

My mother also had a sister, who was very pretty and was always elegantly
dressed. In America she married a cousin called Friedman. He was born in
1899 in Breznica and became a successful businessman in the United States.
He owned some hotels. He died in New York in 1988.

My parents had eight children. My oldest brother, Nabel, was born in 1900.
In 1929 he went to America and worked as a servant first, and, after a
while, as a waiter. There he changed his name to Irving. I was 22 when he
left for America. I hardly knew him and we met for the first time after the
war, when he turned 75. Irving used to send us pictures from America.

All other children stayed at home and helped our parents on the farm. My
second oldest brother Emil, born in 1902, was married, so he wasn't with
us. My oldest sister, Tonci, was born in Breznica in 1910, then there were
my twin brothers Max and Adolf, born in 1914, then my brother Iosef, my
sister Malvina, born in 1919, and me.

We got along rather well with the non-Jews in our village. I remember that
we used to sit in the courtyard with Helena and Dulet Friedmanova; the
Friedman family were our neighbors. They were nice and very helpful. We
enjoyed friendly relations until the great tragedy came with the rise of
the war-time Slovak State and that state destroyed our whole family.

During the war

When the first deportations started in 1942, I was rounded up as a young
girl, the first one of my family. I was deported on 22nd March 1942 with
the first transport. I remember the despair of my parents when they learned
that I had to go; I packed my suitcase, my brother harnessed two horses,
and, along with my father and a policeman, I left. I still remember those
painful first moments in the assembly center in Poprad.

We were on the train for several days, and my first impression of Auschwitz
was that I had arrived in hell. I managed to stay alive for three years in
Auschwitz. I survived several selections and experienced Dr. Mengele's
periodic inspections. Toward the end of the war, I was forced out of the
camp and on to a death march. We went through several other concentration
camps. Until now, I have never returned to Auschwitz.

While still in Auschwitz, I learned from my neighbor, who was deported
later on, that my parents paid 4,000 Slovak crowns in order to obtain an
exception as economically important Jews because they had a big farm.
However, the very next day Slovak guards 1 came to pick up my parents. So
it seems the bribe they paid did them no good.

Many members of my family didn't survive the Holocaust. My father Aron and
my brothers Emil and Max were killed in Auschwitz. My sister Tonci, along
with her three little children, of whom one was only a baby, and her
husband Berkovic were all killed in Auschwitz, too, probably in 1942. My
mother Ester died in Majdanek concentration camp 2 in 1942.

Two of my brothers - Emil, who was 27 year old and already married, and
Max, who was 22 - didn't want to leave our parents and went with them to
the concentration camp. Max had served in the Czechoslovak army, so we have
a lovely picture of him in his uniform.

I remember my cousin Kosen Goldman, who was born in Ladomirov in 1907.
Before World War II he was a businessman. During the Holocaust he was taken
to Auschwitz, and killed there.

My brother Adolf and I survived together. My other brother, Iosef, also
survived because he had been in a forced labor brigade attached to the
army, and that's how he made his escape. And, of course, Irving, who had
left for America in the 1920s, also survived.

Post-war

After the liberation, I returned to Breznica for a while. However, our
house had been destroyed by bombs, everything was in ruins. But my brother
and I were well received by our neighbors and classmates. These good
relations have lasted until now.

I then moved to Stropkov in Eastern Slovakia along with my brother, and we
lived in our cousin's house.

I got married in Stropkov in 1946. My husband, Viktor Guttmann came from an
Orthodox family from Vranov. Out of six siblings, he was the only one to
survive the Holocaust.

We moved to Bratislava in 1949. Our first-born son lives in the USA now. We
had two more sons, one of them lives in Bratislava. Our family property is
now owned by an agricultural cooperative and as yet I haven't got any
compensation for it. I'm retired. After the death of my husband I live
alone, but keep in touch with my sons and their families.

My brother Irving worked as a manager after World War II. He was married to
Ester Kleinmannova, who was born in Poland in 1912. She was a housewife.
She died in Florida in 1999. Irving died in Florida in 1986. He suffered
from mental disorder. My other brother, Adolf, died in Israel in 1990.

I was at the funeral in the USA. Many people came to the ceremony and there
was a big mirror. Police were in the front, then the body was carried in a
car following the police and then people who attended the funeral were
following. There were about ten long big cars with about twelve people. I
attended this funeral where bodies in coffins were put into a wall. Ester
was put next to Irving.

Glossary

Fridric Iavet
Arad
Romania
Interviewer: Oana Aioanei
Date of the interview: April 2003

Mr. and Mrs. Iavet are together since they were classmates in school. Their daughters don't live in Arad, but their presence is felt everywhere in the house - photos of their families are displayed in the rooms. Also, in a glass case there is a picture with the Iavet family during their period in Uzbekistan. Mr. Fridric and Mrs. Iuliana are very hospitable. Probably that the period of time spent in Central Asia has a serious influence ... Their house is close to the center of Arad. It's not a very big house. Behind it there is a small garden with vegetables and a chicken coop. The dog, which is very playful, looks at us from outside trough the window during the interview. Now, retired, they spend most of their time in the house. Mr. Iavet is the one who goes shopping in the morning. On Friday evenings he takes part with his wife in Oneg Sabbath, and on Saturday mornings he goes to the synagogue.

My family background
Growing up
Our religious life
The pre-war situation in Cernauti
Our life in Uzbekistan during the war
Post-war
Married life
My daughters
Glossary

My family background

My maternal grandparents came from Poland, and their native tongue was German. Grandfather Hirschklau Jakob was born in Poland [Note: or more likely somewhere in Austro-Hungary, since he spoke German]. The Hirschklau grandparents lived in Hlyboka, called Adancata in Romanian. Hlyboka lies in the south of Ukraine (former Bukovina). There were many Ukrainians, Germans, Poles. Grandfather Jakob was a bookkeeper. He had a small mustache, and he was rather well off. He always wore a dark black suite and he had a hat. He wasn't very religious, but he came to the temple for the holidays. They were a big family. Grandparents had 7 children: mum was the eldest, then there was Manea, a sister, Frieda, Toni, Elsa and Berthold. They all lived in the same house. I don't know the name of my mother's mother, she died in 1910, when mum was 5 years old. My grandfather's second wife was called Frieda. She was the one I used to call 'grandmother', although she wasn't. I, as a child, did not even know that.

Grandfather Jakob had quite a big house, right on the way to Dymka (Dymka is at 4 km away from Hlyboka). The house was positioned with its length parallel to the street, it had two doors and four windows to the street, and the rest of the house faced the courtyard. The house was big, with a lot of rooms, I don't remember exactly how many. The furniture was massive, in gothic style. My grandparents had neither running water in the house, nor electricity. They used gas lamps, and the water was brought from the fountain. In front of the house there were a shop and a tavern - they belonged to the grandparents. The shop was mixed. As far as I know, somebody from the family sold in the shop and worked in the tavern. Probably the girls helped them out when they had time for it. On Saturdays, neither the tavern nor the shop were open.

My mother, Adela Hirschklau, was born on February 5th, 1905, in Hlyboka. During World War I she was in Vienna with her parents, and she went to school there. She was 10-12 years old by then. They took refuge there from Hlyboka. I don't know why they chose Vienna and I don't know what they did there for a living. Back then only my mother, Manea and Rosa were born. [The family came back, but Fridric doesn't know if his grandparents had had the shop before leaving to Vienna].

Manea was married to David Landberg, who worked as clerk at CFR ('Caile Ferate Romane', 'The Romanian Railway Company'). They had two sons: Leopold and Heine. Manea and Heine were shot by Romanian soldiers in Hlyboka at the beginning of the war, around July 1941. They hid in the cornfield, and when Heine ran away they caught him and shot him on the spot. Leopold was deported from Hlyboka and died in Transnistria. I was very fond of him. David was taken to Siberia. He is the only one left from the family. After he was imprisoned, he was drafted in the Russian army and he fought in both Japan and Germany. I remember he walked with a club, because of a leg injury.

Rosa had a daughter, Coca. They were both caught by the Germans in Poland and shot on the way. Her husband's name was Max. Elsa, Toni, Frieda, all three of them not married, died during the Holocaust. They were approximately 20 years of age when they died. They had just finished high school - Frieda was a teacher, and Elsa and Toni were clerks. Before the war they lived in Hlyboka.

My mother's brother, Berthold, was much younger than her. He was born in 1921 and he was drafted in the army by the Russians, in 1941. During the war he ended up in Moscow, where he settled in 1943. He married a Russian Jew, Esea, he divorced, and then he remarried - I don't know the name of the second wife. He did not have children with any of them. Berthold was an engineer and manager of a factory, but I don't know what occupations his wives they had. He was not a religious man. He visited us very often during my childhood. We got along very well with him, he was the only one of my mother's siblings that I dared to thou and thee. I met my uncle again when I visited Cernauti in 1968. He flew with the plane from Moscow. Uncle Berthold died in the 1980s. There's nobody else left from my mother's side now.

I remember that around the age of 5 or 6, my sister was ill. In order not to stay with her, I was taken to my maternal grandfather. It was like a holiday for me. My father came to me every day with a bag of chocolates. I had to be very good. I got along well with my grandparents.

Grandfather Jakob had a brother in Poland, who lived in Lvov. I do not remember his name. He visited us once, in 1938-1939, before the war, and he gave me 100 lei. A kilo of bread cost 1 leu and something back then, so with 100 lei one could to buy almost 100 kg of bread. 100 lei were a lot of money. I remember that we walked him to the train station. I do not know what happened with my grandfather's family from Poland. They all certainly died [in the Holocaust], when the Germans came.

I know a lot less about the family from my father's side. My grandparents lived in Dymka commune, in Bukovina (today Ukraine). I don't know where they were born. In Dymka the majority of the inhabitants were Romanians - it was a Romanian commune. My grandparents from Dymka spoke Yiddish (their native tongue) at home, although the commune was Romanian. My paternal grandfather, David Jawetz, was an intellectual, a merchant. My grandmother, my father's mother, was also called Frieda. My grandfather had a beautiful house, one of the most beautiful houses in Dymka. It was a newly built house. They had some forest and some land, but they didn't work it alone. They also had a mixed shop with everything. They got along very well with their neighbors. They were very well seen because they owned the only shop and they sold on tick. Surely the shop wasn't open on Saturdays - the Jawetz grandparents were religious, Orthodox Jews. Aside from taking care of the shop, they worked in it, they also had a milk machine - it produced the cream. They were rather well off. They had a garden, but I don't remember them having animals. They lived with one of the daughters, Sofia, and with my father's brother-in-law. Grandfather David was an ill man ever since I knew him. He lied in bed all the time and he wore a beard. There was no synagogue in Dymka, but I believe he said his prayers daily. He was religious - he wore a kippah, but I don't know if that was all the time, because I visited them rather seldom.

My father, Leon Jawetz, was born in Dymka on January 30th, 1899. He graduated from high school, and during World War I he served in the army under Austro-Hungary, and he was in Czechoslovakia. He learned to be a surgeon's assistant in the army. Dad had four sisters: Ieti, Sofia, Lotti and Berta.

Ieti had a shop and a tavern in Hlyboka together with her husband, Schnarch. They had two children: Jakob and Elka, and they were a religious family. Only Ieti and the children came back from Siberia, where they were taken during the Holocaust; her husband died there. Ieti emigrated together with Jakob's family, who was married to Rita, and Elka's. Until then, they stayed in Cernauti, where Jakob worked in a textiles factory, and Elka was a worker. There were around 35 000 of them in Cernauti. After emigrating, Ieti and Elka lived in Ramat Gan, and Jakob in Arad (Israel), where he worked in a textiles factory; he doesn't have any children. Elka is married to Leibu Meidler, an electrician; they have a son, Isiu. Elka is the one who always calls me, every year, on holidays.

Sofia married Daniel Fuchs. They are the ones who had a forest, a shop and a milk-cream machine in Dymka. They lived together with grandfather David. Sofia was taken to Transnistria, but she came back, she emigrated to Israel in 1948 and she was a housewife there. Sofia and Daniel had two children: Ariel and Efraim. Ariel was an associate in a lithography with Israel Schaumberger, a cousin. His wife is from South Africa, they live in Ramat Gan, and they have two children - a boy and a girl. Efraim was an officer, then a colonel in the army. Now he is retired and lives in Beersheva. He also has two children.

Lotti lived in Stanesti, about 20 km away from Adancata. All the family - husband and children - were taken to Transnistria. The parents died there during the Holocaust. Out of the three children, Jakob and Frieda died in Transnistria, but Ariel, whom we all called Leibu, and who in Israel was called Leon, came back. He stayed in Cernauti for a while and married Elka. He emigrated together with auntie Ieti, Elka, Jakob and Rita. Leibu died in Israel.

Berta, who was married with Sami Schaumberger, was taken to Transnistria, where she also died during the Holocaust. They had a handmade goods shop - they sold lengths of fabrics for suits. Their children - Gustav, Israel, Miriam - live in Israel. Gustav, the eldest, was in the Soviet army in Belarus, for about 3 years, after being liberated from Transnistria. He left for Israel after about 10-15 years, not at the same time with his brothers, who, being younger, left to Israel directly from Transnistria, as orphans of war. Gustav was a math teacher in Cernauti, as well as in Israel. He has two children: Igor and Sonia. Igor served the army in Israel, and then he set up a lithography with Ariel Fuchs. Miriam is married to Mordechai, who comes from Poland. They live in Tel-Aviv and they have a haberdasher's shop. They have two children: a boy, Schmulik, very religious, and a girl, Pitzi.

Growing up

My parents, Leon and Adela, got married in 1923. They also had a religious wedding at the synagogue in Hlyboka. It certainly was not an arranged marriage. My parents dressed according to the fashion, especially my mother cared about fashion. Lusia, my sister, was born on September 23rd, 1924, in Hlyboka. I was born on August 29th, 1930, also in Hlyboka.

Before having our own house, we rented a place from a German family, named Moor. I remember where the house was: on the way from the train station to the center of the town. I think we lived there since I was born until I was 6 or 7 years old. We had two rooms. They had a household - pigeons, hens. Back then, my parents had the shop in a different building. But there the shop was robbed several times by thieves from the neighboring villages. I remember that one time they made a hole in the wall. Then we demolished that building and we built our own house there. We had quite a difficult financial situation: daddy kept borrowing money from one place and giving it back to somebody else.

We built our house rather slowly, my dad built it, together with the shop, but it was not finished because of lack of funds. The foundation for the bathroom and two more rooms was built. 3 rooms, the kitchen and the hall were ready. The haberdasher's shop was in one room with a big window, facing the street, we had one more big room and a smaller one and across the big room there was the kitchen. The kitchen was not big. Mum, being a housewife, took care of it. We had a servant for a while, I think until 1940, but she didn't let her in the kitchen much, she didn't let her cook. The servant did the tidying around the house, the cleaning, maybe she peeled potatoes. In the shop my parents sold socks and buttons as well. I don't remember if it was open on Saturdays. When the Russians came, in 1940, instead of having the shop my father built a wall and turned it into a room.

We had massive furniture in our house. In my parents' room, above of the bed, there was a very delicate needlework in a big oval frame. My mum usually did a lot of needlework. I remember that we had a big picture made of linen, cut in bas-relief, so that human-like faces would appear. Back then people usually did a lot of needlework to put on the walls, for example, they embroidered on a piece of cloth with a different color, red or blue, a saying in German: "Arbeit macht das Leben" [There is no life without work]. She also liked to crochet.

We used wood for heating. We had a stove with an oven. In the courtyard we had a woodhouse made of timber. I worked in the garden together with my mum. We had a small garden, where we had beds with garlic, onions, carrots, peas. The garden was long; it was about 150 meters long. We also grew hens. We had a cat and a dog too. My dad had help when he worked with cereals.

We never went anywhere on vacation. I remember that my sister went to Campulung once, but we did not use to go anywhere with our parents. She left only once on a camp for children. My dad always found something to read in his spare time, and mum was busy with the household - she always had something to do in the house: needlework, she never went to bed early.

Dad was a radio salesman at Philips. He went from village to village and he received percents from what he sold. As it was a big town, 8.000-10.000 inhabitants, there were radios in Adancata. We also had a radio in our house. It ran on batteries, not with electricity. I think there was no electricity at that time, we used gas lamps. We had to change the batteries. I remember when I heard on the radio the Hungarian csardas [folk dance] for the first time. It impressed me very much, it was the first time I heard Hungarian music. There was also a Hungarian family from Szeged in Adancata. They were the only ones who spoke Hungarian. I learnt to say "one- two" in Hungarian from them.

In about 1936-1937 dad also had a manufacture. It produced fabric. Simultaneously with his work at Philips, my father worked at CAM ('Casa Autonom? de Monopol', 'The Independent Monopoly House'), also in Adancata. He was in charge of the wholesales, tobacco for example. Dad traveled a lot with his job. He was a representative, he did contracts with Philips, but he also marketed potatoes wagons. He went all the way to Constanta, Bucuresti, Ploiesti. I remember that in Constanta there was one man who always bought potatoes by the wagon - he was called Star Galateanu. From Bessarabia, my father brought around 10-15 cases of grapes. He always brought us something from his trips, toys for example.

My father's grandfather died when I was 6 years old, around 1936-1937, he is buried in Hlyboka in the Jewish cemetery. When grandfather David died I remember that my father traveled a lot. As he was on the train, when he had to recite the kaddish, he gathered 10 men and he recited the kaddish on the train.

As he was a good organizer, from 1940, when the Russians came to Hlyboka, until 1941, my father was a shareholder with 40% and manager in some sort of vegetables shop: they collected vegetables, fruits, cereals from villages and stewed them - for example the fruits - or shipped them in train wagons to Bessarabia or Dobrudja. Grandfather Jakob worked as a bookkeeper here because he had to give up his shop, due to the nationalization 1 of the houses. If I'm not mistaken, uncle Berthod, my mother's younger brother, was also my father's employee. I don't know if my father and my grandfather worked on Saturdays.

My father knew Yiddish, but he talked to us only in German, which was his native tongue, and ours too. Both parents spoke German. Although I don't speak Yiddish, I would understand it, because I speak German and Yiddish is similar to German. We had books at home, but when the legionaries 2 came to power, we buried two trunks with books in the back of the courtyard. Dad dug them out when the Russians came. Dad loved the poems of Heinrich Heine, Schiller, Goethe very much [some of the greatest German writers, 18th century] - slightly right wing writers. He liked to recite them in German. Dad also acted when I was small. So did mum. The acting evenings were held in a hall - cultural evenings were held. They read newspapers too - my father generally read German newspapers. He also had press subscriptions - he received magazines from Czechoslovakia too, because he liked politics, verses, and poetry a lot.

As far as politics in my childhood is concerned, dad was threatened that if he didn't quit politics he would be imprisoned. The commissary called my grandfather David's attention to it, and he came and he kneeled in from of my father, asking him to give up politics. I know he was also beaten once, he had his arm in plaster, and his bone didn't heal for a long time. I think my father's inclination towards politics appeared when he was a young boy - he was a party member in the Social Democratic Party, a party that was illegal back then, during the legionaries' time. My father was very good friend of Lotar Radaceanu, who later became Minister of Labor. He didn't live in the same town with us, but he was also from Bukovina, from Cernauti I think. He was also president of the Social Democrat Party for a while. When the communists came, in the 1940s, he died under very dubious circumstances. I think he attended a meeting in Helsinki, and he was liquidated. My father did social democratic propaganda; he spoke at the gatherings of the Social Democratic Party. He had the gift of speech. He wrote articles in the local newspaper, Neue Zeit ['New Times'], an independent German newspaper [edited in Cernauti]. My father was a very well known man.

Hlyboka looked very well when I was a child. It was quite a big settlement and very widely spread. That's why it is called Adancata. There was also a forest there. I remember that there were some hills where I sledged during the winter, skied or skated. I think that Wednesday was our market day. My mother was in charge of the market. There were around 70-80 Jewish families in Adancata. The Germans were also many. Our neighbors were Germans. Jews didn't live apart from the others, but scattered. We got along very well - we had German neighbors. Only when the war broke out they changed, they grew colder, but towards everybody. The typical Jewish occupation was commerce. There were doctors too - about 3 in Adancata, a postmaster, intellectuals, but mainly traders. Until 1941 they lived well.

Our religious life

There was only one synagogue in Adancata. There was no such thing as Neolog or Orthodox there. The ones who were more religious went there daily, the others once a week or only during the holidays. My father, for example, went there only during the holidays and on the anniversary of his parents' deaths. I never heard of Neolog and Orthodox until I came to Arad. I don't think we had a rabbi, but there has a cheder. I didn't go there, because my parents didn't want me to get spoilt. There were all sorts of children, they cursed sometimes, and they wanted to protect me. My father hired a melamed for me, but when nobody was home, I ran away. I locked him in the house and I left. My parents reproved me, but they didn't beat me - only my mother hit me sometimes. I remember the melamed taught me the alphabet and how to say the prayers. He was in his forties and he wore a beard. He went from house to house and the taught children, but he didn't have many students, because most of them went to the cheder. Dad wanted me to learn at least what was necessary for the bar mitzvah, which didn't actually happen, because of our leaving to Asia.

For me religion means to be human first of all: not to lie, not to steal, not to do bad things. My parents didn't preach me about religion, but I have inherited a lot from them. I never heard my parents lying to me or to others. I didn't see such things in our house. They really gave us an education. I remember mum reproved me once because she heard me cursing. When I was 8 or 9 years old she caught me smoking and she threatened that she would tell my father. I didn't smoke after that. I wasn't a smoker or a drinker. I never drank beer, let alone brandy. I probably tasted it for the first time when I was 20 years old, when I was in Arad. My parents weren't drinkers either.

On holidays mum made all sorts of dishes: you mixed scraped potatoes with egg and yeast, and then let it leaven and then put it in the oven. After that it was cut into slices - it was an extraordinarily tasty dish. I believe it was also a traditional Jewish dish. Mum also made maize cake, from a mixture of corn flour, eggs, sugar, which was left to yeast and then put in the oven. Mum made all sorts of dishes: marinated meatballs and she put raisins in the sauce. She also made triangular dumplings parties: you cut the dough in a triangular shape, then fill it with marmalade or potatoes with fried onion, then boil them. Once uncle Berthold wanted to make a joke and told mum to fill one dumpling with feathers and gave it to a certain person. Mum, instead of giving it to the person Bertold said, gave it to him. I believe the dishes mum made were specific for the Bukovina area; in fact, they were Austrian and German dishes. She also made oblong dumplings, from scraped potatoes and eggs. She put inside plums or cottage cheese: a sort of slightly peppered cheese. When the dumplings were ready she rolled them in fried breadcrumbs - they were very good. There were occasions when she made 7-8 types of cakes at one time.

Holidays were very beautiful in our house; we observed the traditions one hundred percent. Mum lit the candles on Friday evenings - until 1940 when we left. My family went to the synagogue only on the high holidays, on New Year and Long Day. Dad and mum fasted, I think, on the Long Day. I also liked Pesach. You could always tell when there was a holiday in our house. Mum prepared everything so that there was an air of feasting. Moreover, we dressed in a more special way. Although we were not religious, she made all the traditional dishes. My favorite holiday was Purim. On Purim she made hamantashen, marmalade triangular dumplings. She loved to cook, especially deserts. I ran into a cousin of mine not long ago, Gustav, son of Sami and Berta, who told me that mum was renowned for her cakes and for the fact that she cooked several types of cakes: chocolate cake, hazelnut cake, 'mezes' [honey in Hungarian] cake, 'colaci' [milk loaf], 'cremes' [cream cake] with very thinly spread dough, kuglof [ring-cake], but different from the one we have here, with cocoa, poppy cake, apple strudel. There wasn't one week left without a cake. Until 1941...

My parents weren't very religious, but on Pesach we changed the tableware with the one we kept in the attic. We couldn't wait for the tableware to be brought downstairs. We probably visited our relatives on Pesach. We went to my maternal grandparents because they lived there, in Adancata. My maternal grandfather led the evening. I remember that on Pesach, when I was 5-6 years old, I liked to wait for Eliahu to come and empty his glass of wine. My other grandparents, from my father's side, were much older. Grandpa David was a sick man, he always lied in bed.

We always had guests in our house, every week on Friday and Saturday evenings, or on the high holidays. My parents had a lot of friends. They met very often. A few families gathered and played cards or other fun games: for example, you had to jump over a chair, and if you couldn't, you had to take off your coat. I was a child, but I remember some things - they talked, played domino or some other game. They met almost every week. My parents' friends were Jews and non-Jews alike.

I went to a German kindergarten. When I was there I learnt to play the piano, and I also learnt to play the violin in private, but I didn't go on with any of them. I only studied piano for a year, when I was 6-7 years old. I studied the violin for 6-7 months as well. I went to school in Adancata. I liked mathematics the best. I learnt well, in general. I studied the first year of high school in 1940, in Cernauti. I was at Mihai Eminescu high school. Lusia, my sister, also graduated from the Fine Arts high school in Cernauti.

The pre-war situation in Cernauti

Cernauti was a very beautiful town. It was Romania's second most important city, a multi-national city, with universities recognized all over Europe, newspapers in different languages - German, Romanian, Ukrainian, Polish. There was the Neue Zeit ['Timpuri Noi', 'New Times'] in German. When I visited Cernauti in 1968-69 it looked terrible. The population also changed about 95 percent. When I was there it was a very clean town. Some time ago it was called the 'small Vienna'. Downtown there was a very beautiful street for walking, Herrenstrasse - that is the 'gentlemen's street', with all sorts of shops. There were also trolleybuses and trams. The city was up a hill, and the surroundings were beautiful. The university had, and it still does, a splendid building, of the kind I haven't seen in Romania yet. It was an industrial city, with a lot of textile industry.

The change of the population was because of the fact that about 80% of the Jews, Poles, Germans, Romanians there left, and Russians and Ukrainians came instead. In 1940, right before the war, the Germans left - I remember that German officers came to solve the problems of those who were leaving. These officers were invited in Cernauti at the Russian military parade in 1941, two or three weeks before the war started. It was a blitz krieg; nobody expected it, especially because the Germans had a friendship and non- aggression treaty with the Russians. 99% of the Jews were taken to Transnistria. However, in Cernauti many of them stayed behind [escaped] thanks to mayor Popovici, who saved thousands of Jewish citizens. He has a monument in Israel at Yad Vashem. I also have relatives who escaped thanks to him.

The atmosphere was already tensed before the war, after 1936, especially when the Cuzists 2 and the legionaries governed. There were many pogroms back then. When the legionaries ruled, the [Cuza-Goga] Government received an ultimatum from England and France to remove this legionary government. The government was removed in 2-3 weeks and after that the period when the Germans took over Austria and Poland followed.

In 1939, when there were massive concentrations, there was an infantry division from Dorohoi in Adancata. The concentrations took place before the war started in Poland. There were many 'teteristi'. The 'teteristi' were the ones wearing a red and white ribbon, a sign that they graduated from high school. [Note: 'teteristii' were soldiers in the Romanian army conscripted for a shorter period of time]. There were always 4-5 soldiers coming in our house as guests - father invited them. I remember 3 or 4 brothers from Dorohoi who played the violin and sang as well. They were extraordinarily nice people. They sang Jewish songs. They were a lot of fun. We served them lunch every time they could get away from their regiment. They did their military service in Adancata. O September 1st, 1939, the war broke out in Poland. Romania had really good relations with Poland. There were also lots of refugees coming - they came in carts, or with trains, and we took food to the train station to help them. They came by the thousands. Part of them stopped in Romania, but the majority left for France because they had traditional relations with France. [Note: they had to take a detour through Romania because the Germans were advancing from the West.] Many of them probably left from there to the USA, because there is a large Polish community there nowadays. There are also many Jews in the USA.

My father's involvement in politics was the main reason why we took refuge. If we hadn't taken refuge, we would have been the first on the list. We left all of a sudden and our relatives stayed behind. They thought the Romanians were coming to liberate them, but that didn't happen at all. When we left we knew from the radio what was going on in Germany and Poland. We knew about Kristallnacht 4 from Germany, that the Jews had to clean the streets and so on.

Our life in Uzbekistan during the war

During the war, between 1941-1944, we were all - our family - away in Uzbekistan. How did we leave for Uzbekistan? It wasn't our choice. There was no time for talks. Panic ruled. We traveled in a cart for two-three weeks to Ukraine and we stayed for a month there, in Zincov, Poltava region. Then they wanted to draft my dad in the army. He was very desperate, I went to the commissariat and I cried and I don't remember what happened, but they let him go. In Ukraine, where we first took refuge, people received us very well. They gave us food and I think we stayed in a rented house. Dad worked there for a month at the vegetables factory. After a month, the Germans drew closer. We went with the cart farther on, up to the town of Belgorod, region Voronezh, and then we got on a goods train and traveled as far as the train went. I don't know if my father knew or not the direction when we got on the train. We left the cart there. We passed through Ural, through Siberia, through Kazakhstan and we ended up in Uzbekistan, in the Buchara region. We lived in Kermine. When we got there, we slept in the street for a few nights. Mum had taken with her the eiderdown and pillows. Then we received a house, but there was no furniture in it - we slept on the floor. My dad and my sister started working. Mt father worked as a surgeon's assistant, and my sister was a clerk in a bread factory.

Everything was different: the population was Moslem, the traditions were different. I felt no rejection in Uzbekistan. Life was very hard, salaries were very small, the market was very expensive and generally their lifestyle was very different from ours. I was 11 years old when I arrived in Uzbekistan. I went to school there for only two years, but not all the time. I went to a school where they taught in Russian. I knew Russian from home because we had many Ukrainian neighbors, and Russian and Ukrainian are alike. There were native Jews in Uzbekistan, but there were also many Jews refugees from Ukraine, Bessarabia and Bukovina. From Ukraine there were also many Jews. I didn't make many friends there. I went to the market as well to earn money, although I was young. For example I bought sheets, which mother sew and made into clothes. The women wore veils. We went to the market in another commune or little town, mother stayed aside with the pile, and I sold two or three pieces at a time. The Uzbeks from villages used as means of transportation the donkeys and the camels. In the marketplace they came with the sacks on the back of the donkeys.

The food was very different from the one we had home. There was no pork or potatoes. Our greatest wish when we came back was for mum to make for us a pot of potatoes and a pot of corn mush. They ate turtle, though. Near our place there was a turtlery - they ate the liver and different parts of the turtle. The mutton was the most expensive, especially the 'caracal' kind. This kind of sheep had a tail that weighed 10-15 kg. Because it was too heavy, the Uzbeks put wheels under the tail, so that the sheep didn't get tired. You could also find horse and camel meat. The milk - camel's and sheep's milk - was very fat because of the climate. There was no cream - they used the skin of milk.

The fruits were very good, very sweet. The grapes had over 30% sugar, and people made raisins from the seedless grapes. The Uzbeks came to the marketplace with sacks of raisins to sell. They sold them in half a kilo or a kilo. If someone went into a teahouse, he would buy half a kilo of raisins to have with the tea. People drank a lot of tea in Uzbekistan, because the heat was very strong. We drank tea as well because the climate required it. They had a sort of green tea, which went very well without sugar, only with raisins. There were no chairs in the teahouse. People sat on the floor, and smoked pipe. They also sold peaches and apricots - fresh or dried. They were very tasty.

The cotton production was very high. There was also something similar to corn mush, made from some grains called 'jugara', a sort of corn with white ears. The taste was similar to corn. Uzbeks ate rice as well. The quality of the wheat was very good. The wheat harvest took place twice a year. The bread was light white - I have never eaten such good bread. After a while, because of the war, the bread started to be filled with straws. Those who didn't work received 300 grams of bread per day, and those who worked received 600 grams, it was very difficult. I helped a woman there who sold bread, and whatever she had extra she let me sell on the black market. They also ate something similar to the flat loaf of bread we had. The people had ovens in their courtyards. They used as fuel the dung from horses and cows: they gathered it in piles, dried it and they used it for heating. After the dug was dry, it caught fire, and when the oven was really hot, people stuck the flat loaves of bread to the oven walls; when they were ready, they fell from the walls into the oven.

My parents adopted a little girl from there - Alla. Dad worked in the hospital - the girl's father was on the front. Alla was born on March 31st, 1942, in Kermine. She was called Haia Katzefman, we gave her the name Alla, and then, after she moved to Israel, she got the name Haia back. I think the fact that she was Jewish was a coincidence. Her mother was hospitalized, and complained that she had a 6 weeks, or 6 months old child - I don't remember exactly - and dad said he would ask mum if she didn't want to take care of a child for 2-3 weeks. Mum agreed, and when Alla's mother died, people came to take her to an orphanage, but my parents didn't give her away.

During the war we listened to the radio every day, and I looked on the map to see where the front was, to know when we would leave home. I loved geography. Unfortunately I lived very hard times. I was 12-13 years back then and I listened to the radio daily, and I knew how the front advanced. At home we had listened Radio Free Europe 5, Voice of America, Kol Israel, but in Uzbekistan we didn't have a radio. There were only megaphones and newspapers, which said only what the Russians wanted.

Post-war

We decided to leave for Ukraine immediately after the liberation. They didn't want to release my dad from the hospital - under the Russians it wasn't easy at all to change your job, but we all left all the same. I also worked during the holiday at a shop that supplied the army with vegetables, I went in villages, I had a cart and I gathered vegetables. When I wanted to go back to school in the 8th grade they didn't want to release me from work. I don't know how we solved it in the end, but they released me after all.

We left Kermine by train in 1944. I don't remember how many times we changed the train. Generally the train was full with military on their way to the front. The trains were loaded with warfare. It was a train with several floors. I remember it was extremely crowded, we had nowhere to wash, there were lice...I don't know where we got the food from. It took us about two weeks to get home. At first we went to some relatives in Cernauti for a week, and then we went home to Hlyboka, where we lived from 1944 until 1946. Our house had a foundation for another two rooms. I remember I found an anti-tank bomb in the sand. Mum was very frightened.

When we came back from Asia there was already a certain hatred, because many had plundered and they didn't like the fact that we came back. When we came back no one admitted that they had taken things from our house. They didn't even give us back a document. On the other hand, when uncle Berthold from Moscow came back, a neighbor gave him back a sowing machine, pillows, an eiderdown, and some other things. We found our house inhabited by some Russians, but they released it immediately. Few Jews came back. The ones who were in Transnistria didn't even come back to Hlyboka, they went to Israel.

It was very sad when we came back from Asia, everything was like a graveyard. Both my maternal grandparents had been deported from Hlyboka: grandmother died on the way, and grandfather died during the Holocaust, in Transnistria. My paternal grandmother was shot on the way to Transnistria. Over 100 Jews were killed in Adancata in July 1941. They were buried in a mass grave. I went there with my wife and my cousins from my father's side - Gustav, Elka, Leibu, Jakob, who lived in Cernauti, in 1968. A monument was built with their names, but my cousin with his grandchildren and children were there last year [in 2002] and the monument was gone. It is like somebody wants to leave no marks.

Although we had obtained the house, dad decided that we should leave, thinking of us, the children. He knew we would have no future there. He went to Bucharest, where he knew Lotar Radaceanu, and he gave him a repartition to Arad. The prefect Vostinar from Arad gave his recommendation to UTA ('Uzinele Textile Arad', 'Arad Textiles Plants'); there was probably a vacancy. Dad worked during the first year as a stationary department inspector, and then he was head of the statistics department. He got along well with everybody. Mum and dad lived in Arad from 1946. Lusia worked as a clerk at UTA, and Alla went to school. I head about our house in Hlyboka that it was demolished and something else was built instead. It was in the very center of the town. We received no compensations for the house.

We officially came to Arad in 1946 - we were repatriated. I believe the motive in the papers was the departure for Israel. We came to Romania in a cart. From home to the border there were only about 30 kilometers. Bukovina was a very clean and rich region. The difference wasn't very big. Austro- Hungary had been there and here as well, so the differences weren't very big. Arad was much more quiet and cleaner than it is now. Dad had been to Arad in 1936-37 and maybe he was the one who chose to be repartitioned here.

When we moved to Arad in 1946 we lived for about 2 years on 6, Virgil Rotareanu Street. After that, one of my dad's bosses, Fischer, who had a very beautiful house (on Mihai Viteazu Street, were Dermatology is today, on the first floor) gave dad two rooms and the kitchen, because otherwise the house would have been taken away from him, because he lived there only with his wife. He trusted my dad a lot - they even had papers. When the hospital was built there we were given a place to live on 1, Grigore Alexandrescu Street, on the second floor. That's where we lived until we bought this house in 1951.

I remember that when my father and I were at work, we received some wood at home, and mother carried it to the cellar alone. Then she fell ill, and the doctors didn't know what was wrong with her. Her health had been affected by all the journeys to Central Asia, to Romania, she couldn't diet. The marks of the war took their toll: she died of jaundice. Mother died in 1948, when she was 43 years old, and she is buried in the new Jewish cemetery from Gradiste, here in Arad. After mum died, I ran away from school to recite the kaddish in the synagogue. I went there every day for eleven months, and when I was in school, I ran out the window. It was a sort of a soul duty for me. The entire time mother was ill Alla stayed in the house of my future wife.

I went to the professional school here and I am a dental technician. When I graduated professional school I was the first in my class and all the school. I learnt although I didn't cram at home. I always got along well with my classmates. My native tongue is still German, but I speak Hungarian, Romanian and Russian as well.

Married life

I am together with my wife Iuliana, nee Simon, since 1946. We got married in 1950. We didn't have a religious ceremony. She isn't Jewish and she was born on July 5th, 1929, in Arad. Her native tongue is Hungarian. She too is a dental technician - she graduated from the professional high school. After we got married we lived with my dad on Grigore Alexandrescu Street. My dad and my sister had one room, and we had the other; we shared the kitchen. Life was hard back then. Once I stood in a queue all night to get 3 meters of cloth for a suit. It was the first suit I ever had. It was dark blue with thin red stripes.

In 1950, when dad established that we would go and file for leaving for Israel, I didn't show up, and he realized that I wanted to get married, but that I was ashamed to confess it. After we got married, dad and Alla got the passport, but my wife and I and my sister didn't. We would have liked to go because life here was very hard and it had no perspectives for the future. We both agreed on that. Dad left for Israel in 1951, and I volunteered for army service because my wife was pregnant and I thought I had better get it over with sooner, so that I could go back home and help her. Dad would have wanted to give me a medical certificate to dodge the army, but I wanted to know everything was settled correctly. I served in Bucharest, in artillery, between 1950-1952. My wife managed in the meantime with her parents' help. Dad had left, but he had left the house to my wife's mother and sister.

My dad worked as a surgeon's assistant in Israel. He lived in Ramat Gan. When he arrived in Israel he found out the address of Alla's father [who lived in Russia, in the region of Bessarabia] from an uncle of hers who lives in USA. Alla went to meet her father in 1960 - she was about 20 years old. He received her coldly; she was upset that he didn't take an interest in her fate. Alla lived and worked as a kindergarten teacher in Mizra kibbutz. She met her husband, Sar-Shalom Eyal, there, in Mizra kibbutz, and they got married. He was an officer in the army, and 6 or 7 years ago he opened a salami factory in Iasi. Alla has four children: Gilad, Hila, Sai and Ran. I visited her for almost a month and I met her parents-in-law - they were from Poland: very nice people. Alla died in May 2003.

I think I got to have my own household easier than my parents. When I was 26, in 1956, I already had my house without any help. I worked very hard. I had a lab and I worked even 13-14 hours a day. I was already married and I had one of the girls. The other one was born at the end of 1956. We got married early - I hadn't turned 20 by that time. I was as conscientious as possible all the time. I was head of the laboratory for 30 years and whenever I had inspections, they would take me along to control somewhere else, my work was that well organized.

In 1958 we filed again for emigration to Israel. I kept in touch with dad very often by means of letters. Dad kept writing me that life in Israel was very hard: he said that one can still find work there until he is 40, but that after that it is harder, life wasn't that easy. He himself lived in a tent there at first. My father died in 1961 in Tel Aviv. When dad died I recited the kaddish in his memory as well. I received the passport in 1964. We were announced that a person from Securitate 6 had already come to move into our house. But we gave up leaving. I had just signed up to buy a car, a Fiat 8-50, Iudit was 12-13 years old, and Adela was 7, and I asked myself what would I do in Israel, with two children growing up, I had a house, a car...However, I had work colleagues who left for Israel. There were two emigration waves: one in 1951 and one in 1964, when I got my passport. Many from Arad left then. There were approximately 10000 Jews in Arad, now there are only 300, and most of the families are mixed.

I have always been interested in politics. I believed the state had to proceed in such a manner as to create jobs, so that those who didn't want to work wouldn't have a job, but those who wanted to work could have living conditions. Because of the anti-Semitism I have experienced, communism drew me at first, because it theoretically defended the rights of all nationalities. Because I was young, inexperienced, and because I was reading the newspapers and listening to the radio, I couldn't realize what the truth was, but later I began to understand. I did pretty well under communism. I was head of the laboratory and, compared to others, I cannot complain. I wasn't a party member, I was only in the UTM, The Young Workers Union, while I was in the army. I had a managerial position, but I wasn't a party member, although my boss, doctor Muresan, told me to become a member to strengthen my position. I told him that I cannot do something I didn't believe in and that I would do my duty without being a party member. He went on insisting until my daughter left for Israel, after that he didn't say anything to me anymore. If you had relatives abroad you were followed all the time and you had to be careful what you talked about.

Today I can make the difference between communism and capitalism although each has it good and its bad sides. For example, what is good in communism: it gives every man the possibility to work, gives him a place to live. But on the other hand, the one with the possibilities has to lower to the level of the one who doesn't work anything, and then everything is leveled and there is no advantage, or an encouragement for the one who can do more as compared to the one who does nothing. We had in our lab a dental technician, who was an exceptionally kind boy, but who had the vice of drinking. He had been disciplinary moved to our department, and I was afraid, so that an accident wouldn't happen to him, because we worked with engines. In vain I talked to the head of stomatology to have him moved from our department. The good part of capitalism is that the hardworking and resourceful people can thrive. Moreover, in capitalism there is no obstruction of religion: one has to have the liberty to believe in whatever he wants. For as long as I was in Uzbekistan, I never heard of somebody asking you what your nationality was. We have this carryover of nationalism from even before the war. In Arad, for example, whenever the price of hens, or of something else went up in the market, people would say that the Jewish holidays were drawing in. When it rained in September, people said that the Jewish holidays were coming. The primitive man believed anything he heard.

I went with my wife to the cinema very often in our free time. I liked history, war movies. I have seen many Hungarian and Russian movies. I remember the title of a Hungarian movie: 'Two by two suddenly makes 5', and another very good Russian movie, 'The eagle'. Before we got married we went to the movies every week so that we could be together. We also went to the theater or to the swimming pool. We went to the theater two-three times a year, especially when there was a folk music. I loved football very much. We went to the matches together, we never missed one. My wife entered the gate, and I jumped the fence. I also like basketball, and handball, but I like football best. I was a UTA member, but I didn't do sports, I just paid my due. I was at a match in Bucharest once. A man, a supporter of 'Progresul' team, died of emotion when our team, UTA, scored. I accompanied the team UTA to Hunedoara as well, we drove the motorcycle through the snow all the way to Cluj, we went to Timisoara countless times. But for the last two years we stopped going to matches because since I had my eye surgery my distance vision is not so good anymore.

We went on holidays all over the country. The first time we went by motorcycle in 1959, and we drove the car in 1964. I went for treatment in Covasna for 15 years in a row, I drove my motorcycle as far as Constanta, I saw the monasteries in Moldavia, I went to Poiana Brasov. We went with the tent around the country as well. We had one month vacation, and we shared it: we took two weeks one time, and then we left again. We went with the tent at the seaside as well, where we stayed for 10 days. We generally went with tickets from ONT. I also went with my wife to the restaurant: we listened to music, ate a grilled steak.

My daughters

We have two daughters, who were born in Arad: Iudit was born in 1951, and Adela in 1956. Iudit graduated from the dental techniques school in Arad. She observed the Christian holidays as well, because she grew up under the influence of her grandmother, my wife's mother. Adela, on the other hand, was very fond of me. I never influenced her. Adela also went to Talmud Torah classes. We observed both Christian and Jewish holidays at home, together. I didn't observe Sabbath because Saturdays were working days. The girls didn't have any problems because they were half Jewish. Adela even bragged about it. I didn't talk to them much about my time in Uzbekistan. I didn't want to influence them in any way. Iudit married a Jew from Arad, Stefan Weisz, an electrotechnics sub engineer, and Adela married an engineer from Gheogheni, Geza Geller, in 1984. Adela graduated from the Faculty of Stomatology in Cluj and she lives in Gheorgheni, Harghita county, where she is a stomatolog. Geza's father had been to Auschwitz, but he came back - he died about two years ago [approximately in 2002]. Adela and Geza met in Cluj. He studied electrotechnics and they met at the Jewish canteen. They got married in 1984 in the Orthodox synagogue in Arad, and rabbi Neumann from Timisoara came to officiate the wedding.

Iudit got married earlier, in 1970. Back then there was a rabbi in Arad. Iudit emigrated in 1973 with her husband. Iudit has two children, Ariel and Sandra. Ariel was born in 1974 in Israel. Iudit lived at first in Israel, and then she left for Canada so that she wouldn't have to go in the army. Her husband was always away in the army, and life wasn't easy. They had a probation period in Greece, where they both worked - she worked as a dental technician. She had just graduated sanitary school here. They stayed in Israel for about two years. She now lives in Canada, in Toronto, and she works as a dental technician. We keep in touch over the phone. She visits us when she's on vacation. Ariel started studying at the dental school here in Arad, but he gave it up after 6-7 months. After he went back to Canada, he married Angela (her parents are from Russia) and they have a girl, Vanessa. Ariel works at a telecommunications company. Sandra is 20 years old and she is a student.

My sister Lusia was a clerk in Arad, at UTA and at the Jewish community in Arad. She also got married here, in the synagogue. Her husband, Andrei Fuchs, was a bookkeeper at UTA. They had a boy, Stefan, who is an electronics engineer in Israel. She managed to emigrate in about 1982. She enlisted with her daughter-in-law, Agi. Her husband died here in the 1960s. She left with all her family and lived in Tel Aviv, where she was a pensioner. Lusia has two grandchildren - Roni and Dana. I have always kept in touch with my sister. She came very often in the country to visit us, every year. Every time she stayed for two-three weeks with us. In 1999 she suffered a severe accident - she was run over by a car and she was hospitalized. The last time she was in Romania was in 2000. I talked to her on the phone two days before she died, on February 26th, 2001, in Tel Aviv.

I have never had problems with anti-Semitism. But I don't like to hear the word 'stinking Jew'. I believe each nation should respect the others, because we are all people. I was happy when the Jewish state was born. After 2000 years, after being persecuted all the time, it was about time that Jews had their own state, where they wouldn't be cast out from. I was in Israel once before 1989 7. I was impressed. It is very beautiful. I was impressed first of all by the rapid growth - in only 50 years. I was in Israel for a month. I spent two weeks in the Mizra kibbutz. There was truly equality among people. Even if you were a professor, you still got your turn at cleaning, in the kitchen, at picking apples, at grooming animals. Hens laid eggs there twice in 24 hours, they had electric light day and night. Cows gave approximately 60-70 liters of milk per day. Everyone from the kibbutz had the right to have a vacation abroad once a year, at the kibbutz's expense. I was surprised in Israel by the big difference between an Israeli and an Arab village, the Israeli towns, which are very developed - everything is so beautiful, with water and greens. In Israel I was at the border with Lebanon, in Askelon, Arad, Ardot - a very beautiful town. I was alone in Israel. My wife went when Ariel was born.

I had a cerebral spasm about 7 years ago, in 1996, on a Saturday, August 13th. Adela had been here with her husband, and that very day they left for Gheorgheni, in the morning, about 8 o'clock. I was lying in bed, with my head against the bed frame, and all of a sudden I told my wife I was dying. I felt my head would crack open. I took medicines and I recovered, but after that, for 2-3 weeks, I grew so thin I could barely stand. Since then there are some things I don't remember. The doctor recommended that I should eat only vegetable margarine, and not eat pork, fats, and eat only one egg a week, because my cholesterol is a bit high.

I started going to the synagogue only recently. I think the life of the community had never been so well organized as it has been during the last 20 years, now that Mr. Ionel Schelssinger is president. Although the Jews are few, the activity is good. People can go do gymnastics, they can go to the library, to Oneg Sabbath on Friday evenings, which are held in the canteen. Before there had to be a list with the people coming to the prayer, so that there would be 10 people, now 13-15 come, without any appointment. The interest has increased. I go with my wife on Friday evenings, and on Saturday mornings I go alone. We also go together on Pesach. We also observe New Year and the Long Day, when I don't eat. During the day, I like to go to the market, listen to a match on the radio, or I like to read a book or the local newspaper, 'Observatorul' ['The Observer'], to which I have a subscription. I also read our community's newspaper, 'Shalom'.

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