Travel

Rachel Persitz
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: September 2002

My grandmother and grandfather on my mother's side, Haim Lagotskiy and Riva Lagotskaya, lived in the small town of Chernobyl, Kiev province, in the 1860s. The town had Ukrainian and Jewish inhabitants. There were 30 or 40 Jewish families. They were craftsmen and tradesmen: shoemakers, tinsmiths, carpenters, and so on. There was a synagogue and a cheder in town. My grandmother got married at 16. Their older daughter, Rohl, was born around 1884 when my grandmother was 18 years old. Then there came the sons Meyr, Zisl and Gersh and the daughters Bella, my mother, and Zlata.

My grandfather's family was very poor. My grandfather was a worker. He could build a brick house, construct a stove; and he was a good joiner and carpenter. He worked for richer people: merchants, the bourgeois and landlords. He was extremely honest and decent. Once he was replacing floors and discovered a treasure of jewelry and ancient golden coins. He immediately called the master showing him what he had found. The master thanked my grandfather and generously gave him one golden coin. He was very happy about the treasure and about my grandfather's honesty. My grandmother couldn't forget this incident for a few years and said, 'You should have taken a few coins, look how poor we are!' My grandfather replied, 'How could I lie to my poretz [lord in Yiddish]?'

My grandmother Riva was a housewife. Her children worked from their early childhood. The boys were helping their father and later studied to be shoemakers. The girls helped Riva about the house. They had a garden and a kitchen garden and kept livestock. They lived in a small house with a thatched roof. I remember this house well. There was a stove in the center of it. There were two rooms and a small kitchen. There were dried herbs and bunches of onions on the walls. There was a cellar to store potatoes and other food for winter. The furniture in the house was plain: tables, chairs, beds and a big wooden wardrobe. There were a few religious books in the house. The boys received elementary religious education. They went to cheder. Later they all became shoemakers.

My grandparents were very religious. Every morning my grandfather put on his tallit and tefillin and prayed, pronouncing strange words, as I recall. [The interviewee is talking about prayers in Hebrew.] He never worked on Saturdays, even if his employer wasn't very happy about it. They observed the Sabbath. My grandmother always tried to cook something delicious, even during the hard years of the Civil War [1918-1921]. Sometimes we just had plain potato pancakes, but they were so good. They celebrated all religious holidays: Pesach, Rosh Hashanah and Chanukkah.

My mother's older brother, Meyr, born in 1885, and his wife, Haya, lived in Chernobyl. His older son, Shaya, perished at the front during World War II. His second son, Zyunia, returned from the war as an invalid and died in 1954. Meyr, his wife and their two daughters were in Kustanai in evacuation. Meyr and Haya died in the middle of the 1960s. Their daughters, Sonia and Zhenia, live in Israel.

My mother's brother Zisl was born in 1887. During the war Zisl, his wife Rosa and their two daughters, Lisa and Sarah, evacuated to the Northern Caucasus. I don't know exactly what happened to them there - whether they perished in occupation or starved to death. They never returned from evacuation. Zisl's older son Zyunia was at the front and was awarded the 'Order of the Red Star'. He died in Israel in 1996.

My mother's younger brother Gershl was born in 1889. Before the beginning of the Great Patriotic War 1 he lived in Kiev with his wife Sorl, their daughters, Rosa and Eva, and their son Zyunia. Gershl was a shoemaker in Podol 2. When the war began only Eva and her two sons managed to go into evacuation. Gershl, his wife Sorl and Zyunia stayed in Kiev. Zyunia had tuberculosis and Gershl was afraid to move him. Rosa and her two children also stayed. They were all killed in Babi Yar 3. Eva and her sons returned to Kiev from evacuation. She worked in a bakery before the 1970s. She died in the middle of the 1990s. Her son Mark lives in Israel.

My mother's older sister Rohl died in an unknown epidemic before the Great Patriotic War. Her daughters Sonia, Zina and Basia live in Israel. We didn't keep in touch with them, so I don't have any information about them.

My mother's sister Zlata became a widow during World War II. Her husband perished at the front. He was a tailor before the war. They lived in Chernobyl. During the war Zlata and her son Zyunia were in evacuation. In the early 1970s Zlata, her son and his family moved to America. She died there shortly afterwards. Zyunia lives in Philadelphia now.

My mother, Bella Lagotskaya was born in 1892. She didn't get any education. She lived in Chernobyl with her parents and helped her mother with the housekeeping and gardening. When my mother turned 18 she left her parents' house. My grandfather Haim was very ill and couldn't provide for his big family any longer. His sons and his older daughter Rohl were living separately already, and my mother decided to go to Kiev. She became a seamstress in a tailor's shop, owned by Abram Persitz, the older brother of my father, Moshe Persitz.

I know hardly anything about my grandfather on my father's side, Samuel Persitz. I only know that he and my grandmother Riva lived in Simferopol, Crimea. My grandfather died before the revolution of 1917. My grandmother came to Kiev once, but I don't remember her.

I knew my father's brothers very well though. They all received religious education, finished cheder and were religious people. They didn't serve in the tsarist army. The service term was 25 years. Perhaps, they didn't go to the army because of their religious beliefs, or because they just didn't want to go. They bribed the authorities and were relieved from service.

My father's older brother Abram was born around 1880. Abram was married to a Jewish woman called Riva. He was a wealthy man before the revolution. He lived in a beautiful big apartment. His tailor's shop was still open during the NEP 4, but was expropriated later. Also, two other families got accommodation in Abram's apartment. This all had a dramatic impact on my uncle. He fell ill and died from a heart attack sometime in 1925. Abram had three sons: Mikhail, Boris and Shlema. His older sons graduated from the Kiev Polytechnic Institute and became engineers. His younger son, Shlema, studied at a technical college. During the war they were all in evacuation and returned to Kiev afterwards. Shlema died shortly after the war, and Mikhail and Boris died in the middle of the 1980s.

My father's other brother, Lazar, was born in 1885. Before the revolution of 1917 he lived with his family in a Siberian town, where he married a Jewish woman. He moved to Kiev in the early 1920s and lived with his brother Abram. Lazar was a tailor and made women's clothes. Lazar was in evacuation during the war, and then he returned to Kiev. He died in the early 1960s. Lazar's older daughter Lisa lives in Germany. His younger daughter Sonia died. Lazar's son Iosif was an engineer. In the late 1920s Iosif was sent to England by train, and he lived there several years. Later he lived and worked in Moscow, and now he lives in America.

My father was the same age as my mother. He was born in 1892. He lived with his older brother Abram and worked in his shop. He met my mother in this shop in 1910. My mother worked in the same shop and rented a room in Abram's house. They fell in love with each other.

My parents got married in 1911. They had a traditional Jewish wedding, although it was only a small one. The bride and bridegroom stood under the chuppah at the synagogue in Schekavitskaya street [this synagogue is still there]. There was a rabbi, and the closest relatives and friends were there. Abram paid for my mother's wedding gown and the rings. He covered all the other expenses for the wedding, too. This was all his support for the young couple. He probably wasn't very happy about Moshe marrying a poor girl whose parents didn't give her any dowry.

In the beginning my parents rented a small room in Podol 3. In 1912, after my older sister Genia was born, they moved to a small apartment. I was born there on 22nd July 1915. Our apartment was on the first floor of a three-storied building, owned by Karolina Korotkevich, a Polish woman. Karolina occupied a big three-bedroom apartment in the building. She owned a few houses in Podol. She was an older woman and had an executive manager to resolve all issues. They were small and shabby apartments that were rented by people with low income.

In the bigger room of our apartment there was an ancient wardrobe, a carved cupboard, a table and chairs, a sofa and a couch, where my sister and I were sleeping. In my parents' bedroom there were two beds. This furniture belonged to Karolina, but my father bought it from her piece by piece. There was a big stove in the kitchen. My mother cooked on it and baked bread. There was also a huge table there. My father worked at it. The Singer sewing machine was also there. After Abram lost his shop my father began to work at home. He became a highly professional ladies' tailor. He had many clients. My mother was helping my father with the ironing, lining and basting the parts together. I still have an image of it in my head: my father and mother working in the kitchen under the light of a kerosene lamp. We only got electricity in the middle of the 1920s. After the revolution the Soviet power dispossessed our landlady and forced her to move out of her apartment. The big family of a Bolshevik called Mikhailov moved into her apartment. Old Karolina got a small apartment in another street. Our apartment became state property.

During the revolution and the Civil War, when the power in Kiev was switching from the Reds 5, the Whites 6 and Denikin units 7 to military units of Simon Petliura 8, there were many pogroms in town. My mother took my sister and me to our grandmother Riva and grandfather Haim in Chernobyl. There were also bandits in Chernobyl, and we had to hide either in the attic or in the cellar of our grandparents' house. My sister was older and aware of the fearful reality. I didn't understand why we had to sit in the cellar when there were beautiful fields, woods and the Pripiat River outside. We stayed in Chernobyl for almost a year. When the Soviet power was established in Kiev we returned to Kiev. My grandfather Haim died in the early 1920s. My grandmother Riva visited us in Kiev several times when my mother was still alive. When the war began, and my mother's brothers, Meyr and Zisl, were preparing for evacuation, they decided to leave my grandmother behind. They didn't think that anybody would harm an old woman. She stayed in Chernobyl and was shot by the fascists in October 1941 along with other Jews in town.

My parents, and especially my father, were very religious. On Saturdays and on holidays my father went to the synagogue in Schekavitskaya Street while my mother and I waited for him at home. Every day he put on his tallit and prayed. On Friday my mother made a festive dinner for Saturday: stuffed fish, chicken broth and challah. In the evening we changed our clothes and got together at the table watching my mother light candles and my father say a prayer. My parents didn't work on Saturday. In the evening we all sat at the table to celebrate Sabbath. We also celebrated all Jewish holidays. I remember my parents buying matzah and bringing it home in big baskets, covered with white cloth. We also had special Pesach dishes that mother took out before the holiday. Mother also did a general clean-up of the house before the holiday. She cleaned the windows and hung fancy linen curtains. She covered the table with white crocheted starched tablecloth. My mother did everything herself and managed fine - we never had any help for the housekeeping.

My mother believed that Pesach was the most important Jewish holiday. She cooked the best food: fish, chicken, chicken broth with dumplings, rich stew and lots of pastries. There were dishes made from matzah on the table and sweet kosher wine that my father bought in the Jewish kosher store. My father conducted the seder telling us about the exodus of Jews from Egypt, about their journey across the desert under the guidance of Moses. My father used to hide a small piece of matzah, and my sister and I had to find it. We celebrated Rosh Hashanah, Purim and Chanukkah. My parents fasted on Yom Kippur. Sometimes we got invitations from Uncle Abram. When we grew up he took to liking my sister and me. He only had sons, and he always wanted to have a daughter. At Chanukkah Abram always invited us, gave my sister and me some money and treated us to candy and chocolates.

I began to study at a Russian school when I was 8, although there was a Jewish school in our neighborhood. Genia also studied at this school. Our parents always wanted us to get a higher education, and all higher educational institutions were Russian. Therefore we studied at the Russian school to avoid language problems in the future. There were Russian, Ukrainian, Polish and Jewish children at school. My classmates were very nice. We didn't care about nationality. We also had teachers of different nationalities. We were taught by our parents and teachers that all people were equal. My favorite subject was history. I also liked Ukrainian literature. Our teacher was Olga Kosach, the sister of a great Ukrainian poetess, Lesia Ukrainka 9. She told us a lot about Lesia and her attitude towards people. She had many friends of various nationalities. Olga was my favorite teacher.

I became a Young Octobrist 10, and a pioneer when I was in 4th grade. We were admitted to the pioneers in Kreschatik in the center of Kiev, near the monument of Karl Marx. My father and mother supported all our hobbies. My mother made me a fancy white blouse and a blue skirt on the occasion of my admission to the pioneers. We went to parades on 1st of May and October Revolution Day 11. My parents didn't celebrate state holidays. They followed the Jewish traditions and celebrated Jewish holidays. But they didn't have anything against our enthusiastic attitude towards the ideas of communism. We respected and understood the fact that our parents celebrated Jewish holidays. However, we secretly believed them to be retrogrades in their faith.

In winter 1931 my mother fell ill. She had a weak heart, but she tried to ignore it. But that time she was taken to hospital. She died of an infarction soon afterwards. My mother was taken from the morgue of the hospital to the cemetery, and no Jewish rituals were observed. But the rabbi said the last prayer over her grave. The cemetery was a few kilometers from town, and we walked all the way. My father was crying and grieving, but after a few months he brought another Jewish woman into the house and married her. My stepmother's name was Sorl, and she was the complete opposite of my mother. She was wicked and greedy. My sister Genia finished a course in something, I forget what it was exactly, and got a job as a secretary at the Kievenergo company. Genia was straightforward and tough when she was young, and she said that she couldn't stay at home with our stepmother. Genia moved to our mother's younger sister, Zlata. I stayed with my father because I felt sorry for him. He always tried to give me some money or food, but he always tried to do it so that my stepmother wouldn't notice.

In 1931 I finished 7th grade and went to work at the garment factory. I was a laborer. In 1933 there was a famine 12 in Ukraine, caused by the Bolsheviks. The situation in Kiev was a bit better than in other Ukrainian towns and villages, and many people came here looking for jobs and food. In the mornings, on my way to work, I often saw people sitting or lying in a park. It was hard to say whether they were dead or alive. At that time Sorl stopped giving me any food, although I gave my father part of my wages. I often went to Aunt Zlata for dinner. She cooked delicious meals, even in those hard times.

In autumn 1934 I entered the Rabfak 13, a school for young working people, at Kiev State University to finish my secondary education. In order to enter a higher educational institution I needed to complete my secondary education. During the day I worked at the garment factory in Podol, and in the evening I went to school, which was located in the city center near the university. I finished school and entered the Faculty of History at Kiev State University in 1937. There was no anti-Semitism back then. I passed all exams and was admitted.

I liked to study. I quit work and received a small stipend. My father divorced Sorl. Genia married Bencion Obomelik, an engineer. He was her colleague. She moved in with her husband. My father worked, I received a stipend, and we could manage all right. I had many friends at university. We didn't care about nationality. We just didn't think about it. We celebrated Soviet holidays and went to the cinema or theater together. I became a Komsomol 14 member.

I studied ancient history, the Middle Ages and contemporary history at the university. I was always fond of history. We spent much time studying Marx, Engels and Lenin. We also studied works by Stalin about the building of communism in our country and the advantages of communist society. I spent much time at the central library. Once the librarian gave me Lenin's 'Letter to the Congress' in which he criticized Stalin, his rudeness and ruthlessness, and recommended not to elect him General Secretary of the Party. She probably gave me this work by mistake. This was sensitive information at the time and only became known to the public after the denunciation of the cult of Stalin [at the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party] 15. This work implanted strong doubts in the official propaganda of Stalin, stating that he was a follower of Lenin's ideas and his integral friend. I kept my doubts to myself. It wasn't safe to share such ideas at the time. It was in 1937 when arrests of leading party and government officials began. [The interviewee is referring to the Great Terror.] 16 The authorities also arrested common people. One word or joke was enough to make accusations against innocent people.

We read in newspapers and heard on the radio about the arrests of political leaders. We, Komsomol members, had ultimate trust in the Soviet power, but we were shocked and didn't know what to believe anymore. We thought that it was true if newspapers wrote about such things, because we thought the Soviet power wouldn't lie to its people. Our university lecturers also suffered from repression. At some time we even had a visiting lecturer from Moscow to teach us, because there were no specialists left at the university. Yanolskiy, a history teacher, another history teacher, both Jews, a geography teacher and many others were arrested. They were accused of the distortion of the guidelines of the party and the government, betrayal of communist ideas and God knows what other sins. These were all talented teachers and honest and true party members. Some of them came back, others vanished in Stalin's camps.

There was an old history teacher called Konstantin Shtefa. He was German and a communist. In 1938 he was arrested and kept behind prison bars for two or three months. He was released later, but he didn't return to the university. During the war Shtefa lived under occupation. He became editor of the newspaper Kievlianin 17, which was a speaking-tube of the fascists. Shtefa disclosed his anti-Soviet and anti-Semitic self. He condemned the 'zhydy-and-Bolshevik' power, and appealed to Kievites to support Germans and report on Jews, Bolsheviks and partisans. When the Germans were retreating Shtefa left with them. He moved to America. He died there in 1958. Shtefa's son was arrested after the war. He didn't agree with his father's views. He spent ten years in prison camps. He was released and rehabilitated later. He got married in Middle Asia and moved to Germany recently. I know all this from my neighbors. They had known this family.

In 1941 I did my last year at university. On 22nd June I went to university to take my final exam. I remember walking in the streets in the morning when all of a sudden I had a premonition of something terrible to happen. I didn't know that Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, but I walked enjoying the sights of Kiev, thinking that it could all be destroyed because a war was inevitable. When I came to the university building, everybody was listening to the speech of Molotov 18 on the radio. We passed our final exams, but we didn't receive our diplomas. Instead we obtained certificates of graduation from university. I obtained my diploma on the basis of this certificate when I returned to Kiev after the war.

My sister's husband, Bencion, was summoned to the army on the second day of the war. Genia and I decided that we had to evacuate, and Genia received a boat ticket for the evacuation of all members of her family. My father didn't want to leave. He was convinced that the Germans were civilized people and weren't going to do Jews any harm. He ignored whatever my sister and I told him and stayed in Kiev. Kiev was bombed, and we dug up a shelter in the yard where we could hide during air raids.

At the beginning of July we boarded the boat and sailed down the Dnieper River. There was my sister Genia, I, my Aunt Zlata and her son, and my three cousins: Sonia, Zina and Basia, the daughters of Aunt Rohl. Zina and Basia were single, and Sonia's husband was at the front. Sonia's little son was also traveling with us. In Dnepropetrovsk we changed for a train heading to Krasnodarskiy region. We were traveling under terrible conditions - in freight railcars for coal transportation. Genia had brought her and her husband's clothes, and when the train stopped we got off to exchange clothes for food. We reached our destination and settled down in Nefyodovka village, in Krasnodarskiy region [about 1,500 km from Kiev]. I didn't want to stay there. There was no school in Nefyodovka, and I didn't have work. Genia and I went to Timashovskaya village. I worked for a few weeks at the local school. Aunt Zlata and her sisters stayed in Nefyodovka. When the Germans began to approach Krasnodar, they moved on to the Caucasus and settled down in Baku.

When we were in Timashovkaya we received a letter from my father. He wrote to us that Genia's husband Bencion Obomelik perished in the first weeks of the war, during the defense of Kiev. My father regretted that he hadn't gone with us.

Genia and I managed to leave Krasnodar when the Germans were very close. We stayed at the railway station several days and nights until we could get on a train. At the end of October 1941 we reached Chimkent in Kazakhstan. I was sent to work in one of the villages in South Kazakhstan. I worked there for a few weeks until I was summoned to the regional education department where they told me that I was to be replaced by a Kazakh teacher. I was sent to the Russian village of Pervomayskoye. Genia and I stayed in this village until 1944. Life was very hard. We didn't have anything to sell and were starving. I had a very small salary, and Genia worked at the collective farm receiving some cards that couldn't be exchanged for anything. Genia went to the mill where she could get some grain wastes. We made bread from them. Later we got a plot of land to grow vegetables. It saved us. We were fighting to survive during evacuation and didn't have any possibility to observe Jewish traditions.

In 1944 we decided to return to Kiev. It was necessary to receive a residence permit 19 for Kiev to go there. It was the period of the beginning of anti-Semitism, and Genia and I couldn't obtain any permit. We left for Kiev without any permit.

Our neighbors told us how my father perished. When Kiev was occupied by the fascists, Sorl's sisters, Lisa and Ania, came to him. They thought it would be easier for them to live through the occupation if they were together. On 29th September, when all Jews from Kiev were taken to Babi Yar, my father, Lisa and Ania stayed at home. They decided to hide, but the wife of an old Bolshevik, Mikhailov, one of their neighbors, reported on them. At the beginning of October 1941 the police came to take them to Babi Yar.

There were other people living in our apartment. Veterans of the war and widows of those who perished at the front had a priority in getting accommodations, so I understood that I shouldn't expect to get an apartment soon. Genia couldn't prove that her husband had perished at the front. My father had a death notification but it vanished, of course. Genia got a job at the company where she had worked before the war and received a room at the hostel. We couldn't prove that we were from Kiev and couldn't obtain a residence permit. Genia got registered at the hostel. I obtained a residence permit to reside with the daughter of my father's brother Lazar.

In 1944, when we returned to Kiev, I went to work at a Russian secondary school in the center of the city. I was a history teacher at this school for 30 years. In 1946 I married Abram Zeltser. We met at the polyclinic when he came to visit a dentist. He was a Jew and a war invalid. I wanted my sister to sort out her personal life and wanted to move out. Abram was a very ill and selfish man, and our marriage lasted less than a year. We divorced in 1947, and I returned to my sister in the hostel. I didn't see him again. He died in the early 1950s. Genia stayed single and we lived together.

In 1948 Genia received a room in a communal apartment. In the middle of the 1950s she managed to obtain the certificate that said that her husband had perished at the front, and we received a small apartment.

The first years after the war were extremely difficult. It was as difficult as in evacuation. I didn't even have clothes for work. Kievenergo, the company where my sister was working, received humanitarian aid from the USA, and I got a coat. Life was slowly improving. We didn't earn much, but we managed somehow.

Life was very difficult in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the period of anti-Semitic campaigns: the Doctors' Plot 20 and the struggle against anti-Semitism. Everywhere - on the radio, in newspapers, on public transport and in stores - Jews were abused. Many of them lost their jobs and had to leave Kiev. Our collective at school was very good, and I didn't face any abuse at work. We had a very good director, and his deputy was a very nice intellectual, too. We had to discuss the current documents issued by the Party at party meetings at school, but it was a mere formality. I didn't become a party member. It was a verbal requirement of the officials that history teachers had to be communists. I didn't want to become a communist, because I believed that communists and Stalin caused our country lots of troubles. They couldn't force me to become a party member and I had excellent performance records, so the authorities just left me alone.

In 1953 Stalin died. People around were crying and so was I. We were crying out of fear of the future. The 20th Congress denunciated the cult of Stalin. We [history teachers] were kind of at a loss. We didn't know what we were supposed to tell the students. Later we attended workshops and had school programs changed, allowing us to speak about what Stalinism was like openly. We spoke half-truths about the crimes of Stalin and about the lack of principles of his companions, but we never had any doubts about the correctness of the idea of communism. We were telling children that they were the happiest children living in the best country in the world, in the country of socialism, when children in capitalist countries were starving and dying from hard work.

I remember very well the vacuum accumulated around Jews during the Six-Day- War 21 war in Israel. There were six Jewish teachers in our school, and we discussed the situation in Israel silently behind closed doors and with phone receivers removed from the phones for security reasons. One of our colleagues had a sister in Israel that had lived there since the 1920s. She told us emigration to Israel was allowed. I tried to convince my sister to move to Israel, but she was a party member and a convinced communist. She was against emigration and believed that there could be nothing better than our communist motherland.

When Aunt Zlata and her son were leaving for Israel she condemned them and didn't even say good-bye to them. When our cousins Sonia, Basia and Zina were leaving for Israel Genia met with them in a park in Kiev. She was afraid that she could be seen by somebody and that they would report her to the party organization, because this might mean that she sympathized with them and supported them. At that time, one could be fired or expelled from the Party for that. My sister was afraid that she might be suspected of not being faithful to the ideals of communism.

Genia was a very active communist and secretary of the party organization. She dedicated her life to meetings, parades and so on. It didn't even occur to her that life might be different, that we were young and one could get married and have a family. Genia and I never got married again. We often went to the cinema and theater. Sometimes we went to sanatoriums and recreation homes. We celebrated Soviet holidays and went to parades. We have always been atheists. But, in the memory of our parents, we tried to remember Jewish holidays. I recall how, after the war, we stood in line to buy matzah at some private bakery. We kept observing Jewish traditions whenever we had the opportunity. We did it secretly. If somebody from Genia's party unit or my school had found out, we would have been fired or arrested. We couldn't celebrate Sabbath, because it was a working day at school. We've always fasted on Yom Kippur, remembering our relatives.

There is no anti-Semitism on a state level in independent Ukraine. We have all conditions for a renaissance of the Jewish nation. We are old people now. Genia is very ill. She is confined to bed, and as thin as a mummy. She's like a vegetable now.

Hesed provides great assistance to us. We get food packages and parcels. Besides, a nurse attends to my sister every day. I read Jewish newspapers and watch the Yahad program 22 on TV. I can say that I'm happy to see the Jewish way of life restored in Ukraine. I wish it weren't so late for my sister and me.

Glossary

Alena Munkova 
Prague 
Czech Republic 
Interviewer: Zuzana Strouhova 
Date of interview: October 2005-March 2006

Mrs. Alena Munkova, née Synkova, was born in 1926 in Prague into the family of dentist Emil Synek, who was politically and professionally active, and his brother Karel was head of a well-known publishing house and bookstore in Prague, which he took over from his father, Adolf Synek. When Alena Munkova-Synkova was ending Grade One, her mother died of cancer. Her father remarried, but his second wife also died of cancer five years later. Right before the ban on mixed marriages 1, her father married for a third time. Because Emil Synek was protected by this marriage, the first to be summoned for transport to a concentration camp was Mrs. Munkova's older brother, Jiri, who didn't report for transport, and survived the war in hiding. Mrs. Munkova was summoned some time later. She left for Terezin 2, where she was protected from further transport to Auschwitz by the fact that she was considered to be a half-breed. After the war she returned to Prague, where she lived for some time with her stepmother, who had also survived the war, even though she was arrested by the Gestapo along with Mrs. Munkova's father, apparently on the basis of some denunciation, and both ended up in a concentration camp. Her father, however, died in Auschwitz. She graduated from the Faculty of Journalism at the University of Political and Social Sciences, and started working on animated films at Barrandov [a well-known film studio in Prague], from where she was however thrown out due to her Jewish origins. But after several detours she finally returned to film, and until retirement worked as a dramaturge in animated and puppet films. Today she lives in Prague with her husband, Jiri Munk, an architect, and is still very active.

Family background

My paternal grandfather was named Adolf Synek. He was born on 1st November 1871. According to records at the Jewish community in Prague, it was in Mitrovice, in German written Mitrovitz. But I don't know, translated into Czech it could be Mlada Vozice, by Tabor. All the Syneks were from southern Bohemia, from around Tabor. I came across this publication that came out not long ago, about old companies from this region, where there were lots of Syneks. It was probably this regional name there. Grandpa's brother Bohumil, however, wrote it with an 'i,' which was most likely a question of birth certificates. When I retired I also had a problem with it, because some of my documents have an ''' and others a 'y.' As far as I know, my father's grandparents were from Mlada Vozice, but I don't know anything more about them. They probably weren't big landowners, I'd say that more likely they were agricultural workers or merchants. I don't know, I'd be guessing. Grandpa died on 20th January 1943 in Terezin, where he went on 20th November 1942.

My grandfather definitely didn't have a university education, he was a tradesman, and apparently had studied somewhere in Vienna. But his mother tongue was Czech. He then worked his entire life as a book-seller and publisher, the two were usually connected back then. He became famous by having the monopoly on Hasek's Schweik 3. Then he had this edition named 'Minor Works of Major Authors' or something like that, which were classics, beginning with Thomas Mann and ending with I don't know who. [Mann, Thomas (1875 - 1955): German writer, philanthropist and essayist, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929.] I don't know how Grandpa came by that publishing house, but it was in the city ward of Prague 7, on Letna, on Janovskeho Street, which I think is still named that. I remember going to visit him as a small child. The bookstore was down on the ground floor, so I would always stand on the windowsill, and he'd always take me down off the window.

Uncle Karel then took over the publishing house, sometime in 1936, and moved it all to Vodickova Street. It's the store opposite the street named V Jame. Besides the publishing house and bookstore, there was also this so- called 'Karel Synek's Children's Corner,' where there were some toys, too.

My grandfather had two brothers, Bohumil and Rudolf. Bohumil Sinek was born on 19th October 1872, and on 10th July 1942 went to Terezin. He died in Treblinka, but when, I don't know. Rudolf Synek was born on 5th January 1876, and on 25th April 1942 went into the transport, and they took him to Warsaw. I never heard of anything going to Warsaw before. To Lodz 4, there yes, those went in 1941. But this is what it says in the records at the Jewish community [in Prague]. With a cross, that he died there. No one knows when, but probably in 1943. If he left for there already in April 1942, then he couldn't have survived longer than that.

All I know about his brothers is that they were probably members of the wealthier class, because Bohumil owned at least one building, which I was then supposed to inherit. This was because Bohumil didn't have children of his own. But there was probably more than one building. I remember that he lived on the corner of what was back then named Sanitrova Street. But the building he owned was somewhere else, on Bilkova Street.

I also remember that I was in that building when the funeral of T.G. Masaryk 5 was taking place. You see, the funeral procession was going to pass by there, so about fifty of us gathered there, from my point of view a huge number of people, there was all sorts of food served, and we watched. It was apparently all relatives, who I hadn't even known existed. I was about eight or nine years old at the time. Back then I had this feeling that those people didn't even have jobs. On the other hand, they were already older men, so I don't know. Perhaps they were some local businessmen, I don't know, I'd be making it up.

I don't know what Rudolf did. All I remember is that he had a large mustache. He had two daughters, Marta and Irma. Her [Irma's] husband was named Iltis, and after the war he was in charge of a magazine at the Jewish community. They had a daughter, Ruth. But then they divorced and Irma and Ruth moved away to Chile. And then I found out by chance, and it's not that long ago, that they both died in Israel. That they had moved, I don't know when and why, from Chile to Israel. After many long years, apparently. Marta was still here in Prague after the war, but I don't know anything at all about her. Suddenly she wasn't there anymore, most likely she died.

My grandmother was named Terezie, her maiden name was Löfflerova, and she was from somewhere in Slovakia. I don't know anything about her parents. But they probably weren't overly wealthy, because she went to Vienna to work as a servant. But that's just my hypothesis. Her education was most likely a basic one. She met Grandpa in Vienna, where she was working as a servant. That's where they probably got married, because my father, Emil Synek, was born there, but relatively soon they moved to Czechoslovakia.

She died in 1939 in a mental institution. Her sister and their mother were also mentally ill, so I've got this good family medical history. I don't know exactly what she had, back then they probably didn't classify things. Maybe it was some sort of dementia or something like that. I myself, as a ten-year-old, saw visible signs of lack of concentration and distance from reality in her. And I know that she had a horrible clutter in this large embroidered bag that ladies carried back then. So there were already some seeds of schizophrenia or some nervous disease there. Otherwise she was exceptionally kind and affectionate, and saw herself in her grandchildren, as it usually is with grannies.

She's buried at the new Jewish cemetery in Prague, I've found this out only recently. At that time they weren't burying people at the old cemetery much anymore. But she doesn't have a tombstone, because in 1939 that was already forbidden. I'm going to have to have one made. Whether she herself lived in some Jewish fashion, that I don't know, we didn't talk about things like that at home at all.

The Synek family was completely assimilated. It's true that I didn't see my grandfather's brothers, Rudolf and Bohumil, so there I don't know. As far as Grandpa Adolf goes, I don't at all remember there being anything, him celebrating some holidays, although both we and Grandpa lived on Letna, close to each other, so I would most likely have noticed something. But I don't remember anything like that. All I know is that my father, who was very liberal, had me 'liberated' from religion classes, because he wanted, as he later told me, for me to one day choose for myself. But by me that was a mistake, because it belongs to one's education. And I remember that they kept it a secret from my grandfather. That apparently he'd have been upset, so obviously there were at least some traditions there. What's more, his two sons, both my father and my uncle Karel, married Christian women. With my uncle it was his first wife, with my father not until the second and third.

My grandfather on my mother's side was named Bohumil Steiner. He was born in 1871 in Kovansko, Nymburk region. But back then it fell under Kolin. He lived in Kolin, where he was in the textile business, I remember the store. He died on 20th October 1932, a year before the death of my mother, his daughter Marie. Probably in Kolin, because somewhere I had some documents about what Grandma had paid the funeral service, and that was all in Kolin. So he's most likely got to be somewhere in the old Jewish cemetery in Kolin.

My grandmother on my mother's side was named Hermina, née Fialova. She was born on 10th August 1869, so she was two years older than Grandpa, which was very unusual back then. On the contrary, men used to be for example twenty years older. I've also got a younger husband, so I'm continuing the 'tradition.' After Grandpa died, my grandmother moved with my mother's sister, Anna, from Kolin to Prague.

Exactly when I'm not sure, but it probably took a while for them to wind down the store. Because Grandpa had a textile store in Kolin, in this little street close to the town square. I remember that the entrance was right on the street, and in the courtyard there - it's as if I saw it in front of me even now - there were cobblestones, that had grass growing up between them. Back then, as a child, I was very interested as to why there was grass growing up between the cobblestones there. A colorful impression like that stays with you your whole life.

My grandmother and Aunt Anna also had some little store in Prague, in Smichov, but they went bankrupt right away. They then had it in Zizkov [a quarter of Prague], and again went bankrupt. I guess they weren't good at it, my grandmother had probably never done it. She died sometime during the war, most likely in 1942. I don't know if she had any siblings. I later lost contact with them, because after my first mother died, my father remarried, and although that second mother of mine was very kind, she was afraid of me having contact with that original family. But I used to go to Zizkov around once a year anyways. I remember that they lived at 5 Milicova Street. But as soon as I walked in, my grandmother would start weeping, because as soon as she'd see me, she'd right away feel sad that her daughter had died. I remember her as being very slight, this proper grandma, delicate. But that's probably a bit of a fabrication after all those years.

I remember my grandfather being very tall, and my grandma small. My mother and aunt were also relatively small, I probably inherited it from them. But Grandpa Steiner, he was tall. So at least my brother, Jiri, isn't such a shrimp. I used to envy him that a lot. But on the other hand, I've got my grandfather's eyes, their shape, setting, look, color. Our father had grey eyes, Mother was dark-eyed, but I've got quite intensely blue eyes after Grandpa. Genes are genes.

As far as my mother's parent's religiousness goes, there I don't remember anything. We used to go see Grandpa, I remember him playing with me and I used to get fabric scraps from him. And I know that Grandpa used to take my brother Jiri, who was five years older than I, with him to the fair, where he always used to display his wares. But I don't remember them celebrating any holidays, for example.

My father, Emil Synek, was born in Vienna, as I've mentioned, on 1st June 1894. He apprenticed as a dental technician, and then took some exams, so he was a dentist. He studied to be a dental technician and lab technician, and then wrote some exams, so he was a dentist. Which means that he could pull teeth and in general do everything on the level of a dental surgeon. He had his own large dental practice on Letna. He was also very active on the dental panel, and lectured and I don't know what all else. He was very active in his profession, and was always educating himself and studying dozens of professional magazines. I think that he was one of the first ones here to have an X-ray machine. I remember that it was from Siemens, that company supplied it to us from Germany. But he wasn't a physician, he was a dentist.

By the way, he was very popular, because he used to fix teeth for the Sparta soccer team 6 for free. It was in general characteristic of him that he fixed a lot of people's teeth for free, when they didn't have money. He used to say that he'd make it up on the rich ones. These days he wouldn't be able to exist, he'd go out of business within a year. He had a strong sense of social responsibility, which was common in rich Jewish families.

My father was in the army during World War I, but he never told us where and for how long. But I do know for sure that he told us that he was in uniform in 1918, when Austrian emblems were being torn down. That revolution in 1918 was a big experience for him. But he probably didn't spend much time in the army, because he was wounded in some way. Even though who knows how it was, because my father was quite dead set against war, he'd always been an anti-militarist.

My father had one brother, Karel. He was somewhat younger, I think he was born sometime around 1896. He married Vlasta, née Kolarova. She apprenticed as a dental technician at my father's where she met my uncle. Vlasta wasn't Jewish, so my uncle would have survived the war thanks to that mixed marriage, but they divorced because of property. Probably in 1940 or 1941. My aunt was probably afraid to live with a Jew. I wouldn't say that it was only for the sake of appearances, because after that they didn't live together anymore. I think that my uncle then lived with his father, but I don't know exactly. He used to come to our place for lunch. Already before his departure for Terezin, my uncle had open tuberculosis - I remember that we always used to wash all the dishes with permanganate - and he died of this disease in Terezin, in 1943.

Karel and Vlasta had two daughters, René and Milena. René is a year younger than I, she was born on 23rd September 1927. I remember that when we were in public school, we'd always walk to school together, because they also lived on Letna. René then married Igor Korolkov, who was from a Russian émigré family, and after the war they moved to Holland together. She's still alive, in Amsterdam, and her husband died two years ago. Before moving away, René was a seamstress by trade, and then studied at the Faculty of Philosophy, but didn't finish. In Amsterdam she then had a large fashion studio with many employees, where they used to make higher-quality clothing.

The second daughter, Milena, married name Kuthejlova, was born in January 1937, I think. She graduated from economics at university and worked in television, where she worked as an editor for magazines about TV programs. I think that she's perhaps still there now, as a retiree - she's eleven years younger than I - and works in the library. I don't know exactly.

My cousins didn't go onto the transport during the war, because they were half-breeds. Few people know that according to the Nuremberg Laws 7, the year 1935 was a defining line for children from mixed families. Children that were born before 1935 and weren't registered at the Jewish community, which both my cousins weren't - this also shows how religiously inclined our family was - were therefore so-called Aryan half-breeds. Children born before 1935 who were registered at the Jewish community were so-called Jewish half-breeds. And children that were born after 1935 were Jewish half- breeds, whether they were registered or not. I know this because I myself was considered to also be a half-breed, which saved my life. As far as religion goes, as I've indicated, Uncle Karel didn't live in any particularly Jewish fashion, he didn't observe anything at all. I don't know how deeply he felt his Jewish origin, but the Germans then made sure of reminding him of it.

We of course saw my uncle's family, the family stuck together. I also used to see my cousin René quite often. My father was at one time in the Zinvnostenska Party 8, because he was for the middle of the road as a matter of principle, and his brother, Karel, apparently used to try to convince him to vote for the National Socialists. But I don't know how it ended up. My father was perhaps even active in that Zivnostenska Party within the scope of Prague 7, but I don't know anything exact. He was also very active on the Board of Dentistry, where he used to lecture and perhaps even had some sort of function, I don't know what kind.

My father was in general very sociable, quite often he'd go out in the evening, to cafés and so on. Within the scope of these groups, as an eleven- year-old, I used to play in some theater and used to attend Sokol 9. There I also had my first conflict, when they yelled 'Jewess' at me. My father was active in the Czech-Jewish Association 10, assimilated Jews that identified with the Czech nation. They published the Rozvoj weekly, which my father subscribed to.

My mother was named Marie, née Steinerova. She was born on 9th August 1898 in Kolin - she was four years younger than my father - and died before the war, in 1933, of cancer. As I then found out, her father had also died of cancer, a year before her.

How did she and my father meet? I don't know, my mother was from Kolin and my father from Prague, but back then couples apparently used to meet through all sorts of matchmakers, and it was said - don't take this completely seriously - that my father needed a rich bride so that he could start his dental practice. Up till then my mother had been at home, as was right and proper for young ladies back then. She definitely didn't have any sort of university education, but she played the piano beautifully. She was quite a melancholic, and used to play for days on end. I don't have any idea what sort of high school education she had either. Maybe someone used to come and give her piano lessons. That would have been appropriate for that social class. Young ladies knew how to cook, sew and play the piano.

I don't even know what her religious inclinations were like, I was six when she died - it was at the end of Grade One - she'd already been ill for the last two years.

My mother had one sister, named Anna Schwelbova. She was born on 10th December 1904. She was married about three times, and with one of her husbands, some Neumann, she had a son, Zdenek, who was two years older than I. I think that Neumann, but that I'm not sure of, maybe it was Schwelba, was a barber or hairdresser, something like that. Anna, her son and her mother, my grandmother Hermina Steinerova, went onto the transport already at the beginning of 1942, and maybe didn't even go through Terezin, but straight away somewhere further on. I think that they died somewhere in Poland.

Growing up

My name is Alena Munkova, and I was born on 24th September 1926. I was born in Prague, and besides Terezin, I've never lived anywhere else. I've got one brother, who was born in 1921. He was born on 26th November. His real name is Jiri Synek, but he's known by his artistic name of Frantisek Listopad [Listopad, Frantisek (b. 1921): real name Jiri Synek, Czech poet and writer of prose]. I'm giving his artistic name, because he's quite popular under his pseudonym abroad as well as here. He's had several books published, and also does theater.

My parents had one more child, born before me, but it soon died. So I don't have any other siblings, not even step-siblings. Because my father married two more times, but didn't have any children with any of those women, and neither did they have any children from previous marriages. They were divorced and childless when they married him.

My childhood is much interwoven with Letna, where I lived. I really was rooted in that sidewalk there. The way they say a person has roots in land, here it was the sidewalk, with its paving stones. I knew all the store owners on Letna, I used to run to the park there, and to Stromovka [Park]. And the loss of that place where you grew up - and certainly it's different for everyone - can't be renewed again. A person pretends a bit, but it's gone. After the war I did return to Letna, but everything was different. But to this day, when I walk by Letna, I feel a twinge. To this day, I smell that aroma, what it smelled like there. I remember colors a lot, and smells perhaps even more. I think that childhood forms a person, whether he wants it or not. Or also deforms.

So before the war, Letna was my whole life. I've got this memory of our apartment building's courtyard. It's still there, No. 1, we were on the ground floor, on the corner. Back then it was Belcrediho Avenue, now it's Milady Horakove, if I'm not mistaken. Then they made it into a bank, and now I think there's a KFC there. From bad to worse. Back then, when you entered the building, and I even think that the doors are still almost the same, in horrible condition, there on the end of this L-shaped hallway, was the entrance to our apartment. But on the other side, right after the apartment door, was another door, which led into the waiting room and into the clinic. So the entire ground floor was divided among my father's dental practice and our apartment.

Then there was of course a courtyard, where I used to play. People used to hang carpets there, there were these two small trees, and it was all quite grimy. And on the ground floor of the building there was a man with a junk shop, named Andrle. He was a mysterious figure, and I never had the courage to go down into the basement. By the way, back then those apartments had toilets in the hall, not in the apartments. But the toilet was of course only ours.

I don't remember us having a maidservant in that first era, because my mother was at home, and there was a building caretaker there who used to do things, and someone also used to come over and do the laundry. So maybe there was some sort of help, some sort of cleaners and so on. My memories of that are of course very foggy by now. But a servant as such wouldn't even have had anyplace to live there.

Before I started going to school I was at home, but from what I've been told, my older brother Jiri attended French nursery school that last year before he went to school. But I remember being in Brevnov with my mother, and I even know about where the staircase was that she used to lead me up to dance school. I was five at the time. In one of those dance schools for little children I was even supposedly supposed to play a part in some theater, back then it was the German Theater, which today is the State Opera beside the main train station. But my father forbade it, that he didn't want me to grow up to be in the theater. Despite his being such a liberal, something conservative inside him reared its head. I remember being terribly sad because of that. I guess my mother didn't succeed in forcing the issue, or didn't want to, I don't know.

I don't remember any family vacations or trips, that's already quite foggy, maybe my brother would remember, he is five years older, after all. All I remember are the trips to Grandpa's in Kolin.

Then I started Grade One. From this time I remember that an apprentice from my father's lab used to come get me after school. I would always come with untied shoelaces, so he'd always tie them for me. I've got a very strong memory of this. The apprentice would kneel and tie my shoes. That's quite cute. I don't know if we always had gym class, or why I didn't have them tied. But back then people wore lace-up ankle boots, not sandals. I think that by then my mother was quite ill, and so no one was really taking care of me much. That it's the result of there being no one to tell me: 'You've got to tie them yourself.' That's why I'm talking about it, not because of those shoes. That I was actually a bit of an outsider, not on purpose, but because of the situation that existed in our family.

But that was given by the fact that our mother was dying, and I think that the cancer lingered on quite long. I remember being in some room, in some dining room, and my mother is lying in the next room, and Grandma Hermina, who'd come for a visit is with her, and my mother is weeping horribly. They didn't know that I was listening. And my mother is saying, 'What will become of the children, what will become of the children?' And Grandma is consoling her.

That was a horrible experience for me. For one, I didn't want them to know that I could hear it, and then, for a child, suddenly something opens up in front of you, you don't even know its exact scope, because the words aren't completely filled with content, but despite that you know that it's something terrible. That it's something horrible, unjust, cruel, something that you can't defend yourself against. That was a very terribly strong moment for me at such a tender age. I was six then. Later I even wrote this poem about it. I also remember how horrible it seemed to me when then our teacher announced it to the class, and said, 'Your poor classmate's...' It was awful. Even though she probably thought that that was all right, she didn't know how else to react. You can't judge that at all.

By the way, that teacher was named Helena Tumova, and she was an old maid, because during the First Republic 11 teachers were usually single, unmarried women. I remember her being very strict, but everything that I know how to do, I know from those first years when she taught us. Everything that I know in Czech, I know from her. It was a perfect foundation.

I don't remember what went on after my mother's death, it's a blank spot for me. All I remember is us moving to another apartment. This is because our father remarried, but that second wife also died of cancer five years later. That must have been something insane for my father, an absolute train wreck. I was twelve, so it was most likely in 1937 or 1938. That wife was named Marta, née Polakova, then Erbenova, and Synkova after my father. So she was once divorced. She was also a dentist, so they obviously probably met through work. She was a Protestant, from a Protestant family, but that didn't play a role at all. I never had any conflicts with her, she was great. Then when she became seriously ill, I used to sit with her a lot, because by then I was already eleven or twelve.

I remember that my brother refused to call her Mommy, and called her Marta. He rebelled. Well, he was in the full bloom of puberty at the time. There were frightful conflicts because of it, but our father didn't break him. I myself called her Mom. Not Mommy, but Mom. I didn't have any inhibitions in my relationship with her, but I was a little bit afraid of her. She was large and dark, and was relatively, as people from a Protestant environment are, or were, strict and high-minded. Something like that was present in her.

What's more, she was no longer all that young, and it was hard for her to relate to children. With me it still somewhat worked, but she probably never found a way to have a relationship with my brother. She herself had no children, and was an independent, emancipated woman - back then there weren't many women studying medicine either - so I'm convinced, that is, it's my deduction, but for sure a correct one, that it was a problem for her to marry a man with two children. And what's more with a son in puberty and rebellious. For sure our father was also troubled by that situation.

As I've said, my second mother was also a dentist. Our original apartment became her clinic; we created a large waiting room and laboratory there, where she worked on teeth. We had several employees in the laboratory. We moved to what was at the time Belskeho Avenue, now I think it's called Ulice Dukelskych Hrdinu [Dukla Heroes Street], into a modern four-room apartment with all conveniences. There my brother and I already had a children's room, there was also a large dining room, a den, my parents' bedroom and of course a kitchen and a room for the maid, which we had at the time.

We had a maid for a long time, when the second mother died, she was still there. We called her Fanca, I know that she was from Boskovice, by Brno, in Moravia. There were probably quite a few Moravian girls working as servants, and I know that they were treated quite well. With what she made working for us, Fanca for example built a house in Dablice.

The parents of my second mother, Marta, lived in the village of Kluky, by Podebrady. We used to go visit them often, almost every Sunday, because my father loved cars. Every little while we had a new car. I'd say that we were more or less middle class. We didn't own buildings, our father didn't want that. But we always had cars, every three years a new car. Our parents probably used to go on decent holidays, even though I don't even know how much they made a year. They would often go to the Tatras [High Tatras: a mountain range in Slovakia].

But my father always said that he didn't save money. Which was the right thing to do. He used to say that for a country's economy to function, money has to circulate. That was his motto. An absolutely modern way of thinking. And he also used to say as a joke that he wanted someone to marry me out of love and not for money. Back then people used to save up for girls' dowries. And he did the right thing, because he enjoyed his money. Then we lost everything anyways. He also equipped his dental practice with the latest. Had one of the first X-ray machines from Siemens.

I also remember my second mother's siblings. She had two brothers and one sister. I even know that one of her brothers was a university professor, Polak, and that at one time he lectured in Bratislava. I don't know his first name. The other one, also named Polak of course, was the director of some sugar refinery somewhere near Prague. Her sister lived in Podebrady; she was named Karla, was married or perhaps divorced, and was some sort of public servant. The siblings used to get together in Kluky, because the family was quite spread out. There were also perhaps some cousins, I don't know exactly any more.

In Kluky they had a beautiful garden, by this larger country house. From there I've got very intense memories of a garden full of flowers, of course with a swing and so on. We used to go to various nearby farms for fresh eggs... I remember these large, beautiful, grand farms, at least they seemed to be big to me. Apparently people used to bring food from there to Prague, and at the Prague city limits there was then a so-called customs checkpoint. Police, basically. And when you brought in food, you had to pay a tax. Which of course no one ever paid. I know how people would talk about for example having a couple of eggs with them, and said, 'I have nothing,' and everyone that used to bring in things then were terribly pleased that they'd brought in a couple of eggs. But it was more of a sport than anything else, just for fun.

I also remember - Grandpa and Grandma had a maid, I guess they weren't that poor - and she'd always go with me to the nearest forest, where there were dogs' graves. Apparently left by some local nobility, that I don't know. It was on the way out of Kluky, but not towards Prague, nor towards Podebrady, but on the other side. Before you get to Podebrady, there's a large graveyard there, then a turnoff towards Kluky, and if you took that turnoff and continued on, there were big forests there. And that's where those graves were. And not just one, several of them. Those dogs also had names there. For a kid it was an attraction. Back then it wasn't common, perhaps with the exception of some nobility and counts, to bury dogs. And these graves must have dated back to Austrian times.

Besides trips to Kluky to visit my second mother's parents, I also used to go to a guesthouse during the summer holidays, which was in Doksy. I was supposed to learn German there, but because it was all Czech children there, besides the German teachers, we spoke only Czech. It was by Mach's Lake, so I've got beautiful memories of Mach's Lake, where at the age of nine, when I was there, I probably learned to swim a bit, but I don't exactly know any more.

One summer vacation, I might have been nine, ten or perhaps eleven, we were in a different guesthouse, in Nadejkov, which is in southern Bohemia, whose owners were relatives of my first mother, by the name of Seger. They had a farm in Nadejkov, and during the summer there was some sort of camp set up there, where my brother and I were invited. Mrs. Segerova was probably my mother's cousin. They had two sons, one was older by about two years and the other by about four, one was named Milan and they called the second one Hansi, as he was named Jan.

I met Milan after the war during one reunion of children from Terezin. We were both amazed that we had survived. At that time he was already living in Israel, where he married Eva Diamantova, whom I remember from Terezin. It hasn't been so long ago that their son contacted me. He was terribly glad, and said, 'Finally I'll find out something about the Steiners again.' But I'll tell you, that I didn't have the feeling that he's some sort of relative of mine, by which I mean to say that it's not true that a person right away feels some sort of emotions. He'd already been born in Israel, and even though he speaks Czech, it very much depends on where a person grows up. Even though I'm always very afraid to succumb to some sort of false sentimentality, so I hold back from such feelings.

I have memories from the beginning of the war, and they're still quite sharp, because I wasn't brought up in the spirit of some sort of Jewish consciousness, and so it was something new for me at the time. Besides that, I was in puberty. Suddenly came this blow from nowhere, in the sense that the war was actually the beginning of a feeling, at first not completely conscious, but then of course more and more an intensely conscious feeling, that I didn't belong in the society that I lived in. They threw us out of school 12; we weren't allowed to continue. One prohibition followed another, I don't know exactly from what date. My father, who you could say was emotionally unstable, was breaking down more and more. I was suddenly in a situation where I began to be afraid of people.

The first impact was already before the war, when some little girl in Sokol yelled 'Jew' at me. I had no idea what she was going on about. We were an absolutely assimilated family, but it didn't come about through some specific aim, it came about due to our way of life. In my view it's very important that as long as people acted naturally, everything flowed from their way of life. Not that they said to themselves: 'I'll be this, or that.' Today there's a bit of a tendency for people to pretend, and not think enough. But that generation back then, and today it's seen as an attitude that's a bit naive in some respects, was convinced that their way of life was right, and that that's the way they should behave.

With the beginning of the war, I was alerted to the fact that people were watching us. Likely they were also the people across from us in the building - back then all the buildings in Letna had superintendents. They were usually from the poorer classes, although not all of them. As it's always been, envy also began. One prohibition after another was inflicted upon us, and suddenly I heard that we had to have a big 'J,' for 'Jude,' in our identification, that we can walk only in certain streets, and on streetcars ride only in the back car. To this day I always get on the first car, that's in my subconscious, and it's been a long time already.

As a Jewish family, we also had food coupons that were then in use designated with a big 'J.' We had smaller rations and could shop only during certain hours. Some shopkeepers used to bring my father groceries, as he was after all well-known and liked in Letna. I myself witnessed how surprised they were. 'Mr. Synek, those Jewish laws apply to you?' It was something incomprehensible for me. Here, during the First Republic, people didn't reflect on things so much as to say about someone that he was or wasn't a Jew. In a smaller town, or in Moravia and Slovakia, perhaps that was something completely different. I'm only talking about my experience.

I remember that a prohibition, or a bylaw came out - it was one of the first Nuremberg Laws - that the word jew had to be written with a capital J. That was something that I didn't understand at all anymore, I only understood that it was supposed to be pejorative. It had never been written like that before. I haven't accepted it to this day, here jew with a big J is used all the time, though I've asked in my articles for it to not be that way. Because I think that it's very, very wrong, because from that stem other things. Everyone uses only a capital J, but that's nationality, not religion, and why is it always taken as a nationality? [Editor's note: In the Czech language, jew in a religious context is written with a small "j," and Jew in the context of nationality with a capital "J."] It can't be used constantly.

In 1934 there was some sort of census, well, so a few people identified themselves as being of Jewish nationality, so then a capital J. Even the state is Israel, not Jew. And another thing, on our report cards, we had Israeli written for our religion, not Jewish. Or 'of Moses.' I'm very insulted by it, and I think that it supports anti-Semitism. It supports the notion that we're somehow isolating ourselves. Due to this I had big conflicts at the Prague community, even with Rabbi Sidon, with whom I'm otherwise on a first-name basis, as we were once co-workers. [Sidon, Karol Efraim (b. 1942): from 1992 Prague and national rabbi.] He knows it, and knows my opinions. The community also issues everything with a capital J, and that's quite important. Some would say, don't make a fuss, little j, big J, but that's not true. Big things are composed of small ones.

On top of it all, my father's dental practice was endangered, but then he got permission for only Jewish clientele, and thus I was able to work as his assistant. At that time everything had to be given away, musical instruments, pets, and as a dentist my father had gold. Well, I think that then he wasn't allowed to work with gold anymore, there were various substitutes. Then he could only do fillings, because he had to let the lab workers go, and only Mr. Porges remained, who was Jewish, and who went on one of the first transports. So then my father had no one left there, he had to do everything himself, and so could at most do fillings, but certainly not some sort of complicated prosthetic work.

I was helping him out, so I didn't go for any lessons anywhere like other Jewish children did, which I didn't find out until after the war. Maybe when they then met up and played together, it gave them strength. And that they had a bit of fun, even in the worst times there's fun, after all. But I didn't have any, I was in complete isolation. After I stopped attending school, my girlfriends from school of course never came by, people were afraid to associate with us. And that's something that I took very hard. My resistance manifested itself by my going about without a star 13. It made my father crazy and fearful, unfortunately I never got the chance to apologize to him. It was only later that I realized what he went through with us children.

Of all the prohibitions, the thing that bothered me the most was that we weren't allowed to go to school, and that the normal course of things was interrupted. It's not so much about the studies, but about the fact that you were suddenly deleted from society. You couldn't go to the movies, nothing. I didn't even mind the shopping, but the fact that I didn't have the possibilities other girls had. I didn't even have a substitute in another collective.

I remember how once my father arranged a visit - I think that it was somewhere in Dlouha Avenue, even that the people were named the Aschermanns, but of that I'm not sure - during some afternoon when people from Jewish families gathered. I went there, but it was completely foreign to me. I guess I was supposed to get to know someone there, but I was completely... well, I wasn't able to. Likely some patient of my father's saw me and said, 'Why don't you send your daughter, we're having a get- together.' I don't know, maybe it was someone's birthday. I don't know, I just remember that it made me all grouchy, and no one ever got me out anywhere again.

It was also back then during the war that my big complex began, because I said to myself that I don't belong among Jews, that I simply don't belong. My puberty played a role in this too. I wanted to be like other people, and it even went as far as me reproaching my father for my first mother also being Jewish, that I would have at least been only half and half. Later I regretted this terribly. Well, my father tried, explained, he was never angry with me, and was very calm. He tried to explain to me that it's not anything bad, and that when the war ends, everything will be different. I remember him telling me, 'The star you have to wear now, later you'll wear it as a badge of honor, it'll be like when the legionnaires returned from World War I.' He was deeply mistaken. Deeply. But thanks to this big complex, which I really felt intensely, I actually saved my own life.

Luckily, during the war my third mother lived with us, Anna Mandova, who married my father just before the prohibition of mixed marriages, so she put herself at great risk. What's more, her relatives tried to talk her out of it, understandably from fear for her future existence. She of course wasn't Jewish, but a Catholic, utterly tolerant. Overall, she was excellent, kind. According to me, a true angel. She'd loved my father for years; he used to care for her teeth, as a patient. My father was a very - so in this I'm not like him - handsome man, who didn't at all look Jewish. She was born on 9th March 1897 in Kolc, near Slany. She worked as a seamstress. She sewed normally, like people did at home, as well as for the Rosenbaum company. That was this large company where she apprenticed, and she was the first fabric cutter there. So she was a lady that knew what she was doing.

At the time when things were getting worse and worse, by then they were writing about my father in 'Aryan Struggle' - that was this seditious rag - and stars were being worn, he had some patients that were named the Kristliks, a husband and wife. They were faithful Christians, perhaps Catholics. They used to invite my father along with that third wife of his to this outdoor café somewhere in Holesovice, so that he'd be outside, and he'd walk around there with his star covered up, and they knew about it and weren't afraid. From Letna to Holesovice, that was actually the same quarter, and my father was very well-known, so it was a risk.

This couple had such an influence on him that he began to engross himself in the Bible. He read both the Old and the New Testament, and had the Bible on his nightstand. In those last years it apparently helped him very much. What exactly he read from it, I don't know, but he needed some faith, and in that case it doesn't matter which one. It's a question of a spiritual crisis, and he was of a less stable nature. He was very sensitive, very sociable and on the other hand used to have depressions. That was all caused by the way of life during that time. I think that in order to last it out, he needed to believe in something. I don't think that his Christian wives played any role in his affinity to the Bible. Neither of them was religious, I don't remember them going to church. My father even had a baptismal certificate, it was issued to me and obviously him too by the priest at Strossmayer Square. Back then we thought that it would help, but it was of course useless.

But only a handful of people helped Jews. I'm not accusing anyone, I'm stating facts. And when I then add it up, all that had its role in the fact that those people then had a harder time standing up to the hardships that followed. Up till then my father had been extremely sociable, he was a successful dentist and sometimes even lectured about it, and was constantly studying it. So that he'd constantly get better and better at it, so he devoted himself to it scientifically as well. Now, suddenly, when everything was supposed to come together and bear fruit, everything collapsed. Of course, he was marked by the deaths of those two wives of his. My childhood was influenced by those deaths as well.

Suddenly the fact that we were Jewish was an issue. No one had concerned themselves with it before. No one had even known that my father was a Jew, he had nothing Jewish in his appearance, and even the name is Czech. In fact, when he first remarried, he also married a dentist, a non-Jew, who however looked a bit Jewish, so his patients would say to him, 'Why, Mr. Synek, you've married a Jewish woman?' Not until right before the occupation, when papers like 'Arijsky boj' [Aryan Struggle, a magazine put out by the Czech fascist movement Vlakja (Flag)], then we were. Suddenly my father was 'That Synek Jew.'

At that time we were living under great tension. There was constant tension in our home, because not once, but several times someone rang at our door - I remember for example one Czech policeman, who was apparently high- ranking, who walked through our apartment and pointed out paintings that my father then had to give him. Besides this, we were always afraid of Germans and of informers, because in the newspaper belonging to the Vlajka movement 14, that was this Czech fascist rag, there were various denunciatory articles about my father. Like why is it that Mr. Synek is fixing teeth, and so on. So we lived in fear and tension, and you can say that my father was a nervous type, and that it of course rubbed off on me.

I turned to books for some sort of consolation, and already back then I was writing these little verses, I was 13, 14 at the time. I read only poetry. I read prose only a bit. I was very influenced by literature, maybe even of a somewhat exclusive type, especially for my age, which my brother, who was five years older, used to give to me. During those times all he was doing was reading, he was as opposed to me very single-minded and was gathering knowledge. For him it was also actually his future profession. He concerned himself with words, and so did I, but in a different way. He was an example for me, but of course we also fought. He used to scare me at night in that children's room, with lights and so on. So sometimes I hated him. But he influenced my reading, and with my affinity for poetry I was then this insufficiently realistic person. My thoughts were influenced by a certain dream factor, the non-acceptance of reality. This conflict was very, very strong in me.

I was very influenced by what I read, for example already when I was very young I read Pitigrilli [Segre, Dino (1893 - 1975): pseudonym Pitigrilli, Italian author]. I know that a scene when some woman was receiving her lover in a coffin had a great effect on me. To this day I don't know what it was called. I'd really like to read it again. And then there was the famous book by the Italian author Amicis [Amicis, Edmondo De (1846 - 1908): Italian writer and journalist], 'Heart' it was called, and it contained stories over which I wept many evenings and nights, because they were terribly sad and beautiful. I'd like to read that one again too, for one. There was for example one story, 'Sardinian Drummer,' about how during some war they shot a 12-year-old little boy, who crossed some terribly high mountains in Italy, I don't know where exactly, to find his mother, who had cancer and had been transported to the other end of Italy. I was completely kaput from that.

Then I was influenced, for example, by reading classical Czech literature, beginning with Nemcova 15. I liked it all, Jirasek for example [Jirasek, Alois (1851 - 1930): Czech writer and dramatist]. To this day I think that by making him compulsory school reading, they've discredited him. Those classical authors knew their craft, there's magnificent use of words there. I remember that the only book that I took with me to Terezin was Macha 16, his 'Maj' [May]. Nothing else. I liked it very much.

Back then it was in general a little different. In my youth, though after the war already, it was in fashion to read Dostoevsky 17 and carry the book so that others would see it. Now it's music. That's about something completely different. Back then that didn't exist at all, when you wanted to come across as an intellectual, you had to know literature. Right after the end of the war, I was already reading 'The Castle' by Franz Kafka 18, published by Manes in 1936-1937, and was very influenced by it, even though I didn't understand it very much.

My father was also a big reader, but certainly not of poetry. He read Pritomnost 19 magazine, which was edited by Peroutka 20, that was really for intellectual readers. It was a monthly with a beautiful yellow cover. I remember the way the cover looked to this day. When during the war we weren't allowed to go out anywhere in the evening, our father used to read to us. Well, there was no TV. I remember that he was reading the novel 'Katrin vojakem' and 'Katrin svet hori,' which was about World War I. It was dramatic. He'd read us a bit after supper, and we'd sit quietly. He used to do that mainly after the death of our second mother, because he was terribly depressed, lonely.

We used to subscribe to a lot of books from the ELC, a modern European literary club. [European Literary Club: was created in 1935 on the initiative of the publishing businessman Bohumil Janda (1900 - 1982) and his brother Ladislav Janda (1898 - 1984).] Besides Pritomnost, he also subscribed to other papers, Rozvoj, which was a paper that belonged to the Czech-Jew Association. We used to get those papers, but I didn't read them, not Pritomnost either. I wasn't at all interested in that, because they were political, and let's say partially philosophical and cultural articles.

During the war

In 1942 my brother got a summons to the transport. Alone of course, because our father was protected by his marriage to a non-Jew. But he didn't get on, and left a letter that he'd committed suicide. Then very uncomfortable situations followed, because we were in contact with him and I was the connection. Either I or my stepmother would bring him things that he needed. It was so terribly risky. Everything was full of fear and risks. I think that that atmosphere of fear molded me for the remainder of my life. From that time I've never been far from states of anxiety. I don't want to say depressions, that's a strong word. They were more like states of anxiety. Fear of the unknown.

Later I realized that it predestined me to this, basically constant, mild misunderstanding with the world as such. To questions why I am, why do I do this and why do people do that. It's this feeling that I can't communicate what I'm feeling anyways. Basically not to anybody. And that I have to come to terms with that constant misunderstanding.

I've got this incident, completely abstract, just to explain it more closely. In that apartment on Letna, where I lived, to get to the room where I slept, you had to cross from this large room where we used to have supper, through this quite large front hall. The light switch for that hallway was completely on the other side. So that I had to cross it in darkness. To this day I've still got an intense memory of sitting there and being unable to go to bed. No one knew about it, I of course didn't tell my father about it. I remember that I exerted all my energy, or strength - it's more of a symbol, what I'm saying now - to walk through that dark hall. When I entered the children's room and turned on the light, I was completely exhausted. I think that this extreme exhaustion from that journey, which today in my reminiscences is so short, but back then seemed unimaginably long to me, is a symbol of my entire life.

This fear-filled period lasted up to December 1942, when I myself was summoned to the transport. That's when I saw my father for the last time, he had completely collapsed, because there was nothing he could do. Even before that he had been living under terrible tension, in terrible fear, and then suddenly... For him I was a little girl, even though I wasn't all that little any more. Certainly he also blamed himself for everything. Because he was so extremely just, so absolutely humanistically inclined and he idealized the world - even though back then it was still possible, today I don't idealize it anymore, and I don't think I'm alone - that he still believed that it wasn't possible for Czechoslovakia to be gone and for the Czechoslovak state to not care for its citizens.

There was this one incident that took place, that after the Anschluss 21, after the annexation of Austria, some distant cousin of his arrived in Prague, who was then continuing further on. He was at our place, and telling us about the horrors that were taking place there. Well, and when that cousin left, my father said, 'That's not possible. He must be crazy, he needs to go to a mental institution.' He didn't believe it, he didn't want to believe it. He wasn't alone in that, it must have been utterly horrible for those people back then, that powerlessness. What's more, back then a man was still the head of the family, who takes care of his family members. That has changed a bit, after all.

You see, before the war I had had the possibility of emigrating, but my father didn't let me go. When I was very small, when that first mother of mine was ill, I had had a nanny, Miss Saskova. This Miss Saskova, that was around 1939, left for England to work as a nanny for some family, also some dentist. She apparently liked me in some fashion, and so came to see my father, that she could take me with her and that I'd learn a trade there. My father said that it was out of the question.

I remember that even later there was always talk of emigration around us, but we didn't have any contacts, it was said that certain Jewish families had a lot of money and information, so they had at least some possibility of emigrating. Often it was a question of money. I don't know anything exact about it, just that very few people got an affidavit. They may have had one promised, for example, but then it never happened. I know that the Petchka family was terribly rich. They even transported out all of their employees, an entire train. But I'm convinced that even if someone had offered my father something, he'd have turned him down.

We for example didn't even know about Winton's 22 activities, how he transported out Jewish children. We didn't find out about it at all. It's true that we weren't in very close contact with the Prague Jewish community. But maybe it wasn't just because of that. We were recorded there. Jews, for example, used to get summons, while they were still in Prague, for the clearing away of snow. Well, that we used to get every little while. My father and brother. That was so humiliating, you'd be shoveling snow, wearing a star, and on top of that people would be yelling things at you. It was always terribly difficult to get out of it. It was a so-called compulsory labor. So we were in the records.

I expected the transport, I knew that it would come, and was afraid. When I then got the summons, I knew that I had to go, that I couldn't do what my brother had done. For a week before they took us away, we were in a so- called quarantine at Veletrzni Palace [The Trade Fair Palace, a Modernist 1920s exhibition hall]. I knew that my father was only a few buildings over, but with that star he couldn't even come see me. But he sent someone, because through some guard I got a box of candy with a letter.

The conditions were quite bad for us in the Veletrzni Palace. I ended up with a fever from it all. At that time an excellent person took care of me there, Gustav Schorsch, who unfortunately never returned. By complete chance, he had the number next to mine. The transport was named 'Ck,' and I had number 333; I guess the threes were 'lucky.' When you entered the quarantine, there were mattresses arranged there according to those numbers. Schorsch saw me there, that I was alone and crying. He helped me very much during that week before they transported us away, and also the whole time in Terezin, until they sent him further on.

When he knew that I was sick, or that something was wrong, he'd always come to check on me. He used to put on plays there, gave lectures, and in general was culturally active. He was a lot older than I was, nine years. He'd already graduated from high school, and as a student had already acted on the stage. He was the founder of Theater 99 on Narodni Avenue. He was an exceptional stage talent.

After the war a book about him came out, 'Nevyuctovan zustava zivot.' After the revolution 23, in the 1990s, I among other things also wrote a script about him. The film exists, and was shown on TV. Unfortunately I was only able to use interviews with other people, his photographs exist, but there was little authentic material, except for some plays he'd dramatized. They've even been put on at the National Theater. He was an exceptional person, a lot of people reminisced about him, his former classmates and so on.

I don't exactly know what went on with my father after my departure. I think that someone there helped him, that someone from those Letna residents, either from his former patients or the businessmen there, used to go to see him. All the business owners there knew each other. I think that my father must have had contact with someone, because during that year that I was in Terezin, he managed to smuggle through a letter, apparently via the Czech policemen that guarded us in Terezin. I've got it hidden away to this day. It's beautiful, full of hints. He wrote 'Jirina is all right,' that was my brother, Jirka. Contact with my brother was then apparently maintained by our stepmother. But both she and my father were arrested about a year after me. He had the dental practice right up to his arrest. Then there was apparently some German there, because after the war all the equipment was still there. When we returned, my stepmother rented it out via a so-called widow's law.

In Terezin I wasn't all alone anymore, some sort of society formed there. The people there were in the same situation. When I arrived there, we were in the so-called shloiska, which is a quarantine. [Editor's note: the Hamburg barracks, so-called shloiska, likely from the German 'Schleuse': women's accommodations, and from 1943 especially for Dutch prisoners. At the same time the main transport dispatch location.] We had to report there, and precisely because of the horrible complex of mine that I was something different, I reported that I was a half-breed. I had no idea that this had been the first transport that had contained half-breeds, otherwise I would have been found out, and I wouldn't be sitting here now. It was a completely irrational thing. It seems like I've made it up, but that's really how it was.

After some time in Terezin I was put in the children's home. There were children from about 11 or 12 upwards there, up to about 15 or 16, I think. I don't know exactly. I was among the oldest ones there. Younger children were with their parents. For example, my husband, who's younger than I, was with his mother. Children that had arrived in Terezin with their parents were also in the children's home; I was more of an exception, I mean that I had arrived alone. But my uncle, my father's brother, was already there. He was lying there in this hospital room where people with tuberculosis were. I used to go see him occasionally. My father's father was in Terezin at that time. He died very early on, and then my uncle as well. That was in 1943. I didn't have any other relatives there.

In Terezin I became friends with Vera, back then Bendova, who was also a half-breed, but a real one. We were bunkmates - there were triple bunk beds, and we slept up on the top bunk together. She was the only one who knew the truth about me; I had to tell someone what the case was with me. Always, when I was summoned - half-breeds used to be summoned to the headquarters - neither of us slept. We're of course in touch to this day. She lives in Olten, Switzerland, where I went to visit her after the revolution.

As a half-breed I was allowed to stay in Terezin; it protected me from further transport. And my best friend as well. Of the people in our room - we lived in No. 29 in L410 - mostly everyone else were transported further on. And some returned after the war, and some didn't. Plus when Brundibar 24 was being put on there, new children had to be recruited to replace the ones that had been transported away. I myself never played in Brundibar, as I never knew how to sing.

We then tried to put on a play by Klicpera with Schorsch. But mainly I wrote. These trifles, various poems. Mostly they involved reminiscences, for example about a girlfriend that had remained in Prague, or laments over what I had lost. There were all these sentimental things, with tendencies towards romantic expressions. Not long ago there was a reunion of girls from Terezin, and they said, 'Listen, we were always thinking about food, and you were writing poems. We used to say to ourselves that you aren't normal.'

I of course also experienced love in Terezin. And not just once. I think that I fell in love there at least five times. I never counted the times, and I always also soon got over it. It never lasted very long for me, which was still the case long after the war. I perhaps stuck out a bit in Terezin; I was completely blond and blue-eyed. Maybe it also says something about that period, it was sometimes for only a couple of days, but intense.

However, there were one or two stronger relationships. Not one of them returned. One was named Jiri Kummermann. That boy, though he was 17, was already composing. I've still got some notes, some fragments, hidden away to this day. His mother, a former dancer, was also there; she didn't return either. Because I knew that I'd probably stay in Terezin, I had some of his notes with me. But after the war I gave them to his relatives. I guess that the relationship was quite intensive, because long after 1945 I still thought that he might appear.

Then there was Karel Stadler, who I knew from Prague, because he was a friend of my brother's. An exceptionally educated boy. He was about four, five years older, while the musician was the same age as I. So I was impressed by him, and felt embarrassed, that I was completely dumb compared to him. I wasn't the only one to fall in love there. Of course, during the day we couldn't see each other much, but curfew wasn't until after 8pm, so we could still be outside in the evening.

Terezin was an amazing education for me. First of all, I wouldn't be the person I am now, but that's normal. But mainly I was introduced to values there that I would never have had the chance to know. For example what friendship can do for a person, but not only that. How important the influence of art is. There, the people that had come to Terezin, and they were professors, artists, all of them truly tried to convey what they knew. There's no way that could happen in a normal situation. In Terezin everything was extreme, it wasn't a normal situation there. That's of course hindsight, back then I couldn't have realized it.

We lived through extreme situations there. For one, there was the fear of further transport. No one knew when he'd have to leave, and where to. Even though no one of our generation of course wanted to at all allow the fact that it could be the end. Almost to the end of the war, I didn't know that the gas chambers existed. That was because I was in Terezin. Maybe someone there knew it, but I think that most of them didn't. Not until 1945, when people were returning.

Understandably, we also had fun in Terezin. And those love affairs. Everything was experienced intensely, because there you couldn't count on having time. I think that whether you're an adolescent, or 20 or even 50 years old, that's a very unusual situation. There you didn't at all have the feeling that time was uselessly running between your fingers. The intensity of the time was also given by the fact that we were hungry. Everything was intense. I never experienced such intensity before, or since then. Everything that those children were doing there, either they were drawing something, or writing, was full-on. The entire leadership tried to do as much as possible for them. Because in their view the only ones that had a chance of survival were the children, or the young people. In the end it wasn't like that, but even so, they tried.

I don't know if some country, or some group, some small nation, does in a normal situation as much as was done back then in those extreme times in Terezin. Back then, everything was at stake. It was also necessary to help the adults as well as the young people, to make them aware of the fact that they have to watch themselves so that they won't decline morally. All that was terribly important. You had to preserve the feeling that you're not in some hole.

The question, why did I return and not someone else, this feeling of guilt, we've probably all got it. That's been reflected upon many times already. I of course don't have an answer to it, and you can't even feel guilty. But I think that the percentage of those best ones that didn't return is very high. You also don't know what those children would have become. Certainly there were many talented people there, and with that experience, that intensity that I've talked about, everything was amplified even more.

What do the people that survived have in common? I don't have a definite answer to that. I think that the majority of the people that returned are today much more tolerant than people without this experience. But it of course also depended on what sort of way of life you ended up in. That also molded you. If you remained completely alone, or if at least a bit of your family remained. Its way of thinking and intellectual position. Life itself.

There are all sorts of people. Lots of them moved away as well, and those, when they come here, are also completely different. But there is something there, some sort of common fate. Not that we're extremely close, but there is something there that I can easily and immediately identify with. With someone who didn't go through it, I'd have to do a huge amount of explaining to give them an idea what it's about. Here I don't have to. There's no doubt that we have a common experience, which binds us. It's hard to say, maybe we're connected by some sort of reappraisal of values. A larger degree of tolerance, that for sure.

Of course, there are some individuals that don't fit the pattern, but even now, when I meet with people, it's clear to me from the first moment who is a survivor. I also think, though maybe I'm fooling myself, that those that survived won't succumb to concerning themselves only with economic matters. I think that they're a little less susceptible to the influence of today's way of life. That they're a little more themselves. There is, after all, something there, some experience that sets them apart. If I was to summarize what my stay in the concentration camp took from me, it took my past. That severing of the past, that's something I have to come to terms with.

We were terribly looking forward to returning home. But of course there was no place to return to. I suddenly didn't know what to do. How to live, why at all, and mainly there was no one to turn to for advice. My brother, who also survived, didn't pay much attention to me, he had enough of his own cares and worries. He was running all over the place, they were already starting up a newspaper and he was given an important editorial position, head of the cultural section. They got what was then a German paper, Mlada Fronta 25, and he was basically a founder. He was 23, and J. Horec, later the editor-in-chief, was I think 24. [Horec, Jaromir (b. 1921): popular Czech poet, writer, journalist and publicist] He had absolutely no time for me. I remember that back then after I had returned, I went to report to something like the people's committee of the time, I don't know what it was called anymore, because I needed identification. There they gave me two pieces of underwear, panties and some sort of nightie, and about five handkerchiefs.

My father didn't survive the war, he died in 1944 in Auschwitz. I've got two dates. One is in February, the other is in May, no one knows for sure. They arrested him in the fall of 1943, he passed through Karlovo namesti [Charles Square], where he was interrogated, through the Small Fortress 26 to Auschwitz; he didn't go on a normal transport. He was most likely arrested because of my brother. My stepmother was also arrested, but she returned after the war. But she also didn't know why they actually arrested them. It's quite likely that they were denounced by someone. She passed through the Ravensbrück 27 and Barth concentration camps. [Barth: camp that fell under the Ravensbrück concentration camp] She didn't return until somewhat later, not until the end of June 1945, and was seriously ill.

Post-war

After the war, I supported my mother as much as possible; after all, it was thanks to her that I saved my life, because they didn't know that she wasn't my true mother. If that would have been uncovered, it would have been the end. She died when she was 85, that would be sometime in 1983, because she was born in 1898. She was hit by a streetcar; she became disoriented and the streetcar hit her in the head.

By the way, I've found out that in the Pinkas synagogue, where the names of the dead from the concentration camps are, there is also my brother's name. [Editor's note: during the years 1992 - 1996, 80,000 names of Czech and Moravian Jewish who had died at the hands of the Nazis were written by hand on the walls of the synagogue.] Like as if he was dead. As I've said, when he got the summons to the transport, he left behind a letter that he'd committed suicide, and disappeared. In the register he's listed as being dead. Well, there's nothing we can do about it now, it's there. According to one tradition, that mean's he'll live a long life.

Other mistakes occurred as well. For example, my father was arrested, he didn't go by transport, but nevertheless also ended up in a concentration camp, and didn't return. But he's not in the Terezin book. [Editor's note: the Terezin Memorial Book contains the names of Jewish victims of Nazi deportations from Bohemia and Moravia during the years 1941 - 1945.] I don't know if his name was added later, I haven't tried to find out. I told Mr. Karny, who put that book together with his wife, that he's not in there, but that he also died in Auschwitz. There are other similar cases, people that didn't go via the normal transports, but were arrested or disappeared like my brother.

At first I lived with my brother, who got an apartment on Letna, and then, when my stepmother returned, we moved into the apartment where the dental clinic had been. But nothing except for the dental equipment remained there. Back then, when I returned from Terezin, I was, above all, hungry. My mother had relatives here, a sister who was very kind, and I used to go to their place in Smichov for lunch. They fed me from what they had for themselves. It seems strange, but I don't think that there was any sort of organization to take care of those people that had returned. It never occurred to me at all to go to the Jewish community. Maybe I should have gone there, they would definitely have given me advice. After all, there was some assistance here, as I found out later, from America 28. Some applications for compensation were being submitted. Well, I didn't know anything about it, and got nothing. Not until now, after the revolution, that which everyone has.

For about the first two years, until I got my bearings, I really didn't know how I should behave. I knew that you should say hello to people, and what I should say when I enter a shop, but I couldn't at all grasp other people's way of thinking. They were all foreign to me. I had no idea how they thought, why for example they would do something they did. I always wanted to know the reasons for people's behavior.

For example, my aunt, the one that had divorced my uncle because of that publishing house, wasn't Jewish and survived the war. After the war she was in charge of the bookshop that belonged to that publishing house. She offered me a job selling books there. So I worked there for some time. Then she told me, 'Your waist isn't slim enough, I'll buy you a corset.' I couldn't grasp it at all. Why I should be selling books there, and why she was going to buy it for me. I should have asked her, why would you buy this or that for me, or why should I be selling books here? I'm sure she would have explained it to me. But I didn't ask her.

Or another example. There were some girls from Terezin on Letna, and they pulled me into the Youth Union 29. Again, I used to go there, and didn't at all know why I was even there. There were many things that I didn't get back then, not until I met a girl my own age, whose father was a dentist, a colleague of my father's. Dr. Vanecek. He invited me over to their place, and gave me money. That Vera was the only one to say, 'You've got to go to school.' If it hadn't been for her, I would have said to hell with everything. But even she had to explain to me why I had to go to school, and even so I didn't completely understand. Maybe I was completely neglected, or maybe more likely, lonely. I think that it was due to loneliness. And yet later in life, I was a sociable person and not an introvert. But all too late. But back then I was definitely a complete introvert. I think it's a consequence of that what I've talked about, that severing of bonds with the past.

Luckily, several relatives gradually appeared who also helped me. For example my first mother's cousin, who had a list of people whom Anna, my first mother's sister, had hidden things with. He made the rounds of those people with me, who for the most part didn't want to return anything. I experienced this very unpleasant situation, when they'd say, 'Oh my, you've returned!' I don't even feel like talking about it. What's more, that's common knowledge. As far as school goes, they explained to me that I had to arrange a stipend. From a financial standpoint, our life after the war was very bad indeed. In the end I was only able to finish my studies thanks to that stipend, which I got as a war orphan. Back then I was being paid by the War Reparations Office. I think that it was in Karlin [a Prague city quarter]. Without that money, I wouldn't even have had money for a slice of bread.

My brother had managed to graduate from Jirasek High School before the war, and after the war he registered at the Faculty of Philosophy. In 1947 he was sent by the then Ministry of Culture to Paris, where he published a weekly about Central Europe named 'Parallele Cinquante,' Fiftieth Parallel. He was supposed to return right after February 30, he was there for one year. But he emigrated and remained abroad. But he was here secretly, and thanks to my boyfriend at the time, the artist Jiri Hejna, whom I was with for a long time, we changed the stamp on his passport with the use of some plaster. So he got out once February had already passed.

I began attending university in the spring of 1946, when it was actually first being reopened. I picked the Faculty of Journalism at the University of Political and Social Sciences. It was composed of three faculties: political, social and journalistic. This school was also intended for future diplomats, that is, the political and social faculties, not the journalistic one. Already as an adolescent I had written poems, and during the war as well. Besides movement, dance, my strongest interest was literature, so that meant that it had to be some school where you worked with words. I imagined that afterwards I could perhaps live in some foreign city and be a correspondent. In Paris, for example. Stupid me. The faculty of journalism was something new. I've got this impression that it didn't exist during the First Republic, but I'm not sure. It was probably possible to study journalism someplace else, that I don't exactly know. But for me it was a novelty. Plus I knew that there they wouldn't require me to know Latin. I was afraid that even in that Faculty of Philosophy, I'd feel the lack Latin, or perhaps Greek.

I actually finished my high school as part of that faculty. Back then that was possible. This school had a solely practical focus. There was a lot of economics and law, something from all fields. I don't know if that was good, but to me it seemed a lot more doable, because I was missing entire years of education. I thought that I had a better chance of managing it. There was no problem getting into the faculty, everyone that registered could attend. Back then older people registered too, who for example hadn't been able to study during the war. But there was a lot of filtering out. Few people finished all four years plus a thesis. Those people perhaps went for a more practical life, or they didn't like it.

I was finished in the winter of 1949. The biggest problems didn't start cropping up until 1950. I don't remember exactly how the professors were being replaced. Those of them that were orthodox Marxists of course began to work their way up. For example Ladislav Stoll, who was then very orthodox and I think that he ruined a lot of people's lives. [Stoll, Ladislav (1902 - 1981): Czech Marxist critic] He was a big ideologue in the sphere of culture. He was influential in all areas of culture, and I'm sure that he also collaborated with various ministries, and so on. On the other hand, several professors emigrated. For example Professor Machotka left for America. [Machotka, Otakar (1899 - 1970): Czech sociologist]

Originally it had been interesting at that faculty, four political parties were represented equally amongst the professors. So that it would be balanced. Then of course the hammer fell, and those people started leaving, Social Democrats and so on. There was also a lady there that taught social manners, who was later jailed for many years. We used to call her Alca Palca, but her name was Palkoskova. She was from this very rich Prague family. We used to make fun of that social manners class, but she was right, unfortunately social manners have fallen by the wayside. People today don't know how to behave. For psychology there was Prof. Tardy, I don't remember his first name anymore. He immigrated to Switzerland. What's strange is that they gave us an 'Ing.' degree, meaning that I'm an engineer. That's because we had economics, but that's nonsense, they were following the Soviet model.

After finishing school, in 1950 I started working in feature films at Barrandov [a famous film studio in Prague], where they wanted students, in the so-called lectorate. It was this first sieve, where themes were sent. There were about five of us there. Anyways, I'm amazed that they gave me a job there. But I had an excellent boss there, I've never had one like that since. He taught me a lot, how would I put it, about literary creations for film. He was named Ing. Karel Smrz, in general a film pioneer, from back during the First Republic, a founder of Czech film. [Smrz, Karel (1897 - 1953): Czech film historian, publicist and dramaturge]

There I became friends with, among others, Hana Zantovska, a translator and excellent lady, who died two years ago. [Zantovska, Hana (1921 - 2004): translator, poet and writer] She was an expert translator from English, and a poet. During that time I also got to know many other people, luckily that circle included people like the author Josef Jedlicka [Jedlicka, Josef (1927 - 1990): Czech writer of prose and essayist], Jan Zabrana [Zabrana, Jan (1931 - 1984): Czech poet and translator] or the painter Mikulas Medek [Medek, Mikulas (1926 - 1974): Czech painter]. Thanks to these people, I got out of that isolation I was in after my return. It was really good, and some friendships have also lasted until today. For example the writer Jaroslav Putik [Putik, Jaroslav (b. 1923): Czech writer of prose], we see each other, the philosopher Ivan Dubsky [Dubsky, Ivan (b. 1926): Czech philosopher] is also a friend of mine from that time. Some have unfortunately already died. But thanks to all these people, I finally began to really live.

I'd only been at the lectorate for about a year and a half, when they threw me out. The 1950s were beginning, and when they threw me out for being unreliable - at the time it was Jiri Hajek [Hajek, Jiri (1919 - 1994): Czech literary and theater critic], who was later in charge of Plamen [Plamen; monthly literary magazine. Jiri Hajek was the magazine's editor-in- chief from1959 - 1968], not the minister, but the literary critic, a very passionate one - the reason they gave me was that they didn't have anything against me personally, but that I was unreliable because I was Jewish.

At that time I really had no money at all, and that stepmother of mine was so badly off that my friends, the Jedlickas, supported me. They used to give me money, though Manka Jedlickova was still finishing medicine, and Josef Jedlicka, who was at the Faculty of Philosophy, was kicked out when they were doing background checks. He was the first one that they did a show trial with. He was accused of being a Trotskyist.

There are so many people of this type that I used to associate with at that time, that I won't even name them all to you. They were excellent. I was even asked to write about them, but I don't want to write anything like that, because I'm not sure whether my memory is good enough. If I can't write something exact, I won't write anything. I can write about some impressions, I've got something filed away, but I wouldn't want to change history due to my faulty memory. That's something that I can't stand.

The 1950s were hard. The Slansky trials 31, and then I also had big problems because of my brother, who had remained abroad. I had no idea what sort of interminable problems would result from that. I was repeatedly interrogated because of it. I remember that when they came for me, I had no idea what was going on. At that time I began to again experience these unpleasant, depressive states. Fear of the future. I began to be afraid. I experienced a very strong sense of fear, even though that shouldn't happen in one's youth. My conflicts were never caused by my own behavior.

I myself didn't want to emigrate. I was in Paris in 1948, but I didn't want to stay there. Maybe under different circumstances. It was complicated, and I also thought that I'd be able to leave again. No one was able to imagine - maybe someone older, who was also based in politics, but back then I was still very naive - that I wouldn't be able to go there again in another couple of years, say.

It wasn't until later, in 1968, when we had a three year old daughter, did I think about emigration, but my husband was afraid of it. One of the reasons was that nowhere is there as beautiful a city as Prague. So dramatic, in an architectural sense. Because my husband is an architect. For my part, I wasn't able to imagine not using Czech. Not as my livelihood, but that which I had inclinations toward, to that miscommunication, would be even worse. Not that I wouldn't learn the language, at that time I could more or less speak English, that I would have learned. German for sure. But I think that the loss of your mother tongue is terrible. And not only for people that work with it. A few years ago, my brother gave some lectures here at the Faculty of Philosophy, where he said that emigrants, because they couldn't speak the language properly, had to being making a living with images. In television. That was a very interesting notion.

My brother originally lived in Paris with his girlfriend, who had helped him hide from the Gestapo during the war. A lot of people helped him back then. And some of them also paid for it by being arrested. But he broke up with her after some time. Later he met a young lady from Porto there, from Portugal. That was his first wife, she was named Julieta and they had twins together. When there was the danger of revolution in France, they left for Portugal together. There we met for the first time in 20 years, in 1968 32, during the Novotny 33 period. At that time I was allowed to go there.

He lives in Lisbon now, he learned Portuguese the same as French back then, because he's got quite a talent for languages. In Portugal, besides giving lectures in Slavic Studies, he was then at a theater and film school, and was also the director of the National Theater in Lisbon. He published one book after another, and to this day directs operas, all sorts of things. Despite already being quite old, he's so terribly active, that I think that when he once stops, he'll immediately die. He probably can't be without it. When you look at it objectively, he's exceptionally educated, exceptionally hard-working, exceptionally capable and exceptionally egocentric. How else would he have accomplished what he's accomplished? That's a case of extreme egocentricity that is concentrated on its work.

Already even before he emigrated, he'd had five books published here, then abroad as well, and now again after the revolution. He never returned here [permanently] from abroad, he wouldn't be able to live here. But he occasionally comes to visit. He collaborates with local theaters as a director and advisor, and his books of poetry and prose are published in the Czech Republic. After the war he got an award from President E. Benes 34 for illegal activities, and in the 1990s he got an award from President V. Havel 35 for propagating our culture abroad.

That extreme egocentricity of his bothers me a lot, but in my old age I've realized that that's the key to him. He's not alone. It's not possible for people who have accomplished something to be different. For them their work is the center of the universe, and everyone else is there to serve them. He was always a strong personality, which I've never been. He never had to walk through that dark hallway. He really is exceptionally educated and clever, and looks great. He had several women - all Portuguese, mostly from his field - and several children. He's got six children of his own, and two by marriage. His youngest child is nine, and my brother will be 85 this November. Not one of his wives was of Jewish origin. He doesn't deny that he's Jewish in any fashion, but neither does he show it off. He never lived in a Jewish manner, not one little bit. We weren't brought up that way.

For a long time after being fired from Barrandov, about two years, I couldn't find a job; they wouldn't even vet me for working in a factory. Those were hard times, but I survived it all, and finally I ended up back in film. Prior to that I worked for some time for the Nase Vojsko [Our Army] publishing house, but when my background was again exposed, I again had to leave.

I returned to film sometime in 1954 with the help of a classmate of mine from the faculty, because she was Z. Nejedly's secretary. [Nejedly, Zdenek (1878 - 1962): Czech historian, musicologist and critic, publicist and politician] Basically it couldn't happen normally. At first I worked in the film library. That was on Klimentska Street, but it belonged under Central Czech Film. There I put together these yearbooks. What had been done, what films had been made, and so on. It of course bored me immensely. But then I got into the press department of the Central Film Lending Office on Narodni Avenue. And in 1963 I left there to do dramaturgy for animated and puppet films.

In the beginning we were located at Klarov, where the metro [station] is now. There was a pavilion there, which they tore down. Then we were at Barrandov. I stayed there until the end, until I retired, and enjoyed it very much. I also worked past retirement quite a while. I think that I retired the year of the revolution, when I was already 63. But even after that I would occasionally do something there. I worked in dramaturgy, and then also began to write things for children. There you could after all do lots of things, it wasn't under such strict political surveillance, even though we also had problems. I even got some sort of reprimand, because we adapted some text by Skvorecky into animated form. [Skvorecky, Josef (b 1924): Czech writer of prose, essayist and translator] He was also one of my friends, by the way.

I was married twice. My first husband was named Josef Till, an architect. He was born in 1924. I don't even know any more how we met. We were married in 1955, and I was with him for four years. We had no children. My first husband was good and kind, but drank. That was the main reason for our divorce. He's still alive, and we still have a good relationship. What's interesting is that his mother was a Russian woman that his father had brought home with him as a legionnaire during World War I. I didn't realize until afterwards that there's always this affinity to people that aren't completely normal, the same as I was never completely normal. I was Jewish and he was half Russian. In the beginning you don't even know it, you don't find out until later, that he's also different.

When I married for a second time in 1963, I married a Jew. But again I didn't know back then that he'd lived through what I had. It didn't occur to me that he could also be a Jew, he doesn't look it at all. But I think that the common experience then probably connected us. Those feelings of alienation that accompany a person, we didn't have to explain that to each other. We understood each other.

My second husband is named Jiri Munk. He's younger than I am, he was born in Brandys nad Labem on 2nd November 1932. We met through my first husband, they worked together. His father was Adolf Munk, a lawyer, and his mother was named Olga, née Nachodova. She was also from a lawyer's family, the practice apparently belonged to her father, but I don't know that for certain. I do know that she had a sister, and when they somehow lost their mother early on, some aunt brought them up. I think that perhaps they observed some of the High Holidays there in Brandys.

My husband's family could have emigrated too; I think that they applied for an affidavit and were supposed to go to Rhodesia, to southern Africa. I think it's maybe called Zimbabwe these days. His grandfather was a farmer, very successful; though he was a Jew, he was successful in pig farming. He was an expert that was known far and wide. As far as I know, at that time Rhodesia was the only country accepting people, and they were accepting only farmers. You also had to have some money. I think that they did send some money, quite a large sum, and the Germans confiscated it for the so- called emigrant fund. They said that they'd use that money to move the Jews to Madagascar, and the Czechs to Patagonia. The few people that did emigrate were rich, they had information and some contacts.

I think that they went to Terezin on the Hradec Kralove transport sometime in January 1943, a month after me. My husband's father was shutting down the local Jewish community in Brandys, and taking care of everything, so everyone in the family went into the transport a month later than other people in Brandys. Which was also lucky for them, because the previous transport, the one that everyone from Brandys left on, kept going onwards, to Poland. I dare say that almost no one from that one returned.

In Terezin, little children lived with their mothers, and older ones with their fathers. My husband's mother worked with mica in war manufacture, which is why she remained in Terezin and thus protected her youngest child, my husband. My husband's father unfortunately went onwards from Terezin along with my husband's brother, Viktor. His father didn't return, he died in Auschwitz. Viktor did, but was in terrible shape. Alas, he died a few years ago.

My husband's sister, Helena, got married in Terezin during the war - that had to be renewed in some fashion after the war - and this marriage saved her life. Her husband, Rudolf Kovanic, was on one of the first transports; they put the ghetto together, and were then protected. At the end of the war, several dozen young married couples were picked out, who were exchanged into Switzerland. There they shut them up in another camp. They were of course allowed out only once the war was over, some vehicle from what was then Czechoslovakia came for them.

My husband's brother, Viktor, had an exceptional talent for art. He studied at UMPRUM [Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague] or at another art school. But some sort of student revolt took place there. Everyone took it back, except for him, and from that time he isolated himself and despite being very talented, all he did was make some sort of stickers here near Prague. Not until years later, only after his death - he died of skin cancer - did I succeed in putting on a big exhibition of his work, in the Spanish Synagogue. He was really a fantastic painter. The exhibition got a lot of publicity. They wrote about it in 'Revolver Revue' 36, for example. But while he was still alive, he didn't want to allow any exhibitions, nor to sell anything. He gave his pictures to his siblings, on various occasions. We've got a few of them at home. He married very late in life because he was ill for a long time. His wife was named Jitka. They lived by Karlovy Vary 37, where he did all sorts of work, but then packaged trumpets. He didn't live in any particularly religious fashion.

My husband was also talented, in his case it was musically. Already in Grade One they were attempting to convince his parents to do something with it. But even though his mother returned from the concentration camp, she had never been on her own, and suddenly here she was, alone with her children; she was incapable of doing anything, though she was around 50. It was horrible. My husband graduated from architecture, the same as my first husband. As a joke, I say that I stayed with that profession. For years he worked as an architect, but now he doesn't want to anymore. He was an expert on chain stores, and wrote a book about it. He mainly wanted to concern himself with historical buildings, but he never got to. At that time there was actually no real architecture being done, it was Socialist Realism. Now, after the revolution, when he could have started, it was so corrupt that he wouldn't have lasted. Bribes, everything is based on bribes.

I remember 1989 very well. It was freezing cold, and I was going with [people from] Barrandov, with animated film, to Wenceslaus Square with keys. [Editor's note: during the Velvet Revolution, people symbolically expressed their dissatisfaction with the Communist regime by jingling their keys during demonstrations.] We were naive, absolutely naive. We didn't realize that people can't change. The people remained the same. I soon got over my enthusiasm. It declined, but it of course had to decline, because as far as morality goes, it had been declining since 1939. There was no other option, that moral downhill coast is long-term.

After the revolution, we had problems with restitutions. In 1948, I was supposed to have part of an inheritance left by Bohumil Sinek, the brother of my grandfather Adolf Synek. Many relatives didn't survive the war, and some that emigrated gave up their inheritances. At that time after the war, we agreed to put it in my cousin Milena's name because of inheritance tax, as she was the only one that was a minor, and didn't have to pay the tax. I myself didn't have any money to pay the tax. But after the revolution, she claimed the entire building - and it's a large property, a large building at 11 Bilkova Street, four stories, with a store below -in the restitutions.

It wasn't an issue of thousands, but many millions. I of course have no witness to our agreement. So now at least I don't have to worry what to do with the money. I'm not the type of person that knows how to handle it. The devil take it. But I did then send her a message that she's the one that's going to have to live with her conscience. My brother could of course have sued her, but he was abroad after the war, and hadn't given anything up, but he also said the hell with it. But it's something that I can't understand, as far as morality goes.

My husband and I had only one child, our daughter Hana. She was born on 24th June 1965. So she had an old mommy. For a long time, I didn't want children, but they talked me into it. She studied physical education at the Faculty of Education. She had to take Russian as her minor, and when the revolution took place, everyone said to hell with it. People say they don't like Russian, but that's stupid. Once day it'll be needed. She then finished psychology at the Faculty of Philosophy, but educational, not the clinical kind. Well, it's basically useless. She finished school, and is trying to live as a freelancer, but it's a problem.

She made a film, about this forgotten figure from the First Republic, the artist Robert Guttmann [Guttmann, Robert (1880 - 1942): a noted Prague painter and Zionist; died in the Lodz ghetto]. She found some paintings and something about him, there was a fair bit of it, and though she also directed it and didn't have any experience, it wasn't bad. She also wrote a nice script about Uncle Viktor, because there's a lot of information about him too. What's more, they also did an interview with him so there's also text. But it needed support from the state cinematography fund. We tried to get it three times, but to no end.

She also did some book covers - they were quite inventive - but in general it's bad, she doesn't have too many possibilities. She's not in some team, and it's impossible to do on your own. Among other things, she recently turned 40, and that's old already. She tried to find work, but that's out of the question. Why would they take her, when they can take a 20-year-old, whom they'll give half the salary? She could go teach immediately. But she said that she'd rather be homeless than be a teacher.

She has no children, but has a dog that she loves very much. I don't think that she is even able to have kids. She's very sociable, and looks very young. People often address her informally. I think that my states of anxiety have unfortunately been passed to my child as well. She's very unstable. I think that the second and sometimes even the third generation of those that were imprisoned during the war is marked in this way. They're always extreme in some manner. They're either extremely active and assertive, or the opposite extreme. But I'm judging only from the few people around me that I know.

I was in Israel with this one travel agency, it was an excellent trip. The itinerary included both Jewish and Christian historical sites, otherwise I wouldn't have gone with them, because I want to see as much as possible. Jerusalem made an amazing impression on me. A beautiful city, you can smell the history there, is how I might put it. When I first arrived there, it seemed to me that everything there was too white. But then I suddenly saw that it belonged there. Apparently it's even a regulation passed by the mayor, that whatever is being built has to be white.

As far as emotions go, what made the biggest impression on me was the desert. I liked it very much. Shadows in the desert. That made an artistic impression on me. And we were just driving through it, this was just what I saw out of the bus window.

I went there together with my husband for eight days, which of course isn't that long. There were two people from Prague there, one was for modern Israel, he was even a dentist by profession, basically an enthusiast. He knew everything. The second tour guide was for historical things. Then there was a third one, a local Israeli, who took care of organizational matters. The travel agency is named Ars Viva, it's a travel agency for artists and architects, we've traveled with them several times already. They do a lot of museum tours, it's aimed more at the artistic side of things. Those people don't go around shopping.

I liked it in Israel very much. Maybe I'll go there again to have another look, I know some people there who I was with during the war, but no one closer than that. We saw very little of Tel Aviv, we didn't have enough time left, but I don't think that's a big loss, it's a modern city. We weren't in those hotels by the sea either, there wasn't time for that. We spent a whole three days in Jerusalem, and we even lived in a hotel in the old part. There we were, among other places, in the beautiful Museum of Modern Art. They've got statues installed outside, which you don't see very often. And all the things they've got there, I couldn't even fathom it all. South America, Australia. Amazing.

As far as the political situation goes, I'm absolutely skeptical. I don't think that it can be resolved in some way. I think that today I'm living in a world where unfortunately nothing can be resolved. I don't know, the older I am, the less questions I have answers for. I'd like it for them to live there side by side in some decent fashion, but I fear that it's not possible. When Israel was created, I didn't even know about it. I was in completely different circles. Just a little bit got through to me during the Six-Day-War 38.

I never thought about emigrating to Israel at all, God forbid. I'd die without that Czech countryside. Czechs will of course get used to everything, that's a second truth, but what it's like for them, that's a third truth. I for one love Prague, even though it's ruined, but it's a part of my childhood and youth. Then I love our country's countryside, it's beautiful, varied, you'll find everything here.

Right now, the only thing that bothers me is that everything is more and more superficial. Or uncultured. Everyone wants to be well off, or better, that's a normal reaction, but alas the most shallow, primitive outlook is used, and everything is about consumerism. I'm simply a person of the 20th century, not the 21st. I can't erase that from myself. The 20th century marked us, I for example am at odds with technology. That point of view of ours is simply different. Just like I laughed at my grandfather when he talked about Austro-Hungary and about World War I. We thought he was making it up.

I myself never concerned myself with faith, for me it wasn't an issue, which probably isn't common. According to me it's an anachronism, the way that Jewish orthodoxy manifests itself is an anachronism. Those 640 prohibitions or how many there are. [Mitzvah: religious regulation or commandment that a Jew is obliged to fulfill. According to Talmudic tradition, there are 613 commandments in all, 248 positive ones and 365 negative ones.] Then what most bothers me is the position of women, which for me is absolutely demeaning. But if someone accepts it like that, then it's all right. But this is what would repel me the most. But it would repel me from other religions as well. This really is an anachronism, even though they say that thanks to this it's survived. But I'm not so sure about that. Abroad there are even female rabbis, in America. Here they'd have a fit.

About four years ago we succeeded in having a survey done at the Jewish community. It was done by an agency specializing in this. The goal of the survey was to find out what the community's members think its direction should be. Whether orthodox or not, and what their wishes are. There were of course more questions than just that. The results of the survey were 80 percent liberally thinking people and 20 percent orthodox ones. What do you think happened? Nothing. They steamrollered them. That 20 percent completely steamrollered the 80 percent.

According to me, faith is a philosophical question, it doesn't relate only to Judaism. And that's something I don't think I have resolved to this day. Faith is a gift, and I didn't get it. So it doesn't mean that I condemn it. On the contrary, I think that maybe those people's lives are easier, I don't know. When I found out something about Buddhism, if that can even be considered a religion, that's the only one that's sympathetic. But I don't know if it's like that in practice. But if it helps someone, that's fine. Subconsciously, some sort of searching is of course in everyone, and it doesn't matter what it's called. Certainly everyone asks themselves questions about the meaning of life, more or less deep ones.

After the war it never even occurred to me to go to the Jewish community. Not until later, when I needed some confirmation, probably that I had been in the transport. Back then, I ran into one very distant relative there, some Dr. Iltis, who was in charge of the Jewish magazine at the time. When he saw me, he said, 'Hey, you used to write poems.' He was this slight little man, he led me around some offices there, and was saying, 'Look, there's this child here.' Well, I was already 19 or so. I remember going into a room full of birth registers, where they were looking for some information so they could give me that confirmation. It depressed me terribly. It was all dark there. I just took the document and never returned there. Back then in 1950 my tendency was more to pretend that I didn't belong there at all.

When I retired it was after the revolution, so I had the feeling that I should maybe help those surviving Jews in some way. I was under the impression, and I was probably right, that the survivors would often be in a situation where they wouldn't be able to communicate with neither the middle nor the younger generation. And that it's necessary to explain something. Actually, in their own way it was the media that forced me into it, because they did interviews with me on this subject. I also paid some sort of debt of mine when I wrote a script about Gustav Schorsch, who helped me very much back then in Terezin. [Schorsch, Gustav (1918 - 1945): Czech stage director of Jewish origin. Shot in January 1945 during the liquidation of the Fürstengrube concentration camp.] I was glad that it could be done.

So I had to penetrate that Jewish environment. But I myself am secularized, I can't do anything about that, and also don't know why I should suddenly put on a false front, just because it's suddenly in fashion. I am first and foremost a citizen of the Czech Republic, and then by chance, thanks to Hitler, I was put into some other pigeonhole. I think that any sort of extreme direction leads to a certain undemocratic manifestation, and to restricting others. That basically often elicits in me such an exaggerated reaction that I don't want to let myself be classified anywhere, and that I want to be independent. It leads to a certain aloneness and loneliness. When you don't want to belong anywhere, you have to come to terms with yourself. I'm not too successful at that.

Recently, about a year ago, some Austrian was coming here, a writer, and did some interviews with me. The most important thing in that interview is the motto that I haven't come to terms, and never will. Even though I know that things can't be changed. Maybe it's a childish rebellion, but it expresses my attitude.

I had unpleasant experiences with anti-Semitism. Right after the war, I went to register with the Political Prisoners' Association. They didn't accept me, that they don't accept Jews. That it wasn't resistance activity. Then, people didn't want to return things that my father had hidden in places before the war. Then, when they were throwing me out of Barrandov. At that time they said that they didn't have anything against me, but that Jewish origin...that apparently I was unreliable.

During those worst times in my life, what helped me a lot was practicing expressive dance with Jarmila Kröschlova [Kröschlova, Jarmila (1893 - 1983): Czech dancer, choreographer and teacher]. Sometimes a person has to stop, concentrate and relax. The way it began was that after the war my brother was living with the dancer Rene Zachovalova, who had helped him during the war. She was in Jarmila Kröschlova's dance group. Rene brought me there, but I attended for only a short time, because you had to pay, and I didn't have money. So it took a while before I was able to return again, but with small interruptions I've been attending to this day. Sometimes I also teach. But it's just my hobby, not a profession.

Jarmila Kröschlova was excellent, she taught movement to all the actors at the conservatory. She lived a long time; when she died she was over 90. She was even allowed to teach privately, even though that was forbidden in the 1950s. She taught actors and we also used to go to her. But her dance group wasn't together any more. I managed to see Dvorak's [Dvorak, Antonin (1841 - 1904): Czech composer] Slavonic Dances, soon after the war, where she was still dancing. By then she was well over 50. She was a beautiful woman, tall. And she wrote books on theory that by me are the best in Europe. One is named 'O pohybu' [On Movement] and another 'Nauka o tanci' [Dance Theory].

We, as her posthumous children, rent a dance hall from the Popular School of Art on Dittrichova Street, below Karlovo namesti [Charles Square], once a week for two hours in the morning, because the children attend in the afternoon. Several students of long years attend. Of all those people, three of us have remained that can teach a bit, which is Eva Vyskocilova, the wife of Ivan Vyskocil [Vyskocil, Ivan (b. 1929): Czech dramatist, writer of prose and actor], the writer, then Mila Babicka and I. On Tuesday we have two hours in a row, and around ten people usually come, these 'old ladies.' But if you saw it, it's like waving a magic wand, when they put those T-shirts on. You can see on them that all their lives they've been doing things. Really. And then we go for coffee.

We've known each other for ages. Teaching is terribly interesting, I love to watch them sometimes. The body speaks, that's amazing, even the way you move your hand, and from that movement of theirs I can read a whole bunch of things. Everyone moves a little differently, and also someone grasps it better, and that sense in their body awakens more easily for them. That what we're practicing now is basically relaxation, these gymnastics, for example everything that you can do with your shoulder joint. So that you're aware of it.

I've got to say, that many times movement saved me from deep depression. And that it gave me more than all words, even more than all literature. When you start moving, you refresh yourself a bit, and it cleanses a bit. Jarmila Kröschlova's maxim, when I summarize it with one very superficial sentence, was for a person to get movement in tune with thoughts. This way you get into balance, you relax, and in that moment you forget that you exist. I think that it's horrible when a person can't move anymore. Horrible. I've got this one friend, a philosopher, who now just sits and lies there. He's got willpower, he writes, publishes books, but nevertheless it's terrible. I'm very grateful to Jarmila Kröschlova. And I'm not alone.

What to add: after the end of the war and my studies, and various reversals of fortune and tribulations during the time of totality, my absorption with words manifested itself in dramaturgy, scriptwriting and journalistic work. Besides the book 'Motyli tady neziji' [Butterflies Don't Live Here], which features the drawings and poems of the imprisoned children of Terezin, 1942 - 1945, and was translated into many languages, which contains my poems, often inspiring musicians and authors of programs about the Holocaust, I wrote - later primarily with my husband Jiri Munk - script treatments for children's animated serials, which are often broadcast on TV. Later also for short animated films and several documentaries. Recently my husband and I have had two children's books published, about dog cartoon characters, Staflik and Spageta. I can't count how many films I've done the dramaturgy for.

Further enumeration of my various activities isn't important, because at the end of all activity, a person asks himself the question of their relevance. Did I at least partly preserve my father's legacy? My mother's legacy, whom I missed so much, and who luckily didn't live to see the horrific war years? More and more questions without answers pile up around me. So only one difficult effort remains. To come to terms.

Glossary

Zoya Lerman
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Bronia Borodianskaya

My name is Zoya Naumovna Lerman. I was born in Kiev in 1934. My mother's
name is Maria Arkadievna Lerman (maiden name - Gilik) and my father's name
is Naum Borisovich Lerman. My mother was born in 1913. I have no
information about her place of birth. My father was born in 1910. I have no
information about his place of birth.

My family history 
Growing up 
During the War 
After the War 

My family history

I will begin my story from my father's family. My father lost his parents
at an early age. There were two sisters and five brothers in the family and
my father was the youngest child. Boris Lerman, my father's father, died
and my father's mother disappeared. Yes, she just disappeared. She left and
never came back. Nobody knew what happened to her. David, born in 1902, was
the oldest. Their second son was Michael, born in 1904. Then came Semyon,
born in 1906, and Jacob, born in 1908. My father Naum, born in 1910, was
the youngest. I don't remember their sisters' dates of birth. I never met
my father's sisters and know them only from what my father told me. One of
them was called Rachil and another was Bertha. My father told me that Aunt
Rachil was so beautiful that people couldn't help but stare at her in the
street. On September 29, 1941 Rachil and her 4-year old daughter Zinochka
(also a beauty like her mother) perished in the Babi Yar. Aunt Bertha was
also killed there, but her son Boris, a teenaged boy, escaped execution.
When Germans shot his family he rolled down the slopes of the ravine. They
kept shooting but miraculously the bullets didn't hit him. Later, he
crawled out of this pit clutching at some roots and vegetation. Then he got
out of Babi Yar and left Kiev. In the 1950s my mother and father
corresponded with him. He lived in Kuibyshev then. Once he even sent us a
picture of himself and his two children. But then they somehow lost touch
with my family.

When my father was 13 or 14 years old, the children lost their parents. At
that time David, the older brother, lived in Baku. He had a job as a tailor
and he took my father to live with him. Later, my father went to some trade
school (I don't know exactly what kind of school). All five brothers were
educated, but I can't give you a more detailed description. In the late
1920s all five brothers were living in Kiev and I know more about their
life at this period. They all had families, except Uncle Semyon who lived
his life as a single man.

Uncle David was a tailor. He had a wife (I don't remember her name) and a
daughter named Bronia. Uncle Syoma was in charge of an automatic telephone
station which still exists. Uncle Yasha worked at the radio sound recording
office for many years, for almost his whole life. I can't remember what
Uncle Misha did for a living, but I have wonderful memories of his wife
Margarita Evgenievna and his son Dusik.

During WWII my father and his brothers, except for Uncle David who was
beyond recruitment age, went to the front. I will first tell you about my
father's brothers. Misha and his son Dusik went to the front and perished
there. Dusik was killed during the first days of the war. Margarita
Yevgenievna lost her loved ones and went to work at the military college.
The cadets were about the same age as her son, and she worked there for the
rest of her life.

Uncle Semyon worked at the bridge construction team throughout the war. He
survived and returned to his previous job after he returned from the war.
He died at age 93 in 1999. I took care of him during the last years of his
life. Uncle Yasha also went throughout the war and returned. After
suffering shell-shock he was left with a hearing problem. That is all I
know about my father's family. He never told anything else about their
life.

My mother's parents lived in Ivankov. My grandmother on my mother's side,
Leia (Elizaveta) Abramovna Gilik (maiden name Ofman), lost her mother when
she was still a child. My grandmother was born in the late 1880's in
Ivankov. There were many Jews living in Ivankov. But this was not a Jewish
city. Jews and Russians and Ukrainians got along very well and helped each
other. They were good neighbors. There was a synagogue in Ivankov but I had
never been there.

Late in the first decade of the 1900s, my grandmother married Arkadiy
Gilik. I know very little about my grandfather, only what my grandmother
told me. My grandfather was born in 1886 and died in 1926, long before I
was born. I can remember his face dimly from the photo of him that I saw
once. My grandmother told me that he was great at woodcarving. His carving
decorated cupboards and pieces of furniture, etc. My grandmother described
his patterns in every detail to me. He used to carve pheasants or fruit and
climbing vines on the doors. My grandfather died quite young, when he was
about 40 years old. He may have died from cholera or some other disease.

My grandfather and grandmother were religious people. They went to
synagogue, although I don't know how often. They always celebrated the
Sabbath and traditional Jewish holidays at home.
My grandparents had six children: two sons and four daughters. After my
grandfather died my grandmother had to raise their children alone. I knew
both of the brothers, Uncle Grisha and Uncle Motl, and the sisters,
Evgenia, Faina and Raissa. My grandmother never remarried.

The family moved to Kiev around 1918 when my mother was five years old.
Here's how it happened. The gang of Struk, a leader of one of the many
White Guard gangs in Ukraine, came to Ivankov. And this Struk sent his
bandits to steal my grandmother's cow. But my grandmother had to feed her
children. So, she went to see this Struk and told him to give back her cow.
Struk told her to go home and said that everything would be there. My
grandfather came home and told her the story to her neighbor. He was an
older and more experienced Jewish man. He said Leia, are you out of your
mind? They will come and kill you and your children. He advised the two
older boys to go hide somewhere (I don't remember where) through the woods
and brought a horse and a cart to my grandmother in which to hide her
daughters. She piled some hay and rags on top of them and their neighbor
rode them out of Ivankov. He was a nice man. It's a pity that I don't know
his name. He rescued the whole family. He took them to the station and told
them to try and get to Kiev. And my grandmother took her children to Kiev.
I don't know how she managed. She settled down at 12, Mikhailovskaya
Street, Kiev in an apartment on the ground floor. It was very low and the
windows were not higher than one meter above the ground. We lived our whole
life in that apartment. There was one big room facing the street. There was
another room with no windows and a smaller room with one window facing the
yard. Uncle Motl lived in this room for some time after the war. There was
a long hallway in this apartment with a door to the closet in the middle of
it. The hallway led to the kitchen.

When she was a young girl my grandmother was eager to study. She had no
opportunity to study because her mother died, and as my grandmother was the
oldest of the children, she had to take care of all her brothers and
sisters. She sometimes came near the school. She looked and listened. She
learned Russian when she was 60. She learned to read and write and she
wrote her daughters in Lvov and she also wrote my father and mother. My
grandmother's dream was to provide higher education to her children. She
needed money to implement this dream. So, she began to bake rolls at home
and sold them to earn money. She opened one window, made a sort of a
counter on the windowsill and installed a partial wall in the room. She had
very little space, just a few meters long. From this window, she was sold
the rolls that she baked. Sometimes people came at night to buy her rolls.
They were very delicious. My grandmother also made hamentashen pies
(little triangle pies with poppy seeds), strudels and pies. She managed to
educate her children. I don't know exactly what kind of education their
children got, but it was higher education. My mother completed three years
at the cinematography institute and also took a course in shorthand
writing. She became one of the best and fastest stenographers in Kiev.
I don't know how or where my parents met. They married in 1932
in a civil registration ceremony. They settled in the apartment at
Mikhailovskaya Street. Soon after their wedding, my father was summoned to
serve in the army. I believe he served in Petersburg. My mother went there
on the weekends because she missed him so much. This is what my mother told
me. My father wrote poems and dedicated them to my mother. He also painted
very well when he was young.

My mother became an administrator with the Philharmonic. I don't know where
my father worked before the war. My mother's brothers and sisters all lived
in Kiev, except Raissa. Her sisters were already married. Aunt Fania
(Faina) and her husband lived in Kreschatik. She was a seamstress in a
shop. Aunt Zhenia and her family also lived nearby. Aunt Zhenia, she worked
at the Regional Association of Consumers. Aunt Raissa married a military
man and followed him to Moscow. Several years later, her husband was
promoted to the rank of general. Aunt Raya followed him everywhere, as he
had to move from one location to another. I cannot say anything about my
mother's brothers.

Growing up

I was born in 1934. My first memories are associated with
my grandmother. My parents were at work and my grandmother was bringing me
up. I remember the fairy tales that she told me when I was small. She told
me stories from the Bible, but she told them in a fairy tale manner. I
remember her telling me how people were going across a desert and could not
find shelter. A woman gave them some flour and they got some water to make
flat bread. They put these flat breads on their shoulders to dry in the
sun. This was the food of these people. My grandmother also told me that
these travelers came to a gate that was guarded by two lions. They somehow
put these two lions to sleep and managed to go through the gate. Much later
I learned that this was the story about Pesach (editor's note: we are not
sure where the lions fit into the story of Pesach). My grandmother was a
very wise and a very kind person. She resolved all problems in our family
and my mother and father always listened to her advice.

We had neighbors in our apartment. We made a separate entrance door and
walled up the door that connected our rooms and thus had an apartment of
our own. All our neighbors liked and respected my grandmother. All our
neighbors that had a common yard were like one big family. They were all of
different nationalities but they were so close that in summer they rested
on their camp beds in the yard at night. I can't remember how many Jewish
families there were; I didn't quite pay attention to the nationality.
However, I remember one family: Lidia, the mother, her children and her
grandchildren. Lidia was the same age as my grandmother. Later this family
emigrated to Israel. My grandmother always advised those who addressed her
on various matters. She also helped her neighbors to resolve their
problems. She always knew how to save money; she could give advice on
medical treatment or on the upbringing of children. She was a very wise
woman.

My grandmother always made her own clothes and the clothes for her
daughters and me. Before the war my grandmother took me to the ballet
school at the Opera House. I was in the junior group. She made me beautiful
gauze tutus. The war in 1941 put an end to it all.

I often heard Yiddish at home. When my grandmother and my mother wanted to
be secretive, they spoke Yiddish. My grandmother wore long, dark gowns. She
always wore a shawl. Her favorite was a white silk shawl. She always wore
it when she went to pray. My grandmother knew all the Jewish traditions and
holidays, but she observed them all. She was afraid that somebody would
report her to the authorities and that her family would suffer. There were
always big festive dinners on big holidays. My grandmother was a great
cook. I can't remember whether she cooked only traditional Jewish food, but
I know that her cooking was delicious. She wasn't very religious. She went
to synagogue only on holidays. I can't remember whether she prayed at
home. I don't think she had time for that. She was always busy doing
something. She worked from morning till night on weekdays and on Saturday.
I don't remember her ever taking a rest. She had to earn money to provide
for her family. In those years it was not safe to go to synagogue. Those
were the horrific 1930's in the period of struggle against religion. There
was only one synagogue left of the three hundred that existed in Kiev
before the revolution of 1917. Cult structures were removed; rabbis,
Orthodox and Roman Catholic priests disappeared behind KGB (State security
Committee) walls. My grandmother was afraid of it all. I remember one
night. I was in my lower secondary school then. My grandmother got ready to
leave the house and said that she would be back in the morning. I asked her
where she was going, but she told me that I was not supposed to know. Much
later she started telling me that she went to pray. I asked her to take me
with her, but my grandmother would not agree to take me with her. She
explained to me that I would not understand, and that there was a plain
room where people came to pray, and that there was nothing else in this
room.

My grandmother did all the housekeeping. Our family income was very small
but my grandmother managed to cook many delicacies. I remember her
delicious strudels. She always treated our neighbors to her pies. Of
course, my grandmother made apple-poppy seed pies and strudels with jam for
birthdays.

I remember that our apartment was beautiful before the war. My father liked
beautiful antiques. He decorated a very beautiful Christmas tree when I was
small. It might have been a real Christmas tree, or a pine tree, whatever
was available at the market. The Christmas tree was decorated to celebrate
New Year's Eve. I also had beautiful toys. We had a beautiful screen in our
big room. My little bed was behind it. My father and mother slept on the
sofa. I still have our table that we had before the war.

During the War

I remember the beginning of the Great Patriotic War well. It started at
night. My parents woke me up. I saw my father sitting on the sofa ready to
put on his high boots. I asked him "Papa, where are you going?" but he
smiled and didn't say a word. He only said "You will be taken to the
basement." In the next building the basements were very deep and Uncle
Syoma carried me there. My father had already left. There were many
children and older people in that basement. I also remember that there was
only one small lamp turned on when my father was getting ready. I remember
the air raids and the sound of the airplane engines. Later my grandmother
took us out of Kiev. We left on a truck. It was an open vehicle with a
tarpaulin covering it on the rear. My cousin Arkadiy, Aunt Fania's son, was
standing near the edge of the truck body. We four girls (me and my cousins
Sveta, Stella and Natochka), were sitting in the middle to keep safe. We
didn't have time to pack, so we hardly had any clothes with us. The truck
drove us to a village and then went back. My grandmother put us to bed
under a cart and wrapped us up in something to keep warm. We stayed
overnight there. Then we traveled by railroad on some kind of platforms.
They were loaded with steel slabs all covered in black oil (mazut) and we
sat on those slabs. Then again we slept on the ground somewhere and then
got back on trains. We changed trains five or six times and the trip took
us about a month. My grandmother was taking us to Perm, where her older
daughter Raissa lived. Her husband, a general, was in the service there,
and Aunt Raya sent us a message to get to her place immediately.

In Perm we settled down in the clay barracks. It was very long. I think
there were about ten doors on one side of the barracks and about the same
number on another. At the very end there was a little room and we children
stayed there.

Raya and her husband had a small apartment. Aunt Fania and her children,
Natochka and Arkadiy, lived with her. Aunt Fania made men's underwear for
the front. She was spending day and night at the sewing machine. Aunt
Fania's husband was executed in Kiev by the Germans at the very beginning
of the war.

My mother worked as a stenographer through all these years and she had
contacts with Moscow for some reason. But she told me about it many years
after the war. We rarely saw her. My grandmother did all housekeeping
chores and looked after the children.

It was 30 degrees below zero in Perm. My cousin Svetochka's hands became
frostbitten. My own hands and my feet were so frostbitten that I did not
feel any pain when my grandmother and my neighbors pricked them with pins.
We were so miserably dressed. I remember the snow was knee deep. It was
cold in the barracks, less cold than outside, but still very cold.

There was not enough food. Once a local woman gave us a carton full of
peas. But these peas were so old that my grandmother had to beat them with
a hammer and soak them in water for a long time before she could cook them.
Those peas lasted for some time. Later, when my mother went to work she
received one pound of sugar that she had to divide between all of us. My
cousins were the first to eat a lump of sugar, each sipping their boiling
water. And I put my little bit into the cup and sat there waiting. They all
pushed me, telling me to sip because it would melt! My grandmother also
got potato and beet peels, ground them up and made something like pancakes.
In spring we also picked up ashberries.

All the tenants of the barracks supported each other. They all had to share
one common kitchen, but there were no conflicts.

All of us lived in one room. Planks were put between two iron beds and my
grandmother covered them with whatever she had for us to sleep on
overnight.

There were also things to enjoy. I remember an opera theater
during the evacuation in Perm. There was a wonderful ballet group; there
were world-reknowned ballerinas Ulanova and Palladina. Our friend's mother
worked in this theater. She took us backstage from where we watched all the
ballet performances.

I also remember that our grandmother took us girls--only Stella
didn't go--to a music teacher. We were auditioned and the teacher told me
and little Alla to stay. I don't remember the teacher's name or her
nationality. My grandmother took me to music classes for quite a while. I
had classes every night. Sometimes when I had a class later at night I
felt sleepy but I still enjoyed playing music.

Now I will tell you about my father. At the beginning of the war my mother
received a notification stating that my father was missing. My mother tore
up this paper and said, He is alive! I don't believe this! He is alive! And
she was right, he returned after all.

Here is what happened. In case of war, my father had to report to a
certain office, which he did. There he received false documents bearing a
typical Russian name--Nikolai Vassilievich Svistun. He was sent to a
partisan unit. I can't remember all details. Well, at first he was in this
partisan unit. Later, he was sent to the town of Chipovichi. My father was
to support communications between two partisan units in the woods on both
sides of Chipovichi. My father had to think of a profession he could
perform when visited by the high-ranking German military, so my father
became a barber. He lived with a family of Baptists in Chipovichi. There
was a father and two sons in this family. But since they were Baptists,
they did not have to serve in the army. A local Komsomol member reported to
the Gestapo that my father was a partisan and a Jew. I don't know how he
found out. Perhaps he knew my father before the war, or maybe somebody who
worked with my father told him. This informer was a Komsomol member, so
nobody suspected that he was working for the Germans and that he was a
traitor. The Gestapo captured my father and tortured him. The members of
the Baptist family my father had been living with came to the Gestapo every
day to demand that they release my father. The mother of the family brought
food to him every day. The Gestapo military threatened to shoot her and her
sons, but she answered that they wouldn't do anything to them or to my
father. And then the Germans let my father go. But they told him that if
they caught him again they would shoot him. After the war these Baptists
often visited us.

My father was on the edge of death again when the Germans
wanted to check on whether he was a Jew. My father was circumcised
according to the tradition, and an inspection would probably have resulted
in my father's execution or his being sent to a concentration camp. But the
doctor who worked in Chipovichi took my father to the barracks for typhoid
patients, which the Germans wouldn't enter. She saved his life. Her name
was Nina but I don't know her last name. She also visited us after the war.
She was a slim middle-aged woman.

People saved my father's life many times. Once, a policeman came and told
my father that at three o'clock the Germans would come to arrest him. My
father didn't know whether this was true or just a provocation so that they
could follow him to his hiding place, and so he was afraid to go to the
partisans in the woods. Instead, he stayed put and the Germans captured him
and took him to a place of execution. They shot my father and a whole group
of other people. My father lay under the bodies of the dead. He was only
slightly wounded, but was covered in the blood of the others who were
murdered. Later, my father crawled out of the pit. Another time, he was
again captured and was about to be shot. It was afternoon. There was bright
sunshine. There were two military escorts, and four people who were to be
killed. My father and the three others were taken to a sandy spot. The
military escorts gave them spades and told them to dig their own graves.
While they were digging, the oldest of the intended victims told the others
to throw sand into their guards' eyes and run. The moment the escort sat
down for a cigarette break, they threw sand into their eyes and ran away,
all in different directions. My father told me that he didn't know if the
rest of the escapees survived. He was running and bullets were whistling
around him. He ran for a long time and then fell, exhausted, into a pit. He
woke up in the morning and didn't know where to go. He returned to the
partisans in the woods and stayed with them until November 1943, until the
end of occupation. He didn't work as a barber in that town any more.

My mother always believed that my father was alive, and she told all his
friends that he was still living. In 1943 Semyon, my father's brother who
worked in a bridge construction team, somehow learned that my father was
alive. He wrote to us in Perm about it. We received a card from him. He
wrote in small letters, but in the middle of it he wrote "Nyuma lives!" in
big letters. I was just learning to read and read these two words to my
Grandma. My grandmother clasped her hands and ran into the corridor. She
knocked on our neighbors' doors shouting "Nyuma is alive! Nyuma is alive!"
When my mother came home from work my grandmother declared, "You know,
Manechka, Nyuma is alive!" and my mother replied "Yes, I knew that he was
alive." In 1944 we received letters from my father and looked forward to
his coming back. He demobilized from the army in 1946 and returned home. My
father worked as a barber after the war. He worked at the central barber's
shop.

After the War

At the beginning of 1944 my grandmother took us all to Kiev. Aunt Raissa
and her husband stayed in Perm and later they moved to Moscow. I would like
to tell you about my cousins who were in the evacuation with me. They were
very dear to me. Stella (maiden name Feldman), the daughter of my mother's
sister Evgenia, was educated at the Institute of Literature. She married a
Russian doctor named Victor Averin. Victor worked at the maternity home.
Although it was an ordinary district hospital, all high officials brought
their wives to Victor. He worked so hard day and night, that it resulted in
the severe disease of his legs. He couldn't work any more, and he was in
despair. Stella decided to take him to America. Victor lived for two more
years and then died. He didn't reach the age of 60. Their son Peter lives
and works in the USA.

Natochka Miliavskaya (married name - Roiter), the daughter of my mother's
sister Faina, lived in Kiev almost all her life. She worked as Chief of a
shop at the knitwear factory. Her son, Boris Krasnov, a theatrical artist,
moved to Moscow. He is popular in Russia and abroad. He works for the most
famous performers. He often gets job offers from foreign companies.
Natochka and her husband moved to join their son in Moscow. She sometimes
visits us in Kiev.

Svetlana Feldman, Evgenia's daughter, studied at the mathematics and
Physics Department of Kiev University. She was married and worked as a
teacher of Physics and mathematics at school. Her son married, and his
wife's family decided to move to Israel. Svetochka didn't want to go but
she was afraid to remain here alone. So, she left, with her son's family in
the 1970's to live in Israel. Later, they moved to the USA, but we never
heard from then after that. I have no information about what they did for a
living there, or how they lived.

Allochka Lev (married name - Uhlina), Raissa's daughter, lived in Moscow.
She learned Italian, French and German languages. She works as
translator/interpreter.

I don't remember any details of our return from evacuation. We returned to
our former apartment in Mikhailovskaya Street. We were lucky that it was
not occupied. Although it was almost empty, there was only one chair left.
My father was offered another apartment but he said he preferred to live in
his old apartment. We often had our parents' acquaintances staying with us
when they returned and found their houses in ruins. They slept on the
floor, it was as simple as that. After we returned to Kiev my mother was
offered the position of stenographer at the Ministry of Culture.

In 1944 I went to school. I was admitted to the 3rd grade. It was a Russian
school for boys and girls. We had a wonderful teacher, a very intelligent
person. I studied only two years at this school. There were quite a few
Jewish children at this school. There was no anti-Semitism at school. We
didn't have a bell at school. There was a rail and they banged on it when
the lesson was over. Our teacher, Anna Romanovna, always let me go some
time before the end of the class, and I went and banged on this rail. Later
Anna Romanovna paid attention to my drawings. I was in the 4th grade when
she asked me to help senior students to make a wall newspaper. I was to
help them draw Lenin. The senior children brought me a book with a
portrait of Lenin and I made a rather big portrait of him for their
newspaper. I also paint pictures for Anna Romanovna for her classes. She
told me that I had to go to Kiev Art School. My mother and I went to this
school. Its deputy Director looked through my pictures and I was admitted
at this school.

There were up to 10 children in a class at the art school. Of course, my
favorite subject was drawing. But I was fond of other subjects too. Our
French teacher, Louise Edmond, came from France. She always had her hair
done so beautifully. My French was good and I was all right in mathematics.

I became a pioneer and then a Komsomol member at the art school. But we
were not required to be involved in any political activities; we didn't
even have a political information class. Creativity was of the utmost
significance at this school, and the main evaluation criteria were based on
talent and humanity. Therefore my pioneer and Komsomol years passed by
almost unnoticed. Children from other Ukrainian towns studied at the art
school. I can't remember whether there were Jewish children at this school.
We took no notice whatsoever of our nationality; that is why I can't
remember. I met my best friends at this school. One is Ukrainian and
another is Russian. We still see each other every now and then.

I have very dim memories of the period of persecution of the
cosmopolites in 1953. There were no discussions or any meetings at school
related to this subject. My parents didn't have any discussions of this
subject at home either, at least in my presence. But I remember the
"doctors' case." My parents talked about it at home. Of course, nobody in
our family believed that these doctors were guilty. I think Stalin's death
saved many lives. We didn't have any meetings at school when Stalin died.
The only thing I remember was a crepe flag on our building. Then I heard
that Stalin died. None of us felt any sorrow or grief in this regard.

My parents and my grandmother were happy to hear that Israel was
established in 1948. My father often told me about the people who put so
much effort into turning a desert into a blooming oasis. We admired them.
But we never considered emigration to that country.

My father could draw, and he was happy that I studied at the art school. He
began a collection of books on art. He was saving money to buy these books.
When he had a day off he always went to bookstores to get a couple of
books. We all loved to read. He would always bring me an interesting book,
and later, he would always have one for my husband as well. This collection
of books that I have is my father's. My mother always, when I was pupil,
had to tell me to go to bed in the evening, but I still waited up until
everybody else went to sleep to continue my reading.

My grandmother always helped me with my studies at art school. I had to
draw many portraits, and my grandmother never refused to pose for me.

My grandmother didn't go to synagogue after the war. She could hardly walk
so far. I don't remember her praying at home. My grandmother died in
October 1960. It was a big tragedy for me. My grandmother had been with me
since I was a baby. It was very hard for me to learn to live my life
without her.

After finishing school in 1953, I wanted to continue my studies in Riga,
but my mother convinced me to enter an art institute in Kiev. I had no
trouble passing my entrance exams. Sergei Alexeevich Grigoriev, director of
the Institute, often came by our school. He knew me and selected me and
three other pupils to become students at his institute. Then came the day
when they posted the lists of students that were admitted, but my name was
not there. About a week after that, Sergei Alexeevich called me and asked
me to come immediately. I replied that I wouldn't come, because my name
was not on the list. Sergei Alexeevich called me several times and sent
messengers to me, but I still didn't go. Then he sent two of my close
friends to drag me there if necessary. I went there and he explained that
he had to admit two students and that this was the only way for them to get
in. He also told me that he had submitted a request to Moscow authorities
to approve my admission as an additional student. Their approval was issued
in a week's time after our meeting, but I was so hurt that I didn't attend
classes for another month.

I met my husband Yuriy Lutskevich at school. He came from Kirovograd where
his family lived. I don't remember who his father was, but his mother was a
pianist at the town Philharmonic. He had an older sister named Nina. Yuriy
and I are the same age, both were born in 1934. Yuriy is not a Jew, but
this was of no significance.

In Kirovograd, Yura was acquainted with an artist who became his teacher,
and later gave him some money to go to study in Kiev. Yura came to the 10th
grade in our school. We met and got married when we were 3rd year students
at the Institute. We often went to concerts together. We both loved
symphonic music. Also, Yura was very fond of fishing. He took a boat and
sailed far away to a lake because there were few lakes in the vicinity. I used to
meet him when he was coming back home. Once, I remember, he brought back a
backpack full of big pikes. He shared them with his friends and our
neighbors.

I was a graduate when our son Alexandr was born. There was too little space
in our apartment for all of us. I was assigned to work at school and I
received a one-room apartment from this school. Yura also worked. I was
raising our son and kept working. We worked at school at first and then at
the Art Institute. But soon we quit teaching, as we both took to creative
work. The authorities provided us with an art shop and my son spent a lot
of his time there when he grew older. Of course, he took to drawing as
well. He graduated from the Art school in Kiev and then studied at the Art
Institute. He had several exhibitions. He worked in Denmark and then,
recently, in London. He painted landscapes and portraits. He often goes on
tours. Alexandr speaks fluent English and a little bit of Danish and
German.  My son is married to a Jew, and they have a son named
Zhenechka who goes to primary school. He is 8 years old. He doesn't want to
draw yet. He liked to draw when he was younger, and we have kept some of
his paintings from that time.

My parents continued working until they were very old. My father was a
barber and my mother was a stenographer. My mother had many students and
they have very warm memories of her. My father died in 1982 and my mother
died in 1983.

In 2001 my husband died. It was a tragedy for me. I haven't recovered from
it yet.

I knew about anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, but I never faced
any. All the people I knew treated me nicely. Perhaps, because the people
in my surroundings consisted of educated and intelligent people, artists
and sculptors etc.

I am still working. I have exhibitions. Many of my pictures have been sold
abroad. Some of them I gave away as presents. I recently got an offer to
work in Germany and then organize an exhibition of my pictures there. I
lived there for over two months. I had some of my works with me, and I
painted while I lived there. The exhibition was held at the palace where
one of the Russian tsars once resided. It was beautiful. Sometimes I go to
the house of artists in the outskirts of Moscow where I work for 2 or 3
months of the year. I have many friends there. My work is very important
for me. I haven't traveled much. I've only been in Poland and France, but I
hope I will have an opportunity to visit other countries.

But now I find time to study Jewish history and religion, as well as Jewish
traditions. I get more and more interested in these studies. I visited
Israel recently. I liked it there very much. But one can live a life and be
creative only where one was born. Many things are possible now thanks to
Hesed and the Jewish Community Center. I used to go there with my friend,
but her physical condition is worse and she cannot do it any more. I attend
lectures and meetings. I have new friends and we often celebrate Jewish
holidays. I read Jewish newspapers and magazines. There are so many
interesting things around. I feel that by gaining all this knowledge I'm
getting closer to my grandmother. She was the first to open this striking
world to me.
 

Apolonia Starzec
Warsaw
Poland
Interviewer: Marta Cobel-Tokarska
Date of interview: June 2006

Mrs. Starzec lives alone in downtown Warsaw. She is friendly, talkative and charming, although at times our conversation wasn't easy. My interlocutor doesn't feel attached to Jewry, perceives her pre-war family as assimilated, though her story reveals a somewhat different picture. Some subjects proved impossible to discuss at all, and sometimes Mrs. Starzec made the impression of deliberately avoiding certain questions. Despite that, the many disconnected and incomplete strands wove themselves into an interesting story.

My family history
Growing up
During the war
After the war

My family history

Here's my, let's call it, résumé. We lived in Radomsko [town in central Poland, some 150 km south-west of Warsaw]. It was my father's patrimony. My sister's name was Irena... I mean, she had a different name once. She changed her name to Irena during the war and it stayed that way. Before the war her name was Ruta. She was Ruta and I was Pola [short for Apolonia]. We were the only children. In terms of looks, I was more like my father, he was dark, and my mother was a blue-eyed light blond, typical Aryan, as they say. My sister had her looks. My childhood was good, indeed. Cheerful, without inferiority complexes of any kind; I had no idea of anti-Semitism whatsoever. The material conditions were good, at least until the crisis [Great Depression] 1.

My father's name was Mordchaj Dawid Bugajski. He had four brothers and three sisters. One of the brothers was called Salomon. They lived in Lodz, and then [during WWII] they moved in with us [in Radomsko]. The second brother was called Juda, the third one was my father, and the fourth one was Jakub. My father's sisters adopted their husbands' surnames. One had the married name of Lorie; she was a kind of liberated woman, and the other sister had the married name of Hercberg.

My father ran a large family business called Bracia Bugajscy [Bugajski Brothers]. They traded in flour, sugar, salt, things like that. I remember they leased a siding at the train station. I visited the place as a child and saw the wares being unloaded. There was also a wholesale store in the market square. Also a road-building business, and something else, I don't know what. In any case, they didn't make it. The whole thing went bust when the Great Depression came. My father's brother, Juda, committed suicide. He had a large family, a large house, and he was the head of all that business. His children were all grown up; he was much older than my father.

Was my father's family traditional? Yes. They spoke Yiddish. But neither did we visit them nor did they visit us. We didn't keep in touch. I felt more attached to my mother's family. I think they [my father's family] were all murdered in Radomsko. There is a cemetery there, a monument.

The most important person in our home was my mother, whom we loved very much, because she was a friend rather than a parent. She agreed to many things, but also required many things from us. She brought us up well. Her maiden name was Zelinger, Zofia Zelinger. She had an inferiority complex, she was obese; before getting married she strove for her parents to send her to Marienbad 2. They did send her there, but I don't know whether it helped anything. She was very beautiful, a typical Aryan. She was 16 when they married her: to a man from Radomsko. And so she married a Bugajski. How did she meet him? I don't know whether matchmaking was involved, I can't remember those things. She was less than 17 years old when she gave birth to me. And she died young, also [in 1940]. I was the first child, born 1st October 1914; they got married on New Year's Eve... I even had her ring, with the dates engraved.

My mother also came from a large family. And, unlike the Bugajski family, it was an assimilated one. I kept in touch with my mother's family. My mother comes from Sosnowiec [city in Silesia region in southern Poland, some 300 km south of Warsaw]. My grandmother - they say I had her looks. Zelinger. I don't remember her first name. I have a very vague recollection of her. I know they lived in their own house, a large one, because there were nine of them. Grandmother died when I was little. Did she wear a wig? I think so. That was the custom then. And my grandfather I don't remember at all.

In the house in Sosnowiec my [maternal] grandparents lived on the second floor. Lubomirski Park and the river Przemsza were nearby. The address was 2 Ludwiki Street. There were two balconies; you could spend Sukkot there, under the roof. There were quite a lot of rooms, and in the living room stood toys for us. I liked to go there because my grandparents really doted on me. Katowice was not far away, it wasn't part of Poland yet [Katowice was incorporated into Poland only in 1922]. I remember them taking me there [to Katowice], buying me nice clothes. Sosnowiec was poor, and Katowice was different, German style; I returned all elegant.

I don't remember all uncles and aunts. Zygmunt, my mother's youngest brother, lived in France. I remember him coming to our town before the war. When in Poland, he visited us very often. I was in my last year of gymnasium [eighth grade] when he took me to Warsaw for a sightseeing tour. I was 16, just a teenager. I didn't like to dress up, I liked my school uniform. He showed me everything there was to see in Warsaw. I remember me passing through all those revolving doors. Everything was amazing. He showed me the cabaret, the Qui Pro Quo [famous Warsaw cabaret, operating from 1919-1931] and the Morskie Oko [cabaret, operating from 1929-1933]. And if that weren't enough, he took me to an ordinary revue. I'm sitting at the table, dim lights, a dance floor. I was very embarrassed; he had to go to the toilet, left me alone. A young man comes up to me and asks me to dance. And I was so frightened. 'I'm not dancing, I can't!' and I yelled at Uncle for bringing me there. That was my first encounter with Warsaw.

Uncle Zygmunt was very handsome. He was a man who enjoyed life. Elegant and handsome, he long persisted in bachelorhood. His first wife was Aunt Yvonne, as we called her. She left her husband to be with him. She wasn't Jewish. She kept him in hiding somewhere with her relatives in the [French] countryside. She worked as an editor. Uncle Zygmunt came to Poland once, quite accidentally at the very time when I was giving birth to my elder son. It was 1947; they were taking me from the delivery room to the maternity ward. I look, here comes my husband with some gentleman. The first visitor I had after delivery. He died of a heart attack, in 1971. At the table in his bridge club. Had himself cremated. His ashes rest at the Père-Lachaise cemetery [French: Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, Paris's largest and most famous cemetery].

My mother had a sister named Sala. She married a certain Sandomierski, also from Radomsko. Her other sister, Cesia, lived in Bedzin [town in Silesia, near Katowice and Sosnowiec]. She married some Hasid 3, named Zeligier, a similar name. They had a son Zygmunt, he came to us for the summer holidays, and I also spent my vacations there sometimes. There, in Bedzin, I saw the Jewish ghetto [quarter] for the first time. My aunt wore a wig, her husband a beard. Zygmunt had been through the cheder. It was a very religious Jewish family, very different than ours. The boy felt a bit like a bird in a cage. I remember he liked to come to us because at least he could taste some freedom. And get a taste of a different world. And I went there because, you know, it was right to visit Auntie from time to time. Zygmunt had a sister, her name was Pola, too, I think. He was the eldest grandson, I was the eldest granddaughter. We were roughly of the same age. He craved for all that he lacked, the contact with Polish culture, and I ran away from the culture he was raised in. Everything irritated me there.

There was also Uncle Bernard. He was very handsome, blond, like all of them, one of the eldest sons, the most intelligent one. He married Zosia [diminutive for Zofia] from Lodz, a beautiful girl. They eventually took over the [grandparents'] house in Sosnowiec. The other brothers and sisters moved out elsewhere. And reportedly they were taken from that house [by the Germans during the war]. They were a very loving couple. I actually attended their wedding in Lodz. My mother sewed special dresses for us. It was a wedding under the chuppah. And they had two sons: Mietek [from Mieczyslaw] and Henio [from Henryk]. Mietek was born with a harelip. And he was so terribly mean. His younger brother was such a cherub, talented, cheerful, joyful... and then he with the harelip.

Growing up

I was born and raised in Sosnowiec under my grandmother's supervision, because my mother was emotionally very strongly attached to her family home. I spent more time in Sosnowiec each year than at our home. The other grandchildren came, too, had their toys there, I had a beautiful talking doll, Zygmunt Zeligier had a rocking horse in the living room... He was the eldest of all the cousins; he died recently. He had a wife named Adela and a boy. They lived in the States, in Washington, DC.

Now let me tell you about my town. Our street in Radomsko was originally called Strzalkowska. It led to a village called Strzalkow, but later it was renamed to Legionow. The house we lived in was very large. It was owned by some Jew. From the World War I period I remember those massive samovars standing in the large courtyard. There was no sewage system, a waterman supplied water. Later a sewage system was installed. The house was very big. One wing was occupied by an elementary school, and above it were apartments. And in our wing the whole second floor was occupied by a private gymnasium that I later attended.

We lived on the third floor, in a suite of four connecting rooms. From my balcony I could see a mill in the distance, rye fields where we played truant. I was very angry [to be living so close to school] because if I did anything bad, they would immediately send me home to bring my mother for a warning talk. And I envied those who lived farther away. The house is still there. When I came after the war to see how things were, it had already been turned into a hospital.

The town had 30,000 inhabitants. It was surrounded by predominantly German settlements. There was little industry. If anything, it was foreign-owned, the metal industry, for instance, was Belgian. Besides that, there were some private-owned steel mills.

There was also the Witte Wunsche factory. [Ksawery Wunsche i S-ka: a furniture manufacturer, founded in Radomsko in the early 20th century, operated until the end of WWII. Nationalized in 1945, operated afterwards as an independent enterprise under the name of Fabryka Mebli Gietych Nr 2 (formerly Wunsche).] Wunsche's son was my friend and peer. He went to the boys' gymnasium. It was a public school. He was a bit my elder, went to the parallel grade, the so-called German school. But we were members of the same youth organization, MOPR 4. He was also a factory owner's child. During the war, he did a lot for Jews. His father was a Volksdeutscher 5 or a Reichsdeutscher. The young Wunsche also helped the organization, which had a left-wing profile, during the war. He married a Jewish girl. A beautiful girl, he fell in love with her even as a student. And they live abroad.

Politically, the town was under the sway of the PPS 6. All those [left- wing] organizations ruled supreme, and even in the town council the PPS had a majority. The fire brigade was the town's most important organization. On the national holidays, 3rd May or 11th November, we marched in our school uniforms and sang songs. There was this square, called the 'calf pen', young people had dates there [Editor's note: A meeting point for young people, called that because young boys and girls stared at each other 'like calves' - a Polish expression]. And there was the market square. In the market square stood a beautiful old church and next to it the town hall.

The pre-war Radomsko has been very beautifully described by my schoolmate Lola Szlamkiewicz [actually Lea], married name Grebler; she's dead now. She was in Russia when the war broke out, not, like myself, in a ghetto [in Warsaw]. She survived, and I have all those school photos from her. There [in Russia] she met her husband, Grebler, who came from Stanislawow [town in south-eastern Poland, today Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine, some 500 km south-east of Warsaw]. And she became his wife. She lived a beautiful life at her beloved husband's side. I have her book about the Jewish community [of Radomsko], a community I had few affiliations with. [Szlamkiewicz-Grebler Lea (1991): Ryby z nieba. Przedswiateczny cud. Opowiadania i humoreski z zycia Zydow w malych miasteczkach w Polsce w latach 1925-1938. (Fishes from Heaven: The Holiday Miracle. Stories and Humoresques about Jewish Life in Small Towns in Poland 1925-1938), Haifa]

Lola came from a very poor family. My elder, she completed an elementary school. She taught herself. She was an orphan and she was brought up by her elder sister, whose husband was a shoemaker. They lived at the market square, and on warm days the shoemaker would work in front of the shop. They lived in terrible poverty; there was a lot of Jewish poverty around. She left town and went to Warsaw to study biology, which she completed. Later, when the war broke out, we lost contact whatsoever.

After the war we looked for each other. I no longer remember the details, but, in the end, we [Mrs. Starzec and her husband] brought her from Stanislawow to Warsaw. We secured an apartment for her, and even a job. But they didn't want to stay in Poland. Even though they had good conditions here. They immigrated to Israel. Their children were born there, two wonderful children. I'm in touch with the daughter, her name is Ania. She lives in the United States. The parents were already of age, needed care; they brought them to the States to live with them. They both had cancer.

There was a movie theater, the town's only one, alongside it a park, where dancing parties and all kinds of events were held. There were also balls at the town hall; I didn't go because I was too young, but my cousin, who worked as an accountant for us, went, and so did my mother. In the cinema they screened silent films, but there was a band downstairs, like in a philharmonic, providing wonderful musical illustration to the movies. There were the stalls and the balcony, and that was a great thing. Those movies we were allowed to see we did go to see. The first sound movie I saw was in Czestochowa [a city close to Radomsko], with Al Jolson, a black singer [Editor's note: a white actor wearing blackface]. I remember he sang beautifully. [Al Jolson, real name Asa Yoelson, (1886-1950): American singer and movie actor. Played in the first full-length sound movie, the 1927 Jazz Singer, dir. Alan Crosland, a sentimental story about the son of a synagogue cantor who against his father's will, becomes a jazz singer.] Mother took us under her arm, me and my sister, and we went to Czestochowa. It was 50 kilometers, you went by train. I was proud because express trains stopped in Radomsko! They don't these days.

The market day in Radomsko was Thursday. The farmers brought their produce, the prices were low. It was the so called 'price scissors' period: farm produce was very cheap whereas industrial goods were very expensive. During the Great Depression, peasants would split a match into two to save. Matches were expensive; there was a [state] monopoly. Salt, sugar, were expensive. And an egg cost very little, a few pennies. You couldn't buy a box of matches for one egg. You had to sell many eggs or a lot of butter or cheese to buy salt, for instance.

There were many stores and cake shops in Radomsko. There was a cake shop where they sold good cream cakes. Or chocolates. There were stores with plenty of food products to choose from. They were cheap. The stores offered all kinds of exotic fruit. I remember a holiday when you eat a lot of dried fruit, New Year or something. [The interviewee probably means Purim]. You bought pineapple and dates - fruit that in People's Poland 7 were impossible to buy for a long, long time. Stores selling dried fruit and exotic fruit. The domestic ones you didn't buy at the market, of course, but went to an orchard and bought directly from the tree or shrub [i.e. from the farmer]. There was a hospital on our street; the director was Doctor Stanislawski. His wife had a beautiful garden; we went there to buy strawberries.

We didn't go to the market for shopping but had it brought to us by [a woman] from the countryside, from Kobiele [village near Radomsko]. She became friends with my mother, and one day she says, 'I'd like you to hire my daughter.' Jania was 16 when she came to us. To apprentice as a housekeeper, in the kitchen. She was a maid, a 'servant,' you called it those days. Janina Koper. She stayed with us until the war. She came from Kobiele Wielkie, the home town [rather village] of the writer Reymont, and she was a very good student [Reymont, Wladyslaw Stanislaw (1868-1925): Polish author, best known for his novel 'Chlopi' (The Peasants), awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1924]. She was our friend. I had already flown out of home and she stayed with my parents until the war.

A washerwoman came to do the washing. The whole thing lasted for three days, and then you hung the laundry in the attic to dry. Then an ironing lady came, so, put shortly, it was a major operation, the big washing every two months. And then everything had to be starched, it was all cotton, no artificial fabrics, those were unknown.

I didn't know hunger but rather affluence. Well brought-up, learning to play the piano. At first, [my parents] insisted on me playing the violin. It didn't work too well, so I switched to the piano. A pharmacist's wife lived next to us. My sister and I went to her for lessons. We were both brought up as girls from a good home.

The first radio I remember was when I was in the final year of gymnasium. It was a large apparatus, with massive batteries at the back, you listened through headphones. There were lectures for final-year students. Friends would come to me, girls and boys, and we would listen. I know that at the time, I was 16, we were one of the first to have a radio.

What can I say about religion? We observed the holidays for the sake of my father's parents. They lived on the same street. People talked that we didn't observe the kashrut... and my father never ignored what his parents said. I knew them as very, very old people. They didn't visit us often. I remember the food aspect of the holidays. On Purim, my mother would bake beautiful things... My father observed the food regulations, taught us certain things. That is, for instance, you eat only matzah during the holidays. I remember how a friend tempted me to eat a piece of bread on Easter, and my father saw it. It was the first and only time that he gave me a spanking for publicly disobeying [his orders].

For Pesach, my father recited something, and I, as the eldest child, in the absence of a boy, asked him the questions [the mah nishtanah]. He answered me, and so on. I was little, I barely remember those things. I remember the Easter table, covered with horseradish roots [maror]. But, at the same time, there was ham. When I visited a [Christian] friend of mine, I saw the Christmas tree and found I liked it very much. And so there was also a tree at [our] home. But it stood in the last room, ours, in the mezzanine behind the door, hidden in case someone paid us a visit.

My father felt attracted to Jewishness. He read a lot. And he spoke Yiddish. Yiddish, or Hebrew, I don't know. And my mother - not at all, she was completely liberated, and it was her who ran the house, which is why I never learned many of the things [connected with the Jewish religion and tradition]. If my father went to the synagogue, it was on Judgment Day. My mother - never! And he fasted. My mother did not, nor did we. My birth certificate stated my religion as Jewish but my nationality as Polish. That's how I identified myself, that how I was brought up, in Polishness. I didn't know the [Jewish] language because we didn't speak Yiddish at home.

We had this favorite holiday place called Kamiensk, near Radomsko, where we regularly spent the summer holidays. And one Friday I was cycling back from there to Radomsko, it wasn't far, ten kilometers. I'm passing the synagogue and I see small boys starting to throw stones at me, that I'm offending their feelings. And I didn't realize, didn't know it was forbidden to cycle on Friday night. I don't remember my mother lighting the candles, ever.

I went to kindergarten in Radomsko. And then I went to gymnasium. I was always the youngest in the class. I never went to elementary school. There were several gymnasia in our town. Two for boys, one for girls, and the coeducational private one, ran by Mrs. Weintraub. Ludwika Weintraub came from Piotrkow [Piotrkow Trybunalski, town some 120 km south-west of Warsaw], I think. She was the school's owner and headmaster, a Jewess. Mrs. Mittleman, our craft and design teacher, a doctor's wife, mother of two daughters. A wonderful woman, she taught us many things, the useful ones. A professor named Brumberg. He taught biology, if I'm not mistaken. And Mrs. Palusikowa. I think she taught us math. There were also religion classes, in Polish.

Of my schoolmates I remember, for instance, Blumsztajn senior, Sewek's father [Sewek - short for Seweryn; Seweryn Blumsztajn, one of the founders of the underground KOR Workers Defence Committee, since 1989 editor at the 'Gazeta Wyborcza' daily]. We lived in the same house, us on the floor above them, and we completed the gymnasium together. Other schoolmates: Sznajder, a very talented boy, Plawner, he reportedly survived in the Czestochowa ghetto 8. When we grew up a bit, we became involved in other matters, not only our private ones. Community work. Some were Zionists, members of the so-called Shomr [see Hashomer Hatzair in Poland] 9. Brumberg was the leader of the Hashomer Hatzair guys. I didn't belong anywhere because I wasn't interested in the Jewish movement.

When the time came to take the school-leaving exams, I, being the youngest in the class, had to write to the board of education to be entered. The exam was very difficult. A humanistic-profile gymnasium, with Latin, with German. And I went to Cracow to study. I studied in the years 1930-1934. I studied chemistry. I originally wanted medicine but I didn't get in. The numerus nullus had already been introduced [see Numerus clausus in Poland] 10. Only doctors' children could take some kind of competition exam. Well, I had no chance of passing that, of course. So I took chemistry because in the first year the subjects were the same as in medicine, and I thought I'd eventually move. But I didn't. I stayed, studying the so-called physical university-level chemistry. I enjoyed the life in Cracow and I endured until the third year.

The chemistry department educated future school teachers. The industry was very underdeveloped; there were virtually no chemical plants, only the Moscicki factory [Moscicki, Ignacy (1867-1945): president of Poland from 1926-1939, chemist, founder of the State Nitrogen Compound Plant in Tarnow]. Many students studied forever, the so-called 'iron' ones; there was no requirement to complete your studies within any specific time. You could prolong forever. Unemployment was rampant, so students preferred to stay in the university for as long as possible, enjoy the reduced public transit fares, other discounts. School teachers weren't paid well either. In public schools they were paid better, but in private ones - poorly.

I tasted those big cities like the bumpkin I was. The studies were free of charge, we paid only the lodgings. I rented a room together with two other girls. There was antagonism between the [former] Congress Kingdom 11 and Malopolska [see Galicia] 12. The latter believed people from Congress Kingdom to be slobs, and we often had conversations like: 'Where you from? 'From there and there.' 'Oh, we can't rent to you because you're slobs.' And the place was dirtier than anything I had ever seen...

On the same street, Dunajewskiego, the PPS had its office. I remember a wonderful PPS rally and a fantastic speech delivered by Drobner [Boleslaw Drobner (1883-1968): socialist activist, Member of Parliament in communist Poland]. A face emanating with spirituality, dark hair, dressed in a Mao style uniform [Mao Zedong (1893-1976): Chinese communist leader, first president of the PRC, wore a characteristic uniform imitated by leftwing activists all over the world]. And when he spoke, it was very convincing. That was my first demonstration, May Day.

I experienced the bench ghetto 13. That was what attracted me to the socialist movement. Young people had strongly leftist views then. At university [Jagiellonian University] 14, there was an organization called Zycie Akademickie 15, and a socialist organization, the ZNMS 16. We had discussion meetings, because, apart from your own courses, you attended all other interesting lectures. The fellow students would gather, we had our own premises. The University had exterritorial status; the police wasn't allowed to enter. Nor did they ever arrest anyone. And various speakers came to deliver lectures. Meetings were organized once a week together by Zycie and the ZNMS, on subjects literary, political, whatever we found interesting.

One of the first speakers I remember was Cyrankiewicz 17. Wonderful, marvelous, handsome, lean, blond [Editor's note: everyone remembers him bald from the photographs]. He spoke beautiful Polish. He was from the ZNMS. We also invited writers, men of letters. One day, for instance, we were visited by Kruczkowski [Leon Kruczkowski (1900-1962): chemist, left- leaning writer and essayist]. But then there would come the endeks 18, the kind of boys that you'll also find in Poland these days [see Mlodziez Wszechpolska] 19... the ZPND and the Youth Legion [far-right youth organizations]... and they would start the 'Zwischenrufe' [German for 'interrupting shouts'], trying to break up the meeting, prevent the debate. They would also throw rotten eggs at the speaker to force him to leave. That's what they did with Kruczkowski. The meeting had to be aborted. They were a militia, members of the fraternities, student corporations 20.

There's this rhyme by Szenwald [Lucjan Szenwald (1909-1944): poet, communist activist], it goes like, 'czapeczka, laseczka, akselbancik, bydle wlane korporancik,' ['a cap, a cane, an aiguillette, here's the frat boy, a drunken lout']. The 'aiguillette' because they tied sashes on their shoulders. The cap and the cane, the cap often properly trimmed. They staged anti-Semitic riots, organized the bench ghetto and disrupted our meetings. We also had a militia of our own so they fought. And so much for a discussion, for a meeting.

And we did prison time for socialist activism. The university year was divided into trimesters; there was more vacation than normal life. After each trimester we went home for three weeks. And we changed the lodgings every time to save on rent. We didn't live in a dorm because there were few dorms, and chiefly for low-income students. Friends came to us to say goodbye because we were going home for three weeks. And suddenly the police arranged a frisk and, in 1934, in the apartment where I lived on Starowislna, I was arrested for alleged subversive activity. For being anti- state... And we landed in jail. To serve time was called 'kiblowac,' from the 'kibel,' the bucket that stood in the corner where you relieved yourself.

My mother attended every day of my trial. It was a great blow for my parents, but that's how we paid back for all the goodness that we had received. Two years in prison. And my husband, who was tried alongside me, received six years. I was expelled from the university, stripped of my civil rights. I was released in 1936 and started living on my own. You had to work, and unemployment was very high. It was the Great Depression period.

Radomsko ceased to be my home, it was only out of sentiment I went there. I remembered my childhood with great fondness. But in fact I no longer lived in Radomsko. It was a great embarrassment for the family that the daughter did time in prison, ruined her own life. In Radomsko, they viewed everything from a different angle. My parents were neither communists nor socialists. They weren't even Zionists.

Upon being released I first spent some time in Sosnowiec. Then I went to Warsaw. I lived at 56 Nowolipie Street, in a very beautiful, large house, as a subtenant, with Mr. and Mrs. Berger. Those were young, but religious people. I wasn't familiar at all with all those Jewish regulations and restrictions. I was surprised to see a young man scrubbing his face instead of shaving, because Jews weren't allowed to shave. Or, for instance, he calls me from his room, 'Mrs. Pola, Mrs. Pola, can you come here for a moment?' I enter, it was Friday night. 'Where are you?' I ask and I turn on the lights. And he says, 'Thank you.' I didn't even know that [on Sabbath] you aren't allowed to turn on the lights [i.e. perform any work].

I worked in the Alfa confectionery plant, on Mlynarska Street. Some relatives of Samsonowicz [paternal cousin], who were accountants, recommended me. The factory was owned by Jews named Wajdenfeld. They were two brothers who started with two bags of sugar, and eventually worked it up into a business with 400 employees. I worked as a bookkeeper, in the office, clattering away on the typewriter, learned some basic bookkeeping and that's how I made my living.

During the war

In 1939 I went on leave for the first time, to a summer resort, for two weeks. To Zielona near Jaremcze. Areas that are now part of Russia. [Jaremcze, summer resort near Kolomyja, today western Ukraine]. We went hiking in the mountain; it was the so-called Eastern Beskid Mountains, very beautiful. And then, towards the end of my leave, the unrest started in the border areas, in the north. And you felt war in the air. Everyone was packing up and I left, too.

On my way back to Warsaw I dropped in on my mother and sister who were on vacation in Kamiensk [near Radomsko]. And my sister asks me, 'Tell me, if there's war, will it be possible to buy things? Will the shops remain open?' 'I have no idea,' I said, 'like you don't.' 'Perhaps you'll stay with us?' she asked. 'No,' I said. By then I had become almost the sole provider for the family, their finances were poor. I was helping them and I didn't want to lose my job, no one had any idea what war meant. I said farewell to my parents and returned to Warsaw. I left them, and the next time I saw my sister was when she came to visit me after our mother's death.

Before the war actually began, there were preparations, fake alarms, that kind of thing. There was a nurse in every house, with a first-aid kit, to help if need be. I also received first-aid training. To prevent the Germans from entering Warsaw, we dug trenches in the Smocza Street area. I later saw what use those trenches turned out to be... when the motorized [German] army rolled into Warsaw [on 30th September 1939]. They didn't have a single horse... first came the motorcycles, then the tanks.

The first air raid. I was downtown, on Marszalkowska. Doing some business, and suddenly - the alert. We knew what to do. Jump into the nearest gate, because in every house there was a civil defense committee, there was a basement to hide, gas masks... So we're crowding into the gate. Suddenly we hear - the swish of falling bombs. This isn't an alert, this is for real. 'Here we are!' they demonstrated. [The first German bombs fell on Warsaw at 6am on 1st September 1939. They hit working-class apartment blocks in the Kolo and Rakowiec neighborhoods. Ms. Starzec must have remembered the bombing on some other day].

In the meantime, they seized the whole of Poland. Warsaw defended itself until the very end. I was still able to call my parents but soon the telephones were cut off. When the war started, I demonstrated with others in front of the French and British embassies - come help us! Starzynski, the president of Warsaw, a decent, wonderful man, ran the defense effort 21. He gave instructions until the last moment, ordered the men to evacuate from the city. We received all that because we had a radio at the factory. But when the daily air raids began, they didn't let me go anymore.

As long as the [Warsaw] ghetto 22 was open, I went to work, because it wasn't far, in Wola. They no longer paid us in money but still they paid us in kind. Chocolate products, couverture, that sort of thing. The factory had its own water intake, own power plant, and its employees formed a superb team. The owners had a brother-in-law, Kostrzewa, who wasn't a Jew. He later became the plant's Treuhänder 23. They both emigrated to America later. The factory had huge basements with big stocks of sugar, condensed milk, and all kinds of ready products. And when the war started, they didn't lock that away. There was a wide entry gate, they opened it, and people queued up for those products. They sold everything out to the last piece of candy. I slept at the factory in case of an intense air raid. There was terrible hunger. People cut [dead] horses in pieces. The stores were empty, water had been cut off; you took water from the Vistula. There was no electricity, everyone used carbide lamps.

In September 1939 [3rd September], the Germans entered Radomsko. And on 13th April 1940, my mother died. She had angina pectoris. There was no talk of any ghetto at that time, of no armbands... [Editor's note: the Radomsko Ghetto was closed on 20th December 1939; see Armbands] 24. The Wehrmacht 25 soldiers commandeered brass door knobs for cannonballs. My mother saw those Germans and fainted. And they never roused her back. They were worried themselves what to do with the problem. I was in Warsaw at the time and they [the family] hid it from me. My father got a job at the post office and he sent me packages. Those packages were brought to me by Kierocinski, a neighbor, every week. And there was always a letter from my mother. The last time he came, there was cake in the package, everything as usual. 'And where is the letter?' I asked. And he blurted out, 'You know, your mother felt a bit ill, she fainted.' 'But she's alright now?' She was dead by then, but they just prohibited him from saying anything, because it was no longer allowed to travel by train [and the family was afraid Ms. Starzec would try to get by train back to Radomsko].

I had a bad feeling, why has my mother not written me, what is he saying, she fainted? The cake is there, but no letter... I said, 'I'll go with you, when do you go back to Radomsko?' 'Tomorrow, perhaps the day after tomorrow.' It was just an intuition, a nasty feeling that nagged me. I went to the office at Teatralny Square that issued travel permits, and, surprise, I got it. I must have appeared truthful, that something had happened to my mother, I was anxious, needed to go and check.

I arrived in the town, took a droshky to the house, no one went out to the balcony. Well, something's wrong. And at this point my sister and the others run out of the house, all in tears. 'What's up with Mama?' 'She's dead.' She had already been buried. With Jews the dead are buried immediately. My mother is buried at the Jewish cemetery. My sister and I put up a gravestone after the war, not knowing anything about our father, how he died. I think he went with one of the transports, so he rests there symbolically with our mother's ashes. April 13 is the anniversary of our mother's death, a date we have always remembered.

And so I returned to Warsaw. My sister came to me. I still lived with the Bergers, they had two little babies. There was a basement in the house, and [during the relocation action carried out daily between July and September 1942] you could go down there. The Germans entered the ghetto and told everyone to gather in the courtyards, assisted by the police. They didn't go up the stairs because they were afraid of typhus which at the time was rampant in the ghetto. We, acting on intuition, either went down to the basement or not. Grandmother Berger, for instance, climbed into the mezzanine with the children. The entrance to the basement was hidden, children were the first to go. You had to crawl into the shelter which, until the alert was called off, remained bolted shut. And I remember to this day what gave me the horrors then: that I'm in a dungeon and I cannot leave it through that small exit. And the conditions in that basement were horrible. The crying children...

My sister and I went through many such alerts. And the transports kept going until the very end [the ghetto's liquidation]. The last transport during our stay in the ghetto took place when few people had been left [see Great Action] 26. We had realized by then that no one would stay in the ghetto. We had to leave. It was high time. My sister hesitated, she was afraid [to go], was all nervous, her face reflected fear and anxiety.

We worked in the so-called shop 27, a furrier's shop on Nowolipie. We made fur coats for the military, for the German army in Russia. The so called Schultz shop [probably Schultz & Co. at 80 Nowolipie Street, or the Fritz Schultz shop at 44/46 Nowolipie]. We had the 'Ausweise' 28; that was supposed to help us survive. And, indeed, it did. [During yet another action] they told us to take food for three days and clothing. And so we went. A procession, like in the movie, it was terrible, people had taken whatever they could with themselves, now they fell under the burden of all those bundles. We didn't have much, just a change of underwear and that's all. People left everything along the road until they got to the Umschlagplatz 29. And there was a whole campsite. With fires, tents...

And so the selection and segregation began. We had to go into the line, with those 'Ausweise' of ours. You showed your papers and you went either this way or that way. We saw some friends, acquaintances. There was a girl we knew, with her parents, relatively young ones, and her husband. Our friends, neighbors. And, before our very eyes, the parents were taken to the side, i.e. to the transport, and the young ones were let through, because they had 'Ausweise,' like us, so they were still useful, fit to work.

In front of me there was a woman with a little baby. That's cruel, but I'll never forget it either. Because they let her through, but only without the baby. And she left the baby because she wanted to go through. Humans ceased to be humans. All ethical principles and human feelings had been suspended. It was a traumatic experience for me. That was the kind of scenes I saw. I was together with my sister, but we were young, had the papers, and they let us through. And so we returned to the apartment at Nowolipie. We met Grandmother Berger there, she had hidden with the children... the whole family had stayed.

By then, the Russians had started responding, the 'Stalin Organs' [slang military term for katyusha rockets; in August and September 1942, Soviet long-distance bombers carried out air raids on numerous Polish cities, including, several times, on Warsaw]. A German in a Wehrmacht uniform sat next to me in the shop. 'Why do you go obediently like that, why don't you rebel against what's going on?' he asks me. He was our ally! Not all Germans were the same. That I also remember. And the role of the [Jewish] police 30? They weren't nice. They weren't good [people]. The Germans kept them until the last moment, but in the end they also went to the transports.

One time there was an alert and we went down to the basement. In the apartment we had some food products - some flour, groats, things like that. We had an iron stove in the room, because it was terribly cold. And on that stove we cooked soup, [so thick] the spoon stood in it. We come back [after the alert] and the food's all gone, stolen. Because the Germans had the policemen go and check whether anyone had stayed back in the apartments. And on top of that those policemen stole from Jews. That was nasty. Poor guys, they thought they would save themselves that way. They didn't. Which doesn't mean that all of them were like that. Such situations can occur in any community. Those are difficult things. Unfortunately. I remember the actions undertaken by the head of the Judenrat 31.

Donations were organized to help the refugees because the ghetto was hugely overpopulated; people were being brought from everywhere. [The inhabitants of areas around Warsaw, so-called 'refugees,' were being brought to the Warsaw ghetto, and their material situation was extremely poor]. They placed them in all the synagogues, they lived in terrible conditions. You couldn't cross the street, not to rub against one and catch a typhus louse. The poor ones no longer cared about life. Even though it was after curfew, they went out into the street and cried, 'Drop us some bread!' It's the first time I'm telling anyone about it, I'm not sure I should be.

But we had friends [Poles outside the ghetto] who cared for us and at the right moment pulled us out. They told us to leave the ghetto, we obeyed. A lady came with messages from them. Her name was Rozalia Solecka. Much older than myself, she knew me. And she knew I was from Radomsko, like her, only she wasn't [in the ghetto] because she was married to a non-Jew and lived in Zoliborz [a Warsaw neighborhood].

In January I went out [to the Aryan side] and in April [1943] they started burning down the ghetto 32. I knew I had to place my sister somewhere. Myself, I often didn't know in the evening where I'd spend the night, who'd offer me shelter. Though I had the papers, I didn't have a place of my own; I didn't want to expose anyone to danger. But I had some experience in underground activities and I was calmer inside. My sister couldn't hide the fact [she was Jewish], had to be pulled out of the ghetto almost by force, she kept saying, 'I want to die with the others.'

My sister was placed with a family named Skalski. Together with thirteen other Jews, all in a single concealed room. In Praga [a neighborhood in right-bank Warsaw], on Zabkowska Street, near the Rozyckiego market. Placed with a janitor who had been relocated from the ghetto [before the ghetto was closed, all non-Jews had been relocated elsewhere] and given an apartment in Praga [instead]. Three janitors were supposed to live in that apartment, each in a different room. But the other two had relatives in the countryside and didn't use those rooms, so Skalski had the whole apartment at his disposal. They allotted one room for a hiding place. And when a tenant [from the same house] came, it was clear he knew [about the hiding place], but if someone came from outside, the gendarmes, the Germans, they didn't know because the entrance to the room was properly concealed. And they slept in that room, lived there, kept guard in case of anything. They had straw pallets to sleep on.

They were placed there by a man we knew named Hert, a German name, perhaps he had signed the 'Volksliste,' I don't know. [Volksliste (German People's List): a Nazi institution whose purpose was the classification of inhabitants of Nazi occupied territories into categories of desirability according to criteria systematized by Heinrich Himmler. The institution was first established in occupied western Poland. Similar institutions were subsequently created in Occupied France and in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksliste] In any case, he was a public notary in Radomsko and later in Minsk Mazowiecki and my father did business with him and contacted him in business matters. He took care of us by securing genuine birth certificates of people who were dead, thanks to which I had a genuine kenkarta 33, which my sister didn't need because she never left her hiding place. [People in hiding didn't need fake papers]. And my name during the occupation was Zofia Dzioblowska.

My sister met her [future] husband when in the hiding place [in Skalski's apartment]. Chil Kirszenbaum. From Minsk Mazowiecki, young like her, born in 1920. A very handsome and very talented boy. In Minsk, he experienced the anti-Jewish riots in the 1930s, attacks on Jewish stores, was beaten up, he suffered a knee injury, something that has given him a hard time since then. They never left [the apartment they were hiding in]. They had the so-called bad looks [i.e. were easily recognizable as Jews] or had other reasons to stay put.

One important person from the war period was Aunt Niusia. What can I say about her? Aunt Niusia saved my cousin. His name was Ignacy Samsonowicz, he was a Bund 34 member and was in the ghetto at the same time as us. Had a teacher wife and a son, fled from the Piotrków ghetto to Warsaw. And I met him there for the first time. I had heard about him because we had many paternal cousins in Piotrków and Czestochowa. His wife, a beautiful woman, and a wonderful 12-year-old boy, were killed in a roundup [in Piotrkow]. And he was in a terrible depression. He had to be pulled out [of the ghetto]. And as he was a high-ranking Bund member, his fellow Bundists pulled him out of the Warsaw ghetto by force and placed him at 24 Zurawia Street. Where it wasn't allowed to hide anyone because it was a ZOB safe place. [Editor's note: it was a safe place for the Zegota - codename of the underground Council to Aid the Jews - the Polish government-in-exile organization to help Jews in occupied Poland.]

Aunt Niusia had the apartment from before the war. She wasn't Jewish. Her name was Eugenia Wasowska-Leszczynska. Wasowska was her maiden name. She was an editor by profession, ran an advertising business. She was a member of the Stronnictwo Demokratyczne and was very active on the Red Cross before the war. She wasn't married, even though she was many years my elder. A social activist. There were two entrances to the apartment - from the corridor in the front and from the back stairs. She made the apartment available for the ZOB [correctly: for the Zegota]. And the Bundists met there. For security reasons, it wasn't allowed to hide individual people there. But they brought Samsonowicz there and there he stayed. She cared for him. She hid him there until the end of the war and eventually married him.

He changed his name from Samsonowicz to Leszczynski, and hence her married name was Leszczynska. She died on 28th May 1987. We were very close, and to this day I take care of her grave. She was an everyday guest in our home, a wonderful person. The house on Zurawia wasn't destroyed in the [Warsaw] uprising. Bartoszewski [Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, born 1922, Polish politician and diplomat, historian, essayist, writer, during the war a member of the Home Army and a Zegota activist] uncovered a commemorative plaque there and people looked out their windows and said they never knew there had been a safe place there. We tried, my sister and I, to get her awarded with the Righteous Among the Nations medal 35, and we finally succeeded.

Another important person was Irena Solska [real name Karolina Flora Sosnowska (1875-1958): renowned Polish actress]. There was that action, a trap set up for Jews on the Aryan side, the so-called Hotel Polski 36. It was a provocation, they took money from people, promising them safe passage to the States or elsewhere [Editor's note: the travel documents were issued for neutral countries, chiefly in South America, as well as Palestine]. I was already visiting Samsonowicz, receiving money that we distributed as allowance among people [the money came from the Zegota]. I remember I had no job. I had already placed my sister in a safe place. Now, to be okay with my kenkarta, I needed an address.

I met an acquaintance from Nowolipie, she asks me what's up. 'I'm looking for a place, have you heard of something?' 'I'm vacating a room in Mokotow, because I've signed up for emigration, at the Hotel Polski, you know. It costs a lot but I hope it'll work.' I don't remember her name. I don't even remember her face anymore. She gave me Irena Solska's address. 'I have a place but the sofa there has been borrowed from Irena Solska. You have to sleep on something. Here's her address - tell her I sent you and ask whether you can continue using the sofa.'

It was then that I heard about the Hotel Polski. I hurried to Ignacy Samsonowicz and I tell him, 'Tell me, what's this Hotel Polski because I have no means of providing for myself on the Aryan side, and a sister to pay for...' We paid that janitor; he needed money to get by too. And I had no prospects for a job of any kind. I tell him, 'Perhaps I could sign up for the thing too, what do you think, are there any possibilities? I have no money.' And he says, 'Listen, darling, it'll be easier to jump into the Vistula from the Poniatowskiego bridge. Don't try that, it's a dirty business.'

And so I went to Irena Solska and I found a way [to survive]. I didn't know Solska before the war. I only knew she was a renowned theater actress. An artist. I went to her, there was a cosmetics store in the front, and she lived on the first floor at the back. I say 'A lady such-and-such has sent me and can I keep the borrowed sofa because I need a place to stay?' And she starts telling me, in an utterly theatrical voice, the old dramatic school, Nina Andrycz [born 1915, Polish theater and movie actress] style, 'I receive wool here that needs to be taken to the clients...' And she trembled, it was advanced Parkinson, she was already old. 'Your job is to take the material to the clients, pick up the money, the pay is so and so, breakfast and dinner included.' I'm waiting for an answer about the sofa and she's telling me all that in that theatrical voice of hers! I ask, 'But, madam... are you making this offer to me?' 'Yes, I am.' 'Do you know who you're talking to?' 'I do.' 'But I can be stopped with the material and the money and never return, because I'm a Jew.' 'I can tell. But I trust nothing bad will happen to you, I believe in what my intuition tells me.' And it was like being on cloud nine. I had a way to earn my living, to have a place to stay, money, and even to pay for my sister. 'Nothing bad will happen to you with me.'

And I worked for her right until the [Warsaw] uprising. I carried the wool, all day long in the streetcars, riding in the 'grape clusters' [vernacular for streetcars so full that people rode outside, clinging on to the car in an image of a cluster of grapes], my kenkarta was stolen, I had trouble. The clients I delivered the wool to were wives of pre-war officers now interned in POW camps. Officers' wives, in Ochota [a Warsaw neighborhood] and in the army houses in Aleje Niepodleglosci. They had looms and weaved on them. One time I crossed the Kierbedzia Bridge, going from Praga to Warsaw, and right in front of Miodowa there was a blockade. And I had a package with wool. I was going to clients in Ochota. I ask someone if it's a roundup again. Because sometimes they were stopping the streetcars, throwing everyone out, frisking. And me with that package, it was worth a lot of money. And someone answers me, 'Don't you see? They're burning the kikes in the ghetto.' I saw flames over the ghetto... [It was the beginning of the Ghetto Uprising].

And then I had my encounter with a szmalcownik 37. A navy-blue policeman 38. I was unable to keep a brave face. Terrible anxiety, and what to do? I arrive in Ochota, at Narutowicza Square a navy-blue policeman gets off with me and stops me, 'Your kenkarta, please.' He had been following me, must have [found out] from my reaction to the words about 'burning the kikes in the ghetto.' I say, 'I won't go with you, I have some business to do around here.' 'Okay, I'll go with you.' And he did.

I went to two clients with him. I didn't care, I knew he wanted money, but I didn't give him anything even though I had some on me. But, on the other hand - my sister... I called in an apartment at Filtrowa, left a package... but I won't call Solska because I would compromise her. I left him, I'm coming back, he sits and waits for me in the gateway. I say, 'There's one more person I have to visit.' And he obediently follows me, my kenkarta in his hand.

Finally, when I was to go to the third of my contacts, I tell him, 'Okay, I'll go with you now, what do you want to do?' 'I'll take you to the station here.' 'Why do you want to take me to the station? Do you think I'm Jewish?' And at those words he trembled. [The underground Polish organizations] had been issuing death sentences against the szmalcowniks, and he must have thought, 'She goes from one place to another, perhaps she's told them about me?' He was quite simply afraid. He actually kissed me on the hand, apologized. And went away, I didn't even know in which direction.

All trembling, I boarded a streetcar and went to Solska, told her the whole story. It was her who told me then that the Polish underground organizations had been passing death sentences on the blackmailers. 'And he got frightened,' she told me. 'Calm now. It's good it ended like that.' And that was my encounter with the burning ghetto. Solska soothed me then, she was a wonderful person.

The [Warsaw] Uprising 39 separated us because by chance I found myself in Praga... I didn't stay long in my first apartment because there arose some nasty suspicions [that the interviewee was Jewish], I had to keep changing my address. When the uprising broke out, I was living in Mariensztat [Warsaw neighborhood, near the Old Town]. Shortly before [the start of the uprising on 1st August 1944] I wanted to take my sister to my place, I was already a member of the AL 40, had more friends and contacts. I knew the uprising would break out any day now, the preparations had been under way, so in the morning, at dawn, I hurried to [the apartment at] Brzeska to take my sister to Warsaw. It was 1st of August. Ircia was already living with her husband. She didn't want to hear about leaving without him, he didn't want to move either. I decided to go back to Warsaw, all I had on myself was a summer dress. But the bridges had already been closed. I stayed with them. On Brzeska, with the thirteen of them. And there I spent the whole period [during the uprising and afterwards] until liberation.

I had to remain in hiding for some time because my official address was elsewhere. But later I was able to move. I helped the housekeeper, went shopping with her to a market in Grochow [today neighborhood, then suburb of Warsaw]. We had to bring supplies for thirteen. For two weeks the streetcars in Praga didn't work, but then the uprising in Praga was crushed and I was able to move freely. Where the Decennial Stadium is today [Warsaw's largest sports arena, disused now, built in 1955 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of People's Poland] were fruit-and-vegetable gardens. We went there for tomatoes, under fire, the 'cows' [called so because of the sound the heavy shell made when fired] swooshed past! That's how it was.

After the war:

And eventually I was able to welcome the military: the First Army 41. At the corner of Brzeska and Kijowska. There was a balcony on the third floor and a dog, Cacus, who always warned us beautifully if the gendarmes were coming. I went through Praga with the thirteen to get out of town, and as soon as we passed the tollbooths we heard, 'Just look at that, so many kikes have managed to survive.' You heard that around. And so I was liberated and I hitchhiked to Lublin. They [my sister and her husband] stayed in Minsk Mazowiecki, where he found his family house. The family wasn't there anymore. And that's where they lived right after the war.

Let me tell you now about a friend of mine. She's my friend from the student period in Cracow, she studied biology, I did chemistry. She came from Bedzin [town in Silesia, some 200 km south of Warsaw]. We bumped into each other accidentally after the war. We were applying for a job somewhere, she had been in the First Army. Married name Litoczewska, maiden name Perlmuter. Marysia. We called her Maniusia. She was so petit, so slim, always smartly dressed. And when I met her, right after the war, she approached me, in uniform, she looked like a bag with a piece of rope wrapped around her waist, so round she was. It wasn't the same Marysia, I didn't recognize her at first. And so, from word to word, we moved in together. A rented room, in Praga. We also got married on the same day: 1st October, my birthday. 1944. Soon afterwards she emigrated with her husband to Israel. They have two kids, the girl lives in England, the boy in Germany.

I found one more of my mother's cousins after the war - Mietek Zelinger [son of Uncle Bernard]. I was in Katowice, dropped by Sosnowiec, to see whether the house was still there. I arrived, it was. I climbed the stairs to the second floor. I knock at the first door, I ask whether they know anything about the Zelinger family, what happened with them during the war. 'You come at the right moment, Mietek has just returned from the camp. Come in, he's gone to town to look around; he'll see you when he gets back. He'll be very happy to.' How immensely happy I was...

Mietek told me then how it all looked: they [the Germans] came, took everyone, the parents [Bernard and Zosia] and them [Mietek and Henio]. The parents were sent to one camp, and the two of them to another. In the camp, Henio died of hunger right before liberation, and the parents - Mietek didn't know how they died because they were in a different camp. [Mrs. Starzec doesn't remember the names of the camps].

We took Mietek to Warsaw. He wasn't there long. From the very beginning, he was determined to go to Israel [then Palestine]. He made his mind up right away and told us that. We tried to convince him, 'Stay here, we'll set you up,' but he didn't want to hear about that. He started as a simple hand [in Israel], a boy that had lived in a lap of luxury at home. But there he worked hard and somehow, by his own effort, he eventually got settled.

He met a Yemenite girl, and that was his first great love. A beautiful, wonderful girl, slender, as if sculpted. That gave him an extra motivation. He fell in love and they are a wonderful family. He has many kids, they live in Israel. A wonderful marriage, and they live to this day. It was his happiness after all those hardships. He lived in tough conditions. But now he is a happy father and grandfather. He suffers from a heart condition. He's much younger than me, I was his tutor when I lived with them [for a brief period in 1936 in Sosnowiec]; I gave him some private lessons. In one word, a great boy today. He's changed completely. 'Mietek, I remember you were mean, bad...' 'Well, yes, I was mean.' He's grown a moustache [to cover the harelip]. And he wanted to die there, in Israel.

I didn't emigrate because I really feel Polish, I know the language, the literature. I visited Israel but didn't find it attractive. They [the Israelis] are very much like we, the Poles. In every respect. They've been through as much slavery as we have but they are as nationalistic and chauvinistic as many people here. I saw synagogues for whites and for blacks. Just as people don't like Jews here, so they don't like Poles there, I was shocked by all that. It wasn't for me.

I also saw a ghetto in Israel, completely separated... I was there about ten years ago [around 1996]. I went there to see my sister. I was walking through one of Tel Aviv's neighborhoods to visit my cousin [Mietek]. And suddenly a gate opens and the kaftans pull out, all with payes, big, small, pulling out in a large crowd. I arrive at my cousin's and ask him what it was. He tells me the neighborhood is inhabited by Hasidim who still wait for their Messiah to come. From the cheder, to the universities, they have everything they need here. They don't feel liberated yet.

Those who were leaving to Israel were doing so with highly bitter feelings. Some, those who experienced the pogroms, I understand. My brother-in-law, who did a lot for Poland, also met with injustice, was sacked from his job, virtually thrown on the street. And, following Gomulka's speech 42, they [he and his wife, Mrs. Starzec's sister] left. Many like them left then, people that had devoted their lives to Poland. Their elder son, Marek, was born in 1947, lives in France today. Marek Kirszenbaum. He has three wonderful kids, Bruno is the youngest, born in 1981.

My sister and her husband emigrated with their younger son who lives in Los Angeles now. And Marek stayed because he already had a career, in physics. And today he's retired. He's very talented, he worked at the equivalent of our Nuclear Research Institute. My sister and her husband have moved to Los Angeles. He's in a poor condition. The younger son brought them there. When they were leaving, they were still in good shape, but you shouldn't replant old trees. The second emigration, from Israel to the States, proved hard on them.

My husband, Adolf Starzec, isn't Jewish. He grew up in the country, in tough conditions. The parents scrimped and saved to educate their children, to pay for their studies. He was the youngest one, brought up by his aunt. An aunt with ten children. He came from the Cracow region, from a village near Tarnow [city some 200 km south-east of Warsaw], called Zukowice Stare. He was a good student, it was planned he would become a priest. But he changed his mind. He completed a high school in Tarnow, where he lived in lodgings, and then went to university in Cracow. Tarnow is like Cracow in miniature. Beautiful architecture.

It's the student period we know each other from. From the socialist movement. He thought it was it for him. He was also active on peasant organizations. Had contacts with Witos 43, he was many years my elder. He did manage to complete his studies. He defended himself beautifully [during the trial], got six years. Released eventually, he worked as a simple construction worker, carried bricks. And when the war broke out, all the [court] files, of course, fell into the Gestapo's hands. He fled to Russia. He was there all the time. And only after his return we did get to know each other again. And we got married.

He was a man who sincerely fought for freedom and truth and who believed that was the right way. A very noble man. He lived in Cracow for some time after the war. Our little son had already been born. I remember how I traveled to Cracow with the baby boy in a wrap, he didn't walk yet. We hiked a lot in the mountains with my husband. We didn't ski but hiked and that's how we spent any leisure time we had. Our younger son, Krzysio, was born in 1950. He had those beautiful curls, such lovely hair, and today he's bald... My elder son, Wlodek, was born in 1947. He's dead.

And finally a digression. I've never experienced hunger. I was shocked to learn that a friend of mine, with whom I was in prison together, died of hunger in Russia. That was inconceivable for me. A girl from Cracow, my cellmate. Pepcia Alszter [diminutive for Pepa]. It was the first time I met someone like that. We were young so we talked. 'Do you have a boyfriend?' 'I do.' 'And you?' 'I don't.' When we asked Pepcia whether she had a boyfriend, she blushed. So we press, 'Come on, spit it out. Is there someone you're in love with?' And she says, 'Lenin.' A young girl, thin as a rake, eyes big as saucers. She was so devoted to the idea and they let her die of hunger there, in that paradise...

Unfortunately, no idea works right in real life. Even religion, whether Christian or Jewish and so on. What is my criticism of the Jewish [religion] is that it hasn't reformed itself at all. I'm handicapped because I have no religion. I believed in the [socialist] ideology but it didn't work out the way it should. The kibbutzim in Israel were very much how I thought things should look like. But even they haven't managed to stay afloat. They're collapsing slowly because obviously people need some freedom.

Glossary:

Rebeca Assa
Sofia
Bulgaria
Interviewer: Dimitar Bozhilov
Date of interview: March 2002

• Family background
• Growing up
• During the war
• Post-war
• Glossary

• Family background

I was born on March 24th 1922 in Plovdiv. My ancestors were born, and lived, in Bulgaria. My father's parents were born in Plovdiv. Both my grandfathers had died before I was born, and that's why I know almost nothing about them.

My maternal grandfather was named Rahamim Ilel, and he was also born in Plovdiv. Only my maternal grandmother, who was named Rashel, was born in Karlovo [a small town in Central Bulgaria]. My grandmother had moved to Plovdiv, and she met my grandfather there and they got married.

My paternal grandmother, Perla Benvinisti - I don't remember her maiden name - had been a professional cook and she cooked for the rich families, for weddings and other celebrations. She was very popular among the rich Jews.

My [maternal] grandmother had died when she was 75 years old in the house where I lived with my mother and father. Both my grandmothers wore scarves on their heads so that the hair remained hidden.

My paternal grandmother lived with her older son, Rahamin in Plovdiv - according to the tradition he was the one to take care of his mother. The house belonged to Rahamin's wife. Grandmother also lived with her other son, Mihael, and in the end, my mother took her to live with us.

My mother's name was Lora - nee Ilel, Benvinisti after her husband. She was born in 1900. I remember that she used a sewing machine to sew sheets and clothes that were sold in shops later. She didn't get enough money from that; they used her as a cheap labor force.

She went to work so that she could help my father, who was a shoemaker and repaired shoes. His name was ?air Benvinisti. My mother had a brother who had gone to the United States in 1930. I have cousins there but I don't know them.

My father went to the Jewish school till the 4th class. The funniest thing was that even when he was 80 years old, he still remembered the names of all the 32 classmates he had there. He used to recite those names on each family gathering and that always impressed and amused us very much. Both my parents were literate. My father's favorite book was about Vasil Levski 1.

My father had a sister, Sultana Benvinisti, who also went to the United States to live with her fiancé Marko Amar. They were together for a long time in Bulgaria and they even had a child, Aron, but her fiancé suddenly left for the USA.

Everybody then thought that he had abandoned her after she had lived with him for eight years, but one day a telegram arrived saying that he would wait for her at the New York airport. My aunt's farewell was impressive.

I remember that my paternal grandmother lived in a small house and received a lot of congratulations for finally managing to marry her daughter off. Aron is as old as me, but I don't know anything about him. I remember a street with many cabs and many people in them who had come to see Sultana off to the airport.

The whole of Plovdiv had gathered. Before that my father had gone to some rich Jews to ask for money so that he could help her leave. Mutual aid is really great between Jews.

• Growing up

The first house I lived in was in the Marasha quarter. I was born there in 1922. That was the poorest quarter in Plovdiv. It was a place with small, two-floor houses situated on top of each other. The poorest people lived on the first floor, and the richer, on the second.

We lived on the second floor, only because my father had work. The owner of these houses was a Jew and he rented out houses. The houses were situated in such a way that they formed a large inner yard. Only Jews lived there.

We moved into another house in the central part of the town in 1936. My father worked in a small shop where there was also a bakery. The Jews went to have their shoes repaired. We rented the floor above the bakery. The house was next to the Jewish school.

We lived in two rooms on the second floor. We, the children, lived in the bigger room and our parents, in the smaller one. We also had a small kitchen where my mother used to cook. The house was quite unstable and I was afraid to go out on the metal balcony because I thought I might slip and fall down.

Anyway, there was electricity in the house. When they closed the bakery where my father used to work, a good friend of ours, a Bulgarian, placed a barrack at my father's disposal and he continued to work there. We had many acquaintances that were Bulgarians. They helped me a lot, and we loved each other very much. Plovdiv was a nice town and people there were very friendly.

There was a man, Hadji Haim, who lived next to the place where my father worked. He himself had seen Vasil Levski.

We were very proud of the fact that we knew him. This man lived in the biggest building in Plovdiv. It had three floors, and there was a grocery on the ground floor where we could buy on credit.

My father was called to appear before an army commission in the town of Karlovo. He was very short and thin and they didn't accept him into the army. He went back to Plovdiv on foot because he didn't have money for a train ticket. He was a healthy man and lived to an old age.

We usually went on excursions out of Plovdiv in the summer. We traveled in a taligi [long carriage]. We used to go to some village near Plovdiv - usually to Komatevo. We didn't have our own carriage, and we usually hired one to transport us.

We talked both in Ladino and Bulgarian at home. Sometimes we even spoke the two languages simultaneously - for example my mother said something to me in Bulgarian and I answered her in Ladino. My mother tongue was Ladino.

Unfortunately my children don't know Ladino. They understand what we are talking about, but they can't talk in that language. I speak Ladino and Hebrew. I used to speak Ladino to the children of my age before I started school.

This language has always been closer to me. Later I spoke with my husband in Bulgarian. His parents had spoken Ladino but he didn't learn the language because he graduated from a German school. There was a secondary school up to the 7th class in Plovdiv where they taught German.

The Jewish school also went up to the 7th class. My two brothers and I graduated from the Jewish school in Plovdiv. I didn't know many words in Bulgarian when I started school. I used Ladino words when I had to write an essay, because we only spoke Ladino at home.

I learnt Bulgarian only after I started school. We only completed the 4th class [the equivalent these days is the 7th grade], as our parents didn't have enough money to support us. We studied French, Hebrew, Jewish history and Bulgarian history in the Jewish school.

They made us go to the synagogue every morning. We studied up to the 7th class in the Jewish school - that means secondary education according to the Bulgarian educational system. The school was situated in the central part of the town.

My older brother Albert Mair Benvinisti was born in Plovdiv in 1924. He studied at the Jewish school up to the 4th class. He started to work as a laborer in shops and warehouses from a young age. When he was young he worked in a shop and after that, he left for Israel in 1948.

He fixed himself nicely there - he works in an Israeli company dealing with machine production. My brother got married in Bulgaria, then lived in Israel for 13 years, and then came back to Bulgaria again. He is a Bulgarian citizen at the moment but he lives in Israel most of the time.

He travels to Bulgaria often because of his work and sometimes stays here for a couple of months. He earns more money in Israel. He also worked as a truck driver in Bulgaria and used to gather the leftovers from the restaurants, transporting them to some farm.

My younger brother Rahamin Mair Benvinisti was born when I was five - in 1927. We lived on 27, Bratia Miladinovi Street then. I remember his delivery very clearly. There was a midwife in the quarter where we lived. Her name was Mazal [luck in Hebrew].

She assisted in the childbirth of both my older children. My younger brother studied in a Bulgarian school and he had a secondary-school education. He worked as a laborer in shops and warehouses, he used to repair shoes - he did that in Israel also.

My younger brother did a thoughtless thing: he went to Uruguay in 1949, after he had spent a year in Israel. He thought that he would succeed in [South] America but the fact was that he didn't have any particular education.

He was only a great specialist in repairing shoes and that was how he made his living. He's retired now and wants to come back to Bulgaria, but he can't because he can't receive his pension here. This is possible only in Israel.

My mother and father considered themselves modern people and didn't observe the kashrut but we performed the ritual on Easter. I remember that my father didn't want to eat from the tough matzah and secretly bought fresh bread for himself. He didn't go to the synagogue.

He thought that wasn't necessary. Only my mother went there, but mostly to meet some people, or show off some of her new clothes. Women used to sit on the balcony in the synagogue. That was considered the elite.

Every Pesach, my mother and father bought suits for both my brothers and, whatever dress I wanted, for me. The used to take credit from the bank and then pay it off. They always bought us new shoes, too.

We used to gather at my father's younger brother Isak for Pesach, as he was considered to be the most prosperous in the family because he worked in a factory. Three families used to gather then - ours, my uncle's and the one of my father's other brother, David.

That uncle of mine came from the town of Haskovo where another family had adopted him. We had to keep it secret whenever he came because he had been sold in Haskovo on the condition that he wouldn't ever see his mother.

Anyway he used to come and see her secretly. His foster parents were rich people and my father's brother risked them giving him up because he used to come to Plovdiv. My paternal grandmother's family lived in misery and that's why they had to give their child away.

We used to lay a white tablecloth for Pesach, and we also had special dishes that my mother only cooked on this holiday and she called them 'lalosa'. When we went to celebrate our Easter with some of our relatives, my mother used to take those dishes again.

My father's older brother Mihael used to read the prayer. I could also say the Haggadah because I had learnt it at the Jewish school. We had a tradition to hide a piece of the matzah [the afikoman], and the children had to look for it around the place.

We believed that the child who found it would be the happiest one during the whole year. This holiday lasts for eight days but we only took off work on the first and the last days, when we went to the synagogue.

My father didn't go to the synagogue - even on Yom Kippur, the holiday of the great absolution. Only my mother went there and she always invited my father to go with her, though she knew his attitude to that. On this day we weren't supposed to do any work or eat anything the whole day. We weren't even meant to turn on the light.

On Purim holiday the children were given some money so that they could amuse themselves and spend as much money as they could. Every relative who visited us that day, or met us in the street, gave us money.

Our family didn't have the opportunity to buy fruit for the holiday Fruitas 2. My mother's brother Liezer used to help us because he was richer. In my family my father used to buy the bread, and my mother went to the grocery.

The owner of the grocery was a Jew and his name was Rafael. My mother used to put a scarf on, take the basket and go shopping. She could buy on credit in this shop because she couldn't always pay.

My husband is named Moritz Assa and he was also born in 1922. He was from a richer family than mine. He lived nearby and, when I was going out for work in the morning, he also went out so that we could walk together. My husband was studying in the commercial high school in Plovdiv.

We got married in 1941 when we were 19 years old. He came to live in our house when we were just 16. His father had turned him out of home because he was a communist and they couldn't accept me for a daughter-in-law because I wasn't from a rich family.

We moved to 16 Bratia Miladinovi Street in 1936. I met him when I was just 16 years old. I was already pregnant when the chazzan came to marry us. That's why we didn't get permission to marry in Sofia and had to marry at home. The wedding was performed according to the Jewish traditions: with a talamu [Ladino for chuppah] over our heads that made the place holy as in the synagogue.

At this time my husband was involved in illegal activities and was gathering followers of the Revolutionary Youth Union [RYU] 3. He went to the school and agitated young men to become followers of the RYU. The police were looking for him and he used to hide in the homes of his friends - students.

He came to sleep in our home just for one night, on 1st March 1941, after we got married, and then he got arrested. I suspected that the landlord's son, whose name was Berto Garte, had informed the police about him because everybody else in the house was our friend. We met this man again many years later in Israel, but he insisted that it wasn't him that had betrayed my husband.

My husband was a very respected person, and when the policemen led him through Plovdiv the whole town went out to see him. He was fettered in heavy iron chains so that he couldn't run away.

I remember that his legs were hurt, and we managed to hire a carriage to take him from the prison to the court. My husband was in prison in Varna [a town on the coast of the Black Sea] for three years as a political prisoner.

I recall that my brother had worked since he was a little child. I also started work when I was 13 years old. I wanted very much to study at the commercial high school because I liked mathematics a lot. My mother wanted me to become a dressmaker instead.

I opposed that, and found myself a job at a shop in the main street. I started to clean the threads from the finished dresses there. Later, I started to sew with a machine and sewed 17 shirts a day. Of course, the work was shared between the different workers - I used to sew the collars, the other workers, the sleeves or the cuffs, and so on.

The owner of the dressmaker's workshop was a Jew and his name was Baruh. There was a butcher shop, Manevi Brothers, just opposite the place where we worked, and we used to have lunch there. The owner, Mr. Manev, even gave us food for free.

My mother had a treadle sewing machine, Pfaf, that she had bought second hand. This machine is still in good condition in my basement. My mother worked at a tobacco store at first and she was sewing sacks there. As she couldn't bear the smell of tobacco, she started to sew handkerchiefs. After coming back from work, I used to take her place behind the sewing machine while she prepared the meal.

I lived under rent the whole time. Only when my husband became a commercial representative in London in the late 1960s did I understand that the municipality sold apartments, and they let us buy the apartment where we live now. We took credit from the municipality to buy it. All our friends in London were very surprised that we didn't have the opportunity to buy it ourselves.

My mother and father had socialist political convictions. They had always been left-wingers. In the 1930s my father hid people who were illegal and wanted by the police for their extreme pro-communist convictions.

Such people used to take refuge in the Soviet Union at the time and came back after 9th September 1944. 4. Many guerrillas [antifascist orientated members of armed squads] have visited our home in Plovdiv. I remember that one night Malchika came to our house.

He was wearing a squash-hat and he came to instruct us to recruit people to join the party. [Editor's note: Malchika was the nickname of Adalbert Antonov, an active UYW member, who took part in the underground communist movement in Bulgaria. He was caught by the police and later executed.]

We held the gatherings of the Revolutionary Youth Union in a small wood near Plovdiv, and the boys used to hold hands with the girls so that it looked as though we were couples. We did that because the police kept an eye on us. I stopped being involved in illegal activities after my husband went to prison.

We didn't have any concrete ideas against the official authorities; we just wanted the working class to be paid better and have a better influence in the society. That's why we had a club where we used to read The Capital by Karl Marx. These ideas were very popular among young people.

All the young people that came from the villages to look for work in the town became members of RYU. My husband had impressed a great number of people with the antifascist cause. All that was considered illegal then. I remember that he impressed students from the carpentry school in Plovdiv.

He didn't only have troubles with the police because of his convictions: one evening we were walking together with Malchika when suddenly some classmates from the commercial high school attacked my husband. Malchika and I ran away then, and left him to fight them alone.

There were 32 members of the Revolutionary Youth Union in Plovdiv. That was quite a number for the town. There were wonderful people among them whom I had the honor to know. Malchika, for example, was a very erudite person. Unfortunately many people died in the mountains [the members of the guerrilla squads used to hide out of towns and villages].

• During the war

Our state got worse after the 'Nation Defense Law' [Law for the Protection of the Nation ] 5 was accepted in 1939. The first anti-Semitic sentiments started to appear and we started wearing badges. The Jews in Plovdiv were not interned; only rich people were moved to ghettos.

Many of them used their money to 'ransom' their chance to escape abroad. So many of the richer Jews from Plovdiv went to live in Western Europe, or in the United States. The situation was very tense - there were 'brannici' [Brannik] 6, and they didn't allow us to go out on the streets freely.

Anyway, there weren't the extreme anti-Semite movements as there were in Germany, but the merchants were afraid to open their shops because Brannik members would break the windows. These were just hooligans - they weren't expressing the attitude of the whole Bulgarian society towards the Jews. In this connection I can say that the Bulgarian people is the wisest and the best one. We lived really badly in the time of Fascism.

Our first son Isak was born in 1942 when my husband had already been sentenced to political imprisonment. I raised my son alone with the help of my father who went on maintaining the whole family during the Holocaust - he worked as a shoe repairer. We couldn't go out, and I could only take my son for a walk outside the front of the door of the house.

A woman whose sons were 'brannici' lived in our house on Bratia Miladinovi Street. She used to have a very good attitude to my family and, as she had a radio, she constantly informed me about the latest developments from World War II.

She was the first to tell me that the Soviet army had entered Bulgaria, and that we were saved. After 9th September 1944, the first Prime Minister, Bagrianov, issued a decree and set free all political prisoners and I was very happy that my husband would be freed at last.

• Post-war

My husband came back from the prison in Varna on 8th September 1944. I stood by the window for several days and nights waiting for him to come back. I remember that my younger brother didn't recognize him from the distance, but I ran [to him] immediately and hugged him.

Our first son was born while my husband was in prison - he hadn't seen his father! I remember that when my son was very little he cried from jealousy because I had my head on my husband's knees.

After 9th September 1944, my husband was chosen as a member of the Regional committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party [BCP] and, in 1946, he got a lodging in the main street in Plovdiv - on 1, Kniaz Alexander Street.

My second son, Maer, was born there. My husband worked for free then. After some time my husband's work became more organized and he started to get 40 leva a month. At the same time, my father was working as a shoemaker and supported us financially.

Then, for the first time, the organization Joint 7 came to Bulgaria and they gave clothes to many Jews and Bulgarians. That was the first time I tasted margarine and I found it very delicious. They also gave us many other products such as cheese, rice, butter and powder milk.

My husband went to work in the central committee of the BCP and my two children and I stayed with my mother. My husband and the people around him who dealt with the party business did that almost for free. They were exceptionally honest and motivated ideologically.

My husband was in a party school 8 in Sofia for two years where the future party leaders were trained. Meanwhile, I was living with my parents in Plovdiv. I used to sew at home because we were short of money, and I also distributed food vouchers. My husband Moritz was totally devoted to his ideas. I thought then that this idealism was not absolutely positive because it suggested that those who weren't communists were not human.

The great aliyah in Sofia happened in 1948 - thousands of people left for Israel. My brothers also left then. The older one had already married and had a child at that time.

I moved to Sofia in 1950. There were commissions that distributed lodgings. Such a commission gave me two rooms with the right to use a living room on Klement Gotwald Blvd [today Evlogi Georgiev Blvd].

My landlady had a husband who had been interned as an anti-communist because he had been a rich man. We got along very well with our landlady. I remember that she was very grateful, for I met her husband warmly when he came back from the internment.

Two of my children got married in that house. We moved to the apartment that we live in now - in the Hipodruma quarter - in 1962. I had already started work and was dealing with social activities then.

My parents came to Sofia two years after me because I wanted to work, and my mother came to look after the children. My mother and father easily became residents of Sofia [Sofia Resident] 9. I began to sew shirts and got very little money for that, but it helped us anyway.

My father started work in a co-operation for shoe repair. Our third child, Margo, was born in 1951. When she tuned two, I started work in a dressmaker's, Boyka, where I was promoted to quality controller. I worked there for 13 years and after that, I retired. My husband was sent to London in 1968 as a commercial representative of Bulgaria, and my children and I went there a year later.

We lived in England for five years. My husband was dealing with the whole trade exchange between the United Kingdom and Bulgaria. During our stay in London my husband managed to increase the exchange between the two countries several times over. His colleagues still remember him with respect.

We lived with our three children in London. My daughter married and had a baby at that time. I used to look after her baby in London. My older son also got married and gave me his child, Moritz, to look after.

All my five grandchildren speak perfect English. After we came back, we stayed in Bulgaria for eight years, and then went to London again because my husband was sent there as a commercial representative.

My older son Isak graduated from the university in Kiev, Ukraine. He went to work in Vienna, Austria, as an engineer, and he speaks English and German perfectly. After the political changes in Bulgaria in 1989, he went to Israel and hasn't come back since.

His son lives in Germany. My younger son, Maer, was born in 1946 in Plovdiv. He graduated from high school in Sofia, and he has a secondary-school education. He is married and has two children, Moritz and Maer. He lives in Sofia and is in the trade business.

One of his sons lives in Israel. My daughter Margarita was born in Sofia in 1951. She also has a secondary school education - she graduated in Sofia. She has a family and two daughters, Tzveta and Lora, and she is a clerk. All my children are married to Bulgarians.

I have been to Israel many times. The first time was in 1964. I visited my brother in Jafo for three months. Bulgarian Jews inhabited this town, so I didn't have any problems talking to people there.

There is a great invasion of Russian Jews there now, and the last time I went there I saw many sign- boards in Russian, too. During the wars in Israel [the Six-Day-War 10 and the Yom Kippur War 11], my two brothers lived there.

In 1989, when the political changes began, I was a little afraid that separation between Jews and Bulgarians would occur again, and that the people who had been in prison because of political reasons before 9th September 1944 would be imprisoned again. But it didn't happen.

We went on observing the Jewish holidays after 9th September 1944. There was a period in the 1950s when Zionism was declared to be equal to fascism and we were a little scared then. It was questionable whether Jews could take leaders' positions in the BCP.

I am very pleased of what Liudmila Zhivkova 12 did. She opened Bulgaria to the rest of the world and contacted the United States first. That was a very brave act for the time. I knew her personally from the time in London, and she seemed a very humble person to me.

After the political changes in Bulgaria from 10th November 1989 13, the Jewish community gained a lot of freedom. We had the freedom to meet as much as we wanted. During the communist rule there was a period when we were forbidden to meet in the Jewish community club.

The Jewish community is very well organized nowadays. We have different occasions in different clubs that we visit regularly. We have a Health club where we do physical exercises, a Ladino club where we practice the Ladino language, and a Hebrew club where we learn Hebrew.

We also have a club named Golden Age where we gather every Saturday - we listen to lectures and music, or discuss different topics. Many people are interested in studying Ladino and go to this club.

My husband Moritz Assa is the president of the Jewish organization Shalom in Sofia and he actively participates in the Jewish community life. The Jewish organization in Sofia takes care of the activities of the Jewish Culture Home, which offers us a rich cultural program, many social benefits and opportunities for meetings.

All the Jewish Culture Home activities are supported by different foundations and mostly by the American association Joint, and the English one, Lauder [the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation]. We also receive funds from restituted Jewish real estate.

I also visit the community regularly. We take care of the poor and people in need there. Joint foundation also helps us a lot. We collect clothes and distribute them among the poorer families and orphanages. Our club develops a wide range of charity activities. We also have an old people's home where we look after lonely, elderly people.

I live very freely now. Every Saturday I go to the club where we listen to lectures from different professors. The last lectures were about Judaism so that we, the Jews, got to know about the sages of our history. I find the book that describes the most famous Jews in the world very interesting. The club's main activities are supporting mutual aid between Jews and the organizing of educational lectures.

• Glossary:

Iosif Gurevich
Uzhgorod
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya
Date of interview: April 2003

Iosif Gurevich and his wife Ludmila live in a two-bedroom apartment in a five-storied 1970s building in a new district of Uzhgorod. They have a similar way of speaking and are both nice and friendly. Iosif and Ludmila make a wonderful couple. They are caring and loving partners. The first thing that attracts a visitor's attention in their apartment is the large number of books. Iosif has always been fond of reading. After he retired he got the opportunity to spend as much time reading as he wished. He collected books with a great fondness. There is a selection of books by contemporary writers in his collection. Iosif is a man of average height. There is something boyish and naughty in his eyes and smile. He has a wonderful sense of humor. When he was telling me stories about his childhood and about the provincial town, where he spent his childhood, I couldn't help laughing. Iosif has not left his home since his heart attack. He suffers a lot from lack of communication with the outer world. During the interview he had heartaches several times. I offered him to postpone the interview, but he refused. Iosif willingly spoke about his family. There are pictures of his family and his wife's family on the walls and the bookshelves. Iosif knows many poems by heart. He recited some to me.

My family background
Jewish life in Konotop
My mother
Growing up
Our religious life
My school years
The war begins
Post-war
Married life
Glossary

My family background

My father's family lived in a village, six kilometers from the small town of Konotop [in Sumy region, about 300 km from Kiev]. I don't remember the name of the village. It was an old Ukrainian village where several Jewish families lived. The Ukrainians were farmers and the Jews were tradesmen and craftsmen for the most part. There was no synagogue in the village. On Saturdays and Jewish holidays Jewish men went to the synagogue in a neighboring village, two kilometers from their home village. All Jews in the village observed Jewish traditions and followed the kashrut. There was also a shochet in the village. Both poor and rich families celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays. If a boy was born to a Jewish family all Jewish men came to the brit milah ritual on the 8th day. Boys had their bar mitzvah at the age of 13. Jews and Ukrainians got along well and helped each other. Every Jewish family had Ukrainian friends that came on Saturdays to light the lamp and stoke the stove. There were no pogroms 1 in the village.

My paternal grandfather Tevel Gurevich was born in this village in 1864. My grandmother Frida was born in 1865. I don't have any information about her place of birth or her maiden name. My father didn't tell me anything about his family.

My grandfather owned a mill before the Revolution of 1917 2. All members of the family worked at the mill. My father told me that it was a good source of income for the family. He didn't tell me anything about their house, however, and I've never been to the village where he lived. They were an ordinary Jewish family, did their business and lived according to all Jewish laws. They were religious, went to the synagogue, celebrated Jewish holidays and followed the kashrut. They spoke Yiddish at home. They were real Jews.

I remember Grandfather Tevel well. He was a tall broad-shouldered man with a beard and payes. He wore a black silk yarmulka at home and a hat outside. On weekdays he wore casual peasant's clothes. When he went to the synagogue on Sabbath and Jewish holidays he put on a long, black jacket. He was very strong, even in his old age. From what I remember he was never ill and never complained that he was tired or not feeling well.

My grandmother was a short, good-humored Jewish woman. She always had a nice smile and a kind word for other people. I remember her wearing long, dark clothes. On hot summer days she wore blouses with a high collar and long sleeves. She didn't wear a wig, but always had a kerchief on her head. Like all other women in Konotop, she went to the synagogue on Jewish holidays.

My grandmother gave birth to ten children. Only seven of them survived. The oldest, Shaya, was born in 1888. Then came two daughters: Esfir, born in 1891 and Bertha, born in 1893. Ilia followed in 1895 and Chaim was born in 1896. My father Samuel was born in 1898, and Iona, the youngest, followed in 1899.

All children had classes at home with a melamed. They learned to read and write in Hebrew and Yiddish, prayers, the Torah and the Talmud and Jewish traditions. All, except for Ilia, only finished two years at the Ukrainian elementary school in the village. My grandfather provided a better education for Ilia, though. Ilia finished a lower secondary school in Konotop and went on to studied in an accountant college. I was acquainted with all my father's brothers and sisters. They were nice and decent people. All sons worked at their father's mill, and the daughters helped my grandmother about the house.

After the Revolution of 1917 the Soviet authorities began to put a lot of pressure on my grandfather. He had to pay high taxes. The only reason why they didn't expropriate his mill was because he didn't hire employees. During the period of the NEP 3 the family business improved. This lasted until 1923 when the Soviet authorities did expropriate the mill. The family had nothing to live on any more. It was impossible to find a job in a small village, so they moved to Konotop, where it was easier to find work and support the family.

After moving to Konotop my father's older brother, Shaya, worked at the state-run grits facility. He was a tall and beautiful man. He had a Jewish wife and three children. When Shaya lived in Konotop he was religious. He observed Jewish traditions and went to the synagogue. Before the Great Patriotic War 4 his family moved to Moscow. Shaya couldn't go to the synagogue or celebrate Sabbath there. The Soviet authorities persecuted religion, although the constitution of the USSR stated that religion was each individual's private business. However, it was officially considered that religion was alien to Soviet people. Shaya and his family celebrated Jewish holidays at home. He died in Moscow in 1969. Shaya's grandchildren, my nephews and nieces, live in Moscow now.

My father's sister Esfir got married in Konotop. She and her husband moved to Leningrad. I don't remember her husband's name. Esfir had two children. She was a housewife. During the Great Patriotic War Esfir and her children were in the blockade of Leningrad 5. Her husband perished at the front and her children starved to death. Esfir was the only survivor. After the Great Patriotic War she moved to Moscow and lived with Shaya's family. Esfir died in 1970.

My father's sister Bertha was single. She lived with her parents in Konotop and helped my grandmother about the house. Bertha died in Konotop in 1971.

My father's brother Ilia was married and had a son called Ilia. He lived in Kursk with his family and worked as chief accountant at a big sugar factory. Ilia wasn't religious and didn't observe Jewish holidays. My uncle had tuberculosis which caused his untimely death. When I was 13 I went to a pioneer camp in a pinewood near Konotop where my father rented a house for Ilia. The air in pinewoods was good for him. Ilia stayed there the whole summer and then my father took him back to Kursk. Ilia died in 1938.

I have no information about Chaim. I only saw a picture of him. My father didn't tell me anything about him. I also know very little about my father's younger brother Iona. He was mentally ill. He died in a mental hospital in Kiev in 1939. My father went to his funeral in Kiev. Iona was buried in accordance with Jewish traditions in the Lukianovka Jewish cemetery 6 in Kiev. In 1960 this cemetery was destroyed and a TV tower was erected on the site. We got no notification and couldn't remove Iona's ashes to another cemetery.

Jewish life in Konotop

My grandparents on my mother's side came from Konotop. My grandfather, Arkadi Simonovski, was born in 1870. I don't remember my grandmother's name. I just know what my mother told me about her. My grandmother was born in 1871 and died in 1924, the year when I was born.

Konotop was a small patriarchal town. I remember the town from the time when I was a child. The population was 35-40,000 people. Konotop and its outskirts stretched for a distance of about 3 x 3 kilometers. There was a big railroad station, four kilometers from town, and a big military airfield and an aviation regiment. There was a small cinema in the main street, shops, a pharmacy and a fire brigade. We often went to the cinema where we listened to music in the hall before the screening of a movie. A violin, a grand piano and a saxophone player were in the foyer of the cinema. A circus came on tour to our town. It performed in the park. Our whole family went to see the circus.

In the evenings and on Saturdays and Sundays the residents of the town liked to go for a walk in Konotop. There were mainly one-storied houses and just a few two-storied ones in the center of the town. The Jews didn't have their own neighborhood; their houses were scattered among Ukrainian houses. There were Jewish doctors, teachers and lawyers. There were wealthy Jewish tradesmen during the NEP period. The majority of Jews were craftsmen and many worked at the plant. There were two big plants in Konotop: a big mechanic plant for the manufacturing of mining equipment and a locomotive repair plant at the railway station. At 7 o'clock in the morning the factory sirens woke up the town. There was also a siren at lunchtime and at the end of the working day.

There was a synagogue on the outskirts of Konotop, not far from our house. Once my father took me to the synagogue. It was a two-storied wooden house. There were also Torah scrolls there. I was surprised that women were sitting on the balcony. This was the only time I was at the synagogue. There was a cheder near the synagogue and a Jewish school. The cheder and school were small. The Soviet authorities persecuted religion. Fewer and fewer Jews sent their children to the cheder and the Jewish school. The language of teaching at higher educational institutions was Russian. Jewish parents wanted their children to have fewer problems in the future. If they studied in Jewish schools they had fluent Yiddish but poor Russian, which might have become a problem for their further studies.

There was no anti-Semitism and Ukrainian and Jewish families lived next to each other without having any conflicts. There was a shochet in town. The Jews bought chickens at the market and took them to the shochet. Poor Jews were deeply religious while wealthier people with education hardly ever observed Jewish traditions. My mother's family was like that.

My mother

Grandfather Arkadi owned a crockery store, which was expropriated. He became either a shop assistant or a commodity manager at another store, I don't exactly remember. All those events had their impact on my grandfather and he died at the end of 1925. My grandmother was a German teacher in a Russian grammar school for girls in Konotop. There were only male teachers at the grammar school for boys while there were many female teachers in the school for girls. My mother told me that they had male teachers in mathematics, drawing and religion for Christian children when she was in school. The rest of the teachers were women. After the Revolution of 1917 the grammar school was closed.

My grandparents had five children. The oldest, Riva, was born in 1898. The second one was my mother Elizaveta, born in 1900. Then came Nyunia, born in 1903. The fourth daughter was Rosalia, born in 1905 and the youngest, Sonia, followed in 1908.

My mother's parents weren't religious. They didn't even speak Yiddish at home. None of my mother's sisters knew Yiddish. They spoke fluent Russian. They didn't observe any Jewish traditions at home. I know for sure that they didn't celebrate Sabbath. I cannot say for sure whether they celebrated Jewish holidays or not, but I don't think they did. None of the daughters was religious. I knew all of them and my mother, who didn't observe Jewish traditions, wasn't an exception in her family. They were all raised that way.

My mother and her sisters received secular education. They finished Russian grammar school where they learned to play the piano and sing. Riva was the only one that continued her education. She moved to Kiev where she finished a college. Upon graduation she married a Russian man. After her marriage she finished another college. I don't know if she worked. She left her husband some time before the Great Patriotic War. He became a drunkard. They didn't have children. My father visited her in Kiev. That was before Riva divorced her husband. My father stayed there one day and returned home. He said that Riva suffered a lot from her husband's behavior. She stayed in Kiev and perished in Babi Yar 7 at the beginning of the war.

My mother's sister Nyunia lived in Konotop. She was married, but had no children. Nyunia worked as a typist at the Statistics Department. She was in evacuation in the Ural during the Great Patriotic War and returned to Konotop after the war. She died in Konotop in 1956. She was buried in the town cemetery.

My mother's younger sisters, Rosalia and Sonia, were very young when their parents died. When my mother got married she took them into our family. They lived with us until they got married. They married two Jewish brothers, Isaac and Evsey Shmerkins. Shortly after the wedding the two families moved to Priluki, a small town [about 150 km from Kiev]. The sisters were skilled typists and their husbands were qualified bakers. They were wealthy; our family wasn't. Before the war my mother and I visited them once. Our visit lasted three days. After my grandmother died my mother was like a mother to her sisters and they loved her dearly. They were very happy when we came to see them. They spoke about their life with my mother, tried to entertain and feed us well. When we were leaving they gave us presents and some money. After the Great Patriotic War both families settled down in Lvov. Rosalia had a daughter: Esfir. In 1991 Rosalia, her husband and daughter's family moved to Australia. She died in Australia in 1992. Sonia and her husband had a son, Arkadi, named after his grandfather. He finished Lvov Polytechnic College and got a job assignment to a heating power plant in Simferopol, Crimea. Sonia died in Lvov in 1985. After her death her husband moved to their son in Simferopol where he died in 1995.

Growing up

My parents met when my mother studied at grammar school. There were often balls arranged at their school. My father used to come to these parties in a horse-driven carriage. He was a handsome and well-dressed guy and managed to impress my mother, although they were different in many respects. There was a romantic story in my mother's life. During the Civil War 8, after the Revolution of 1917, Germans came to Ukraine. I guess this happened in 1919. A young German officer and my mother fell in love. He wanted to take her to Germany. When my mother's father heard about it he tied my mother to the table. The Germans left and my mother stayed in Konotop. Perhaps, my mother married my father to forget what had happened back then.

My parents got married in 1923. I don't think they had a traditional Jewish wedding. I believe they had a civil wedding. Well, at least my religious grandfather Tevel never once came to the house. Grandmother Frida often came to see us, but my grandfather didn't. I guess, he must have had a good reason for that.

My mother became a housewife after she got married. My father did badly paid manual work. My parents were poor. They rented a small 15-square-meter room in a one-storied house with two porches and entrance doors on the outskirts of town. There was a small river in this neighborhood where I liked to play when I was a child.

I was born on 11th March 1924 and I was named Iosif. My father insisted that I was circumcised in accordance with the Jewish traditions. My maternal grandfather Arkadi liked me a lot and was happy that there was a man in the family since he only had daughters. My mother told me that my grandfather never let go of me. Somehow there were no notes made at my birth, so my grandfather registered me in April 1925. Therefore, all my documents, including my birth certificate, state that I was born on 5th April 1925. Perhaps, my grandfather saved my life unintentionally because I was only recruited to the army at the very end of the war. My brother Arkadi was born on 11th March 1932. On the 8th day after his birth he had his brit milah. I remember that my grandfather Tevel came to our house and watched the process through the window. After the circumcision all attendants sat at the table where it had been carried out and had a meal. My grandfather was standing by the window and didn't come into the house.

Grandfather Tevel died in 1933 during the time of the famine in Ukraine 9. I remember his funeral. I was nine years old then. My father took me to the room where my grandfather was lying on the floor covered with a black blanket. The mirror was also covered with black cloth. My father and I left our shoes at the threshold and entered the room barefoot. There were relatives and neighbors in the room and the women were sobbing. My father didn't take me to the cemetery. My grandfather was buried in accordance with Jewish traditions in the Jewish cemetery in Konotop. My father recited the Kaddish. He couldn't sit shivah because he had to work.

Grandmother Frida always came to visit us on Jewish holidays. She gave my brother and me Chanukkah gelt on Chanukkah and brought hamantashen on Purim. She also visited us on ordinary days. My father's older brother Shaya took grandmother to his family after grandfather died. When he moved to Moscow with his family in the 1930s my grandmother refused to go and went to her daughter Esfir in Leningrad. My grandmother died during the blockade of Leningrad in 1941. She remained religious throughout her life. I know this from Uncle Shaya.

Soon after my brother was born we moved into a brick house for four families across the street from our old house. The Russian stove 10 was stoked with wood since coal was way too expensive. We didn't have much furniture: a table, my parents' bed with nickel-plated balls on four posts; I slept on a squeaky wooden bed and my brother Arkadi slept in his cradle. There were self-made rugs on the floor. My mother kept the room very tidy. She got very angry when my father didn't wash himself immediately after he came home from work. He didn't feel an urge to do so and that drove my mother mad.

My father was an ordinary man who grew up in a Ukrainian village. He had Ukrainian friends when he was young. He was kind and sociable. He didn't have any profession. All he knew was how to grind grain, which didn't require any intellectual efforts. He worked as a loader, joiner and mechanic. He was almost illiterate. My father wanted to go to a drivers' school, but failed at the exams because he had only studied at school for two years. My mother was different. She got a good education, liked to read and knew a lot about music. My father found it boring and unnecessary. However poor we were my mother tried to keep up with her standards. She made her own clothes. Even though she wore dresses made from cheap fabric or altered from old clothes they were always up-to-date. Her clothes were impeccably clean and ironed. My mother raised my brother and me while my father was always at work. My father liked drinking since his colleagues drank at work. He often came home drunk. Of course, my mother, my brother and I were very unhappy about it. He liked to dress up and have a stroll in the town. That's the kind of man he was, and, what could one do about it?

There was no running water in Konotop. We fetched water from a water pump about 400 meters from our house. I fetched water in buckets on a yoke. There was a period in the early 1930s when water was sold. Aunt Bertha and my grandmother were hired to sell water. There was a shed in the street with taps in front of it. My grandmother and Aunt Bertha were sitting inside the shed. A bucket of water cost 1 kopek. We used the water for cooking and minor washing. We went to the sauna to wash ourselves.

We bought food at the market. My mother had to work miracles to feed our family of four. We had all necessary clothes and enough food; the only time when we didn't have enough food was during the period of the famine in 1932- 33. My mother boiled potato peels and goosefoot grass then. Those were hard years. Many villagers traveled to towns looking for food and work. They were dying in hundreds. Several times a day a horse-driven cab drove across the town picking up corpses.

Our religious life

We only spoke Russian in our family. My father sometimes addressed my mother in Yiddish, but she always replied in Russian. I didn't learn any Yiddish. I wish I knew Yiddish. My mother wasn't religious. We didn't observe any Jewish traditions or celebrate holidays. My mother used to say, 'I don't need matzah. I'd rather have a dozen cakes'. My grandmother always brought us some matzah on Pesach. On Jewish holidays my father always went to his older brother Shaya where my grandmother lived. My mother didn't let my brother or me go there because she believed that we didn't need to be involved in those outdated celebrations.

My father had all religious accessories at home: tefillin, tallit and a prayer book. Early in the morning, before he went to work, he prayed. He never taught my brother or me how to pray. Perhaps, he didn't do it because my mother was against it. On holidays he went to the synagogue. Once my father took me to the synagogue. I remember something round-shaped in the middle and Jewish men going around this round-shaped something. [Editor's note: Iosif must be talking about the festival of Simchat Torah when the men walk around the bimah 7 times with the Torah scrolls in their hands. The round-shaped something is the bimah.] There were also Torah scrolls. I was surprised that women were sitting on the balcony. This was the only time I was at the synagogue. I wish I had been there more often.

The Orthodox synagogue and Orthodox Christian and Catholic churches were closed during the period of struggle against religion in the 1930s. This was happening all over Ukraine. I remember how bells were removed from cupolas. There was a crowd standing in front of the church shouting communist slogans. They looked like cheering each other. Then a few people from the crowd climbed ladders by the walls to the cupola of the church. It took them a while to throw a rope loop upon the top of the cross. They managed at last and again the crowd cheered. One end of the rope was thrown down and tied to a hook on a trailing line fixed on a truck. People got down, the engine started and the truck began to move slowly. The cupola and the cross fell down. The crowd was overwhelmed with joy, but this wasn't all. A few young men climbed the bell tower, ripped off a copper bell and dropped it onto the ground from the height of about 15 meters. The bell fell to the ground and broke. The crowd cheered again. A red flag was installed on the bell tower. We, boys, were cheering along with the crowd. Long afterwards I remembered what I didn't seem to notice back then: a bunch of old Christians standing aside, watching everything with an expression of horror. They crossed themselves, whispering prayers. Old men held their hats in their hands like they do at a funeral.

There was a kolkhoz 11 and a mill on the outskirts of town. Some time in 1938 my father became a miller. He was good at this job. He had earned little before, and in the kolkhoz he didn't get any salary at all. Only in the fall, when the crops were milled, did my father receive some grain and money. Collective farmers had no rights and didn't even have passports, but my father was an employee there. He built a shed and kept pigs in the yard of our house. We sold pork and ate it. We could afford to buy some clothes, and I remember, I also got a suit and white fabric shoes that I had to rub with chalk.

My school years

My aunt Bertha submitted my documents to the Jewish school in 1931. Since I hadn't reached the age of 7, according to my birth certificate, I wasn't admitted. The following year my mother took me to the Russian school. This was the only Russian school in Konotop; the rest of the schools were Ukrainian. Boys and girls studied together. There were about ten Jewish children among my 30 classmates.

I had many Jewish and Ukrainian friends. I didn't face any anti-Semitism, but I heard the word 'zhyd' [kike] from senior pupils. In my family we were raised to make no difference between nationalities.

I was fond of literature at school. We had a very nice teacher of Ukrainian and Russian literature. I read a lot and knew many poems by heart. I still read poetry and make notes if I like something in particular. I was a good pupil. I was also fond of history. I didn't really like mathematics that much. We didn't have any books at home except for textbooks. I borrowed books from the town library. I was very fond of sports, too. I went in for football, gymnastics and acrobatics. Physical culture was well developed at the time. There were skid-pans, bars and a football ground in every yard.

We celebrated Soviet holidays at home and at school. We celebrated 7th November [October Revolution Day] 12, 1st May, Lenin's birthday. There were parades and amateur concerts at school that my parents came to watch. My mother cooked something delicious. We didn't have guests since we were poor and besides, there wasn't enough space. Only relatives visited us occasionally. On 1st May we went to a forest by bus. We took food with us and arranged a picnic in a nice spot. We ate and sang Soviet songs such as 'For Motherland, For Stalin' and danced. I remember that the first toast was always to Stalin.

I became a pioneer at school and felt very honored. I had a red necktie and believed that everybody around was staring at me. In summer I went to a pioneer camp in the pinewood. We lived in wooden barracks. Every evening we made a pioneer fire and sang patriotic songs. We were told about the current situation and capitalist schemes. We were taught to be patriots of the Soviet Union. We played military games. In the evenings we sometimes had dancing parties. I danced with a girl for the first time in this camp. When I finished the 8th grade I joined the Komsomol 13, but there was not ceremony. Everybody was admitted and it was a common process.

The arrests that began in 1936 [during the so-called Great Terror] 14 didn't involve our family. My father was either a joiner or a loader and Soviet authorities weren't interested in him, although they sometimes did arrest workers like my father if somebody reported on them. I remember posters on the walls saying, 'Be watchful - an enemy is near!' Some of my classmates' parents were arrested, but their children continued their studies and nobody mentioned to them that they were children of 'enemies of the people'. I remember the 'Black Maria' driving in our street, and my parents sighing with relief whenever it passed by. [Editor's note: 'Black Maria' was the name for the dark vehicles of the NKVD 15 in which arrested people were driven off from their homes to their first interrogation. They were vans with small barred windows painted black.]

I watched all movies in the cinema before the Great Patriotic War. They were simple Soviet films like Tractor Drivers, Volga-Volga and If War Comes Tomorrow. My favorite film was The Great Waltz. It was miraculous: the music, actors and clothes - I admired it all. There was no theater in Konotop. There were radios that looked like big black plates on the walls in the houses.

The 8-year Jewish school in Konotop was closed in 1939. Many children came to study in our school. There were several of them in my class. It was difficult for them to study since they had very poor Russian.

The war begins

In 1939 we heard that Hitler had attacked Poland. We were taught at school that our army was the strongest in the world. It never occurred to anyone that Hitler would dare to attack the USSR. We weren't interested in the international situation at that time. This was the time when we experienced love and affection for the first time, and we were far from thinking about what was happening in the rest of the world.

22nd June 1941 was a Sunday. We were on vacation from school. I finished my 9th year at school and was planning to enter a college in Kiev. We thought that while on vacation I would go to my mother's sister Riva in Kiev to choose a college. That morning my mother went shopping and I was still sleeping. My mother came home without any goods and said that Germany had unleashed war on the USSR. We were patriots and believed Stalin and the Party. Stalin said that we would beat the enemy on his own territory. So, why worry? People believed that the war wouldn't last long. Nobody hurried to evacuate. Only two plants were evacuated from Konotop. Workers' families and equipment left on two trains. Then people began to evacuate.

My grandmother and Bertha went to Esfir in Leningrad. Thousands of refugees from Belarus moved through Konotop. There were Jews and Russians among them. There was also cattle evacuated, but we didn't even consider evacuation. After the war I got to know that the Germans shot 12 Jewish families in Konotop and the rest of the Jews managed to evacuate. My father worked until the last minute. I saw Bachmach, a town 25 kilometers from Konotop, being bombed. There was such a huge ball of fire that it could be seen in Konotop.

When my friend and I went to a bookstore to buy textbooks for the 10th grade, the Germans began to bomb Konotop. A German plane dropped a bomb that hit a fuel storage facility on the outskirts of town. Beams from the storage facility flew 100 meters up into the air. Then German planes attacked an airfield in Konotop and there was a battle between planes. The Germans were firing at our planes. They were small wooden planes while the German Messerschmidt fighter planes were armed. We watched it from the street. There were no people in the streets. I ran back home and asked my mother what we were going to do. She told me to go to my father, who was at work, and ask him.

There were many villagers that brought their grain to be ground. The farmers understood that the Germans were near and that they needed to have stocks of flour. I said to my father that we had to leave town immediately or we would all perish. My father and I went to the chairman of the kolkhoz to ask for a cart and horses. The chairman told my father to take all we needed. My father harnessed two horses into a cart and we rode home. On the way we went to pick up my mother's sister Nyunia. Her husband was a doctor and went to the front. My mother, my 8-year-old brother and Nyunia sat on the cart. My father reined the horses and I rode on my bicycle beside the cart. We rode 250 kilometers to Kursk. I don't remember how many days our trip lasted, but I don't think we covered more than 50 kilometers per day. When we were going past some town, Germans troops were landing, but we managed to escape. We didn't have any money. We only had some clothes. We stopped at a market to sell some clothes and buy some food. We were taken to the militia department. My father was charged of speculation, but we were released later.

What we saw on our way to Kursk was terrible: crowds of people on vehicles and carts running away. In Kursk we went to my father's brother Ilia, but he wasn't there. We were told that they had evacuated. We had evacuation papers for the town of Ruzaevka, in the Mordova Soviet Socialist Republic near the Volga River [about 700 km from Kursk], that we had obtained in Konotop and decided to head there. I don't remember how we got there. In Ruzaevka we were accommodated in the evacuation agency, which was the cultural center and stuffed with people. There were no chairs and people were sitting on their luggage. We got a meal: porridge. We were sent to a village that was also overcrowded. We returned to Ruzaevka and heard an announcement about a train going to Middle Asia and all those willing to move there had to come to the registration office. We decided to go because we didn't have any warm clothes with us and the climate in Middle Asia was warmer. The train we boarded was a train for cattle transportation. My aunt got in touch with her husband at the evacuation agency. His hospital was deployed in Tula region. She received an invitation letter from him and moved there.

The four of us went to Middle Asia. Our trip on that cattle train lasted 28 days. It was a very hard trip. There were lice and women cut their hair. It was dirty. There were no toilets. We arrived at Gorchakovo station in Fergana valley, 500 kilometers from Tashkent [Uzbekistan] and 3,500 km from home. We went to Margilan station. This was in October 1941. We were accommodated with an Uzbek family in a village. We lived upstairs in a booth of 2,5 x 2 meters. We had to find work. There was a cattle base at the station that bred and slaughtered cattle for the front. My father and I were laborers there. Later I found a job as a postman at the local post office where I worked for about two months.

I was a patriot and so were many other young people. I went to the military registry office and told them that I was born in 1924 and wanted to serve in the Air Force. Young people born in 1924 were to be recruited in 1942. I was sent for medical examination and was registered for military service. After a month I was sent to Kharkov Infantry School, deployed in Namangan. Although I went in for sports I had rheumatism. About 80 of us came to the school. There was another medical examination that I failed to pass due to my health condition. I returned to Margilan. Two weeks later I was ordered to come to the registry office again. There was a train full of recruits from the neighboring location. We were sent to the Far East. We arrived at Boretz Kuznetsov station in Primoriye [over 5,000 km from Margilan]. We were accommodated in huge storehouses where we stayed overnight. On the following day commanding officers from various military units came to 'buy' us for the infantry, tank units, Air Force and Navy. Three people - one officer and two first sergeants - 'bought' me. They argued and asked me about my education, until I was finally taken to the Pacific Navy. I served in the Navy in the Far East from 1942-1947. All this time I sent my requests to be taken to the front.

I came to the Navy in September 1942 when combat action near Stalingrad began. We were punished and put into the guardhouse for asking to go to the front. They asked us, 'Who's gonna stay here?' We got little food and had no warm clothes. It was cold in fall and winter and the only clothes we had were our uniforms. At the end of my guarding time I couldn't get downstairs because I was so cold. I joined the Communist Party in 1943. It was simple during the war: the soldiers submitted their application to the deputy political officer. There was a meeting on that same or the following day where they were admitted to the Party, even if they hadn't been candidates before. At that moment I believed that it was a duty of every decent man to be a member of the Communist Party.

I have bright memories of Victory Day 16, 9th May 1945, when we heard that Germany had capitulated and the war was over. Soldiers and officers hugged and greeted each other. There was a meeting and then a festive dinner. We were happy and thought about our plans for the future. However, the military men of the Pacific Navy had to postpone their plans for two years. When the war with Germany was over in 1945, the war with Japan 17 began. Our fleet took part in combat action. It was strange, but I didn't have any fear during the battles. I had a feeling deep inside - it's hard to describe it - that I was invulnerable. Fear came some time after a battle when we recalled our fellow comrades that had perished. I have a medal 'For Victory over Japan' and the orders 'Combat Red Banner, grade III' and 'For Courage'. I demobilized in 1947. Upon demobilization I received a diploma 'For Faultless Service in the Pacific Ocean Navy'.

I didn't face any anti-Semitism in the army. I lived with people of various nationalities for five years and we were friends. We were like a family. Basically there was no anti-Semitism before and during the Great Patriotic War. Besides, it seems to me that in extreme situations people have different values. What mattered was one's personality and not nationality. There were several Jews in the Navy. We were friends for a long time after the war. I had friends of various nationalities.

My first love was my classmate Nadia Volkova, born in 1925. She had a Jewish mother and a Russian father. Her mother was the director of a kindergarten in Konotop and her father was a doctor. During the war he worked in a big hospital. Nadia was a nice girl. I cared about her a lot. We went for walks on the outskirts of town after classes and kissed. At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War Nadia and her mother evacuated to Mordovia. From there she went to the Radio Operator School in Moscow in 1942. The school trained radio operators for partisan units. We corresponded. Nadia studied in Moscow for six months. When she finished this school I received her last letter, in which she wrote, 'We'll probably never see each other again'. This was true. Nadia was sent to the Kharkov partisan unit and perished. I don't know any details of her death. She was awarded the title of 'Hero of the Soviet Union' posthumously. There are photographs of all Heroes of the Soviet Union from the town at the railway station. There are about ten photographs and one of them shows Nadia in her field cap. She sent this picture to me in the Far East.

During my military service I hardly ever wrote letters to or received any from my family. Mail services were unreliable. Letters hardly ever reached their addressees. I knew that my father went to the army a month after I was recruited. He was a driver at the border with Iran. My father served there until the end of the war. My mother and Arkadi stayed in Margilan. At the end of 1942 my mother fell ill with enteric fever and died in hospital in December 1942. I can't imagine how my 10-year-old brother Arkadi survived. He worked at a kolkhoz until May 1945. After demobilization my father found him and took him back to Konotop. Other people lived in our room. My father didn't feel like telling them to move out and he found a small room where he lived with my brother.

My father went to work at the mill. My brother didn't go to school during the war and was too old to do so after the war. He went to study at a vocational school to become a tool joiner. After finishing this school he went to work at the tool shop at the Konotop plant of mining equipment. My brother enjoyed this work. He got more money than the engineers there.

Post-war

My father married an elderly Jewish woman whose husband had perished at the front. My father wasn't religious after the war. He and his wife celebrated Jewish holidays, but only formally. My father died in 1973. My brother and I buried him in the Jewish cemetery in Konotop in accordance with Jewish traditions. His second wife also passed away.

My brother married Rosalia, a Jewish girl from Konotop in 1956. They had a common civil ceremony in a registry office and a small wedding party for relatives and close friends in the evening. Their daughter Elizaveta, named after my mother, was born in 1957. Some time afterwards a big plant of electronic microscopes was built in Sumy and the chief engineer of the Konotop plant was appointed director of this plant. He asked my brother to work there. My brother and his family rented an apartment in Sumy and lived there until my brother received an apartment of his own. Their daughter got married and moved to Lvov with her husband. Her daughter Yana, my brother's granddaughter, was born in 1977. Elizaveta died in an accident in 1980. She was 23. She was buried in the cemetery in Konotop.

My brother and his wife moved to Konotop and raised their granddaughter. Arkadi, his wife and his granddaughter emigrated to Germany in 1990. They live in Dortmund. Yana got married and works. My brother and his wife are pensioners now. We correspond with them. I'm very concerned about my brother. His wife is very ill and doesn't have much time left. She needs to go to a mental hospital. If my brother loses her his life will be difficult. Apart from losing a close person, he will have language problems because he doesn't know German.

I wanted to continue my studies after my demobilization. I couldn't obtain permits to go to Moscow or Leningrad and didn't want to return to Konotop. In evacuation I had met a boy from Lvov, two years older than I. He had finished his first year at the Faculty of History at Lvov University. He told me a lot about Lvov. I corresponded with him and he suggested that I went to Lvov upon my demobilization. I obtained a permit to go to Lvov. I visited my father and brother in Konotop and went to Lvov.

My mother's sisters Rosalia and Sonia lived in Lvov. During the war they worked at a military hospital in Lvov and they stayed in this town after the war. I lived with Aunt Rosalia for about a month. I didn't have a profession but had to go to work. I could play volleyball and swim very well. I had been trained in the Navy. I got a job as a PE teacher at a vocational school. The management of this school sent me on a three months' course of advanced training at Lvov College of Physical Education. I was offered to enter this college, but I was thinking of some other profession than a PE teacher. I went to the Mechanics Department at the Food Industry Technical School. I became a 2nd-year student since I had finished nine years at secondary school. This technical school trained specialists for alcohol and yeast factories. Three years later I became a mechanical technician. I got a job assignment at an alcohol factory in Lvov region in 1950. I became chief mechanic and then chief engineer at this factory. I met my future wife, Ludmila Volosova, in Lvov. She came to work in Lvov upon her graduation from Odessa Food Industry Technical School.

Married life

My wife is Russian. She was born in Kazanka, Nikolaev region in 1922. Her father, Klimenti Volosov, was a farmer before 1917. They were a wealthy family and had a house, cows and horses. They had three children: Ludmila's older brother, who perished at the front, Ludmila and her younger sister Valentina. When the Soviet regime was established Ludmila's father was declared a kulak 18. The family was forced to leave their house. They destroyed their belongings. They had no place to go and lived under the threat of being sent into exile in Siberia. Ludmila's father had a distant relative in the district town. He was a manager in an office. He issued them some ID certificates - villagers had no passports - and they managed to go to Krivoy Rog. Nobody knew them there and it was easier for them to get lost in a bigger town. Her parents lived there all their life. Her father worked at a plant and her mother was a housewife. Her brother was recruited to the army when he was a 2nd-year student at a College. He served in the army two years and when it was his time to demobilize the Great Patriotic War began. He was in Belarus on the first days of the war and perished there. Ludmila's family was in evacuation in Tashkent. After the war they returned to Krivoy Rog. Ludmila entered the Production Faculty at Odessa Food Industry Technical School. After finishing this school she got a job assignment at a plant in Lvov where we met.

We got married within a month. My family didn't have any objections against me marrying a non-Jewish girl, and Ludmila's parents treated me like a son. We didn't have a wedding party. It was a hard and miserable time. We had a civil ceremony. In the summer we went to my relatives in Konotop on vacation, and then we visited Ludmila's parents in Krivoy Rog.

In 1953 the director of our trust offered to send me to the reconstruction of the alcohol plant in Uzhgorod. The plant was located in the suburbs of Uzhgorod. The director of this plant was recruited to the army and I was appointed director of the plant. We completed the reconstruction of the plant and I continued to work as its director. When the former director came back I stayed at the plant as chief mechanic. Uzhgorod was a small and pleasant town. It was much smaller than it is now. It was a quiet and clean town. People were calm and never in a rush. Subcarpathia 19 is a multinational region. There are Romanians, Hungarians, Czechs, Ukrainians, Moldavians, Russians and Jews. There were many Jews in town before the war. Many Jews perished in Subcarpathia during the Holocaust. They were taken to concentration camps in Germany.

There was no anti-Semitism in the area before the war. Other nationalities treated Jews with respect. They were only suspicious about those that came from the USSR. Subcarpathia joined the USSR after the Great Patriotic War as a result of the Yalta Conference 20. Teachers, engineers, doctors and other professionals came to Western Ukraine from Eastern Ukraine. Later, when the local population got an opportunity to study at universities, they expressed their negative attitude towards the 'eastern people' from the USSR. One could hear things like, 'Did you get an invitation to come here?'

We rented an apartment. Some time later all alcohol plants were closed due to lack of resources. My wife and I got job offers from other towns, but we didn't want to leave Uzhgorod. We got used to living there. I went to work at the design office for local industries. There were about 25 employees in this office. I began as an engineer and was promoted to chief engineer. Later I was appointed director of the design office. I graduated from the Extramural Heat Engineering Department of Lvov Polytechnic College as a professional heating engineer. A few years later I was called to the regional party committee that told me that I was appointed chief engineer of the Regional Department of Local Industries. I worked there until 1968. Then 'UkrNIIstromproject [scientific research institute of design and construction], an affiliate of Kiev Institute, was established in Uzhgorod. I became the director and worked there until I retired in 1985. My party membership was expressed through the payment of monthly fees and the attendance of party meetings. I didn't have any responsibilities as a party member and I wasn't eager to have any.

I don't remember much about the trials against the 'cosmopolitans [during the campaign against 'cosmopolitans'] 21 in 1948. They involved scientists and people in the arts. Of course, it was strange to read in newspapers that such honored people happened to be 'enemies of the people', but back then I believed it was true. When articles about doctors being poisoners [Doctors' Plot] 22 were published at the beginning of 1953, I had doubts they were true, but those were just doubts. Some people believed it so much that they refused to consult Jewish doctors.

In March 1953 Stalin died. My wife and I were at work at the alcohol plant. All employees got together in the hallway near a radio. All people were crying. My wife was the only one that had no tears for Stalin. She couldn't forget all the disasters that her family had to go through. Stalin was my idol. I grew up believing in his impeccability. I couldn't imagine life without him. I couldn't imagine what would happen to our country or to each of us.

When Khrushchev 23 denounced the cult of Stalin and spoke about his crimes at the Twentieth Party Congress 24 I couldn't believe it for a long time. It's hard to change one's ideology. I had to break with my inner beliefs to believe Khrushchev. Now I understand that Stalin brought many disasters to the country, but I also know that he achieved victory in the war. It's another question how he did that. Of course, there were frightening times: arrests, famine, Stalin's repression and camps... We didn't understand it at the time. In 1954, before the Twentieth Party Congress, I was on vacation in a recreation center in the Crimea. My neighbor was older than me. He was there with his family. He probably went through hardships himself. He told me that Stalin was a terrible tyrant, that he locked our country from the rest of the world. I argued with him stating that Stalin won the war and that if it hadn't been for him we would become slaves. I still think so. I accepted what was said at the Party Congress, but it took me some time to believe it.

We didn't celebrate any religious holidays at home. Both my wife and me were atheists and didn't feel the need of religion. We celebrated Soviet holidays and our birthdays. We had guests, danced, sang and enjoyed the good food. Our favorite holiday was Victory Day on 9th May. We had survived the war, lost our close people and felt like it was our personal holiday. Most of our friends were Jews that came from the USSR. It just happened so. We spent vacations with friends. Sometimes we went to the Crimea or the Carpathian mountains. On every vacation we visited my father, my brother and my wife's parents. My wife and I have lived a good life together. In 2000 we celebrated the 50th anniversary of our wedding. Unfortunately, we have no children.

In the 1970s Jews began to move to Israel. I didn't blame those people, but we never considered departure. I had a job that I liked and we have a lot of friends. I've never faced any anti-Semitism. Ukraine is my motherland. The history of Ukraine is as close to me as Jewish history. Besides, my wife isn't Jewish and I was afraid of prejudice towards her in Israel. Maybe I was wrong, but it's too late to think about it now. Many of my friends and acquaintances left in the 1970s or sometime later. We've been in touch. They have a good life in Israel. Some of them have passed away already.

In the middle of the 1980s perestroika 25, initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev 26, began in the USSR. I was enthusiastic about it and believed in it. The Iron Curtain 27, separating the Soviet Union from the rest of the world fell, and that was a good sign. I believed that things would keep improving. Unfortunately, life's not always as we want it to be. The good beginning didn't continue. Still, the main achievement of perestroika was glasnost [openness]. We lived under the Soviet regime for 70 years, a whole epoch in history. After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the Communist Party of the USSR ceased to exist, and I automatically stopped being its member.

Ukraine is different now. It's hard to say how things will develop. The mentality of the people has to change. It's not that easy. Every individual must develop his personality now, while we were always taught that a person is nothing without a collective. Every individual must do his work honestly to have a positive effect. The attitude towards Jews has changed. I think there is no anti-Semitism on a state level. It happens in everyday life, but not as often as it used to happen, and is demonstrated by older people. Young people probably don't know what it is about. Young Jews have no problem entering a higher educational institution or getting a job. It's a person's skills that count and nationality doesn't matter. Jews can openly go to the synagogue and observe Jewish traditions. Young people are proud of their origin. I've seen many such examples among the children or grandchildren of my acquaintances. The Jewish way of life has revived. Young people get closer to religion and Jewish traditions. I think one can see more young people in synagogues nowadays.

Hesed was established in Uzhgorod in 1999. This organization does a lot to revive Jewish life. They also take care of old Jewish people. Unfortunately I'm in no condition to go to the synagogue or Hesed. I would be very interested to meet people and attend various activities. I like reading Jewish newspapers. Volunteers from Hesed bring them to me. I know more about Jewish traditions and holidays now. I wish I had been raised in a family where Yiddish was spoken. My wife and I have had heart attacks and my wife has also had a stroke. Hesed employees clean our apartment, do the laundry and bring food and medication. We have small pensions and this is a big support for us. We are very grateful to them.

Glossary

Basia Gutnik
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Zhmyr Oksana
 

My family background
Growing up
During the war
Post-war
My husband Vladimir
Our children
Glossary

My family background

My name is Basia Gutnik and I was born in Kiev in 1928.
My maternal grandfather told me that he and my grandmother
came to Kiev from Rakitnoye in 1909. Perhaps they were running away
from pogroms,1 but I don't know for sure. Mama was 5 years old
then. To obtain the right to reside in Kiev, they needed to have
their child study in the grammar school. Jews were only allowed to
reside in Podol2 - this was their residential area3. My
grandfather rented a house in Podol and my mother went to grammar
school. Almost everyone who lived in that house was Jewish. Only
the janitor was Russian. We also had one Russian and one Polish
neighbor.

The family was poor. My grandfather was the only family member
working, and my grandparents had three children to suppport. In
addition, both my grandmother's and grandfather's mothers were also
living with them. I don't remember when they died. Grandfather
managed to provide for his family and pay the rent. His name was
Aaron. He was born in 1880, I believe. He was an educated man. He
knew Hebrew and read the Torah. He worked as a cashier in a bank.
He was a very honest man. My grandmother said that whenever there
was a theft of money in his office, never was suspicion cast on my
grandfather. The idea that he could be a thief was simply
ridiculous. His colleagues would donate money in the amount that
had been stolen from him and return it to the bank.

While my grandfather was alive, the family observed the Jewish
traditions. I remember my mother's brother and sister and their
families visiting us at Pessach. We all assembled and my
grandfather put on his thales and said a prayer. We had matzoh and
wine. My mother's family celebrated many holidays, including the
Sabbath, but I remember only Pessach. My grandfather tried to raise
me as a Jew and told me about the Torah, but I don't remember what
he said. I was too young to take any interest in such subjects. In
the 1930s the practice of any religion, including the Judaism, was
eliminated from our country4. And my mother's parents realized
that their children might be at risk if they insisted on their
religiosity. So, nobody forced us to pray or to observe any of the
Jewish traditions. My grandfather died around 1936. The Jewish
ritual requires that one sit on the floor for six days, and that
the oldest family member read a prayer. My mother's brother,
however, didn't know anything about this ritual, and so my
grandmother and I went to an old man who did, and my grandmother
ordered a prayer. She herself sat on the floor near the tiled stove
for the six required days. My grandfather was buried at the Jewish
cemetery in Lukianovka. It was closed after the war. My mother's
sister Luba moved his grave to the Baikovoye cemetery where my
grandmother was buried.

My maternal grandmother, Sima, was born around 1884. My
grandmother had a great sense of humor. When I asked her about
pogroms, she used to say "Well, the pogroms... they robbed and beat
people... especially Petlura gangs5. But life went on and we had
to go on with our life." I must explain here that the worst curse
one can make in Podol is to call someone a "petlurovets". My
grandmother could write Russian very well. As for her religiosity,
while my grandfather was alive she observed all the traditions
assigned by the Torah. After he died, she occasionally went to the
synagogue. She had no profession. She was a housewife and looked
after her husband and children devotedly. After her husband died,
she dedicated all her time to her children and grandchildren.

My grandmother had three children: my mother, Luba and Matvey.
Matvey was born in 1908. He was very handsome. He finished grammar
school and then received further education at the Kiev Polytechnic
Institute. It was difficult to gain admission into this Institute
in the 1920s. Only the children of workers and peasants could be
admitted. My grandfather was a clerk. The husband of my
grandfather's sister was a veteran of the Great October Socialist
Revolution. He and some Party official helped my grandfather to
obtain a certificate stating that he had participated in the
October Revolution. With this certificate, Matvey was able to study
at the Institute, and he graduated from it very successfully. He
got a job assignment as a shift engineer at the KPP6 and married
a very nice woman named Anian. They led an ordinary life, went to
the cinema and to the theater, and celebrated the Soviet holidays.
When the Great Patriotic War began in 1941 ?.) and the Germans were
approaching Kiev, Matvey evacuated his family, his sister, her baby
and his mother. He remained in Kiev to blast boilers at the KPP.
They completed their task and were going in the direction of the
front when they bumped into German military. The Germans let the
other workers go, but shot Matvey because he was a Jew.

Matvey had two sons. Matvey's eldest son, Rudolf, followed in
his father's footsteps by studying at the Polytechnic Institute.
His grandmother's name was Riva-Gisia, and Rudolf received his name
in her memory: the first letter of their names is the same - such
was the tradition. After the war, Rudolf worked at the heating plat
in the Solomenka district of Kiev. He died of a heart attack when
he was 60.

Matvey's second son, Valentin, was born fatherless. Matvey's
wife, Ania, was in the last moth of her pregnancy when the war
began. Valentin never knew his father. While my aunt was alive we
got along well.

Aunt Luba was born in 1907. She studied at grammar school and
then at the Ukrainian secondary school. She couldn't enjoy her
youth because of the civil war and the devastation which followed
(1917 - 1921). After finishing school she entered Kiev's
Pharmaceutics Institute and then worked at the pharmaceutics
factory. She married in 1933. Her husband's name was Alexandr
Morozov. He was Russian and a very decent man. He came from the
Crimea and was educated at the Kiev Construction Institute, but he
didn't have an apartment, so he rented an apartment from my
grandmother. Before the war, he worked as a construction engineer
in Kiev. In 1934 their son Mara was born. Alexandr was the first to
go to war. On 22 June7 the war began, and he was summoned on 24
June. Luba and all the other tenants of our house went to see him
off to the recruitment office. We heard later that in a few weeks a
splinter hit him on the breast, on the left side, and lodged
underneath his heart. At that time doctors didn't perform surgeries
on the heart and, besides, the splinter was too close to the heart
to be operated on. Alexandr became an invalid. He was treated in a
hospital in the Middle East and then returned to Kiev. He lived
with this splinter in his breast until 1972.
At that time they didn't perform surgeries on the heart
and, besides, the splinter was too close to the heart. Alexandr was
invalid of the 1st grade. He was in hospital in the Middle East and
then he returned to Kiev.

In the summer of 1941 Matvey was supposed to send his family
along with other KPP employees' families on a barge. He sent his
wife and children, and my grandmother was supposed to go with them
while Aunt Luba and her son were to wait for the next barge. But
grandmother refused to go without her daughter. Later, Matvey sent
Luba and Mara and my grandmother to the village of Georgievskoye,
where Luba's husband picked them up and took them to Kokand where
he was staying in the hospital. They all stayed in Kokand until
after the war. Luba worked as a pharmacist in the pharmacy at the
Zaitsev hospital. At first, her family rented an apartment in Lenin
Street, then for a while moved in with us. Then, finally, Alexandr
received an apartment. The address was No. 2, Andreevskiy spusk.

After his father died Luba's son changed her apartment to
the one that was near his house. Aunt Luba's family did not celebrate
religious holidays. Like many other Soviet citizens, they had
parties or went to the cinema. Mara graduated from a Ukrainian
secondary school and then studied at the Geology College.
Afterwards, Mara worked for a year, but realized that his job
wasn't quite what he wanted to do - he liked having comforts in
life. He married a Russian girl whose parents were opposed to her
marriage with a Jew. Before long, they separated. Mara was working
at the Kremechug hydropower plant where met his future wife, a
Jewish girl twelve years his junior. They have two children. In
1996 they emigrated to Germany, although Mara had a good life here
in Kiev. He had his own business and good business contacts in
Kiev. He was known for his decent personality and expertise. I
asked him why he was leaving Kiev. He said his children wanted to
go. He visited Kiev in 1998.... He misses Kiev a lot.

My mother Hana Tabachnik was born in Rakitnoye in 1904. At the
age of five she attended the grammar school in Kiev, but she didn't
understand a wordk of Russian. (Tthere were only Russian grammar
schools in Tsarist Russia, but her family only. spoke Yiddish. She
had a music teacher who came to her home to teach her. My
grandmother was so proud of this. Besides the music teacher, an
Italian teacher also came to give her lessons in how to use her
voice - she could sing well, but was too shy to sing in public.
When my parents were children, they lived in the same street, and
of course, they met. My mother was very pretty and my father was
quite handsome. They were a beautiful couple. Both were 21 when
they married in 1926. My mother told me that they had a Jewish
wedding with the huppah in the bridegroom's yard. Frania, my
father's sister, said to her mother that this was the last Jewish
wedding they would be having, and that her mother would not arrange
anything like that for her. I've also seen once how they installed
the huppah. We had a butcher in the yard and his daughter was
getting married. All the village people came out to look - it was a
big rarity in the 1930s. They installed a tent on four beams in the
middle of the row, and the bride and bridegroom went there and
prayed. Mama and Papa were also wed in this manner.

My father's parents came from Radomyshl. I don't know why they
moved to Kiev. My grandmother Revekka was born in 1885 and my
grandfather Iosif was born in 1882. My paternal grandparents spoke
fluent Yiddish and Russian. My grandfather's name was Iosif-Alter.
My paternal grandmother explained to me that when children died
their parents gave a second name to the surviving child so that the
next one wouldn't die. My grandparents were married in Radomyshl,
Ukraine, when about their lives many times, but they wouldn't
tell me anything. In Kiev my grandfather rented a room in Podol and
they lived there until the end of their lives. My grandfather was a
railroad forwarder in Radomyshl. He worked very hard. They married
on 7 January on the Russian Orthodox Christmas, because it was an
official holiday and my grandparents thought it was good to have
their wedding celebration on this date. I don't know the year of
their marriage, but I remember that they celebrated the 35th
wedding anniversary before the war. My grandmother was moderately
religious and observed some of the Jewish traditions. She was
careful about having separate dishes for dairy and meat products.
My grandfather, however, didn't believe in God. He just loved fried
fat, and my grandmother was very concerned that nobody else should
use the same frying pan, especially the children, and she always
pushed this frying pan to the farthest corner of the stove. Their
children grew up to be atheists.

My grandmother was a heroic woman. She was a support to
her whole family. Whenever they received food during WWII, she
would divide it equally among each member of the family. When there
was sugar she would give everyone their share and keep none for
herself. If one asked, "How about you?" she would answer, "I don't
like sugar." She was a very handy cook. She could make cutlets from
potato peels or flat bread from sunflower waste. Frania told me
that when my grandfather lost his job he was so upset that he kept
repeating in panic, "What do I do now? What do I do," but my
grandmother didn't say anything - she just got some clothes
together to take to the village to exchange for food, walking there
with her older son. And the rest of her family just sat and waited
for her. She could adjust to any circumstance. And she never knew a
life of plenty. Such was her destiny. My grandmother died in 1951.
(Photo3) My aunts told me that when she lay dying, until her last
moments her eyes were gazing at the portraits of her sons. My
grandfather died in Charjou during the evacuation in ? 1942 and
was buried there.

My grandmother had five children. Grigory, my father, was the
oldest, born on 4 October 1904. He died in 1944. Debora (1907 -
1981), Fania (1909 - 1961), Maria (1911 - 1999), and Yan (1913 -
1941) followed.

The oldest daughter, Debora Gutnik, and my father were close
friends as well as siblings. He often wrote her letters... when
they were away from one another, even when he was at the front
during the war. She studied at grammar school in Podol, and in 1931
she and Luba -- they were friends -- graduated from the Kiev
Pharmaceutics Institute. They worked together for some time as
shift chemists at the Lomonosov plant at Kurenyovkar. Debora met
her future husband, a Ukrainian named Leonid, in Kanev. She got a
job assignment there as director of the sanitary and
epidemiological facility. He was a high official, and when mass
arrests began8, he ... ran away from Kharkov to Kanev and worked
there as a turner. He was already married. Debora soon had a son.
It was a scandalous situation for its time. They were living
together when we arrived in Kharkov in 1941. Leonid's wife had died
before that time- she had been ill. In 1942 Debora came to Maria in
Minusinsk with her son, and in 1943 she moved to Kalinin - her
husband had a job there with the hospital since the beginning of
the war. Debora got a position as Deputy Director of the hospital
pharmacy. Debora's family travelled from one town to another along
with the hospital. In 1944 her daughter was born in Rzhev. They
were at Daugavpils, Latvia, at the end of the war. In the spring of
1945, Debora returned to Kiev with her family. Her husband got a
job as a turner at the "Geophyspribor" plant, and Debora went to
work as a pharmacist at the pharmacy. My aunt loved to read
Russian, Ukrainian, and foreign literature. She sang beautifully
and played the piano. She had three myocardial infarctions and led
a very quiet life. She rarely went to the theater, although she
loved it when she was young. Her husband died in December 1958 at
the age of 63. They never observed any Jewish traditions or
celebrated religious holidays. Debora could understand and speak
Yiddish very well, but with her family she spoke Ukrainian and
Russian. Her son Vladimir was educated at the Vassilkov Pilot
School as a mechanic, and her daughter Yanina graduated from thee
Kiev Medical School and became a lab assistant. Debora died in
September 1981.

Another of my father'sisters, Frania Gutnik, who was born in
1909, must have studied at the secondary school, but I don't know
for sure. After school, she took a course in typing. She was
unhappy in her love life. She dated someone in the 1920s, but I
know no details. They say she even had an abortion and that her
lover then married a rich girl. Frania never married. She worked as
a typist before the war at the Vehicle Yard in Kiev. During the
evacuation she worked at a Soviet farm, excavated trenches, and was
involved in the construction of fortifications. When we were in
Inozemtsevo in the Caucasus, Frania went to the front with the
SMERSH units9. She had an affair with a married man at the front,
but terminated their relationships after the war. She didn't want
to destroy his family. The war was still going on when Frania
returned to Kiev and began to work as a typist at the prosecutor
office. She lived with her mother and her sister Debora's family.
There was a horrible famine after the war in 1946-48. There were
endless lines for flour and sometimes people had to stand there for
a whole day. Frania gave everything that she received through her
food ration cards to her mother, sister and nephews. My grandmother
used to exchange something from the package for bread. Frania
suffered a lot when her mother died. But she was a very sociable
person - she always had guests and parties where she and her
friends danced and sang Ukrainian and Soviet songs. She was an
atheist. She dedicated the rest of her life to her sisters'
families. She died from a heart attack in 1961.

Maria Gutnik, my father's younger sister, finished secondary
school in Kiev and met a handsome Jewish young man named Semyon
Kanevskiy who came from Kiev. He worked at the mill like everybody
else in his family. I don't know anything about his parents. Maria
married him in 1932, right when the Podol was flooded. They didn't
have a wedding party, but they sailed to the registry office on a
boat. Semyon went into the army. He completed 7 years of school. He
was goal-oriented and hard working, and he managed to graduate from
the Political Academy in Leningrad. He took part in the Finnish and
Great Patriotic War holding the position of Commissar of a
regiment. After the war, he served in Brest and Kurily. They
returned to Kiev in 1952 and he worked at the Otradny village as a
medical tutor at the military medical school. He retired in the
1970s with the rank of Colonel. He died in 1986. Maria was a very
kind person and she always tried to make everyone feel comfortable.
She worked at the military hospital in Essentuki for a short time,
as a supervisor of a shop in Minusinsk at the Stavropol Theater,
and then was a housewife and followed her husband in his constant
moving around. They didn't observe any Jewish traditions or
celebrate Jewish holidays. They often spoke Yiddish to one another.
They had many friends. Nationality didn't matter to them, and there
were always many people in their apartment on Soviet holidays
getting together to party. Maria had one daughter, Tatiana, who was
born in 1946. She graduated from the Medical School in Kiev.

My father's brother Yan Gutnik (1913 - 1941) graduated from
the rabfak10 , or trade school,) and gained admission to the
Institute of Light Industry. He was single. Yan's co-students used
to get together at our home, my maternal grandfather's place. They
had disputes and discussions and discussed books they had read and
performances they had attended. Sometimes they worked as a troupe
at the Jewish theater, in a building which is now the Brodsky
synagogue. One of Yan's friends was Russian and didn't understand a
word of Yiddish. Yan and a few other young Jewish men taught him a
few words and he shouted them out with everybody else, though he
didn't know what they meant. We were poor, but we had a rich
spiritual life.

Yan went into the army in 1939, along with his co-students.
Their mothers were all missing them and crying after them, but my
grandmother said "Well, what are you crying about? There's no war.
They will serve their term and come back!" But, unfortunately, the
war began when it was time for him to demobilize. I believe he
perished somewhere in the vicinity of Viasma. We received only one
letter from him when during the evacuation. All our neighbors cried
as they read his letter. We were told about it when we returned
after the war. Yan perished in 1941, and we don't know where he was
buried.

Growing up

My father, who was born in 1904, studied at a commercial
school and worked at various places. After their wedding in 1926,
he and mama lived with my maternal grandparents. I was born in
1928. I was the only child in the family. I finished my first year
in the Jewish school at Podol. I was almost 8 years old when I went
to school, but my parents said they would take me back home if I
couldn't cope there. After a year at the Jewish school, I attended
the Ukrainian school which was located directly across the street
from our home. My aunts and uncle and my father's parents lived
within a half block of the school. So after classes I faced a
dilemma about where to go. I liked to go to my aunts' place. I
liked to listen to their discussions about books and performances.
I went to the theater rather often. The Cinema Theater "Oktiabr," a
very posh cinema, was built before the war. My friends and I went
there almost every day. I finished the 7th grade right before the
war. We lived in a four room apartment. My grandmother occupied one
room, my parents and I another. Mara and his mother lived in one
room and the fourth room was a living room. Our family always got
together for dinner. In our room we had two beds. My parents' bed
was nickel-plated. There was a table in the middle of the room and
a huge rubber plant beside it. After my grandfather, died I moved
into my grandmother's room. The furniture included an old leather
sofa, an antique cupboard, a red piano--my mother played the piano--
and my grandmother's bed. There was also a very beautiful tiled
stove. We liked to celebrate the New Year. In 1936 Stalin allowed
Soviet citizens to have New Year trees. My paternal grandmother
used to make all the decorations herself, and my maternal
grandmother always admired how handy she was.

During the famine11 of 1933, Papa worked at the creamery. He
used to bring us butter, soap and sunflower seed husk to burn in
the stove. We exchanged the soap and butter for bread and flour.
Mama didn't work outside the home. She didn't have a profession.
She was a homemaker and a good wife to her husband. At the age of
30 she was diagnosed by doctors as suffering from heart disease.

Papa was a very devoted son. He used to visit his parents
every day. He also supported them. He gave money to my grandmother
to go to Essentuki to cure her liver. Once, grandfather was in a
car accident and was taken to the hospital. When the doctor asked
him whether he needed crutches, he pointed to his sons and replied
proudly "Here are my crutches, one son and another". He was very
proud of his sons. My father and his wife lived with his wife's
parents, and since her father was religious, they observed all the
Jewish traditions and celebrated holidays. But my father didn't do
this due to religious convictions, but in order not hurt his father-
in-law's feelings. He loved to read, and read fiction, scientific
and philosophical literature, and discussed it with his brother and
sisters. My parents and I celebrated the Soviet holidays - on the
1st of May we attended the parade and then went into the woods.

During the war

When the war began my father was not subject to recruitment.
He went to build fortifications in the outskirts of Kiev. When the
Germans were close, he returned home. Frania was working at the
vehicle storage yard. All vehicles were to be mobilized for use by
the army and moved to Kharkov. Frania was allowed to take her
family there. My grandmother was in poor physical condition then
and refused to leave. My grandfather said that the Germans were
decent people and wouldn't do them any harm. Frania said that even
so, she was still going to take them away. We put my grandmother on
a stretcher, loaded it onto a truck, and left: Mama, Papa and I, my
grandparents, Frania, Debora and her son.

Debora's future husband lived in Kharkov in a room in a
communal apartment. We stayed with him, sleeping on the floor.
There were evacuation points in all the large towns and we went
there. Mama, Papa and I and my grandparents were sent to the Soviet
farm "Gorky" in the Kharkov region. Debora and her son stayed in
Kharkov. We lived in a big room that had a stove. We shared this
room with two drivers and their families. They all went to work and
I stayed with my grandmother - by that time her health was
improving. The drivers, Papa and Frania went to work on the
fortifications near Kharkov. Once, when they returned at night, I
heard Papa telling my grandmother to start a fire in the stove so
they could burn their clothes, which were full of lice, and to heat
some water to wash themselves. They also said that the family had
to leave Kharkov. The drivers' wives and their children returned to
Kiev. The drivers went into the army. We went to Aunt Maria's -
Papa's younger sister - in Essentuki. But we were not allowed to
stay in Essentuki, and had to go to Inozemtsevo nearby. We rented a
room and lived there for several months. In 1941 Papa got a job at
a military plant. Then he said he was ashamed to be in the rear any
longer. In 1942 he received a subpoena to appear at the recruitment
office in Mineralniye Vody. Maria and I went to see him off. Mama
and grandmother were hysterical and stayed at home. Papa perished
in Poland in 1944. As for Yan, nobody heard from him for quite a
while.

The four of us, Mama, my grandparents and I stayed in
Inozemtsevo. One day somebody told us that there were no
authorities left in the town, so we packed our backpacks and
prepared to leave. We wanted to go to Aunt Maria in Essentuki. All
around us there was panic and crowds. The patients from the
hospital were walking past our house. The patients caught some
horses and found carts. We threw our luggage onto these carts and
moved on. We spent the nights in the open air and dug up vegetables
from gardens to make something to eat. In this way we reached
Nalchik. The situation there was panicky as well, and we were told
to continue on to Ordjonikidze. When we reached Ordjonikidze the
authorities there summoned whomever possible into the army. The
rest of us boarded the trains heading for Middle Asia. My
grandfather fell ill on the way. His legs swelled up. We reached
Charjou, where we met acquaintances from Kiev. They told us to stay
there. My grandfather had contracted spotted fever. He died within
a month. But how were we supposed to bury him? The Uzbek people do
not have the tradition of burying people in coffins. Mama went to
the factory and explained that grandfather had two sons on the
front. The director of the factory felt sorry for us and gave an
order to make a coffin. But the Uzbek people did not want to carry
this coffin to the cemetery, so Mama and I tried to carry it
ourselves, and somebody helped us along the way. Before he died,
grandfather recalled his sons shouting, "The second front! The
second front!" He was probably hoping that the Americans would open
up a second front and defeat the fascists, so that his son would
return home. We buried my grandfather and our acquaintances from
Kiev even installed a monument on his grave. Mama and I went to
stay with my aunt Luba and my mother's mother in Kokand. But my
mother was suffering from the climate and spent most of the time in
the hospital, all swollen. As soon as she got better, she and I
went to stay with Papa's sisters. Mama got a job there, but I don't
remember what it was. When we got to Stavropol, Mama got a job as a
clerk in the hotel. My paternal grandmother went to stay with
Debora in Minusinsk.

We lived in Kokand for some time and I even went to study
there at the Geological College. In 1943 Mama and I went to
Minusinsk. Maria and Debora were living there. Then the Germans
began to retreat, and the Stavropol Theater moved back to
Stavropol, and we went along with it. Vera and her family stayed in
Minusinsk. Our trip to Stavropol took two weeks and we got lice.
Upon arrival we found accommodation at the hostel of the Stavropol
Theater. The front was nearby and Frania visited us to help us a
little. She used to bring us food. In Stavropol I attended the 9th
grade of the Russian secondary school. In 1943 Kiev was liberated.
We ran to the evacuation point to get permission to go home, but
they wouldn't give it to us. We stayed in Stavropol for another
year.

In 1944 we were allowed to return to Kiev. Neither our
apartment nor my grandmother's was available. Luba and her husband
received an apartment in Lenin Street. There was a public toilet
underneath. Luba and her husband, Mara, my grandmother, Mama, Maria
and I moved in there. We had to go to court to get back my maternal
grandparents' apartment. There were two Russian women and their
families living there. The decision of the court was positive for
our room and my Aunt's room, but we didn't get back my
grandmother's apartment. When we moved back into our rooms in the
apartment those women who were living there ran into the street
screaming, "Help! Zhydy are throwing us out of our apartment!" and
all the invalids attacked us. It was a nightmare.

Post-war

One day after the war my two grandmothers went to the only
functioning synagogue in Kiev on Yom Kippur. It was a memorable
visit. The people there mourned for the deceased and those
exterminated in the Babi Yar12, and people were fainting and
screaming. I said, "Why did you go? What did your God give you?
One of you lost one son, and the other lost two!" Grandmother Sima
replied, "Well, you know, at our age we need to have faith and go
to the synagogue."

Mama got a job at the "Metiz" plant in Kiev which made metal
products. She was a laborer and then got promoted to the department
of ready-made products. I remember she brought home defective
spoons and my grandmother sold them to buy some food at the market.
Later, Mama got a job as a night nurse at the kindergarten.

My husband Vladimir

In 1946 I visited my aunt Maria in Brest, Belarus. My mother
and grandmother stayed in Kiev. I got a job at the pharmaceutics
agency in Brest. I also took a course in English and met my future
husband Vladimir Fadeev there. He was attending an evening school
at the House of Officers. We were meeting at dancing parties,
because the only entertainment in Brest was theater and dancing. We
decided to get married.

Vladimir was Russian and was born in Kiev in 1925 He graduated
from secondary school. His father Ivan --I don't remember any
details of his biography-- worked at a military plant and his wife
was a housewife. Vladimir had a brother named Leonid, who was born
in 1939. Vladimir was like any other boy in his childhood. He went
swimming in the Dnieper River, was fond of the cinema, and was not
particularly fond of reading. He finished the 9th grade before the
war. After the war began, all teenagers and men not subject to
recruitment were taken away from Kiev. I saw them marching when we
were on our way to Kharkov. The men were taken outside Kiev and
told to go anywhere but Kiev. Vladimir decided to go back to look
for his parents, and was captured by the Germans on the way back,
along with some other boys. The Germans gave the order to take them
to Bucha and shoot them. But on the way, the German guard stopped
the truck and told them to get out of his sight. Vladimir ran to
his home, but there was nobody there - his parents and his younger
brother had been evacuated to Gorky. Vladimir got to Gorky on a
flat railcar. When he arrived, he found the house where the
evacuated were staying. His father was a janitor there, but he
didn't recognize his son - he was dirty and lice ridden. Vladimir
stayed with his parents and worked at the mine factory in Sormovo.
He stayed there every night, coming rarely to Gorky. When he did
visit, he brought an additional rationed food package for his
brother. When it was time for him to go into the army, the
management wouldn't let him go. After the war, he gained admission
into the Communications Department of Murom Military College. After
graduating in 1947, he got a job assignment in Brest. He wanted to
continue his studies and attended the Brest evening school at the
House of Officers. The Military College curriculum was the
equivalent of eight years in secondary school, and he needed ten to
gain admittance to the higher military college.

When I wrote mama to tell her that I was going to get married.
I didn't ask her consent. I guess she was opposed to my marrying a
Russian, but later she grew to like him very much. He was very
charming and kind. By the way, my Aunt Maria and her husband did
not oppose my choice. Mama came on a visit to meet him. She
couldn't give me any dowry. She brought me a housecoat made out of
parachute silk hand-painted by one of her acquaintances. This was
in 1947, and we married on 5 May 1948. We just had a civil
registration ceremony and then my husband had to leave for his
military unit. I went on business trip to inspect a pharmacy near
his regiment and he showed me where he lived - in the barracks with
soldiers. His bed was separated from the others by a curtain. Then
he came to Brest. Maria and Semyon were leaving for the Kuril
Islands. I lived with them, and since they were leaving, I was left
with no place to live. But we were lucky and got a room next door.
Our son Grigory was born in 1949.

Our children

We enjoyed life. Although we had a baby and my husband was
finishing the 10th grade, we still found time to go dancing. In
1950 Vladimir got his school certificate and was admitted to the
Electrical Engineering Academy in Leningrad, so we moved there.
This was during the period of the notorious "Doctors' Case13,
but I only read about it in the newspapers. I felt no prejudiced
attitudes by others towards me. We were close friends with some
families of Vladimir's colleagues, and this friendship continues
until the present. We lived in Leningrad for five years. We rented
a part of a room, and shared this room with our landlady. There
were six other rooms and a kitchen in this apartment. There was a
long hallway, a toilet, two stoves in the kitchen and one sink -
all for 22 tenants! But we got along well and my landlady used to
say, "You shall have long memories of this lodging". In 1955 my
husband graduated from the Academy and got a job assignment in
Uzin, a town near Kiev. There were hardly any comforts, and these
were outside, and there were people of all nationalities living
there. But again, we all got along well. We celebrated birthdays
and Soviet holidays together, and neighbors never refused to baby-
sit when we had a chance to go to the cinema or the theater. We
still have few friends in Uzin. Vladimir was there from 1956 till
1965.

Our younger daughter, Ira, was born in 1957. Mama was always
willing to help me and visited us in Brest, Leningrad and Uzin. She
loved her grandson. She always brought him picture books as
presents and read them to him. Sometimes he stayed with her. In
1957 Mama married Miron, a Ukrainian. I don't remember his last
name. He worked as a loader at a store, or something similar.
Later, he was put in jail for something or other and Mama had a
nervous breakdown. I took Mama to the neurological department of
the hospital in Uzin. In 1960 doctors diagnosed cancer. She died
that same year during the surgery.

In 1965 my older son Grigory completed nine years at school
and my daughter finished her first year. Vladimir got an assignment
in Mozdok in Chechnya. I stayed in Uzin until the end of the
academic year. Then Vladimir came to pick us up and we moved to
Mozdok - he had an apartment there. Grigory finished school in this
town and was admitted to the Geology College in Leningrad. After
graduating, he got an assignment in Altai. There he met his future
wife, a Russian girl who is also a geologist. In 1974 their
daughter Elena was born. Later, his former co-students helped him
to find a job in Petrozavodsk. They moved to Petrozavodsk and in
1977 their son Vladimir was born. My grandson and granddaughter are
graduates of the Pedagogical Institute in Petrozavodsk. My
granddaughter lives and works in St. Petersburg and my grandson
lives in Israel. He finished a course of study in design. My
daughter Irina graduated from a Russian school in Kiev in 1974, and
then from Kiev Polytechnic Institute in 1977. She got married and
her family moved to Riga in 1979. Her husband is a pilot. She
works as a manager. They have two sons born in 1980 and 1986. One
of them, Roman, went to Israel in 1997 to study, and stayed there.
Igor studies at school in Riga. My daughter is quite content with
her life in Latvia - she speaks fluent Latvian and English and
finding a good job is no problem for her.

In 1975 my husband retired and we returned to Kiev. He
got a position as senior engineer at the "Vulcan" plant. In 1979
the doctors found out that he had a malignant tumor, but he got
well and found a job in a TV shop. We went to theater performances
and visited our friends in Uzin, or they visited us. We read
newspapers. We often had our four grandchildren staying with us for
quite a while. My husband always spent a lot of time with them. He
died in 1998.

My children do not identify themselves as Jews. Perhaps
it is so because we never celebrated Jewish holidays or observed
any of the Jewish traditions. But if I did want to have it all
done, I do believe that Vladimir wouldn't have had any objections.
I never gave much attention to such things. It's an individual that
is interesting, not his nationality. We had Russian and Ukrainian
friends and there was never an issue of nationality. We spoke
Russian, putting in some Yiddish words that we remembered since we
were young. I feel sorry that I've almost forgotten the language.
My children are very interested in everything related to Jewish
culture and follow the events in Israel. They've always been open
about their Jewish roots. My two grandchildren live in Israel, love
it and are proud of it.

My husband never favored the idea of emigration - he
cared too much about the place he lived, and I was with him in this
regard. Regretfully, I've never been to Israel, but I hope to visit
my grandchildren there some day and see the country of my
ancestors.

Glossary

Maya Kaganskaya
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: April 2003

Maya Kaganskaya, an elderly woman with shrewd eyes, gray hair that she wears in a knot, a disciplined and accurate person wearing a business suit, looks like a teacher or a doctor. She lives in a nice two- bedroom apartment with furniture of 1970s style that her husband and she bought back then. There is a Japanese TV in her room that her son gave her as a gift. I guess, this is the only item of 'luxury' that she owns. She also has a piano that she plays. Maya makes the impression of a reticent person at the beginning of our conversation, but when she starts talking her eyes brighten up, especially when she talks about her mother and grandfather. Although she told me a long story of her family she didn't disclose her deep and private feelings or her love to her husband. One can only guess how strong her feelings are towards those that she loves.

Family background
Growing up
During the War
After the War
Glossary 

Family background

My maternal and paternal relatives came from Radomyshl, Zythomyr region [about 120 km west of Kiev]. The majority of the population in Radomyshl was Jewish. There were municipal buildings and a market in the center of the town. Jews also resided in the central part of Radomyshl. Like in all other towns Jews were craftsmen and tradesmen in their majority. There was a big beautiful synagogue and several prayer houses in the town. My ancestors were religious Jews professing Hasidism 1 - a wide spread religious movement in Bessarabia 2. My maternal great-great-grandparents whose name I don't remember were Hasidim. They lived in Radomyshl and their children, who also became Hasidim, were born in this town.

Their daughter, Chava Shteinberg, my great-grandmother, was born in 1860. She was called 'Chava de husidka' [Chava the Hasid woman] and became a widow when she was young. She had three children. She was under the guardianship of Reizl Gorenshtein, a Jewish woman, a Hasid and the owner of a fabric factory. She contributed to charity and provided meals to poor Hasidim and made arrangements for their children: helped girls getting married and young men getting a job. Reizl Gorenshtein played an important role in the life of our family. She supported Chava and helped her to raise the children. During the Soviet power Chava lived in Radomyshl with her daughter Basheva. I saw Chava several times when my mother and I traveled to this town. She died in 1937. She looked like everyone else. She wore a long black skirt, a blouse and a kerchief. She remained deeply religious until the end of her life.

My grandmother Riva Vilenskaya, nee Shteinberg, born in 1880, was my great-grandmother's oldest daughter. The next daughter was Basheva, whose last name in marriage was Rabinovich. She was born around 1885. Basheva also became a widow. She had three daughters: Bronia, Raya and Fira. Basheva owned a confectionery shop and was called 'Basheva de szukernitsa' [Basheva the confectioner]. She worked very hard doing men's work. Basheva was also a Hasid, but her daughters who were in their teens during the revolutionary years [the Russian Revolution of 1917] 3 were atheists and wanted to get education.

Raya finished Pedagogical College, left for Leningrad and got married there. In the middle of the 1930s Basheva joined her there. Bronia and Fira lived in Kiev. They were both married. Fira's husband was a Jew and Bronia married Nikolay Ermolovich, a Ukrainian man. They moved to the Ural, for the construction of a new town: Komsomolsk-on-Amur. In the late 1930s they returned to Kiev. In 1939 their daughter, Valentina, was born and in late 1940 another daughter was born.

My great-grandmother Chava's younger son, Berko Shteinberg, was born in 1892. He was called Berele in the family and in the Soviet times he became Boris [common name] 4; that name was written in all his documents. He finished Medical Faculty of Odessa University before the Revolution of 1917. He became an orthopedist. He lived in Leningrad with his wife, Rosa, and his daughter, Sophia. During the Great Patriotic War 5 he worked in a hospital at the front. He died in the early 1960s. Rosa died shortly after he passed away. I have no contact with Sophia.

My grandmother Riva was betrothed to Isroel Vilenski, a young man from a Hasidic family before she turned 17. It was a common practice in Jewish families. Isroel, my grandfather, was only half a year older than Riva. He was born in 1879. His ancestors, in particular his paternal grandmother whose name I don't know, came from a rich family of a merchant of Guild I 6.

My great-great grandfather Isroel's son Moshe, my great-grandfather, was a well-educated Hasid. He read many books and could interpret the Torah and the Talmud, but he was no good in everyday life issues. He didn't learn a craft or profession. They lived in the town of Brusilov near Radomyshl [100 km from Kiev]. Moshe was married three times. He divorced his first wife; I don't know for what reason or how he managed to get a divorce when a divorce was strictly forbidden. His second wife died and the third one was my great-grandmother Manita. By that time they had spent what they received from Moshe's mother and Moshe had to earn his living and provide for the family. Moshe became a melamed, a Jewish teacher. He taught Jewish children in various towns. He was paid little for his work and his family was poor. Moshe and his third wife had two children: my grandfather Isroel and his sister Beshyva. My grandfather Isroel studied at cheder like all Jewish boys. He was a smart boy, but his family couldn't pay for his education. I didn't know my great-grandparents. Moshe died about 1910 and Manita ran away from home trying to escape from a pogrom 7 in 1919, vanished and never returned home. She was probably killed.

My grandfather's older sister Beshyva, born in 1875, married Aron Geller, one of the ancestors to the 6th generation of famous Israel Besht [Baal Shem Tov] 8, the founder of Hasidism, a just man and a miracle worker. Aron Gellers' father was a senior man at the synagogue in Khotin, chairman of the Jewish community and a well-respected man. They were very poor and decided to arrange for their sons to marry girls with a profession. Beshyva, who grew up in a poor family learned to sew at the age of ten and when she grew up she became a skilled dressmaker for poor Jews. Aron was neither smart - although he descended from a wise man - nor could he earn his living. They lived in Beshyva parents' house in Brusilov. They had two children: a son named Israel, born in 1910, and a girl, whose name I don't remember, born in 1913. In 1919 Beshyva's husband Aron died of typhoid. His six- year-old daughter passed away shortly afterwards. Beshyva was raising her son. Her son, Israel, studied in cheder. I don't know where he studied in Brusilov. In the middle of the 1920s Israel and Beshyva moved to Kiev. Israel went to the 7th grade then. After he finished school he worked as a laborer and loader, then he finished a rabfak 9 and an agricultural college. In due time he became an outstanding scientist, agronomist, soil specialist, and an expert in growing sugar beets. Beshyva lived with her son's family in Kiev. She died at the age of 102.

My grandfather Isroel and my grandmother Riva got married after a four- year engagement at the beginning of 1900. They had a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah at the synagogue. The guardian of my great-grandmother, Reizl Gorenshtein, paid all wedding expenses, bought a gown and wedding gifts. She also employed Isroel at her fabric factory. First he worked as a spinner and then, after some training, he became a supervisor at the factory. He received an apartment from the factory. My grandparents had six children. Although my grandfather had a stable job and a house they weren't very wealthy and couldn't afford to give education to all children. Therefore, only my mother, Basia Vilenskaya, the oldest, got education before the Revolution of 1917. My mother's parents were religious: they observed all traditions and celebrated holidays and Sabbath. They went to the synagogue. I don't remember these details; it's what my mother told me.

My mother had two sisters and three brothers: Ania, her Jewish name was Hana, was born in 1902, Feigl, followed in 1906 and Nochim in 1908. Odl, born in 1910, died from a brain disease in infancy. Moshe, the youngest, was born in 1912. The boys studied at cheder and then at a Jewish primary school. The girls also studied at the Jewish primary school.

My mother's sister Ania got fond of revolutionary ideas and joined the Red Army in 1919. At that time she also joined the Communist Party of the Bolsheviks. In Kiev she entered a Party school and became a history teacher. She met Leonid Paliy, a Ukrainian man, at this school. They fell in love with each other and decided to get married. Knowing that her parents would be against their marriage Ania decided to tell them that Leonid was a Jew, especially since he had dark hair and dark eyes. She taught him several questions that are usually asked in Jewish families during introductions and he learned the answers in Yiddish. Finally they came to meet Ania's parents. Leonid answered the first questions in Yiddish with dignity, but he couldn't go on talking Yiddish. My great-grandmother said, 'Weizmir! [My God!], young people cannot speak Yiddish any more!'. She believed her daughter's tale and gave her consent to their marriage. They had a civil ceremony at a registry office.

Ania and Leonid lived a few happy years in Zvenigorodka near Uman where Leonid was the director of the technical school. In 1926 their son, Stalia, named after Stalin, was born. In summer 1933 Ania and Leonid went to a farm where other organizations and schools sent their employees and students to work. Ania and Leonid met a young teacher of history, a Jewish woman, that they enjoyed spending time with. After some time Leonid told Ania that he had an affair with that woman. Ania left the same day. She came to Uman with her son. This was a hard period in 1933 [during the famine in Ukraine] 10, and Ania had no money or bread cards - she didn't take anything with her from Zvenigorodka. Being a party activist, she was admitted to the Institute of Socialist Education in Uman. She also worked as a teacher in social disciplines to earn her living. Leonid married that woman later, but he asked Ania to forgive him. She didn't, but they remained friends for a lifetime. Later they entered Pedagogical College in Kiev. They prepared for exams together.

After finishing college Ania worked as the director of a school in Kiev, and when vehicle maintenance companies were opened she went to work as an editor with the newspaper of the political department of a vehicle maintenance company. In 1937 [during the Great Terror] 11, when her brother, Uncle Nochim, was arrested, she was expelled from the Party and moved to Vasilkov [a small town near Kiev]. Soon she resumed her membership in the Party and worked as the director of a school until the Great Patriotic War.

My mother's second sister, Feiga, was the 'black sheep' of the family, as they say. She didn't work and liked parties and drinking. People even said that she was hardly selective in her relationships with men. Sometime in 1925 she went swimming with a group of her companions and never returned. They said Feiga was drunk and drowned in the river.

My mother's younger brother, Nochim, was under the influence of Ania's communist views. He became a pioneer, a Komsomol 12 member and then joined the Communist party. He finished some short-term training and studied at Promaspirantura, an educational institution for party activists. In the 1930s Nochim was head of the party office of a knitwear factory in Kiev. In 1936, during the time of arrests [Great Terror], he was accused in cooperation with the Zinoviev-Kamenev block [Zinoviev-Kamenev triumvirate] 13. When the so-called platform of Trotsky 14 appeared in 1928-29 the Party split into two groups. One group didn't support Trotsky and the other group, including Nochim, offered to give Trotsky supporters an opportunity to express their views. This served as the basis of Nochim's charges in 1936.

Nochim also suffered for the reason that the director of the factory where he worked gave him a recommendation to join the Party and this director was executed as an 'enemy of the people'. My uncle was also accused of being 'enemy of the people' and expelled from the Party. He was fired from work. He went to work as a worker at a plant. However, such injustice made him feel restless and he went to an NKVD 15 office to prove he wasn't guilty. He didn't return from there. He was sent into exile to Komi ASSR where he worked at a woodcutting facility. Since his charges weren't that severe he was subject to amnesty at the beginning of 1940 after the heads of the security agencies had been replaced. Beriya 16 replaced Yezhov 17, who was arrested and executed. Many prisoners were released under the pretext that Yezhov was an 'enemy of the people' and imprisoned innocent people. Nochim returned in 1940. He wasn't allowed residence in Kiev or other capitals of the Union Republics. Nochim, his wife and their daughter Nelia - born in 1936, after Nochim was imprisoned, so she didn't even know her father - moved to Malin, Zythomyr region.

Uncle Moshe, the youngest in my mother's family, named after my great- grandfather, finished a mining technical school during the Soviet regime and worked in quarries and coalmines in Donetsk, Ukraine.

My mother Basia, the oldest in the family, was born in 1900. Her parents gave her education: she finished a grammar school for girls in Zythomyr, and a private music school where she learned to play the piano. My mother studied and lived in Zythomyr, 50 kilometers from her home village of Radomyshl. She had to rent an apartment. Her family sacrificed themselves to give her education: they paid for her studies in grammar school and apartment rental fees. After finishing grammar school my mother went to Kiev. She wanted to enter the Conservatory since she was very good at singing. This happened in 1917. She failed to enter the Conservatory and returned to Radomyshl.

Then the Revolution took place, followed by the Civil War 18, and there were other things than studies to think about. My mother was sufficiently educated. She began to work as a teacher and then as the director of a children's home, the so-called 'House of Teenagers', although she wasn't much older than her pupils. In 1920 she followed into her older sister Ania's footsteps and joined the Party. In 1921 or 1922 she was cleaned 'out' [Editor's note: At certain intervals, all party members were checked by party committees to identify and get rid of 'untrustworthy' party members.]. The thing is that my mother was courted by a communist who was the commander of a partisan unit. My mother didn't respond to his passes since she had already met with my father, who was a bourgeois offspring. That communist submitted his report to the Party committee. He wrote that my mother was seeing a man of non-proletariat origin. My mother was expelled. Of course, in those years she was far from religion or Jewish traditions: she considered herself an advanced person that had no prejudices.

I know very little about my father's family. I knew my paternal great- grandfather, Gershl Radomyshlski, who was a clerk before the Revolution of 1917. He died in 1940 at the age of 102. My paternal grandfather, Meyer Kaganski, born in the 1870s, worked for his older brother, Moshe, who was a leather specialist and became rich during the Civil War. During the Civil War a gang 19 of a White Guards 20 officer came into town. My grandfather Meyer, a handsome tall man with a big dark beard, was the first they met on their way. The bandits brutally murdered him. My grandmother Pesia had to raise her three children on her own: her daughter, Malka, my father, Yakov, and her younger son, Omo. This incident happened in 1918 or 1919. I know little about Grandmother Pesia. I know that after her husband perished she tried to move to America with her younger son, Omo, but he didn't receive a medical certificate due to some health problems and they stayed in Radomyshl. I saw her once in 1940 when she visited my mother. My grandmother was very religious. She wore a kerchief, celebrated all Jewish holidays and Sabbath, observed Jewish traditions and followed the kashrut. She died after the war, sometime in 1946.

My father's sister, Malka, born in 1900, married Semyon Katsovski, a Jewish man. In 1923 her son was born and shortly afterwards she moved to Tashkent [Uzbekistan] with her husband and son looking for a job. A few years later Malka developed symptoms of mental illness and after a few years she got into a mental hospital in Lubertsy, Moscow region, where they lived. Semyon waited for her several years. When the Great Patriotic War began he left for somewhere and there was no contact with him. There's no information about Malka, either. She probably died during the Great Patriotic War.

My father's younger brother, Omo, lived in Moscow. He was a cab driver. He had a Russian wife. He died in 1955. That's all I know about him. We weren't in contact.

My father, Yakov Kaganski, was born in Radomyshl in 1903. After my grandfather died in 1919 my uncle Moshe employed my father. Around 1920 my uncle moved to Palestine. My father finished cheder and didn't study for a long time afterwards. In the 1920s my father finished a vocational school; I don't know what kind of school this was. At the time when he met my mother he didn't have a job. However, people knew that Uncle Moshe was a wealthy man and my father was also considered to belong to the rich. That was the reason why my mother was expelled from the Party, as I said earlier.

My parents got married in 1922. Although their families were religious, especially my mother's family, my father and mother were atheists. They just had a civil ceremony in a registry office. They lived in the house of my father's parents with Grandmother Pesia after their wedding.

In 1924 my parents moved to Kiev. I think they moved looking for a better life and more job opportunities. Grandmother Pesia bought an apartment for them: two small rooms and a little kitchen in a basement in Podol 21. I don't know where my grandmother got the money to buy an apartment - she probably had some savings. My mother's parents, Grandmother Riva and Grandfather Isroel. lived in Brusilov where they moved to in the early 1920s. All relatives that were moving to Kiev from small towns - Nochim, Bronia and many others - stayed in our small apartment. My mother told me that they stayed with us several days until they found some accommodation. They slept on the floor. We had two rooms in a communal apartment 22 and there was another family besides us. We had kerosene lamps to light the rooms, fetched water from a pump in the yard, and washed ourselves in a bowl in the kitchen. There was a toilet in the yard and there was a line to get there in the morning.

Before I was born my mother had an abdominal pregnancy and when I was born my parents understood that I was their first and last child. I was born on 16th May 1926. My father called me Maya.

Growing up

There was huge unemployment in our country. My mother worked at the tin food plant and confectionery for some time. My father worked for a leather craftsman and after the liquidation of the NEP 23 he couldn't find a job for a long time. In 1928 he decided to move to Tashkent hoping to find a job there. His sister, Malka, and her family and his mother lived there. My mother refused to follow him. She wanted to stay close to her parents, who often came to see her in Kiev. Finally my father left for Tashkent in 1928. At the beginning he came to see us once a year. He missed us and asked my mother to join him there. He said there weren't so many problems with getting a job there, but my mother was stubborn and didn't want to go. My father began to visit us less often and in 1939 he married a Russian woman and moved to Yoshkar-Ola.

After my father left, my mother went to study at a pedagogical school for a year. She sent me to her parents in Brusilov for a year. After finishing pedagogical school in 1930 my mother went to work at the Jewish elementary school in Brusilov. My grandparents moved into our apartment in Kiev; they sold the house in Brusilov. They probably hoped that life would be easier in the city. My mother and I lived in a small room at the school in Brusilov. There were only 35 pupils at school, the director and one teacher: my mother. Pupils of the 1st and 3rd grades studied in the first shift and pupils of the 2nd and 4th grades in the second one. Although I was only four years old, I stayed in class and listened to the teacher. I was an industrious pupil and soon learned to write in Yiddish. The curriculum in this school was no different from other schools; we studied mathematics, drawing and botanics. I believed myself to be a pupil and demanded to have my last name on the list of pupils and my documents in the files. My mother even had to file my birth certificate. Townspeople even called it 'five-year plan 24 in four years'. This was one of the widespread slogans during the execution of the first five-year plan and I was four years old. This nickname meant 'fulfillment of the five-year plan in four years'.

My mother and I returned to Kiev in 1932 and she went to work at a Jewish school near our house in Podol. I was six years old, but I had finished four years at school already and could read and write in Ukrainian and Yiddish. It didn't make sense to send me to kindergarten and my mother obtained a special permission for me to go to the 1st grade since I was still under age to go to school. There were several categories of the first grade: 1st grade literate, 1st grade illiterate and 1st grade average. Pupils of the 1st literate had already finished a 'zero' class or came from kindergartens where they were taught the basics. 1st average was a mixture and 1st illiterate was a class for illiterate children. It goes without saying that I went to the 1st grade literate. My mother was a teacher in the 1st grade illiterate. I stayed in my class until I got bored. Then I asked my teacher permission to go out and went to my mother's class. I stayed there a little and then went back to my class. I was very successful at school and when I was out of class and our teacher asked a difficult question my classmates replied, 'When Musia -that's how they called me affectionately - comes back she will answer this'.

Grandfather Isroel and grandmother Riva lived with us in Kiev. My grandfather worked in the Metalloprom factory which manufactured metal ware. My grandfather made some units and later he went to work as a janitor at school. I spent much time with my grandparents. They talked Yiddish to one another and to my mother, but they tried to communicate in Russian with me. My mother believed that since Yiddish was my mother tongue I was good at it anyway while I needed to study Russian to do well in the future since it was the language of teaching in higher educational institutions.

My grandmother laughed at my Yiddish. I tried to speak it the way we were taught at school while my grandmother spoke a local dialect and she told me that the Yiddish I spoke was more like non-Jews imitating Jews speaking Yiddish. My grandfather had a very good Jewish education and knew the Torah and the Talmud well. I was their favorite granddaughter. My grandfather loved me because I actually grew up without a father. My grandfather spent a lot of time with me. He told me things from the Old Testament like fairy tales.

I remember how my grandparents celebrated Saturday: My grandmother put on her kerchief and lit the candles. She didn't do any work on Saturday while grandfather had to go to work. I don't think he was very religious in those years. I think he probably observed traditions and celebrated holidays paying tribute to tradition or trying to please my grandmother. He only wore a kippah and tallit during the prayers on holidays. I don't remember him going to the synagogue. My grandmother was very religious and constantly had a prayer book with her. She went to the synagogue every day as long as she could move. I remember the celebration of Pesach. My grandparents made matzah in the Russian stove and I pressed out holes. Their acquaintances - an old Jewish couple, visited them at Pesach. My grandfather conducted the seder and I asked him the four traditional questions [the mah nishtanah]. I remember only one of them, 'Why do we eat bread and matzah all year round, but only matzah today?' My grandfather answered all the questions.

I don't think we followed the kashrut at home. We didn't eat pork, but every now and then we bought sausage. There were no stores selling kosher food. My grandparents didn't impose their religious convictions on me. They thought I had to find out by myself and live my own life. When I was eight or nine years old the persecution of religion [struggle against religion] 25 began. There was anti-religious propaganda everywhere. I became a pioneer and was supposed to be an atheist, apikoyres in Yiddish. Under the influence of the propaganda I began to develop doubts about religious principles. I thought for a long time about how I should demonstrate my atheism and finally I went to bed during the seder. By the time when I was supposed to ask questions I was no longer at the table. My grandmother didn't make any comments about it to me.

I was an active pioneer and took part in many activities. I attended all kinds of clubs: choir, drama club and played checkers. I also studied to play the piano at a state music school. We studied music, literature and solfeggio at school. I can't say I was fond of studying music. I preferred taking part in various events at school: I recited poems, sang songs at school concerts and took part in parades and subbotniks 26. I wrote poems and attended a literature club with the Jewish newspaper 'Zai Grei' - 'Be ready!' [the motto of pioneers]. I wrote poems in Russian and Yiddish.

I remember the famine in 1932-33. My mother had food coupons and received food in a store for workers. A nephew of my grandfather sent some money from America. It was only enough to buy some flour and a piece of very delicious herring at the Torgsin 27 store. Basically, our family didn't suffer much during the famine, but it may be just my impression since I got the best pieces of food in the family.

A doctor lived with us in our apartment When Uncle Nochim was arrested this doctor spoke about it at school, but the reaction of my mother's colleagues was different from what she had expected. They didn't blame my mother as his relative, but discussed what my mother should do to avoid any after-effects of this event. They decided that my mother should disappear from Kiev for the time being. My mother went to see my father. She realized that she was wrong having terminated relationships with him and wanted to make it up. They met in Kazan, but nothing worked out the way she expected. I stayed in Kiev. In some time my mother returned and went to work in a Russian school.

In 1938 our school merged with Jewish school #17, and in 1939 it became a Russian school. The only change incorporated was switching to Russian as the language of teaching. In 1941 my classmates joined the Komsomol; I had to wait until I reached the age of 16. After I finished the 9th grade the war began. By that time my mother and I lived in another apartment in a house in Malopodvalnaya Street that the cooperative company of my mother's brother Moshe had built.

During the War

A few of the best pupils and I were invited to the prom in our school on 20th June. After the prom we went for a walk in the town. On the next day we went to the railway station with a friend of ours that was leaving for Kovel [a town near the border with Poland] where her sister and her sister's husband lived. It turned out that all trains going in Western direction were cancelled. On our way back we noticed the scarlet sunset. The sky was like on fire. In the morning of 22nd June my mother and I heard some distant bursting sound, but we ignored IT. At about 9 o'clock I went to my music class in Podol. When I was on my way I heard the sound of sirens and I stayed a few minutes in an entrance to a house thinking that this was a training alarm requiring people to stay inside. For some reason the tram to Podol didn't commute. People waiting at a stop discussed what the reason might be. I walked on. One house in Podol was ruined by a bomb, but there was still no word about the war. I attended my class and then went to see a friend of mine who lived in Podol. It was early afternoon. A bright and sunny morning turned into a dull and gloomy afternoon. I met my friend walking with her friends. They told me about Molotov's 28 speech and about the war. We didn't feel scared since we were kids and couldn't imagine what a war was like.

Every day we had classes of civil defense at school. Every day I went to school in Podol with my gas mask on. In about ten days all boys from our and senior classes were sent to Donetsk for military reserve. We said goodbye to them wearing our fancy dresses and wrote poems for them. Almost all of them perished in Donetsk or at the front.

Our family didn't have any doubts about evacuation. We watched films about the brutality of fascists, such as Professor Mamlock 29 and others, and were aware of Hitler's plans about Jews. In early July our family began preparations for evacuation. Uncle Moshe was appointed director of a mine in Lugansk [about 1,500 km from Kiev in the southeast of Ukraine]. My family thought it was far enough in the rear and decided to send me there with his family. Uncle Moshe only had space for one person in the car. My mother said that she would stay in Kiev and if Germans invaded it she would join the underground movement and that she would feel better if I went with my uncle. We left on 3rd July, but we weren't allowed to leave Kiev since all roads were closed and civil vehicles weren't allowed to leave. We returned home. There was panic in Kiev and people tried to find any way to leave. Trains were overcrowded. Many people went by boats or barges down the Dnieper, which was continuously being bombed.

My grandfather and my uncles Nochim and Moshe found a way out. They bought a cart and two horses and made a booth on the cart so it looked like a gypsy wagon. When we all boarded this wagon: my mother and I, my grandfather, Uncle Nochim and his wife and daughter and Uncle Moshe with his family - the horses could hardly pull the wagon. When we had to ascend a street in Podol the wagon fell apart and we had to return home. The men started working on our means of transportation and we started on our way again on 15th July. In the evening we reached the town of Borispol, 30 kilometers from Kiev. There was a military airfield in this town. We stayed overnight there watching our horses at night. I took my turn when it was my time to watch them. In the morning we moved on. After we covered about ten kilometers some military took away one horse from us - this happened near Baryshevka. They gave us a letter confirming that it was their obligation to return it to us after the war.

We had to separate: Uncle Moshe, his family and my grandfather and grandmother boarded a train in the direction of Lugansk. Later they reached Fergana in Uzbekistan. Uncle Nochim, his family, my mother and I started on our way. We covered another 30 kilometers before some other military confiscated the remaining horse. We had to think of an alternative. Uncle Nochim had a permission enabling him and his family to take any train. We boarded the first transit train transporting damaged tanks. There were only those tanks and our family on the train. We reached Poltava [regional town in Ukraine, 250 km east of Kiev] where we changed for a train with refugees. This was a freight train. We reached Kharkov [regional town in Ukraine, 550 km east of Kiev] and from there we moved on to Stalingrad. In Kharkov we met a family from Vasilkov. Their daughter was the same age as I. There was another Jewish family from Bessarabia. I met a Ukrainian boy, Mykhailo. He sang Ukrainian songs beautifully. He and I sang Ukrainian songs, Russian ballads, popular Soviet songs and I also sang Jewish songs. I enjoyed it and was sad at the same time. I didn't even notice the discomforts caused by evacuation and wartime; lack of food and water. I believed that everything would be fine. We reached Stalingrad in a relatively short time: 18 days.

We stayed in Stalingrad for several hours before we boarded another train that took us to a fish farm kolkhoz 30 on the Volga in the villages of Bolshoy Tuzuklei and Maly Tuzuklei, Stalingrad region. It was almost 2,000 kilometers from home. The management of the kolkhoz was notified that there was a train to arrive. There was a ceremonious meeting: the local leadership and farmers were waiting for us in the central square near the village council. Farmers offered us accommodation in their houses. The director of the local primary school offered us to stay in his house: he wanted to have a family of a teacher to stay with them. There was a clay hut in his yard that he offered to us. He gave us a big samovar and showed a pile of corns to be used to stoke a stove.

So we were in evacuation. My mother and I, Uncle Nochim and his wife went to work in a vegetable crew in the kolkhoz. This was early August and we picked cucumbers, tomatoes, melons and huge water melons. At the beginning of the war we received enough bread: one kilo for a working person and 600 grams for a dependant. There was enough fruit and vegetables and I gained weight and got sun-tanned in a few weeks.

Uncle Nochim continuously went to see a military commissar with his requests to be sent to the front. He remained fanatically devoted to the Soviet power and believed everything that happened to him to be an unfortunate misunderstanding and mistake. Since he was under arrest he wasn't fully trusted to be sent to the front, but in the middle of 1942 Nochim went to the front. He perished at the beginning of 1945 in battles on the Oder [during the Battle for Berlin, which lasted from January-May 1945]. His wife passed away and his daughter lives in Kiev.

When the Great Patriotic War was began my mother's sister Ania evacuated to Poltava region. Then she came to Stalingrad region at the beginning of fall 1941. Ania became the director of a school and invited my mother to work as a teacher there. We didn't know anything about the living conditions in the village where Ania was working and the family council decided that I would stay to finish school and receive my certificate of secondary education and my mother would go there. In October or November my mother wrote me a letter telling me to come to that village. It was already very cold when I finally decided to go. I came to Astrakhan, but I couldn't move on since the Volga was frozen and there was no boat transportation. I had to go back to the kolkhoz. On the way I got my feet frost-bitten. When I arrived Uncle Nochim, who loved me dearly, massaged my feet for hours in the evenings and wrapped me in a blanket. Nochim was a very sociable man. He was always among people. I stayed in the kolkhoz throughout the winter. I drove an ox-drawn cart and sorted out potatoes and vegetables. In spring I worked at the crew of Komsomol members that constructed storage facilities for rice. It was hard work. We had to carry a lot of soil to and fro. Our meals weren't very nutritious. We mostly had fish that we even hated the sight of. Sometimes we got transportation on ox-drawn carts and sometimes we had to walk ten kilometers to and from work. I worked in this crew through spring 1942.

My mother was very nervous about my being away from her. She always had nervous breakdowns: she was afraid that we would never see each other again. In early summer she managed to get to Stalingrad and from there to the kolkhoz. She walked some distance and got a ride on a cart where she left her bag with her belongings and all documents. She was probably very nervous and overstressed thinking about me.

In summer 1942, when the front was approaching Stalingrad, we decided to go to Middle Asia since my uncle Moshe and his family, Grandmother Riva and Grandfather Isroel were there, in Fergana, Uzbekistan.

My mother and I arrived in Fergana in late summer 1942. Uncle Moshe, who was a mining inspector, received a nice apartment in Fergana, had a good salary and got food packages. They were doing well. Only my grandmother, who fell ill on the way, didn't recover. Before she had to stay in bed due to her illness she had a job: she knitted gloves for the front. She had to accept this job to get a food card. When I came I began doing this work. In Fergana I went to the 10th grade at a local school. I didn't really enjoy studying there: it was boring and too routinely. Schoolchildren were sent to the construction of a water channel for a month. We excavated stony soil and carried pallets with soil. My mother couldn't find a job as a teacher and was a receptionist at a store of salvageable materials.

In early fall 1942 Aunt Ania arrived. A few days later my grandmother died. I continuously touched her feet hoping that they were warm and she was alive although I was scared dead of dead people before. I was so much in grief that my mother sent me away from home. My cousin Stalia told me later that grandmother was taken out of the house on some stretchers and she was buried in this same position in an Uzbek cemetery. Her grave was back-filled with stones. My grandfather kept reciting memorial prayers.

After the funeral we went to the town of Kyzyl-Kiya where aunt Ania was offered a job. This town was 35 kilometers from Fergana, but it was in Kyrgyzstan. I tried to enter an institute in Fergana. I could have gone to medical or pedagogical colleges after the 9th grade, but I didn't want to study there. I wanted to go to the Institute of Oriental Studies, but I wasn't admitted there since I didn't have a higher secondary education and wasn't a Komsomol member. When in Kiev I didn't join the Komsomol and later I somehow missed to do so, too. I was busy with other things.

There was an iron mine and the Mining College in Kyzyl-Kiya. My mother got a job at the school in a kolkhoz four kilometers from the town. Stalia and I entered the Mining College, where admission was allowed on the basis of lower secondary education. We lived in the hostel of the college. I lived with five other girls evacuated from various towns of the Soviet Union. We shared everything we had and got along well. I want to say that I've never faced any anti-Semitism in my life. I never cared about anyone's nationality and people always treated me well.

I studied at the Electric Engineering Faculty where I was the only girl. We worked in a mine for the most part where we did all kinds of auxiliary work. I studied very well although I had never been interested in the mining business before. I joined the Komsomol and obtained my Komsomol membership card.

When Kiev was liberated in fall 1943 my mother and Aunt Ania submitted their request to obtain permission for re-evacuation. They left in March 1944 and Stalia and I stayed. Firstly, we had to finish college and secondly, students weren't allowed to return to the areas that had been liberated recently. My mother, Aunt Ania and my grandfather lived in Vasilkov district, Kiev region. My father, who was wounded at the front and had to go to hospital, demobilized and came to see me. We had a warm meeting. I forgave him for everything. I understood that he had to live his own life and needed a woman beside him. My father was trying to convince me to go to Yoshkar-Ola where he lived with his Russian wife Alla. I didn't like my profession anyway. Although I was about to get my diploma I quit college and went to Yoshkar-Ola. I stayed with my father for over a month. My father's wife Alla treated me well. They had three sons. They lived in a small two-bedroom apartment in the center of the town. My father didn't go to work since he wasn't feeling well after he was wounded. Alla looked after him and the sons.

I went to my mother, who lived with my aunt and grandfather in the village of Plesetskoye, Vasilkov district, 40 kilometers from Kiev. Aunt Ania was the director of a school and leader of the party unit of the village. They lived in a nice house and had a kitchen garden. By the time I arrived in November 1944 they had a good harvest of potatoes and vegetables. Ania didn't remarry. Her son finished Pedagogical College in Uman, where his father worked, after the war and then he finished Pedagogical College in Kiev. He became the director of a boarding school in Vasilkov. Ania died in 1985 and her son, Stalia, died in 1993. He was single.

When we returned we learned about what had happened to our relatives. When the Great Patriotic War began my grandmother Chava's niece Bronia, her husband and children failed to evacuate. She 'followed the order' - Kiev residents used this phrase when speaking about Jews that went to Babi Yar 31 - on 29th September 1941 and perished there. When she was leaving her husband took away their older child, Valentina. Bronia had their still breastfeeding baby with her when she left. Valentina's father was hiding the girl throughout the war. Bronia and her baby perished in Babi Yar. Her sisters were in evacuation: Raya, who was the director of a children's home in Leningrad during the blockade 32 escorted the evacuation of the children via the 'Road of Life' 33 to Omsk where she stayed during the war. Her sister, Basheva, was with her. Fira was in Middle Asia. Their husbands perished at the front. Fira's child died in evacuation. Raya didn't have children. When she returned to Leningrad from evacuation she adopted her niece, Valentina, Bronia's daughter. Fira also moved to her sister in Leningrad. Basheva lived with them. They raised Valentina. Raya became an honored teacher, deputy of the Town Council of Leningrad and a member of the Communist Party. Fira worked as an accountant. Basheva died in the early 1950s, Fira in the 1970s and Raya in the 1980s. Valentina finished a college and became an engineer. She was married, but divorced her husband. She had a son that she raised on her own. Valentina moved to Israel in the 1990s. She has a difficult life there. She cannot prove that she suffered from the Holocaust and stayed on occupied territory since her father, Nikolai Ermolovich, has died long ago and she has no proof of what happened to her.

My mother's youngest brother Moshe was in evacuation in Fergana, Middle Asia, where he worked as mining engineer during the war. After the war he returned to Kiev and worked in design institutes. Moshe died in 1987. His children, Chava and Vladik, live in Israel and his other daughter, Maya, lives in Kiev.

After the War

In 1944 I went to a school in Motovilovka since there was no higher secondary school in the village and I needed to complete my secondary education. I went to school after New Year's, but I finished it with a gold medal [highest award for school graduates in the USSR]. It was a surprise for us since this was already during the time of anti- Semitism on the state level and some teachers told my mother that the school wouldn't award a medal to me due to my Jewish nationality. We didn't know whether I would get it until the last minute when I was awarded the medal at the prom. In those years medal awardees were admitted to higher educational institutions without exams. I liked humanitarian subjects and chemistry.

My aunt Ania and I went to Kiev to submit my documents. We went to see the dean of the Faculty of Chemistry of Kiev State University and he told us that he would be happy to admit me, but I submitted my documents to the Philological Faculty. I went back to the village to wait for the confirmation of my admission.

At that time David, my former co-student from the Mining College, found me in the village. He entered Dnepropetrovsk Mining College. David was ten years older than I. Before the war he lived in Western Ukraine. His family perished during the Holocaust. David was in love with me and came to propose to me. He was a good friend to me but there was nothing else. I refused to marry him. David convinced me that I should study some technical disciplines rather than philology. I went to Kiev and picked up my documents at the Philology Faculty. Although they were already stamped with the 'admitted' stamp, I submitted them to the Faculty of Chemistry at the Polytechnic College. During the first semester I understood that I had made the wrong decision. I mean, I studied well, but I took no interest in technical subjects.

I rented a room from Uncle Nochim's wife's friend. There were four tenants in this ten square meter room. Ania, the owner of the apartment, worked as a shop assistant at the knitwear factory. There was a card system and Ania brought all cards she received during a day home and we sorted them out and glued them to report sheets. She had to submit this report at work, but didn't have enough time to finish it at work. I didn't have a space or time to study. My former school tutor found me. She was terrified to see my living conditions and moved me to her apartment. She lived in a small room at school with her husband. I stayed with them for over a month.

Every week I went to Plesetskoye by bus to take some food from home. Once I caught a cold on my way. Pickpockets stole my Trade Union and Komsomol membership cards and some change. I had furunculosis for about two months. When I got better I decided that it was a sign. I took my documents from Polytechnic College and the next year I entered the Faculty of Philology of Kiev University.

When I was a 2nd-year student I switched to the new Faculty of Logic and Psychology of the Russian language and literature. I got a room in the hostel where I lived with three other girls from Kiev region. When we were 4th-year students the management of the faculty announced that we would specialize in the logic and psychology of the Ukrainian language. At first we were taken aback and didn't know what to do. We hardly knew any Ukrainian and our group began to protest. We decided to write a letter of protest to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR. One girl said that her father worked at the department of ideology in the Central Committee and she would help to have it processed promptly. I refused to sign this letter since I thought it made no sense to write it and, secondly, Ukrainian teachers were also needed and in provincial schools teachers often taught both languages. A few days later a reaction to this letter arrived. Representatives of the party unit of the university and the Central Committee came to a meeting with our group. All those that signed the letter were accused of chauvinism. Fortunately, there were no serious consequences, but my co-students were discussed at Komsomol meetings for a long time afterward.

This happened in 1950. I got married that year. I married my distant relative, Israel Geller, a son of my grandfather's sister Beshyva. He was 16 years older than I. Israel defended his candidate of sciences thesis in biology before the war. He lived in a civil marriage before the war. They weren't happy together and when Israel was recruited to the army during the Great Patriotic War they made an agreement that if he survived they would split up. After the war Israel returned to Kiev. His ex-wife got married and lived in Sverdlovsk. When I was a child Israel and his wife were my idols. I just adored Israel. Therefore, when he began to court me and then proposed to me I gave my consent at once. His mother Beshyva and he had a room in a communal apartment in the center of Kiev where I moved to. Our co-tenants were a very nice Ukrainian family. Their only son perished at the front. We were friends and often had tea in the kitchen until late in the evening. In 1960 our co-tenants received an apartment and we became the owners of a three-bedroom apartment with a kitchen. We didn't have a wedding party. We had a civil ceremony and went to visit my mother at the weekend. She made a wedding dinner for relatives. Israel worked at the Sugar Beet Institute. He was a senior scientific worker and then became the head of the laboratory.

I passed my state exams in 1951 - I was already in the family way - and was waiting for an assignment distribution [mandatory job assignment] 34. This was the first time I faced state anti-Semitism. I was the only contender for post-graduate studies, but my degree tutor said to me, 'Maya, take it easy. Take it as it is. Jews are not being admitted to the post-graduate course'. During the campaign against cosmopolitans 35 there were continuous meetings at which Jews were accused of cosmopolitism. We had a wonderful teacher of Russian literature - her last name was Fradkina and she was a Jew. She was accused that in her dissertation entitled 'Chekhov 36 and English literature' she stated that Chekhov must have been under the influence of the English literature and followed its principles. Everybody understood how wild such an assumption was, but nobody could do anything since anyone would have been fired as a supporter of Zionism if they had tried to speak in her defense. She was fired from university and so was her husband, who taught history.

All Jewish students were expelled from the Faculty of Journalism. So I wasn't surprised or upset about not having a chance to study at the post-graduate course. I was glad I finished my studies. I received a degree with a notice that I had to find a job by myself. I didn't get a mandatory assignment since my husband was a candidate of science and I had to be where he had his job. Besides, my first baby was to be due soon. When a commission was signing my degree the dean said with a jeer, 'You'll stay at home and make borsch', hinting that I wouldn't get a job. My teachers calmed me down telling me that I was smart and wouldn't stay without a job. My older son, Michael, was born in 1951. In 1953 I registered my name in the town department of public education for getting a job. At that time a new wave of anti-Semitism and the Doctors' Plot 37 began. As soon as they heard a Jewish name the officials' attitude changed drastically. A job for me was out of the question. They said that if I were a Russian teacher they would give me a job, but a Jew couldn't be a Ukrainian teacher.

Stalin's death in 1953 was hard for me to bear. I cried after him like all other people. It didn't even occur to me that he was to blame for all our problems. My second son, Vitali, was born in 1954. Only in 1956, after the denunciation of Stalin's cult at the Twentieth Party Congress 38 open anti-Semitism diminished and I got a job. I was the teacher of a group of children that stayed at school after classes to do their homework, school #157. In some time I got a job at an evening school for young working people. I taught Russian and Ukrainian literature at this school until I retired.

My husband defended his dissertation in 1963. He was head of laboratory and a well-known scientist in the field of soil science. His works were known abroad, but he wasn't allowed to travel abroad. He got invitations to conferences in the USA and Australia, but he always turned them down. He wasn't ambitious and knew that even if he was allowed to go there, which was hardly likely because Jews weren't allowed to go abroad, he would be called to the authorities that would ask him questions and bother him with humiliating and groundless suspicions.

My husband worked a lot and didn't even want to go on vacation. However, we went to resorts in the Crimea several times. Usually I traveled with our children. We had many friends and went to the theater, symphonic concerts, took our children to museums and tried to help develop their personality. We raised our children in an international air of respect of all people regardless of their nationality or faith, but they always identified themselves as Jews.

In due time my mother and grandfather moved to Kiev. They sold their house and received a two-bedroom apartment not far from where we lived. My mother was a pensioner and helped me to look after my children when I went to work. My mother lived with my grandfather, and my husband's mother, Beshyva, lived with us. In the last years of his life my grandfather was less religious. He didn't pray at home and went to the synagogue only on big holidays. We didn't celebrate Jewish holidays. My grandfather died in 1966 and my mother died in 1977. Beshyva died in 1977 at the age of 102. They were buried in the town cemetery. No Jewish traditions were observed at the funerals.

I met with my father several times: I visited him in 1944 and 1946. When I wrote him that I got married he stopped writing for some reason, although he knew my husband and knew that he was a decent man, but he probably didn't approve of our marriage due to the difference in age. I wrote to him several times and even sent letters with someone going to Yoshkar-Ola, but he never replied. My husband was rather upset about it. A few years later I received a telegram saying that my father was traveling from the Caucasus via Kiev. He asked me to meet him. My husband said that if he were in my shoes he wouldn't go to meet him. I kept thinking about what I should do. I went to the station, but changed my mind and returned home. It turned out that my father came to our home. When he rang the doorbell Israel said, 'Maya is not at home and I don't want to see you'. My father left and I never saw him again. I was very upset, but I didn't want to hold against my husband. I know that my father had three sons, but I never saw them and don't even remember their names. My father died in 1985. His wife notified me by sending me a telegram.

My older son, Michael, was a very smart child. He went to school before he turned six and finished it at the age of 15. His teachers advised him to study in Moscow. I went there with him. We submitted our documents to the Mathematics Faculty of Moscow University. There was a competition among those that passed exams. Michael didn't win it. Then we submitted the documents to the Faculty of Automation of Kiev Polytechnic Institute. Michael got a '3' in the main subject. I don't know whether it was anti-Semitism or whether Michael was just too shy at the exams since he was one and a half years younger than other applicants. It was evidently a mistake to submit our documents to the evening Faculty of the Chemical Machine Building Institute because they 'lost' them. That year Michael didn't enter any college. The next year our acquaintances advised us to go to Russia. Michael entered the Faculty of Radio Engineering in Taganrog and simultaneously studied at the Faculty of Mathematics of Rostov University. My younger son, Vitali, also studied at the college in Taganrog.

When Michael was a 4th-year student he married Tamara, a Russian girl. I had no objections to their marriage. I respected my son's decision. They came to Kiev after finishing university and Tamara found a job as a radio engineer in a design institute without problems while it took Michael with his 'Item 5' 39 several months before he found a job. Afterwards he worked at a computer center very successfully. He and Tamara lived together for several years before they parted. They had a daughter, Tania, but we are not in touch with her. Michael married Marina, a Jewish girl. She grew up in a family of atheists in Kiev. She finished a Russian school and Polytechnic College. She was an engineer and my son's colleague. Under the influence of his wife he moved to Israel in 1990. They live in Beer Sheva and are very content with their life. His daughter, my granddaughter Irina, born in 1985, serves in the army there. Of course, I would like to go there to see them, but my health condition is poor and the doctors don't allow me a change of climate. My son often calls me and supports me, but he is so busy that he cannot travel here.

My younger son, Vitali, and his wife Tamara - she is Russian - live in Chernovtsy where they moved after finishing college and getting jobs there. Their son, Oleg, is 25. Vitali was chief engineer at a big instrument manufacturing plant. The plant was shut down and Vitali is jobless now. Vitali often calls me. They don't have enough money to make a living since they receive very low pensions.

Perestroika 40 didn't bring anything good. We became poor in a jiff. Our children lost their jobs. We received good pensions and had savings. That's all lost. The level of culture dropped significantly. Many wonderful theaters closed. It seems nothing but money is important now. Of course, it's wonderful that people got an opportunity to travel, but I don't know who can afford this pleasure.

My husband and I were raised to be patriots of our country like all Soviet people. We never wished to move abroad, to Israel. My husband died in 1999. Almost all of my friends and acquaintances either died or moved abroad. I like socializing with people and I enjoy going to Hesed, a Jewish charity center. I read Jewish newspapers and watch the Jewish Yahad program 39 on TV. I like everything that has to do with Jewish history and culture, but I shall never be a believer.

Glossary

Klara Dovgalevskaya
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Vladimir Zaidenberg
Date of interview: December 2001

Interviewer's Note: This was a very difficult interview. I had to return to Klara Dovgalevskaya three times because of her poor health. Afterwards, she got very tired and shared nothing about her life after the war. She asked me to finish the interview at that point.

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

My family background

My name is Klara Dovgalevskaya. When I was young I was called Khaya. I was born in the village of Tripolye, Ukraine.

I never knew my paternal grandparents; I don't even know their names. My father, Leizer Dovgalevsky, was a merchant. He had his own small one-room store in Tripolye. He went around villages buying various staple food products - grain, flour, bread, sugar, salt - which he then sold in his store. I remember that during his lunch break my mother, Esfir Dovgalevskaya, would run to work for him while he went home to eat, and then he would go back to the store and my mother would come home. My mother worked from dawn to dusk. They worked a lot and our family was not poor.

We had a big house. My paternal great-grandfather built the house. It was a good-sized house with several rooms: a living room, a boys' bedroom, a girls' bedroom, and our parents' bedroom. But the toilet was outside, and water for the bath was heated only once a week for my mother to wash us one by one. I remember we had a big garden and three cows. One of the cows was very smart, but wild. She could open the gates with her horns, and would come to our kitchen window and call my mother. She loved mother very much. In the mornings I woke up early, ran to the kitchen, and my mother would give me a glass of warm, fresh milk.

Our parents had seven children. The eldest was my brother Moishe, born in 1900. Then came Aba, born in 1903, followed by Pinya in 1905. My sister Buzya was born in 1907; in 1910 came brother David; and in 1912 my sister Sonya. I, the youngest, was born in 1914. I was born on the first day of Passover.

Growing up

My mother said that those were hard times then, probably due to the start of World War I. It was more difficult for my father to buy products in the villages, and life became harsher. My mother worked a lot around the house while my elder sister Buzya took care of me. My mother would put a scarf around Buzya's neck and shoulders, put me inside it, and Buzya would walk with me everywhere.

I can vaguely remember our Passover celebrations. I remember that at Passover my father sat at the head of the table, with the boys sitting on his right hand and the girls on his left. My mother served the food. My father took me on his lap and lifted me up; I remember dancing on his lap and singing. And then, suddenly, I pissed. My father got angry and put me down. I remember it very vividly even though I was only two years old.

My parents and the elder children spoke Yiddish at home. The children went to cheder. After that they attended a Ukrainian school in Tripolye. My elder brother Moishe left for Kiev in 1916.

Then our family suffered a terrible tragedy. In 1918-1919 there were gangs in Tripolye that consisted of 15-20 men. They would come to villages, and rob and kill Jews. One of the gang leaders was Zelyony, the son of the priest from our village. When his gang came into our village, he would put a soldier next to our gates and say, 'This kike is a good one. We should protect him.'

My elder brother Pinya was not living with us at the time. Once some Komsomol 1 members came from Kiev to our village to fight against the gangs. They were all young men and women, without any training or knowledge of how to fight against bandits. So, the bandits encircled them and put them into the basement of my father's store. They also posted guards there. My brother Pinya, who was 14 years old, decided to rescue them. He went to the store and began digging in the ground in order to reach the basement. The guards saw him and shot him, wounding him in the leg. He dived into the river to escape them, and my mother lost communication with him for a long time. Later, we found out that he had managed to reach Kiev and got to the hospital there. His leg was amputated and he remained handicapped for the rest of his life.

After this event, some time later, another gang burst into Tripolye. They came into our house and one of them slashed my father on the head with his saber. I saw that happen. My brother Aba rushed to defend my father, but he was also slashed by the saber. My father died at once. Aba ran out of the house, still alive.

After the gang attacked our house and killed my father, they raped my mother. I did not understand what was going on, but my mother was crying and begging, 'Please, don't kill me, my children are so young! Do you see how young my girl is? She will not live without me.' She also motioned for me to leave and so I went to another room. When everything was over, my mother ran to me, took me in her arms and ran out of the house, running without any purpose.

I followed after her, holding tight onto her skirt. All the other children had run away in fright, I alone stayed. She found Aba sitting against a wall, dead. My mother touched him, and I was crying with fear that the bandits would come and kill my mother and me as well. As it turned out, when Aba ran out of the house, the bandits caught him and put him against the wall and began to shoot at him. But their bullets did not hit him. Later my mother said, 'He died from fear'.

On that night, my mother sent my sister and me to spend the night with an old Jewish couple. They lived in a semi-basement. At night, the bandits burst into their home and beat them to death with ropes. I can still hear their cries as if it happened yesterday. The bandits did not find us, so my sister and I remained alive. Early in the morning, when it was still dark, my mother took us away. The next night, which was our last night in Tripolye, the priest's wife allowed us to stay with her. It was very hot where she put us to sleep, and I remember constantly asking her for something to drink. But nobody gave me a drink because they where afraid that the bandits, who also stayed in that house, would find us out. I don't know where my mother with my brother and other sister spent that night.

In the morning, those of us Jews who remained alive, around 15 people, found a boat and crossed the Dnepr River. We went to Kiev along the other side of the Dnepr. I don't remember how many days the journey took us. I only remember that my mother carried me. My mother was wearing only an underskirt, because she had no time to dress when she left the house. So she covered me with this underskirt when we stayed at an empty bakery. Its owner let us stay there. My brother David walked, holding my mother's hand and crying all the time: 'Oy, meyne fiselekh!' [Yiddish: Oh, my feet!] When we came to Kiev, the feet of my mother and my brother were very swollen.

I don't remember how, but my mother found some of my father's relatives in Kiev. I think it was his cousin's family, because his last name was also Dovgalevsky. The cousin was not in Kiev at the time, he had left for America, but his family was still living in Kiev, downtown, in a rich, nice house. His wife accepted us. But we did not stay long at that house. The family moved to America, too. I don't even remember their names. We had to move out of their flat. My mother found us a tiny room where we all lived.

In Kiev my mother found Pinya, my elder brother, who had had his leg amputated and who now walked on crouches. My eldest brother Moishe found a job at a bakery, and every day he brought us bread. It was so good! Pinya, the invalid, sold cigarettes; he hung a tray with cigarettes on his neck and sold them.

At that time my mother's mother, my grandmother, came to live with us. I don't remember her name. I only remember that she was very old and blind and she was in bed all the time. I would get into her bed, and she would tell me Bible stories about the Jews. I asked my mother, 'How come grandmother looks into the Bible and reads, being blind?' Mother said, 'No, she does not read; she knows all the words by heart'.

While my grandmother was still alive, my mother would buy matzah for Passover, and my grandmother would tell us all about Moses and the exodus from Egypt. My brothers criticized our grandmother. They said there was no God, for if He existed, He would never have let anyone kill our father and brother and cast us out of our house in Tripolye. To this my grandmother replied: 'God punishes us for the sins of our forefathers'.

I was sent to the Jewish orphanage. It was located in Podol 2, near the synagogue. The times were hard; there was a famine in Ukraine 3 after the Revolution of 1917 4, so the synagogue organized an orphanage for young orphans. We were fed and taught there. We did not study religion, but we danced and sang Jewish songs. I still remember them. In the beginning I lived at the orphanage, but then my mother began to take me home every day and I went back there every morning, so the orphanage became more like a kindergarten for me. The synagogue fed the older children as well. They did not stay at the orphanage, but simply came there every day to eat. My brothers and sisters came too. I don't know how our family would have survived had it not been for the synagogue. I spent two or three years in that orphanage.

Then we moved to another flat, also small, and lived there until 1941. I only started going to school when I was already 8 years old because I was so very weak and ill. It was hard for me to study, so my elder sister and brothers helped me. We had a mixed class: boys and girls together. The school was Russian. The students were of different nationalities: Russians, Ukrainians, and Jews. I was friends with all of them; they all looked the same to me.

But in our yard children teased me: 'Khaya is a zhyd [kike]! Khaya is a zhyd [kike]!' It took me a while to understand what they were teasing me for. Only later did I understand that I was Jewish and that this was the reason why my father and brother were killed, my mother raped, and why the whole yard teased me.

I studied only for 4 years, finished elementary school and then attended a factory college. Our life was very hard financially; my mother did not work, so I could not stay at school. At the factory college we studied one day and worked one day. We were also taught such regular school subjects as mathematics, physics, geography, and drawing. Every other day we took a tram and went to the factory where we were taught bench work. I liked it, although I cannot say that my dream was to become a metalworker. I did not care; I only wanted to learn some profession in order to be able to earn a living. We received no payment for our work, but we got fed every day. We ate soups that were not very tasty, so children who were richer than me, gave theirs to me. I was happy to eat mine and their portions as well.

My elder sister Buzya married her cousin Yefim Dovgaletsky. She never worked outside her home; she was a housewife. My sister Sonya studied at the Medical Institute. She also worked as a nurse at the hospital part-time at nights, and studied during the day. She very much wanted to become a doctor. My brother Pinya worked at the knitting factory. It was a factory where invalids were employed, and he was chief of the section that prepared yarn. Before his army service, my brother David was a worker. He was called up in 1931. I still have a photo of him with our mother, Sonya and Pinya, taken right before David went to serve in the army. My brother Moishe worked at the bakery, but by then it became a plant.

When David returned from the army and saw my hands, he was shocked. My hands were covered with calluses, because I worked with metal. He made me quit this heavy job. Then I worked at the same knitting factory as my brother Pinya. I worked with the knitting machine. David forced me to study all the time. He said, 'Look what nice girls are working at the office. You should study too!'. I finished a course for bookkeepers and for a short while, it was already 1940, I worked as a bookkeeper.

In the 1930s I and my brothers and sisters, joined the Komsomol. We loved Soviet holidays very much. I remember that on 1st May we always came together at the Dynamo stadium, wearing sports suits and marching in demonstrations along Kreschatik Street [the main street of Kiev]. We also celebrated the October Revolution Day 5 and New Year's Eve. At that time, we no longer celebrated any Jewish holidays, as we were all Komsomol members, and Pinya was a member of the Communist Party.

Right before the war the atmosphere was disquieting because of talk about Hitler. I did not read newspapers, so I don't remember now if there was any information about Hitler's negative attitude towards the Jews. I think my mother knew about it from newspapers and was very anxious. My brother David and sister Sonya were mobilized even before the war. David was in the reserve and Sonya was a doctor. We understood that since mobilization has started, there would be a war.

During the war

The war [the Great Patriotic War] 6 broke out on 22nd June 22. It was not until noon that we learned that Germany had attacked us. I went to the military enlistment committee because I wanted to fight at the front. They registered my profession and said that when the army needed people from these non-military professions, we would be called. But nobody called.

When the war broke out, my mother was not in town. She, my sister Buzya, and mother's four young grandchildren were in Brovakhy village. There was a collective farm there, where Yefim Dovgalevsky, Buzya's husband, was working. He went there every spring to fix tractors. So, Buzya with her children and our mother went there every summer as well. That's where the war found them.

In Kiev evacuation started at my work place. I tried to get in touch with my mother but I failed. My elder brother Moishe was working at the Bolshevik plant at the time. He insisted that I evacuate together with him. I remember that during the evacuation bombing raids were frequent. We were put on an open locomotive platform together with tanks and other military equipment. This is how we went to evacuation in Sverdlovsk.

My brother stayed at the Uralmash [a heavy machine building plant] in Sverdlovsk with the equipment and machines, and we, who were working at the plant, were sent to villages. I found myself in the village of Boiny, where I lived until 1944. We worked at the collective farm, sewing, digging, loading and unloading sacks with vegetables and other products.

All the time I was trying to find out what was going on with Sonya, David and my mother. I wrote to military units, to the village where my mother was supposed to be staying, but I learned the horrible truth only after I returned to Kiev. I came back to Kiev in the summer of 1944. Kreschatik Street was ruined; houses had been blown up. Our basement was also destroyed. I found a photo album and a picture of my sister Sonya at her graduation. There were no clothes in our flat. But there were many rats, because our basement was used as a vegetable warehouse during the war.

Once at the market a woman approached me and said, 'Are you Klara Dovgalevskaya? I can tell you about your family.' Buzya's husband, Yefim Dovgalevsky, went to Brovakhy village to take them away before Hitler's coming. On his way there, he met some Ukrainian friends, who gave him a lot to drink, got him drunk, then took all of his money and killed him with an axe. They left his body in the forest, where it was found by the locals. Before the fascists came, the locals hid my mother, Buzya and her children in someone's basement. A neighbor took the oldest girl, Firochka, to stay with her. She said, 'Let her stay with me. If something happens, she will live'. When the fascists came, somebody betrayed my family. Mother, Buzya and the children were led out of the basement put on horses and taken into the forest. They also took the owner of the horses. In the forest he was ordered to dig a grave. My mother was thrown into that grave and buried alive. Buzya and her small children were shot. The man who was ordered to dig the grave told that story. Firochka, Buzya's oldest daughter, remained at the neighbor's. Once, a woman in the village quarreled with this neighbor and told her that she would let the Germans know about the Jewish girl. So, this neighbor took Firochka to the commandant's office, and she was also shot.

My sister Sonya was killed in Kiev. A neighbor from our yard told me how it happened. Sonya served in the army and took part in the defense of Kiev. When the Germans were already in Kiev, she came to our house. She was not wearing her military uniform, but a light Ukrainian blouse. From her friend Manya she took the keys to our flat that I had left for her, went into our flat, and began to look for some clothes. It was late September, rainy and cold. She asked Manya for a coat, but Manya said there were no clothes there, that the Germans had probably stolen everything. But Sonya should have had her own keys! So, Manya went out of the yard behind Sonya and pointed her out to the Germans who were passing by. They caught up with Sonya and took her with them. The neighbors said they saw that Sonya and other Jewish women were led out of the Gestapo gates on Vladimirskaya Street and put on a truck. Rumor has it that they were taken to Babi Yar 7 and shot there.

In the mid-1960s, my brother Pinya met a man who said he knew David Dovgalevsky. He said he was together with him in the encirclement of Kiev and in the camp for prisoners of war in Darnitsa [industrial zone of Kiev]. Thousands of Soviet prisoners of war were kept under the open sky, without food, without water in that camp. Many people died every day. Their relatives saved many of them, though. Ukrainians were saved by their wives and mothers, who paid for their release in gold and valuables. That's how that man got saved. But David was killed, because all the Jews were killed there. That's what that man told my brother. So, after the war I was left practically alone. My mother, my sisters, and one of my brothers were killed just because they were Jewish.

My brother Pinya and his wife returned to me from evacuation. Their son Abrasha was killed together with my mother, Buzya and her three children in that village in 1941. After the war, Pinya continued to work and headed a workshop of the invalids' factory. He died in 1968. My eldest brother Moishe also returned from Sverdlovsk. He continued to work at the Uralmash plant. He died in 1974.

Post-war

After the war the situation of the Jews worsened in general. I could not find a job for a long time because I was Jewish. On the bus people would always say, 'Oh, too many zhyd [kikes] have come here. We are moved out of our flats so that they could move in. First they did not want to fight in the war, and now they want to return to their Kiev flats.' It was very hard. I bore this burden my whole life, since the moment my father was killed.

So I decided that my children would never be Jewish. When I was 35, I began to date my boss, Valentin Zaritsky, who was half Ukrainian, half Polish. I understood that he would not stay with me for long because I was not very beautiful. But I wanted to have children. He and I lived officially together for only two months, but I had twins from him, and then he left me.

My sons, Valery and David Zaritsky, were born in 1951. Both my sons are Ukrainians. I did my best to help them identify with Ukrainians. It was very hard for me to bring them up. They spent many years in a boarding school and then in a vocational school. One of them is an electrician, the other a metalworker. Valery lives with me; he is still single. David has a family.

Life is very hard now. If it was not for the aid of the Jewish community, we would have starved already. I really appreciate their help. It is hard for me to speak now. And I don't really have much to add.

Glossary

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

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

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

My family background 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Growing up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

During the War

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After the War

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My wife and I sympathized with the Jews that moved to Israel in the 1970s. We couldn't move there. My parents and my wife's parents weren't well. They couldn't move and didn't want to. Then we grew older. If we had children we would move to give them an opportunity to have a decent life, but we have no children, due to the hard years in the ghetto, and we are afraid to start a new life at our age.

My father died in 1975. We buried him in accordance with Jewish traditions in the Jewish cemetery. There were two rabbis at his funeral - I invited one, and the other one came when he heard about my father's death. My father was buried wrapped in a shroud. I recited the required prayers [the Kaddish]. He was a respected man among Jews in Chernovtsy and many of them came to his funeral. After the funeral my wife and I couldn't observe all Jewish traditions: we worked and couldn't even leave work for a week. My mother died in 1983. Since I had worked at school for a long time my colleagues were supposed to come to the funeral. It wasn't safe to have a traditional religious funeral with teachers involved because they were responsible for the education of the young generation. There were no colleagues and pupils of ours at my father's funeral, but they came to my mother's funeral. A religious teacher would have lost his job in an instant. The funeral was to be in the afternoon, and we had a religious ritual completed in the morning. We buried her without a prayer, but in a shroud as required, in the Jewish cemetery beside my father's grave.

I was rather skeptical about perestroika, which began in 1986. I thought it was another 'activity' of the Communist Party. After some time I saw that things began to change for the better. Newspapers became more interesting, and books, which had been banned in the past, were published. The first steps of the restoration of the Jewish spirituality and culture were made at that time, and I became actively involved in this movement. I was chairman of the Jewish charity committee that was established during the Soviet regime in 1988. Many problems that had made our life difficult before perestroika were eliminated. Religion, although it wasn't officially acknowledged by the state, wasn't forbidden any more. The attitude towards Jews changed for the better. Jewish writers began to have their books published, which hadn't happened before. A Jewish association of culture and a public cultural fund were established in that period. I participated in both organizations. Jewish life began to revive even before Ukraine declared its independence in 1991. Jewish organizations, theaters and art collectives were established. People visited Jewish exhibitions. A Jewish library and school were opened in Chernovtsy.

When Hesed was established in independent Ukraine I became chairman of the Board of Hesed. This organization supports older people and helps them to communicate and satisfy their spiritual needs. I'm the chief editor of Hesed News, the newspaper published by Hesed. I do this work for free. My wife and I receive a pension given to former inmates of ghettos. We can manage with what we receive, and when somebody needs help we are always happy to provide assistance. I go to the synagogue on Jewish holidays and on the death anniversaries [Jahrzeit] of members of my family. My wife and I celebrate Jewish holidays and Sabbath at home. We have lived a difficult, but interesting life. I'm grateful that we've found each other in this big world.

Glossary

Henrich Zinger
Uzhgorod
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya
Date of interview: April 2003

Henrich Zinger lives with his wife and daughter Elena in a private house not far from the center of Uzhgorod. The house is rather old, but well kept and clean. There are a few fruit trees near the house. In spring Elena plants flowers around the house. Henrich Zinger is a short, slim and lively man. He doesn't look his age. He likes walking and until lately he often went fishing to the Uzh River. Herman's wife and daughter stayed with us during the interview and listened to Herman's story with great interest. Henrich speaks with an explicit Hungarian accent. He expresses his thoughts very clearly and finds witty definitions. Of course, these reminiscences were hard for him, but when I suggested coming another time to continue he refused and finished his story. In 1997 Henrich gave an interview to the Spielberg Foundation.

My parents' families came from Subcarpathia 1. Subcarpathia belonged to Austro-Hungary before 1918. Hungarian was the state language and many residents of Subcarpathia can speak it. In 1918 Austro-Hungary gave the Subcarpathia region to the Czech Republic for the term of 20 years. At the time of Austro-Hungary there was no anti-Semitism, and when the Czechs came to power they encouraged Jews to take official posts and develop their businesses. Czechs were very cultured and loyal people and there was no anti-Semitism during their reign. In villages Jews and the indigenous population lived side by side and developed friendly relationships through generations.

The center of Subcarpathia was Uzhgorod [about 800 km from Kiev]. Before World War II it was a small and quiet town with a population of about 40,000 people. It was multinational: there were Hungarians, Czechs, hutsuls - Ukrainian ethnic people -, Jews, Russians and gypsies. Jews constituted one third of the population in Uzhgorod. There were no nationality conflicts. Jews were craftsmen and tradesmen, doctors, attorneys and teachers. Most of the Jewish families were poor. There was a big beautiful synagogue in Uzhgorod built by the French in the 19th century. After Subcarpathia joined the USSR in 1945 the synagogue underwent reconstruction. The Jewish symbols were removed and it became the building of the Philharmonic. There was a cheder and a Jewish school in town. Jews lived in the center of the town. Before 1918 there were mostly one-storied buildings in Uzhgorod. When the Czechs came to power in 1918 they began to build two and three-storied apartment houses in the central part of the town with spacious and comfortable apartments. There were stores on the ground floor. Subcarpathia came to prosper during the Czech rule.

My father's parents were born and lived in the village of Turi Remety in Subcarpathia, about twelve kilometers north of Uzhgorod. I visited this village only once in my childhood and cannot describe it. My paternal grandfather and grandmother were born there in the 1860s. They died long before I was born. My grandfather's name was Yacob. I don't know my grandmother's name.

My father, Kalman Zinger, was born in 1886. I only knew my father's younger sister, born in 1900. I don't know her first name, but her last name in marriage was Klein. Her daughter lives in Israel. My father also had two older brothers, but all I know about them is that they moved to the USA at the beginning of the 20th century. My father corresponded with them for some time, but then they stopped writing for unknown reasons. My father didn't tell me much about his family. They were very poor and lived from hand-to-mouth.

My father's family observed Jewish traditions. The family was religious. At that time all Jewish families were religious. My grandfather and his sons went to the synagogue and prayed at home. My father's family celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays and followed the kashrut. My father and his brothers studied at cheder. The children were raised religiously. When the children grew older they went to learn a profession. My father became an apprentice of a stonemason when he turned 13. This stonemason made gravestones. They didn't pay for my father's apprenticeship, my father worked for the stonemason for two years for free. If after finishing their training apprentices stayed to work for their master they got paid for their work.

My mother's family lived in the village of Velikiy Berezny. It was a big village, 40 kilometers north of Uzhgorod. It's a district town now. There were big fairs in the village. The population consisted of Hungarians, Ukrainians and Jews. There were many Jews like in any other village in Subcarpathia. The Jews spoke Yiddish, Hungarian and Ukrainian. The Jews lived side by side with their neighbors of other nationalities and had friendly and supportive relationships with their co-villagers. Nationality didn't matter at that time. There were earthen floors in most houses covered with weaved rugs. There was a synagogue in the center of the village and two cheders: a cheder for boys and a cheder for girls 2. Most of the Jews were craftsmen and tradesmen. All stores in the village were owned by Jews. Some Jews were farmers. All Jews were religious and went to the synagogue on Sabbath and all Jewish holidays. Many Jews attended the synagogue every day. There was a shochet in the village. All Jews followed the kashrut. When a cow was slaughtered Jews could only eat its front part. [Editor's note: This custom was followed in a number of communities, although Jewish law does not forbid eating certain parts of the rear part of a cow.] The rear part was sold to the villagers. Every family had separate utensils for meat and dairy products. They also had special crockery for Pesach.

My mother's father, Yacob Galegrter, and her mother, Zali Galegrter, were born in Velikiy Berezny in the 1860s. My grandmother's maiden name was Ginig. My grandfather was a craftsman and my grandmother was a housewife. My grandmother died in 1907 and my grandfather died in 1914, a few months after I was born. They were buried in the Jewish cemetery in Velikiy Berezny in accordance with Jewish traditions. My mother told me that there were several daughters in the family. I only knew my mother's older sister, but I don't remember her name. My mother, Hana, was born in 1886. My mother's family was religious like all Jewish families at that time. They observed all Jewish traditions.

My parents met with the help of a shadkhan, which was a common way of introducing young people back then. They got married in 1910. They had a traditional Jewish wedding with a rabbi and a chuppah in Velikiy Berezny. My grandmother had died before. The newly-weds settled down in my mother's parents' house where her older sister and her husband lived as well. Her husband was a shoemaker. The house was big and accommodated two families comfortably. My sister Helena was born in 1912. Her Jewish name was Chaya. I was born in 1914. I was named Henrich, my Jewish name was Chaim. My younger brother Leopold was born in 1918. His Jewish name was Leib.

Some time later my father bought a plot of land near my mother's parents' house and built a house with a thatched roof for our family. We lived there until 1944. The house wasn't big. It was built from air bricks made from the mixture of cut straw and clay placed in rectangular containers to dry in the sun. Many houses in Subcarpathia were built from air bricks. Our house was like many other houses in the village and had a room and a kitchen. There was a big stove in the kitchen. My mother cooked on it and in winter this stove was used for heating. The stove was stoked with wood. Wood was inexpensive since there were many woods in Subcarpathia and brushwood was free. There were fruit trees around the house, a big backyard, a kitchen garden and sheds for grain, a chicken-coop and a barn on the right side of the backyard. We didn't keep cattle, but my mother kept chickens. My father made gravestones and engravings on them. These gravestones were kept in the yard. He did this work from spring till fall and in late fall he started making frames for pictures and photographs. My father provided for the family and my mother was a housewife, which was customary in Jewish families. Married women were responsible for the house and raising children.

My parents were religious. They strictly observed the kashrut. There's a number of rules to be followed. There was a special tray with the sides made of twigs in each house. When a shochet slaughtered an animal and let the blood flow down this wasn't kosher meat as yet. He had to remove pellicles and fat, place this meat on the tray and salt it. The tray was put in slant to let the blood with salt flow down into a bowl. Then the meat had to be thoroughly washed to become kosher. Jewish customs and traditions are complex and were transmitted from one generation to the next.

My mother didn't wear a wig since it wasn't customary in the village, but she always wore a kerchief, even at home. We never saw her without a kerchief. She wore casual clothing like all other women in the village. She wore long-sleeved blouses and long dark skirts. She had a long silk dress to wear to the synagogue. This was her only fancy dress. My father wore a kippah at home and a wide-brimmed black hat to go out. On weekdays he wore his work clothes. He had a black woolen suit to wear to the synagogue.

On Friday evening our family got together. We said a prayer, which went like this 'Barukh ata adonay, elohenu melekh ha-olam, asher kidshanu be- mitzotav v-civanu lehadlik ner shel shabat, and my mother lit candles. She said a prayer over the candles with her hands covering her eyes. Then we said a prayer all together, said 'Shabat shalom!' and had dinner. My father blessed the kids. My mother cooked something special for this meal. On Friday morning she usually told me to take a chicken to the shochet. We didn't have chicken on weekdays. We couldn't afford it. From Friday evening till Saturday evening Jews didn't do any work. It wasn't even allowed to strike a match or stoke the stove. On Friday morning my mother cooked food for Sabbath. In winter our Ukrainian neighbor came to stoke the stove on Saturday. He also lit the lamp. There were kerosene lamps. On Saturday morning my father went to the synagogue. Women only went to the synagogue on Jewish holidays. When my brother and I grew older my father took us with him. After he came home from the synagogue he read a special section from the Torah to us. His dream was to have a seat of his own at the synagogue. He couldn't afford to pay for it. I hoped to earn money and pay for my father to have a seat at the synagogue when I grew up. I wanted all Jews in Velikiy Berezny to know that I bought it for my father, but unfortunately, this dream of mine would never come true. Life has its own ways.

We spoke Yiddish at home. We also spoke fluent Hungarian. When Czech became the state language in 1918 our parents had a problem learning it. They spoke Hungarian with their neighbors. We, children, picked it up soon. We also knew 'rusinskiy' - a dialect of the Ukrainian language spoken in Subcarpathia.

We celebrated Jewish holidays at home. On Pesach our neighbors came to our house to make matzah for several families. Women got together at the big table in the kitchen to sieve the flour, make dough and roll it, and my father baked matzah in the oven. I liked sitting beside him. They made a lot of matzah to last throughout the eight days of Pesach.

We went fishing to have fish on holidays. There was a small river in Velikiy Berezny. Fishing was different than it is now. We bought some powder to throw into the river. The fish became drugged and turned up on the surface with their stomach up and we picked it. The powder wasn't hazardous for people.

My mother did a major clean up before Pesach. We moved all furniture to clean every corner. We collected all breadcrumbs in a piece of paper. This chametz was burned in the stove. We kept special crockery for Pesach in the attic. My mother did the cooking in advance. There were lines to the shochet before Pesach: women sent their children to the shochet with chicken and geese. Then the skins were removed along with the fat from the poultry. The skin was cut into small pieces and the fat was melted in big cast iron pots. Food was only cooked in this fat. The children had a chore to crush some matzah in a mortar. This flour was sieved. My mother made chicken broth with pieces of matzah. We always had gefilte fish on Sabbath and Jewish holidays. My mother made pudding from crushed matzah mixed with eggs. She also made chicken necks stuffed with fried flour and onions. She baked honey cakes and strudels with jam and raisins. On the first day of Pesach we went to the synagogue in the morning and in the evening my father conducted the seder. Besides other traditional food there was a plate with bitter greeneries, horseradish and a boiled egg on it and a saucer with salty water. We dipped greeneries into salty water before eating it. We knew that in this way we honored our ancestors' exodus from Egyptian slavery. We drank special wine on Pesach, red and very sweet. There were silver glasses for every member of the family and one extra glass for Elijah the Prophet 3. Everybody had to drink four glasses of wine at seder. Children had water added to their wine. I asked my father the four traditional questions [the mah nishtanah] in Hebrew.

On Sukkot we made a sukkah in our yard. The roof was made from corn stems. We decorated the sukkah with ribbons and flowers, put a table inside and had meals in it throughout the holiday.

Before Rosh Hashanah the shofar played after the morning prayer for the whole month of Tishri and Elul at the synagogue. On the eve of the holiday Jews had to offer an apology to those they hurt even if the hurt was unintentional. On Rosh Hashanah my father put on a white shirt and went to the synagogue with my mother. It was mandatory to wear white clothes. When we grew up we also went to the synagogue with our parents. My father had a special prayer book for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. My mother cooked traditional Jewish food: chicken, chicken broth and gefilte fish. We ate apples dipping them in honey and my mother explained that we did this to express our hope for a year full of sweetness ahead.

The family, including children of over five years of age, fasted on Yom Kippur. The kapores ritual was conducted before Yom Kippur. My mother and sister took a white hen in their right hand and my father, my brother and I took a white rooster, said a prayer and waved them over our heads saying in Hebrew, 'May you be my atonement'. We went to the synagogue. Prayers were long on Yom Kippur and when we returned from the synagogue we sat down at the table. After the 24-hour fast all food seemed particularly delicious.

There were the joyful holidays of Chanukkah and Purim. On Chanukkah children received Chanukkah gelt and painted wooden spinning tops. We spent our Chanukkah money on sweets. We played with spinning tops with other children. There were four Hebrew letters, one on each side of the tops, which stood for the words: 'nes', 'gadol', 'haya, 'po', which means 'a great miracle was here'. Every letter had its price. The letter 'nun', which was the first letter in the word 'nes', was the most expensive. Whose spinning top fell on the letter 'nun' took all stakes: candy wrappings, buttons and colorful pieces of glass.

On Purim my mother made hamantashen. There was a custom to take gifts of food to relatives and acquaintances. It was called shelakhmones. All kinds of sweets were put on a tray, covered with a napkin, and children went to deliver the shelakhmones. In the morning of the first day of Purim my father read the Scroll of Esther to us. Purimshpilers disguised as characters from the Scroll of Esther came to perform in Jewish houses. They were usually children of ten to twelve years of age. They were given money or sweets for their performances. I didn't take part in such performances since I was a shy boy.

There were two cheders in Velikiy Berezny: one for boys and one for girls. Girls studied fewer subjects than boys, but they learned everything a Jewish woman should know: to pray and read in Hebrew. Girls went to cheder at the age of five or six - I can't remember exactly - and studied there for a year. Boys went to cheder at the age of three. We had a melamed teaching us, and his assistant helped him to take care of younger children's needs: he gave us food, took us to the toilet, etc. At the age of four we studied the alphabet and reading in Hebrew since we had previously learned words. We also studied Yiddish, learned to read and write, studied Jewish history, traditions and religion. After finishing cheder at the age of seven we went to a general school.

There was no Jewish school in Velikiy Berezny. We went to the eight- year Ukrainian school. My sister Helena and my brother Leopold also went to this school. Boys and girls studied together. There were many Jewish children in this school and there were also Ukrainian and Hungarian ones. There was no anti-Semitism. We used to fight or argue, but there were never any conflicts about nationality issues. I had Jewish and non-Jewish friends. I studied well at school. I was good at all subjects. When I turned 13 my parents arranged for a bar mitzvah and from then on I was considered to be of age. On Saturday during my bar mitzvah I was told to come to the Torah for the first time in my life. I recited a prayer. The first tallit in my life was put on me. In the evening my parents arranged a dinner party and invited our relatives and friends. I remember that my younger brother felt very jealous about it since I was treated as an adult.

I finished school at the age of 14. My parents offered to send me to study at a garment factory in Czechoslovakia. There was a Zionist organization that organized training for teenagers helping them to get a profession and then go to Palestine. The Zborovitz garment factory belonged to this organization. I don't remember in what town this factory was located. There were other children from Velikiy Berezny and from other towns of Subcarpathia in the factory. We lived in a big building, ten to twelve tenants in one room. There was a canteen downstairs where we had kosher food. We had festive meals on Sabbath and Jewish holidays. We celebrated Sabbath on Friday evening and on Saturday we had a day off. We observed Jewish traditions and laws. We were trained to operate equipment at the factory and studied Hebrew and Yiddish. I worked for two years at the factory. I enjoyed my life there very much. I returned from Czechoslovakia in 1930 and my father sent me for training with a tailor. I studied there for three years. Of course, the training itself didn't take that long, but apprentices used to help their master's wife about the house, too. They fetched water, looked after the children and did what they were told to do.

After finishing my training I began to work at my master's shop. I was a fabric-cutter. I lived with my parents and brother. My best friend was a barber in the village. He wasn't a Jew. He was a very nice person. We didn't care about nationality then. What mattered was whether a person was decent and honest.

My sister Helena got married in 1934. She had a traditional Jewish wedding with a rabbi and a chuppah in Velikiy Berezny. My father bought a house in Uzhgorod for the newly-weds. My younger brother finished school and I began to teach him to be a tailor.

In 1936 I was recruited to the Czech army. I served in an infantry unit in Czechoslovakia. We had military and sport training and studied theory. There were rooms in the barracks, eight to ten tenants in each room. There were beds, tables and chairs, bookshelves and wardrobes in each room. There was a library in our unit and we could read in our spare time. We celebrated the religious holidays of all religions: Jewish, Catholic and Christian, every confession had its holidays. On Jewish holidays Jewish soldiers were invited to the synagogue where festive dinners of traditional Jewish food were arranged for them. Local Jewish families often invited Jewish soldiers to their homes on Sabbath and Jewish holidays. Matzah was delivered for the Jews from the synagogue on Pesach and for Christians Easter bread was made at Easter. The soldiers were allowed to go to the synagogue or church.

We didn't follow the kashrut, but I managed to observe all other Jewish laws. Every morning I put on my tallit and recited a prayer, and on Sabbath and Jewish holidays I went to the synagogue. Religiosity was appreciated. My fellow comrades were of various nationalities. There was one other Jewish soldier. There were Czechs and Hungarians. We never had any conflicts related to our nationality. Officers had a friendly attitude toward young soldiers. There were no brutal attitudes, nothing like what is happening in the Ukrainian army nowadays. We were like a team staying close together.

I returned home in 1939. Subcarpathia belonged to Hungary since 1938. The Hungary of this time was different from the Hungary where my parents lived when they were young. This was a fascist Hungary. There was a war in Poland and the Germans were killing Polish Jews. There were many refugees from Poland. Hungary declared itself an ally of Hitler's Germany. The oppression of Jews in Hungary began. A number of anti-Jewish laws 4 were issued. Jews weren't allowed to own enterprises or stores. They had to give them voluntarily into non-Jewish ownership or they became property of the state. Then Hungarian passports were introduced. All Jews had to prove that they were born in Hungary or they were subject to deportation. I don't know where they were deported. Passports were issued in Budapest, the capital of Hungary. To go there was expensive. Jews had no right to hold official posts. Life became much more difficult.

In 1939 Germany began World War II. Hungary was an ally of Germany during the war. Mobilization to the Hungarian army began. In 1941 Germany attacked the USSR [this was the beginning of the so-called Great Patriotic War] 5 and I was mobilized to a forced labor battalion in the army. At the beginning we had German commanders that were later replaced by Hungarians. We were sent to excavate trenches along the Don River in the USSR [Don is a big river in Central Russia]. Hungarian officers were commanders of the Don front. They behaved brutally. We were ordered to do all kinds of hard work. We had no right to refuse and they shot people for disobedience. Our task was making trenches. All roads were covered with snow and we had to clean the snow for the army troops. Frosts were so severe in January - February 1942 that people froze to death within a few minutes if they fell down. We were given spades and if someone dropped his spade he died. There was a strong wind blowing and it was only possible to walk with a spade. I had a woolen mask that my sister had knitted to cover my head and face. There were only Jews recruited to labor battalions. There were about 1,000 Jews in our unit. I don't know how many survived, but I don't think there were many survivors. I believe, about 1%. Besides inhuman work conditions Jews were shot by Russians while they didn't have any weapons to defend themselves.

In February 1942 our battalion was attacked by the Soviet troops. The Hungarian military ran away. There were nine of us left and we were wandering about not knowing in what direction to go. We bumped into a house at the border of a forest with a kitchen where they cooked meals for Hungarian soldiers. We asked them if they wanted to hire us in exchange for food. We had to chop wood and peel potatoes. Soldiers got some black coffee and rum or cognac to cheer up before combat action. We also got some coffee or rum occasionally. Regretfully, we didn't stay there long. One night some drunken German officers broke into the room where we slept. They yelled, 'Wake up, communists!'. They thought that all Jews were communists for some reason. We couldn't understand what it was all about when we were told to get dressed, take our rucksacks with our belongings and go to the kitchen. When we came there the food stock supervisor began to yell at us, 'You, dirty Jews, communists, drank the cognac and rum that our soldiers need so much!' It was the Germans that drank it, but they blamed us. The officers began to beat us. I bowed down protecting my head and they kept hitting me on my rucksack. They wouldn't have been held responsible if they had killed us. When they got too tired they told us to go into the yard.

The snow around was so deep that we couldn't run away. We were lying in the snow. When we pulled ourselves together we moved on. We were looking for our fellow comrades. We couldn't speak Russian. I spoke Ruthenian, but this was the dialect of Ukrainian hutsul people, the language that we spoke in the village. We finally found our headquarters and were sent back to work. We did the hardest work, but we didn't have a choice. There was no escape from there. People got shot for attempting to run away. So, we would have been shot by the Hungarian, German or Russian military if we had tried to escape and were captured.

There was a frontline in the area where we were working. One night the Soviet troops passed to the offensive and we were ordered to retreat. The nine of us stayed together. We decided to hide in a village. This was the village of Oshurki, as the woman who gave us shelter told us. There were bombs falling all around. My fellow comrades followed the woman into the house, but I stayed outside. I saw a big basket near the front door and got inside. Within some time three German soldiers came to the yard, placed a mortar and started shooting. They were keeping the Russian troops to give their troops an opportunity to retreat. They were very close to where I was hiding. They didn't see me while I could see them through the basket. Then they finally ran away. It became quiet. I got very cold.

Some time after the Germans had left I heard the sound of skis. A Russian officer wearing a white camouflage suit and carrying his machine gun came down the hill to inspect the surroundings. He came into the house and I was still lying in the basket. The Russians were aware that the Hungarians had Jewish labor units. He asked how many of us there were and told us to hurry into the rear, since the army troops might come back, and showed us in what direction to go. It was 2 o'clock in the morning. We still didn't know where to go. We went through some villages. We got thirsty and hungry. Most houses were destroyed. We went into some houses to get warm and get some food. We came to houses like beggars, moving on and on. On the next day we bumped into our fellow comrades lying dead on the road. They had been shot from a plane. There were planes hanging over us, but I remembered from the time when I served in the Czech army that one had to pretend to be dead and walk on after the plane was gone. I don't know whether they were Hungarian or German planes flying over us, but they killed all that didn't follow this rule.

I don't know how many days we roamed about. We were hungry and looking for food. Once we found some pumpkins. We made a fire and fried these pumpkins. They were rotten, but we ate them anyway. Once we found a horse that had frozen to death. We cut pieces from it. We found shelter in abandoned houses. Once we were robbed by some Russians. They were civilians with a gun. They came at night and took away our shoes and clothes. They took my sheepskin vest. They gave us their old clothes.

Finally we bumped into some Russian military. They understood Ukrainian and I asked them whether they needed a tailor or if we could maybe do other work for them. They brought us their clothes and underwear to have them fixed. They gave us some food and when it was time for us to leave they gave us a bag of dried bread. We moved on having no idea where to go. We didn't know the country.

We fell ill with typhoid and some people showed us the way to a hospital. The hospital for patients with typhoid was housed in a school building. Every day dead bodies were taken out of there like logs. The patients were lying on dirty straw on the floor. There were lice that bit patients to death. I don't know where I got the energy, but I didn't sleep at night cleaning my clothes from lice. This probably saved me. There was no water or food. We melted snow to have water. We were so weak that we couldn't walk. We could only move on our fours. Two of my fellow comrades and I survived.

Then some Russian officers and civilians came. There were doctors among them. One doctor asked me where I came from. I replied that I was from Uzhgorod and he happened to come from Uzhgorod, too. He had moved there from the USSR in the 1920s. He asked me more questions and looked around in search of those that could be saved. Those that had a chance to live were taken to another premise. The rest of the patients perished. When we recovered we moved on. We got washed in a sauna and cleaned our clothes.

Then we were sent to Usman [a town in Russia, about 400 km southeast of Moscow], to a camp for prisoners-of-war. There were German, Italian, Romanian, Turkish and other soldiers. There were many military men that surrendered at the front. When we came there we were ordered to take off our clothes, then we were searched by a doctor and allowed to put on clothes again. This was a transit camp where prisoners were examined and sorted out before they were transported to another camp. I was always looking for work to do. I had needles and other sewing accessories. Only my scissors where taken away during the search, although it was my tool. I got a pair of scissors later. I said that I could fix clothes.

At the beginning my clients were inmates of the camp. I did work in exchange for food. Later I opened a shop. There was a storage facility with stocks of food for the army in the Russian military unit where I was. The Italians went there to steal food. They were starving. Those that were captured were shot immediately and I saw this more than once. Later a shoe shop was opened near my shop. The shoemaker was also an inmate of the camp. I stayed a rather long time in this camp. Newcomers arrived constantly to the camp. Once a train full of former SS military arrived. My friend Schwartz from our labor battalion was among them. He had been hiding with Germans in the house of a woman when they were captured. I took him to my shop.

From Usman we moved to Voronezh [Russia, about 500 km southwest of Moscow], where we were taken to the sauna. We had our clothes disinfected and got them back. We were feeling much stronger than before. There was another big camp there. Its inmates were German, Italian, Romanian and Hungarian. We lived in huge wooden barracks. We slept on two-tier plank beds along the wall. We had sufficient food there. They received American food supplies of lentil with chicken meat. America supplied food for prisoners-of-war under an international treaty. The camp in Voronezh was much better than the previous camp. We had sufficient food and a place to wash. There were Jews in the camp, but we didn't observe any Jewish traditions. We didn't eat pork, but this was the only thing we could do in that respect. This was a different world and we were separated from the reality we were used to. I opened a garment shop there, and it was a good shop.

We made uniforms for Russian officers, women's clothes and fixed clothes. There were very skilled German tailors working in the shop. I learned many things from them. I still have notebooks with my notes from this time and albums with patterns. My shop was located near the military unit headquarters, beyond the camp. The colonel, chief of headquarters, lived upstairs and the shoe and garment shops were downstairs. Schwartz and I lived there. I was a tailor and he was a shoemaker. I didn't have to live in the camp for long. I obtained an identity card with my photograph. Schwartz and I lived in the building of the headquarters and moved around. We got food for our work. There were bed bugs that disturbed us in our sleep. We wrapped wet cloth around the legs of our beds to keep bugs from getting onto the bed. However, they got onto the ceiling from where they fell on us. We survived. Every morning I came to the camp to select 20-25 inmates to work in the shop. They weren't going to escape - there was nowhere to go. The local residents thought they were fascists and wouldn't help them. They worked in the shop during the day and in the evening they returned to the camp.

I met my future wife when I was in this camp. There was a house across the street from the building of the headquarters where we lived. I often saw a girl in a window. There was a big family living in that house. Schwartz and I often watched them through the window. It was an episode of peaceful life for us, associated with home. There was a river and a pump nearby where people came for water. We went to swim in the river and often saw this girl, who came with her buckets to get water. Once I took the courage to talk with her. I was wearing a German uniform that Germans had given me for my work. Those Germans didn't know that I was a Jew since I spoke fluent German. I also spoke Russian. I talked with the girl and asked if I could see her in the evening. I longed for talking with someone. I was afraid that she would refuse since she didn't know who I was. She agreed and we met in the evening. I chose a spot where nobody could see us since inmates of the camp weren't allowed to be outside in the evening. We walked and talked. It was like a holiday for me.

We began to see each other more often. I brought her food that we received in the camp. Her name was Sophia Belinskaya. I didn't know who she was. She looked like a gypsy girl. Once she told me that her mother told her to stop seeing me. She thought I was a German and might kill her. We talked more and she told me that she was a Jew. I confessed that I was a Jew, too. Her mother didn't believe it was true. She said there were only German inmates in the camp. I began to come to her home in the evening when nobody could see me. Sophia lived in a big family. There were seven children and Sophia was the oldest. She was born in 1924. Sophia's mother was a housewife. Her father left their family. I tried to support their family as much as I could. We made gowns from white fabric in my shop. We received fabric in rolls. Every night I wrapped some fabric around my body and went to visit them. Sophia's mother sold this fabric at the market and bought food for the family. Once Sophia's mother invited me to lunch. I understood that she wanted to talk to me and find out whether I could speak Yiddish. By the end of my visit she knew that I spoke better Yiddish than she did. After that Sophia's mother wasn't afraid of me any more and I visited them every evening. My friend Schwartz also met a local girl from Voronezh.

In May 1945 we heard that the war was over: the inmates were telling this news to one another. On 9th May 1945 all inmates of the camp were lined up in front of the headquarters of the camp and announced that Germany had capitulated and that the war was over. We felt very happy. People in the streets hugged and kissed each other. I hoped to be able to go home soon. I had no information about my family. Sophia and I decided to get married but postponed it until we came to my home. We wanted to celebrate our wedding with my family. I asked Ptashynskiy, the chief of the camp who was Jewish, to get some information about the situation in Subcarpathia. He sent a request about my family and received a response saying that no member of my family was alive. They perished in Auschwitz where the Germans took them.

Before we were released from the camp we were asked where we wanted to live. I could have gone anywhere, but I only wanted to go back home, even though I knew that nobody was waiting for me there. I was in captivity from the beginning of 1942 till September 1946. In September I obtained the required permits to go home. In 1945, after World War II was over, Subcarpathia joined the USSR, but it didn't scare me away. I remembered that the Soviet army had liberated us from the fascists. I was still hoping that I would find at least some of my relatives when I came home. I left for home alone. I wanted to prepare everything for the arrival of my future wife.

I arrived in Velikiy Berezny where my neighbors confirmed that the Germans had taken my whole family to Auschwitz in 1944 and none of them returned. I went to Uzhgorod to obtain my documents, but I couldn't get any. Some other people lived in the house of my sister Helena. My sister and her family also perished in concentration camp. I stayed in the house of my distant relative and tried to have the house of my sister returned to me. An attorney, who was my cousin's acquaintance, agreed to help me in court. I finally obtained an identity certificate in Velikiy Berezny, on the basis of which I received a passport. The verdict of the court was positive and I got back the house.

I went to Voronezh to take Sophia to our home. We returned to Uzhgorod where Sophia and I got married. We didn't have a Jewish wedding. We had a civil registration ceremony at the district registry office. We still live in this house. When we started repairs of the house in the 1950s I found a gift from my sister. We needed to replace the rotten floors. She must have put an envelope with family photographs under the floor before being deported to the concentration camp with her family. We found this envelope and I was very happy to get it since I didn't have a single photograph of my close ones.

I began to work at a garment shop in the center of the town. My clients mainly wanted to alter their old clothes. I went to work and my wife was a housewife. Our first baby, our son Kalman, named after my father, was born in 1947. He was circumcised according to Jewish traditions. In 1949 our daughter Elena, named after my sister Helena, was born. Her Jewish name is Chaya.

I had to work a lot to provide for the family. This was a hard time. It was difficult to get food. Our shop grew bigger. I worked there for 25 years. I had a crew at the beginning. The procedure was such that I gave a cut to one seamstress and she had a suit or coat completed from beginning to end. I just checked her work. When the shop switched from individual to operational method I quit. I don't think it's good when one employee does only one operation and it takes eight people to have an item completed. I thought it had an impact on the quality of work. My management tried to keep me at work, but I didn't feel like working in this manner.

I went to another shop where an acquaintance of mine worked. They worked as I was used to: one person made an item from beginning to end. There was one fitting with a client, but if a cut was precise the client didn't even need to come to a fitting. There were many clients. Our work was so good that our clients even paid more to encourage us. They were happy with our work and came another time to have another item made for them. I retired when I was over 70. However, I continued working at home. I had many clients. It was impossible to buy good clothes in stores and people had to have their clothes made for them. I earned enough money and we were in no need of anything. I had very little free time that I tried to spend with my family. I took them to the park or to the cinema.

After I returned to Subcarpathia I noticed some demonstrations of anti- Semitism. During the war common hardships made people stick together. There were different values at the front. Shortly after the war life was so hard that people were busy with their own problems and didn't think about nationality issues, but some time later anti-Semitism started to appear. I think one of the reasons was that so many people came to Subcarpathia from the USSR. Many of them were anti-Semites. There was always anti-Semitism and there still is. One can hear, 'Jews, get out to your Israel' in public transport even nowadays. I cannot say that the state persecutes Jews now, but it did before. However, there are demonstrations of anti-Semitism in our everyday life. We are used to anti-Semitism, even though my family or I have never faced it in person. I had clients of many nationalities, but I never heard a rude word from them. They only thanked me for my work.

I didn't suffer during the time of the Doctors' Plot 6 at the beginning of 1953, but I was surprised that so many people sincerely believed this evident lie. Though I wasn't interested in politics. Only idle people discuss politics. In March that same year Stalin died. Those that cried for him were mainly people from the USSR. His death wasn't a calamity for me, but I did think about what was going to happen. I remember how at the Twentieth Party Congress 7 Khrushchev 8 spoke about Stalin's crimes. I never took any interest in politics, but many of my acquaintances were upset that Stalin turned out to be an oppressor of the people instead of being the father of the people like he was called by the propaganda. We hoped that life would change for the better after the Twentieth Party Congress, but there were no significant changes. We lived under various regimes in Subcarpathia. Working class people cannot be interested who has power in their country as long as this power gives them an opportunity to live, work and be able to provide for the family. Of course, I never wished to join the Party. They wouldn't even have admitted me since I had been a soldier of the German side and a prisoner-of-war in a camp. Anyway, I never even considered this.

In 1948 the state of Israel was established. I was happy that our people got their own state, but there was the Jewish state of Palestine that had existed for a long time before. [Editor's note: There was no Jewish state before 1948, Palestine was under British mandate.] Even before I was born, Jews moved there to work in this country. So for me it was like just changing the name of the country.

My wife and I tried to observe Jewish traditions and celebrate Jewish holidays. We followed the kashrut especially during the time when we could buy the food we needed for it without problems. My relative Roujeana, the daughter of my mother's cousin, and her family lived nearby and on Friday Roujeana and my wife cooked together for Sabbath since it's not allowed to cook or stoke a stove on Sabbath. On Friday evening our family got together for dinner. We prayed and my wife lit candles. However, I had to go to work on Saturday. During the Soviet regime Saturday was a working day. Whenever I could I would come home earlier from work. I was a crew leader and couldn't just leave my colleagues to go home. My wife and I spoke Russian at home, since she could hardly understand Yiddish. Her Yiddish wasn't important for me. All I cared about was that we understood each other.

We celebrated all Jewish holidays at home. The synagogue in Uzhgorod operated until the early 1950s. My wife and I went there together only on Jewish holidays. There was a special balcony for women at the synagogue. However, we had small children and my wife couldn't leave them to go to the synagogue on Saturday, so on Saturday I went to the synagogue alone. Later the synagogue was closed and reconstructed to become the building of the Philharmonic. A prayer house opened where only men could go.

My wife and I fasted on Yom Kippur. We still fast regardless of our age. We also celebrate Pesach. We have special crockery and utensils for Pesach. I conducted the seder on Pesach. When my son grew old enough I taught him the traditional questions in Hebrew that a son is supposed to ask his father during the seder. We celebrated all holidays and I told my children the history of all of them. My wife and I raised our children in accordance with Jewish laws. They identified themselves as Jews and never concealed their identity like others at hard times.

We didn't celebrate Soviet holidays; except for Victory Day 9 on 9th May none of them were of significance for us. When our children went to school my wife and I went to concerts at school arranged on Soviet holidays, but it was just another opportunity for us to spend time with our children. We also celebrated family birthdays. We invited friends and relatives. Almost all our friends were Jews. It just happened so, although I don't value a person by his nationality.

I like walking long distances. My wife and I often went for walks with our children. My favorite pastime was fishing. It is only in the last few years that I haven't gone fishing. My family always spent a week with my wife's relatives in Voronezh during summer vacation. Sophia's mother, her sisters and brothers were happy to see us. We spent the rest of our vacation in picturesque Subcarpathia. We rented an apartment and spent our time in the woods or at the river bank.

When our children grew up my wife went to work at the instrument manufacturing plant called Uzhgorodpribor. She worked there for 30 years. She started as an apprentice and finished her career as a crew leader. I provided well for the family, but my wife wanted to work to spend more time among people and, also, to get a pension.

Our children went to school. Our son was very fond of music and learned to play the violin. Later he gave up music. Our daughter also started playing the piano, but she also gave up. After school our son studied to become a photographer and then he began to work as a photographer. He married a nice Jewish girl from Uzhgorod. We made a chuppah for them at home and invited a rabbi. We also organized a wedding party at home. Their son Dmitrii was born in 1982. In 1996 our son and his family emigrated to Israel. His son went to study at school in Israel and then my son and his wife went to visit him there and decided to stay. My wife and I approved of his decision. My son and his wife were young and could start their life anew. Our son works as a driver in Israel. Our grandson finished school and serves in the army. When his service is over he will go to university.

Our daughter Elena went to work at the Uzhgorodpribor Plant where my wife worked. Elena married a Jewish man from Uzhgorod. Elena and her husband also had a Jewish wedding. Her last name in marriage is Goldman. In 1976 their son Edward was born. Our grandson finished school and went to Israel under a program for young people. He lives and works in Israel. He got married in Israel. I have an eight-year-old great-grandson. His name is Daniel. Unfortunately, Elena's marriage failed. Our daughter lives with us now. Elena worked at the plant for 22 years until it was shut down. Since then she has worked with Hesed. She used to deliver hot meals to old people and now she works as a visiting nurse.

Many of our friends and relatives moved to Israel in the 1970s. My wife and I sympathized with them and supported their plans, but we didn't intend to leave. I'm too old to work in Israel and I couldn't think of staying at home receiving a pension. I wanted to work and enjoyed working.

I was enthusiastic about perestroika 10, which began in the 1980s at the initiative of Mikhail Gorbachev 11. I was glad that people got an opportunity to start their business without obstacles and fear. Private businesses were allowed for the first time in the history of the USSR. Of course, private entrepreneurship existed before, but if a person got caught for working for himself he might have been arrested and imprisoned for it. Besides, anti-Semitism mitigated, both on the state and interpersonal level. Relationships with Israel improved at that time. Soviet people got an opportunity to travel abroad, visit their relatives and friends and invite them to their homes. Official Jewish organizations were established and people got an opportunity to read books by Jewish writers and attend Jewish concerts. In the past even the word 'Jew' wasn't officially used. If they talked about Jews that perished during World War II they called them 'Soviet people' and when they mentioned those that were at the front they said 'Russians, Ukrainians, Belarus and representatives of other nationalities of the Soviet Union'. Now they mention Jews, Heroes of the Soviet Union, scientists and use the word 'Jew' to identify the nation.

In 1997 I went to Israel to visit my son and his family, my grandson and see my great-grandson. I toured Israel. It's such a wonderful country! It's a pity there is no peace. I was pleased to see how much Israelis love their country and how patriotic young people are there. My daughter also went to Israel to visit her family. Perhaps it would be better for Elena to live with her son and grandson in Israel, but she is a loving daughter and understands that my wife and I are in great need of her.

In 1991, after the fall of the USSR, Ukraine became independent. Since then Jewish life began to revive. Many Jews dropped their Jewish traditions in the past. There were often fewer than ten people, which is necessary to have a minyan, at prayer houses and we had to go home without praying. Now many of those that didn't even identify themselves as Jews before go to the synagogue with their children and identify themselves as Jews. I go to the synagogue every Saturday. I'm glad that many young people identify themselves as Jews. Many young people attend the synagogue. There's also a Jewish school in Uzhgorod.

In 1999 Hesed was established in Uzhgorod. It's very important for older people and for children. There are many clubs at Hesed where young people learn Jewish traditions, customs, Yiddish and Ivrit, foreign languages and get computer education. There is a choir and dance club for children and adults. We celebrate Sabbath and Jewish holidays at Hesed. Beside spiritual development and communication Hesed supports and provides assistance to old people. They deliver food packages, medications and hot meals to their homes. This is great assistance to people in this hard time.

Glossary

Vladimir Tarskiy is a short man. He is sharp, chatty and cheerful. He lives in a two-bedroom apartment in Konkovo, a suburb of Moscow. His wife Anna died in 2003. Vladimir is a hospitable and friendly host. His apartment is furnished with furniture from the early 1960s. He has many books on technical subjects and fiction. He was willing to give us an interview and he fondly told us the story of his family.

My family background

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family background

Unfortunately, I know very little about the relatives of my father Leonid Tarskiy, or Emmanuel Sokolovskiy, which was his real name. My father was actively involved in the revolutionary communist movement. Leonid Tarskiy was his pseudonym. His documents indicating this name were issued to him at the time, when the Communist Party was in the underground and was persecuted by the tsarist authorities. In the early 1920s this became his name for the rest of his life, and he was called that at home and at work, and it was given in his documents.

My parents weren’t officially married, and my father lived separately from us. He left Moscow for the Far East and later moved to Voronezh [about 450 km south of Moscow]. My father came from the family of the Sokolovskiys. All I know about his father is that his name was Lev Sokolovskiy and that he lived in the town of Nikolaev [about 400 km south of Kiev]. His children were also born there. When they grew up, they got involved in revolutionary activities and left their home. I don’t know anything about my paternal grandmother whatsoever.

My father had an older brother and two sisters. His brother Ilia Sokolovskiy was born in Nikolaev in the 1880s. He became a journalist and wrote popular articles for Odessa newspapers under the pseudonym of Sedoy. My father’s older sister Alexandra was born in the 1870s. She was actively involved in underground revolutionary activities. She became Trotsky’s 1 wife in the 1890s. According to my mother, my father didn’t speak well of Trotsky. Probably the reason was that he left his sister with two children. Also, the shadow of Trotsky probably fell on him as well as his brother Ilia and his sister Alexandra who all perished in the Gulag 2 during the period of Stalin’s arrests [the so-called Great Terror] 3. They were blamed of relations with Trotsky, who was in disgrace, and sent to the Gulag.

Recently my relatives in Israel came across a magazine in which they published the memories of a former prisoner of the Gulag in Russian. She witnessed how Sedoy perished. He was exhausted and weak, and his convoy stabbed him with their bayonets. During the Great Patriotic War 4 Stalin issued an order for all prisoners to be taken away from German occupation to the East. They were exhausted and fell dying, and their convoy finished them with bayonets. Regretfully, I don’t know anything about my father’s sister Maria.

My father also got involved in revolutionary activities when he was young. As I mentioned before, Tarskiy was his pseudonym and later it became his surname, as well as mine. My father’s older brother Ilia provided money for my father to finish a Humanitarian Faculty in Switzerland. At the age of 22 he was elected a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine at the 1st and 2nd Congresses of the Communist Party of the Bolsheviks of Ukraine and the Central Committee sent him to Odessa 5 [about 450 km south of Kiev] to organize the Bolshevik underground to struggle against Denikin 6. My father became a Bolshevik journalist. He supervised the ‘Odesskiy communist’ newspaper publications. Later my father was chief editor of the ‘Knigonosha’, a popular magazine in Odessa in the 1920s.

I know more about my mother’s relatives. Her paternal grandfather Reb Boruch der Magid Roshal lived in the town of Shklov. [Editor’s note: Names like Reb Boruch der Magid Roshal were typical Jewish names in the 19th century. There was a common belief that if the angel of death would come for Boruch, he would not find him, but Magid and vice versa. The name was believed to guard a person from troubles.] I don’t know when my great-grandfather was born, but he died in 1890. I read about him in the biography of my uncle Victor, an amazing and extraordinary person. He wrote his autobiography in 1904. I read that in his childhood he was under the influence of his grandfather, ‘a preacher by profession, a man with patriarchal appearance, deeply religious and with an inexhaustible sense of humor’.

I don’t know anything about his wife, my great-grandmother, unfortunately. The parents of my grandmother were Gersh and Nehama, nee Vermel, Tseitlin. They must have come from Shklov as well. This is all I know about them. According to the family legend, my mother’s father changed his surname to Rabinovich to avoid mobilization to the army. This was the surname of some childless relatives who adopted him fictitiously [at that time the only sons in families were not subject to military service]. My grandfather’s first name was Honon Yankel. He was a quiet man. He read a lot and helped his wife who owned a store. He often went on business trips. When he was at home, he worked in the store, always hiding his books under the counter from his enraged wife. He was born in Shklov in 1850 and died in Odessa in 1907. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery. His wife, Maria Rabinovich, nee Tseitlina, owned a store in Odessa. She was a very busy woman and had to take care of her family. My grandmother was born in 1857 and died in Moscow in 1932. She was cremated and buried in Donskoy cemetery. Later all the deceased of the Rabinovich clan were buried there.

My mother’s parents had twelve children. The older children were born in Shklov. After my grandfather died in 1907, the family moved to Odessa. All children finished grammar school and were educated and intelligent people. My mother Yeva Lyulkina, nee Rabinovich, was the last child in the family. Her Jewish name was Hava. She was born in 1899. My grandmother owned a big store of household goods, but her children made a different choice in their life. All the older children got involved in revolutionary activities, traveled a lot and were taken to prisons. All of their friends and comrades found shelter in the house. The younger children, Rosa [Jewish name Rachil], Sophia [Jewish name Sarrah] and my mother Yeva were supposed to take care of their older sister and brothers and their comrades, when they were behind bars. The younger children were called Sonechka, Rosochka and Yevochka in the family. They sent or delivered parcels to their brothers and sisters and their comrades in jails.

My grandmother often went on business trips. While she was away, the younger children packed goods from her store and took some cash keeping it a secret from her. My mother’s brother Victor was born in 1882. He finished a Realschule 7 in Odessa and began to work as a propagandist of the committee of social democrats. He was arrested and put in Odessa prison. He took part in a hunger strike, was taken to jail in Voronezh and exiled to eastern Siberia. He participated in a riot in a transit prison and was sentenced to 20 years of forced labor in a camp. In January 1905 Victor escaped through a mine to Paris where he became a professional revolutionary. His life was like an adventure story. Several times he traveled to Russia illegally, was arrested but escaped again. He lived in London, Argentina, Australia and Africa. After [the Russian Revolution of] 1917 8 he returned to Russia through Japan. On his way back to Russia he managed to force Chinese officials to sign a protocol of reassignment of the Chinese Eastern Railroad to Russia. [Editor’s note: the railroad in North Eastern China, from Manchuria station through Kharbin to the Far East and Port Arthur, built by Russia in 1987-1903. Under the Russian-Chinese Treaty of 1924 it was recognized as a commercial enterprise to be managed jointly by China and Russia].

Although he didn’t have a higher education, Victor spoke several European languages. During the Soviet rule he was assistant Vice-President of the Academy of Sciences for the publication of the Big Soviet Encyclopedia. Later he worked as a diplomat in Latin America and China. Mayakovsky 9 was his friend. He accompanied the poet on his trip to Mexico. I remember him to be a merry and kind person telling lots of jokes. He was just called Vitka in the family. He died in 1934.

My mother’s brother Philip, called Fishka in the family, was not so accessible. He was born in 1885. He was a trade representative in the Soviet Embassy in London, traveled to Moscow and stayed in a suite in the Metropol Hotel. Later he was deputy minister of foreign trade and deputy minister of forestry. He vanished in the Gulag camps in 1937.

My mother’s sister Cipora, born around 1880, was a professional revolutionary. The tsarist police exiled her to the town of Ust-Sysolsk [about 1,200 km north of Moscow], where she died in 1913.

In 1920 or 1921 the family moved to Moscow. Grandmother Maria Rabinovich lived with her daughter Rosa till she died in 1932. I often stayed with them, when my parents took me there. I remember my grandmother well. She had a sound mind and a sense of humor till her last days. She never made the impression of an old and decrepit person. Being a real Odessite she used to repeat with the typical sense of humor that these people have: ‘As much as I know, it doesn’t hurt me’. The family was very close and its members always supported each other. The older brothers, Victor and Philip, gave Sophia and Rosa money to buy a cooperative apartment in 1933. Our relatives and friends used to have gatherings in this apartment in Odessa. The doors were always kept open for visitors. Later, when our family got into trouble, we found shelter in this apartment. My cousin Marianna, Aunt Sophia’s daughter, and my sister Inga, her daughter Anna and grandson Zhenia live in this apartment now.

My stepfather, Veniamin Lyulkin, was also an open, cheerful and hospitable person. I rarely communicated with him, though. Veniamin was quick and kind. He was a high-level official in the field of agriculture and grain stocks. My mother had two children from her first marriage: my sister Victoria, born in 1922, and I, born in 1925. Veniamin Lyulkin was the father of our younger sister Inga, born in 1931.

I don’t know where or how my parents met, but I guess that they came together through their revolutionary activities. Of course, Jewish traditions were out of the question. They were atheists. I was born in 1925. My early childhood was happy and untroubled. My mother, father, my sister and I lived in a big house in the center of Moscow. This building used to house a hotel in the early 20th century. In 1925 our family moved into two rooms of an eight-bedroom communal apartment 10 where the owner of the hotel had lived before the Revolution.

Growing up

My sister and I stayed with our nanny Polia, a young pretty girl from Riazan region. She adored me, as my older members of the family told me later. I was a quiet, agreeable and nice child. I didn’t cause anyone any trouble and was everybody’s darling. My nanny took me for walks. I particularly liked the bus stop near our house, where bright red English ‘Lowland’ buses with shining copper rails stopped. They looked like sailors starting on their journey. I envied the happy passengers going on their long tours. I was passionately fond of traveling when I grew up.

After my father moved to Voronezh he corresponded with my sister and me sending us cards with short letters written on the back, giving us instructions regarding studies and the list of books he was sending to Moscow. In summer 1932 I started kindergarten. This kindergarten took the children on trips to the seashore. I remember a Black Sea Fleet squadron with a battleship and cruisers in the sea, a boat cruise and a meeting with Red army troopers for who we gave a concert. When in 1929 our stepfather joined the family, we moved to his big three-bedroom apartment on Gorky Street in the center of Moscow. My kind and strong stepfather was quite an agreeable replacement of my father for me. I went to the Russian school near our house. My school life till the 6th grade could be described with my mother’s saying: ‘Quiet successes and noisy conduct’. I was a naughty and lazy idler. I was a pioneer [see All-union pioneer organization] 11 like everybody else and blindly believed in communist ideas.

In the late 1930s our family faced a number of disasters. My father became the first victim. He was deputy chief of the political department of the South-Eastern Railroad and executive editor of the ‘Vperyod’ [‘Go forward’] communist newspaper. On 13th May 1937 he was sentenced to ten years in prison for ‘anti-Soviet propaganda and illegal possession of weapons’. According to the information of the chief information center of the Ministry of Home Affairs of the RF, my father ‘died in prison on 10th January 1938; location unknown’.

The next victim was my stepfather, sentenced to ten years in prison on 16th July 1937 for ‘sabotage and participation in the anti-Soviet Trotskist organization’. In September my mother was notified on the ‘compaction of her living conditions due to her husband’s arrest’. My mother submitted a claim to the court referring to her having three children. On 3rd November official representatives made their appearance in our apartment with a search and arrest warrant. A Special Council of the NKVD 12 USSR sentenced my mother to ‘eight years in penitentiary camps as a member of the family of an enemy of the people’ 13. My mother was taken away that same night.

My sisters Victoria and Inga, the younger one was five years old, and I, eleven years old, were taken to a transit home for orphaned children - that we became all of a sudden despite our parents living - at the Holy Danilov Monastery in the center of Moscow. We got a wash in the shower, they took our fingerprints and photographs en face and profile, as if we were adult criminals. We were provided sufficient food and had clean bed sheets, but we weren’t allowed to leave the monastery. The walls around the Monastery were stuffed with broken glass. We were horrified waiting for them to send us to a children’s home, because we knew that my sisters and I would end up in different children’s homes in different towns and would be given different names and never be able to find each other again. Twice a day our tutors arranged ‘lessons of political education’ for the children of enemies of the people, taking us through a crowd of whistling and hooting local stray children: ‘Look at the saboteurs and traitors of their Motherland! Death to spies’. Our aunt Sophia saved us. She managed to obtain guardianship of the three of us. She took us to her home and told us that our father had been sentenced to ten years in prison without the right to correspond with us. From the talks in the children’s home I already knew that it meant the death penalty. She also told us that our mother had been sentenced to eight years in camps on the charges of being a non-informer.

Aunt Sophia had her own daughter, Marianna, born in 1932. The family never mentioned the father of the girl. Sophia worked as an economist in an office, but she couldn’t manage to support four children and aunt Rosa helped her. We went to school. Many of my classmates’ parents had been arrested as well. It was not appreciated to talk about it, and we felt very lonely. When the war in Spain [see Spanish Civil War] 14 began, the schoolchildren began to dream to fight on the side of the republicans. I was no different. ‘It’s important to go abroad’, I thought naively remembering exciting stories that uncle Victor had told us. The radio broadcast merry songs: ‘We live merrily today and tomorrow will be even better…’ And our situation was that our aunts worked so very hard to feed four children.

So, there was a firm decision taken to go to Spain. I was responsible for buying bread for the family. I saved some change each time till I had enough to buy a train ticket to Rzhev. I plotted the route: the nearest was the Latvian border, from there I would get to the sea, take a boat to France and then cross the border to Spain. I drew the route on the map of Europe; this map is still kept in my files in the Ministry of Home Affairs archives. For the case I would be captured by the opposite side in Spain I had typed a pile of anti-Soviet flyers on our typewriter at home. So I took a train to Rzhev from where several international trains were going to Riga.

I got to Rzhev [about 200 km west of Moscow] and managed to get into an international railcar. It was empty and all doors to the compartments, but one, were locked. My heart was pounding. I got into this compartment: there were rolled mattresses on the third bench and I hid behind them. I woke up from the noise of slamming doors: a frontier man and the conductor were inspecting the railcar. They didn’t notice me and the border was crossed easily. So all I had to do was stay quiet till the train reached Riga [about 680 km west of Moscow]; it was like a sentence to ten years in prison to wait that long. At the first stop I got out of the railcar and into an empty barrel without a bottom to spend the night. A janitor discovered me and took me to the local police who put me back on the train to transfer me to the transportation and road department of the Rzhev NKVD office.

They searched me and discovered a compass, a map and the flyers with the false slogans of the Soviet power, about the absence of freedom and lines for bread. ‘Who gave you these, boy and where were you going to take this anti-Soviet stuff?’ ‘I wrote them myself’. I spent the first month in a cell of t 4х1.5 meters and about 2.5 meters high. There was a bed attached to the wall, a stool and a bulb over a small window with a wooden shield outside. Later I learned that this shield was called a ‘muzzle’ in prisoners’ jargon. It was tightly adjusted to the wall from the outside leaving only a palm-wide slit on top through which the prisoners saw a piece of sky. There was not even a table or a toilet in the cell. The latter became the cause of my first conflict. According to the procedures for bull pens there was a schedule for going to the toilet to be followed by the convoy, while I believed that I could go to the toilet whenever I wished. I knocked on the door, but they didn’t let me out. I complained to a supervisor who explained the procedure to me. I got along well with my guards. They were young guys who were probably serving their mandatory army term. They didn’t bother me with interrogations and came to my cell twice a week.

All I saw was my cell, the toilet, corridors and the interrogation room. There was also a small yard where I could walk and three to four other prisoners were walking as well. There was a wall surrounding the yard on two sides, and on the two other sides there was a high fence with several rows of barbed wire on top of it. There was a tower and a guard with a rifle on it in the corner of the yard. There was a radio on a post outside, and at night I could listen to the news. Once it announced that the republicans had been defeated, and this made me upset more than my personal problems.

Two investigation officers were conducting my case. I refused to tell them my name or home address, but my aunt Sophia’s request helped the investigation to discover my address. My restless aunt addressed the Holy Danilov Monastery where I had been in 1937 after my mother’s arrest. The omnipresent organs helped her to find me in Rzhev where she arrived immediately. The investigation was over. I was sentenced under Article 58 items 1а – treason, 10 – anti-Soviet agitation and 84 – crossing the state border.

I was then taken to a common cell. It was a dim cell with a ray of light coming from the narrow slit between he wall and the ‘muzzle’. The window was in the upper part of the wall, and prisoners could only see the sky standing on the table pressing their faces tightly to the window niche. This was forbidden by prison rules and was punished by sending one to a punishment cell. I met my co-prisoners, got attached to them and close to some others. I told them about the events in the world and in the country.

The prison in Rzhev was built in the tsarist time. There were large numbers of inscriptions on all kinds of subjects on its brown and red walls. There were two rows of plank beds by the walls on two sides of the cell. There was a toilet in one corner, and the table was in the brightest part of the cell by the window. There was an electric bulb attached to the ceiling above the window opening, in a glass cowl and protected with thick wire grid. There were twelve prisoners in the cell sentenced for anti-Soviet propaganda. One was the former assistant people’s commissar of the food industry. He was an intelligent older man. He taught us English and Arabic.

There were ridiculous circumstances under which people were taken to prison. One young aviation technician after the 1st May parade of 1938, for which he prepared air planes for the flight over the Red Square on Stalin’s order – and there were 1000 planes involved – told his comrades that he had been invited to a banquet in the Kremlin where he had a shot with Voroshylov 14. As a proof, he showed them a card with a portrait of the people’s commissar signed: ‘My companion for a drink and snack. Klim Voroshylov.’ He actually bought this card and signed it himself. He was reported on immediately, arrested and sentenced to three years in prison for ‘political hooliganism’.

There was also an older blacksmith who had been a cavalry man during World War I. Somebody also reported on him. The investigation officers beat him demanding to confess of having served in intelligence. The blacksmith, who was used to fights in his village, endured it and kept silent. He actually didn’t seem to understand what they wanted from him. We spent time playing chess which was also forbidden. We made chess from bread painting the white ones with toothpowder. To make the board, we wiped tobacco ash onto the table and then made black cells on it. I was once sent to a punishment cell for playing chess, when the chief of jail broke into our cell catching me playing chess and ordered the guards to take me to the punishment cell for gross violation of the rules of conduct.

I was taken to a small 2х1.5 meter stone hole with a ventilation opening under the ceiling. There were many curses inscribed on the walls. There were sewage remains on the concrete floor. The guard said, ‘Don’t knock – nobody will hear’. My body gradually got sweaty. I felt giddy and dizzy. There was no toilet or stool in the cell. My fellow prisoners demanded at this time that the ‘teenager’ was taken back to his cell. Perhaps, this helped or for other reasons four hours later I was taken back. We also used to hum songs. Prisoners knew many songs. Songs cheered us up, quieting us and helping to get adjusted to one another mitigating the dislike that appeared among prisoners from time to time. My investigation officers didn’t bother me and I even forgot that they were still there.

One day in early June the guard opened the door and said: ‘Tarskiy, get your belongings and come out’. I was taken to a special black car with steel bars commonly called ‘voronok’ [derived from ‘Varon’, raven in Russian, and means bringing trouble]. I was taken to a room where there was an officer whom I had never seen before. He offered me a seat and read the sentence of the special council of the NKVD USSR [extra-judicial punitive body within the NKVD authorized to issue sentences without a trial or attorney. In 1939 it was acknowledged to be illegal and its sentences became ineffective]: ‘The defendant charged under Article 58-10 part 1 and 84 of the CC of the RSFSR Tarskiy V.L. should be set free with the inclusion of the term of punishment into the term of his stay in the bull pen’. They asked me to sign under my obligation not to disclose the circumstances and materials of my case, gave me a ticket to Moscow and took me to the railway station in a car.

I returned home, and half a year later my stepfather, Veniamin Lyulkin, was released from prison. It turned out that Stalin needed to have strategic food stocks made while my stepfather and a number of best experts in bread stocks were in prison. He issued an order to discharge them. My stepfather began to pull strings in Moscow for my mother’s release: ‘She is in prison due to me, and I have been found innocent. Let her free’. However, my mother was only discharged on 21st December 1940. We didn’t get our apartment in Moscow back. There was our big family of eight living in my aunt Sophia and Rosa’s apartment.

There was always the atmosphere of love in this apartment. The sisters Rosa, Sophia and Yeva loved and supported each other, and my mother was grateful to her sisters that they rescued her children. My mother lost apartment and belongings, but at least the children were doing all right. My stepfather became the head of this big family. He loved all of us. When he saw me thin with my head shaved, he demanded my certificate of release and burned it. ‘That’s it! Nobody knows about the jail. Don’t tell anybody and live your life as a free person’.

In the 1960s I, a veteran of the war and former intelligence sergeant, addressed the KGB 15 with a request for review of my case. The officers there were surprised: ‘What do you mean, citizen! You crossed the Soviet border, didn’t you? You did. This means, you are still a state criminal and you are not subject to rehabilitation 16’. Many years later, on 18th October 1991, the law of the RSFSR [Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic], ‘Rehabilitation of the victims of political repression’, was issued canceling all verdicts of the ‘Special Council of the NKVD’, and the ‘council’ itself was recognized as illegal. On 23rd June 1993 I finally received a certificate of rehabilitation.

After I was released I went to the 6th grade of another school. I had smartened up in jail and became the best pupil of this school. I had excellent marks only in the 6th and 7th grades. Then I decided to enter a technical communications school. They admitted me without exams and nobody knew about my past and my parents’ sentences.

On Sunday 22nd June 1941 only my mother and I were at home, when the radio broadcast with a tragic voice of the announcer: ‘Listen to an important news’. Then Molotov 17 spoke. As it happened, the war had begun and bombs were falling. I was 16 and had a passport when the war began. Fire protection groups were formed. In the first month of the war we patrolled the roofs in Moscow installing barrels with water, bags of sand and big long tongs to fight the fire bombs. There was an air raid on 22nd July 1941. The Germans made a tactical mistake. There were markets under glass roofs near railway stations in Moscow and the railway stations were camouflaged. So they dropped bombs on those glass roofs, but the stations were intact.

We saw German planes targeted by our ground artillery and were happy when their planes were hit. Later there were bombings every day. Fire bombs broke through the roofs and stuck in the attics. We grabbed them with tongs and threw them into barrels with water. We saw big fires. Soon a direction for the evacuation of the children from Moscow was issued. My sisters Victoria and Inga, my cousin Marianna, my mother and I and my aunts Sophia and Rachil evacuated to the town of Naberezhniye Chelny [about 900 km east of Moscow]. There was a big grain elevator in the town, and my stepfather had acquaintances who worked there. He made arrangements for the children to stay in the kindergarten and the adults to be accommodated in local houses.

I hated to evacuate, but my family convinced me to do so since I was the only man with a whole bunch of children and women. We sailed there by boat and I stayed with machine operators all the time. When we arrived at Naberezhniye Chelny, I went to look for a job and was sent to an equipment yard in a big kolkhoz 18 where I worked as a scale operator and later, when tractor operators went to the army, their foreman trained me to operate tractors and I became a tractor operator. I was very strong. My mother and my aunts went to work, and Inga, Victoria and Marianna were in boarding school. We didn’t starve.

After the harvest I went to work as an electrician at the grain elevator and later went to a course of agricultural mechanics. I was sent to work in a kolkhoz. I fixed a vehicle and wanted to drive it, but I didn’t get permission and the work I had to do seemed dull to me. On the way to Naberezhniye Chelny I got interested in the work of boat motor operators. I quit the kolkhoz and went to work on the ‘Zhemchuzhina’ [‘Pearl’] boat, the biggest freight and passenger boat in the Volga-Kama basin.

I worked in 3x1 shifts: working one shift and resting the two following shifts. I was a stoker working from 12 midnight till 4am. At four I was replaced and fell asleep on the dark iron floor right where I was. It felt as if I had just lied down when they were pushing me to get back to work. We sailed up and down the Kama and Volga. As the front line was approaching Stalingrad [about 900 km from Moscow] in 1942 the ‘Zhemchuzhina’ was used for the needs of the front for the transportation of ammunition and the wounded. The Volga was not as wide as it is now and the Germans blocked it by dropping mines. There were barges and towboats exploding on them. Later I got to know that there was Stalin’s order to leave 10 percent of the crew on a damaged ship and the remaining staff was to join the marines.

During the war

Once our boat bumped into a mine and I was assigned to the marines. I was 17. We were trained to manage rifles. I was wounded in my first battle and taken to hospital. From there I was sent to the Ordzhonikidze motorcyclist school in the town of Minusinsk [about 3,400 km east of Moscow], but they didn’t admit me after they got to know about my family and sent me back to the frontline. However, the military registry office authorized me to find out, if there were students in this school who wished to go to the front before they finished the course of training. I stayed there for some time looking for the strongest young men. I had meals in the cafeteria of this school. The food was miserable: a big bowl of boiled water with potato peels, bread crumbs and food fat made from kerosene and oil, and mashed potatoes for the 2nd course. The volunteers received their rationed food and we went to the front line.

Our destination point was near Smolensk [about 350 km west of Moscow] and from there I was sent to the Omsk infantry school where I failed for the same reason of my family history. Finally I joined Novosibirsk reserve infantry division 21 training infantry sergeants. I liked it there. I wrote for a newspaper about our commanding officers. I was promoted to the rank of a private first class. I was praised for my performance in this school. They even sent my mother a letter of gratitude for raising a good son. We were accommodated in big earth huts for 200 tenants. There was a forest nearby. We exercised drills and mine firing. I then joined the Komsomol 19, and became a Komsomol battalion organizer. I wrote articles for a district newspaper.

Then we headed to the front as a marching battalion. We stayed longer in Novosibirsk [about 2,800 km east of Moscow]. We were thirsty. I took a bucket to fetch some water, but when I ran back – there was no train. I saw the train some 50 meters away and ran after it. I caught up with the last railcar and jumped into the tambour. It was autumn, cold wind and snow falling. I was freezing. I put down the bucket trying to get myself warmer. When the train stopped, I ran to an open platform, and on the next stop I ran to our railcar. I jumped on the footboard, but I couldn’t lift my arm to knock and knocked with my head instead. The others dragged me inside and gave me half a glass of pure spirit and I felt my ears getting warmer.

For the first time we realized that we were moving to the front at Bologoye station [about 200 km west of Moscow]. There was hell at this station. It must have been bombed severely: there were twisted rails and turned over locomotives. We moved on. At night we got off the train in Toropetz [about 400 km west of Moscow], and marched to infantry division 71 of the Baltic Front. I was assigned to the division intelligence. Later I served in intelligence units of different divisions and fronts throughout the war. I had to catch prisoners for interrogation, identify a junction between the wings of armies, identify the front line and set up communications with partisans.

We were in the northeastern part of Belarus, in the vicinity of Nevel [about 450 km south of St. Petersburg]. There were partisans in the middle of swamps to which Germans couldn’t get access. We delivered directions, and weapons and ammunition to partisans. We sometimes got directions to capture a prisoner for interrogation, but at times it just happened so that we did. Once we were ordered to identify and bring together the flanks of a division, when we captured a prisoner. This German trooper either got lost or had no idea where he was going. When he saw about eight of us he raised his hands shouting ‘Hitler kaput’. This was a common statement when they surrendered.

We went on tasks in our military uniforms, but left all documents and awards. To capture a prisoner for interrogation we went in two groups: one capture group and one cover group. I was big and strong. Once a German trooper stabbed me in my neck with his knife. I stabbed him to death and we didn’t capture a prisoner that time. It took us one, two or even three days to capture a prisoner since we also had to identify access to capture one at night. We had to find one or two German troopers because if there were more of them they would start firing at us and this would mean the end. Germans were very cautious guarding their positions at night. When we bumped into one German he was afraid of starting fire and so were we. He feared that if he started making a noise we would kill him, and we were afraid of attracting attention. When German troopers realized there was a group of us they usually surrendered. I have another scar on my hip: by another German who tried to stab me in my stomach.

Our division advanced to Nevel. The Soviet troops started their advance to break through the blockade of Leningrad 20, and our division was ordered to attack from the north of Nevel to distract Germans and make it impossible for them to provide additional troops to the Leningrad Front. We suffered significant losses, but we had to demonstrate a massive attack and all division staff including accountants and intelligence troopers were distributed to infantry regiments. I was assistant platoon commander. After an artillery preparation we advanced across the Lithuanian border to the town of Pustoska [about 400 south of Leningrad]. I was with a ‘Dehtiaryov infantry’ machine gun. My friend Semyon Narovlianskiy perished in this battle, and I was wounded: both my hands were shot through during an attack.

I left the battle field and was taken to a hospital in Nevel. The doctor decided to amputate my hand. She was a dentist by profession. An old assistant doctor saved my hand. He was telling the doctor to save the 17-year old guy’s hand and wrote to my mother, who rushed to where I was. She wanted them to send me to Moscow. My sister Victoria talked to her co-student who was the daughter of a general, chief of medical service of a hospital in Moscow. My mother obtained a letter of permission to take me to Moscow. A doctor in this hospital performed surgery on my hand. At that time my mother received a letter from my military unit. They informed her that I was awarded a medal, the number of the medal and that the medal and a certificate were sent to the department of awards. My mother was very happy. This was my first award.

After the hospital I was sent back to the front line. I was assigned an intelligence trooper to the operations unit of a Guard Mine Firing Unit. The intelligence troopers were to identify the coordinates of German troops. There were Katyusha units at quite a distance from where we were at the front line. We also served as communication troopers. There were no radios, but wiring units and when the wire got damaged we were to find the breakage. Once I was wounded in my right shoulder trying to fix a communication line. In total I served two weeks in the Guard Mine Firing Unit. I had to stay about a month and a half in a hospital near the front line. I was wounded in January and in late March or early April I was back to the front, in the 17th Guard division.

This was the period of preparation to the ‘Bagration’ operation for the liberation of Belarus. This was the 3rd Belarusian Front. There were big battles near Vitebsk [about 450 km west of Moscow]. At times divisions dispersed several kilometers away from one another, and there were swamps between them, and then intelligence troopers were to find the flanks to take them together. Following this order we got into treble firing of two our divisions and one German. I was severely wounded there. After the hospital I was sent back to the front. This was already the year of 1944. I had to catch up with our troops. I got to Orsha [about 550 km from Moscow], and the front line was in the vicinity of Minsk [about 720 km from Moscow], and there were no trains moving in this direction. There were trains full of the military from hospitals going back to the front in Orsha.

All of a sudden a passenger train stopped at the station. It was heading to Minsk. There were officers and generals in the train and we climbed the roofs of the railcars. The commander of the station couldn’t allow people to be on the roof. He came to the platform with his men armed with machine guns ordering us to clear the roof. Nobody listened to him. Everybody was eager to go to the front, when all of a sudden a general got off the train and shot his gun into the air demanding for the commander to make his appearance: ‘How much longer can we be here? I’m going to command a division. If the train doesn’t move in five minutes I shall shoot you and inform the commandment that I’ve done it on grounds of sabotage’. The commandant waved his hand and the train moved on. We arrived in Minsk sitting on the roof of the train.

The railway station had recently been cleared of Germans, and there were ashes and ruins around. In the commandant office we were told to move on since the Third Belarusian Front was in Lithuania. In my effort to catch up with my troops I walked across Lithuania as far as Eastern Prussia. The military heading to the front line from hospitals had certificates for rationed food or hot meals that they could receive in special provision centers on their way. In Eastern Prussia, where I arrived, was detached fighting anti-tank artillery brigade 47 of the reserve of the chief commandment. Its commanding officer was captain Chemeris, a nice, but weird, person. He tested me, but since I had studied artillery, I knew all kinds of details, including targeting and identification of coordinates. He liked me so much that he appointed me commanding officer of a platoon.

We served side by side with him till the victory over Germany and later in Japan. Our task was to identify the targets and coordinates. Since this was anti-tank artillery with direct targeting our observation point was located beside the front line positions of infantry where we performed our tasks. At first there were inert battles in Eastern Prussia. Our brigade participated in a few breakthroughs. We were making the way for infantry marching ahead. We took the firing positions on tank risk direction locations. When intelligence units advised us that there were tanks accumulated in the rear of German troops we moved in that direction, deployed there waiting. If there was an order to go into action, we did.

Once, when we were deployed near the Lithuanian-German border, Captain Chemeris called for me. He always had unusual ideas. This time he ordered me to go to the rear of the Germans and hide in a haystack unnoticed by the Germans. When the Germans started on their tank attack, we were to set all haystacks on fire and return to our unit. In this way the tanks were to be seen in the light of burning haystacks and we could shoot at them easily. My soldier and I looked at each other. We had no idea how we could manage this. Where would we go in the background of burning haystacks? However, this was an order and we went on. We discovered a spot in the lowland where there were no Germans and where we could crawl into their rear. We crawled to haystacks and stayed there overnight, but there was no attack that night. We stayed in those haystacks for another day till we could manage to go back to our positions in the dark. The commanding officer praised us.

Then fierce efforts to liquidate the Eastern-Prussian grouping were taken. Our brigade joined a tank army. We broke through the front line with the tanks. A tank is a noticeable target and we were to neutralize the weapon emplacement to enable the tanks to attack. For these actions and the storming attacks on two towns our army received appreciation of Stalin twice. There were fierce battles in this direction. We witnessed how General Cherniakhovskiy, Commander of the 3rd Belarusian Front, was lethally wounded in a small town cleared from the Germans who retreated into a small forest on a hill in the north. Thus the town was in their full view. Our attack was delayed. Cherniakhovskiy was a very energetic man, the youngest Commander of the Front. A column of vehicles with the Commander of the Front drove to the headquarters. The staff rushed outside, the Germans saw it and shot Cherniakhovskiy.

Marshal Vasilevskiy replaced him. He was chief of general staff before. We, soldiers, sensed the difference. Perhaps, German troops were exhausted from previous battles or Vasilevskiy was more skilled than the previous commander, but German troops began to fall apart. They were encircled and eliminated without significant losses or hysterical battles. The front promptly advanced to the Baltic Sea. The Eastern-Prussian grouping of Germans was cut into two parts.

I need to mention an episode that hasn’t been recorded in military history. Konigsberg [today Kaliningrad, Russia] was encircled twice. The first time, and we participated in it, was a breakthrough to Zalmanskiy peninsula. We advanced to the sea west of Konigsberg cutting it from Pilau where the Germans had several tank units. They attacked, captured many prisoners and came back to Konigsberg. I need to mention here that while our aviation bombed military facilities and utilities, the Americans and British raged on cluster bombings of the towns that were to belong to us after the war. They destroyed Dresden this way and bombed Konigsberg. We were in a town near Koningsberg before Germans repositioned themselves in Konigsberg. The allies didn’t drop bombs on this town and all German elite took shelter in it.

When we came into this town, there were civilians in it. We had never met any before. Peaceful citizens usually left the towns before we entered there, but here we broke into a living German organism. I didn’t care about women then. Besides, nobody raped my wife or killed my children, but there were older soldiers who had information that their wives had been raped by the Germans or their wives and children had been killed. They began to take revenge on German women. I don’t think there were more than 20 percent of the German women left who weren’t raped in this town. The soldiers destroyed and ruined everything. I saw them throwing down a grand piano listening to its clinking. It didn’t occur to them that it would be all ours in the end. They burned everything. They sensed the victory. If they had saved every house on our territory because it was ours, there, on the German land, they wreaked vengeance on Germans. ‘Let’s set this house on fire and I will get warm nearby.’

I remember our troops seizing a railway station where there were trains with valuables that Germans had taken to this station. There were a few railcars with Swiss watches. Our soldiers took five to ten watches each. I didn’t need a watch, so I took a box full of Zeiss binoculars and stereo tubes with periscope features. These were valuable trophies for my intelligence activities. While we were in this town, we didn’t know what was happening in the rear, and at this time Germans troops broke back to Konigsberg. We were ordered to move in the assigned direction, when we bumped into a commandant’s platoon. ‘Who are you?’. We began to explain that we were from the frontline observation point and that we had got the order to return to our unit. They took us to the commandant office to clarify the circumstances and put us into a cellar with cupboards full of delicious food. There was silver tableware on the table in the middle of the cellar. This had probably been a hotel or a café before.

We took to drinking and eating, when we heard some noise and cracking sounds upstairs. The door opened and our commanding officer and the commandant came in. He pretended to speak in a threatening voice ‘What are you doing here? Eating? The battery is fighting and you are fooling around here? Rush to the battery location!’ We were sorry to leave the spot, but moved to the position of the battery. By the way, we left there on time since the Germans went on their attack: their two groupings that we had split before united and they occupied Konigsberg and the town where we had stayed before.

There were many battles and attacks before we broke through to the sea and proceeded to Konigsberg and fought it back in April. For the attack on Konigsberg I was awarded the Order of the Red Star 22. Then there was the Zalmanskiy peninsula and fortress Pilau. This was a historical fortress. There were huge marine cannons there. During our attack on Konigsberg we had an inconvenient position to support our infantry. We couldn’t see the positions of the enemy. Our commander ordered me to move onto the territory of the enemy and shoot air rockets in the direction of the positions that were to be destroyed. There was an artillery preparation and Germans were hiding away. I went on this task with my radio operator.

After fulfilling the task we hardly managed to escape from there. Later this radio operator perished. I usually went on my intelligence tasks with a radio operator. Three of my radio operators perished during the war. One was hit by a mine and smashed to pieces, there were no remains left to bury; another operator perished in the tank brigade near Pilau. This battle was called ‘Landing troops on armor’. I was sitting on the tank beside my radio operator to send messages about our whereabouts, when a shell exploded near us. He was killed and I just fell off and wasn’t even wounded. He was a skilled carpenter. When a soldier had been killed before, this man made him a coffin and a grave pillar with a star. He said back then, ‘Here we bury him while there will be nobody to make a decent burial for me’, and indeed it happened so. I put him aside, we threw stones over him, marked the spot on the map and moved on to Konigsberg.

I didn’t have any fear during the attack. I was young and had no children. Besides, I had been in the war for some time. I used to feel fear in Belarus and in Smolensk region during bombings and air raids, when we were defenseless. There were bombs falling on you and the soil hitting you from all around. It wasn’t just fear, it was the feeling of hopelessness, when you look for a hiding, but there is none. An attack is different. When I had been wounded in my hands I felt like running forward and tearing everything apart with my teeth, though I couldn’t even hold weapons. Any of us felt the same. We attacked shouting ‘Hurrah! There! Go forward!’, or advanced in silence. When we came closer when we could see Germans we began to shout to scare them and it worked: they left their trenches retreating – it was scaring when a brutal crowd moved on them. I joined the Party at the front. My father was a dedicated communist. I became a traitor of the motherland for struggling for communist ideas. I was absorbed in them. I joined the Party for ideal considerations.

They write in books that the infantry received vodka before attacks. We didn’t. In winter we got our daily rates regardless of attacks. We always had almost a canister of vodka in our intelligence platoon. Our sergeants were smart. They submitted requests for a ration for 50 people before a battle and after the battle there were about 20 survivors and there were always sufficient quantities of vodka available, but I don’t remember any drinking excesses. Well, we could drink 200 grams instead of the standard 100. There was the tradition to drop awards in the mess tin to ‘wash it out’.

The war in Eastern Prussia was over in April. We moved to the seashore. We stayed in a nice resort town: gorgeous houses, furnished and vacant. There were still battles near Berlin, but we liquidated all Germans in Eastern Prussia. I was under arrest on Victory Day 23. We felt like the war was over for us, even though there were battles near Berlin or Vienna – this was far from where we were. It lasted about two days, when we were told that we were to attend mandatory political classes. In the morning my commanding officer gave me the schedule. We had been on battlefields, when now we had to attend a class with the title ‘Sleep and security’. My platoon and I went to a forest, took off our boots and leg wrappings and relaxed on the grass. However, we were intelligence troopers and we watched around to be on the alert.

On the 2nd day of training an inspector arrived from the general staff office. I noticed somebody approaching us, looked at my watch - it was the time for a three-minute break according to the schedule. I approached the inspector to explain that we were having a class and then there was a break. ‘Why don’t you order ‘Attention?’ I explained that this order wasn’t supposed to be given during a break and there was loud snoring around. Formally they couldn’t forward any charges, but they still gave me three days of house arrest. This happened on 8th to 9th May 1945. This was a punishment for officers. There were no guards, but I wasn’t supposed to leave the house.

I was taken to a nice house, my guys brought wine and food there. I was eating, when I heard shooting. There were even heavy cannons shooting and air rockets. My commander came running in. ‘Why are you sitting here? It’s the victory; that supersedes everything!’ I had a box full of German air rockets on my vehicle. I opened it to shoot color rockets. Basically, we celebrated the victory. A few days later we were ordered to relocate to Konigsberg for a parade of the garrison. Marshal Vasilevskiy received it. I was a leading singer in the regiment. We sang naughty songs: ‘when a gypsy man threw a gypsy woman onto a bench’. Our commanders and we liked these songs a lot. Then we were taken to Mongolia by train.

I didn’t know much about what the Germans did to Jews during the war. We knew that they exterminated prisoners, as a rule, and that there were death camps. In the army I had ‘Russian’ indicated in my documents since if God forbid I would have got in captivity, everybody knew it was sure death, but we didn’t know any details about the camps, crematoria, six million of killed old people and children. [Being a Jew meant being surely destined to death in case they were captured, and for a Russian there was still hope to survive.] Nationality didn’t matter in the army. Personal values mattered. There was a mixture of nationalities in our units. Everybody was aware I was a Jew wherever I served, but there was no segregation in this regard. It was only after the war that anti-Jewish attitude on a large scale appeared. There were many Jews at the front. All boys in our family who came of the recruitment age were at the front. My two cousin brothers perished: one near Stalingrad and the other one near Moscow.

I had several wounds, seven of them severe, during the war. I was wounded in my shoulder three times, one splinter wounded me in the abdominal cavity, I still have 20 splinters in my head, talocrural and in the shoulder, but in general, I was lucky and young, and the wounds healed fast. They healed and I still run around today or pretend to be running around. 

I have orders and medals. I have 22 governmental awards in total. There were awards for combat actions. I received an Order of the Great Patriotic War, 2nd class after we repelled a tank attack in Eastern Prussia. [Editor’s note: established 20th May 1942. These orders were awarded to officers and men of the Soviet army, navy, and to partisans for personal courage and bravery as well as to those who contributed to the success of an operation. The 2nd class award was issued over 1,028,000 times.] I also have an Order of the Red Star 22 for Konigsberg and two medals for combat service. [Editor’s note: established 17th October 1938. This medal was awarded for a person’s contribution to the success of a combat mission and for the enhancement of the combat readiness of the military units. The silver medal with the inscription ‘For distinguished service in battle’ over a saber crossed with a rifle. The medal was awarded over 5,000,000 times.] And I have a Mongolian order for the defeat of Japanese troops.

The trip from Konigsberg across the victorious country to Japan took us a whole month. How we were met! There were flowers thrown at us, people were meeting their liberators at stations and in towns. They were happy that we had won and that this horrific war was over and brought flowers to meet the trains from the front, in which the military were returning home. We passed villages where there was nothing left and they were throwing us carrots. Tears filled our eyes: people didn’t have anything, but shared the last things they had with us. In Darasun [about 4,500 km east of Moscow] we got off and walked across Buriatia and Mongolia to Choybalsan [about 5,000 km east of Moscow]. We encamped in Mongolia. There was general staff of the Zabaikalskiy front. We were told lies during our trip. We were told that we were taken for reformation, and that we needed to take everything we could from Prussia since at the place we were heading to we were to dig earth huts. We loaded wood, a grand piano and even vehicles; everything we could. We didn’t know where we were going.

Before our departure a high official from the political department started his fable about correspondence with relatives. I wrote my mother every day from the front and the field mail operated well, but this queer man told us to not drop our letters in mail boxes at stations, but hand them to field mail reps.

Our commanding officer didn’t want us to write about our destination. My mother all of a sudden received my letter from Konigsberg saying that I was alive and healthy and would come home soon, while she hadn’t received a letter from me in three months. No letters that we took to the field mail office had been sent. Later censors thoroughly checked my letters from Choybalsan crossing out any mention of my whereabouts. However, knowing the Russian characters, I mentioned the name of the town five to six times in a letter. They crossed it out at the beginning and at the end of the letter, but missed the middle part. Our commanding officers got married during the trip. We had a grand piano with us and there were girls joining us on our way. We sang and danced. When we approached the border with Mongolia, we were told that only the military, but not their girlfriends would be allowed across the border. When we arrived in Mongolia, it turned out that Mongolians paid one horse for a binocular.

They could see a rider at quite a distance through the binocular. We didn’t need a horse, so we traded a binocular for money and bought alcohol. We were in Choybalsan for about a month. Troops for the attack on Japan were gathered there. We were in the reserve of the Zabaykalskiy Front and were waiting for the declaration of war. There was one army protecting our borders located in Mongolia throughout the war. When we arrived this army moved to the border, and we became a front line reserve. I admired the fortifications that the army made with a few stories, the passages in the sand, shelters, and everything was skillfully camouflaged.

The war with Japan 23 lasted three months. On 10th August Japan capitulated. On 3rd September I received a medal for the victory over Japan. We struggled against Japan on the territory of China. We actually had no combat actions. There was major Japanese resistance in the direction of Vladivistok where they held strong, but what could they do here with the open steppe and a tank army attacking? We had all cannons and heavy artillery with us in Eastern Mongolia. Of course, we had losses. There’s even a monument to those who perished in the Far East - there were about 15 of them. This happened at the time, when the 11th army alone lost over 10,000 during the attack on Konigsberg. The Japanese were very scared of getting captured by Mongolians. They were so wild. They didn’t give food to prisoners. And they threw a loop around their neck, riding their horses and the prisoners were running behind.

Our troops didn’t torture prisoners. There were Japanese officers supervising Japanese captives, and our troops even left their cold weapons with them. There were only our guards watching that our soldiers didn’t rob the Japanese captives. The Japanese had watches that became trophies. I knew that Americans had dropped an atomic bomb on Japan, but this was somewhere far away from me. We actually didn’t read newspapers and had no idea about how deadly dangerous nuclear weapons were. There were no such celebrations like there had been after the victory over Germany. There was triumph that it was so easy to destroy a big empire. There was no immediate demobilization, but I got lucky. There was an order issued saying that military who had three or more wounds were subject to immediate demobilization, and I had seven.

After the war

After the war with Japan we were grouped based on the locations we came from and sent home by trains. The trains were slow and I was eager to get home as soon as possible. I changed for a courier train to Moscow. I was rich when I came to Moscow. The money that I brought with me lasted in the family for quite some time. I had shoes and clothes and received cards. [Editor’s note: the card system was introduced to directly regulate food supplies to the population by food and industrial product rates. There were cards for workers, non-manual employees and dependents in the USSR. Food products were distributed per food cards or coupons. There was nothing in stores to buy for money. Food cards were issued at work, in colleges or in social services.] We were paid at the front, but we hardly ever spent this money. Before going to the East we received bags of money: there was guard and field money, in Germany we were paid in occupational marks, and in Mongolia we received tugriks. In Manchuria we received Chang Kay Shi Chinese dollars. In Moscow I exchanged these currencies to rubles.

My family was happy that I was back home. We lived in the apartment where my aunts Rosa and Sophia accommodated us. My friends and my sister's friends, the former exiles who had no place to live and our relatives always found shelter in this apartment. There is the friendly atmosphere surrounding anybody who comes into this apartment. I decided to go to college, but first I had to obtain a secondary school certificate. I had finished seven years at school. I passed school exams for three years. This was 1947 when specialists for atomic energy studies were in great demand. I entered the Engineering and Physics Faculty of Moscow Applied Physics College. Right upon my admission the period of exclusion of Jews from science began: the campaign against cosmopolitans 24. I remember Professor Landa, who had organized this college, was fired. Professor Haikin, an outstanding mechanic theoretician quit his job.

I studied well and made reports in our mathematics club. I was a head student of the course. When we were in our third year of studies students began to obtain permits to do sensitive work. I was invited to the special department where they told me that they could not allow me access to secrets due to my name. I had too many sins according to their thinking. My father having been arrested as an enemy of the people and I having being in prison and probably my Jewish identity also played its role. I went to study in the Moscow Machine Instrumental College [STANKIN], the faculty of machines and technology of the foundry production. This was one of the few higher educational institutions where Jews were admitted. There were many Jewish lecturers and students. As a result, there were such good results, that graduates from STANKIN were in great demand. Our students’ life was wonderful. It was easier for me to study there. It took me one or two hours to prepare for exams. I went in for tourism and mountain climbing. In winter I guided groups of skiers to Moscow region. I was head man in the group, editor of the wall newspaper and chairman of the tourism and mountain climbing club. I organized many tours, became master of sports in tourism and traveled to the Far North in the country. I was a reliable leader. There were no accidents in my groups and I was often invited to supervise training in the Caucasus and Altay. 

In 1949 my mother died after being severely ill. My mother wasn’t a public person. She never joined the party or any public activities. She liked everybody, supported and helped all. One of my strong impressions was that during my mother’s funeral: the hall of the crematorium was overcrowded, many people grieved after my mother. This was the kind of person she was. My stepfather Veniamin Lyulkin lived with us for a long time and was the head of the family. He worked in the ministry of bread products where he was deputy chief of department of acceptance and placement of bread. In 1952 he remarried, received a new apartment and moved there with his wife, but he continued to be a friend of the family. He died of a heart attack in 1960. Aunt Rosa had fracture of the femoral neck and was bedridden ever since. She died in 1963. Aunt Sophia got blind in the late 1950s, but she kept her sense of humor and nice attitude. She lived wrapped in Marianna and her nephews’ care and love. She died in 1989. My sisters Victoria and Inga, my cousin sister Marianna and I have always been friends.

My older sister Victoria finished Moscow Polygraphist College and married Vladimir Zaitsev, a nice Russian guy, in 1946. She worked as an editor and a librarian. Her daughter’s name is Yekaterina. Victoria died in 1996. My sister Inga graduated from the Geographical Faculty of Moscow University. She worked as a geographer, married Igor Kontsebovskiy, also a Russian guy, and they live in harmony. She has two daughters: Yelena and Anna. She raises her grandson Yevgeniy, Anna’s son.

The time of receiving mandatory job assignments 25 was coming close. I spent a lot of time with public activities, had all excellent marks, was editor of the faculty newspaper, a veteran of the war, a member of the party and I assisted the dean’s office to eliminate lost hours in our studies. I believed I had all grounds to expect a good job assignment, but I was the last one to be called into the room. The meeting was chaired by the deputy minister of machine tool construction. He was a foundry man. Many years later I did joint work with him, and then he explained: ‘Look, I had directions of the district party committee regarding all job assignments. It didn’t matter what I knew or wanted. Everything was directed’. To cut this long story short: I was told that there were no vacancies in Moscow, though I was aware that the director of the scientific research institute of the foundry machine building [NIILITMASH] had forwarded a request for my assignment to his institute. I was assigned to work in Kolomna [a small town 50 km from Moscow], at the biggest plant of heavy machines. I realized it didn’t make any sense to complain. When I came to the ministry to obtain a letter of assignment, they told me that the plant had refused to employ me. So they sent me to the Klinskiy, about 100 km from Moscow, to a machine repair plant, the last enterprise in the lists of our Ministry. They didn’t know what a wonderful gift they prepared for me.

I went to the plant. Its director was a former foundry man. He appointed me chief of laboratory. This was good for a graduate since the others were just the lowest rate engineers in their scientific research institutes. This happened to be a nice job for all ‘outcasts’ that later developed into the best chief designers. There were literally trains of machines shipped to our plant under the reparation terms [from the beaten countries] and we restored them. I dealt with the best machines in the world. Soon I became supervisor of the foundry shop and then was chief of laboratory and supervisor at the same time. The director of the plant was a drunkard, but he was a great foundry specialist and we got along well. There is a German saying about the foundry men: ‘It’s a bad metal that doesn’t pour and the foundry man who doesn’t drink’.

Once we decided to celebrate my promotion. I went to buy more vodka in the café at the railway station. I bought two bottles. This was fall 1953, when there was amnesty and many criminals were released in Klin. [Editor’s note: After Stalin had died in March 1953 he was succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev 26 as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The new leadership declared an amnesty for some serving prison sentences for criminal offences, announced price cuts, and relaxed the restrictions on private plots. De-Stalinization also put an end to the role of large-scale forced labor in the economy.] When I was going back, two men caught up with me. One of them took a knife out of his pocket demanding my coat from me. I grabbed a bottle and gave one of them a hard blow in his temple. He fell to the ground and another criminal ran away. The blow was so hard that even the bottle broke. I happened to be attacked by the criminals who had been released from jail. I killed one of them. The militia proved that I was defending myself and the case ended well for me. They found the knife with the criminal’s fingerprints on it at the scene of crime. However, about two weeks later the captain of the militia office notified me that there was a gang of criminals in Klin planning to wreak vengeance and it would be better for me to leave town.

At that period there was an order issued by the government to send industrial engineers to kolkhozes and equipment yards. I wrote a letter to the central party committee informing them that I was ready to go to any distant kolkhoz and they assigned me to an equipment yard in Tajikistan. I worked there for four years. Then the equipment yards were closed. My wound on the hip opened and I was taking medical treatment in Moscow, when the director of NIILITMASH, who had known me since I was a student, offered me a job. I worked there from 1957 to 1996. There were many Jewish employees working in this institute. During the period of the suppression of Jews the NIILITMASH was allowed to employ Jews. This institute gathered such a brilliant team of designers that this industry, which was underdeveloped before, reached an internationally recognized level in the Soviet Union.

When I was employed there was one vacancy for a senior engineer. It was a lower position against my previous positions, but I agreed to take it. I finally got a chance to deal in the science that I had studied in college. Before the end of two years I was promoted to supervisor of a group, then chief of the laboratory, and then I won the competition for the position of chief of department and in this position I worked till I retired. I liked this job: firstly, I returned to Moscow and secondly, I got to work in science after I returned from a Tajik field. Actually, I reached the highest qualifications in my profession.

There were five laboratories in my department, about 50 people in each of them, I wrote manuals and other scientific books. My industry people still remember me and make agreements for writing books with me. There were different laboratories. There were international jobs related to specialization of cooperation of the production of foundry equipment. My department dealt in economics, specialization of cooperation and new equipment. We studied the best international practices and published recommendations about development of new equipment. Our department determined work directions for our institute and industry. I had serious scientific research works at the institute at the beginning of my career. There were several dissertations based on my ideas defended in the institute [see Soviet/Russian doctorate degrees] 27. Over 250 of my works were published, translated into foreign languages and published abroad. I didn’t want to defend a dissertation. I earned sufficient money: I had my salary of chief of the department and lectured on foundry discipline in two higher educational institutions.

In the late 1980s the new era began when we stepped into capitalism in its wild form. There were all kinds of conflicts with the new management of the institute since I didn’t agree with its financial policies. Our customers paid for the contracts completed by my department, and the managers took this money. I got so sick and tired of it that I quit my job at the institute in 1996 and retired. I have agreements that I execute through the association of foundry experts, and I get paid for this work. These are research works on sales markets in Russia or in the world for the products of the foundry industry and the cost of foundry products. Besides, I write manuals for foundry students.

I met my wife, Anna Tarskaya, nee Shamrai, on a hiking tour in 1952, when I worked as a senior instructor for tourists. I had high skills in orientation and azimuth orientation. I was 27 then. I looked well, was a strong and quick young man. I had finished college and was chief of laboratory. I was chief of the whole tourist hiking base and I chose the prettiest girls and the strongest young men for my group. I liked my future wife Anna. She was a small, pretty slim girl, but very quick and business-like. We saw each other for a year until 1953, when I had to leave Moscow for Tajikistan. When I returned I thought Anna had forgotten me, though I remembered her. Anna was Russian, but nationality didn’t matter to me. I called her and we met and began to see each other again. Then we got married in 1957. There was a big joyous wedding to which Anna’s friends and my relatives and friends came, but of course, there were no Jewish or Russian traditions observed.

Anna’s family came from Kaluga province. Her grandfather, a poor villager from Vinnitsa province, moved to Kaluga province with his family in the late 19th century where he bought a plot of land. Though his successors joined a kolkhoz after the Revolution of 1917, and Anna’s mother was a milkmaid there, they were still declared kulaks 28, and thus subject to dispossession. They escaped to Moscow. Anna’s father and mother went to work at the plant of rubber products ‘Kauchuk’.

There were five children in the family: Tatiana, Maria, Ivan, Pyotr, and the oldest Anna, born in 1925. Her mother had no education, but she was a wise woman and helped her children to get a higher education, although Anna couldn’t get a higher education because of the war. Anna’s mother worked in the metallization of rubber and was awarded orders for her performance. Anna worked at the bullet plant during the war. This was terrible work: they worked on the conveyor placing bullets into cases. Every day another girl lost her finger in an accident. Anna was accurate and hardworking. The NKVD office noticed her and sent her to a course of typewriting, stenography and German. She finished the course with honors and spoke fluent German. She was sent to Germany on an intelligence task at the end of the war. She worked for an organization purchasing and shipping out documentation and consumables of missile equipment. Their organization was disclosed and she saved them from execution by writing an explanatory note that those were outdated documents that had been shipped and lost. In Germany she worked for the Soviet Military administration and they didn’t dismiss her for a long time as they were interested in her knowledge of all German office and bureaucratic rules. She returned to Russia in 1947. In Moscow she was chief of department 1 [secret] in an academic institute and later she became human resource manager. My parents and hers didn’t mind that I was a Jew and she was Russian.

Her sister Tatiana is also married to a Jewish man. We lived many years together, but there were never any signs of anti-Semitic expressions or displeasure. We were one wonderful family. My family was happy about my marriage. He finally got married! There was no question of whether I had a Jewish or a Russian wife. What kind of Jews were we?! I’ve already mentioned that nine out of twelve children of my grandmother were in exile. They were internationalists. There was no Russian or Jewish spirit in our family. We didn’t teach our daughter Jewish traditions and she didn’t identify herself as a Jew.

At first we rented an apartment. Then my stepfather received an apartment and remarried. Anna and I moved into his wife’s room. Soon my wife received an apartment from her institute. This is where I live now. In 1960 our daughter Natasha was born. She grew up a cheerful and quick girl. She studied well. At school she was chess champion. When she was small we rented a dacha [cottage] near Moscow and later we spent vacations in recreation centers. I often went to the Crimea or the Caucasus as an instructor of tourism and mountaineering. The organizers of these trainings paid for my trips. My wife and I like traveling across the country. We took many tours. Now, as an invalid of the war, I receive tickets to stay in health centers. Last summer I flew to Vladivistok, to the division in which I served during the war. This year I want to go to Kamchatka to look at geysers. I had friends who worked for foreign companies that I worked with. They invited me to visit them. I traveled to Norway and Germany. I made a tour to Italy and traveled all over the country. We had many friends at work. We often got together and visited each other.

My wife and I lived in harmony. After finishing school she went to study in Moscow College of Fine Chemical Technology. She studied in the evening department and went to work at daytime. After finishing the college she went to work at the academic institute. She worked well and was going to defend a dissertation of candidate of sciences when perestroika 29 began. She began to receive a very low salary at the institute. Our daughter already had two children. Natasha works in the business department of the Tax Police Fund. I’ve never asked her how much she earns, but since she goes abroad with her children twice a year, and they have nice furniture and computers at home, and everything is super, I believe she earns all right. Natasha got married in 1980. Her husband, Alexandr Kurilenko is a chemist, a military, worked in the space industry and was responsible for fueling missiles. Recently he retired in the rank of colonel. He is Ukrainian, but his mother is half-Ukrainian and half-Jewish.

My grandchildren are a mixture of Russian-Ukrainian-Jewish blood. My granddaughter Maya is a 4th-year student of the psychology department of the Jewish University. She is now working on a thesis on Jewish subjects. She studies Hebrew, the history of Jewish people and knows all Jewish traditions, though they don’t celebrate Jewish holidays at home. The Jewry has returned to my granddaughter. My grandson Misha is a 3rd-year student in college.

In 1999 my wife fell ill with rectum cancer. She lived three more years after the surgery, but then she had metastasis. She had another surgery, got weaker, lost her ability to speak and orientation. She died in hospital in 2001. I buried her in the Hovanskoye town cemetery in Moscow.

Basically, I’m positive about perestroika, but what kind of perestroika is this? This is just a many-year destruction of the country’s industry, that’s how I call this period. I am an economist. I wouldn’t want to say that everything was fine during the Soviet power, but when Kosygin was in power, there was discipline. [Editor’s note: Kosygin, Aleksey (1904-1980): state and party leader 1961-1964, 1st deputy chairman of the council of ministers, 1964-1980 chairman of the council of ministers USSR.] There was a five-year plan 29, and he never allowed a single kopeck for anything beyond this plan. If a ministry wanted the construction of something they were to provide documents to prove that they stopped constructing another facility. Although, in my opinion, there were huge amounts spent on defense that they might have given away to the people.

When the USSR broke up, the industry went down to 10 per cent of the Soviet period. The industry was destroyed and where were they supposed to take the money? There might have been a tough economy and it might have been wrong during the Stalin rule, but there was iron discipline. Within five years after the war the level of production exceeded the prewar levels. Now it’s been ten years since perestroika [editors note: Perestroika started in 1985, after Gorbachev came to power], and the Russian President Mr. Putin tells us that industry has increased by 10%. I feel ashamed to hear this – I would spit into his eyes. Ten per cent of what? Of the 10% that it was dumped to in the 1990s? There are many grave mistakes made just because of misunderstanding the situation. The power allowed certain manufacturers to make big money, and the working class and working people became miserably poor.

When Jews got their state in 1948, I felt very proud. I perceive this state as a part of myself, I’m proud of the military successes of the Jewish people, but I’ve never strived to go there [Israel]. Just to go there on a visit maybe, but nothing else. I’m a Jew. I was born to a Jewish family. Before the Great Patriotic War I identified myself as just a Soviet person. There were children from Brazil, Latvia and Germany in my class. There was never an issue of nationality. I’ve never kept my Jewish identity a secret.

Before receiving my first passport at the age of 16, I wrote in my application form that I was a Jew. After I returned from the army there was reregistration. The militia asked me while looking into my old documents why it was written that I was Russian, when I was a Jew by my passport. I said that they had to register me as a Jew. I felt patriotic about my people at the moment and believed I had no right to reject my belonging to the nation. I grew more conscious and restored my nationality in my documents. Since Jews were suppressed in their rights I believed that I didn’t have to play tricks and hide away. Even if I don’t know Yiddish or Hebrew, the Old Testament or Jewish laws, by my nature and in essence I identify myself as a Jew.

My roots are in Russia, I was educated here, I worked in this country on many jobs and positions: as stoker, tractor operator, sewing cotton… I was an honored mechanic of the republic and I worked 40 years to support the foundry machine building. I struggled for this land. Foreign countries still believe me to be the greatest expert in foundry equipment; I have 22 governmental awards from this country. I don’t think Israel to be my state. I’m a citizen of Russia.

Glossary