Travel

Iancu Tucarman
October 2006
Romania 
Bucharest
Interviewer: Cosmina Gusu

Though already in his 85, Iancu Tucarman, an energetic retiree, is still passionate about American literature and symphonies. He is one of the few survivors of the summer 1941 pogrom in Iasi when many of his friends and relatives lost their lives. After graduating the Faculty of Agriculture in Iasi, he moved to Bucharest where he has since been living with his wife, Clarisa Tucarman [nee Kaiserman]. His brother-in-law, Pincu Kaiserman, chairs the Iasi Jewish Community which is much smaller today than it used to be during the inter-war period. Currently, Mr. Tucarman is a member of the Association of the Jews in Romania Victims of the Holocaust. In this capacity he gets involved in many projects designed to provide education for the younger generations. 

My family story
Growing up
Iasi Pogrom
During the war
After the war
Glossary

My family story

I have not met my paternal grandparents. My grandmother’s name was Brana Tucarman [nee Herscu], and my grandfather’s – Iancu Tucarman. My father had two sisters: Raschela Gruber [nee Tucarman], and Mali Crowen [nee Tucarman], and a brother, Iulius Tucarman. They left the country [crossed the Atlantic]: Raschela to Canada, and Mali to America. I have foggy memories about my aunt Raschela. She had three children: Iancu, Fenny, and Bernice. Fenny lives in Paris.

My father, Iosif Samoil Tucarman was born in 1889, in Iasi.  He owned a grocery store, then a ferrous and nonferrous metal shop. He went about his business in the shop and saw to the house as well. He was very good at it. He was the warden of the Haim Hoffman synagogue located behind our house. He kept the Jewish tradition in the sense that he would go to the synagogue every Friday evening, on Saturdays, yearly holidays such as Rosh Hashanah, and Yom-Kippur. 

Ever since I turned ten or eleven, after I did my homework, I would help my father many times in the shop, or out shopping, or selling. He couldn’t manage it by himself. Many customers thought they could fool me, but I was very well trained, I was good at it. My father was 50 in 1939 when my mother died. He was left alone with four kids and he did not remarry.

I have not met my grandfather from my mother’s side. My maternal grandmother, Debora Moise [nee Haufman] was a special woman in point of the way she behaved in the family, towards her children or grandchildren. Especially on Fridays we would go out to visit relatives and friends. She stayed with the Madrisovicis, at her daughter Betty’s. She would tell us fairy tales which we really loved. She came by in the afternoon and many times she would stay the night because the house she lived in was about 2 kilometers away. The carriages stood waiting nearby as the taxis stay today. I would go, take a carriage and go around on it, driving it. Back then in 1936-1937 it was 10 lei per ride. To take my grandmother back home was one of the things I loved. She is the only grandmother I have ever known. We loved her very much and she loved us. She died in 1941.

My mother had a sister, Betty Madrisovici [nee Moise] and four brothers: Carol Moise, Pascal Moise, Moritz Moise, and Strul Moise. Moritz left for London were he had a ready-made clothes shop. At some point he changed his name from Moritz Moise to  Moritz Hoffman which meant ‘hope-man’. Strul and Pascal remained in the country where they had an alehouse. Betty lost her husband Marcu Madrisovici, and their three sons – Strul, Iancu, and Lupu – in the Iasi pogrom.

My mother, Minta Tucarman [nee Moise], was born in 1889 in Iasi. She would not let a Friday evening go by without her lighting the candles. I can see her right before my eyes: she put her little shawl on her head, she lit the candles. ‘I pray for our welfare, your welfare, let us all be healthy and safe from evil!’ She would utter these words in Yiddish although my parents spoke Romanian flawlessly. Like in any Jewish house, both they and my maternal grandmother would talk in Yiddish every time they did not want us children to understand what they were talking about. My mother played the most important part in our education.

When my youngest sister was born, the birth was very difficult. They did not use the forceps to help her, she disturbed her heart and she had heart problems ever since, for 15 years. She had an embolism and that was the cause of her death. She used to say: ‘Iosef, dear, my children, don’t leave me!’ I can still hear the words she said when she was aware that she had to leave us. She died in 1939.

We lived on Apelor Street in Iasi [Street in the Targu Cucului quarter. There were several Jewish quarters: Targu Cucului – to the north, Sarariei – to the north, Tatarasi – to the south, or Podul Ros – to the south of the city]. It was a miserable little street, not paved. We had a grocery’s there. My father and mother kept it; it is how they provided for us. They bought the house. They even had three tenants back then. When I turned 11 and I started high school, we moved to Sarariei Street where we would live throughout the war. The house had eight apartments, a ground floor and a first floor. We had an old shop selling ferrous and nonferrous metals. The shop had two rooms and a kitchen. The apartment next door was ours too. We built a door: we broke through the wall to have a passage to the next apartment. This is how we lived. We had a small table at the back of the shop. We would sit at that table, study, read. We had a radio that we kept until the time when all radios were seized from the Jews. Very few houses had a second or a third floor. There were very many houses in the courtyard and around 67 families lived there. This quarter was mostly a Jewish one.

I had three sisters: Sofia Segal [nee Tucarman], Betty Laim [nee Tucarman], and Fany Klinger [nee Tucarman]. Since my mother was ill, the girls would always help her around. The youngest, even when she was 8 or 9 years old, did all the chores that she could do at her age. There were women who came by every week to help my mom with the work she could not do by herself. Sofia could play the violin, unlike the others. Fany studied the piano for about one or two years, but my father could no longer pay for her lessons. I remember just one time when I was a child and I went with my folks in a holiday to Targu Ocna for a fortnight. I think I was not older than 5 or 6. But it was our only time, the rest we couldn’t afford it. My father worked very hard and he could barely manage to keep us afloat.

My elder sister Sofia had been married since 1938. Her husband Leon Segal managed to get his way through chief accountant of the Penicilina Factory in Iasi. So, he took care of the others as well. They left for Israel in 1982. He had already retired when they left. She died in 2000.  

My sister Betty who was born right after me married in 1946. She left for Israel in 1965. My brother-in-law was a very good mechanic. He worked in precision mechanics all his life.

In 1950, my youngest sister Fany married a dental technician, an exquisitely good chap. They had a wonderful life. She bore two children in Bucharest, and in 1960 they moved to Israel. At first they told me that they had a very hard time there. There are a lot of disagreements between various professions in Israel as well. My brother-in-law, who is a very good technician, headed a dentist’s cabinet in a clinic with several sections. They have two sons: Mordehai and Dany. God bless them, they both managed well. One of them has two sons, and the other one two twin girls. A grand-grandson married on the 2nd June last year [2005]. They invited me as well and I answered the invitation and went over to attend the wedding. We talk on the phone all the time. My grandsons are more concerned about their own business, their families. But I talk with my sisters by phone all the time, whenever they call me or I them.

Growing up

As for me, Iancu Tucarman, I was born in Iasi on the 30th October 1922. When I turned 5 or so my parents sent me over to a melamed [teaching the children the alphabet and prayers] and I studied with him until I was 13. I managed to learn the Talmud and Tanakh. I learned Yiddish that was very important to me. When I turned 7 I started going to the ‘Vasile Adamache’ Elemental School [public school]. My teacher’s name was Pantelimonescu, an extraordinary man whose memory will always stay with me because he took really good care of us. He taught us everything about manners. Two or three years after I graduated elemental school, the poor man died. All his pupils went over to his house and led him to his final resting place in the Eternitatea Cemetery in Iasi. This is how close he had become to us and how much we had come to love him. He was like a real parent throughout the four years of school.

I was an A pupil, I was awarded first prize every year. I tried to study hard. I knew that my parents worked hard to earn a living and that I had to get ready to help them at some point. I liked all the subjects, but I was mostly drawn to music. When I was 6 my father hired a teacher to teach me play the violin. 

I attended the ‘Stefan cel Mare’ Secondary School that was very close to our house. I had extraordinary teachers there. I cared very much about teacher Pausesti who was famous for his knowledge of French. Mr. Glica, the arts [teacher], lived nearby and every time he passed by he would stop and have a chat with us. I remember mostly Mr. Traian Gheorghiu, the Romanian teacher. He cared very much about me. I was hard-working, I learned hard. I would get a 10 at his subject. All these four years that I studied Romanian with him he had a custom. He noted the marks in the catalogue, mentioning the day, month and mark. Every time on the 10th October he would call me in front of the class, ask me questions to put down my mark and say: ‘I would like to have the pleasure of writing three 10 under your name today, on 10th October!’ I kept in touch with this teacher even after I finished secondary school.  He was a supporter of the Peasants’ Party by tradition, through his parents. After the 23rd August [1944], he was arrested and jailed for 11 years [as a political detainee]. After he was released I kept in touch with him, we used to meet. I told him: ‘I care about you as a teacher. I know who you were and who you are. It doesn’t bother me and I am not afraid either’. After a while, he was rehabilitated and taught Romanian at the faculty. He wrote a play, ‘The Honeycombs of Vrancea Mountains’ that had its premiere at the National Theater in Iasi. He invited me and I had a box seat right next to the author. He was a special man of extraordinary education and honesty. The thing that impressed me and still hurts today is what happened to all those who were sent to the Channel, where the Romanian intelligentsia was physically destroyed. [In 1949, the construction works on the Channel began. Many workers were actually political detainees from communist prisons. The works were ceased in 1955 only to be resumed in 1975 and completed in 1984. The Channel connects the Danube (south of Cernavoda) to the Black Sea (at Agigea, south of Constanta) and cuts the way to Constanta short by almost 400km.] 

I attended the 5th grade at the ‘Alexandru cel Bun’ High School. But since the 6th had been disbanded I had to sign up with another high school. The two most famous high schools in Iasi were the Boarding High School and the National High School. I joined the latter to attend the 6th grade. I have never had any arguments or disagreements with my classmates.

There is a street in Iasi in the area where we lived that was called just like that: the Synagogues Street. A lot of synagogues were there, separate synagogues according to trade: the Tailors’ Synagogue, the Publicans’ Synagogues, and the Grand Synagogue that remains today the only synagogue in the area to still be used for prayer and Jewish cultural events. In my childhood and even later, in my 15 or 16, my father would take me with him to Friday and Saturday evening prayers. When others would go outside to play football, I had to go to the synagogue. But this is how I learned everything that it is to know about Judaic tradition. I liked it because I learned all kinds of useful stuff. 

More often than not the holidays were about the relationship with God, about going to the synagogue. That was the atmosphere, especially in Iasi. There were a lot of shopkeepers and during the New Year or Kippur holidays, Iasi would be a commercially dead city. All shops were closed, all synagogues were full. Everybody spent the New Year’s Eve with the family. Of course we would go visit our relatives. My mother had a few brothers in Iasi. We exchanged visits. Anyone of our friends was so busy earning a leaving that he would spend all day long in the shop if that was his trade. They didn’t have much time to spare but only when they went to the synagogue on Friday or Saturday evening and chatted.

My father used to go to the synagogue even during communism. That regime looked askance at the employees’ relationship with religion and tradition. As for myself, because I loved my father, I loved Judaic tradition that I have never denied or went astray from I would go to the synagogue on those days even in Ceausescu’s time. He used to go on Fridays and Saturdays but in the evening, especially in winter, I would go and take him home. 

For me, although I left Iasi after I graduated faculty, in 1948, even today I can feel some kind of love for my birthplace with its special wonders. It was not a crowded city. It had about 150,000 inhabitants. The atmosphere was very nice by 1938-1939. We didn’t even know… there was no difference between Christian, Jew or any other ethnicities. I cannot say that I felt any inappropriate attitude towards myself as a Jew in primary or secondary schools. We were Romanians too. We all had Romanian citizenship. We got along very well in school as well. We had no problems until we started to feel a drift of anti-Semitism due to the Goga-Cuza government 2 all the more considering that professor Cuza came from Iasi. I remember that as early as 1939 when I was living on the Sarariei Street and one morning groups of students and of… I would call them citizens for want of a better word… broke the windows of every Jewish shop. 

Iasi Pogrom

The war broke on 22nd June 1941 [Romania entered World War II alongside Nazi Germany]. A week later the pogrom 3 took place in Iasi which would not spare me either. One third of Iasi’s population was Jewish, that is almost 45,000 people. And we all had a very pleasant life. On 29th June 1941 we found ourselves thrown in trains or killed on the street. It was like a cold shower. It was unexpected. There were frightfully few cases when nice people warned their neighbors and took them in their houses. It was a big question mark as to how this could happen in Iasi where we had lived until the War and till that day that turned into doomsday for many of us.

On the 29th, around half past 8 or 9 in the morning, when they took me out there was a long wall and 20-30 were already standing by that wall waiting for the others to be brought. A military passed by and at some point he drew his gun and wanted to shoot us. A major was passing by at that very moment and asked: ‘Soldier, have you been ordered to shoot?’ ‘No!’ ‘Get out immediately or you’ll be court-martialed!’ And he left. I don’t know who that was and I’m sorry I didn’t ask. We survived then but many of us who were taken to the Section [police headquarters] did not…

On the way there we walked with our hands up. Not a soul was to be seen on the street. The only people I saw were over to the Notre-Dame de Zion School – that is on Cuza-Voda Street. The building now hosts the Philharmonic. Germans stood at the windows and took pictures of us as we walked with our hands up. About 200 meters away, as we went further from our house towards the Section, there I was and my father walked on my left. We walked in lines of 7-8 persons towards the Section. A sergeant came towards me, slapped me twice over the face, took my wristwatch and said: ‘Hey, kike, you won’t need it anyways!’ It was then that both I and my father understood that something really bad was going to happen to us. And my father told me in Yiddish: ‘My dear, let this be an offering in exchange for your soul!’ And that’s exactly what happened. I managed to find myself among the survivors.

They took us to the police section. We spent all day there. Policemen with rubber batons stood on each side of the entrance and they would kick all those who entered. Since both I and my father were shorter we got away untouched. When we entered I saw piles of dead people one over the other and blood from those who had been hit on the head and died. When you came in the police section, in the middle, you could see some steps and two machine guns. One of them was aimed towards the gate, the other one towards the backyard fence. Anyone who tried to jump over the fence would be shot. They couldn’t bring in all of us and so they came up with a plan: the elderly and the children, but especially the men were given a 5/5 ticket with a stamp reading ‘free’. And they were told: ‘Tell the other Jews to come with their ID to receive a ticket like this one. Those who don’t present this ticket upon control will be shot!’ Out of fear, a lot of people came on their own. For the majority, the only freedom they got was the eternal one. And this is how they managed to bring everyone to the Section, even those who were not brought by the police or the army. My father got a ‘free’ ticket and managed to go back.

We spent the 29th at the Section. In the morning we were taken to the station, again walking in lines. On the platform in front of the station we were ordered to lie on the ground and we stayed like that until other people boarded the train. Then we got in the train as well and there was some guy there who kept counting.  And I heard – because I didn’t know my number – I heard 137 and then: ‘Lock the train car!’

At the Iasi station a railroad employee shouted ‘Kikes, close the shutters!’ He came with a ladder and blocked our windows with some very big nails that were so long that they came out on the other side of the shutter and I had something to hang my raincoat on. I took off my coat inside. Because of the heat most people remained naked. I too took off my coat and my shirt. Inside the car some would go crazy and jump from side to side like at the circus. When there were only 10 or 12 of us left, the entire floor was covered with dead people. It was like a mattress they jumped on. They didn’t jump at first; at first everybody was normal. And one more interesting thing, a thing about dreams. I fell asleep in the train. And all these people that were jumping from side to side stepped on me, hurt my leg really bad and I woke up. But while I was asleep I dreamt that I was going to work at a farm. I saw a wheat field, fruit trees. Indeed, one week later I was sent to do forced labor at a farm and then this became my lifelong profession: agricultural engineer.

I believe in destiny and I wonder why I was among those chosen to stay alive. It was then that I noticed a very interesting thing biologically speaking. Namely that those who had least demands from life and the environment, that is the weak ones, were the ones to survive. 

The first to die in the train was a sportsman. He died after an hour, an hour or so. I thought he just fainted, but he actually died of heat. And those who were least pretentious survived. All of us who got out were short and thin.

I can still remember as if it were today the moment when the train opened, at Podul Iloaiei. When the gates opened, I stepped back, although I was close to the door. But I just stood like that for about 2-3 minutes until almost everyone got out. I got out the last. Many of us when they breathed the fresh air fell down, fainted. The people got out on a field, there were very many puddles and they threw themselves in them because of thirst. Some wanted to cool down, others to quench their thirst. Many died right there on the ditch, others were taken to the hospital. One thing still haunts me: I was weary but I walked until I found clean grass with no mud in it. How could I refrain from jumping into the water then? I looked for a clean place so that my raincoat wouldn’t get dirty! 

During the war

The Jewish community there was asked whether it would agree to receive, to host Jewish communists as we were labeled [The official propaganda called the victims of the pogrom Jewish communists to justify the repression.] So, after we spent about half an hour on the field, they lined us up and escorted us towards the synagogues in Podul Ilioarei. Lined up. There were some people from that town on the road that behaved really nasty: ‘Why did you come, kikes?’ Others even spitted on us. The Jews came first to look for their relatives, friends and acquaintances. A former classmate of mine and relative, one of the Idels, with whom I was to live during my stay in Podul Iloaiei, came before me: ‘Are you Iancu?’ I said: ‘Yes’. I looked at him curiously: ‘Are you asking me, dear former classmate?’ Other three survivors were in his house. And when I entered his house I stared in the mirror: ‘What is this?’ It was me. I didn’t recognize myself. I was haggard, nothing but skin and bones, my lips won’t close, my eyes almost popped out and then I suddenly realized why he asked me whether I was Iancu or not. If I couldn’t recognize myself, how could he then?

When they brought us to the synagogue, I sat down on a stair step and we were given tea. The first thing I thought about was this: until the day before yesterday I used to be a normal person and look at me now: who am I? A nobody! My turn came to receive a cup of tea. And I took the first sip. And it almost killed me. I chocked. It took me half an hour to calm down my cough and then I realized how dehydrated I was and I started to sip one drop at a time, like with a dropper, until I managed to swallow it.

After the first days in Podul Iloaiei passed, we were given a postcard to write on. And the first thing I wrote was this: ‘My dears, you cannot imagine the things I had to go through until...’ and I stopped and thought ‘Man, what are you writing about?!’ I took another postcard and I wrote: ‘My dears, I have arrived safely to Podul Iloaiei. All the best, Iancu’. Both I and my brother-in-law Leon Segal wrote the same. My sister got the postcard a few days later and learned that he was alive. My father had heard how many people had died there and counted me among the dead, delivered all the payers that should be delivered for the dead and got my postcard only a week later. 

We returned to Iasi and one week later we came to the Deployment Center to be sent to do forced labor to various places. All these 4 years I was never sent outside Iasi. In Iasi I worked at the Electrical Power Station, at a textile factory, all winter cleaning the snow. My father too cleaned the streets in winter. In 1941, my father was 52. People were taken to forced labor until their 50s, but he did not show his age and was taken for 2-3 months. He worked somewhere at Repedea, at a stone quarry. The work would usually start at 7am and lasted until 6 o'clock in the evening. I worked for a time at the Railroad Company [CFR] in Socola. It was very hard; some of those who supervised our worked were tougher, they would insult us: ‘Hey, kikes, faster! Don’t linger! Mind your work!’ They would even hit us. And this thing lasted for a while. At 1 o’clock we had a half-an-hour break when everyone brought something over if they could do so ... Many had nothing and I would share my meal with them, but I too didn’t have all the time. I shared a sandwich or so. And all this until 6 in the evening depending on the season. It was very hard for us. Because we were working together we could talk about how happy we could have been if we had had a weapon and knew that we were at war. Why were we subjected to these degrading situations regardless of education? Some of us were doctors, engineers, lawyers and worked side by side with everybody else. And this was not humiliating for them; the thing that was humiliating was that we could not be considered true citizens of our country like everybody else. In wintertime we were especially sent to the tramway company to clear the snow off the tracks. In Iasi sometimes it was as cold as -20. Your eyelids and nostrils froze together. We had to work from 7 in the morning until dark under very harsh conditions. Various people would pass by; some of them, indeed, you could see some kind of compassion in their eyes because they knew us. They were neighbors, acquaintances. Others behaved terribly: ‘Kikes! It serves you right!’ Why - I couldn’t understand. And this situation lasted until the end of the War: various labors in summer and cleaning the snow in winter. 

After the pogrom we had to obey several restrictions. You could really feel that you were different from all the people that you had very well lived with until that day. You were not allowed to go to the market by 10 o’clock in the morning. That was the time when we wore the yellow star 4. I was out at work doing forced labor; my sisters were still too young. The shop was given to a Christian, a certain Maftei Constantin, and my father was able to work with him. He got a certain percentage of the profit. He was a special man, an understanding man. There were some who took the shops altogether and drove the real owners away 5. This one was a wise man. I don’t remember how much he received, but anyway this is how we managed to survive. 

I lived in Iasi all this time. As the front line drew nearer I could even see how the shells were launched towards Iasi. I could see the flames from the cannons. Considering the place they were firing from I did the math and thought that a shell could not reach us. But a shell did reach us and hit the other side and the second floor of the house nearby. It made a pretty big hole and broke all the windows. The Russians entered Iasi on the 20th August [1944]. We were standing in front of our shop and could see 2-horse carriages that were pulled by just one horse and led by Asian-looking narrow-set eyed military coming from Copou towards Sararie. I didn’t realize. Nobody met them. They were the first, the first brigades to enter the city. Half an hour later, they were followed by the Soviet Army. 

After the war

Of course we were happy and many wonder why the Jews met the Soviet Army with flowers. Why? Because, unless the Soviet Army had come to chase the Germans away and the Romanian Army switched sides and turned against them a few days later, instead of us greeting the Soviet Army with flowers, they would have laid the flowers on our graves. And I am certain that we wouldn’t have had this interview today. So, many judge wrongly. They were our saviors. 12 of my family died. 7-8 of my colleagues, my friends died. They were all exterminated in the trains [death trains]. 

My father had long wished to move to Bucharest. And now he thought that the time came as he could still do it. In October [1944], he and my sister Fany left to Bucharest. I don’t know how they could have the courage to do so, especially my sister who was 17, a real young lady. They left by truck under very harsh conditions. They reached Bucharest 2-3 days later. My father started working for his cousin Oscar Froimovici who worked at the men’s lingerie shop. When he was younger my father too had worked at the lingerie shop. With much trouble they managed to find a room to rent. It was very hard to find a place to stay in Bucharest. They settled there. I stayed in Iasi with my other two sisters. One of them had been married since 1938, the other one married in 1946. 

All these years when I had some time to spare I would study: I wouldn’t let one spare hour or two to pass by without studying according to the curriculum. I hoped then that I would live to come to study. And indeed there was a law 6 for all those who could not study because of the anti-Jewish regime. This law stated that these people could graduate school and the Baccalaureate in private. Of course I had pretty low marks but I graduated nevertheless and I was very happy when I became a student of the Faculty of Agronomy in Iasi on the 5th May 1948. I attended 6 months of training until I could give the national exam. In the summer of 1949, I passed the state exam and graduated as agricultural engineer. 

I believed that my student years were the best in my life. I was never sick, so I did not miss classes due to illness. I attended absolutely all classes. I was well aware that I was a city-born and city-educated Jew that had very few ties to what we call agronomy. I was in love with music, with nature. During the 4 years in faculty we had to spend one or two months a year working at a farm. I did all this training at the Targu Frumos experimental station where I met engineers whom I still have beautiful memories about. The Dalas engineers, husband and wife, that took great care of me and saw that I was lending all my attention to the trade. I attended all training sessions, even though some of my mates skipped classes; they would go out in Targu Frumos to wander around, to meet girls or I don’t know what. I never skipped a class during my training because I wanted to learn everything that was to be learned. 

There were 10 of us Jews that joined the faculty of agronomy at the university in the first year. There were about 56 students enlisted in 1945. Imagine this: 10 Jews! The other 46 were Christians and one of them, a certain Rapeanu, used to be a Legionary 7. He couldn’t help himself: ‘What are these kikes doing among us?’ He was finally expelled during the second year. All the others were good colleagues. I didn’t feel absolutely nothing embarrassing about the fact that I was Jewish. Our ancestors have originally been peasants, cattle breeders. The Bible shows this very clearly. 

I lived in our old house in Iasi all the time. I kept the shop. When I had some spare time I took care of the business and it is with this money that I managed to pay all my expenses during university years. My father could barely make a living from the job he had at his cousin’s in Bucharest. He had hoped for something better. He was an enterprising and very honest person which many time cost him in business after the war. Some people cheated him. He lived on the verge of poverty.

I chose were I was to go for the practice before the final exam. I chose Buftea [20km of Bucharest] because I wanted to be closer to my father. During the 6 month training I lived at the farm. On Saturdays and Sundays I would come and visit my father and my little sister. The other two sisters remained in Iasi all the time until they left for Israel. From time to time they used to come to Bucharest to visit my father and me. Since 1948, because I was appointed chief engineer, I lived at the farm. On the 1st March 1949 the kolkhozes were set up and Buftea become a state-run farm. 7-8 months later, it was merged with the state-run farm in Peris and I remained the chief engineer at Peris-Buftea. I would come to Bucharest in my free time, especially on Sundays, because I lived close by. Peris was about 35 kilometers from the city. The train station was right in front of the farm. The first thing that impressed me in Bucharest was the automated tramway doors that opened and closed by themselves. The tramways we had in Iasi were old, small and worn-out. Of course the buildings in Bucharest impressed me compared to those in Iasi. The roaring life here had somehow bothered me; I was used to a certain kind of tranquility, not with the booming post-war Bucharest. 

Since the very moment they appointed me chief engineer at the Buftea and Peris state-run farms [one of the largest farms in Bucharest, 3000ha, Buftea was the land of Prince Stirbey, while the former Royal Lands were at Peris], I realized that incompetence was at the highest levels and I told myself that I could never be part of such a regime, no matter what the risks. Back then only those with a clean, ‘healthy’ file could be in leading positions [healthy social origin, hailing from the working class, or members of the Communist Party] and so a smith, a blacksmith was appointed director, and a Gypsy musician as deputy director. He played the clarinet. They were the head and deputy head of the largest farm in Bucharest. As for me, the chief engineer, I was not a member of the Communist Party. The master head had a very inappropriate behavior towards me. He didn’t respect me and kept on going about the fact that he was the one in charge, that he was the one giving the orders. You can imagine: he had suddenly found himself in the shoes of the head of a farm with a very good salary. On the other hand, his deputy respected me. I played the violin since I was 6-7 years old and I played it even at the farm. I would play it mostly in the evening. I have played the violin for 40 years.

The creation of the State of Israel was one of the greatest joys in my life. Don’t get me wrong, I have my Romanian State. But the fact that Israel exists is a shield without which we don’t know what could have happened in various times.

I worked at Buftea since 1948 until 15th July 1950 when I came to the ministry. Then I was deputy editor in chief for several science magazines published by the ministry. All agricultural methods and equipment were discussed there. The ministry had 8 magazines for various branches and areas of agriculture: agriculture, stockbreeding, fruit farming, horticulture, beekeeping, etc. The Party organization secretary who had a BA in philosophy had no interest in turning me into a Party member because I would have then automatically got the editor-in-chief job. When the state-run Agrosilvica Publishing House was established in 1953 and the agricultural magazine department within it, I was the editor-in-chief because they had no one else to appoint. And 6 months later they created the deputy editor-in-chief job for me. The head of the computing center was not a Party member either: a certain Mr. Constantinescu, economist, but not specialized in agriculture issues, as neither was the Party organization secretary. So, nobody had any interest in telling me out that I was not a Party member. Neither he nor the director.

 In 1962, when collectivization was over 8, 3,000 agronomists, mostly from Bucharest, were deployed to the collective farms. All the directors of the institutions where you could find them, even outside the Ministry of Agriculture, had to make up a list of engineers they could spare and send them over to the Ministry of Agriculture for deployment. My director told me: ‘Don’t worry! Carry on; you shall not be on the list’. The then Minister was Ion Cosma. The minister of agriculture was also the chairman of the editorial board for one of the magazines. Many columns had to be written and signed by ministers. But naturally, they did not have the time for these things. I wrote a lot of stuff. When they came with the lists during a big meeting and the State Agricultural Publishing House’s turn came, where the agricultural magazine department was, my name didn’t show up on the list. Some colleagues of mine that knew me asked: ‘But what about engineer Tucarman? Why isn’t he deployed?’ And the head of the publishing house told me that Minister Cosma said: ‘Tucarman shall not leave! I cannot find someone overnight to appoint as deputy editor in chief of the Ministry’s magazines!’ And that was that. Cosma was replaced and Mihai Dalea was appointed in his stead. Lists were made: ‘Why isn’t Tucarman going?’ And one week later I would be sent to Suceava where I spent half a year. And another minister brought me back. Half a year later again they asked why I was brought back and I stayed for 4 years and a half. Origin had nothing to do with all this. That is a categorical no! It was envy.

In 1962-1967, when I was working as chief engineer at Costana, though I was a Jew and representative of the state as chief engineer at the state-owned agricultural farm, the C.A.P. [Agricultural Production Cooperation], all these five years I never heard anyone saying the word ‘kike’ or winking each other in the tavern or displaying any kind of anti-Semitic attitude. This has impressed me a lot. 

I married quite late, in 1965. I had a lot of friends, most of them married and I realized that it involves a lot of hypocrisy when you do not want to break a relationship for various reasons: that you have a child or two children or whatever. A lot of lies and other unpleasant things can be there between two partners, things that I didn’t like. I saw a lot of things that weighed more than the beautiful ones and then I realized that marriage is a very serious institution for those who want to take it seriously. Who doesn’t – well, it’s his business. My father was very concerned with the fact that his only son wouldn’t marry. And he would go to the synagogue and asked among his friends: ‘Don’t you know a girl that could be suitable?’ ‘Here!’ Since 1953, Clarisa had been sent to Bucharest and took another 12 years until we met. In the meantime, both my father and friends were busy looking for a suitable girl for me. How many persons do you think I met over these 10 years? 124. And she is the 125th.

The moment we saw each other she liked me very much or so she says and I would like to believe this is the truth. I liked her too, but I couldn’t make up my mind. I let almost a year pass by. I was working at Costana and I had the right to come back once every 30 days for 5 days. When I came back, we would see each other. I recall it was a Thursday and one of her colleagues and very close friends of mine calls me and says: ‘Hey, Iancu! Have you seen Clarisa?’ ‘Not yet.’ ‘Why don’t you go and see her? I believe that you should go and see her’. ‘Alright’. I called her and I told her that I would come by at around 6pm. She made some sandwiches, put out a glass of wine. She had a very large room: 2/2 meters back then. And after we chitchatted for a while, we talked and before I left I stood up. She also stood up to see me to the door and I told her very simply: ‘Clarisa, would you like to share the rest of your life with me?’ She embraced me: ‘Why are you even asking?’ it was a quarter to 11 in the evening. We went downstairs and I called my father: ‘Father, it is a quarter to 11 in the evening, but I’ll come by to share happy news! I won’t tell you what news yet…’ We took a cab and left. ‘Father, I’ve just proposed to Clarisa and we are engaged. This is your future daughter-in-law. Whether you like her or not doesn’t matter!’ He embraced her, kissed her and ever since, God be praised, we are together. 

In a later talk we had I realized that she cared more about me and I told her frankly: ‘Look, we are engaged, we are going to be married, but I’ll tell you something that won’t probably suit you very well. I prefer starting from zero and go as far as 100 to starting from 100 and going to zero’. And, indeed, thank God, she cannot bore me for one second. Do you know how important this is? 

We had little time to spare after we married. Apart from the work as such for which I was employed, what bothered me greatly were the meetings. I’m not referring to party meetings because this was my luck: I needn’t attend party meeting too, but there were trade union meetings, all kinds of meetings. Whenever we were on holiday we would go together. I had bought a car. It is still in front of my block. We still have it. I haven’t replaced it. It has a French engine, thank God! Because we had a car, we would go to Iasi to see my sisters. So, for two or three days we would be in Iasi on a regular basis. And during holidays we used to take the car and tour Romania. We went via Ardeal and came back via Iasi. Many times I would invite my wife’s sister too. 

The Ministry of Agriculture had a small symphonic orchestra, a chamber orchestra so to say of about 30 people. Apart from the employees who could play an instrument, others that played the bass, the clarinet and the flute could get a job in the orchestra. Others played the violin, the cello, piano, accordion and so on. They could get employed as doormen but you should know that they didn’t work as one. We had 2-hour orchestra rehearsals every week. And we had our shows! The Ministry of Agriculture had a theatre team that was very good. We were even awarded the trade union prize. We had a traditional folk dance group and the orchestra and we staged shows. Even the television recorded one of our shows back then.

My youngest sister applied for emigration in 1958 and left in 1960. Because she was a housewife she had no problems to face. On the other hand, some friends of ours that had applied in 1958 were demoted and their salary got as low as a janitor’s. On 30th December 1970 we saw them to the airport. 12 years since they had applied for emigration! It was very hard. You couldn’t take more than 70 kilos of luggage and part of the furniture could be taken away. My brother-in-law that had left Iasi had a 2-room apartment with a kitchen and a bathroom that cost him about 80,000 lei. He gave it to the state and received 46,000 lei. I remember it as if it were yesterday the day I went with them at the CEC… [Savings and Loan Bank]

My sisters left for Israel, one in 1960, the second in 1965 and the third in 1982. In 1972 they came to Romania to see our father. And indeed they managed to come while he was still alive, because in 1974 my poor father died. My father had lived with us. He didn’t feel quite well exactly by the time we had applied for emigration. In autumn I sent him over to my sister in Iasi and so it happened that he died there. He died the same day as my mother: 29th April. During the last month of his life, every Saturday afternoon I used to go to Iasi by an evening train and Sunday evening I would come back because I had to go to work. I would spend with him these 24 hours. And I remember once I got up to leave and he said: ‘Iancu, stay a little longer! You know I have prayed for all these years. If God really loves me, let Him take me sooner and get me to your mother!’ On Sunday evening I said goodbye to him and on Monday morning at 11 o’clock I got a phone call saying that my father had died. 

One day we were suddenly visited by two citizens, both well dressed as if right out of the box. They introduced themselves: major X and colonel Y. My wife was with me. They asked her to go to the other room and they talked to me. ‘You are going to leave for Israel. Be careful what you say about the Romanian state’. I told them: ‘I would never denigrate the country I live in. I’m going to see my sisters there’. And these two citizens told me: ‘We would like to ask you if you go there to try and find some things that might be of interest to us. When you go there and meet people, have a chat or two…’ In other others, elicit information from one or the other… And I told him the same thing. ‘I want to be honest with you. I cannot do what you are asking me to do as I would not say a bad thing about Romania when I go there, it is not my nature’. I was weighing in my mind: ‘My God, will I see my relatives?’ I didn’t do what they asked me to, but when I think today about that I cannot fathom the situation each person found himself/herself in. 

I thought about emigrating but I thought the consequences through. I am very sensitive to heat and I realized we could not get accustomed to the climate there. Secondly; the language is quite difficult. Thirdly: since I was born and grew up here, the age when I could have left, was, let’s say 55 in my case. This is not an age to start a new life. Fatherland is not just the country where you were born. Fatherland is the language as well and I do care very much for both of them. So I have gone on visits 6 times so far. The first time I was allowed to leave was in 1977.

Israel is a jewel and I’m not saying it because I’m a Jew… The agronomist in me was deeply impressed because I saw a lot of green in a country that was built in the desert. You couldn’t find a house without a garden, without flowers or trees. You look and wonder. Everyone has a drip irrigation system because water is very expensive there. I analyzed more this beautiful part that I saw in 1977 and 1980. I visited a city called Arad [Modern city located in southern Israel, founded in 1962.] You can see the Dead Sea from there. An astonishing view. It had 15,000 people living there, mostly intellectuals. A city built from scratch, on the sand. Today it counts about 30-40,000 inhabitants. I saw Karmiel when it had only a few thousand people and years later when it had several tens of thousands. [Karmiel, a city located in northern Israel, founded in 1964 in Galilee.] So, it’s possible! 

When people start blaming all the bad things that this regime had one by 1989 I would like them all to remember the good things as well. That is that houses were built, the people had a place to live. We should also remember those who built all these things because it was the work of my peers and we did not live our lives by doing nothing. On the contrary, we did not have Saturdays or Sundays. Of course, sometimes we were indeed working, other times we were attending meetings. During communism those who were really exploited were the peasants. They said that: ‘we are fighting against the exploitation of man by man’. No other man was more exploited than the Romanian peasant. In a collective farm the norm was 7 lei per working day according to the plan. And what did this mean? That they wouldn’t get even 200 lei a month! Less than a janitor! Why wouldn’t they then work 8-9 hours in the open field? They were really exploited. The SMTs [Machine and Tractor Units] would skin them alive. Weeding, plowing, threshing and so on was done by tractors. We have suffered a lot because we were deprived of food between 1980 and 1989 [due to exporting goods to pay the foreign debt]. After 1989 9, one of the first measures taken was to disband the collective farms. Today I consider it the greatest mistake ever. They were already there, ready to use! You should have found the formula of a new regime that would leave them untouched from an organizational point of view and let them yield millions of tons of agricultural products. What are we going to do now about production? These units have been disbanded, while Federal Germany is busy creating agricultural units of 1,000 – 1,200ha. We already had them: ranging from the smallest of 600ha to the largest of 3,000 – 4,000ha. And not to mention the state-owned farms! Why have we neglected them? We did them away. This is what I cannot understand. 

In general they would not talk about the Holocaust during communism. They talked about it at annual commemorations organized by former Chief Rabbi Moses Rosen 10 within the community. But never publicly! People say that Rabbi Moses Rosen was once asked by a good friend of his that was not Jewish: ‘Why do you need to hold this commemoration every year for the Iasi pogrom, for the Holocaust of the 6 million Jews? Why every year?’ And he answered: ‘Look, I’ll answer this. First of all, we have this custom to annually commemorate the dead, those who have died just because they were Jews. Secondly, we want to keep the attention of the world alive so that nothing like this could happen anywhere. And thirdly, mind my words, if a Holocaust happens, then it will not concern the Jews alone any longer’. 

I am a member of the Romanian Jewish Holocaust Survivors’ Association and I have been the chairman of this association for a while. Because I am a survivor, I went to schools to tell about what happened to us. The students asked really interesting questions and proved to be interested to learn and surprised that something like this could happen. Some of them are shocked and wonder how come that something like this could happen. I wonder how come that I am still alive. 

Religion-wise, we keep the traditions. I, for instance, appreciate a whole series of commands that should be followed. According to the principles of today, at least my principles of today, most commands concern hygiene, education and so on. They do not have a quasi-religious explanation alone. I go to the synagogue especially on autumn holidays. This is for me a tradition and a vow that I made to my father who used to go to the synagogue almost every day. I go on the eve of Yom Kippur, in the evening, which is the fasting time. So, on this evening and the second evening I attend the final prayer of Yom Kippur. And I mostly like to hear the shofar on that evening.

I get reparations because I spent 5 months at the labor camp in Podul Iloaiei which was under Romanian and German military supervision. I get a lifetime pension from Claims Conference. This one I started getting much later than others because their provisions are German provisions, very strict, and they provided for a minimum of 6 months. I had but 5. And it took years before they changed to a minimum of 5 months. It was then that I entered the category of those who get this lifetime pensions which comes four times a year, every three months. I must say that this has significantly improved our life because I couldn’t have led a decent life only on the pension that I get for a 35-year work. I am a great admirer of cultural life, of anything that has to do with music, literature, trips, things that I could easily do before 1989. I would like to point out one detail here: I used to have a 4,000 lei pension and the expenditures were just like today. No matter what hotel I would choose I would pay 70 lei for a two-bed room at the most. Nowadays I need my whole pension to pay for 5 days at a hotel in Sinaia. I consider myself to be privileged compared to other retired people who get 300 or 400 ron. Our purchase power is 25% of the one we had before 1989.

I spend my spare time reading, going to concerts. I have all the books by Philip Roth, the great American writer. Truman Capote’s books again, because he is a writer that I love. And many more. I have been having a subscription at Sala Radio and there are so many concerts that you cannot attend them all. That is every Wednesday the chamber orchestra has a very good program; on Friday evenings the national orchestra and once in a fortnight again chamber music. A recital or the voice quartet from Iasi which is one of the best in the world. 

I don’t have a subscription to any newspaper. I have a neighbor that brings me Romania libera [daily] once in a few days and Libertatea [tabloid] every Sunday, Evenimentul Zilei [daily], Jurnalul National [daily] once in a few days. I give him books, you know, like between friends. But I do buy Universul Radio, the weekly radio program, I buy TvMania [TV program] for the TV. I watch mostly Mezzo [classical music channel] that I never miss, depending on the program. I buy Lumea Magazin [monthly magazine of global politics and foreign affairs]. There you have all kinds of analyses – political, economic, social, and so on. I love this magazine very much. May articles about Israel, about the Jews are presented with much objectivity, sometimes with a somehow ambiguous note, but anyway. 

As you can very well see on TV as well, one of the greatest Romanians in history [Great Romanians, TV show on national television about national heroes] is Antonescu 11. And during the talks, Mr. [Adrian] Cioroianu [Romanian historian and politician from the new generation] had a fair and unbiased approach, but I am sorry that he didn’t insist more. While showing the suffering of the Jews during Antonescu’s regime, he did not highlight more the suffering of the Romanian people who had 600-700,000 dead, not to mention the wounded. He should have highlighted why Antonescu was deemed a war criminal, not just because the Jewish people had to suffer. 270,000 Jews were killed just because they were Jewish, but the entire Romanian people had to suffer because of this leadership.

I spoke about the pogrom in Iasi because I wanted people to know that something like this could happen and that we, first of all as Jews, would want that something like this would never happen again. I welcomed the ‘Elie Wiesel’ committee on the study of the Holocaust that gave the President a document [Final Report, International Commission for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania; chairman: Elie Wiesel; authors: Tuvia Friling, Radu Ioanid, Mihail E. Ionescu; Iasi, Polirom Publishing House, 2005, 423 p.]. These are efforts that prove one thing: looking at what happened during the War, all the measures that were taken against the Jews came from the state leadership. Today, all the measures that protect the Jews come from the state as well. So, quite the opposite, institutions are established, commissions are created, laws are adopted, laws that provide what the justice system should do in situations that fall within its scope.  

As for my political conviction it is, so to say… I don’t know if I would assign a determiner: it is socialist. But I believe that there should be balance between each man’s contribution to the prosperity of the nation within which he/she lives and each man’s living standard. I would have never anticipated what is happening today. I don’t agree to what is happening today when you watch the TV and see that 17 out of 56 customs officers were arrested. It’s not fair! But on the other hand to accept bribes so that the state is deprived of a series of income that should go to the state budget and that affects all of us – this is unforgivable. And I am sorry. As you can see today, upon joining the European Union, one of the benchmarks that is still under monitoring is and will be the justice system.

After 1989, I have hoped more and I have the same unrelenting hope today. Considering my age, I would like to see some of this hope coming true. There is a crucial principle that says ‘Fight for the good of the country you live in, because your good depends on your country’s!’ This has always been one of the basic principles of my life.

Glossary:

Tobijas Jafetas
Vilnius
Lithuania
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: February 2005

Tobijas Jafetas, chairman of the ghetto and concentration camp prisoners at the Jewish community of Lithuania [see Lithuanian Council of Ghetto Prisoners] 1 is a tall, handsome and very reserved man with big dark eyes and a quiet voice. When I first visited Vilnius, Tobijas was busy and could not find time to meet with me. However, he promised and initiated our meeting during my next visit. We met a couple of times to complete the interview. Our first meeting took place in Tobijas’ spacious apartment in the very center of Vilnius. He has many books and pictures on the walls. Our second meeting took place in Tobijas’ office in the community. Tobijas makes the impression of a rather introvert personality. Even his impeccable clothes – a gray suit (the jacket is tightly buttoned) and a white shirt and a tie on a hot day demonstrate this. I think that the ghetto added docility to Tobijas’ natural shyness, or, as he mentioned during our conversation, perhaps, his youth in the ghetto eliminated all idealism from his life.

My family history
Growing up
During the war
After the war
Glossary

My family history

My father’s family came from Raseiniai in Lithuania [180 km from Vilnius]. My paternal surname of Jafet originated in Raseiniai in the 17th century. My grandfather, Azriel Jafet, born in Raseiniai in the 1850s, was a rabbi. He died in 1920, long before I was born. All I know about my paternal grandmother, Gita Jafet, Azriel’s wife, is what my relatives told me about her. My father told me that his was a traditional Jewish family. All my grandfather Azriel did was reading the Torah and the Talmud, and he spent the rest of his time praying at the synagogue. Grandmother Gita took care of the house and the children. This was common for all religious Jewish families. My grandmother perished during the first German extermination action of Jews in Raseiniai in 1941. I don’t know where my grandmother’s grave is, but my grandfather Azriel’s grave is in the Jewish cemetery in Raseiniai.

Azriel and Gita had three sons and four daughters. From what I know, all of the boys finished cheder and received a Jewish education. My father, Rafail Jafet, born in 1893, was the oldest son. The next son, who was given the Russian name [see Common name] 2 of Mikhail was born many years later, in 1906. There were the girls born in-between. Perhaps, Mikhail also had a Jewish name, but I know him by the name of Mikhail. He moved to Kaunas in 1923. In Kaunas Mikhail married Zina, a Jewish girl. They had two sons: Ariy, born in 1925, and Grigoriy, born in 1933. Mikhail owned a small store, which supported the family well. When the Soviet regime was established in 1940 [see Occupation of the Baltic Republics] 3, the shop was confiscated, and Mikhail found a job in the fire brigade. When the Great Patriotic War 4 began, the family evacuated. They went to Kazakhstan, and when Rostov region was liberated, they moved to Rybinsk. After the Great Patriotic War Mikhail, Zina and their younger son settled down in Riga. After the war Mikhail continued his work as a fire brigadier. He died in the early 1960s, while Aunt Zina lived almost 30 years longer. Ariy, the older son, was at the front. He was wounded in Lithuania in 1944. After the war Ariy moved to Moscow. He worked in the trade unions. He died in the 1980s. Grigoriy and his family moved to Germany in the 1980s. This is where he lives now.

Alexandr, or Alex, as he was called, born in 1913, was the youngest in the family. He also had a Jewish name; I think it was Zalman, since his family called him Zisia. Alexandr had elementary education. He also moved to Kaunas where he married the daughter of a sawmill owner. He worked at this sawmill. In 1941 Soviet authorities deported him and his wife Rosa to Siberia [see Deportations from the Baltics] 5. I think it might have been a mistake. They might have been looking for my father, who lived abroad, and Alex suffered for having the same surname as my father. At least, there were no evident reasons to deport him: Alex’ family wasn’t a wealthy one. Alex’ wife died somewhere on the way. Alex spent over 17 years in exile in Irkutsk region. When he returned to Lithuania, there was none of his kin left there. He and Rosa had no children. He lived in Lithuania till 1973, celebrated his 60th anniversary there and left for Israel where he lived with his sister Doba. Alexandr died in 1988.

I don’t know much about my father’s sisters. Two older sisters, whose names I can’t remember, lived in Riga where they perished during the occupation in 1941, as did their families and Grandmother Gita. Mania, five years younger than my father, lived in Raseiniai. In the 1920s, when my parents’ family lived in Berlin, my father’s companion Isaac Dinerman, a Jew from St. Petersburg, who was about ten days older than Mania, had become a widower some time before and had to raise his little daughter. My father introduced him to his sister and they got married shortly afterward. A year later their daughter Mary was born. They had a wonderful family and Mania was raising two daughters. When the persecution of Jews in fascist Germany became unbearable, Dinerman managed to move his family to London in 1937. Isaac was a wealthy man. He founded a company in London. Isaac Dinerman died in 1942. Mania inherited his company and became its successful leader. I don’t know what kind of business she was doing. I know that after the Great Patriotic war my aunt Mania was an active member of the Baltic Jewish Society, established by my father in London. She managed to obtain a license for charity food shipments to Lithuania and Latvia. This was the humanitarian part of her company’s activities. Mania died in the 1970s. Her daughter Mary also passed away. Mary’s children live in England.

My father’s sister Doba, the youngest daughter, studied at the Medical College in Moscow. When her father moved to Berlin, she followed him. She studied at the Berlin Medical University where she met her future husband. I don’t remember his name. In the early 1930s Doba and her husband moved to Palestine where they worked as doctors. Doba had no children. She passed away in the late 1980s.

My father finished cheder and went to the Jewish school. He was good at trading since his early years. He started selling pencils, notebooks and other stationery; helping his parents and following his older brother’s example. By 1918 he became a merchant of Guild I 6 which gave him the right to reside in capital towns. He lived in Moscow. In the late 1920s my father met my future mother in Riga or in Moscow. This was the gloomy period of the [Russian] Revolution [of 1917] 7, destruction and expropriation process, which resulted in poverty at best and at the worst it meant exile and death. Therefore, immediately after they got married – they didn’t have a traditional Jewish wedding considering the hardships of this time – my parents moved to Berlin in 1920.

My mother, Bertha Shustoff, was born in 1893, same year as my father. This Jewish surname appears in Jewish archives. According to some information, my ancestors lived in Lisbon in the 13th century. My mother’s parents, David and Genia Shustoff, born in the 1860s, came from the town of Visginas in Lithuania [130 km east of Vilnius]. My great-grandfather, David Doniakhi, grandmother Genia’s father –his name originates from the old Jewish name of Yakhi with the Spanish attachment of Don, which proves that my mother’s parents lived in Spain – was a rabbi. My grandfather, David Shustoff, studied religion under him. He became his best and favorite student and married Genia. When World War I began, the tsarist government deported Jewish residents from the near-the-front areas, seeing potential spies in them. David and Genia Shustoff were deported to Perm [2000 km from Moscow], where shortly after their arrival my grandfather became the rabbi of the town. When Lithuania gained independence [see Lithuanian independence] 8 in 1918, David’s family stayed in Russia. This was the time of World War I, and Perm was in the rear. It was cold and there was lack of food in the town. Grandfather David died of hunger in 1942. Grandmother Genia survived and lived ten years after the war.

David and Genia had many children. They got public and Jewish elementary education, but they didn’t grow up religiously. However, all of them, except my mother’s sister Masha, married Jews. My mother’s brother Tobijas Shustoff disappeared during the Civil War 9. This is all I know about him; I was named after him. My mother’s oldest brother Max, born in 1880, and his wife lived in Vitebsk [Belarus, 250 km from Minsk]. He died before the Great Patriotic War. Max had two sons and two daughters. I have no information about his daughters. His older son, Tankhu, was a pilot during the Great Patriotic War. After the war he got married and lived in Vitebsk with two daughters. In the 1970s Tankhu and his family moved to Israel. Max’ younger son, Menia, finished a higher educational institution in Moscow and became an engineer. His wife and two children moved to the USA a long time ago.

The next after Max was Mama’s brother Solomon Shustoff, born in the 1880s. He fought in the tsarist army during World War I. He was wounded and was captured. He was in captivity in Austria. In 1922 he was released and got married, but he had nothing to provide for the family. Solomon wrote to my mother in Berlin. My parents advised Solomon to move to the USA. They bought him tickets, and Solomon and his wife, whose name I can’t remember, moved to Chicago in the USA. Solomon worked as a laborer in a printing shop. In due time, he became the owner of a printing shop and a publishing house. Solomon had seven children, born in the USA. The two oldest sons fought in the US Army during World War II. One perished in Europe and the other one died in Japan. Two of Solomon’s younger sons still live in America. In total he has 62 descendants. He died in the 1970s.

Naftoli, the youngest boy in the family, was born in 1905. He lived with his parents in Perm, finished the Oil College and lived in Tatarstan, Caucasus, Crimea, where oil was extracted. When Naftoli retired, he moved to Simferopol [Crimea, Ukraine, 1000 km from Kiev] where he died in the 1980s. He had three sons: Yudel, the oldest, born in 1935, moved to Israel with his family in the 1970s, and we lost contact with him. Iosif, born in the late 1930s, also became an oil specialist, a Doctor of Science. He lectured at Sverdlovsk Oil College. In the 1990s he, his wife and their daughter moved to the USA. Veniamin, the youngest, also an oil specialist, followed his brother. That’s all I know about him.

Mama’s older sister Rebekka, born in the 1880s, also lived in Perm. She was a pharmacist. There, in Perm Rebekka got married and adopted the surname of Veksler. Rebekka had two daughters: Sarra, the older one, and her family live in the USA. Frieda, the younger daughter, lives in Hannover, Germany. Rebekka died in Perm in 1969.

Mama’s sister Masha, born in 1891, married Iosif Katinskas from Lithuania. Their daughter Anna was born in 1920. During the occupation Iosif, Masha and Anna stayed in Vilnius. Masha was hiding in her apartment and never left it throughout the occupation. Iosif took every effort to save his wife. Anna was a teacher in a distant village. They survived and supported me. A long period of my life is tied to this family. Masha and Iosif had me in their family after I lost my parents, and actually they replaced my parents. Masha died in the 1980s.

Mama’s youngest sister Hilna, much loved by all brothers and sisters, was born in 1907. Hilna married Lazar Frenkel, a Jewish man from Kaunas. She gave birth to their son Lev, but she didn’t enjoy her family life. She died in 1933. Her husband never remarried. He hired a nanny for his son. This lady became Lev’s second mother. Lev and his father were prisoners in the Kaunas ghetto 10. They perished during its liquidation. I know that Mother had another sister, but I can’t remember her name. She lived in Perm with Grandmother Genia and had two sons. One became an architect and artist, and the second one was a TV producer. They live in Perm, but I don’t know them.

My mother didn’t work for some time after finishing the gymnasium. She went to Riga from Perm. In Riga she entered the university, but she didn’t study there long. Shortly afterward she met my father. They got married and moved to Berlin. I don’t know whether my father managed to take a part of his capital to Berlin, or whether my parents went there having nothing. One thing I know for sure is that in Berlin my father started his own business. Lithuania was devastated at that time. There were no essential goods or products being produced. Taking advantage of this situation, my father opened a small store in a little town near the German and Lithuanian border. My parents were doing well. At least I know that they managed to help their brothers and sisters. However, my parents, particularly Mama, missed their motherland. Since there was no threat of communist repressions, as Lithuania and Latvia became independent bourgeois countries, my parents moved to Kaunas in Lithuania in 1923.

My father became a dealer for British textile companies. Britain manufactured wonderful woolen fabrics, known all over the world, and exported them to Lithuania. My father was a wholesaler.

Growing up

In 1925 Mama gave birth to my older brother Azriel, named after my father’s father. In 1927 Yefim was born. He was called Fima in the family. At the age of six Fima caught a cold and died of pneumonia in 1933. I was born on 31st March 1930. My parents were thinking of giving me the double name of Tobijas-David after my mama’s brother, who disappeared during World War I, and after Mama’s father. However, the Lithuanian authorities refused to allow the double name, and I was registered as Tobijas. At home my family called me David or Dodik. My surname was registered in the Lithuanian way with the grammatical ending of ‘as’ [Lithuaniazation of names] 11, and I’ve lived my life with the surname of Jafetas.

I had a beautiful childhood, and I would wish my grandchildren and great-grandchildren, if I’m lucky to live long enough to see them, to have a happy childhood. Our family was rather wealthy. My father owned two houses. We lived in one, and I can’t describe that other house. I don’t remember it, but I remember the one we lived in very well. It was a big stone house in the center of Kaunas. It had five rooms and a kitchen. There was a dining room, a living room and a big kitchen on the first floor. There was a beautiful wooden staircase to the second floor. There was also my father’s room, where we had to ask permission to come in, my parents’ bedroom and the children’s room that belonged to Azriel and me. I can’t remember our brother Fima. He died when I was just three, but I think he must have slept in this children’s room as well. There were two wooden beds with nice covers and a desk where Azriel liked to paint and draw. Azriel demonstrated amazing talents with regards to painting and drawing of houses and structures since he was a young child. There was also a bookstand with our children’s books and a wardrobe in this room.

The furniture was plain, while in the other rooms it was luxurious. My father ordered it in Berlin. It was shipped in two freight cars to our town. It was made from mahogany, which was very popular at the time. The beds were huge and had beautiful lace curtains. There was also a four-door mirror wardrobe, full of my parents’ clothes. Mama also had her desk with a marble top in the bedroom. Mama did her housekeeping calculations, wrote letters and read books sitting at this desk. There were two huge handmade cupboards in the dining room. Mama told me that when they were delivered, they had to break the wall to take them in. When I was a child, I liked touching the carved cupboard doors ornamented with little birds, flowers and angels. They were made in the rococo style, popular at the start of the 20th century. There was also a smaller cupboard, a table and chairs and a big mirror made in this same fashion. There was a small round table with a silver candle stand on it in the corner of the room. Mama lit candles on Sabbath. In my father’s room there was his desk, bookcases and a floor clock where I liked to hide, when a child. There was the marble bust of Mercury, the God of Commerce, on a high narrow table, our only belonging that survived the Great Patriotic War. It decorates my living room now.

My mother didn’t work. She had a cook and a housemaid to help her about the house. Mama made daily menus, supervised the cook, tried the dishes and added spices to them. Mama knew all culinary secrets of the Jewish cuisine, but we also had European dishes for our meals. My parents were not religious Jews, though they were both born into rabbis’ families. My father had a tallit, tefillin, Talmud and Torah. On big holidays he attended the big choral synagogue of Tallinn and took me with him, when I grew a little older. My father prayed at the synagogue. He knew Hebrew and also, he knew prayers by heart. However, Jewish traditions were not strictly observed in our house. On Saturday my father had to work, and therefore, on Friday we had no festive preparations for Sabbath like they had in other Jewish homes. My father only wore a kippah when he went to the synagogue. Mama had nice hairdos, and she didn’t wear a wig or a kerchief. Mama honored Saturday, wearing a white lace shawl and lighting candles in the silver candle stand. This was all we did for the Sabbath celebration. We didn’t follow the kashrut in our family. Though we didn’t eat pork and meat was bought in special kosher stores, I don’t remember that we had separate dishes or sinks for meat and dairy products. But since I never went to the kitchen, I cannot be quite sure about it.

We celebrated Jewish holidays, though. As a rule, our relatives Mikhail and Alexandr and their families visited us on such occasions. On Yom Kippur my parents fasted, and, what is surprising, the children also followed the fasting, though it wasn’t mandatory for children to fast. I can hardly remember any fall holidays. I remember well that we had no sukkah. On Sukkoth we visited Uncle Mikhail. My uncle made a sukkah in his yard. I liked Chanukkah, like all children. The house smelled of potato pancakes and pies with jam filling, which were made in the kitchen. The children were given petty cash. I also remember Purim, the funny costumes and Purimspiels, organized in our house. The cook made hamantashen with poppy seeds and delicious rolls with raisins and nuts under my mother’s supervision. I have the best memories of Pesach. The house was thoroughly washed, cleaned and scrubbed before the holiday. There were fancy curtains hung and lace tablecloths put on tables. There was a big basket with matzah brought to the kitchen by a courier from the synagogue. Mama put on her fanciest dress, and helped us into lovely velvet suits with ribbons. There was delicious gefilte fish that Mama made herself, stew, chicken, and also salads and cakes on the table. There were also various tsimes dishes, yimberlakh and other traditional Jewish food on the table. Our daily meals were also delicious and plentiful, but there was no such variety as we had on Pesach. My father conducted the seder according to the rules and I, being the youngest child, asked him the four questions. Often my cousin brother Lev Frenkel and his father visited us. Lev was my best friend. We often played together. I also visited him, accompanied by my nanny.

I don’t remember my nanny. My governess was a nice lady from Austria. She spoke German to me, and this was the first language I learned. My parents spoke Russian and Yiddish to one another. My brother, who studied in the old Jewish gymnasium, spoke Hebrew to them, and I also learned it. I spent most of my time with the governess and my brother. Mama also often spent time with us. She took us to an ice-cream shop and to the Jewish children’s theater performances.

In 1936 we visited Aunt Mania in Berlin. She, her husband and children lived in the center of the city. We stayed in Berlin for about two weeks, but I was too young to remember any details of this trip. That same year I went to the preparatory class at the gymnasium where my brother Azriel also studied. Jews constituted about 30% of the total population of Kaunas, and there were several Jewish schools there: a Yiddish Jewish school, the technical Jewish gymnasium, the humanitarian gymnasium and a religious school. In my gymnasium the subjects were taught in Hebrew. Soon I started talking to my parents and my brother in Hebrew. I had Jewish friends. One of them, Zandel, was my classmate and so were the girls Tanur and Soloveichik. These were their last names; unfortunately, I don’t remember their first names. Regretfully, our communication didn’t last long. Zandel and Tanur perished during the occupation, and Soloveichik and her family were deported to Siberia. I don’t know what happened to her. I also played with other children of different nationalities, and we got along very well.

There were many Jewish organizations in Kaunas. I liked performances of the Jewish theater where we went with my class. I liked music and liked listening to the records my father played on the record player. I started learning to play the piano, when I was about five years old. We had a piano delivered from Germany. I didn’t like playing it but preferred playing with my friends and Lev. I played table tennis for some time. There were Jewish organizations in Lithuania and in Kaunas. I didn’t like Betar 12 members, who I thought were too aggressive. Maccabi 13 and Hashomer Hatzair 14 were closer to me. There was another organization in Kaunas, which collected money to purchase land in Palestine, and for the construction of kibbutz communities and establishment of the Jewish state. There was a nice money box, where Mama and Papa always dropped change, in our living room. Every week a representative of this organization visited us. We opened the ‘cannon’ and he collected the money.

My parents’ friends were wealthy merchants, lawyers and doctors. They were the Jewish elite of Kaunas. My parents often arranged receptions and went to see their friends. My father had Lithuanian, Polish and Russian business partners. My father taught me to respect other nations. His secretary Unger was German. In 1939, when Hitler appealed to all Germans to repatriate, he bid farewell to my father and left. I don’t know if this was the last drop in my father’s cup of patience, or if he already knew how Hitler treated Jews, but he insisted that our family moved to England where Mania’s family lived. Many Lithuanians had big hopes for the Soviet regime and looked forward to its establishment, but my parents were well aware of the Soviet Russia in the early 1920s and expected no good from them.

I remember the last celebration in Kaunas. It was my brother Azriel’s bar mitzvah. An old Jew visited our house to teach my brother the prayers and how to put on the tefillin. On the day of his coming of age our relatives and close friends gathered in our house. There was a big ball. They already knew about my father’s decision to leave Lithuania and this was a kind of a farewell party with the rest of the family. When the academic year came to an end – my brother finished the gymnasium and I finished the fourth grade – we moved to London.

We left in a car and later we took a train to Berlin. My cousin sister Anna Kapiskene, Aunt Masha’s daughter, went with us. Anna, born in 1920, was a quite a grown-up young lady by then. In England my father took my brother and me to the college in Brighton on the southern coast, near the English Channel between England and Europe. Then he went to a resort in France. He suffered from stomach ulcer. Mama and Anna decided to travel in England and then join my father in France. My brother and I spent six weeks in college. It was a Jewish educational institution. There were many Jews living in Brighton. We lived in bedrooms, had meals in the canteen and read books in the library. We were bored, I was missing my parents and my brother was trying to entertain me. On holidays we visited Esther, my father’s distant relative. She had a traditional Jewish home, and there was gefilte fish, tsimes and other dishes on the Saturday table. This food was very much like my mother would have made it. The international situation in Europe was aggravating. Mama decided she had to take her niece to her parents in Lithuania. Besides, she had more extensive plans to sell the houses in Kaunas and ultimately move to the West. I don’t know whether Mama discussed this with Father or she took this decision by herself, but I really don’t know why she decided to leave my older brother in England. One way or another, six weeks after we came to this college Mama came to pick me from there. Mama, Anna and I left.

We arrived in Kaunas in late August 1939, and on 1st September fascists occupied Poland [see Invasion of Poland] 15: World War II began. Jews from the occupied areas were invading Lithuania. They were telling horrible things about fascist atrocities, but nobody thought that mass murder would come onto stage. I can’t understand why Mama stayed behind rather than leaving with us. She was still hoping to sell the house profitably. I went to my former gymnasium, met with my friends and everything went well for me. Mama kept saying that after the academic year was over we would go to my father in London. This was not to be. In June 1940, when the academic year was over, the Soviet forces invaded Lithuania, and Lithuania was annexed to the new Soviet Russia. We failed to move to the West. Most likely, Mama didn’t even try to obtain the permission fearing the Soviet authorities. Many years later, when I grew up, I tried to recall and analyze Mama’s feelings, when she realized she was not going to see her husband and older son for quite a while. It never occurred to anyone that this was for good. Maybe, she was hoping that everything would go well and one day we would all be together. At least, this was what she kept telling me. She had to get a job and went to work as an accountant assistant in an office. Her fluent Russian helped her to get a job.

I spent the summer of 1940 in Kaunas, and in the fall I went to the Soviet school, which was a former Jewish religious school. Our gymnasium was closed and its students went to different schools. Deportations of wealthier people began. They didn’t care whether they were Jewish or non-Jewish. Zionist and Jewish activists suffered from repressions a lot. Mama often told us how good it was that Papa wasn’t in Lithuania, or he would have been deported for sure. We, children, didn’t know Russian, and had our school classes in Yiddish. We had a pioneer [see All-Union pioneer organization] 16 and Komsomol 17 organization, meetings and formations. I liked this new way of life. There was some time to go before I could become a pioneer, but I was eager to join this organization. In May 1941 Uncle Alexandr and his wife were deported. Mama was crying and said that this was a stupid mistake. He was neither wealthy, nor a Zionist. Most likely, they were hunting for my father, and Uncle Alexandr suffered from this.

During the war

When the school year was over I went to the first pioneer camp in my life, in Palanga, a few kilometers from the border. How happy I was! I had a pioneer necktie clasped together with a nice metal clip, and we had pioneer meetings and lined up near the pioneer fire. We swam in the sea and played volleyball. Our life in the camp lasted just one week. At 4am on 22nd June 1941 we woke up from the explosion of bombs. At first we decided these were trainings, which were quite frequent at the time, but this happened to be a bombing and one cannon shell hit our camp. The fire started, and we formed a column and it headed to the sea. We moved in the direction of Latvia, and fear and bombs were pushing us forward. We even saw a sea battle. Fascist planes flew over the column dropping bombs several times. A few children were wounded

Before one o’clock in the afternoon we’d covered 16 kilometers along the coastline. At that point younger children boarded buses and moved to Russia. Fortunately, they managed to rescue these young children. They probably didn’t have more buses. Older children had some dried fish and sauerkraut. I was hungry, and this food, to which I was unaccustomed, seemed to taste delicious. We didn’t walk long – some time later a motorcycle with three fascists, two on the seats and one in a sidecar, caught up with us. They were the first Germans I saw. They just told our leader to turn the column backwards. We turned and headed back to Palanga. We never saw these officers again. We were taken to a house. The Lithuanians, who had agreed to serve the Germans, took command. I managed to step aside into the bushes where I took off my precious pioneer necktie and threw it into the bushes. However, I couldn’t part with my clip. I put it into my pocket.

The Jewish children were separated from the others and taken to the synagogue, a small red brick house. There were already local Jews in the synagogue. They were old men, old women and children. I didn’t see any young man. Perhaps, they were no longer in the town, or they had been separated during the first action. Fascists used to kill younger men immediately to demonstrate their beastly character and make people fear them. The synagogue was guarded, and nobody was allowed to go outside. We were given no food or water. On the following day all inmates were directed to a camp located in a mansion. There were two buildings: a kitchen and housekeeping facilities. We were taken to one structure where we had to sit on the floor. In the morning we were given some potatoes and sauerkraut and had to go to work. We were to clean up the building that formerly belonged to the Soviet military. We could find pressed cereals in packages, and we ate them as they were. In the evening we were given some miserable dinner. We slept on the floor so close to one another that when one wanted to turn, the whole row had to turn simultaneously. There was no toilet or sink, and we went to the toilet in the yard.

Ten days passed like this, and I almost lost hope to see Mama. On the 11th day my Lithuanian friends who were in the pioneer camp with me, came to the building where we were working. They said Lithuanian children were to go to Kaunas on the following day and suggested that I went with them. I knew this was the only hope for me to get home. I left work with them and slept in their quarters. On the following day I boarded the bus with them. Nobody asked me about my typical Jewish appearance or my name. I arrived in Kaunas on that same day.

Mama was home. She hadn’t left the house since the first day of the occupation, when Jewish pogroms began. She was crying and kissing me. Then she heated some water, washed me and burned my clothes. I wasn’t only dirty and exhausted, but also had flees. So our life in occupied Kaunas began. Mama and I stayed in the house. Frania, my cousin brother’s governess, brought us food and told us about what was going on in the town. Soon the order for Jews to move into the ghetto in the suburb of Kaunas, a small village on the Volia River, was issued. They were to move there within one month: from 15th July to 15th August. The non-Jewish residents of this area were to exchange apartments with the Jews living in the town. So, this relocation to the ghetto in Kaunas was well prepared and organized, which was different from other towns. The Jews who had nice houses in Kaunas managed to find nicer apartments in Viliampole. We didn’t take the effort of looking for a nicer apartment, and only received one room in Viliampole. We took everything we could carry, and Mama had money and jewelry, whatever was left from what Frania had traded for food.

At first there were two ghettos in Kaunas, separated by a street. There was a passage bridge across the street. The street didn’t belong to the ghetto, and the inmates weren’t allowed to walk on the street. The ghetto was fenced with two rows of barbed wire. We had our room in the larger ghetto. All inmates who could go to work had to work. Mama worked at the stocking factory in the town. She went to work there every day and came back in the evening. Children of my age also were to go to work. Fascists had everything planned. Every person had to make his or her own contribution into the Reich, or had to be exterminated. There were no general education schools in the ghetto, but there was a vocational school where I studied the vocation of a mechanic for some time. However, I never got a chance to practice what I had learned.

In fall the first mass action took place. During such actions fascists killed those, who were of no use to the Reich. In early fall all inmates were ordered to gather outside for sorting out. In the following few days the fascists killed ten thousand inmates. All doomed inmates were taken to the old fortress where they were killed. The room where we lived was near Linkovos Street that led to the fortress. Jews were marching along this street and I’ll always remember this doomsday. We were lucky to escape this action.

After this action many apartments and houses became vacant, and we moved into the third house from the gate to the ghetto, on Glinius Street. It was a two-storied wooden house with two apartments on the first floor and two apartments on the second floor. We shared our apartment with two other families. One of the families, the family of a Jewish policeman, had a girl, born illegally in late fall. She was given the name of Ghettele, after the place where she was born. She was born illegally, since childbirth was forbidden in the ghetto.

Our life in the ghetto was regulated by a number of orders. There was a German commandatura in the ghetto. It was a fenced tiny and tidy house with 10-15 people in it. Jewish policemen watched the order and formed the guard service. The Judenrat 18, with many honorable Jews and Jewish policemen elected as its members, was responsible for compliance with orders. Actually, the Judenrat took responsibility of many parts of life in the ghetto. There was an employment department, which was to provide certain numbers of employees at the German commandment request. It also had an accommodation unit, responsible for accommodations and also the health and sanitary department. There was also a hospital in the ghetto, but nobody wanted to go there. The fascists sent those who had severe health problems to be shot. In late 1941 there were rumors spread that there were many contagious patients in the hospital. The fascists encircled it and burnt everybody inside: doctors, patients and visitors. I don’t remember whether they opened another hospital afterward. There was also a funeral crew in the ghetto. There was a wagon pulled by a miserable horse, riding along the street and picking all deceased or killed inmates. They were buried in the Jewish cemetery in the ghetto. If they knew the name of the deceased, the Judenrat even installed a gravestone with the name of this person. Often, when there were many dead people, particularly those killed during an action, they were buried in a common grave.

During my three lives in ghettos I saw many deaths, and death was a mandatory element of our life, and we didn’t think there was something special about it. When you don’t know a different life, and in the ghetto I soon forgot my happy prewar life, then you think there can be no other life and take what happens for granted. At least, this was what many other guys and I thought. We actually knew no other life and it wasn’t until many years later that we could evaluate our life and realize the horror of our existence.

So at that time I took that life for granted, being the ten-year-old boy that I was. I had to do some work and I became a courier. I did various errands for the policemen on guard at the gate. I was a courier, a messenger and a carrier. The gate was near our house, and I spent almost all of my time in our yard. Our main care was to get some food. Mama received 700 grams and I received 70 grams of sodden sawdust bread. We also received some cereal, peas and rosefinch by cards. The rations were so small that it was hard to put together daily rations, and so we received these food portions once a week or even once in a few weeks. However, we were not to choose, and we were very happy to have what we were given. Mama always tried to bring some food from the town, however dangerous it was. The policemen at the gate could either take away the food or even beat those who violated the rules. Anyway, Mama never got caught, maybe because she never had much food with her. Frania kept almost all of our best belongings and valuable things. She brought food to Mama’s work place and supported us well in this manner. She also brought food to her favorite Lev and Uncle Lazar. We didn’t see them often. We had our hands full in the ghetto. I made a vegetable garden in our yard. I took care of the vegetables growing and enjoyed this work. The vegetables were a valuable addition to our ration.

I had friends and played with them. We made a ball from cloth and played football. We also organized amateur theatrical performances and the characters were fascists, policemen, inmates of the ghetto surrounding us. Our favorite game was with buttons. We threw them in a special way against the wall and then we watched where they fell – our gain depended on that. I practiced throwing buttons pointedly and won the prize in a game. The prize was a nice gray rabbit. We made a cage under the roof in our house. Later somebody brought a female rabbit and soon we had several rabbits. Picking grass and giving the rabbits food and water was a lot of fun. Rabbits multiply rapidly, and they made a big addition to our food ration. My friend or I never slaughtered rabbits or even looked at how adults picked a rabbit to kill. We loved them well, but we didn’t turn down rabbit meat.

I started talking Yiddish here in the ghetto. I only talked Hebrew and German before, but we thought it bad to speak German in the ghetto. In 1943 I turned 13. A few weeks before the date, Mama found an old Jewish man to prepare me for my bar mitzvah. He taught me how to put on the tefillin, and a few prayers. Mama also had her preparations, saved food and even arranged a dinner in honor of my coming of age. My friends, Uncle Lazar and Lev came to this dinner. There was our distant relative Yatkunskiy, the editor of the Kaunas Jewish newspaper, his wife and two sons in the ghetto. We didn’t see them often. We worked during the day, and there was a curfew in the evening. We always feared actions. Fascists undertook them spontaneously, slightly changing their requirements. They either wanted to capture 500 men or 200 women. They pretended to be taking people to work, but then they killed them. Though I knew Jewish prayers, I didn’t pray according to the rules. I always prayed in my own words. I had God in my heart and needed no minyan to pray.

In 1943 we started being aware of the underground organization. I don’t know whether my mother knew any underground activists, she never mentioned it. There were flyers describing the victorious advance of the Soviet army at all fronts and appealing to fight against fascists. We were waiting for the news about the situation at the front, hoping to be liberated soon.

In late April 1944 I went to work as usual. All of a sudden I felt something was wrong. I could hear screams and shooting from the outside. I rushed to my rabbits and took shelter in their cage in the attic. This happened to be the so-called ‘children’s action.’ They exterminated children of the ghetto that day. I stayed in the cage. On that day a tragedy happened in our house. The fascists captured Ghettele, a two-year-old girl, our favorite. Her mother was out of her mind and the fascists killed her in the yard. When Mama returned from work, she told me that I had to leave the ghetto since one could no longer stay in the ghetto. She had discussed this with some people and had everything prepared for my escape. In the evening Mama washed my clothes. In the morning she took my clothes to work with her. About two days later Mama told me to be at her factory at 12. She explained how I was to find her since I had never left the ghetto before and didn’t know the neighborhood where she worked. My first challenge was to get over the fence. I managed it all right. The policemen were used to my presence at the gate, but I didn’t use the gate. When there was nobody around, I pulled the lower wire using my leg, and then did the same with the upper wire with my hand, and got to the other side of the fence. Then it took me almost no time to find the factory. Two Jewish workers were waiting for me at the entrance to the factory. They hid me in the boiler room. This was where I saw Mama for the last time. She came to say goodbye to me. She promised that she would also leave the ghetto soon and we would reunite. I said goodbye to her and it never occurred to me that this would be the last time I saw her. Some time later the same workers helped me out of the factory. I still cannot understand, and there is nobody I can ask about it, why my cousin brother Lev Frenkel was not with me. He, his father Lazar Frenkel, my mother and the rest of the Yatkunskiy family perished during the elimination of the ghetto. I was the only survivor in the family.

Two women were waiting for me. One was my cousin sister Anna Katinskaite, Aunt Masha’s daughter, and Katrina Katinskaite, Masha’s husband Iosif’s sister. Katrina was Lithuanian and Anna was semi-Lithuanian. They were dressed like Christian women, wore crosses around their necks and the German authorities had no suspicions about them. They came to Vilnius from Kaunas to help me. They had documents for me issued by a pastor they knew. The documents were issued for Yonas Vaitkavichus. Only now I understand how thorough my beloved Mama’s preparations were. Katrina, Anna and I went to Frania’s place where we stayed overnight. They washed me, shaved my dark curly hair and told me to pretend I was mute and answer no questions. In the morning we took a train to Vilnius. On our way a policemen addressed me, but I pretended I couldn’t hear anything. I had no fear. Quite on the opposite, I found it an interesting adventure. It was the first time in three years I was out of the ghetto. I tried to have no concerns about Mama, hoping that she would be out of the ghetto soon.

In Vilnius we went to Aunt Masha’s apartment on 2, Kashtonu Street. Uncle Iosif was not in Vilnius. He was working on a farm. Anna went to the province where she was a Lithuanian teacher. Being half-Jewish, it was easier for her to keep her origin a secret. Katrina lived with my aunt Masha. I stayed with them and had to be very quiet and careful. This was a shared [communal] apartment 19, and another room was occupied by two young men. One was a student, and the other one was a policeman. Aunt Katrina told me that this policeman drank a lot one night and sitting in the kitchen told her that once he took part in a terrible thing, which was shooting of Jews. He confessed and felt very sorry. He told Aunt Katrina that this was a terrible thing to see. Aunt Katrina was scared of him. She never left her room and told me to stay inside. In June this policeman had a wedding party, and there were policemen and Gestapo officers in the apartment. Masha and I stayed in our room and felt more dead than alive. Fortunately, nothing happened to us. In late June one could tell that the front was nearing Vilnius. There were severe bombings. Some time around 10th July we saw fascists running away. Their dormitory was near our house. The policeman and the student, our neighbors, also disappeared.

We also left home and were hiding in St. Jacob Cathedral. Many other residents found shelter behind its thick walls. On 13th July the cannonade grew quieter. We came out of the cathedral. There was a tank and a dead Soviet soldier on it across the street from the cathedral. There was a glow in the square where wooden storages were located. There was a field kitchen installed here, and people were given soldier’s boiled cereal. We ate our ration and the dish tasted delicious. We went home. The windows were broken, and there was ash from the fireplace all around the place. We cleaned the room and placed carton sheets in the window frames. The sense of freedom and that I could walk in the streets without restrictions were new to me. Aunt Masha told me off saying it was too soon to walk in the streets. Gradually Jews from ghettos and camps started returning to Vilnius. I went to the railway station every day, hoping to meet Mama there. Some people returned from Kaunas. Mama was not there. Some time later one man told me that Mama gave her jewelry to a guard at the gate for letting her out, but when she went through the gate, this rascal shot her. I was alone and knew nothing about my father. When Kaunas was liberated, my aunt and I went there. Our house was robbed, and I was scared to be there. Besides, the house was nationalized, and I had no right to stay there. I found the bust of Mercury among the dust and dirt. It was in my father’s room watching the chaos and devastation inertly. I took the bust and it has always been with me ever since.

After the war

Aunt Masha and Uncle Iosif treated me as if I was their own son. They were willing to adopt me, but I didn’t support this idea. My mother’s death caused me a lot of pain. I wanted to keep the name I was born with, and besides, I was hoping that my father would find me. My dear ones understood my feelings and remained my closest people till their very last days; they died in the late 1980s. My cousin Anna has also passed away. I saw Frania, my rescuer, just a few times after the war. She lived in Kaunas and died in 1993. Yad Vashem 20 awarded Frania the title of the ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ 21.

In the summer of 1947 I went on vacation to Grandmother Genia Shustoff in Perm. This was the first and the last time I saw her. Grandmother was a traditional patriarchal Jewish woman. She wore a kerchief, followed the kashrut and celebrated Sabbath. She always invited poor women who couldn’t afford to celebrate Sabbath to her meal. This was the first time in my life that I celebrated Sabbath according to the rules. I never saw Grandmother again. She died in 1953.

In fall I went to the 2nd grade of gymnasium. After the war Lithuania maintained its prewar educational system: a four-year elementary school and eight-year gymnasium course. I didn’t feel quite comfortable, being overage. In summer I studied individually and passed exams for the 3rd grade, and then I could go to the 4th grade. I also took the course for the 7th and 8th grade at university. I was good at studying. I also joined the Komsomol, and in 1949 I finished school and obtained a very good certificate.

I successfully passed my entrance exams to the Chemical Faculty. However, Buchas, the rector of Vilnius University, who came from Kaunas and knew my father very well, said that sons from bourgeois families were not to study at the university, and I was not admitted there. Anna’s friend helped me. She was married to the pro-rector of the Teachers’ Training College, and I was admitted to the Faculty of Physics and Mathematic. I studied well. I was well-loved at home. Masha’s family treated me like their son. I wasn’t an active Komsomol member, but I liked amateur performance clubs. I was involved in the amateur theater performances and sang in the folk choir. This choir toured all over Lithuania on plain trucks. I had many Lithuanian friends and never felt an outcast like I did in the ghetto. When in the early 1950s all newspapers trumpeted about cosmopolitan Jews [see campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’] 22, this anti-Semitic campaign also affected me. I was excluded from the Komsomol, not for being Jewish, but for having a bourgeois origin. I was a success with my studies and finished the college with the highest grades. I wanted to attend post-graduate studies, but I wasn’t admitted there, without any explanation. I was told I was to work off whatever money the state had spent on my education.

I got a [mandatory] job assignment 23 to Taurage [Lithuania, 200 km from Vilnius], where I worked for two years. I taught physics, astronomy and mathematic in a secondary school. In Taurage I made friends with a girl. She had finished the same college and was an English teacher in my school. I had never looked at her, when we were at college, but at that school, far from home, we became friends and I proposed to her. Yelena Zagorstene, whom I chose, was two years younger than me. She was born in Alytus [Lithuania, 100 km from Vilnius]. During the war Yelena was in the occupation, and after the war she moved to Vilnius with her parents. Her parents and Masha were against our marriage due to the national issue. We were given six months for the probation period. Both sides hoped that we would find different attachments within this time. However, Yelena and I remained faithful to one another. On 20th June 1955, when the academic year was over, we registered our marriage in the district registration office in Taurage. My wife went to take an advanced training course in Vilnius almost immediately after this event, and I followed her after my assignment term was over.

I worked as a teacher before 1959, when I entered the Faculty of Cybernetics for those who had higher education of Moscow Polytechnic College. After getting my degree in cybernetics I went to work at a computer company, which had opened in Lithuania. I went successfully in this company for almost 32 years till 1992. I wrote a candidate degree [Soviet/Russian doctorate degrees] 24 thesis, but I didn’t want to defend it. I thought its subject had become outdated while I was working on it, and I decided against defending it for the sake of an increase of my salary and obtaining the candidate’s degree.

In 1957 our daughter Edita was born. By that time we had already received a room in a shared apartment. Ten years later the state gave us a nice three-room apartment where we live now. We were quite well-off. My wife and I had decent salaries and had everything we needed. Well, actually, my father supported us well.

Almost immediately after Lithuania was liberated, Aunt Masha started searching for relatives. She contacted Uncle Solomon in America. He wrote to her that my father was alive and lived in London. He happened to be a well-to-do businessman. My brother Azriel had graduated from university and became an architect. My father had remarried, but he had never given up hope to find me. He established the Union of Baltic Jews in London. My aunt Mania was a member. They were sending parcels to Jewish communities in Lithuania and Latvia. When my father got to know that I lived in Lithuania, he started supporting me. I also received parcels from the Union of Baltic Jews in London. I saw my father in 1955, when he flew to the Soviet Union and we went to meet him in Leningrad. It’s hard to describe this reunion without tears. We had lost hope to find each other. Afterward I was allowed to visit my father every three to four years. I visited him six times. We talked and recalled Mama, our home and our wonderful life together, whenever we met. My relocation to London was out of the questions considering that Soviet authorities would have called me a traitor and I would have never seen my family again. This was not possible for me. My father’s second wife was a nice lady, but she passed away too early, and he was alone again. Regretfully, my father didn’t have a long life. He died in 1970.

I visited my brother Azriel in London, and he visited Vilnius several times. Azriel got married in 1949 His wife, whose name I can’t remember, was a Jew from Czechoslovakia. They met at Manchester University where they studied. Azriel lives in London now. He has two grown-up daughters: Nadine and Michel. Michel lives in London with her husband, and Nadine lives in Spain.

In 1946 many Lithuanian residents had a chance to move to Poland. [In 1946 Soviet authorities permitted to leave the territory of the USSR to all people, who were born on the territories annexed to the USSR in the period from 1939-1940s.] I also considered this possibility to move further to Israel or England where I was hoping to find my father and brother. However, my wife was against any relocation. I loved her and didn’t want to destroy our marriage. The subject of emigration has never again been raised in our family. I have always been very enthusiastic about Israel. I thought it was the very fortress capable of protecting Jews all over the world and would never allow a repetition of the extermination of Jews. Through all years of the Soviet regime I had to keep the fact of my imprisonment in the ghetto a secret. Soviet authorities never went into any details about who or why someone had been in the occupation. One’s presence in occupied areas was almost a crime. Back in Taurage, where Yelena was secretary of the Komsomol unit, she helped me to restore my membership in the Komsomol. It ended when I turned 28, and I never wanted to join the Party. Firstly, I didn’t care about public activities, and secondly, the ghetto taught me to be quiet and system-obedient, as they said, never to ‘stick out.’ I enjoyed my work and the family. In the early 1960s my father gave me a car, and the three of us often went on vacations to the Crimea or Caucasus; we also traveled across Ukraine, the Carpathians and Zakarpatiye.

My daughter grew up in an international family. She considers herself a Lithuanian, but she has a Jewish heart. Though our family never celebrated Jewish holidays during the Soviet regime, Judita always arranges celebrations for me on Pesach, Purim and other holidays. My wife doesn’t mind it, but she never initiates any celebrations. Judita finished school successfully and graduated from the Faculty of Applied Mathematic of Vilnius University. She actually followed into my footsteps. Now Judita works with one scientific newspaper publishing office. Judita’s marital life was not that successful. She divorced her Lithuanian husband, but she kept his surname of Shpokauskene. I have two grandchildren: David, born in 1981 and named after my grandfather, who graduated from the Law Faculty, and my granddaughter Raya. She is two years younger than her brother and studies to be a designer.

My family had very positive feelings about the changes after perestroika 25, when Lithuania gained independence [see Reestablishment of the Lithuanian Republic] 26. Well, this office where I was working happened not to be needed, like many others, and I lost my job in 1992, but my brother supported me all right, and besides, I had my pension. In independent Lithuania I didn’t have to explain anything, when I wanted to travel abroad. We became free citizens of a free country. Besides, I’ve become a rich man. According to the restitution law my parents’ house in Kaunas was given back into my ownership. Now I have real estate, and my family and I go there at weekends. My grandchildren will inherit my house, which was built by my father.

The public Jewish life has progressed in independent Lithuania. In 1994 I was offered to be the Head of the Lithuanian Jewish Union of ghetto and concentration camp prisoners, and that’s where I’ve worked since that time. We started from scratch looking for the former prisoners, because they had kept this fact a secret during the Soviet regime. Now we have a big society. We often get together and talk about our childhood and youth behind bars in the ghetto. The memories still hurt. We’ve established international relations. We correspond with Jewish communities and unions of former ghetto prisoners from the USA, Israel and other countries. I celebrate Jewish holidays with others in the community. I’m trying to get closer to the Jewish tradition. I haven’t become religious, but I respect those who believe in God and pray. I also address the Lord and destiny, whatever there is above us, but I speak to them in my own words, which come deep from my heart.

Glossary:

St. Petersburg
Russia
Interviewer: Vera Postavinskaya
Date of interview: April 2007

Mark Evgenyevich Epstein is a very charming person. He is 83 years old, but he bears his age well: he is tucked up, gray-haired elegant sporting man.

Mark is very active, vigorous and full of plans. He tells the smallest details of his eventful biography and shows documents from his family archive with pleasure.

Mark is very emotional; he seems to go through the events of his life anew. It is necessary to note that Mark always liked to sing and took voice-training.

At the end of the interview we managed to record Mark's singsong. On his repertoire there are romances, songs of known Soviet composers Dunaevsky, Bogoslovsky, Mokroussov and others.

Less than 2 years have passed away since Mark Evgenyevich left his pedagogical activities. At present he is a pensioner, but devotes all his energies to public work.

In the room there are bookcases with books, most of them are devoted to physics and history of the Great Patriotic War 1.
Mark’s memory keeps a lot of information not only about distant pre-war years and wartime, but also about contemporary events. 

• Family history
• Growing up
• During the war
• After the war
• Glossary

• Family history

I was born in Leningrad on March 26, 1924 in the family of Eugeny Markovich and Evgenia Yakovlevna Epstein. I know nothing about my paternal great-grandparents. I also do not remember my paternal grandparents. I only know that my grandfather’s name was Meyer, I do not remember my grandmother's name. Their surname was Epstein. When I was born, my grandfather had already died, and we were not in touch with my grandmother.

I also know nothing about my maternal great-grandparents. My maternal grandfather’s name was Smeer (people called him Yakov 2) Shemshelevich and my grandmother’s name was Gitel Yakovlevna.

They lived in Leningrad. I do not know the place where they were born. I know that they lived in Revel (now Tallinn, the capital of Estonia). My maternal grandparents had got 2 daughters (my Mom Eugenia Yakovlevna born in 1895 and my mother's sister Dina Yakovlevna) and a son David Yakovlevich born in 1906.

Grandmother was engaged in public work at the house-keeping department, and my grandfather was a shoemaker. We lived only a short walk from them (about 15 minutes) and frequently visited each other. Both my grandfather and my grandmother loved me very much. Grandfather was a person of cheerful nature, a real devotee. He observed Tradition. If I came from school with sandwiches in my schoolbag, grandfather used to comment on it that I should never eat sandwiches.

Grandfather attended a synagogue, prayed at home, celebrated every Jewish holiday including Shabbath. Grandmother helped him to observe traditions, but I consider her to be not religious. I don’t think grandmother attended the synagogue.

My grandfather used to wear secular clothes. He was a good shoemaker, his work was highly commended, and people said he had clever fingers. One day I visited grandparents carrying sandwiches with bacon in my schoolbag (Mom had given them to me: she did not observe kashrut). Grandfather noticed them and created a scandal.

Grandfather knew that I liked jam very much. Grandmother kept jars of home-made jam in the small cupboard. Grandfather used to give me a table-spoon and a jar of jam and say ‘Start eating quickly, before Granny comes in!’ It did not mean that grandmother was greedy, but she could not understand how it was possible to eat jam with a tablespoon. And I liked it very much. Grandfather was very benevolent. Grandmother was a great contrast to him: she was strict and not always understood jokes.

People who worked together with her, used to say ‘Your grandmother is able to be in command of big military units.’ She always behaved in the spirit of Soviet authorities, but at the same time she successfully helped grandfather in observing Tradition (she carried much on her shoulders). Grandparents were a united family.

Grandfather had a beard, and he put on his kippah only when he prayed. Grandmother did not wear a wig.

Grandfather and grandmother lived in a one-room apartment. The room was large, but there was too much furniture: a big bookcase, a cupboard, a smaller cupboard with jam, a large screen, a sofa, a bed, a table, and several chairs. In the hall there was a hallstand. Their apartment was separate, not communal 3. Grandparents lived the two together. Mother’s brother and sister lived separately.

Grandmother was very active at her house-keeping department. My grandparents loved me. Each my visit was a holiday for them. Grandfather and grandmother celebrated all Jewish holidays and invited only relatives.

My father’s family came from the town of Velizh in Belarus. My paternal grandparents were born in Velizh. My father was born there too. It happened in 1885. Unfortunately certificate of his birth was lost. His name was Epstein Eugeny Markovich or Genuch Meyerovich (his Jewish name). He was a tailor. In St. Petersburg father worked at Bronstein's Berlin shop from 1912 till 1917. From 1918 till 1922 he worked as a tailor at the Theatre of Musical Comedy. Later he worked at the Smolninsky garment factory.

Father had got 4 sisters: aunt Tsilye, aunt Zhenya, aunt Rose, and aunt Sonya. They all lived in Leningrad. Aunt Tsilye was an outstanding therapist, her husband Samuil Karpovich was a lecturer at the Medical College, and their son Victor (he is 71 years old at present) works as a plasma metal cutting engineer.

Aunt Zhenya was a singer and worked at a musical school, her husband’s name was Victor Markovich. They had got a son Boris. All of them are not alive by now. All her life long aunt Rose worked with children at a kindergarten, she was not married. The 4th sister was aunt Sonya, her husband Ilya and their son Izya have already died (Izya was knocked down by a tram when he was 4 years old).

Their daughter Galina is now 86 years old and her health is very poor.

They all were educated well. I guess my father was the eldest child in the family. I do not remember where my paternal grandmother lived. I saw her only several times in my life.Father was an excellent tailor. He had got a lot of customers and not only in the city: some of them came from other cities. My father was religious: he observed the lent, prayed, attended the synagogue, but he was not fanatic.

During all his life father was engaged in individual work (he worked every evening at home), and worked honestly. Soviet authorities confiscated everything we had, and father was deported to Luga of Leningrad region, where we lived several years. It happened in 1933 or 1934, and we moved to Luga all 4 together: Mom, father, my brother Alexander (born in 1921) and I.

In Luga father found a job as a manager of tailor's workshop. He worked there very well. Later things changed and… we returned to Leningrad. Our apartment was already occupied, and we had got great difficulties changing our house in Luga for an apartment in Leningrad. At that time grandmother and grandfather lived in Leningrad in the 8th Sovetskaya Street. Both grandfather and father had no concern with military service.

My mother Epstein Evgenia Yakovlevna (nee Shemshelevich) was born in 1895 in Revel (now Tallinn, the capital of Estonia). I do not know when mother's family moved from Revel to St. Petersburg: parents never spoke about it. When they arrived in Leningrad, mother could not speak a word of Russian. At first father was distressed for her, because she spoke only Estonian language. Later Mom managed to learn Russian, and at home parents spoke only Russian.

Before the Revolution of 1917 Mom worked as a milliner. But after her marriage she became a housewife. I guess she finished only 10 classes. My parents were able to write and speak grammatically correct. They read much, especially my father. Mom took care of my brother and me. She kept a strict hand over us. Mom was authoritarian.

In the family of mother’s parents there were 3 children: mother's brother David, mother’s sister Dina and my Mom Eugenia. A lot of people (relatives and friends) used to visit us during holidays. Mom was a fine hand at cooking.

In 1930s when authorities banished my father to Luga, parents bought a small house there. They grew vegetables and berries. In Luga father did not observe Tradition (no ceremonies), because he was oppressed by the fact of deportation. I remember that in Luga father went on sewing and carried finished clothes to customers in Leningrad. His clients did not leave him. It was very difficult for him both morally and financially, but it was necessary to work: father had to support his family.

In 1936-1937 we returned to Leningrad and settled in Nevsky prospect, 158. Before our departure to Luga we lived in Pushkinskaya Street. I remember it very well, because more than 55 years I worked as a teacher and have exact memory.

• Growing up

In Leningrad our life was very interesting: we went to the cinema, to the theatre, took part in dancing sessions, had a good time on the Kirov islands, swam in the Gulf of Finland, and went boating. I liked to dance very much. I still like it: if they tell me about dancing and good music somewhere, I’ll give up everything and quickly run there. Probably I got it from Mom: she liked dancing very much.

She always said ‘Dear me, I see that you will take after me!’ Every year the Leningrad Palace of Pioneers celebrates its anniversary, therefore on February 12 I come to the Palace, watch the official ceremony and take part in dancing. After that I feel 20 years younger, I really come to life! Together with my wife we won a lot of prizes for dancing tango, waltz Boston, Cracovienne, etc. at different recreation houses.

My parents read much, first of all classics, but they also kept their eye on periodic literature: literary magazines, newspapers. They subscribed for the Leningradskaya Pravda newspaper. I used a library, and my parents exchanged books and magazines with their relatives and friends. At home there were many books.

Most parents’ friends were from among the father's customers. Mom was interested in political events, but she was a member of no political party. Her friends shared her interests. Most friends of my parents were Jewish, but there were a few Gentiles. All of them were intellectuals.

I never attended a kindergarten, Mom stayed at home with me. In summer we all went to dacha (to Kurort or Sestroretsk) in the Leningrad suburbs. When my brother and I were little, parents did not go far away from Leningrad, but later we spent summer in Sochi and other places by the Black Sea. Before the beginning of the war Mom went to Tallin, where she had a lot of friends. Daddy never left Leningrad before the war.

I was born in Leningrad on March 26, 1924. My elder brother Alexander was born in 1921.

I studied at the school #162. It was situated near the PRIZYV cinema. I studied with pleasure and was very assiduous in my studies. I was able to sit at the table doing my homework for 5 or 6 hours, especially if I had problems with my sums. I was an excellent pupil. Here you can see my school-leaving certificate, which permitted me to enter the Leningrad College of Cinema Engineers without entrance exams after the end of the war. 

My favorite subjects were mathematics and physics. That was why I became a physics teacher.

I remember my teachers. Nikolay Nikolaevich Platonenko taught us mathematics, Kotsubinsky taught us geography (he traveled much, and his stories were extremely interesting). Ketler taught chemistry. Aglaida Petrovna, our German language teacher liked me very much. Later at the front-line I was able to talk to the captured Germans (thanks to my teacher of German language). Later another teacher came to teach us geography. I was allergic to her and she was down on me. Now I understand that my nationality was the reason of it.

I do not remember any manifestations of anti-Semitism at school. Frequently my elder brother was not able to do difficult exercises in physics and asked me to do it for him. I did it, and his teacher of physics said ‘I guess it was the younger Epstein who managed.’

At the same time I studied at the musical school. I started there studying piano, but later changed for voice-training. I liked to go to the nearest house of culture for dancing, but it was a problem to leave home, because Mom usually threw cold water on it. 

At school I had got a friend Naum Katsunsky. He was the only and the best friend of mine. Here you can see his photo taken in 1945. Together with him we went for dancing, did our homework, and visited each other. My Mom liked him very much, and his mother liked me too. Naum’s mother was very kind to me and tried to do her best to set a good table for me. Our days off we devoted to film-going. We also often went out on dates with girls. By now Naum has already died.

One summer I spent in the pioneer camp in Taytsy in the suburb of Leningrad. I keep a photo of me, where it is written on the reverse side ‘During my stay in the pioneer camp I gained weight (300 gr), but at home I immediately gained  more (2 kg).’

When a schoolboy, I was fond of reading fiction and liked to retell what I had read. That was the way I developed my abilities of narrator and later it became very useful for me (when I started working as a teacher). For many years I have been engaged in military and patriotic education of schoolchildren and students of technical schools.

[Technical School in the USSR and a number of other countries was a special educational institution preparing specialists of middle level for various industrial and agricultural institutions, transport, communication, etc.] Boys and girls usually listen to me with great interest, especially when I tell them about the blockade of Leningrad.

My brother Epstein Alexander was 3 years older than me. He was talented for music, played piano very well. At school he was very good studying humanitarian subjects, but other subjects were very difficult for him. I helped him in his studies. Alexander was a very sociable person, smiling, cheerful, had good chances with girls.

My brother liked to improvise on the piano. He read much. Our relations were ideal. Unfortunately he died when he was a pupil of the 10th form: he was going home from school and boys played throwing pieces of ice at each other. By chance one of those pieces hit him on his head. 3 days later Alexander died. He was hardly 19. Those 3 days turned my Mom from a brunette into a gray-haired woman. Mom begged the surgeon to save my brother and promised to give him as much money as he wanted, but nothing could be done. My brother did not finish school. It happened right before the war burst out.

• During the war

On June 22, 1941 we learned about the beginning of war by radio. In Leningrad the weather was fine. Molotov’s speech 4 troubled everybody. Stalin addressed people on July 3. Situation reports were alarming. In Leningrad authorities issued ration cards, but gradually number of products we could buy using cards became less and less. Hard time came in November 1941 - February 1942, when it became possible to get only 125 gr of bread per day.

As a matter of fact it was not bread: sawdust and something else. In June 1941 I finished 9 classes. We started preparation for defense: stuck paper on windows cross-wise. Balloons appeared in the sky. Roofs of military establishments, schools, factories, and medical institutions were coated with special camouflage paint. 

Autumn came, it became dark, and there appeared special phosphoric badges. As the city illumination was cut off, people had to wear those phosphoric badges to be seen in the street. In October municipal transport stopped functioning (electricity supply was cut off). Water supply and heating were stopped, too. 30 degrees of frost were terrible, because people lacked fire wood. They burnt their furniture and books, tried to close windows with pillows to get warm. We cooked meals on special small stoves.

Mom casually found some raisin and walnuts in the cupboard, and it helped us to hold out for some time. My friend Naum sometimes brought us a sausage (his father worked at the meat-packing plant). We used to cut those sausages into 50 parts before eating. People reported about cannibalism cases. All cats and dogs had been eaten and some persons started eating people. They caught children, killed them, and sold their flesh and ground bones. No official reports. Only many years later I found some articles about it in newspapers.

Our teachers often sent us to find out why this or that pupil had not come to school. Usually we went together with my schoolmates, but sometimes I went there alone. I was afraid to go crazy. All doors in all apartments were open. I used to come in, say hello, ask whether there was anybody in the apartment. If nobody answered, I started moving from one room to another. People usually lay in beds. Very often all of them were dead. I saw terrible scenes: dead people lying or sitting in beds with their eyes open. Now it is impossible to imagine horror we had to go through.

Germans began dropping fire-bombs. Adults taught us how to behave. At first it was frightening, but later we understood that we had to seize a fire-bomb and quickly put it into the container with water to neutralize. Streets were almost empty. If somebody went along the street carrying something, he would have been robbed for sure. And if somebody walked carrying nothing, he could have been pushed behind a street-door, killed and eaten up. Life sparkled only in the market.

There were people who had everything (for example, directors of shops) in the midst of starving citizens. There it was possible to change valuables for bread. Famine, cold, and poverty reigned everywhere.

In our district there operated 3 schools. One day together with other excellent pupils I was invited to the Palace of Pioneers. There they set a good table for us: big dishes with sandwiches! They did not have time to give a command: children immediately fell upon those sandwiches!

Sewerage system did not function, therefore people carried sewage out to their back yards in buckets, and some people emptied those buckets out of the windows into the streets. Later authorities warned citizens by radio that the incoming of spring could cause epidemic. You see, we went through hard times; nobody has ever experienced or will experience anything of that kind. 

Things looked black: we had nothing to eat. I was advised to find work, because workers received working ration cards (250 gr of bread vs. 125 gr). I managed to find a job of metalworker apprentice in Khersonskaya Street (near Naum’s home). I immediately received a working ration card and an all-night pass.

Parents burst into tears when they got to know about my working card. Things became a little bit better. I used to bring water from the Neva River. It was an arduous trial. It was very difficult to approach the hole in ice: steps were ice-covered; therefore I slid down on my buttocks. Near the hole people stood in long line carrying hollow-ware. The hole in ice was very narrow, because it was about 30 degrees of frost. People became frozen standing in line, often fainted and sometimes died. It was impossible to help them.

So I brought water from the Neva River for 2 families: for my parents and for my grandparents.

There are a lot of stories written about blockade of Leningrad by authors who never outlived it. Therefore it is possible to find the truth only from a few witnesses who are still alive.

In August 1942 I received a notification from the local military registration and enlistment office. By that time I had finished school with excellent results and received my school-leaving certificate with distinction.

At present in my school which I finished during blockade, there is a local museum. A copy of my certificate is one of its exhibits. Now at that school I give pupils lessons of courage.

All the siege long our family was in Leningrad. Father went on working, but later he swelled up because of starvation and stayed in bed. Mother turned into a real mummy: before the war she was full-bodied (85 kg), and in blockade her weight was 36 kg... She took care of father and managed to help him be well again. My parents survived.

One day we were near to eat a human being. A dog casually ran into our apartment and started barking at the piece of meat Mom had brought from the market. We understood everything. And my uncle (chief engineer of the military factory) was eaten. One evening our neighbors came to us and sent us to the nearest doorway. The body of our relative was found there; flesh had been cut off. It was a nightmare. 

I am sure that without me my parents would have not survived. One day at school I got a kettle of shchi. Fantastic shchi! Grandfather of one of my schoolmates went to the suburb and brought some hearts of cabbage heads. At school they cooked shchi from water and that mere apology for cabbage for us, pupils. I brought that kettle to my parents, shaking with fear that someone could strip me of my shchi. Mom was a wonderful woman. In spite of the fact that water, electricity supply, central heating, and sewerage system were cut off, she tried to keep the apartment tidy.

Mom put my shchi on a small stove to reheat it. Together with my father we sat at the table covered with a snow-white cloth, and banged the table with our spoons. Mom used to cut our bread (125 gr per person per day) into thin pieces and put them on a big plate to create an abundance of bread. So we were sitting at the table and waiting for my shchi. Mom took the kettle from the stove and stepped towards the table, but caught her foot and fell down. Shchi spilled on the floor. I seized a chair and would have killed mother, but Daddy shouted ‘Sonny! Mom!’ It stopped me. We all bent down and picked slices of cabbage from the floor. We ate it with bread. I’ll never forget it.

Listen what happened later. Mom bought a cat and I ate it. For some reason I also ate the cat's eyes though Mom urged me not to do it. The cat's pigment started glittering in my eyes. One dark evening I came into the room, and Mom cried ‘A devil is here!’ Daddy said ‘What kind of devil?’ Mom cried ‘Look!’ Father looked at me and said ‘Yes, it is something terrible and looks like a devil!’

It was me who was the devil. I was surprised to watch them quickly barricading my door (they used a wardrobe and a table). I understood that my glittering eyes terrified parents to death. Parents kept me in my room during 2 days. I knocked at the door, asked them to believe me, and begged them to recognize their son. They did not trust me and said ‘Stay there in your room: you are a devil!’ Several days later I was back to normal. You see, it was another nightmare caused by the siege circumstances.

During the siege Mom carried all our valuables to the market. For example, she changed my father’s expensive suit for 200 gr of bread and a piece of sugar.

During the blockade schools went on functioning and I studied at my school #11 5. Later its number was changed for 162. 

My parents and I survived, but my grandfather and grandmother died from starvation. They were buried at the Jewish (Preobrazhenskoe) cemetery. 

Grandfather of my classmate brought us to the Preobrazhenskoe cemetery by a horsed cart. We paid him a bottle of vodka. It was very cold and difficult to find workers for digging a grave in the frozen ground. Later inscriptions we made on the gravestones disappeared, and we could not find the graves. After the end of the war I visited the cemetery many times, but found neither graves of my grandparents, nor tablets with their names. Everything disappeared. Grandfather had died earlier than grandmother. It was terrible.

In August 1942 I received call-up papers. By that time I had finished my school and got a school-leaving certificate with excellent marks.

I was called up for military service and brought to the local military registration and enlistment office. I left my parents at home. We (recruits) were offered seats at the table and given a pot of millet porridge each and it was possible to eat as much as we wanted. A doctor came in and warned us not to eat much, because we were really famished. Not all of us took his advice. Four guys died right at the table. It was terrible to watch famished people eating.

Later they gave us military uniform. They were not interested in our size, therefore they simply made a laughing-stock of us. 

We were sent to the Leningrad front. I got to the detached company of snipers in Levashovo (rifle battalion #78). There they taught us about 2 weeks. The situation there was similar to that at the front-line. We got up at 6 o'clock in the morning (we lived in large barracks and slept in plank beds). We used to run to the lake (it was very cold in the morning), and had to give a souse. Two weeks later we were sent to the front-line. And it was impossible to ask questions, otherwise you could fall into the hands of SMERSH 6 officers.

We used to sit in trenches. Sometimes they equipped special places for us: in the trees, on the roofs, etc. We were engaged in murder: we had to shoot at Germans. If we noticed a moving target, we fired a shot. 

I did not count how many Germans I killed, but my commanders told that the number was about 25 (from October till December 1942). In December we started preparing for the breach of blockade of Leningrad 7. The routine was very strict. Sometimes we went on the scout.

On the opposite side of the Neva River (near Dubrovka) Germans dug earth-houses. They made real earthworks. And in their earth-houses they had everything they needed. Later when we took that fortification by storm, we were surprised to find pianos in the German earth-houses. Our commanders trained us intensively, because Germans poured water over the steep bank of the Neva River (it was 12-14 meters high). Water froze; therefore it was necessary to use long ladders to climb up the bank after crossing the river covered with ice.

On January 12, 1943 we were ordered to fall into line near the bank of the Neva River. The first sergeant arrived carrying a large container. They handed out mugs and said ‘Men, come forward!’ All of us made a step forward. The first sergeant came up and filled every mug with alcohol (from the container).

Commanders told us that we had a hard work before us: a capture of the opposite bank of the Neva River, where Germans had entrenched position. We were dressed warmly: short fur coats, quilted trousers, warm caps. But we were inexperienced. Our commanders warned us that in case of wound, it was better for us to fall down and try to survive.

If not, nobody could help us, therefore they considered it necessary to give us a drink. Brother-soldiers were shocked: was it possible to drink, get drunk and go into battle? One guy said ‘I refuse to drink.’ The first sergeant answered ‘You declared yourself to be a man, but you are not a man yet, join the ranks!’ The first sergeant watched us drinking.

I drank half a mug of alcohol. We had nothing to take after, therefore we started eating clean snow. The orchestra began to play; we heard the thunder of cannon. We rushed forward carrying ladders. It became hot. We were drunk, we ran shouting hurrah. I guess we would have never run forward if we were able to take a practical view of the situation. Around us machine-guns and artillery fired, mines exploded. Germans pushed our ladders back as soon as we pitched them against the bank. The ladders fell back together with people and people broke their backs and heads shouting with horror and pain. At the same time shells and mines dropped into the Neva River and all this went under. Blood and flesh were around us… It is impossible to describe.

I was not religious, but I believed that every person had his fate. So we rushed into the trenches, killed Germans and hid inside the shell-hole. When we ran out of the shell-hole, a strong blow caught me on my head. I fell down and lost consciousness. Later they told me there was a big hole in my head, and it seemed that my brain was damaged.

The surgeon examined me and ordered to put me closer to the morgue. Nurses dressed my wound smartly. In the outskirts of consciousness I heard that they were going to send me to the hospital in Leningrad immediately.

I found myself in Leningrad in January 1943. When they brought me to the Neuro-Surgical Institute in Mayakovskogo Street, doctor Polenov, the founder of the Institute was on duty. He examined me and ordered to put me on the operating table at once. [Polenov Andrey Lvovich (1871-1947) was one of the founders of neurosurgery in the USSR.] I was under the knife for 6 hours. After that I was unconscious for a long time. Polenov often came to examine me, and shouted at nurses ‘Give him all the best!’ The tastiest meals were on my bedside-table. Later they moved me to the hospital named after Mechnikov. I spent half a year there at the neurological department. There I was surrounded by crazy people, many of them were bound to their beds. My parents knew nothing about me.

I was horrified to watch my neighbors. Later I was discharged from the hospital and sent to a military unit. My father visited me there, but I did not see Mom. Very soon I was at the Leningrad front again, and later at the Baltic one. There I was wounded again and was brought to a hospital in Estonia. One day a doctor came in our ward and ordered all of us to go out of the hospital and hide in the field: they expected bombardment of the hospital. We all secreted ourselves in haystacks. By the way, Estonians hated us and sometimes shot at our officers from behind.  

We found a hay-loft and hid there. We agreed upon night duty. At night an officer on duty woke us up. Fortunately he knew Estonian language and heard local people taking counsel together: ‘Some Russians came into this shed, let’s burn it to ashes.’ That officer fired a grenade at them and saved all of us.

In total I was wounded 5 times and was demobilized in 1945 in Kazan (after my 5th medical treatment). It happened shortly before the end of the war. By the way, in 1944 I took part in liberation of Siverskaya (a suburb of Leningrad), where we have our dacha 8 at present.

At the front I joined the USSR Communist Party and was its member till the day of its collapse during Perestroika 9.

After demobilization I went to Leningrad, to my parents. For my service in the army I got 14,000 rubles. At that time the sum was rather significant. We bought furniture. Parents were in fair condition.

After the end of the war Daddy went on sewing. He worked at a fashion atelier, and Mom was a housewife. My parents lived happily till 1955, when in Pyarnu (a seaside town in Estonia) father died. I’ll tell you how it happened.

• After the war

Father went on working, but with the increase of years it became hard for him. One day he got ill with influenza. Mom asked him to stay at home, but he refused and stayed on his feet. In summer he got a permit to Pyarnu sanatorium in Estonia, and they went there together with Mom. At that time I went to the seaside (to Sochi).

In Pyarnu it was very hot, and father decided to swim in the Gulf of Finland. Mom objected, because father was sick the other day, but he refused to take her advice. When he came out of the sea, he felt shivery and had running temperature. Mom was frightened. From her neighbors she got to know that Kremlin doctors from Moscow spent their vacation nearby. She paid much money to invite those physicians for council. They told her that father could die in 3 days. Mom sent me a telegram to Sochi ‘Sonny, if you want to see your father, come in short order.’ 

I bought an airplane ticket to Leningrad with great difficulty, then went to Tallin by train, and then from Tallin to Pyarnu. By that time father’s health went from bad to worse: he was inarticulate and soon died. We did not want to bury him in Pyarnu. Estonians refused to transport his body to Leningrad by car not at any price. At last we managed to arrange railway transportation (we paid a large sum of money for it). They agreed to put the coffin into the freight car. I am sure that my father was able to live a long life, but that flu had got him down.

Daddy died in 1955 at the age of 70. I remember that he was always in good health, never sick.

After father’s death something happened to Mom. Her arm and leg did not function well and I guess she became demented. At that time it was impossible to find a nurse, therefore she lived together with my wife and me. We had to leave home for work and used to leave meal for her.  When we came back in the evening we usually found her all in muck. At night she shouted loudly and we could not sleep. Later they took her away to the hospital, and on March 19, 1968 Mom died. 

After the end of the war I entered the Leningrad College for Cinema Engineers without entrance examinations, because I was a former front-line soldier and my school-leaving certificate was excellent. It was difficult for me to study, because I had forgotten almost everything. But I was assiduous in my studies again and 5 years later I got my honors degree of an engineer. Later I was invited to the local communist party committee. They wanted me to work as a director of the technical school for projectionists in Tula.

At that time I wanted to become a postgraduate student and handed in an application. But the head of the acoustics department turned me down. Later I understood that my item 5 10 was the reason. It happened in 1950. So I agreed and left for Tula, where I rented a room. I delivered lectures on amplifiers and political subjects. Everything was fine, my school was considered to be good. At that time my parents informed me that if I wanted to keep my room in Leningrad for myself, I had to come immediately. It was not easy to leave Tula, but they agreed to let me go if I found somebody to step into my shoes. I persuaded a local resident (a projectionist) to fill the position and left.

I arrived in Leningrad in 1953. Stalin died, the age was gravid.

After my return to Leningrad, I started working at the Leningrad Palace of Pioneers as an assistant manager of the department of science and technology. My task was to teach gifted schoolchildren physics. Later the Heads of the Palace offered me to supervise the city contest in physics, chemistry and mathematics. My work took plenty of time: teaching of pupils and coordinating of work in all districts of the city. Besides I arranged excursions around laboratories of our department for schoolchildren of different city schools.

I used to describe our laboratories and invite pupils to come and study. Every year we arranged an exhibition. Exhibits were created by our pupils. The Palace of Pioneers was often visited by interesting people, for example we welcomed Jawaharlal Nehru, Ives Montand and Simona Signore. At the same time I studied at the postgraduate courses for teachers of physics and radio electronics. At the same time I taught physics at several city schools. I worked at the Palace of Pioneers from 1953 till 1962.

Before the war I finished musical school (voice-training class). When I was a student of the Leningrad College of Cinema Engineers, I sang to the orchestral accompaniment at my College. I also sang at the opera studio at the Leningrad Conservatory. The studio was housed by the Teacher's Club in the former Yussupov Palace. Aron Solomonovich Bubelnikov, the Honored artist of Belarus (a father of the well-known conductor Pavel Bubelnikov) was our teacher. At that time we prepared for stage a musical comedy Okulina (based upon Pushkin’s 11 Mistress into Maid). We acted to the pianist accompaniment.

We performed Okulina not only in Leningrad, but also in Leningrad region. The performance was a great success. I sang the main part of Alexey Berestov. I also took part in fashion displays as a model. That was the way I earned additional money during my studies at the College. I was very vigorous. Among my friends there were pianists, accordionists, and guitarists. When we gathered at home, we used to sing much. I liked to sing very much and I like to do it till now. If only I had an opportunity, I would go on singing. Unfortunately, most of my friends are already not alive. 

Being a student of the last course I got qualification of a projectionist. We had practice at different cinemas of the city.

I got acquainted with my future wife when I worked at the Palace of Pioneers. My wife Rose Yakovlevna Ebert graduated from the Leningrad College of Foreign Languages (French faculty) and taught French at school. She took her pupils to the Palace of Pioneers for excursion and came to my department. We noticed each other and I started courting her. It resulted in our wedding. We celebrated our wedding in the large canteen of the Mariinsky theatre. We invited 102 guests. An orchestra played, several people shot films. We had a good time. I still keep invitation cards. The next day at home I gathered my colleagues from the Palace of Pioneers, and my wife invited her colleagues from her school.  

My wife was born in 1928.

During my work at the Palace of Pioneers the Head of our department regarded me with disfavor. I guess she was an anti-Semite.

I was a member of the CPSU since 1943. I joined the party at the front.

It was very difficult to find job at that time, especially if your item 5 was a stumbling-block. The principal of the school where my wife worked was a very decent person. He advised my wife to improve her English urgently (her basic language was French). You see, at that time English became the basic foreign language at schools, therefore my wife could loose her work teaching only French.

She finished a postgraduate course for teachers of English language, and started teaching English at school. As her salary was rather small, the director permitted her to combine teaching with a post of a Pioneer Leader 12. 

My wife’s mother Maria Romanovna was a seamstress and worked very quickly. My wife’s father was a tailor (like my father). He was a wonderful person. He loved me very much (considered me to be his son). He often asked me to tell about a book I had read or a film I had seen. He said I was the best narrator he knew. My wife had got an elder brother (he was 4 years older than me). Her brother was a medical officer (submariner). He graduated from the Army Medical College in Leningrad.

Later he left for Chelyabinsk and worked there at the faculty of microbiology. With assistance of my wife he became a PhD, and later defended his doctor's thesis. He became a professor and a Head of the microbiological faculty at the Chelyabinsk Medical College. He was also a pro-rector of the College. Later he became a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences. My wife’s brother was a very sociable person.

In September 1962 I changed my work for the Leningrad Technical School for Radio Engineers. Here you can see a lot of diplomas for my work there. 

I worked there about 44 years (till September 1, 2006).

In 1968 my Mom died. It was rather difficult to change our apartment for another one. But we managed and many years lived together with my wife’s parents. Later her parents died, and we remained together with my wife in that apartment.

During my work in the technical school I never came across manifestations of anti-Semitism. All my colleagues were nice to me.

In 1970s our relatives left for Canada. We discussed it with my wife and decided not to leave the country.

Among my relatives there were some religious people. My father was also religious, but he was not fanatic. He attended a synagogue, celebrated Jewish holidays (especially Pesach). Mom was not religious. And I grew up an atheist. In the family of my wife they did not celebrate Jewish holidays.

At present I often visit the Jewish Community Center (the Organization of Jews - War Veterans), when they arrange different cultural events. Jewish traditions were a part of my life only while my parents were alive.

In 1950s I got to know that Stalin prepared deportation of all Jews somewhere very far from the European part of the country. I guess a lot of them could die on their way there 13. But fortunately Stalin died in 1953.

I mentioned already that at the Palace of Pioneers my chief was in antagonism with me and evicted me out of my post without any reason. In difficult situations I always addressed the local Communist Party committee and they helped me immediately. I was an active member of the CPSU, accomplished their errands without mishap. For example, during many years I was a member of the regional election committee.

I worked in Tula, when I got to know about the Doctors’ Plot and persecution of Jews - doctors. I addressed a meeting and spoke in defence of them. Communists wanted to take away my party-membership card and expel me from the party. I had a hairbreadth escape. 

War in Israel in 1967-1973 did not concern me.

I’ve never been to Israel. Relatives of my wife, some of my friends live there, but no relatives of mine.

Most of our friends are Russian. They are good people.

After Perestroika my life did not change, because I went on working at the same place and did not change the type of my activity. I am often invited to different schools where I deliver lectures about the war and blockade of Leningrad. It is necessary to say that usually children listen to me very attentively.

Sometimes I take part in different events arranged by the Jewish community of St. Petersburg. Once I visited the new building of the Jewish Community Center in Raznichinnaya Street. Several years ago my wife and I received food packages for Jewish holidays. Firstly, it was a pleasure for us to receive them. Secondly, it was significant support for our family. This year I was invited to JCC before Pesach and received only matzot. Taking into account that I am not a young man and JCC is situated far away from my home (it takes one hour and a half to get there), this sort of attention (so to say!) causes a lot of raised eyebrows and disappointment. I can buy matzot in close propinquity to my house.  

I often visit the Organization of Jews - War Veterans in Gatchinskaya Street. Sometimes I sing there.

• Glossary:

Saul Eskenazi 
St. Petersburg 
Russia 
Interviewer: Olga Egudina 
Date of interview: November 2005 

I met Saul Eskenazi in his cozy apartment in one of new St. Petersburg districts. 

Saul Eskenazi speaks about his life with pleasure and in details. 

At the same time there are certain things which he wants to go into under no circumstances, and here we have no choice but to hold his decision in respect.

Saul Eskenazi is a topnotch storyteller. He speaks easily. You understand that he agonizes over every recollection only when you see him nervously clenching his hands from time to time.

Not all events he remembers equally well. But if he remembers something and agrees to share it with us, it turns out to be really invaluable.

His cheerful character, his sense of humor, his interest to everything around him excites admiration, and when you get to know what he has gone through, it also commands respect. 

• My family background 
• Growing up 
• During the War 
• After the War and later life 
• Glossary 

• My family background

Here you ask me, whether I remember my great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers. And immediately I start doubting: is it worth talking about my life if I remember about my relatives almost nothing (and it is wormwood to me)? I know nothing not only about my great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers, I know nothing even about my grandmothers and grandfathers. And then, you know, I relive my old memories, and I say to myself ‘Are there many people in the world, whose life experience is so rich? I’ll tell you everything I remember, and my relatives (may they rest in peace!) will forgive me. They are always in my heart…’

Our family never lived in the same place for a long time. But the city of my childhood was Bucharest. The city was very large, and there were a lot of Jews there. In Bucharest there were buses, trams; streets were good (paved). A part of roads were covered with bitumen. One of my childhood sensations is the feeling of my boots sticking to road during summer heat.

I do not remember houses without electricity supply. Water supply also was almost everywhere. If it was absent, people took water from special water-pumps, which looked like fountains. Housewives with pailfuls of water gathered near them to talk behind neighbors’ back. I think that these scenes took place in the city suburbs.

In Bucharest there were two main streets, one of them was called Calais Doudesht (calais means a road) and the other one Calais Bucharest. I remember those two streets very well, because in Bucharest a lot of (if not mainly) Jews lived there, though in Bucharest there was no special district for residing of Jews. In Romania people had no respect to Jews 1.

There existed Garda di Fier (Iron Guard), a fascist organization. [Garda di Fier was a fascist organization in Romania in 1931-1944. It was dismissed and forbidden in 1944 after liberation of Romania from fascism.]

They were true Nazis. In general, in Romania there were a lot of anti-Semites. But approximately till 1938-1939 they were not in great power. Moreover, sometimes these fascist-minded swells penetrated into Jewish residential areas and behaved outrageously, but Jewish youth gave them resolute repulse. They escaped, as beaten dogs. All changed by 1939-1940. By that time these bastards, members of the Iron Guard began to march along the Calais Victoria (one of the Bucharest streets) carrying torches. And that was the moment I understood that things looked bad.

In Bucharest there was rather large Jewish community. There were several synagogues, cheders and yeshivot. There also were shochetim, and our family certainly visited them.

In Romania Jews were discriminated: it was not easy for a Jew to get higher education. Colleges and universities followed the rules of Numerus Clausus and Numerus Nulus. Numerus Clausus meant that that educational institution was authorized to have a certain percent of Jewish students. And Numerus Nulus meant that no Jews could enter. In Romania anti-Semitism was some sort of official.

In Romania there also existed Jewish organizations. I do not remember exactly: some Zionist organizations, some left ones and right ones. For the most part they assisted Jews in leaving for Palestine.

Among official holidays I can mention the King Day (on 10th May).

Jews in Romania had no right to be landowners. Sometimes a piece of land was down in the name of a gentile, and a Jew cultivated it. In general, most Jews were engaged in trade, they used to have small shops. There were a lot of Jews - owners of small pubs, where it was possible to have a drink (usually about 200 gr of green wine).

I do not remember market days in Bucharest. I only remember that it was Mum who did shopping. She often went to the market by closing time, hoping to buy something cheaper. She hugged very heavy bags, and tried to take somebody of her children with her to get help. But she (poor Mum!) managed to get our help rarely.

I do not remember any political events of that time. I think that my parents did not discuss that sort of things in the presence of their children.

Now I’ll tell you what I remember about my parents. Unfortunately, I remember very little. At the same time I am the last person on the earth, who can say these words about them. That is why we have to be content with it. My father’s name was Samuel. He was a rabbi. As far as I remember, his father (my grandfather) was also a rabbi. And Mum was from the family of rabbis. In a word, there were only rabbis around me, probably therefore I became an atheist. Well, it often happens.

My father was a very clever person, and my Mum was very kind. Please do not think that my Mum was silly and my Daddy was malicious. The point is that my mother's kindness and my father's intellect arrested everyone's attention.

My Mum’s name was Esther. Her maiden name was Fischer. She was born in Romania, in Fucheni. As far as I know, she got no education. Perhaps, she attended a school for girls during a year or two. And my father finished yeshivah. He was a very good rabbi! He was able to work both with Sephardim and with Ashkenazim. And people of that sort don't grow on trees!

My parents spoke Yiddish. They spoke to each other only Yiddish. And we (children) spoke to each other and to our parents only Romanian. As for me, I did not manage to learn Yiddish. Later, when I started studying German in lyceum, I began to understand their conversations. But I did not speak Yiddish.

I do not remember exactly the way my parents got acquainted. I know that they met each other in Fucheni, where my father arrived on official business. He saw my Mum somewhere there and fell in love with her. It was impossible not to fall in love with her: she was a real Jewish beauty. There they got married, and my elder sister was born. And I was born in Bulgaria, in Varna. I do not know how my Mum got there. My parents dressed as secular people. My Mum did not wear a wig, though she was a rabbi’s wife. I also wonder how it could be. My father put on something special (long and black, probably a coat) only when he went to synagogue.

• Growing up

I told you already that during all my childhood our family moved from place to place, because my father worked in different cities. We never had either our own house or our own apartment. We always rented very modest and small apartments (two-room, usually): one room for parents, the other one for children. We had our own furniture; probably formerly it was good, but suffered very much on the wing. In general, we were hard pressed for money. But we had enough for living. Of course, for rather modest living, but we knew nothing else. In our family it was not customary to compare our income with that of others. Anyway, we were never hungry. We ate everything we had. Mum always cooked much food, and we never thought about its quality.

In these small stoves they burnt briquettes made of breeze mixed with black oil. They gave good fire. But if they used fire wood, sometimes they had to chop it. All family members used to take part in it. 

At our place we always had cats.

In our family we never had any assistants. We could not permit it ourselves. Mum was a housekeeper. We (children) helped her, but the truth was that we did it not willingly: only when she asked us about it. She had a hard time: we (children) were four.

We always had many books: not only religious, but also secular ones. For example, I remember Balzac's collected works. [Onore de Balzac was a well-known French novelist (1799-1850).] I also remember books by Victor Hugo. [Victor Hugo (1802-1885) was the great French writer, a poet and a playwright, one of the brightest representatives of progressive romantic literature of the XIX century.]

There were books in Spanish, in French, in Latin. I do not know where from my father knew all these languages. In general my father was a widely read man (not only in religious, but also in secular sphere).

There were, certainly, religious books, too. I remember small rolls of Torah; I was very interested in them when I was a child: they reminded me some strange toys. My father read much, he always read when he had a moment to spare. But I do not remember my Mum reading. For my father we always bought newspapers. I remember the Romanian newspaper Morning.

Father closely watched my reading: he used to give me books according to his own choice. One day father gave me a book about origin of religion. That book impressed me deeply. I do not remember anybody from our family visiting library.

I do not remember any stories about family life told by our parents.

I know that both Mum and Daddy were from large families (10-11 children in each), but I can tell nothing about their brothers and sisters. I have a vague idea of my father’s brother: his name was Margulis. If I am not mistaken, he was a rabbi, too. I know that brothers and sisters of my father ran every which way all over the world.

Our parents loved us very much, their heart was always sore for us. I was my father’s favorite son. Our family was really harmonious. Now I understand that our poor, small apartments were always real HOME for me.

Perhaps I am mistaken (this is my special personal opinion), but I think that my parents were not really religious people. But they observed traditions: you know, my father was a rabbi, and everything that is in full view should be observed strictly. Every Saturday and on holidays Mum went to a synagogue (sorry, I am not sure that she did it every Saturday). At home we celebrated holidays for sure. But for some reason religiousness of my father always was open to question for me. He was very educated person, a great expert in ceremonies and traditions. But here I repeat that all my life I had some doubt in sincerity of his belief. I can not explain my doubts: only vague feeling of my childhood…

Certainly being a rabbi, my father played a great role in the life of Jewish communities in the cities where we lived. Sometimes I was invited for minyan, but since my childhood I was interested in religion very little.

My parents never joined any organizations or parties.

I do not remember friends to my parents. I know that my parents kept in touch with their brothers and sisters, but I can tell nothing about them.

Our neighbors were of different nationalities: Romanians, Jews. Our relations were always good.

My parents never went on leave. Sometimes on days off we went to suburbs with my father. Romanian nature is very beautiful! Mum always remained home. She never had time for rest and entertainment. I should think so: she had to feed such a crowd!

As I already told, I was born in Varna, in Bulgaria. My elder sister was born there, too. Soon we left for Romania (I do not remember to what city). I have a hazy recollection of my visits to a Romanian kindergarten. I also remember (from my early childhood) that we lived in some city, not in Bucharest yet (maybe in Cimpina). There was such a big parkway located on the top of a high hill or even a mountain. From that parkway there went a ladder downwards. From that place it was possible to see far out: a railway down there and a river behind it. Father showed me trains and steamships… One more I remember from my early childhood: I am lying in my bed (in some garden), and my parents are in the house. Boys are jumping over the fence into our garden. I am telling about it to my Mum with fear, and she explains me that they are schoolboys from a Romanian school, they live in a hostel at school, they are hungry, they get into our garden to eat our apples. And here I understand that my Mum is the kindest woman in the world.

Later, when I grew a little bit older, we moved to another city, and I was sent to a Jewish kindergarten. By the way, my father taught Hebrew in kindergartens and in Jewish primary schools. Later my father got a place in Bucharest. There I went to a primary Romanian school, where I studied during four years.

After that I entered a lyceum. It was not easy to get there. They did not like to have Jews as students. You remember: Numerus Nulus and Numerus Clausus. Students were admitted by competitive examination (4-5 persons for one place). But they did not accept documents to the 1st form of lyceum from Jews. Therefore I studied the program of the 1st form of lyceum by correspondence and after that passed my examinations. They allowed me to enter the 2nd from. Anti-Semitism was very strong in the lyceum. There were 40-45 pupils in every class. In our class there were 2 Jews, and in some classes there were none.

There was only one Jew among the teachers. He was a very good teacher. He was even well-known, therefore they gave him that job. One day a pupil called that teacher ‘Dirty Jew’. And despite of the strongest anti-Semitism reigning in the lyceum, it turned out that prestige of a teacher was very high there. Terrible scandal burst out. They immediately arranged teachers' meeting. The point was that the pupil who had offended the teacher was a son of a major of the Romanian army, i.e. a person of rather high-rank. What was the way out? And they made a decision worthy of Solomon. As the lyceum occupied three separate buildings, the little anti-Semite was transferred to a parallel class in the building next door.

In the lyceum they used ten-mark system: 1-4 – a weak pupil, 5-10 – an advanced one. You know, it is possible to know subject differently, and there are different degrees of lack of knowledge. We had a teacher of Romanian language, Radovich. He used to say ‘Only God can have mark 10 for knowledge, possibly I can have 9, and my best pupil is worth 8.’ I usually got 7-8. But one day I got 10: we were suggested to read a pray Our Father (Pater nostra) in Latin, and at the next lesson we were asked to write it down by heart. I made no mistakes! In general, it was rather difficult to study there: one year more than half a class remained in the same form for second year. Very often they transferred examinations to autumn. In one class there were 40 pupils, or even more. But they taught us very well: till now I remember everything they taught me in the lyceum. And I remember only partly what they taught me in the Soviet time.

I remember that when I was a boy I liked to read adventure novels very much. I read them at home and at school if the lesson was not interesting. For this purpose I elaborated a special system. My book was lying on my knees, and I was holding a sheet of paper before me, it had a small hole. From time to time it was necessary to tear myself away from the book and to look at the teacher through the hole. Teachers were strict, for instance one of our teachers of mathematics. He had a head on his shoulders. So, one day I was present at his lesson. My school desk was close to window. It was snowing in the street. Those snow-flakes bewitched me, I could not look away from the window. At that moment the teacher said ‘And now all of you should look at me.’ I did not hear him. Then he approached me and slapped my face: my cheek was red during 3 days.

Most of all I liked geography and history. But I was the last pupil in drawing. Our teacher of drawing was a great anti-Semite. But nevertheless, he never dared to give low grade to Zilberman (a pupil who was Jewish), because he was born artist. The teacher looked at Zilberman and at his drawings with undisguised aversion, but always gave him the highest mark. It is interesting that I remember nobody from my schoolmates, except that Zilberman.

Besides school I was engaged in nothing: neither music, nor languages, nor sports. You see, it was not customary among us.

Most of my friends were Romanians. I made friends only with my schoolmates, and almost all of them were Romanians. In general, I never chose friends according to their nationality and always paid no attention to it.

I always said about myself that I was a twaddler. I liked to prattle with my friends since my childhood. I can formulate it differently: most of all I appreciate discoursing.

Sometimes we went to suburbs: Romanian nature is very beautiful. We seldom gathered mushrooms: at home they said that it was no good for Jews to eat mushrooms. I used to get so much homework that practically I had no days off.
We never left for holidays or vacations when I was a boy. Nobody from our family was engaged in any political or cultural activities. 

It never came to our mind to have dinner at a restaurant. I guess Mum would have been surprised and felt hurt: ‘Don’t waste money! Don’t I cook well enough?’

II do not remember when I went by train or by automobile for the first time in my life. I guess my first trip by train was from Bulgaria to Romania. At that time I was 2 years old. Do you agree that it is possible to be forgotten?

Running a few steps forward, I can tell you that in 1960s I bought a car, and since then it became my lifestyle. I repaired it myself, I practically lived in my garage. I used to take my sons there with me. Till recently I used to be a skilled driver. But now, certainly, I am a little bit oldish for it.

In our family there were 4 children. My sister was the eldest, we called her Koka, but her real name was Rachel. I was the next one. My brother Nachum-Leyb was the third one. And my sister Frieda-Miriam was the youngest. We called her Dussya. I know that my elder sister was born in Bulgaria, and both my second sister and my brother were born in Romania in Tulcea (it is a city on Danube, near the Black sea).

In spite of the fact that my father was a rabbi (and probably just therefore) our family was not very religious, to my mind. But many traditions were observed strictly. Special dishes for Pesach, keeping the fasts – we followed these traditions for sure. Till now Sabbath remains a kind and warm memoir of my childhood. Warm light of candles, white purity of cloths, tasty meal, and (the most important!) we all together at the table. Each time I thought ‘This is what people call a real family.’ We never ate pork, but observed kashrut not strictly. When I was treated by somebody to a good dinner with pork, I ate it with pleasure. It seems to me that I was born not religious. We celebrated all holidays for sure. And my favorite holiday was Purim: Mum cooked a lot of tasty meals for Purim! I remember a nut pie... There was no flour, only ground nuts. I never ate anything of that kind.

Father taught me to read, together with him we visited synagogue to celebrate Sabbath. All I know about Judaism I got from my father. Of course, his both sons were circumcised, he arranged bar mitzvah for us. I remember my bar mitzvah very well. It was arranged in the synagogue, it was very solemnly. After it I repeated proudly: ‘I am adult.’

I finished the lyceum at the age of 17, it was already in 1938. For a short period of time I worked at a photo studio, where I showed films and printed photos. And I was thinking what to do next. The international situation was so disturbing that it was difficult to make plans for future. 

• During the War

There came 1939 year, Hitler conquered Poland: it was the beginning of the World War II. I already told you that in Romania anti-Semitism always flourished. But there were no great Jewish pogroms. Supposedly Romanian people did not permit murders of innocent people, even Jews. And by 1939 anti-Semitism reared its head. The Iron Guard already began marching with torches along the central street. As soon as I saw it, I understood that it would be impossible for us to survive. This event forced me to leave Romania illegally. Our family council advised me to leave the country, and nobody knew what would happen after it. I intended to settle in the new place, take a look-see round the place, and call for my family. If only I could make a look to the future!

At that time people moved from Moldavia to Romania and back. I took advantage of that strange period of misunderstanding and crossed the river Prut, leaving Romania. So I found myself in Bessarabia 2 and later in Ukraine. 2 or 3 months after that I ran from Romania through Moldova to Ukraine on foot. Bessarabia was annexed 3, and the border between Romania and Moldavia was closed. We were separated, but at that time I did not know yet that it was for ever. During first months I still received letters from home.

Now I can not understand the way they reached me. Once I received a letter from my dear brother. It was absolutely neutral, about nothing. And at the foot of the page it was written: ‘Recollect our games.’ I thought and thought and finally understood that when we were boys we wrote each other confidential letters using citric juice, which it was necessary to hold above a lamp to see letters. I took the received text above the fire and managed to read between its lines: ‘If you have a photo of our father, take care of it.’ I understood that our father had already died. I have no photos of him! And you see, I was his favorite son…

And the text I read in that letter further (it was written the same confidential way), doesn’t let me rest during dozens of years. In Romania I studied in the so-called prewar course. Once a week I had to put on some sort of a military uniform and go to the suburb of Bucharest. There together with young men of my age we were trained by a private first class.

And so, when I escaped, representatives of that military center came to our place and asked why I had stopped my training sessions. My relatives told them that I went abroad. And I am afraid that they killed my father for that. Possibly they tormented him to death, trying to discover where I had disappeared. I heard about many murders of Jews in Romania. It means that I caused the death of my father. And I saw nobody from my family any more.

My life turned round so sharply that if I read my story in a book, I would never believe it was true. I can not believe that all that happened to me.

I led a nomad existence. I turned into Der ewige Jude: you know, Wandering Jew. [Wandering Jew or Ahasverus is a personage of a Christian legend, a Jew-wanderer condemned by the God for eternal life in wanderings, because he refused to help Christ to carry the cross to Golgotha.] I begged for meal, sometimes ate directly from fields. And in the meantime, Germans attacked the USSR, and the war burst out 4. People started digging entrenchments. When I passed by different settlements, they involved me into that work.

[During the first months of war all able to work population without fail had to dig entrenchments around their settlements.] I reached Kharkov on foot. Somewhere near Kharkov I got on a train. I did not know the train’s destination point, but for that time it was normal: people strived for getting on any kind of transport, paying no attention to its destination point. I hardly squeezed myself onto the platform, next day I managed to penetrate into the car. And one day later a ticket collector handed me over to the chief of the train, and they made me get out nearly without stopping the train. And again I started to hang about. I ate something, I slept somewhere. Still I do not understand the way I survived.

Having walked through almost all Ukraine, I got into Russia. I walked and walked, eating vegetables from private gardens, spending nights somewhere. One day (it was in Ukraine) it was raining cats and dogs, and I was absolutely exhausted. On my way I found a haystack, I crept inside it and decided to die there. I could not drag my feet another step. But it turned out that a woman, a local inhabitant noticed me. She was brave enough to take me out from that hay. She brought me to her place. Half of her izba was occupied by Russian stove.

The hostess gave me food; I climbed on the stove and had been sleeping for two days. After that I went on. But, you see it became much easier for me to go, I do not know the reason: possibly my sound sleep helped me, but most probably it was the idea that there were kind people on the face of the earth! You see, the most painful was the fact that I was a boy from a large and united family, and suddenly I found myself alone in the world. For the most time I walked alone, but sometimes some strange persons joined me.

For some time we walked together, then separated unexpectedly (the same way we had met). We could have not exchange even a couple of words. Do not forget that I knew not a word in Russian. At last I came to Kharkov. In Kharkov I got on a train. Again I knew nothing about its destination point. For me it was all the same: I was a stranger everywhere. The only thing I knew for sure was the fact that under Germans it would be bad for me, a Jew. But in fact not everyone understood it. I found out that my train was going to Rostov region. On the way I had running temperature.

One guy unknown to me gave me his coat to get warm. At a station I got out of the train to visit a first-aid post, and the train left. I ran to the station-master, started to explain him that it was necessary for me to catch that train and return a coat. They looked at me and thought I was round the twist. They even took me for a spy. As for me, during many years I was pursued by remorse, because of that coat lost by that kind guy.

In a couple of days I boarded another train and reached Bataysk, situated several kilometers far from Rostov. There I had to dig entrenchments again. One of the soldiers who supervised the process of digging, told me ‘Recently there came the heads, they tried to make a decision, if they should immediately execute you by shooting or not. And they decided to leave you alive so far. Consider it to be your second birth.’ Again I got on a train. Of course it was not easy to board the train: I fought for it, two days I spent on the platform, and on the 3rd one I managed to get into the car.

I do not remember how long I spent in the train, probably 10 days. At last I arrived in Penza. In every city I addressed local military registration and enlistment office. [Military registration and enlistment offices in the USSR and in Russia implemented official call-up plans.] I asked to send me to the front line. I said that I had a score to settle with Germans. But they refused to take me as I was a foreigner.

All people were surprisingly nice to me, they gave me food, sometimes gave me some money. What is the most important and impossible to understand: they did not arrest me. Probably during the war NKVD 5 lost a part of its basic functions (mass execution of peaceful citizens).

I’d like to tell you about one episode, which happened during my travel. Together with me in the car there traveled a family. For some reason they had a lot of meal. They were eating continuously, in contrast to me. The only thing they lacked was bread. From time to time they spoke to each other, pointing a finger at me ‘Look, this guy eats nothing all the travel long!’ At one of railway stations I came off the train, went to a bakery and bought 3 big warm loaves of bread (I spent my last money for it). And I managed to get back to the train in time.

One loaf I presented to a Pole (I do not know, whence he appeared there). My neighbors-gluttons asked me to sell them bread or to exchange it for meal. I refused proudly and ate my bread dry, and they flashed their envious looks at me. It is strange, really, what remains in your memory sometimes!

After Penza I got to Central Asia, to a small town 30 kilometers far from Tashkent (I do not remember its name). There I found myself among local people which did not speak Russian, just like me. By pure accident I got a textbook of German language for Uzbeks. I started learning Uzbek language and after several months of studies I already spoke it. I am sure that you will excuse me, but a mullah even taught me Arabian prays. I still remember them.

The secretary of the regional Communist Party Committee told me ‘I will not let you go to the front, I need you here.’ [Regional Communist Party Committee was a supervising official body – representative of the Central Communist Party Committee.] I was appointed an accountant. After all I was a competent person: my lyceum education, you know, was no jesting matter. I drew up reports like that: ‘A ram fought against another one, and got badly wounded. It was slaughtered urgently to avoid spoiling of meat. The meat was distributed among collective farmers.’ At that time it was the only way to provide people with at least small amount of meat.

Doschanov, the secretary of the regional Communist Party Committee suggested me to marry a local girl and stay there for ever. I remember him saying ‘A lot of Russians live here for a long time knowing not a word in the Uzbek language, and you became our relative now.’ At that time in Central Asia there were a lot of evacuated people. [Evacuated peoplecame from different places of the country occupied by German army.] They lived poorly, they were treated badly. And I lived very well. When I arrived in Central Asia my weight was 53 kg, and when I left for the front line (in 1944) - 72 kg. I gained 20 kg.

Once I was almost taken. They brought us (about 600 persons) hundreds kilometers away to a recruiting center. [Recruiting center is a place where a person starts his military service.] From those 600 persons only 2 were scrapped, and I was one of them. Why did not they take me?! I wanted to go to the front! I had a score to settle with Germans: all my relatives, whom I loved, were lost (I was sure in it by that time) because of Fascism, because of Nazism. I wanted to fight. And again I was scrapped as a foreigner. 2 years more I spent in Central Asia. And at last they agreed to send me to the army.

I got to the 1st Belarus front, to the division no.69. Marshal Zhukov was the commander of the front.

I started in Poland. We were brought there via Urals.

We won back Warsaw and Berlin. I participated in the meeting with Americans on Elba. [The Meeting of the Red Army and American armies in Torgau took place on Elba in April, 1945. As a result of that meeting, Germany was split into two parts.]

I served in infantry as a submachine gunner. I was afraid of nothing: I can’t say that I ignored myself, but I thought ‘It’s better for me to perish, than to somebody else, because nobody will cry for me.’ In this connection I recollect the following tragical story. Being at the recruiting center, I saw a guy there. A very young woman (his sister or a wife) saw him off. She cried so bitterly! My heart was breaking! And later, already in Poland I suddenly saw that guy in our entrenchment (nearby and opposite to us Germans were sitting in the similar entrenchment).

Before I had time to say I was glad for him (that he was alive and fine), he got up to his full height and shouted with all his lung power: ‘Hey you, Germans (round oath), I am not afraid of you!’ and fell dead at that very second. Till now I cannot forget that crying little girl at the recruiting center, even more than him. At the front it happened sometimes that people went out of their mind.

I went through the war unhurt, though that war was terrible! Imagine, from 180 soldiers of my company only 8 survived, including me.

• After the War and later life

You know, I forgot some details, but the meeting on Elba impressed me greatly (and not only me). Certainly, everyone understands that that meeting resulted in something good (German army was divided into parts, and the war ended faster). But it was not that result that stuck to my memory. All the war time they spoke that all our allies did not hurry up to open the 2nd front, etc. You know: the Soviet propagation. And there we saw those allies first-hand. We embraced, shook hands, and exchanged souvenirs.

Stars from ours field caps were a great success among Americans. All of them knew one word in Russian - ‘a comrade’. And we drank there a lot: vodka, whisky - it didn't matter! Before the meeting political departments and SMERSH 6 recommended us to follow special instruction and carry out ‘friendly meetings in the spirit of revolutionary vigilance.’ [Political departments were special bodies created by the Central Committee of the Communist party in the Soviet Army and Navy fleet for strengthening of political work, and mainly for realization of total shadowing.] And one more trifling thing stuck to my mind: boots of American soldiers were polished!

After the victory I started working at the strategical department in Berlin. It was our secret service and counterespionage department. All inhabitants of Leningrad, and not only of Leningrad know what the Big House is. [Big House is a building in St. Petersburg (Leningrad), where since 1932 People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs was situated. The Big House became a symbol of lawlessness and terror. According to a legend, the sense of the name is the following: ‘The Big House is the highest building in the city. From its windows everyone can see Siberia.’] 

Here you can realize the level of nonsense: they refused to send me to the front line as a private because of my political unreliability (as they thought), and in Berlin they trusted me more than difficult affairs. To tell the truth, I fought fairly, I did not hide from bullets, never betrayed my comrades – so, I proved my reliability. Certainly, my perfect knowledge of German language was of great importance. Once again I had to thank the Bucharest lyceum. I rented an apartment, I took an officer’s post. I was engaged in translations, but not only in translations.

I cannot tell you everything even now. Anyway, thanks to my work in strategical department in Berlin I became able to catch pilferers, when I began working at school. No ruses could help them! If it was necessary to find out who had broken a glass, they addressed me. Once I even managed to return a motorcycle to its owner (that motorcycle was stolen by pupils of our school). You will not believe, but I was even invited to work in militia.

But in general, I did not like that work. People ought to stand aside from such places. And I decided to start new peaceful life.

In 1946 I got demobilized. And in the USSR I had nobody and nothing. I did not know how to start the new life. I wanted to go to Leningrad. But Leningrad was a closed city: people were allowed to go there only if they had been born there or had work there. My front-line comrade helped me to get to Leningrad having sent me an invitation. His name was Alexey and I do not remember his surname. What is ridiculous: when I arrived in Leningrad, I did not find him there. His neighbors told me that he had fallen in love with a girl from Tadjikistan and had urgently left for her. He even left no address. 

So I had no opportunity to thank him for his assistance. It ensured my coming to the city, which became my home very soon. You remember I thought that I would remain Wandering Jew for ever. Really, nobody waited for me, nobody was pleased with my returning. I was alone both in the city and in the whole world. I understood it, but at the same time my heart was pleased that I was alive. I fought against Hitler, I would have fought against that bastard on the side of any country. Step by step I realized that the country on which side I fought, was my native country.

So on 14th August 1946 I appeared in Leningrad. And on 16th August entrance examinations at the College of Foreign Languages began. I sent my documents to the French language department. The most difficult examination was composition. My Russian was very poor. Only regarding round oaths, I had no match. There I was worth an academic status of professor.

But unfortunately entrance examinations required different sort of knowledge. And one very beautiful girl wrote that composition for me. Don’t look at me that way: you see, now I am old and bald, but 60 years ago I was rather handsome. Moreover, I was a front-line soldier! That is why she herself suggested to do it and did it. And the rest examinations I passed myself and got very good marks.

I became a student. But the College director told me ‘Your knowledge of Russian language will not permit you to study in our College. I allow you to study till the first session.’ Here I’d like to tell you that during years of my study in that College I got only one good mark, all the others were excellent. It is interesting that that good mark I got for military translation. Guess why: because I had to translate into Russian. It was ridiculous, taking into account that I had finished war in the rank of captain-translator. 

It was very important for me to be an excellent student, because they received 25% higher stipend. And I could rely only upon myself. I lived in a hostel. My stipend (even increased one) was not enough for living. I earned money additionally: worked as a docker, helped to carry books in libraries, etc. And I was an excellent student. I had time for everything. At that time I had a feeling (more likely subconscious) that I was living not only for myself, but also for all my family members. 

I graduated from the College so successfully that acquired the right of teaching not only at schools, but also in higher educational institutions. It was written down in my diploma. I was assigned 7 to Kishinev. I asked the commission about it myself, because I knew Romanian language. And Moldavian and Romanian languages are so similar that I started speaking Moldovian at once. In Kishinev I taught French language at the Pedagogical College. By that time I was already married. Please, do not be angry with me, but I’ll tell nothing about my wife. There are things in my life, which concern only me. Do not ask me, I’ll tell nothing. My wife went with me to Kishinev and became an inspector at the Ministry of Public Education there. We lived there 3 years. After that we returned to Leningrad, and I started working in the school no.112. Shortly after our return to Leningrad, my elder son was born. 

At first we lived together with my mother-in-law, and later they gave me (as a war participant) an apartment. At the school no.112 I worked 44 years: it was my first and the only one place of work. I worked till 1996, and retired on a pension at the age of 75. Nobody dismissed me, I could go on working, but it became already a little bit difficult for me. 

In 1996 I met Bronislava Davidovna and since then we have been together with her. Her maiden name was Krifuks. She was born in Leningrad in 1925. She graduated from the Leningrad State University (department of Russian language and literature). She worked at the same school, where we worked with my first wife. She taught Russian language and literature. She was married to Vitaliy Semenovich Lurye, who died in 1994. Our families were on friendly terms. That was why when both of us lost our spouses, we paid attention to each other.

I do not remember anybody from our circle, who emigrated soon after the war. I frequently thought about leaving, but not in details. I did not want to go abroad, knowing nothing about the future: I had already knocked about the world quite enough. But my heart always belonged to Israel. Till now I am sometimes very sorry that I did not manage to visit it. It means that I was not fated to! 

I have got 2 sons Mikhail and Andrey. Mikhail was born in 1952 and Andrey in 1963. Both of them were born in Leningrad. They grew as ordinary boys. They were very good friends, despite of great disparity in years. They both graduated from the Leningrad Electrotechnical College as programmers. Each of them has 2 sons. Mikhail’s wife name is Irina. Their son Alexey is already married. He studies (as his father and his uncle did) in the Leningrad Electrotechnical College. His wife Ekaterina graduated from the Antique Department of the State University, she is a teacher of English language. They have a daughter Masha (my great-granddaughter). 

Their second son Evgeniy graduated from the Polytechnical College and went to Holland for postgraduate course. He works there now. His wife’s name is Oksana. They also have 2 sons Denis and Anton. The elder son is a 1st year student of the University of Economics and Finances. The younger brother is a schoolboy. They are good boys. Denis was the first one in my family who took great interest in Judaism. He reads books on history of Jewish people and is a member of Petersburg branch of Hillel. [Hillel is the largest International Jewish students’ organization in the world, which promotes revival of Jewish life on the territory of the former Soviet Union. Hillel has its branches in 27 cities of seven countries in CIS.]

We see each other with my children and grandsons not frequently. We live far away from each other, and they are busy very much. But somebody of them gives me a telephone call almost every day to ask about my health.

When my son Andrey was going to enter the Leningrad Electrotechnical College (in 1980), we heard that they did not want Jews to become students of the Faculty of programming. And I told you already that during the war I worked at the strategical department in Berlin. I still had some acquaintances in certain spheres. I went to the department no.1 of the College and said ‘Old men, I helped you, you help me now.’ [Department no.1 was a special department in every soviet institution. They were organized to keep people under surveillance. As a rule, there worked representatives of the National Security Committee.] And my son entered the College. 

You know, at my work I never had problems connected with my Jewish origin. The same was during my studies and at the front, though horrible anti-Semitism flourished around us. But when I worked in Kishinev, newspapers informed people about the Doctors’ Plot 8. In connection with it, Jews were fired out from offices right and left. I was not fired. I think the reason was not only in my front-line backward, but also in important position my wife occupied in the Ministry of Public Education. But why did she remain untouched? Sometimes they make mistakes! 

In fact I made no secret of the fact that I was Jewish. By the way when I served in Berlin, I had good relations with Germans, including girls. There was one girl… I immediately honestly told her that I was a Jew. And she answered ‘Well, and now what?’ 

Probably the point was that I never occupied important positions. To tell the truth, there was one exception in Kishinev. But I already told you about it.

I did not bring up my children as Jews. They certainly knew that we were Jews, but that was all. I did not visit synagogue, and never brought my children there. I don’t think that they were especially interested in my life. They never asked about details of my life (as you did). You already know about me more, than my own children do.

After the end of the war we did not observe traditions, did not celebrate Jewish holidays, - we were not Jews in the full sense of the word. We cooked no special Jewish meals. Sometimes we bought matzah in the synagogue. We had a lot of friends, both Jews and Russians. By the way, it never came to my mind to count up the percentage of my Jewish friends among the others. And I know no Jewish families which observed traditions. Perhaps, someone observed, but they preferred to keep it in secret. 

My life after 1950s did not change noticeably. Salary of teachers was always miserable. At school there worked only people who really loved their work. And I was one of them. It was very unpleasant, when school authorities forced teachers to give pupils undeserved high marks (they wanted their school to have a good reputation). Once I even spoke at a teachers' meeting against their position. I held up the Bucharest lyceum as a positive example. The director attacked me with reproaches: she blamed me for my bourgeois ideology. But I was not fired: schools always lacked teachers, and a male teacher was always worth his weight in gold. And by the way, I was a good teacher. My pupils liked me. 

Here I can tell you one story, which happened recently. Being a war participant, I have the right to rent dacha in Ushkovo in summer. [Ushkovo is a settlement in Leningrad region 55 km far from St. Petersburg.] Certainly, it is much cheaper for me, than for others, but not free-of-charge. We spend there summer time year and year out. 

Well, the rent grows and the conditions become worse from year to year. They make no repair: leak in the roof, the refrigerator out of order. I suffered for a long time, and then became angry and wrote an article. I sent it to a newspaper and named Payment for a Jolt of Fresh Air. The article was signed by me. The newspaper fell into the hands of my former schoolgirl (she studied in my class about 30 years ago). She was not lazy enough to make a telephone call to the newspaper editors and get my telephone number. She called me and said so many warm words, that now I have a lot to keep in my memory!

I never had to swear fidelity. But you should take into consideration that in 1937-1938 (during the Great Terror 9, when employees everywhere voted for executions of enemies of the people 10) I did not live in the USSR.

During the wars which were waged by Israel [11, 12], I was on the side of Israel for sure. I was very pleased with those victories, because I always considered that country to be almost my native. You should take into account that I was at war (a very serious war), and I came to know the particulars of military science and art of war. To my mind, the way Israel waged those wars was fantastically good. It seems to me that every anti-Semite should have changed his opinion of Jews during those wars.

I do not remember whether the severance of diplomatic relations with Israel influenced my life.

I have no relatives abroad. To put it more precisely, I know nothing about anybody of them. 

You know, when at present some old fools (I am sorry, but I am used to call things and people by their proper names) start complaining that democrats have crushed the ideals they shed their blood for, I’d like to say the following: ‘I liberated Berlin. I did it personally. Only 8 persons (including me) survived from 180 soldiers of my company. I fought fairly. I have the full right to judge, what is good for this country and what is evil for it. And I do not have a sense that they betrayed everything I fought for. I consider democratization to be a blessing for our country.’ 

I am connected to the life of St. Petersburg Jewish community very little. Sometimes they bring me food packages from the Hesed Welfare Center 13. Oh, you should see those packages! My income is enough for living, in fact I receive two pensions: an old age pension and pension of a war participant. But I understand that it is not a package, but attention that is dear to me.

I never received any financial assistance from Germany or Switzerland. It would be ridiculous, if Germans make compensatory payments to the person, who worked at the strategical department in Berlin! 

Here you ask me what I felt, when Stalin died. You know, according to Stalin's plan, I should have not talked to you here now, I should have lived (or most probably, be already buried) in Birobidzhan 14. Certainly all these details became known rather recently. But in fact at that time even blind understood Stalin’s attitude to Jews. And when people say that they knew nothing about Stalin’s terror, I cannot believe them. In fact almost every family suffered from repressions. I am proud of the fact that when Stalin died I not only did not cry (as everybody did around me), but felt pleasure and a sense of relief. Many people say now ‘We cried, because we were afraid to witness even worse times in the near future.’ And what could be worse? It could not be worse. And I turned to be right! The doctors were released from custody, and hard as times might be later we never experienced such horror any more.

Certainly we took the Doctors’ Plot hard. I told you already that at that time I worked in Kishinev. I remember how they fired Jews. I was not fired probably because I was a war participant. It was almost impossible to find job for a Jew in 1950s (before Stalin's death). 

Revolution in Hungary 15 and the Prague spring 16 I took hard. I understood well that it was unfair. But even better I understood that I had to keep my own opinion to myself. From that point of view I became a real Soviet citizen quickly.

I’d like to brag a little bit. I was awarded medals For Liberation of Warsaw, For Liberation of Berlin, and an Order of the Great Patriotic War 17. I deserved one award more, but I do not remember which one. Probably you have noticed my disadvantage: I am a yap. Since my childhood I had a long tongue. I said too much about private life of my commander (he lived with a nurse). Somebody told him my words with pleasure and then he said ‘That Askenazi has too long tongue, he will manage without award.’ I took no offence at him.

I was happy to remain alive and safe. I am still alive, and I am going to live a long life (minimum 100 years). Do you know why? I do not want to let the authorities save money on my pension. They should pay! I have 2 sons, 4 grandsons, 1 great-granddaughter - all of them exist thanks to me! On my birthday my grandson (he is a pupil of the 4th form) proposed a toast to me: ‘To my grandfather, our root, we all are his descendants!’ My family is large, and there are no drunkards, no peculiar fools. 

I am also proud of the high standard of my knowledge in languages. We can count: Romanian, Russian, French, English (I studied it in the College as the second language), Latin (from my lyceum), German, Uzbek! You’d better come with me to the market! I speak to every seller in his native language. And they give me 50% discount! Everyone is pleased to hear native language in a foreign city.

• Glossary:

1. Anti-Jewish laws in Romania: The first anti-Jewish laws were introduced in 1938 by the Goga-Cuza government. Further anti-Jewish laws followed in 1940 and 1941, and the situation was getting gradually worse between 1941-1944 under the Antonescu regime. According to these laws all Jews aged 18-40 living in villages were to be evacuated and concentrated in the capital town of each county. Jews from the region between the Siret and Prut Rivers were transported by wagons to the camps of Targu Jiu, Slobozia, Craiova etc. where they lived and died in misery. More than 40,000 Jews were moved. All rural Jewish property, as well as houses owned by Jews in the city, were confiscated by the state, as part of the ‘Romanisation campaign’. Marriages between Jews and Romanians were forbidden from August 1940, Jews were not allowed to have Romanian names, own rural properties, be public employees, lawyers, editors or janitors in public institutions, have a career in the army, own liquor stores, etc. Jewish employees of commercial and industrial enterprises were fired, Jewish doctors could no longer practice and Jews were not allowed to own chemist shops. Jewish students were forbidden to study in Romanian schools. 

2. Bessarabia: Historical area between the Prut and Dnestr rivers, in the southern part of Odessa region. Bessarabia was part of Russia until the Revolution of 1917. In 1918 it declared itself an independent republic, and later it united with Romania. The Treaty of Paris (1920) recognized the union but the Soviet Union never accepted this. In 1940 Romania was forced to cede Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the USSR. The two provinces had almost 4 million inhabitants, mostly Romanians. Although Romania reoccupied part of the territory during World War II the Romanian peace treaty of 1947 confirmed their belonging to the Soviet Union. Today it is part of Moldavia. 

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

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

5. NKVD: People’s Committee of Internal Affairs; it took over from the GPU, the state security agency, in 1934

6. SMERSH: Russian abbreviation for ‘Smert Shpionam’ meaning Death to Spies. It was a counterintelligence department in the Soviet Union formed during World War II, to secure the rear of the active Red Army, on the front to arrest ‘traitors, deserters, spies, and criminal elements’. The full name of the entity was USSR People’s Commissariat of Defense Chief Counterintelligence Directorate ‘SMERSH’. This name for the counterintelligence division of the Red Army was introduced on 19th April 1943, and worked as a separate entity until 1946. It was headed by Viktor Abakumov. At the same time a SMERSH directorate within the People’s Commissariat of the Soviet Navy and a SMERSH department of the NKVD were created. The main opponent of SMERSH in its counterintelligence activity was Abwehr, the German military foreign information and counterintelligence department. SMERSH activities also included ‘filtering’ the soldiers recovered from captivity and the population of the gained territories. It was also used to punish within the NKVD itself; allowed to investigate, arrest and torture, force to sign fake confessions, put on a show trial, and either send to the camps or shoot people. SMERSH would also often be sent out to find and kill defectors, double agents, etc.; also used to maintain military discipline in the Red Army by means of barrier forces, that were supposed to shoot down the Soviet troops in the cases of retreat. SMERSH was also used to hunt down ‘enemies of the people’ outside Soviet territory.

7. Mandatory job assignment in the USSR: Graduates of higher educational institutions had to complete a mandatory 2-year job assignment issued by the institution from which they graduated. After finishing this assignment young people were allowed to get employment at their discretion in any town or organization.

8. Doctors’ Plot: The Doctors’ Plot was an alleged conspiracy of a group of Moscow doctors to murder leading government and party officials. In January 1953, the Soviet press reported that nine doctors, six of whom were Jewish, had been arrested and confessed their guilt. As Stalin died in March 1953, the trial never took place. The official paper of the Party, the Pravda, later announced that the charges against the doctors were false and their confessions obtained by torture. This case was one of the worst anti-Semitic incidents during Stalin’s reign. In his secret speech at the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956 Khrushchev stated that Stalin wanted to use the Plot to purge the top Soviet leadership

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

10. Enemy of the people: Soviet official term; euphemism used for real or assumed political opposition. 

11. Six-Day-War: The first strikes of the Six-Day-War happened on 5th June 1967 by the Israeli Air Force. The entire war only lasted 132 hours and 30 minutes. The fighting on the Egyptian side only lasted four days, while fighting on the Jordanian side lasted three. Despite the short length of the war, this was one of the most dramatic and devastating wars ever fought between Israel and all of the Arab nations. This war resulted in a depression that lasted for many years after it ended. The Six-Day-War increased tension between the Arab nations and the Western World because of the change in mentalities and political orientations of the Arab nations

12. Yom Kippur War: The Arab-Israeli War of 1973, also known as the Yom Kippur War or the Ramadan War, was a war between Israel on one side and Egypt and Syria on the other side. It was the fourth major military confrontation between Israel and the Arab states. The war lasted for three weeks: it started on 6th October 1973 and ended on 22nd October on the Syrian front and on 26th October on the Egyptian front.

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

14. Birobidzhan: Formed in 1928 to give Soviet Jews a home territory and to increase settlement along the vulnerable borders of the Soviet Far East, the area was raised to the status of an autonomous region in 1934. Influenced by an effective propaganda campaign, and starvation in the east, 41,000 Soviet Jews relocated to the area between the late 1920s and early 1930s. But, by 1938 28,000 of them had fled the regions harsh conditions, There were Jewish schools and synagogues up until the 1940s, when there was a resurgence of religious repression after World War II. The Soviet government wanted the forced deportation of all Jews to Birobidzhan to be completed by the middle of the 1950s. But in 1953 Stalin died and the deportation was cancelled. Despite some remaining Yiddish influences - including a Yiddish newspaper - Jewish cultural activity in the region has declined enormously since Stalin's anti-cosmopolitanism campaigns and since the liberalization of Jewish emigration in the 1970s. Jews now make up less than 2% of the region's population

15. 1956: It designates the Revolution, which started on 23rd October 1956 against Soviet rule and the communists in Hungary. It was started by student and worker demonstrations in Budapest started in which Stalin’s gigantic statue was destroyed. Moderate communist leader Imre Nagy was appointed as prime minister and he promised reform and democratization. The Soviet Union withdrew its troops which had been stationing in Hungary since the end of World War II, but they returned after Nagy’s announcement that Hungary would pull out of the Warsaw Pact to pursue a policy of neutrality. The Soviet army put an end to the rising on 4th November and mass repression and arrests started. About 200,000 Hungarians fled from the country. Nagy, and a number of his supporters were executed. Until 1989, the fall of the communist regime, the Revolution of 1956 was officially considered a counter-revolution.

16. Prague Spring: The term Prague Spring designates the liberalization period in communist-ruled Czechoslovakia between 1967-1969. In 1967 Alexander Dubcek became the head of the Czech Communist Party and promoted ideas of ‘socialism with a human face’, i.e. with more personal freedom and freedom of the press, and the rehabilitation of victims of Stalinism. In August 1968 Soviet troops, along with contingents from Poland, East Germany, Hungary and Bulgaria, occupied Prague and put an end to the reforms

17. Order of the Great Patriotic War: 1st Class: established 20th May 1942, awarded to officers and enlisted men of the armed forces and security troops and to partisans, irrespective of rank, for skillful command of their units in action. 2nd Class: established 20th May 1942, awarded to officers and enlisted men of the armed forces and security troops and to partisans, irrespective of rank, for lesser personal valor in action.

Olga Bernstein 
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Oksana Kuntsevskaya
Date of interview: October 2003

Olga Bernstein is a round lady of average height. She looks wonderful. She doesn’t look older than 70, while actually she is 85 years old. She is friendly and smiles readily. She has a professional and distinct manner of speaking. One can tell that she used to teach. Olga and her husband live in a small 2-bedroom apartment in a 1970s house in one of new districts of Kiev. It’s a cozy apartment with nice furniture bought in the 1980s. There are family photographs on the walls.  She has it was one of her sons’ doing.  Olga is a good housewife. She likes cooking and treats me to delicious homemade cookies.  

My family background

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family background

My mother’s parents lived in Kopachiv village Obukhov district near Kiev [about 60 km from Kiev]. There were few Jews in the village. Its residents were Ukrainian for the most part. Ukrainians and Jews got along well and treated my grandfather with great respect. I don’t know when or where my grandfather and grandmother met or any details about their wedding. My grandfather David Bronfein was a tailor. I believe he was born in 1870. I don’t know who his parents were. He made sheepskin coats for villagers. I didn’t see my grandfather going to the synagogue, but he had a tallit, white and black, and tefillin, Every now and then he had then on to pray, but I don’t think he did systematically. Grandmother Fenia was a thin tall woman, born around 1869. I don’t know about her parents, either. She gave birth to babies and raised them, this was her job. My grandmother had 14 children, all born in Kopachiv. Many died at birth or in infancy. Seven children survived. The children were growing up and the village was small and there were no distinct prospects for them. In 1913 my mother moved to Kiev and got married there and her parents decided for moving there as well. The family lived in Stalinka [a district in the suburb of Kiev at that time, one of its central districts at present]; this district was like a village where everybody knew everyone else. Many of my relatives resided in the same street.

My mother’s older brother Naum Bronfein was born in 1895.  There was no cheder in Kopachiv and he didn’t go to school, but of course, he could read and write in Yiddish and Russian.  Following his sisters and brothers he moved to Kiev in 1914 where he worked as a barber. In 1926  he married Bertha, a wonderful Jewish girl. She was 13 years his junior. She was so smart! She finished a grammar school and could play the piano. We all loved her dearly. I even shared more thoughts with her than with my mother. My brother also shared his thoughts with her. Many of us went to ask Bertha’s advice about life matters, though she was the youngest daughter-in-law in the family. Naum was also a very nice person. In 1927 their son Leonid, my cousin brother, was born. When the Great Patriotic War 1 began, Naum was mobilized to the army and he was at the front. I don’t know where exactly he was at the front. The main thing was that he survived. His wife Bertha worked at an enterprise in Kiev and got an opportunity to evacuate with her son. My grandmother and grandfather Bronfeins didn’t want to evacuate, but we had a wise daughter-in-law in the family. She insisted that grandfather and grandmother left Kiev. We had left Kiev before, and she was there and was persistent and took my grandmother and grandfather out of the town on the last day. They died in Siberia, but they died from old age. 

After the war uncle Naum continued to work as a barber in Stalinka in Kiev. He was a veteran of the war and managed to have his apartment back after the war. His wife and son returned to him from evacuation. He died in 1963. Bertha died some time in the 1970s. She was my favorite aunt. Her son Leonid died in Kiev recently, three years ago, but I keep in touch with his wife. 

My mother’s next brother Itsyk Bronfein was born in 1899, I think. He was the only one in the family who did farming. He kept pigs and had a vegetable garden. Itsyk didn’t want to move to Kiev from Kopachiv. He loved farming. He was married to a Ukrainian woman. Her name was Odarka. She called Itsyk Grisha, Grigoriy, in a Ukrainian manner. Odarka was eager to move to Kiev. To make the long story short, the relatives almost pulled him out of the village. In 1936 Itsyk and his wife arrived in Kiev. My grandfather rented a small room for them in Stalinka. Itsyk went to work as a laborer. Odarka went to work in a factory in Kiev. They didn’t have children. In June 1941 he was mobilized to the army. I think he perished in 1942. I don’t remember any details.  His wife stayed in Kiev during occupation. My mother and other relatives kept in touch with her after my brother died. She died some time in the 1960s.

The next child in the family was my mother’s sister Vera Obukhovskaya, nee Bronfein, born in 1902. I know little about her childhood and youth. She probably had some kind of primary education. She moved to Kiev in 1914 with her parents, my grandmother and grandfather. In 1922 Vera married Boris Obukhovskiy, a Jewish man. I don’t remember when he was born. In 1923 Vera’s son Pyotr was born. She was a housewife and Boris was a worker at a plant in Kiev. This family has a tragic history. Boris was mobilized at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War and he perished at the front in 1942. Now about his wife and son. In June 1941 all 18-year boys were taken to Donetsk region [about 800 km from Kiev] to do some work. When they were done they were told to go home. Those whose parents were in evacuation went to them. My aunt Vera was in Kiev. She didn’t want to leave home. She said: ‘we will be protected, we saw Germans in 1918, they are a civilized nation and we won’t go’. Pyotr returned to Kiev. He and his mother perished in Babi Yar 2.

My mother’s sister Sonia Bronfein, born in 1903, also moved to Kiev with her parents in 1914. I have dim memories of her. She wasn’t married. She was ill for a long time and died in the 1930s.

The next child in my mother’s family was her brother Hatskel Bronfein, born in 1905. He didn’t have any education. He moved to Kiev from Kopachiv with his parents. Hatskel dealt in trade.  I remember that when I was small he used to ride a horse arranging his dealings. He dealt in selling apples, flour and had something to do with horses. When the Great Patriotic War began Hatskel was also mobilized to the army. I don’t know where he was. After the war he returned to his apartment in Kiev. He wasn’t married. After the war and until he died in 1970 he worked in a store selling household goods. 

My mother’s youngest brother Yefim Bronfein was born in 1910. In 1914 he moved to Kiev with his parents and other brothers and sisters. He finished seven grades in a school in Kiev. Yefim joined the Communist Party. He was an active, devoted and educated communist. He studied at a Party course and was very competent. In the early 1930s he was recruited to the army. I don’t remember his rank for sure, but he was an officer. I remember his photograph where he was wearing a military uniform. He was handsome and stately.  Yefim served in Orel [650 km from Kiev] in Russia. After his service in the army he returned to Kiev and worked as logistics manager in a hospital. Grandmother and grandfather Bronfeins lived with us until 1941. I remember my uncles Yefim and Hatskel always arguing about something during family gatherings. One of them was devoted to his ideas and another one thought ideas were nothing and didn’t like the Soviet regime in general. Hatskel used to say: ‘You are a communist! And I want to trade and I deal in it and provide for my family! And you will be as poor as the rest of them!’ Their parents were very upset about their quarrels. But Hatskel turned out to be right! In the late 1930s Yefim married Olia, a Jewish girl. She was a medical nurse in the same hospital where he was working. In 1940 their daughter Sopha was born. When the Great Patriotic War began Yefim stayed to defend Kiev serving in the Territorial Army 3. He got in captivity. Later we were told that people saw Germans shooting people in Darnitsa [a suburb of Kiev then] and that Yefim was among them. His wife and daughter perished in Babi Yar.

My mother Slava Bronfein was the oldest in the family. She was born in 1890. She didn’t study anywhere and from the age of 10 she used to sit in my grandfather’s shop assisting him with hemming skirts, corsets and shirts.  She learned from grandfather and became a dressmaker. My mother was tall and beautiful. She was the first one to take a decision to move to Kiev in 1913. She rented an apartment in Stalinka in Kiev and her family followed her. My mother was a very popular dressmaker in Stalinka. In 1914 she married David Bernstein, my father. I don’t know how they met or what kind of wedding they had.

My mother’s family came from a village, but my father’s family was from a town. My father’s father Benicion Bernstein was born approximately in 1865. I didn’t know my grandmother. My grandfather Benicion worked as chief accountant of a big meat factory in Kiev. When I knew him he didn’t work since he was very old. He lived with my father’s younger sisters who were single in the same street as my mother’s parents. My grandfather was a beautiful old man with a white beard. He read the Torah and was religious. He even had a tallit and tefillin. But he also read Stalin.  I saw that he had books by Stalin. My grandfather celebrated Saturday and went to the synagogue on holidays.

Manya, the oldest of my father’s sisters, was the same age as my mother. She was born in 1890. Vytola, another sister, was about five years younger. I don’t know where they studied or worked.  This was an intelligentsia Jewish family. They knew many Jewish songs and I liked listening to them.  My grandfather and father sang on birthday parties or other occasions.   

When the Great Patriotic War began grandfather Bencion was very ill. His daughters didn’t want to leave him alone and stayed in Kiev. Their janitor told us later that Germans ordered them to go to a certain place and to get grandfather into a wheel chair with them. We don’t know where they went. All we know is that all three of them perished.

My father David Bernstein was born in Kiev in 1887. Unfortunately, I remember very little of what my father told me about his childhood and youth. He must have finished cheder since he could read and write and knew Yiddish. He was religious in his heart and went to the synagogue often, but he didn’t demonstrate his religiosity otherwise. He probably didn’t want to involve his children in religion. This is how it used to be when authorities didn’t approve of religiosity 4 and my father didn’t want to complicate our life. I know that he took part in the Civil War 5, when he was on the side of the Red Army.  My father told me how hard his life was and how soldiers starved. I didn’t remember much since I was too young. My father was shell-shocked and had problems with his spinal column. His diagnosis was inflammation of the spinal column.  When I remember him he was small and humpbacked. Due to his health condition he didn’t work and was a pensioner.  

As far as I can understand he met my mother via matchmakers. My mother had just come from a village, she was the oldest daughter in the family and was single. Although she was beautiful, she had a hearing problem.  And my father’s problem was that he was short and humpbacked, but they cared about each other and had a good life together.

There were three of us: my brother Matvey whom we called Motl, my sister Fenia, Feiha by her passport and I was the youngest. 

My older brother Matvey Bernstein was born in 1915. When he grew older my parents sent him to a Jewish kindergarten across the street from our home.  We all went to this Jewish kindergarten. At the age of 8 Matvey went to a Jewish school in Kiev. After finishing the 7th grade Matvey went to study in a school of economics and became an accountant. Matvey made a quick career. He became chief accountant at the age of 19-20. He supported us and I remember that we bought a sofa and a wardrobe before the war. This was thanks to my mother and brother. Many people couldn’t afford these at the time. In 1939 my brother went to serve in the army. He went to the army at the age of 24. There was an order issued by Voroshilov 6 about privileges to those who didn’t have a father and whose mother was their dependent that they could go to the army at the age of 24. He turned 24 in 1939. He went to serve in Strii town [about 600 km from Kiev] in Western Ukraine. In 1941 the Great Patriotic War began. So he went to the front from there. 

Matvey corresponded with us during the Great Patriotic War. In 1944 after liberation of Ukraine  my brother wrote us to where we were in evacuation that he was sending us a document allowing us to go to Kharkov [500 km from Kiev], where he was chief of the planning department of his regiment. He also gave us money for this trip through a captain. Of course, this captain never showed up and we never got this money and then my brother mailed this letter to us. He met us in Kharkov. In Kharkov my brother received an apartment where my mother, my sister and her daughter and I lived with him. A few years later my mother and I moved out. Matvey was a captain at the end of the war and continued his service as a professional military. He met a Russian girl from Moscow at the front. Her name was Anastasia. He married her after the war.  My mother didn’t mind. They had three nice kids.  My brother served in Kandalaksha Rostov region and his last location was in Slavinsk Donetsk region, 500 km from Kiev. He was chief financial in a military registry office. He would have been eager to move to Kiev upon demobilization, but he didn’t have an apartment so he stayed to live where he had been on service. My brother died of ulcer in 1972, when he was 57.  His children moved to Germany in the 1990s. They are wonderful people. It’s a pity I’ve lost contact with them. Matvey’s wife Asia died in Slavinsk in the 1980s. 

My sister Fenia Matusovskaya, nee Bernstein, was born in 1917. She also went to the Jewish kindergarten and at the age of 8 she went to the same school as my brother.  She finished 8 grades at school and went to work as a cashier in a grocery store in Stalinka. She was good at calculations. In 1936 my sister married my brother’s schoolmate Yakov Matusovskiy, born in 1915. This Yakov visited us since he was a small boy. His mother made sugar candy. When she made plenty of them she allowed him to share candy with his friends. Keeping one candy behind a cheek we could have two glasses of tea with it. When Yasha brought this candy he asked my mother: ‘Ms. Slava, have you got bread and beimele?’ ‘Beimele’ was sunflower oil. My mother always gave him a slice of bread with beimele. So he was the one who married my sister.  Yasha [common nickname for Yakov] was a driver at an enterprise. In 1938 my beloved niece Dina was born. 

When the Great Patriotic War began Yakov served in a motorcar unit in the army. Once he came home and said that the plant ‘Krasny rezinschik’ where my sister used to work at one time was organizing evacuation. Yakov was one of the drivers that were sent to support this evacuation process. There were no suitcases, so packed up and got ready to evacuate. My sister and her daughter were in evacuation with my mother and me. She worked at harvesting and as a worker in a match factory. 

Fenia’s husband Yakov was at the front. He was in Berlin when the war was over. He continued his service in Potsdam, Germany. In 1945 he came to pick up Fenia and Dina. They went to Potsdam and lived there for two years. In 1947 Yasha’s service was over. They returned from Germany and had their room in Stalinka returned to them. They had two rooms before the war, but they only had one returned to them. After the Great Patriotic War and till retirement Yakov worked as a driver in a vehicle company in Kiev and Fenia was a cashier in a grocery store. Dina finished Kiev Medical College, got married and worked in a Polyclinic in Kiev. Yakov died in the late 1960s. My sister died of a heart attack five years  later, on 5 December 1977. Dina, her family and grandchildren live in Los Angeles. My sister and her husband were buried in the Jewish section of  Baikovoye cemetery  in Kiev.

Growing up

I was born in 1920. Everybody called me a ‘little pretty girl Olen’ka’ ‘myzynka’, which means ‘little one’ and dearest. I went to the Jewish kindergarten and then I went to a Jewish school in 1928. The subject curriculum in this school was no different from Russian or Ukrainian schools, but we studied all subjects in Yiddish. We had a wonderful teacher. He was also a poet. His name was Benion Gutianskiy. He was executed in 1953 during the period of ‘doctors’ plot’ 7 like many other Jewish scientists. They were ‘spies’, you know. So this was what happened to him. Gutianskiy was my brother’s teacher, but I knew him very well.  When I was in the first grade my brother was in the 7th. I often ran to my brother’s class. I liked staying with them a little.

Our school was near the synagogue in Stalinka. My mother and father always went to the synagogue on holiday. My mother wore a kerchief and sat upstairs and my father sat downstairs. An academic year started in September and there were all Jewish holidays at this period and we always dropped by the synagogue when we knew that father and mother were there. We actually always passed by the synagogue going home from school. Then we went home with our parents.  I don’t know whether my parents were very religious. Nobody taught us, kids, to pray or get involved in any rituals. However, we liked holidays when there were delicious things to eat. Grandchildren always visited grandmother Feiga on holidays. She always had a basket full of matzah covered with a bed sheet at Pesach. Those were real holidays. There were pancakes with goose fat. My mother and grandmother cooked Jewish food. After the Great Patriotic War it was different. Perhaps, it was because the older generation in our family passed away and there was nobody to keep traditions. Besides, at that time people were afraid of coming close not just a synagogue, but even a church. On religious holidays there were representatives of Party committees watching who entered a synagogue or a church. My mother and father spoke Russian and Yiddish to one another and to us.  So did our other relatives.

My mother was a seamstress earning our living. My father was our mother since he didn’t work. My father prepared us to school, made us sandwiches and attended parents’ meetings at school. I don’t remember my mother going to a meeting at school before my father died. Everybody liked him at home and in the yard… Children from all over the street came to our yard screaming: ’Mr. Dudala, Mr. Dudala, tell us a fairy tale!’  Dudal is Jewish for David. He told us very interesting stories. They were probably stories from the Torah, I don’t remember, but it was interesting to listen to him.  My father always told me fairy tales before I went to sleep leaving my room after I was fast asleep. I had a very kind father and my brother and son are like him.

Sometimes my father did some work when there was work for invalids in Sovki, Stalinka. I remember when I was nine I came to see him. All invalids were sitting at long tables in a building. They were sorting our tea. I also sorted out tea with them. Then we also made boxes earning few kopecks and a little tea. 

We had a hard life. We were hard up. My father fell ill with wet pleurisy and stayed in hospital.  I remember an episode. I liked chocolate waffles called ‘mikada’. My grandmother Fenia and I went to take ‘mikada’ waffles to my father one Sunday. My mother had just bought me boots and my father was very happy about me having them. He loved me dearly. Next day I was sitting with my friend outside when our neighbor came by: ‘Olen’ka, you need to go home!’ I came home, there were people in the room, in the bedroom. What I remembered was ‘mikada’ that I liked so much. For some reason those waffles were at home, when we had brought them to my father when he was ill… I was 11, but I understood that my father died. This happened in 1931. My father was buried in Lukianovskoye Jewish cemetery 8. After the war we couldn’t find the grave.

I remember famine in 1933 9. I remember villagers coming to town, asking for a piece of bread at the porch and then falling dead. Thanks to my grandmother and grandfather Bernsteins and my father and mother’s sisters shared their last crumbs with us we survived.

In the 1930s my mother’s family was here. We had lots of fun getting together on birthdays, singing songs: they were mostly Soviet songs… We were a poor family since only mother was working. My mother liked all relatives. However little space we had there were always some relatives staying with us.  My brother’s friends often visited us and there were always lots of people. I went to do my homework with a friend of mine. There was a record player playing and my brother and sister’s friends dancing and singing at our home. After doing my homework I came home and counted galoshes to know how many guests we were having. They used to dance with me to master their dancing skills and so I learned to dance with them. They used to say about our apartment: ‘They are poor, but they always have so much fun!’ I remember my grandfather’s 70th birthday celebration before the Great Patriotic War. The difference in age between his oldest grandson and the youngest granddaughter was 24 years.  My 25-year-old brother greeted him holding his one-year-old sister Sopha. 

I studied well at school and got along well with my schoolmates. I finished the 8th grade of my Jewish school. There was no 10-year Jewish school, but I wanted to continue my education. I went to a Ukrainian 10-year school. In 1939 I entered the Geography Faculty of Kiev Pedagogical College. I finished two years before the Great Patriotic War. I was the only one in our family who received a higher education.  

During the war

We evacuated on 11 July: I, my sister and her daughter and my mother. We knew nothing about the war or Hitler, but we had a feeling that we had to save our life. Probably it was an instinct. We went on coal barges down the Dnieper to Dnepropetrovsk [about 500 km from Kiev]. There we changed for an open platform train and reached Rostov region [about 900 km from Kiev] and got off in a village. There was a line of wagons waiting for evacuated people at the station.  One woman, her name was Matryona Titovna, gave us shelter. She liked us. It was like paradise: chickens and geese in the yard. I had never seen such plenty of things. My mother did the housework washing, cleaning, cooking, feeding the poultry and our landlady went to work. Everybody was happy. Our landlady accommodated us in a big room. I went to work as an assistant accountant in the kolkhoz and my sister worked with harvesting. When chairman of the kolkhoz heard that my mother could sew he employed her to sew for the management and members of their families.  

However, this pleasant state of things didn’t last long. German troops were advancing. We were going to move on. Those who were naïve to think that Germans would not harm them paid a terrible price for their trustfulness.  

We stayed three weeks in Rostov trying to get in a train. Our trip lasted for probably a whole month. On our way a bag of flour that our landlady gave us disappeared. We had to exchange whatever little we had for a loaf of bread. My sister had two skirts that she took with her. She had to give them away for food… You know why the trip was so long? When the train stopped everybody got off to cook something on fire, some flat cookies. We didn’t have flour so we couldn’t make any flat bread. We exchanged things for food. My niece caught a cold on the way. Our co-passengers wanted to force us get off the train, but we begged them to let us stay. We arrived in Sverdlovsk [about 2500 km from Kiev]. Some equipment of the ‘Krasny rezinschik’ plant where my sister used to work before the war was shipped to Sverdlovsk and workers also came to Sverdlovsk. Other workers and their families and equipment were transported by barges and then by railroad like we went.

We sent Fenia and her child to a hospital. Then we went to the plant. There was no work for us. The plant sent away those who had just arrived. We were sent to Sverdlovsk region, Nizhneseversk district, Mikhailovskiy plant. It was a military plant. I went to work as a tutor in a kindergarten. I worked there four years.

My sister went to work in the field and then at a match factory. My mother did housework and sewed. Once director of the railway station came to see us. He escorted children to the children’s home. When he heard that my mother could sew he invited her to his home for a few days.  She made clothes for his family and he gave her some flour and frozen milk for her work. In 1943 we received a plot of land. We grew potatoes and our situation became better.

There were homeless children taken from trains brought to my kindergarten. People were dying on the way and their children were taken to children’s homes. They were starved and ragged and we have them food and clothes. I loved them and they were treated well. At some moments they stole things, even potatoes, but we comforted them and spoke to other people from whom they stole and we took every effort to help them stop doing it. We shared everything we had with those children, however little there was to share. Tutors and teachers gave them everything we had, although we were also hungry and cold.

In 1944 my brother took us to Kharkov. There Matvey, my mother and I and Fenia and her daughter received an apartment.  In 1945 Yakov took Fenia and Dima to Potsdam.  My mother, my brother and I stayed in Kharkov. I went to work as a secretary of a military medical commission.  Once I bumped into my friend and she told me that she resumed her studies in college. I didn’t even consider this in 1944: there was still a war going on so how could I? Besides, my mother didn’t work, so how could I give up work?  I talked to my brother and he said: ‘Olga, go ahead. You have to study and I will help, of course’. I came to Kharkov University with my record book. They admitted me to the third course.  I worked in the evening and studied in university in the morning. I graduated from Kharkov University in 1946 and had a job assignment 10 to Kiev school for cultural and educational employees. I was to be a teacher of geography. My mother and I went to Kiev.

Our house was ruined and we lived with aunt Bertha, my mother brother Naum’s wife. She had a room for us. She got it back when she returned from evacuation. Everything was robbed. This aunt had close and distant relatives living with her sleeping on the table, and under the table, anywhere you would think about. My mother and I lived through whatever: they didn’t want to issue residential permits 11 and militia came at night, but it all passed away. First we obtained temporary permits and later we got permanent residential permits. When in 1947 Fenia, Yakov and Dina returned to their room in Kiev my mother went to live with them. А I stayed with Bertha and went to work at the technical school. 

After the war

I got married in 1949. My husband Alexandr Min’kovskiy was born in 1919. When we met he was a student of Medical College. We had a civil registry and then a wedding dinner at his parents’ home.  

My husband’s family spoke Yiddish and Russian at home. My mother-in-law Hanna Minkovskaya came from Narodichi [about 100 km from Kiev] Chernobyl district. Her father whose name I don’t know was a teacher of Hebrew in his village.  He was a very educated and religious person. My mother-in-law was the oldest in the family. She learned Hebrew herself and became a teacher. She said that she moved to Kiev in 1921 and had her own pupils. Her former pupils visited her. They respected her so much. My mother-in-law parents and some of her brothers and sisters lived in Kiev before the war. They stayed in Kiev and perished in Babi Yar. My husband’s father Yefim Minkovskiy was born in Habno in 150 km from Kiev. My father-in-law had a higher education. He must have been an engineer. When I met him he was chief accountant of Darnitsa railcar repair depot. He was a nice and decent person.  During the war he, his wife and son evacuated to Omsk [about 4000 km from Kiev] with his depot. When the war was over, the Minkovskiys returned to Kiev. My father-in-law worked at his job forty years. Besides, he was chief inspector of Southwest railroad. Every December my father-in-law and his wife went to Moscow and representatives from there also came here to submit their reports. Their apartment was furnished Spartan plainly: a plain double bed, cupboard, a wardrobe with a high back up to the fashion of the time and a sofa made by workers of the depot. My son still has this cupboard in his garage.  It’s a relic now. They had painted floors, always clean, gauze curtains, everything ideally clean. No rugs on the floor. They bought a cheap carpet when I was with them. My husband and I lived in a bedroom very plainly furnished: our relatives bought us a bed, bed sheets and a desk. Uncle Hatskel bought me a wardrobe. He had many nieces and when another one got married he bought her a wardrobe as a gift. 

After the wedding my husband and I settled down in his parents’ apartment in Darnitsa that became a district in Kiev. My mother couldn’t come to live with me since I came to live with my ‘in-laws’. After my son Dmitriy was born in 1950 I went to work in an evening school near home. When I was at work my mother-in-law looked after my son. In 1951 my husband finished the Medical College. 1951 was the only year through the history of the Medical College when all men graduates were given the rank of junior lieutenants and sent to the Far East. My husband went to Sakhalin [about 7000 km from Kiev] and sent me invitation documents to join him there.

I went to my husband with my mother and son. In January 1952 my second son Konstantin was born. My mother was very pleased and happy to be living with us. We lived in our own apartment in Sakhalin for five years. I didn’t work. I was a housewife and my mother helped me. Those were wonderful years with her!

I remember the day when Stalin died very well. We lived in a military unit.  Of course, there was a Party unit and a political officer there. There was a funeral oration and we were kneeling on snow during this meeting held of 5 March 1953. Like everybody else! For me personally it wasn’t much of grief, but I was in terrible mood feeling like it was going to be the end of the word. 

Five years later, in 1956, my husband’s job assignment in the Far East was over and I returned to Kiev with my family. My mother came with us.  We lived with my in-laws again. My mother stayed with my sister Feiha’s family for some time. She earned her living by sewing again. Dina, her granddaughter was growing older and there was not enough space again. I rented her an apartment from my friend. My mother was always trying to help her children. Though she actually had no education, she raised decent people without anybody’s help, and she spent her life with a needle in her hands. She never lost optimism and everybody loved her. My mother said to Bertha, her deceased brother Naum’s wife, they were friends and my mother liked her:  ‘If I die, bury me near Naum’.  He died on 21 February 1963 and she died on 20 September same year. She said: ‘I love flowers and want many flowers’. They are lying together in the town cemetery in Kiev and we always bring flowers to their graves.  

I am very fond of theater. I went to the Ukrainian and Russian Drama Theaters. I liked and knew actors. I was particularly fond of Russian drama. However busy I was with my work I always went to the theater and taught my children to like theater.

My husband went on a spree in the early 1960. When I got to know that he was seeing another woman I said: ‘That’s it. Get packed and out of here’. I divorced him. His parents were on my side. They said: ‘You go where you were fooling around and Olga is staying with us. She belongs to us’.  They felt hurt by his conduct. Even many years later, when he came home on some business his mother talked to him from behind the door. Now, when we meet on occasions, happy or sad, I talk to him, of course. We have children, you know. 

I was alone for a long time. I retired in 1975. I receive a pension, but I don’t know how I would live if it weren’t for my children…

My older son Dmitriy Minkovskiy, born in 1950, finished a secondary school, served in the army and finished a medical College. For over 20 years he has worked in Kazakhstan, in Surgut town [about 3000 km from Kiev]. He went there on job assignment after finishing his college and stayed to live there. We didn’t know that in 1991 we would be living in different countries 12. He is married to a Kazakh woman. They have a good life together and have two daughters, very nice girls. My son deals in insurance medicine. He is very successful. The only sad thing is that we see each other rarely. Traveling is expensive.

My older son Konstantin has an engineering education. He is married to an Armenian woman.  They lived in Kiev. Konstantin worked as an engineer. In the 1990s my son and his family moved to Germany.  They live in Berlin. My son works in some business related to his profession of an engineer.  They have a daughter named Olga after me. She is married and I have a great grandson.  It’s all right that my sons have non-Jewish wives. It has never been a problem in our family.  My uncle was married to a Ukrainian woman and my brother had a Russian wife. Most important is that they love each other. 

Since 1978 I’ve lived with my second husband Grigoriy Levin. He was born in 1916 in Uman [about 200 km from Kiev]. We are some distant relatives. Grigoriy finished a military pilot school. He was a military pilot and served in different locations. I’ve known him since 1940. He was at the New Year party with his brothers at our home. Then we went different ways. In 1974 we met in hospital by chance. I was visiting my relative and he came to see his wife. In 1975 Grigoriy’s wife died. They had no children. By the time we met he was a pensioner. He lived alone for a long time before he began to visit me. We’ve been together for 25 years. Our children love us and we love them. They help and support us as much as they can.  We have a much better life now when we are old. We were always hard up. Our children have grown up and became good specialists. They support us. We are eager to socialize and we like coming to Hesed. Whenever they invite us we are happy to go there to socialize with people. We attend lectures about Jewish traditions, mainly before holidays. We also celebrate Saturday there. We’ve learned to celebrate it at home. We like it. We didn’t know many things before; the regime stole much from us. That we studied in Jewish schools doesn’t fill in the gaps, but it was this way at this period of time when they destroyed churches and synagogues.

We have friends. Unfortunately, we don’t meet often; they have walking problems and so do Grisha [Grigoriy] and I, but we talk on the phone in the morning and in the evening. We love life and perhaps our long life – I am 83, and he is 87, perhaps this love of life and that other people come to see us and do not forget us, perhaps this has been given to us from above. We do many things about the house. I can lie down to rest and then get up and continue the housework. Grigoriy goes shopping. We do our cooking and washing, we do everything together.  This helps us to live longer.

I was in America in 1994, I lived there three months and my husband and I have visited our son in Germany a few times. My relatives ask me: ‘Why are you staying?’ I say: ‘I want to be buried near Mother, there is place near her!’ I want to live here where I was born and studied.

GLOSSARY:

Zalman Kaplanas
Vilnius
Lithuania
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: February 2005

Zalman Kaplanas is an athletic, good-looking elderly man. He refused to be interviewed at home. He accounted for this by the fact that his wife was bed-ridden because of a severe illness. So, she didn’t welcome any visits by strangers. She didn't approve of my interview either. She refused to show her pictures, even those where she was young, and the pictures of her children. Zalman looks young for his age. He is dressed in an elegant vest suit. We met on the premises of the Jewish community of Lithuania. Here Zalman feels very confident. He takes an active part in the life of the community, being a member of the Committee of the Veterans of War. The way he tells his story speaks for his reclusive character. He hardly answers my questions regarding his personal life, while he dwells on the things he is interested in.

My name is Zalman Kaplanas. The ending ‘аs’ is added to all last names in Lithuania. [The ‘as’ ending is characteristic for masculine Lithuanian surnames. After the country gained its independence in 1991, in line with the national idea, people without this ending were encouraged to use it and make their name sound Lithuanian] My original surname is truly Jewish: Kaplan. I was named Zalman after my maternal great-grandfather. I was born in the small town of Jurbarkas, 200 kilometers away from Vilnius. The town had existed for 400 years by the beginning of the 20th century. Jurbarkas was built on the river Neman in the western part of Lithuania, 86 kilometers to the west of Kaunas. Back in the Middle Ages fortifications were built for the defense of cities. Thus the frontier town of Jurbarkas, bordering on Germany was built. [Lithuania was bordering with Germany until the end of WWII, when Eastern Prussia was divided up between Poland and the Soviet Union. The previous Lithuanian-German border today separates Lithuania from the Kaliningrad territory, a part of the Russian Federation].

An ancient citadel was preserved in the vicinity of Jurbarkas. There was a very beautiful park in the town. There was a palace of the Russian Prince Vasilchikov [Prince Ilarrion Sergeyevich Vasilchikov (1881-1969) was a state activist, economist and publicist. He left Russia after the Communist take-over and lived in Berlin, Paris and after 1932 in Kaunas, the capital of Lithuania at the time, and was involved in social life and economy there. He started his career as a provincial governmental leader of Russian gentry. When Soviet troops occupied Lithuania in 1940, he immigrated to Germany]. A small park not far from the Jewish lyceum was called Tel Aviv by local people, as it was the place where Jewish youth got together. There was a large Catholic cathedral in the center of the town, though half of the population of Jurbarkas consisted of Jews – the total population of the town was five thousand. There were several synagogues, two elementary Jewish schools – in one of them subjects were taught in Hebrew, in the other one in Yiddish – and an amateur Jewish theater. In the early 1920s a private Yiddish lyceum was founded, where the children of rich local and out-of-town people studied.

Jurbarkas Jews were involved in craftsmanship and commerce. They were cobblers, tailors, hatters, glazers, cabinetmakers etc. The only photography studio in Jurbarkas was owned by a Jew called Levinas. There were brilliant dedicated doctors among the town’s Jewish intelligentsia. Doctor Karlinskiy was the one who stood out. He treated both the rich and the poor. He gave medicine to the indigent. He went through the villages and assisted everybody who needed help no matter what nationality they were or what social strata they belonged to. In the first day of the Great Patriotic War 1, the Lithuanian Polizei 2, who served the Germans, came to us. The doctor was on the round in the town hospital, which was the only one in our town. His Lithuanian colleague reproached the police and tried to stand up for the Jewish doctor. He said that Karlinskiy had recently rescued his little son. The Polizei just sneered and pushed the doctor aside. Doctor Karlinskiy was doomed like his patients. He was shot during the first action against Jews in Jurbarkas.

There were rich Jews in Jurbarkas. They were merchants and manufacturers. The Jews Lemberg and Vodopian were the owners of the steam-boats. These steam-boats navigated the Neman River. Automobile transport was underdeveloped at that time, and river transport connected Jurbarkas with other cities. My maternal grandpa, Morduchai Grinberg, was among the rich Jews of Jurbarkas. There’s hardly anything I know about my great-grandpa, Zalman Grinberg, whom I was named after. All I know is that the second time he was married to a lady who was much younger than he was. His son Leibl was born in 1895. Thus, Grandpa Morduchai had a stepbrother, who was younger than some of his children. Zalman died in the early 1900s.

Morduchai Grinberg was born in Jurbarkas in 1864. Morduchai was involved in commerce. He was neither rich nor poor. His wife, Grunya, was also born in Jurbarkas. She died at a rather young age from some sort of a disease in 1905. She died and six children became orphans. Grandpa didn’t remarry, though he was a rather young man. He didn’t want his children to be brought up by a stepmother. During World War I the tsarist government exiled Jews to clean up the frontier territories as they considered Jews to be potential spies. In 1915 Morduchai was exiled to Siberia. Morduchai wasn’t only smart, but also an energetic man. In Siberia, an almost pristine business area, he started his own business and came into money. When Lithuania gained its independence in 1919 3, he came back to Jurbarkas a really wealthy man. Grandpa purchased a large house and opened one of the largest agricultural stores in town. There was a wide range of products on offer, starting from the most primitive nails to common agricultural gadgets and machines.

Morduchai’s family kept Jewish traditions and celebrated holidays. Grandfather wasn’t a very religious man as business was the pivot of his life. God and prayers were in the second place. In the course of time Grandpa got married for the second time. His children had their own families, even the youngest child, my mother, was married. His second wife’s name was Emma. Before the Soviet regime came to power Grandpa had a pretty calm living. He gradually passed his business to one of his sons. When in 1940 the Soviets nationalized Grandfather’s property, he and his wife had to rent a dark apartment in a village not far from Jurbarkas. They didn’t live there for a long time. By the vicissitude of fortune Grandfather was exiled to Siberia again 4. It happened a couple of days before the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War, in June 1941. The 76-year-old Morduchai couldn’t stand the hunger, cold and the humiliation. Soon his wife and he passed away. They were buried somewhere in Siberia.

Morduchai and Grunya had three sons and three daughters. The eldest son, Meyer, born in 1885, left for the USA in his adolescence. It happened at the beginning of the 20th century, before Grandmother Grunya had died. In America Meyer married a wealthy Jew. He developed her father’s pharmaceutical business and made a brilliant career and became a millionaire in the 1920s. In 1930 Meyer and his daughter Mariam, who was my age, came to Jurbarkas. We had a family reunion on that occasion. There was a joyful get-together, which lasted a couple of days, with incessant laughter and chatter. Then Meyer left and didn’t keep in touch. Meyer was a miser. He never helped neither his parents nor his siblings. He died in the mid-1960s having bequeathed the lion’s share of his fortune to his daughter and the rest to charity funds. I didn’t keep in touch with Mariam. I don’t know anything about her life.

Mother’s brother Emmanuel also immigrated to the USA. He was one year older than my mother. Since they were of the same age group they got along very well. Emmanuel immigrated to the USA in the mid-1920s. We didn’t hear from him for two years. His Aunt Beila, Grandmother Grunya’s sister, was looking for him. She went to the USA to see her brothers: one of them was called Gersh, Gary in English; I don’t know the name of the other. She didn’t find Emmanuel there. She turned things upside down and finally found out that her nephew was working in Canada as a security guard. After that they found a job for Emmanuel and took him to the USA. He worked for the company of Grandmother’s brothers. Unfortunately, I don’t know the names or the fate of my Grandmother’s siblings. Emmanuel had a wife and two children, whose names I don’t remember. He had a modest living, but in spite of that he helped out his siblings, our family in particular. During the Soviet times we didn’t keep in touch with my uncle’s family as we feared persecution and exile 5. All I know is that Uncle died in 1965.

My mother’s middle brother Joseph, born in 1890, worked in the store with Grandpa Morduchai. He had an accident and became disabled: one of Joseph’s legs was shorter than the other. In 1920 Joseph got married. His wife, Zhenya, was from Riga. In the 1930s Granddad was ill, and Joseph managed the business. He ran the store. Joseph, his wife and their small child were exiled with Grandpa Morduchai on 14th June 1941. Joseph was the only one of the family who survived. Zhenya and Robert died on their way to exile. Joseph was sentenced to eight years in camps for having been a member of the Shaulist Council 6. It was a kind of a military and sports organization. Joseph was charged with counterrevolutionary Fascist activity because he regularly paid a membership fee to the organization. Having gone through this ordeal Joseph came back to Lithuania in the post-war period, then he immigrated to Israel, where he died in the 1970s.

My mother’s sisters were married to well-off people and had a comfortable living. The eldest, Polina, born in 1893, was married to the venereal disease doctor Volgart. They lived in Riga. They had two children. Polina, her husband, and their two children perished in 1941 during Fascists actions [military execution] in Riga. The family of my mother’s sister Dina, born in 1895, was also doomed. She was married to a pharmacist, Shabashevich, who owned a large apothecary in Kaunas [the capital of Lithuania during its independence (1920-1939)] Dina had a small daughter. In 1941 they were put in Kaunas ghetto 7 and shot on 28th October during one of the Fascist actions.

My mother, Etl, was born in 1900 and became motherless at the age of six. Her elder sisters finished lyceum in Kaunas. My mother, who lived with her father, had to go to the Jewish school. In 1915 she finished school and Grandpa was exiled to Siberia. There was no way she could go on with her studies. Mother did house chores and helped her brothers Joseph and Emmanuel, who didn’t have their own families yet and worked to support their sisters. In 1919 when Grandfather Morduchai came back, my mother fell in love with my future father.

My father was also born in Jurbarkas, but into a very poor family. My Grandpa, Аbba Kaplan, was a butcher. I don’t know whom he worked for. As far as I remember from my childhood, Abba spent most of his time in synagogue. He started his morning with a prayer in a synagogue and finished his day with a prayer. He studied the Torah and Talmud almost all day long. But the knowledge of the Torah was not income-bearing, so Grandpa earned very little. From my own observations I can say that religion is meant for the poor, as the rich spend time on business.

Abba had his little ramshackle house made of darkened wood. The house consisted of two rooms and a kitchen, where Grandmother cooked. I don’t remember Grandmother’s name. She died before I was born. There were eight children in the family. I don’t know what to tell about them. Almost all my aunts and uncles and their children died in World War II. My father’s brothers were Yankel-Berl, Dovid, Meyer. Entl and Shove were my father’s sisters. All of them died in Jurbarkas. My father’s other two sisters, Klara and Riva, left for Belgium in the 1920s. They were sheltered by the Belgians during the [Nazi] occupation. Riva and her husband were found out by the Fascists. She and her son were put in the [train] cars heading for concentration camps in Poland. Riva’s son managed to escape through a hole in the train car. So, he remained alive. Riva perished in the crematorium in Auschwitz.

Klara’s fate was more auspicious. Her husband, the owner of a haberdashery factory, was killed in action during World War II. Klara survived the war. She stayed with a Belgian family. She raised two sons. One of them became the managing director of one of the rolled steel mills in Belgium. Unfortunately I’ve never met them, and this is all I can say about them. In 1961 Klara got hold of me on the phone and was even going to visit me. She didn’t manage to come over. She died in the 1970s.

My father, Moshe Kaplan, was born in 1893. He was even less educated than my mother. He merely finished cheder. Father was on odd jobs before he married my mother. He was willing to do any job. My parents fell in love with each other. Grandpa Morduchai was categorically against their marriage. He thought it to be humiliating for my mother to be married to a poor man. Then Moshe and Etl crossed the river in a boat and settled in a neighboring hamlet. They had made preliminary arrangements with the rabbi who made a chuppah for my parents. When Mother’s brothers found out about the runaways, they took the boats to chase them, but they were a couple of hours late. It was too late, the rabbi announced: ‘Amen’, so Etl and Moshe became husband and wife. First, Grandpa Morduchai didn’t recognize their marriage, and was hard on my parents. Mother was practically cut off the shilling. If she had made another choice, she would have relied on her father’s assistance.

After the wedding the newly-weds rented the apartment in Jurbarkas. It was the place where I was born on 28th May 1921 and spent my adolescence. My mother gave birth to my younger brother Mendel there in 1926. This old well-built wooden house is still there. Two stories of the house were residential and the third storey was a garret. The house was adorned with a carving. The house was owned by a Jew, who leased the apartments. There were two large apartments on the first floor, and three smaller ones on the second floor. Our apartment, consisting of two small rooms, was on the second floor. The rooms were modestly furnished. There were a table and a beautiful, carved cupboard in the largest room, the so-called drawing-room. There was a large, carved bed with a laced cover in my parents’ bedroom. The smallest room was the children’s.

Our family lived modestly. We didn’t starve, but we couldn’t even think of luxury. As far as I remember, Grandpa Morduchai tempered justice with mercy and accepted our family. I became his favorite grandson. However he gave my father a cold shoulder in a way. At any rate, he didn’t help us financially, and didn’t involve my father in his business. Father dealt with catering and retail sales of essential commodities. He purchased goods from the peasants at a wholesale price and resold them at a higher price. There were the following things in my father’s storage: a barrel with kerosene, a sack of flour, matches, soap. Father also sold herring, brought from hamlets in big barrels by shore-line fisherman. One barrel of herring cost a certain amount of money. Father sold herring by weight and it was profitable. Father’s earnings were enough for our modest living: food, a festive meal on Sabbath and Jewish holidays and decent clothes. Besides, Mother’s brother Emmanuel was assisting us. When he settled in America and got a job there, he sent us money sometimes.

Mother was a housewife like almost all Jewish women in our town. In such cities as Vilnius and Kaunas, where enlightened Jews resided, women tried to find a job as they learned about emancipation. But our town didn’t keep abreast with the times and had a conservative mode of life like the rest of the smaller towns. Our family couldn’t afford a maid. Mother had to do all the chores. Our family kept Jewish traditions. Mother thoroughly observed the kashrut. She took meat and poultry to the shochet. Sometimes she took me there, when I was small. When I went to school she thought it wasn’t becoming of a schoolboy to go to the shochet with her. We had separate dishes for dairy and meat products at home, as well as kitchen utensils such as silverware, pots and pans. Mother cooked food in the kitchen oven, sometimes she used a primus. [Primus stove: a small portable stove with a container for about 1 liter of kerosene that was pumped into burners.]

Mother cleaned the house thoroughly and baked challah before Sabbath. Mother always cooked gefilte fish for Sabbath. Fresh fish was sold in our town at a fair price, and Father was able to purchase it dirt cheap. In our vicinity fish wasn’t a delicacy but pretty affordable food. Father went to the synagogue on Friday. When he came back we, dressed to the nines, were waiting for him at the table. Mother lit the candles and Father said the prayer. After that we began our meal. Father was more religious than my mother. He had never worked on Sabbath. All Jewish stores and shops were closed on Sabbath.

Sometimes on Sabbath I went to my Grandpa Abba. On those days I carried his prayer book to the synagogue. Grandpa went to a large stone synagogue, located in the center of the town. It was a two-storied building. Women prayed on the second floor. I was mostly attracted to the old wooden synagogue – the place of interest in Jurbarkas. It was a synagogue, built in 1700, without any nails. It was a nice three-storied building adorned with carving and stained glass windows [This 250-year-old wooden synagogue, burned down in June 1941.] This synagogue was open only on Saturdays. Apart from those big synagogues there were rather smalls ones, meant for two-three families. Grandpa Morduchai went to such a tiny synagogue on Sabbath and holidays. Women weren’t permitted to go there; they had a separate small synagogue premise.

Pesach was the biggest Jewish holiday for us and for the entire town. There was a matzah bakery in Jurbarkas. Long before the holiday Father brought matzah in a big basket covered with white clean cloth. Mother cleaned the house thoroughly, laid fresh tablecloths, hung dressy curtains, cooked festive dishes. The first seder was carried out in the house of Grandfather Abba. He was a widower and wasn’t able to cook a good dinner. So, Mother brought gefilte fish, broth, chicken and laid a festive table. She made tasty dishes from matzah and even baked a cake from matzah flour. Grandpa was reclining at the head of the table. I was the one to look for the afikoman. Having found it I usually got some kind of present. Usually it was a cheap toy. I asked Grandpa the four traditional questions. Later on, when I was a lуceum student, my younger brother Mendel was supposed to do that.

I wasn’t interested in Jewish holidays. I have vague recollections of the holidays, as we celebrated them only when grandfather Abba was alive. Mother baked hamantashen with poppy seed on Purim. We played with rattlers. There was a tradition on those days to bring presents, the so-called shelakhmones. Mother put the tasty things on a tray and took them to her friends. Our neighbors also brought shelakhmones. On Purim there was a joyful pageant procession. Students of the Jewish school, the private lyceum, clad in pageant costumes, were walking along the thoroughfare with music and rattlers.

On Yom Kippur my parents fasted, but they didn’t make me or my brother fast. I don’t remember the fall holidays very well. There was no sukkah in the yard of our house. We also went to our Grandpa Abba, who made a sukkah in the yard of his modest house. On the holiday of Simchat Torah all religious Jews had fun. They took the Torah scroll from the synagogue and were dancing around it. I liked Chanukkah most of all. I enjoyed playing with a spinning top, and the tasty potato fritters. But what I liked the most was that both grandpas gave me Chanukkah money. Grandpa Abba could give me only a couple of coins, but Morduchai was very generous. That money was enough for my mother to buy me the clothes I needed and later on textbooks and books. Grandpa Abba died in 1936. He was buried in accordance with the Jewish tradition. We mourned [sat shivah] for seven days. My parents were sitting on the floor dressed in torn clothes. Father’s sisters came, they were also mourning. I wasn’t present at Grandpa’s funeral, but I know he was buried at the Jewish cemetery with all Jewish rites observed.

In 1927 I went to the Jewish elementary school. All subjects were taught in Hebrew there, and I was well up in that language. Yiddish was spoken at home as well as in the household of both grandfathers, I learnt Hebrew very quickly at school. Thus, I was fluent in both languages in my childhood. I studied for three years in the elementary school. I was a good student. It was easy for me to study. Here I met my first friends and my bosom friend Joseph, Josele, as we called him tenderly. We spent time together after school, wandering through the beautiful park Tel Aviv. When we finished school, my parents decided that I should go on with my studies. Unfortunately the Jewish private school wasn’t affordable for my parents, so I entered the state Lithuanian lyceum, having passed entrance exams rather easily.

There were different nationalities in the lyceum. There were a lot of Lithuanians and Jews. Teachers treated us very well. Back in that time Jews were protected as there were Jewish senators in Lithuania 8. There was even a department on Jewish issues in parliament. All subjects were taught in Lithuanian. The only subject we were exempt from was the Bible studies [Christian religion class]. Saturday was a school day and Jews as well as other students were supposed to attend classes. Nobody was exempt from studies [in the Lithuanian lyceum] on Sabbath. Some Jewish children weren’t allowed [by their parents] to attend classes on Sabbath. But acquiring knowledge was a priority for our family. Paying tribute to traditions was in the second place. I was truly prepared for my bar mitzvah. Grandpa Abba took me to a melamed, who taught me prayers, putting on teffilin. At the age of 13 I went though the rite of bar mitzvah in the synagogue. Mother made a festive dinner in accordance with the traditions. Mother invited our relatives and my friend Josele. My bar mitzvah was the last time I paid tribute to the Jewish tradition.

At that time a lot of political parties and groups were emerging in Lithuania. There were underground Communists. There were only five of them in the town, and everybody knew who they were. There were several Zionist organizations such as Betar 9, Maccabi 10, representatives of the Revisionist Zionism movement 11 etc. Our family was apolitical. Both my mother and father were politically dispassionate.

I was an excellent student, displaying more and more interest in history and philosophy. One of the teachers in our lyceum, a Catholic priest, who taught Lithuanian language, differed from others by his extreme left, even Communist views. He had to conceal his beliefs as at that time Lithuania was reined by an extreme nationalist party. The teacher trusted me for some reason and asked me to buy daily newspapers for him. There were three daily newspapers in Lithuania at that time, the pro-government ‘Echo Lithuania,’ the Catholic ‘The Twentieth Century’ and the social democratic ‘Izvestiya’ [Editor’s note: It is unlikely that a Lithuanian newspaper had a Russian name (Izvestiya was a major Soviet paper). Since the interview was conducted in Russian it is possible that the interviewee drew an analogy with the Soviet paper.] I bought all of them for the priest and managed to read them from cover to cover. That is why I was aware of what was happening in Germany, France and the USSR. I knew all the French prime ministers. I knew about the policies of Fascists and Hitler’s attitude toward the Jews. True things about the USSR were published in the papers, news of repression and arrests of the innocent people 12. Apart from reading papers every day I listened to the radio at home.

Europe was contaminated with Fascism. Fascist organizations appeared in Lithuania, even in Jurbarkas and in our lyceum. On 23rd March 1939 the German army captured the Klaipeda district, the so-called Lithuanian coastland 13. Hitler came to Klaipeda. It was a big shock for Lithuania, and young Fascist guys were happy that they finally were free to do as they pleased. There was one event that I would never be able to forget. Two weeks later, on 4th April Joseph came to the lyceum. He and I were the only Jews in our graduation class. There were 18 boys and three girls. I was friends with one of them, a Lithuanian, Elena Taimati. Joseph and I usually sat at the second desk. On that day it was taken by two friends, members of the Fascist party. They pointed to the last desk for us to sit there. Joseph and I kept on standing. When our history teacher came in – a pious Catholic spinster – she understood what was going on. She took the register and rushed out of the room.

She came back with the director of the lyceum, Bronis Lesas. He was an elderly man, a Lithuanian nationalist, who during tsarist times had fought for recognition of the written Lithuanian language, banned in Russia since 1864. [In 1863 Tsar Nicholas I began to carry out the policy of Russification in the Russian Empire. As a part of that, the written Lithuanian language was banned. Lithuanian children were taught to read at home by their parents.] At the end of the 19th century he was arrested and was sentenced to eight years of penal servitude. He was pardoned in 1904. At that time the director was a member of the leading nationalist party. That elderly Lithuanian, the nationalist, stood by the first desk, where my friend Elena was sitting, slammed his fist on the table, and cried out that Fascist escapades and Hitler’s ideas wouldn’t have a place here while he was headmaster. He had those boys leave our desk and told us to sit there. The whole class sat still. Elena was looking at me with her eyes full of tears.

There were no cases like that in my life. But I still remember those creeps and the humiliation I felt at that moment, and will remember it till the end of my days. I regret to say that when the Soviets came 14 Bronis was arrested and most likely shot as an outstanding nationalist, allegedly a Fascist sympathizer. I tried to stand up for him. I went to the district committee of the Party and told them about the case when he had stood up for me, but they didn’t care… 

That very year, 1939, I finished lyceum and went to Kaunas University. Elena left with me, too. There our paths diverged. Soon she married one of the leaders of the governing party – a Lithuanian with the last name Gashke. I entered the Economics Faculty of the university. I lived with Mother’s sister Dina Shabashevich. In November 1939, upon the signing of Molotov-Ribbentrop pact 15 and the annexation of Polish lands 16, Vilnius became the capital of Lithuania again 17, and the university was transferred there. On 15th December my mother and I, her favorite eldest son, came to Vilnius. My mother rented me a room from an elderly Jewish lady and paid for bed and breakfast. My landlady was rather poor like most of the Jews in Vilnius.

It was the happiest period in my life – my student’s years in Vilnius. Soon I met the Vilnius Jewish elite. Shailik Kaplanskiy, my fellow student, the son of one of the leaders of the Bund 18 in Vilnius, introduced me to his family. Their house was like a real salon, where the most enlightened Jews of the city got together. Vilnius was a true Jewish city, the center of Jewish culture. Shailik’s mother received me like her son. The entire Jewish intelligentsia got together in Shailik’s house: the Jewish theater, writers, scientists – the employees of the Institute of Yiddish Language and Culture. There was a large table abundant in hors-d’oeuvres, meat dishes. The simmering samovar was in the middle of the table. Having tea there, at that very table, must have been the best times of my life.

The start of my studies went by in a glimpse. In June 1940 I came back to Jurbarkas on holidays. The town hadn’t changed during my absence. On Saturday, 15th June, Joseph and other Jewish guys went to the forest for a picnic on the occasion of our reunion. There we saw two large trucks filled with chattels and trunks. Women and men were in the car and we showed them the way to the border, which was 10 kilometers away. When we came to the city, we saw the Soviet frontier squad. Thus, in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Lithuania was annexed to the Soviet Union.

In a couple of days we understood that things were getting worse. First, many products and goods that used to be in abundance, vanished from the stores. Soviet soldiers and officers bought out practically everything in large quantities: toilet soap, stockings, cosmetics, underwear, footwear, clothes, not to mention the food! Butter, sausage, usually sold in ten different kinds, ham, cheese, canned products, smoked fish, alcohol practically vanished from the stores. We couldn’t have imagined at that time that there was such an acute deficit of food and goods in the USSR. Nationalization commenced. They confiscated my Grandfather Morduchai’s house and store. He and his family had to move to the village. The wives of Soviet officers were walking around in the confiscated dresses and lingerie with fur boas. Outstanding religious and Zionist activists, members of the Lithuanian governing party were arrested. It was the time when the director of our lyceum was arrested. Our family wasn’t affected by the changes as Father was considered to be poor.

In two months, when I came back to Vilnius I was shocked that my friend Shailik, his parents and other members of our circle were arrested and exiled. I don’t know the details. It was perilous to try finding out anything as there was a chance that I might be imprisoned, too. On 1st September 1940 the academic year started. I was given a small, but rather cozy room in the hostel. Now, I had a place to live. A Komsomol 19 organization was founded at university. I was spurred on to enter it. I saw what the Soviet regime was doing, using high party ideas as a smoke screen, and decided not to join either the Komsomol or the Communist Party. I devoted the whole year to my studies, passed the summer term exams and decided to stay in Vilnius to work in the library a little bit longer. 

Early in the morning on 22nd June 1941 we woke up to the sounds of bombing. The hostel building was shuddering from the blast. We went down to the basement to wait until the air-raid was over. Among the students there were some Fascists. They took out knives and started to threaten the Jewish students. Early in the morning on 23rd June I left the hostel taking basic things with me – linen, some food and a student’s card, which was the only document I had. Now it took me about three hours to get to the train station, though before it was only 20 minutes. The city was in flames, buildings were collapsing. The bombing was incessant. One of my acquaintances, Rosa, a student, and a 35-year old Polish Jew were my company on the way to the train station. The Polish Jew told us what the Fascists were doing with Jews in Poland and that was the reason why he had fled in 1939 and come to Vilnius. We were even more discouraged.

It was really hard for us to get to the train station. There was a dreadful panic. People were nudging to squeeze in the car. We were lucky: at the eleventh hour we jumped in the car of the train which was leaving Vilnius. The train started rolling. Before that moment I didn’t have a chance to think over the events, remember my kin. Now, I understood that it was most likely that I’d never see neither my parents nor my brother again. Jurbarkas was occupied as it was the town close to the [German-Soviet] frontier. The Fascists entered Vilnius on the day we left.

It took us more than 24 hours to get from Vilnius to Minsk [today Belarus], though the distance wasn’t that great. We got off at the goods station. Minsk had already been bombed. The three of us – we decided to stick together – went to the university, hoping that we would join the Belarusian students. It seemed to us that the Fascist attack was a misconception and soon the valiant Soviet army would defeat them. We couldn’t imagine that horrible calamity was ahead. We walked around the city. Our appearance was really different from the rest of the people. We were dressed much better than people around us. I was clad in an elegant vest suit and yellow Swiss leather boots, carrying a yellow portfolio. My companions also significantly stood out from the crowd.

Hardly had we walked for 500 meters and we were taken to the police station. During the first days of the war people were afflicted with the spy scare. They saw a spy in any stranger, who looked different. We showed our documents. As the latter were in Lithuanian, the policeman thought us to be foreign. Thus we were immediately considered to be spies. A young officer took us in the yard of the police station, told us to lean against the wall and raise our hands … My life would have ended right here if not for a lucky chance… A police lieutenant came to the police station and asked who we were. When our documents were shown to him, he started to reprimand his subordinates. As it turned out he had served in Vilnius for a year and understood Lithuanian. He apologized and asked us to leave as soon as possible.

In the suburbs of the city we stayed in some kitchen garden for about three hours waiting for the bombing to stop. Then we joined the people who were walking in the western direction. It took us a week to reach Mogilev [300 km from Vilnius]. I saw a lot of deaths on my way. The Germans were constantly bombing. Mothers were carrying frightened little kids. Old people were driven in carts. I saw how the columns of convicts were convoyed from Minsk prison. There were mature gray-haired people, the elite of the nation. They could hardly move as their feet were chafed and bleeding. They were guarded by NKVD people 20 with dogs on both sides. It was a terrible scene. I remember it as if it was yesterday.

The three of us got on the train and went to Tambov oblast [today Russia], covering a distance of almost 1000 kilometers. Here I was sent to a kolkhoz 21. We were given lodging in the houses of farmers. It was a warm summer and we slept on a hay stack. We were mocked at, because we hardly understood Russian. When we were trying to say something our Lithuanian and Jewish accent seemed preposterous. The local people were even more captivated by our bourgeois attire, despite the fact that it was worn out from the emaciating labor and the sun rays.

I worked there for almost three months: July, August and beginning of September. I was despondent by the atmosphere in the village. Almost everyday somebody was drafted into the army, in the action lines and people got together on that occasion. It looked like a funeral and a wedding at the same time. People were dancing, singing, playing accordion and those who were to remain without husbands were crying and moaning. I understood that the locals treated me, a young and strong man, with contempt [because Zalman was not drafted]. I addressed the military enlistment office a couple of times, asking them to send me in the lines. The response was the same: wait for your turn. We didn’t know at that time that it was Stalin’s order not to draft people from the newly-annexed lands. The Soviet regime didn’t trust us.

I left my landlady the miserable money that I earned, my bourgeois clothes. She gave me a simple working jacket, pants and shoes instead of boots, a bottle of milk and rusks. I said good-bye to my fellow travelers and went to the military enlistment office for them to take me to the front. I had been waiting for the decision for a couple of days, lying on my jacket in the yard of the military enlistment office along with the rest of the guys like me. In three days, the 300 of us were aligned in columns and sent somewhere. We had no idea where we were heading.

It was horrible. Every day we had to walk about 30 kilometers, falling from emaciation. We would walk for 50 minutes and then had a 10-minute break. We were fed with herring and bread. Being starved and exhausted we were thirsty as well. So, we reached Atkarsk, Saratov oblast [today Russia], where we stayed at the draftees’ point for about three weeks. We went through some quick training here. Then, we were given the uniform, a rifle, and got on the train. I was assigned to the combat engineering separate battalion of the South-Western front. I had to go through another training session: on blasting, grenades and mines. We were in Krasnodar region, far from the front, 2200 kilometers from home.

In about a month I was called by the commander of the squad who appointed me to be signaler of the squad. When I came to the command post of the battalion with the assignment and the commander found out that I was from Lithuania, he got angry with me and cried out that I had no right to be in the lines. I was kicked out from the squad. They took my uniform and sent me to the penalty squad. In a while I came to the replacement depot. Commanders from different divisions came here to take the soldiers. This time I decided to be more cunning. I didn’t have the documents on me. When I was called and asked where I was from, I said I was from Belarus. I remembered the towns we were passing by on our way from Minsk, and recalled the town of Smilovichi. I named Krasnoarmeyskaya [Red Army] Street and a number of the building at random, understanding that streets named Krasnoarmeyskaya were in almost all towns. I also mentioned that all buildings were one-storied. Things went smoothly.

By that time my Russian was pretty good, over two years had passed since the Soviet regime had been established in Lithuania. I had to speak Russian all that time, besides all subjects in the university were taught in Russian in 1940-41. My Jewish accent didn’t embarrass anybody because before the war there were a lot of Jewish towns in Belarus, where people spoke with a strong Jewish accent.  

Again I was in the training squad. From morning till night we had a marching drill, studies on defense and assault methods. At that time the allies’ supplies system lend-lease commenced. [Lend-lease is the system of transfer (loan or lease) of weaponry, ammunition, strategic raw materials, provision etc.; supplies in terms of lend-lease were made by the USA to the ally-countries on anti-Hitler coalition in the period of WWII. The law on lend-lease was adopted by the US Congress in 1941.] Apart from food products, canned meat, ham and egg powders the army also got good uniforms. We were dressed in English things: warm uniform, underwear, fore and aft cap, boots.

We had been trained for three months and on 9th May 1942 we were supposed to be sent to the lines. At night, on 8th May I was woken up and called in the headquarters dug-out. It was dark in the dug-out. The light was coming from the table lamp. The representative of SMERSH 22 was sitting at the table. I was interrogated. I was asked questions about who I was and who my parents were. I was telling my ‘legend,’ but the lieutenant was asking for more and more details. Suddenly I heard the voice coming from the middle of the dug-out: ‘Enough fooling around, we know everything about you, who you are and where you come from!’ The captain came up to me and told me that in the best case scenario I would be sentenced to ten years in the camps 23 or sent to the penalty squad for fraud and deliberate misleading of the army commandment. I began to justify myself saying that I was lying only for one reason: to be in the lines.

I had a sleepless night. Even now I can’t comprehend how they could possibly find out about me. Probably they had a hunch. In the morning all transgressors were aligned on the drill square. As it turned out there were 180 of us. This was quite a scenic view. Before aligning us they took our new English military coat, boots and underwear and gave us all written-off uniforms. For instance, the sole of one of my boots was tied with a rope and my military coat was without one lapel. The head of the political department of the division held a speech from the pulpit. He said that we certainly weren’t the enemies, but as per order of the Defense Committee we weren’t entitled to be in the lines as we didn’t manage to command the loyalty of the party and government. We were sent to the city of Engels to be involved in construction works of the aviation plant 24.

Engels is a town located on the bank of the Volga River opposite to Saratov. We settled in the barracks close to the construction site. The hardest days of my life started here. Even now I recall those moments with a shudder. The mode was the same as in the concentration camp. We slept on the bunks without linen using our coats as a blanket. In the morning we got up early, had a bowl of soup made from semi-rotten cabbage, a tiny slice of bread, and off to work we went. Our daily standard was to overhaul four cubic meters of earth. Late in the evening we had the same soup. In a month and a half I weighed less than 50 kg. I started walking with a stick as I was so emaciated that I could hardly move. Once during work I lost consciousness and when I came around I was in the hospital. I stayed there for a couple of weeks. I was well fed and my young organism recouped very quickly. But still, I didn’t feel very well. I had another physical examination where it was decided what kinds of work I was capable of doing. I heard two Jewish ladies, the doctors, saying that I would die if I was sent to such hard labor. They were sorry for me. I think those two unknown ladies can take credit for rescuing my life. I was sent to a Lithuanian kolkhoz.

That Lithuanian settlement not far from Engels was founded at the end of the 18th century, when, during the Polish rebellion 25 of Kosciuszko 26, the tsarist government exiled entire villages here. Having passed thousands of kilometers in Russia I wasn’t surprised by the indigence and gloominess of the lives in Soviet kolkhozes. When I came to this Lithuanian village it seemed to me that I was home in my Klaipeda. There were clean well-built stone and wooden houses resembling my parental house in Lithuania, with laced curtains, flowers on the window sills and flower-beds in front of the house.

There were several large Lithuanian families in that village. We, the group of six people – five Lithuanians and one Jew – settled in the house of a Lithuanian landlady. Her name was Gaidite. She was a widow, her husband had been killed in action and her elder son was in the lines. She was very hospitable. She fed us and let us sleep on a large Russian stove 27.

One of my companions, an elderly Lithuanian, was wounded in the urine bladder and he suffered from uroclepsia. It was summer time. He put a couple of pants on and in spite of that they were drenched, producing a stench. In a couple of days the other guys left the place as they couldn’t stand the smell and left their comrade. The odor was unpleasant for me as well, but I was sorry for the elderly Lithuanian and stayed with him. The landlady was moved by my good attitude towards that Lithuanian. Once she mentioned that I was a Jew but treated the Lithuanian better than his comrades. Since that time Gaidite started treating me better than the rest. She tried to give me more food. She said that I reminded her of her son with my kindness.

We worked in the kolkhoz. It was the beginning of fall. We loaded the grain on camels and took it to the commodity point in Saratov. There was no bridge across the river in Engels. There was a ferry. Once, at the end of October I heard Lithuanian speech on the ferry boat. A man and a woman were having a conversation. I broached the conversation with them and found out that in Balakhna, a town not far from Gorkiy, there was a Lithuanian battalion being reformed. [The battalion was called Lithuanian because it was formed mostly of former Lithuanian citizens, who were volunteers, evacuated or serving in the labor front.] They told me the way. The evacuated Lithuanian government 28 was in Saratov, in Bristol hotel, and Lithuanian citizens could address their requests there. I didn’t lose hope to be in the lines, especially understanding that my kin had most likely perished. I remained by myself and had nothing to lose.

The next time I was in Saratov, I went to the hotel. At once I recognized the people who were receiving me. These were Kviadaras, the head of the Forestry Department of the Republic and the Minister of Agriculture, Mitskis. I told them my story and asked to send me to the Lithuanian battalion. Then Kvyadaras told me in Lithuanian: ‘You are a child, a boy why are you rushing in the lines? It is pandemonium there … They are moving to Stalingrad 29 now.’ I was persistent, explaining that I can’t idle around being young and strong, I have to fight the Fascists. Besides, my relatives had perished. I was issued documents, and I went to the military enlistment office. Again I had to go though physical examination and I was recognized fit for the front lines. It was January 1943.

The landlady gave me warm clothes, rusks, pig fat and saw me off like a son. I reached Saratov and from there I squeezed in the overcrowded train, as during evacuation, and went to Gorkiy, then Balakhna, where the Lithuanian squad was located. Again I had to go through an examination. There was a Jewish doctor, Epstein, who didn’t want to issue a conclusion that I was fit for the front line service. It was hard to talk him into changing his conclusion, but I managed. The conclusion said that I was fit for the front-line service.

I was sent to the second squad of the Lithuanian division #16, which was getting ready to be sent to the front lines. Again I was given a uniform. The training lasted for two weeks. After that the mandate board considered my case and it was decided that I should go to Podol infantry military school. The duration of studies was four months. In June I was supposed to graduate. At that time there was a turning point in the war. The Soviet Army was attacking and the commandment decided to prolong my studies aiming to preserve officers. We had several extensions: the first time for six months, then for three months. As a result we studied for 15 months at this school, revising the same material.

I graduated from the school in the rank of a junior lieutenant. I was sent to Yartsevo, Smolensk oblast, where the Lithuanian rifle division #50 was being reformed. I was platoon commander for 24 hours. The next day I was called by the regiment commander Churbaneyev and was assigned commander of squad. I was in that position for about a week. Then I was assigned the personal aide of the headquarters commander. I worked for a couple of weeks and then I was supposed to go through the investigation of the board consisting of general and colonels. They wanted to check me. I was asked many questions. In the end they were satisfied with my answers.

The same evening my school comrade, a Lithuanian guy named Markovich, brought me a letter from Jurbarkas [Lithuania had already been liberated]. His relatives wrote me a detailed letter, saying how my relatives perished. On 3rd July 1941 my brother Mendel was shot in the Jurbarkas cemetery together with 350 young Jewish people. Father was shot with the group of Jews in August. He had to dig a grave for himself. My dear mother, whom I loved best of all, was sent to Kaunas ghetto, where she died on 28th September 1941 during a big action. I was grieving. I was in a terrible mood. One thing to deem your loved ones to have perished and quite another thing is to know about that for sure. I was alone in the whole world.

In the morning I was called to the headquarters and told about my assignment to the post of the aide of the headquarters regiment commander. I lost control, burst into tears and said that I didn’t want to work or to live. The regiment commander reprimanded me brusquely and told me to leave. I went outside, sat on the steps and started crying. I felt that somebody was giving me a hug. It was the regiment commander. He sat next to me and started comforting me. He told me that in Ukraine his wife and children had been murdered by the Lithuanian Polizei. He said that we should survive no matter what, for our foes not to gloat over our death. He said that I was capable and would cope with work. He said he would be helping me. So, I became the personal aide of the regiment commander.
Our regiment wasn’t involved in battles that much. Our battles were of short duration and not very critical. We fought in Smolensk oblast, liberated a part of Belarus. The Fascists were hardly resisting us. They mostly were retreating. In two months, in September 1944 we were transferred to Lithuania to the prewar military camp of the Lithuanian army Gaizhuna. It was the place of a mass abandonment of post. Lithuanians left for the forests, having taken the weapons. 25-30 people left our regiment with the guns. Every morning the regiment commander asked, ‘Kaplan, tell me how many?’ and I reported how many people were left with weapons and how many of them were unarmed.

On the anniversary day of the October Revolution 30 there was a mess in the barracks. The soldiers were drinking moonshine with the local broads and at dawn many of them headed for the forests with them. It turned out that 180 deserted the regiment. It was a big scandal. The commandment and I were threatened with the camps, but what could we have done? In a couple of days, as per order of the Supreme Commander, our regiment was reformed. Our banner was taken from us, and that was it. I was transferred to Vilnius, where the capital regiment was formed from those who remained in our former regiment. In the lines I was offered to join the Party on multiple occasions. I honestly said that I was raised in bourgeois Lithuania and wouldn’t be able to give my life for Lenin and Stalin. A long time ago I made up my mind not to enter the Party.
We settled in Vilnius, where military squads were positioned before the war. The regiment commander gave me and my orderly a separate house. It was a small wooden house on Kostyushkas Street. My lodging was primitively furnished – two iron folding beds, a table and a chair. I used to have no luxury during the war. I celebrated the Victory Day 31, 9th May 1945 here, in Vilnius. I had served by the end of the year 1945 and pleaded for demobilization. I was called to the Baltic military circle a couple of times. They offered me to go to military school or academy for me not to leave the army. I didn’t want to be in the military. I intended to study at university and made arrangement to resume my studies. Finally, on 26th January 1946 I was demobilized from the army in the same rank I had after having finished military school.

I was in high spirits. I had a place to live. The house that the regiment commander gave me still belonged to me. I was to study at university and have a good job. I was offered the position of deputy head of the municipal Ispolkom 32 owing to my fluency in Russian. But things turned out to be quite different. I met my friend, Ivan Zherebtsov, in the military enlistment office where I came to take my documents. He offered me a job in the forestry vocational school as a civil defense teacher. The previous teacher, the Lithuanian Dragunas was a sot, who even drank during the lectures. He was fired and I was offered to teach civil defense instead of him. I resisted for a long time. I didn’t want to work at the vocational school as a teacher with a certain schedule. I wanted to have time for my studies. Frankly speaking, the salary was much lower at the vocational school as compared to the one offered by the Ispolkom. In spite of the fact that I didn’t give my consent to work at the vocational school, I was forced, because Ivan, without telling me, had an appointment with the head of the Ispolkom and convinced him to assign me as a defense teacher at the vocational school. My task was to establish a rigid discipline as there were bandits in the forests at that time, and students, who mostly came from villages and hamlets, were influenced by them. It was very easy for me. During the war I used to stick to military discipline and require it from my subordinates. In a couple of weeks there was an apple-pie order in the vocational school and the students didn’t only obey me, but also other teachers and the director.

Now my life wasn’t that easy. I had to combine work at the vocational school with daily studies at university. Things got even more complicated when I was assigned the monitor of the course, who was supposed to mark the attendance of students and be responsible for the discipline. Soon, I managed everything, asking some of my friends to perform my functions. When the first term was finished I was declared the best monitor. Our course had the best attendance. So I coped both with work and studies.
I didn’t know anything about my prewar comrades from Jurbarkas and Vilnius. I assumed that they had perished. In spring 1947 somebody knocked on my door, and when I opened it, I was so surprised to see Elena, my friend from Jurbarkas lyceum. She came in hastily, asked me to lock the door and told me her story. Elena Taimati came to Kaunas with me after having finished lyceum. Soon, she married the Lithuanian lawyer Gashka. He was a member of the nationalist governmental party. [As a result of the military coup in 1926 ‘Tautininki’ (nationalists) came to power and a dictatorship was introduced.] He came from a large poor Lithuanian family of eight children. They lived in a hamlet. One of Gashka’s elder brothers was a Communist. He left for Russia and became an outstanding activist of the Lithuanian Communist Party after the annexation of Lithuania to Russia [the Soviet Union]. In 1940, after the Soviets came to power, Elena’s husband was shot right away for being the activist of the nationalist conservative party.

Elena gave birth to a daughter after her husband was arrested. In 1941 she and her child were put in a freight car and exiled to Siberia for being the wife of an enemy of the people 33. Elena lumbered wood in the taiga and lived in the hardest conditions. She was young, capable and presentable, so she managed to find a job as an accountant. Then she was offered a position in the central administration of the forestry in Yakutsk. She became the chief accountant of the trust.
Once, when she was looking through the payroll, she noticed the last name Grinberg. When she met with that man, it turned out that he was Leibl Grinberg, the younger brother of my Grandpa. He also was repressed and exiled to Siberia with his whole family and had almost the same story as Elena. I didn’t keep in touch with Leibl, but he knew from Uncle Joseph [Grinberg], who also lived in Siberia, on the open land, that I lived in Vilnius. He even knew my address. So it was he who told Elena where I lived.
I don’t know how Elena managed to escape from Yakutsk as she didn’t have documents. Now she was here in my house asking for help. I sheltered Elena in my house and told her not to go out. In a couple of days I found her husband’s brother, who was the director of the Central Polygraph Department of Lithuania. Being a crystal clear man he went to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Lithuania and asked him to exonerate Elena. The minister couldn’t resolve that issue and asked him to write a letter addressed to Beriya 34. Luckily, Elena’s relative understood that he shouldn’t do that, otherwise not only Elena, but I and he would perish. Then he went to the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Lithuania, Snieckus 35. Snieckus was the one who helped. She was exonerated and issued a passport. She left for Moscow in a year and entered the university. In a couple of years she wrote a dissertation on the literary activity of Lev Tolstoy 36. We kept in touch. Lena obtained the degree of doctor of science [Soviet/Russian doctorate degrees] 37. She remained single. In a couple of months after that story with Elena my uncle Joseph, who lived on open land, came back from Siberia when his exile term was over. He lived with me for a while and at the end of 1947 left for Poland, then for Israel.

In 1949 I wrote a diploma work and graduated from university. I got a mandatory job assignment 38 to the Ministry of the Forest Industry of Lithuania and was supposed to start work on 1st August. I resigned from the vocational school and was looking forward to my new job. In the middle of July I was called to the headmaster’s office. My job assignment was changed. I was shown the order of the minister wherein I was assigned acting director of the vocational school I was so happy to have resigned from. The previous director, who had practically ruined the work of the vocational school, was promoted to a deputy minister in Moscow. It was normal for the Soviet regime to get rid of negligent directors by promoting them. I was trying to resist the best way I could, but the minister promised that I would be transferred to another position after ensuring order at school. It turned out to be more than one year.

In a year, viz 1950 I was again appointed the acting director of the vocation school at the collegium of the ministry. I couldn’t be appointed director as I was a Jew, and besides I didn’t belong to the Communist Party. It was the period of state anti-Semitism. Almost every day ‘rootless cosmopolites’ 39 were stigmatized in the papers, which said that they were looking for ways to do harm. At that hard time when Jews were fired no matter what position they had, I became the acting director of the vocational school. Since 1950 the commissions from Moscow came to the vocational school on a frequent basis. Many people couldn’t abide by the fact that I was a good director. In reality, the vocational school became one of the best in its field. I moved to the vocational school. I locked my apartment, where I had a relative comfort. I lived in my office, slept on the leather couch. Back at that time such couches were the attributes of the offices. Many people burned the midnight oil trying to copy Stalin.

I followed the behavior of my students. I often went to the hostel. I didn’t allow them to drink moonshine and flirt. There was a semi-military discipline in the vocational school. Many people disliked it. My position became shaky. On the one hand I understood that I would be working there until a good Lithuanian director was found, on the other hand I didn’t like my job, but nobody allowed me to leave. In the full swing of anti-Semitism, during the Doctors’ Plot 40, at the beginning of 1953. the auditor came to the vocational school intending to fire or arrest me. But he couldn’t find a reason. The most interesting thing was when the Minister of Forestry was trying to find out from our curators in Moscow who initiated the checkup, it turned out that the checkup wasn’t coming from our system. They didn’t even know the name of the auditor. It means that other important authorities were interested in me, mostly likely it was the KGB 41. It was a terrible time. It was impossible to read those loathing articles about Jews being criminals and murderers. All people with common sense understood that it was libel and provocation. But still it affected the public opinion. People became suspicious. The Jews in the street were looking around feeling harassed.

Before the holiday of 23rd February 1953 [Soviet Army Day] 42 Elena called me from Moscow. She said that her relative who helped her out with exoneration as per assignment of the municipal committee of the party was to hold a lecture on doctors-poisoners in my vocational school. He was so worried that it made him sick. I said that I understood everything; it didn’t matter to me who would say that rubbish – her relative or a stranger. I promised that I wouldn’t be offended as it was clear to me what was going on.

On 23rd February all students got together in the assembly hall. The relative was broaching all kinds of subjects in his lecture – his fate, his career in the Party, the difference between the socialist and capitalist mode of life – and finished his speech with a laudation to the Party and Stalin. He hadn’t said a word about doctors-poisoners. Of course, Elena’s relative took a risk. If some sort of stooge leaked a word that he hadn’t fulfilled the assignment, he could have been turned out from the Party and in the worst case die.

Fortunately – and it’s not a slip of the tongue, I mean it – fortunately for me and for other millions of people, the tyrant died on 5th March 1953. I didn’t mourn over his death, but I didn’t show my joy either. By that time I knew a lot about the true persona of Stalin and repressions. Every morning I listened to Radio Free Europe 43 in my office, BBC and other western radio stations. It was impossible to black out these radio stations in Lithuania and the voice of Anatoliy Goldenberg, the BBC announcer became dear to many Lithuanian households. That year, 1953 I was given a car, a ‘Moskvich-401’ 44, for being the director of the best vocational school of the industry. I stayed in that position for another four years. In 1957 they finally found the director who met all requirements of the ministry. He was a Lithuanian and was educated in forestry. By that time I had been given an apartment by the vocational school. They told me to move out of my apartment after my resignation as it was meant for the new director. And again luck was smiling at me. The vocational school was transferred to Kaunas, so the apartment was left to me.

I had a family by that time. A wonderful girl, Sheina Volpe, lived with her mother not far from me in the house of their remote relative, my former front-line comrade, Avrum Volpe. I met her in his house. Sheina was born in 1928 in the small town of Kronis, not far from Kaunas, into the family of a merchant, Moses Volpe. A couple of days before the war the Volpe family came to their relatives in Kaunas. They were caught in the war and became inmates of Kaunas ghetto. Moses, Sheina’s father, was shot during one of the first actions. Sheina, her mother, aunt, and cousin were taken to a hamlet by one of their acquaintances, a Lithuanian called Bronis. For two years the three of them stayed in a hole under the shed sized 2.5x1.5 meters. The hamlet where Bronis lived wasn’t far from the highway Kaunas–Vilnius. There was a pond where the Fascists washed their horses and watered them. If somebody had checked the shed, where the Jews were hiding in the cellar, not only the Jews would have been killed, but also the whole family of the host.

When the Soviet Army liberated the hamlet, Sheina and her relatives were on the brink of emaciation. Aunt Mery was the one who suffered the most as her toes were frozen and she was severely afflicted with rheumatism so that she wasn’t able to walk. First Sheina and her mother Sarah lived in their town. Then their distant relative, my comrade, suggested moving to his house, not far from mine on Kostyuskas. I liked Sheina at once. She was a pretty Jewish lady. We had a lot in common: our childhood and adolescence went by in one little town, our kin perished during the occupation. Besides, I wanted to have a true family: to have our holidays and traditions. In 1955 Sheina and I registered our marriage in the state registration office, but we didn’t have any party on the occasion. Sheina moved into my apartment. In 1956 she gave birth to our first-born. I decided to name him after my father, Moshe.

At that time there was the first Israeli-Arab war for independence in Israel [Editor’s note: It was the Suez Crisis taking place in 1956, the Israeli Independence War was eight years earlier.] 45, and everybody knew the name of Moshe Dayan 46, the one-eyed Israeli general, though Soviet propaganda depicted him as a symbol of the ‘international belligerent Zionism.’ If there was an article devoted to unmasking the ‘Israeli aggressors’ his picture was always published. When the newsreel of that war was presented, Dayan was always there. He was vituperated at all party convocations, meetings of the workers and lectures.

When I came to the state registration office to register my son, I was told that such a name didn’t exist, but I was persistent and named my son Moshe. However, I had to be persistent in pushing for them to agree to put the name Moshe on the birth certificate of my son. I demanded that they show me the official stamped document where it was written how to name children, and which names were banned. Of course, such a document didn’t exist. I said that such names as Stalina [derivative from Stalin], Oktiabrina [derivative from October Revolution] and other similar names weren’t listed in any book, nevertheless I personally knew some people with such names. In 1961 Sheina gave birth to our second son, who was named after Emmanuel, one of my mother’s brothers, who was helping our family.

First, we lived in my house. It was rather hard. We had to carry water in buckets and warm it to bathe our son. Upon receiving the apartment our life was getting gradually better. By that time Sheina had graduated from the Chemistry Department of Vilnius University and was employed by a military plant. She worked there for quite a few years. After I resigned from vocational school I started working for the Design Bureau of the Light Industry and then for the Light Industry Ministry as an advisor on financial issues. I was well paid. My wife earned pretty good money as well. We had a comfortable life. We could afford good food and beautiful clothes. I still think what suit to put on and pick a tie to match the suit. In the summer time we went to the popular Baltic spas or to the Crimea and the Caucasus.

Sheina and I had arguments. In spite of inconsiderable disparity in years our views differed as she was born later and she grew up in the USSR. So, we were raised in different states: I was raised in bourgeois Lithuania and Sheina in the Soviet Union. She was a zealot of the socialist way of life; she believed the Communist ideals, while I was rather skeptical of them. The situation at the military plant affected my wife’s outlook the most. It was a certain realm where people were raised to be devoted to Communism.

In spite of the fact that after the war I didn’t keep in touch with the Jewish community, nor mark religious holiday, in my soul I was loyal to the Jews. I’ve always been a patriot of Israel. I always followed the events in Israel and my wife considered me to be anti-Soviet and that was the reason for our tiffs. When at the end of the 1970s a new immigration wave commenced, she was against our departure. For us to leave anywhere she would have had to resign from her job at the plant and work for several years at an ordinary enterprise as all employees of the defense industry had top-secret status. It was considered that they were aware of state secrets and they were banned from going abroad even as tourists. She didn’t want to quit her job. She said she had a wonderful life in the USSR and there was no need to go anywhere.

When after the breakup of the USSR in 1991 we were invited to immigrate to Israel by one of my wife’s distant relatives, Yehoshua Rabinovich [former Israeli Minister of Finance and Mayor of Tel Aviv] who was the mayor of Tel Aviv, we couldn’t leave as our passport bureau didn’t want to accept my wife’s documents for a visa. It was such a good chance for us: we were guaranteed a job and an apartment. I was one of the first who came to Israel on invitation. I am fascinated by this country. I would love to live there, but I couldn’t leave my family.

My sons were very good students at school. Both of them entered Vilnius University. Here in Lithuania, state anti-Semitism was not at such a level as in other parts of the USSR and almost all Jewish children entered universities without any problem. Moshe graduated from the Economics Department and Emmanuel from the Faculty of Applied Mathematics. Unfortunately, we have a lot of disagreements with Moshe. He married a Lithuanian and I was against it. Besides, when my wife was seriously ill, he turned his back on us as if we were strangers. I can’t forgive him for that. So, we don’t keep in touch. I know that he has a good life. He works in a computer center and has a top position.

Emmanuel is quite a different son. He is devoted to his mother. In 1995 Emmanuel immigrated to Israel. He found a very good job there. But in 1997 my Sheina, who had spent her adolescence in a damp basement, got severely ill. She was afflicted with rheumatism since adolescence and now it was recrudescent. She was operated on her knee joint. In 1998 she had to go through a complicated oncological operation. I’ve always been there for my wife. Emmanuel called from Israel every evening asking how his mother was doing. He also sent money, medicine and came for a visit on holidays.

Three years ago Emmanuel came back to Vilnius. I’m a very elderly man and it is hard for me to look after my sick wife. Now Emmanuel lives not far from us and calls on us every day to spend time with his mother. When she is in hospital, he spends most of his time with her, changes her nappies and takes her to the bathroom. That is why my son’s personal life wasn’t happy. However, I know that he has a girlfriend, but he finds it impossible to get married. My Sheina is weak not only physically, but also suffers morally. Sheina doesn’t want to see people, especially those who have known her young and beautiful. She has destroyed all her photos. I’ve loved Sheina all my life and would never leave her.

I’ve always been biased against the Soviet regime. That’s why I approved of the breakup of the Soviet Union and the foundation of the independent state of Lithuania 47. My wife and I are currently members of the revived Jewish community of Lithuania. We celebrate all Jewish holidays. I am a member of the military community of Jewish War Veterans 48. I often go to Jurbarkas, to the place where my kin perished. Only five Jews, born in Jurbarkas before World War II, remained in Lithuania. We founded a club. Now there is a group of the second generation there – children of native Jurbarkas Jews who are currently residing abroad. We also established a charity fund, where donations from Jurbarkas Jews are collected. We put up a monument at the place where Jews from my town were shot by the Fascists.

Glossary:

Elena Drapkina
St. Petersburg
Russia
Interviewer: Vera Postavinskaya
Date of interview: February 2006

Elena Askaryevna Drapkina is very pretty and charming woman. Aged 82, she looks like a 65-year-old woman. Her eyes are bright black; her voice is young and ringing.

She is very active. She is a person of humor and inspires her interlocutor with energy and optimism.

Is also very sociable, during the interview in her apartment telephone rings every minute: her acquaintances, friends, relatives, and neighbors call her having different requests.

Elena Askaryevna lives alone in a cozy two-room apartment in a new district of St. Petersburg. Scrupulous neatness is around her. We can see photos of her relatives on the walls.

She does her apartment herself, nobody helps her. Every Saturday she goes to the synagogue, and the way there is not easy even for a young person: it usually takes 1 hour and a half.

But it does not embarrass Elena Askaryevna. She goes shopping almost every day. She also often takes part in different cultural events arranged by the Hesed Avraham Welfare Center 1. Her memory keeps a lot of details of her colorful biography.

To read interview in Russian go to: https://pamjat.centropa.org/ru/biografiya/yelena-drapkina/

• My family background
• Growing up
• During the War
• Life in the Ghetto
• Escaping the Ghetto
• Partisan life
• After the War
• Glossary 

• My family background

I was born in 1924 in Minsk in the family of Levins (Osher Girshevich and Ginde Elyevna). [Minsk is the capital of Belarus.]

I know nothing about my great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers. My paternal grandmother and grandfather died before my birth, and all my maternal relatives were born and lived in Minsk.

My maternal grandmother died in 1934, her name was Dina-Rayzle Hautovskaya. She was a housewife, she had got 10 children: 7 daughters and 3 sons. I remember my grandmother very well: she often went for a walk with me, we talked much. I remember that one day I asked her ‘Granny, does God exist?’ Grandmother answered that she did not know, and asked me not to ask my grandfather about it. Grandmother did not wear either a wig or a scarf, but at home she observed kashrut and celebrated holidays.

My grandfather (my mother’s father) was called Elya Hautovsky, but all of us called him grandfather. He was born in 1870, and died in Minsk ghetto in 1941. He was a real devotee: he never ate out, because they observed kashrut nowhere around. By the way, my parents did not observe kashrut. The only relative of ours, my aunt Sonya did it when she lived together with grandfather and grandmother. After grandmother's death she lived with grandfather and cooked kosher meals for him. Later she got married, but still observed kashrut.

Grandfather worked at a small shop, he was its owner. Financial position of the family was not very good. All children wanted to study, but it was impossible: at that time (in tsarist days) there existed five percent quota for Jews 2. The elder children (my Mum, aunt Manya and aunt Sonya) finished high school in Minsk.

Two daughters of them (Maryasye and Malke), my aunts left for Moscow to study, later they got married there and had children. They both married Russians. Aunt Maryasye was a teacher of geography. Aunt Malke worked as an economist at a textile factory all her life long. There she was a local Communist Party leader [a head of the primary organization of employees-communists of the organization]. Her husband’s surname was Sidorov. Before the war burst out, grandmother visited her daughters in Moscow. She reported that Malke had got a very good husband, although he was gentile. Both aunts survived the war in Moscow and reached a great age.

Grandfather observed Tradition, visited synagogue. He always wore a hat. I remember that when he prayed, he put tefillin on his forehead and hand. He also had tallit.

Their 6th daughter, aunt Polya got married and left for Kiev. There she continued studying at a pharmaceutical school and became a pharmacist. In Minsk aunt Sonya decided to attend lectures at the pharmaceutical school instead of her absent sister, but they said ‘Hautovskaya, you steal our lessons.’ I heard that story later from relatives.

The rest children lived in Minsk. My mother's brother, uncle David had a family, and uncles Misha and Shayle were not married. Aunt Polya lived in Kiev, she got a specialty of pharmacist, but did not work: she was a housewife (she had got 2 children). Her husband was the chief inspector of Belarus. His name was Lazar Hautin. A Jew was the chief inspector of Belarus! During the war aunt Polya, her husband and her children Berte and Sara were evacuated to Kazakhstan. There Lazar was considered by authorities to be a great expert, therefore they did not call him up. After the end of the war I returned to Minsk (I worked there in the Executive Committee of the City Soviet of People's Deputies) and sent them an invitation to Kazakhstan. [Official invitation for residence in Minsk after the lift of occupation in Minsk in July 1944, the city authorities established for the evacuated citizens as temporary restrictions. These restrictions were caused by considerable destruction of available housing and municipal services and acute shortage of housing. For entry to Minsk, it was necessary to have an official invitation of a ministry, plant, establishment, or a member of the family residing in the city.] Therefore they managed to return to Minsk in 1945.

Grandfather and grandmother spoke Yiddish to each other, but they also could speak Russian. I misremember their house, because we lived separately. We had a lot of cousins and we were good friends. Grandfather loved all of us very much, and we adored him. He often played games with us. 

Before the war Minsk was a fine small town, there were about 300,000 inhabitants, if I am not mistaken. I guess a good half of them were Jews.

My Daddy, Levin Osher Girshevich was born in Minsk in 1891. His coworkers called him Oscar Grigoryevich. Daddy worked as a teacher of Jewish and Russian languages and later (when I was a pupil of the 8th or 9th form) he started working as a bookkeeper. His health was always weak: he was visually impaired and always wore glasses. Daddy was lost in Minsk ghetto in 1941.

My Mum was born in Minsk in 1895 and was lost in Minsk ghetto on November 20, 1941. Her maiden name was Hautovskaya. Her Jewish name was Ginde Elyevna, but everybody called her Eugenia Ilyinichna. Mum finished a high school in Minsk, she worked in Minsk Executive Committee of the City Soviet of People's Deputies. Probably Daddy could not support our family alone, therefore Mum had to work.

Daddy took in the Worker newspaper, Murzilka children’s magazine for me, Pionerskaya Pravda newspaper, Moscow Pravda, and a local Belarus newspaper. 

Mum and Daddy spoke Yiddish to each other, and we (children) understood them, but they did not teach us to write and read Yiddish. When I was 8, in Belarus there still were several Jewish schools, but a little bit later authorities closed them down.

I know nothing about the way my parents got acquainted, about their wedding, but I guess that everything was arranged according to Tradition, because my grandfather was strict religious observer.

In our family there were 3 children: elder brother Hirsh was named in honor of my paternal grandfather. Hirsh was born in 1920. The next child was me, Elena (born in 1924). And my younger brother Saul was born in 1929. Saul was lost on November 20, 1941 in Minsk ghetto together with Mum.

Daddy had a lot of books: I remember books by Chernyshevsky 3 and Gertzen 4. Mum read less, because she had to work: there were no assistants, she had to do the house, cook meals. She used to come home late in the evening, but Daddy helped her much. I remember the following: one day Mum came home and lay down to have a rest, and Daddy came up to her and kissed her in our presence (I guess that action was some sort of educative value: he wanted to show the children an example of proper relations between family members). Daddy read much, knew much, and played first fiddle in our family. We did not go to the regional library: every school had its own school library, where we borrowed books for reading.

• Growing up

Our family did not observe Jewish traditions, but for Pesach grandfather used to come to us, bring matzah and some very tasty wine, which he asked all of us to taste.

One day, I remember, when we were in ghetto, grandfather came in (probably it was Yom Kippur) and said ‘Ginde, today don’t give children meal at least until 12 o'clock.’ At that time we had only groats and water to eat. Mum objected, saying that we were already starving. Nevertheless grandfather asked her to put off till 12 o'clock. I heard their conversation, but at that time I did not understand the meaning. Now I understand that it was Yom Kippur, when people had to keep a fast and eating was forbidden.

My parents were not Party members. I know nothing about their political views, because that topic was taboo for us.

Daddy probably had a white chit [a person exempted from compulsory military service because of poor health]. He was visually impaired since childhood and wore glasses all the time.

At that time I knew nothing about Minsk Jewish community. Grandfather visited synagogue and there he probably communicated with the community members. My parents did not go to the synagogue: they had to work much, they had no time for talking, it was necessary to take care of 3 children. I remember that once our parents went to the theater, and we together with my brother remained at home. There were no locks at that time, I barred the door and we fell asleep. We did not hear our parents returned from the theatre, did not hear them knocking at the door. Daddy had to bring a ladder, climb upstairs, and get in through the small opening window pane of the room on the 2nd floor.

When I became older, we often went to the Minsk Jewish theatre. I remember Tevye Milkman performance. The theater was closed before the war burst out. We also went on a visit to Russian families.

I do not remember my parents leaving for somewhere to have a rest. As for me, I spent summer holidays in pioneer camps, and my younger brother went to dacha 5 with children from his kindergarten. Mum worked all days long, therefore it was me who often visited my brother in his kindergarten.

Daddy had 2 brothers. The younger one was called uncle Tolya, and I do not remember the name of the elder brother. The elder one was a pharmacist and worked in a drugstore. The younger brother had a wife and a son Misha Levin (I do not remember what he did for living). Uncle Tolya’s wife was aunt Rachel (she finished the high school together with my Mum). All of them lived in Minsk. During the war, in ghetto all 3 brothers and their families lived in one 14-square-meter room.

I attended kindergarten, later I became a pupil of the school no.34. After a while we were moved to the Stalin school no.21. My elder brother Hirsh studied at school and had a hobby: he liked to dance and was rarely at home. We together with my younger brother Saul stayed at home. I remember us building a steam locomotive of chairs. As our parents were busy with their work, I spent all the time with my younger brother.

At school we had very good teachers. They taught us in some sort of a mixed language: one word in Russian, another word in Belarussian. Teacher of geography was Uzbek, and Russian language was taught by a Georgian woman. History was taught by a married couple of Rubinchiks: sometimes he taught, sometimes she did. Their lectures were very interesting.

Yakov Meltserzon was our from-master and taught us physics very well. All pupils knew physics perfectly: it was impossible not to know it. If it was necessary, Meltserzon gave supportive lessons to pupils who were below their schoolfellows in class. When after the end if the war I arrived in Leningrad, I had to pass only 2 examinations to enter a stomatological school (I was hors concours as a war participant): Russian language and physics. In spite of 4 years of war, I went through the exams successfully (having only 1 month for preparation). I think it happened due to Meltserzon’s contribution.

Recently I read biography of the latter Nobel prize winner (Vitaly Ginzburg, a physicist), where he wrote that before the war he was a pupil of a Minsk school, and it was Meltserzon who planted his love for physics. So I was very proud of the fact that I and the Nobel winner were taught physics by the same teacher.

My brothers and I studied at school. Before the war I finished the 9th from. I remember that when I was a pupil of the 3rd form, I concerned myself with children's technical station, where we tried to cultivate cotton. My cotton grew high, but did not ripen: there was not enough solar heat for it. My cotton was shown at the exhibition in the House of Government.

We lived near the river, and I managed to swim well at the age of 12. All children had to meet requirements of special classification standard for young sportsmen [it was called Be Ready to Work and Hold the Line]. A coach saw me at the competition and invited me to his sports group. I agreed. At that time in Minsk there was the only swimming pool in the House of Red Army, I started training sessions in swimming (brace style) at the city sports society. I held several records of Belarus in that category of swimming; I also took the 6th place at the all-Union competition for girls of my age (aged 12-14). I participated in all-Union competitions of five cities in Kiev and in all-Union competitions in Tbilisi. Children were brought there from all republics. It happened in 1939. At the same time I studied in theatrical studio at the Palace of Pioneers. There I got acquainted with Masha Bruskina.

So that was my childhood and it was not a time of stress. Before the war my elder brother studied at school, and after the war burst out he left for the army. This is all I know about him till now. After the end of the war I wrote to the all-Union Search Department, and they answered that he was not registered among persons who were killed in battle, died of wounds or were missing.

Members of our family did not observe Tradition; life of Soviet style surrounded us. I remember the process of construction of the Opera and Ballet Theater. Its building stood in its integrity after the end of the war. Our apartment was situated in the house between the River Svisloch and the Opera and Ballet Theater. It was the former Belotserkovnaya Street (in Soviet time it was called Krasnoznamennaya Street).

We lived in the two-storied building, on the 2nd floor: we used an iron ladder to get there. The 1st story was made of bricks, and the 2nd one was wooden. There was no water supply, no toilet, and electricity supply was only in one room. For those days it was a good communal apartment 6. There were 3 rooms, one of them was occupied by a family (a husband, a wife and a child), and our family lived in 2 large adjacent rooms (a large dining room with 4 windows and a large bedroom).

I remember workers stretching radio network. We used stove for heating, the kitchen was common. In the kitchen there was a Russian stove, and in our rooms there was a tiled stove. The apartment was situated in the corner of the house and was rather cool. In the bedroom there were 4 beds and a wardrobe, in the dining room - a big buffet (as long as the wall) and a sofa. Later we bought nickel-plated beds instead of wooden ones.

In our house there lived both Russian and Jewish families. Russian families observed orthodox Easter. I do not remember any manifestations of anti-Semitism: at that time it was prosecuted. I remember that a boy called somebody a dirty Jew, but it was stopped and caused fair hearing in presence of his parents. I remember that it was not accented. And in 1937 we felt the changes, when they started arresting teachers, including Jews.

I remember my school teacher of history Timofey Timofeevich. We loved him very much, and at school they told us that he was an enemy of the people 7, a spy. It was very special time. After his arrest Riva Abramovna began to teach us history (she was a director and also a good historian).

I grew up in pioneer camps, because my parents could not rent dacha for a summer. I went to different pioneer camps, which belonged to my mother's organization or my father's, etc. During summer time I used to have rest in 3 camps (one after another). In camps food was abysmal. I remember that in 1934 (I was 10 years old) Daddy came to visit me there and brought two loaves of bread, and it was a festival for us! There were very long intervals between meals. Children lacked food, but we were cheerful. Our pioneer leaders stuffed our heads with patriotic propagandistic ideas.

Not far from our house there was a horse market, there were many different markets around. Most often Mum went to the market to buy food, she took my brother and me with her. I remember the so-called Tatar Vegetable Gardens, once we brought a bag of potatoes from it using sledge. It was in 1934 or 1936.    

I remember that in 1937 there appeared newspaper articles about traitors to our country: Rykov, Zinovyev. I also remember parades that took place in front of the House of Government.

We were very modest in dress. Sometimes children wore clothes with room for growth. Parents paid main attention to feeding and educating of children.

At school there were pupils of different nationalities: Jews, Russians, and Ukrainians. When we were placed in ghetto, but before it was surrounded by a barbed wire, my friends came to visit me: Varya Solonenko, Zina Ivanova, Valya Andreeva.

One day after Varya visited me in ghetto, I went to see her to the ghetto gates. We saw inscriptions on the gate-posts around the territory of ghetto: GENTILES ARE NOT ADMITTED (the same was written in German). Varya and I stood on different sides of the ghetto limit, and at that moment a German officer appeared nearby. He had seen Varya (she was blond) leaving ghetto territory. He approached her and said ‘Are you crazy? Where do you go?’ The officer took her to the gate-post and ordered ‘Read the inscription! Did you understand it?’  Then he shouted loudly ‘Nach Hause!’

When I came home and told Mum about the incident, she decided to forbid girls their visits: if something happened, their parents could be displeased.

I had good friends: Masha Bruskina and Masha Plotkina (her family did not manage to evacuate). In ghetto I met Vinitsky (I guess he was killed later) and Fima Messel. Messel was his father’s family name, but during the war he changed his surname to that of his mother: it was more like German, than his father’s. Later he became a dissident.

• During the War

In 1941 I finished 9 classes. The war burst out in June 8. On the 2nd day of war on June 24 Germans severely bombed Minsk, and troops entered the city. Our neighbor Shura Bogdanovich (he had a Jewish wife and 2 little children) came by a large car, took his family, his wife’s parents, our family and 2 families more.

Minsk was burning, it was full of smoke, and Shura took us away from Minsk (later it turned out that we moved towards German troops). We ran away from fire, not from Germans. We arrived in a small town near Minsk; there we spent 10 days. Soon that town turned out into a battlefield, and we went back to Minsk on foot.

When we returned to Minsk, we found out that our house had been bombed-out. Next to our house there was a military hospital. They spread out a special cloth with a red cross: they expected Germans to be civilized people and not to bomb a hospital. But they used that cross as a target and destroyed the hospital by bombing.

We went to grandfather. Grandfather, aunt Sonya and two little children could not leave Minsk during the fire, but they survived the bombardment: all houses around were burned down except theirs. When I asked aunt Sonya how they managed to survive, she answered ‘Lena, you know that I believe in God; I was sure that God would help us.’

They curtained windows with wet bed sheets and saved their lives. Moissey, aunt Sonya’s husband was at the Leningrad front, they corresponded with each other, but at the end of the war aunt Sonya stopped receiving letters from him: probably he was killed in battle. 

• Life in the Ghetto

Grandfather lodged us in the apartment of uncle David, which also escaped bombardment (uncle David left the keys for grandfather when his family was going to be evacuated). The ghetto limit went along the street, where uncle David’s apartment was situated. Unfortunately our side of the street was ascribed to Russian area, and the opposite one was included in ghetto territory.

When Germans entered the city, they posted up notices that all Jews should gather in one district (they named the exact district). Those Jews who lived in the named district had to remain in their houses, and Russians had to leave: people started exchanging apartments. Our house was on the Russian side of the street. We had no time to change our apartment, but on the ghetto territory there lived father's younger brother (uncle Tolya), he had a small room of 14 square meters and a tiny kitchen of 5 square meters on the ground floor (they lived there together: uncle Tolya, aunt Rachel, and their son Misha). Family of the father’s elder brother also got into difficulties. As a result, 3 brothers with their families gathered in that tiny room. We were many: Daddy, Mum, my younger brother Saul and I, family of uncle Tolya (3 persons), and the elder brother of Daddy with his daughter (his wife died before the war) - 9 persons in total.

Jews who failed to appear in ghetto had to be executed. So we lodged in that small room. It was possible for Jews to live only on the ghetto territory. But while it was not enclosed with barbed wire yet, we managed to get out for a certain time to find food, though it was forbidden. When the territory got enclosed, they organized there labor exchange and people went there. Daddy and I also went there.

Daddy died very soon. The first manhunt was organized on August 14, 1941. The second one happened on August 28.

Germans and volunteers from among local citizens (called polizei) inspected houses. Their aim was to find men. On August 28 Daddy went out of doors, they took him away and he disappeared. Daddy’s elder brother escaped somehow. He went to the assembly point, because they promised to give job. But in fact they gathered men to send them to concentration camp. Uncle Tolya stayed there a couple of months and then managed to escape. But on November 20 he died together with my Mum. In the morning of that day I was still in bed. My place for sleeping was on the table because the room was overcrowded. Father's elder brother was a real devotee and as I understand now, Jews organized a meeting-house in ghetto. In the morning he wanted to go there, but polizei did not let him out. Among the polizei there were Russians, Ukrainians and Lithuanians. He came back and informed us about policemen. We understood everything, because grandfather and my aunt disappeared during the similar manhunt on November 7. Immediately I jumped up, put something on and rushed under the staircase. Our men constructed there some sort of a shelter trench: the narrow space was covered with plate from one side and curtained with cloths. I managed to jump inside there. The space was already full of people, after me uncle Tolya’s son Misha jumped in. There we stood all day long. Among us there was a woman with a little child, and we all were afraid that the child would cry. Germans entered the houses, combed rooms and took everybody out. We heard everything around us: people going upstairs and downstairs and my Mum saying ‘Wait a moment; I’ll put on my coat.’

All my relatives were taken away from Minsk and executed by shooting. Now I cannot understand the way I managed to endure the torture that lasted the whole day. Thanks to Daddy’s elder brother who warned about the manhunt, I had enough time to hide and escape.

Standing there in that narrow place, I heard my uncle Tolya taking the ladder to leave house through the second floor. Unfortunately he fell down, broke his leg and crawled back into the house. Germans came in to comb the house once more, found him and shot right in the room. A day later we went out of our shelter together with Misha and saw his father dead.

It was impossible to stay in our house any more. Through the window I saw Rachel (a girl whom we studied together in the theatrical studio at the Palace of Pioneers). She lived in the same house with my grandfather. I called her, and she gave me a silent signal to come to her place.

She lived there together with 2 other children, their father and his brother’s family. Her father was a very good shoemaker, he worked for the general-commissioner of the city, therefore Germans kept him from scathe. Together with Misha we went there. We all stayed in one room. There was no place to sleep, but we found a place under the table and considered it to be very good, because when people got up at night they were not able to step on us.

Later Germans brought Jews from Hamburg (Germany) and lodged them in the houses of killed Jews. Later they told us that Germans deceived them: told that they would bring them to Palestine, but brought to Minsk. They were horrified, when got to know about it.

A day later I went to the labor exchange. They gave me job in the main warehouse of the railway. The warehouse was very large and they brought there soap, a soap powder, brooms and other goods from Germany. We were 19 girls, we had to load and unload freight cars. Germans brought us there and back by a lorry as the warehouse was far from ghetto. So I remained working there from the end of autumn (all winter long). Many Jews worked, but not all of them. There were many women with little children, a lot of old men.

Germans repeated pogroms. There was no food, people tried to change things for food. At the warehouse Germans gave us their uneaten food, but it was their good will. Most of railroad men were old persons. The chief German was about 40 years old. Sometimes they gave us fire wood, gasoline, kerosene, soap, soap powder. In the ghetto there was a market, so I sold there 2 bars of soap (for example) and bought something eatable.

I lived in the room with my cousin Misha and with some elderly person and his son. Later Misha found his aunt Rachel (his mother’s sister), but she died soon, therefore Misha was taken by Rachel’s unmarried sisters.

On March 3, 1942 there happened a terrible pogrom, at the warehouse we were told that ghetto was in fire. We asked assistant of the chief, the old man not to carry us in ghetto after work, but he said it was impossible. When we arrived, they made us stand in line at the ghetto entrance. We were surrounded by armed guard, it was impossible to escape.

There were several cordons, and near each one a German checked documents. I had a worker’s pass. Germans sorted people to groups. It lasted very long, night closed in, it was cold, and full moon gave bright light.

It was already about 3 o'clock in the morning. In the first group they gathered Hamburg Jews (they were holding hands). I approached them and went through, having lifted their hands. I was moving towards ghetto. Poles stood next, and again I went through. I came up a German who checked documents, and he struck me on the head by a whip, but he let me into the ghetto, and I joined a group of our men whom we worked together. A person among them asked me about his daughter, but I knew nothing. At last Germans ordered ‘Go home!’ And the next day all our men arrived at the warehouse, but only 2 girls including me. 

After that I realized that it was necessary to escape. But how? Earlier we talked about it with Masha Bruskina and assumed that somewhere there was an anti-fascist underground. But on October 26 Masha was hung up by Germans.

I’d like to tell you a little about my friend Masha Bruskina. We made friends with her before the war when we studied in the theatrical studio. During German occupation Masha got fixed up in a job at a hospital situated out of ghetto limits. They did not want Jews to work there. So Masha blonded her hair and managed to get that job. When wounded men recovered, they usually were sent to Germany for forced labor. To avoid it, Masha got somewhere civil clothes for them and helped them to find partisans. But it could not go on without end: someone informed Germans against Masha.

Germans arranged a demonstrative execution and hung Masha in one of the Minsk squares. Her body was left on the gibbet for a long time. Having learnt about it, Masha's mother (she was in ghetto together with us) went crazy. After the end of the war I came to Minsk and visited the local museum. There I saw a photo of partisans on the gibbet and recognized Masha Bruskina among them.

There was an inscription ‘Unknown Partisans.’ I immediately recognized Masha and addressed administration of the museum. But they talked to me very scornfully; they said that for some reason several people of a certain appearance wanted to discuss that photograph. They hinted at my nationality. It took me a lot of time to rehabilitate Masha Bruskina: she died saving lives. It is very hard to recollect it now.

Electricians Chekhovsky and Victor (Russians) worked together with me in the warehouse. They hated Germans. One day Chekhovsky came up to me and said ‘Lena, we’ll give you Russian passport; I hope you won’t betray us.’ I promised. I gave them my photo, and they made a seal on it in the passport by hand. That passport read that I was Skrotskaya Yadviga, a Pole born in 1920. So I got my passport in April, and waited for a moment to leave ghetto. Terrible pogrom happened on July 28, 1942. It lasted several days. After that pogrom I managed to leave Minsk. Later I met Victor in a partisan group: it turned out that he and Chekhovsky were partisan messengers.

A Russian girl Lena worked together with me. I asked her to help me get out of Minsk. Another girl Oktya already left Minsk for Western Belarus. But in Minsk she left her mother and sister. So she worked for a short time in the Western Belarus and decided to return and save her mother and sister. But by that time her mother was already dead.

Oktya told us that in the Western Belarus, on the territory of former Poland it was possible to find job easily: they required women for field work. Lena’s sister lived there, therefore I asked her to take me out of Minsk limits. She agreed.

• Escaping the Ghetto

At 6 o’clock in the morning I left ghetto in the column of workers. Near the ghetto limits Lena was waiting for me. The column was escorted by one German soldier; I managed to leave the column imperceptibly and met Lena. Then I took off my jacket with yellow tabs and we went to Lena’s home. There she locked me and left for her work. In the evening she returned, we spent there a night, and early in the morning of the next day we started our walk to Lena’s sister. We walked from 6 o’clock in the morning till late at night (about 50 kilometers). It was in July.

Now I cannot understand the way I stood that test. At the exit of the city they checked our documents: passport of Skrotskaya and a reference (it was made for me by a German Jewess, who worked for our heads). Late at night we came to Lena’s sister, they gave us food and a place for overnight. Lena slept in the house, and I was sent to a hayloft. In the morning we had breakfast, and then Lena’s sister harnessed a horse. We drove out, and there she showed me the road and the wood I had to go through to get to the Western Belarus. Lena’s sister left and I remained alone on the road in the unknown place.

All my belongings I carried with me. I went forward. I never saw raspberry in the forest, so I was walking along the road and eating berries. At last a farm appeared. I saw 3 men there and asked in Belarussian whether they needed a girl to work at their farm. An elderly man refused, having explained that they did everything themselves. He advised me to go farther to Poland and showed the road. He said that the brook over there was the former border of Poland (up to 1939) 9. If I crossed it, I would find myself in the Western Belarus, where it was easier to find job.

I thanked, but asked the old man to show me the way. He agreed and for some time we were moving together. He suddenly asked me if I were Jewish. I confirmed. Then he warned me ‘In no circumstances tell anybody that you are a Jewess. Show your passport and keep silence.’ And I went on alone.

By the way, later I met all those people who helped me. And regarding that old man: I met him by chance, when I got to his farm, being a member of partisan group. He told me that those two men I saw at him that day were later killed by Germans.

I reached another farm, where there lived a woman, her daughter and her son. They asked me where I was from. They spoke Russian, and I only spoke Belarusian language. I told them that I was from Minsk. They asked me to show my documents. From my documents they understood that I worked in the main railway warehouse. It turned out that the woman’s son also worked there. He asked whom I knew there. I named several persons. So I got through that checking procedure successfully.

The woman asked me to work in their field next day (to crop oats) and promised to show me the way to the Western Belarus later. I spent the night in the house; they said that at night time partisans could come. The next day they gave me a sickle, and I worked in the field.

Later I gave the woman some soap powder and I went on. She went with me for a while, because I was afraid of woods. Soon we saw 2 men cutting grass in the clearing. The woman knew these men (a father and a son) and offered me as a worker for them. The man’s name was Paul Bulakh. He asked me to show my documents and later his wife agreed to take me. They had 3 children: Volodya, Sergey and Nina. In my passport there was a note that I was married. I told Paul’s wife that I was able to do everything.

Then she decided to begin with milking their cow. I said that it would be very hard for me, because I had been living in the city for a long time. In short they had to milk the cow themselves after my milking. I lived with them for a month and one day Paul and his wife left for the near village to attend a funeral, and I stayed at home with their children. Suddenly Nina ran in and shouted ‘Partisans are coming!’ I ran inside and hid myself behind the wardrobe. I heard partisans asking children about their parents. Nina told them that parents had left for the funeral and added ‘And there is a girl here!’

At that moment I understood that there was no more sense to be hidden and appeared from behind the wardrobe. They were 5. Again they asked my documents. The commander looked my registration note. There was written that I was registered in Komintern settlement near Minsk (it was rather far from my house in reality).

The commander said that he had been my neighbor, he began asking questions and I did not know the answers. I admitted to be a Jewess who escaped from the ghetto. I asked them to take me with them: as they unmasked me, it would be difficult for me to speak to the farm owner. Among the partisans there was one Jewish man [Here Elena Askaryevna called him in Yiddish ayid]. The commander told the children to say their father the following: the girl would live on the farm until partisans come to take her away.

He said to me that they were going to fulfill a combat mission, and on their way back they would come to take me. Here he added that if they did not find me, they would burn the farm down. And they left.

When the farm owners returned home, their daughter told them everything. And her father answered that he already suspected me. I heard their conversation. Then he asked me to tell everything about myself in details and especially to tell my real name. His wife pointed to her suspicions too, because I not always responded to my name.     

I told them everything, and the farm owner was surprised by my straight hair and absence of burr. I lived with them for another month. Nobody came.  

• Partisan life

Suddenly a Moscow landing group appeared there in the wood (near the farm). They were 8. They came to the farm, and I told them I wanted to become a partisan, I wanted to take revenge for my lost relatives, because I remained alone. They promised to take me. So I became a member of the Moscow landing group in September or October 1942.

Since that time till July 1944 I was one of the partisans. The group grew into a brigade, later the brigade developed into a formation. All the time we acted in the same region. Our base was in Stayki village.

In 1943 in a battle I was wounded in my back (a splinter went into my back). Our formation was supervised from the center of partisan movement in Moscow. Later Franz Dvorack, a Czech became our commander. Having been wounded, I got into the partisan hospital.

Partisans lived in earth-houses both in the winter and in the summer. They never got undressed. The hospital was situated in earth-houses, too. There worked a very good doctor Svistunenko. He made blood transfusion and then sent me to the farm owners. They helped me to recover: their family was loyal to partisans and supported them.

I became a commandant of the village most remote from the German garrison. There were 7 commandants on the territory. From time to time Germans appeared in our villages. Once during a meeting of 3 commandants of the near villages Germans came unexpectedly and shot them. But Germans did not dare to approach Morozovka (my village), because on the way there were a lot of other villages controlled by partisans. In 1944 during running fights Germans blocked us.

They set fire to surrounding woods, and we did not know where to go. We ran around the wood. I was together with 2 girls from our brigade. We had crackers with us, but no water. I carried a sawn-off gun. Girls were afraid of my gun, because without weapon we could be taken for local residents, otherwise we could be only partisans. Therefore we buried my gun.

So I was a member of the partisan group from 1942 till July 3, 1944. Later we joined active forces of the Red Army. After that we got an order to clean the woods. Germans broke up into small units and hid in the woods (especially volunteers from among local residents). They lived in our earth-houses, and we tried to find them. It lasted about a week.

That was why I did not manage to be on the Victory parade in Minsk. I got to Minsk later. Immediately several girls and I got fixed to job: we were secretaries (gave out meal tickets, documents, and characteristics). Franz Dvorack, my commander told me that as I was with partisans from the very beginning, I had to describe everything in full details (in fact he could not write in Russian). I did it, and only then he gave me my documents.

In 1944 vice-president of the Minsk executive committee came to us and asked about 2 competent girls for work in his reception. He did not want to take someone who was on the occupied territory. I and my friend Alla were taken there.

Together with Alla we lived in a hotel. Several months later we started asking for another habitation. And we got one small room and a kitchen on the ground floor. Alla was from Kinghisepp [a city in Leningrad region], before the war she worked in Minsk. During the war she worked there for Germans in a passport office. She gave out passports for partisans, but Germans got to know about it. Fortunately Alla was alarmed in time, therefore she had time to leave and survived.

• After the War

The apartment of my uncle David survived the war, but there lived chief of local KGB 10. They did not let me in. In the apartment of my grandfather I found letters from aunt Polya and uncle David. From the letters I learned that aunt Polya, wife of uncle David was evacuated to Bashkiria. I also understood that they wanted to come back home.

I made invitations for them. I thought that when my relatives arrived, we would live in my room all together. But suddenly there appeared a Jewish woman with 2 little children - she was the mistress of our apartment. Public prosecutor of Minsk decided to return the room to that woman.

Alla and I had to move away. But that woman appeared to be very kind, she understood the situation, and let us stay in her room. So we were 5 in that small room: the woman, 2 children of her, Alla and me. I was horrified: where should I lodge my aunt and her children?

So we (Alla and I) decided to live in the executive committee building for some time.

My aunt and her children arrived in December 1944 or in January 1945. I told my aunt everything, and we managed to lodge her and her children in her former apartment together with new tenants.

In Minsk restful life was shaking down rapidly, I had good work. But walking along the streets of the city where my parents, my brother (all my relatives) had been shot, was very hard for me. My mother's sister (even more than sister: my mum’s twin) aunt Manya and her family lived in Leningrad and survived the blockade. So I arrived in Leningrad and entered a stomatological school. It happened in 1945. And in 1946 I got married.

My husband Drapkin Wolf Yakovlevich was born in 1921 in Gorodok (now Belarus). At the age of 2 months his parents brought him to Leningrad, there he finished school. His mother was a housewife and did not work; his father was director of a big shop in Ligovsky prospect. During the siege he stayed in Leningrad, and his family lived in evacuation.

My husband had a brother and 2 sisters. Before the war he finished military school of communications, got appointment to the Far East and was moving by train to the destination point when the war burst out. During the war he served in Iran, in Central Asia. There he got ill with enteric fever and malaria and undermined his health.

In 1945 he arrived in Leningrad and entered the Military Academy of Radio Electronics named after Budyonny. In 1946 we got acquainted in the house of my aunt, where my future husband came on business. We both finished the first courses and got married in summer.

It happened on August 9, 1946. My mother-in-law was a devotee and said that she would  consider valid only chuppah wedding. You know, at that time making chuppah was equivalent to committing a suicide, because my husband was a Party member. We were scared, but nevertheless he took the risk. I did not object, because my mother-in-law wanted us to do it. It was the day off, relatives went somewhere to Sestroretsk or Zelenogorsk and brought rabbi. They opened the small synagogue, and we had there our chuppah wedding. So our wedding was arranged according to both Jewish Tradition and Soviet rules (of course we registered our marriage at the civilian registry office).

On May 9 (the Victory Day), 1947 I gave birth to my son. My son Alexander Drapkin was born strong and good. By the way, we arranged bar mitzvah for my son at the urgent request of my mother-in-law.  

On June 27, 1949 my husband died suddenly. It happened in a tram. He told passengers that he felt bad and that was all.

We lived together with his parents 3 years more. His parents lost 2 sons (Boris was killed during the war, and my husband died after it).

In 1948 I finished my studies.

For 11 months I stayed at home with my child, and then went to work in a children's polyclinic. During my life they moved me from one polyclinic to another, but I never left my service and worked 35 years until I was 60 years old (in 1985), when I retired.

I remember central newspaper articles concerning Doctors’ Plot 11. It happened in 1952. Those articles created a great impression on me: I was brought up by the Soviet propagation and considered everything published in the central press to be true. In my polyclinic I shared my ideas with its manager (she was Jewish too) Anshelis. That wise woman looked at me attentively and said ‘Elena Askaryevna, do not trust these newspapers, you will see them rehabilitated one day 12.’

At the age of 25 I became a widow. I lived with my son and did not want to marry for the second time.

In 1959 I got acquainted with Leyb Berovich Sverdlin. By that time his wife had died, and he remained with 2 sons: Vadim (born in 1934) and Sasha (born in 1944). He was a builder by profession. His father was a rabbi in Polotsk (Belarus), where my husband was born. We got acquainted in the apartment of my friend Etty Gordman. She lived in one communal apartment with his sister. We got married in January 1960. There was no wedding ceremony.

We were 5: I, my husband and 3 sons. By that time Vadim was already married. He moved to my room, and I together with my son moved to my husband’s, but Vadim used to spend a lot of time at ours. The younger son of my husband Alexander and my son (Alexander also) made friends at once and spent all holidays together. They are good friends till now.

My husband’s elder son Vadim graduated from the Leningrad Railway College (building faculty) and worked as a builder. Unfortunately he died 7 or 8 years ago.

My husband’s younger son Alexander also graduated from the Leningrad Railway College (mechanical faculty) and many years worked as an engineer at Kirov factory.

My son Alexander studied in the Higher Military School of Communications named after Popov and later he changed that School for the College of Communication named after Bonch-Bruevich and graduated from it. At present he is a businessman.

Now our sons have families, children, and I have got grandchildren. The elder son Alexander has Jewish family. My grandson was born in 1975.

My son has got a daughter. She was also born in 1975. Now she lives in the USA with her mother and grandfather, she is single. They have been living in the USA (in California) for 20 years. I see my granddaughter very seldom when she comes to Russia. My son was married for the second time; he brings up the son of his second wife.

I lived with my second husband for 28 years. At the age of 70 he still worked... He died in 1988 from an insult.

When I retired, we moved to another district (to this apartment where I live now). But being a pensioner, I continued working in children’s stomatological polyclinic and implementing stomatological checkups at schools and kindergartens.

During our life with my second husband we always celebrated Pesach and remembered Yom Kippur. At home we had matzah, stuffed fish, and chicken. Of course we did not observe Tradition strictly, but tried to celebrate holidays somehow.

In 1995 I visited Israel as a member of the Moscow delegation of invalids and veterans of war 13. I was invited to go with that delegation.  

Only now I started studying Tradition seriously, because during Soviet time we had no opportunity to do it. It is a pity that I don’t know Hebrew. I know Yiddish a little (I understand better than speak). As our sons grew up, they identified themselves as Jews. They go to synagogue sometimes, on the death-day of my second husband they order Kaddish.

Every Saturday I visit synagogue. I receive no help: as a disabled veteran I have a good pension. From Switzerland and Germany I got everything they were obliged to pay to ghetto prisoners.

• Glossary

Naum Bitman
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Vladimir Zaidenberg
Date of interview: February 2002

My name is Naum Shykovich Bitman. I was born in 1937 in Kiev. My parents: father – Shyko Bitman and my mother – Basia Bitman ( nee Shub).
I have no information about my father’s parents.
My grandfather’s name was Teviee (my mother’s father). His last name was Shub. I don’t know where he was born, but he was living with his wife and children in the town of Zhytkovichi in Byelorussia. In 1921 they moved to Kiev.
Zhytkovichi was a far away place. There lived Byelorussians, Russians and other nationalities along with Jews. They were living there peacefully. Almost half of the population was Jewish, but mamma often repeated that they had never felt any disparage or discrimination. Mamma attended school and heder.
The people in town respected grandfather Teviee very much. He was a shoihet - cutter. He studied his trade in Warsaw and received a diploma. He could slaughter poultry and cattle. The capability to slaughter cattle was especially respected. The people, Jewish, Byelorussian and Russian among them, keeping cows, bulls and poultry were addressing my grandfather asking him to do his job.
My mother said they had a house of their own. It was a small wooden house. I don’t know how many rooms there were in the house, but it was good to have their own house. I cannot say what they had, but I know that although they were not living in luxury, my grandfather’s work enabled them to be relatively well-doing. He was given meat and was paid well for his work. They were not in need of anything.
Grandfather didn’t have any assistants – he worked alone. Grandfather was religious, as his work required following religious rules and traditions. However, I cannot say how deeply religious he was, as I didn’t know him. As I have already mentioned, he studied in Warsaw. Here is what happened to him once.
He came to Warsaw. It was a big town. My grandfather liked many things about it, and many of them he saw for the first time in his life. He had his picture taken in Warsaw. Then he went to Zhytkovichi and showed the picture to people. They were shocked, and the only thing they could say was: ”He bought a picture in Warsaw, and the person in the picture looks exactly like Teviee!”  They didn’t understand that it was possible to be photographed. This can give you an idea how distant from civilization this town was.
Things went well until 1918, when all kinds of gangs (the gang of Zelyoniy – the gang leader – and others) started coming across this area.
  I am only aware of one episode, very hard for us, the one that actually caused my grandfather’s early death. Mamma often told us about this. Few bandits captured my grandfather and said “We shall cut off his ears”. That’s what they wanted – just to cut off his ears. The whole family was in such panic that they had to turn to other people for help. Somehow they all stood for grandfather and rescued him. They told the bandits how grandfather was always helping all people – Jewish, Byelorussia and other people and how much he was respected and loved.
That was generally a quiet location and the bandits just happened to come across that area. But my grandfather didn’t live long after this. He had died before we moved to Kiev in 1921.
They might have been living in that little town much longer, they might have remained there. But then the first gangs started coming over this area and the  bolsheviks followed them, throwing out of their homes into the streets a number of Jewish families, including my parents’ family.
Some relative offered shelter to them. But it was such a tragedy for them. And it was particularly hard for my grandfather, as he was the head of this family. He had six children by then, and the family was homeless. He couldn’t endure the fact of it and died in 1918. I don’t know exactly how old he was, but he died young.
My grandmother’s name was Haiya, her last name was Shub (nee Serebrianaya). Grandmother was born in 1886 in Zhytkovichi. I know that she had brothers and sisters. But I only know her younger brother. His name was Lev Serebrianiy. I don’t know what he was doing before the war, but after the war he lived in Lvov. I don’t know what his position was, but his work had to do with the return of Jewish people from other countries after the war. Many of them didn’t want to come back, believing that they would be subject to repression. Lyova was arrested. He was charged for intentionally keeping the Jewish people from returning to their Motherland. He was sent in exile on Kolyma and spent over nine years there. He returned home after Stalin’s death.
My grandmother had a cousin Sarra. She left for Palestine in the twenties. At that time it was easy to go. Later she participated in a beauty contest in Paris and won the first prize. This story continued after the war. Once we received a paper from the Red Cross. My grandmother's sister was looking for her. We all felt happy, but then we remembered that all those who corresponded with their relatives underwent repression and arrests. So, my grandmother was afraid to answer. She never wrote her sister Sarra until the end of her life.
As I have said the bolsheviks coming to Zhytkovichi put an end to the people’s quiet life, bringing a wave of anti-Semitism. My grandmother had a prayer of her own. Looking at what was happening around she always said: “Ah, melihe, melihe…”[this is translated "power", life was very difficult]. She understood at once what those people in power were like and that no good could be expected from them.
Well, after my grandfather’s death my grandmother remained with six children and no means of existence or a home. They moved to Kiev in 1921.
The oldest sister Asia Shub was born in 1905. After her came brother Zalman (Zelik) Shub, born in 1906. Then was brother Shelik, or Sasha, born in 1910. Then came my mother Basia. Mamma’s younger sister Dvosia Shub was born in 1916. And the last one, Gersh, Grisha, born in 1918 some time before my grandfather passed away. We don’t even have his picture.
Mamma’s sisters Asia and Dvosia got married later. Asia kept her own last name and Dvosia took her husband’s last name – she became Tarakanskaya. Asia worked as cashier all her life. During the war the sisters were in evacuation. Then they returned to Kiev. Asia died in 1987, and Dvosia Tarakanskaya is still alive. She lives in America with her son. Mamma’s brothers Zalman Shub and Gershl Shub perished on the front during the great Patriotic War. Brother Shelik was shot by the Germans in Kiev in 1941. Later I will tell about it in more detail.
As it was, the family consisting of six children and my grandmother arrived in Kiev. They arrived in hungry Kiev (hunger of 1921 in Ukraine).
They struggled to survive. We settled down in a building on the embankment. We had a state-owned apartment and I don’t know how my grandmother managed to receive it. The family lived in two small rooms. This was a two-storied building. Our family lived on the first floor. Grandmother realized she needed to do something to survive. And she took to baking rolls. Older sisters (Asia and mamma) were selling them. They Lived in Podol and it was difficult to sell things there. They had to go downtown – Kreschatik (central street) or Bessarabka (central market) to sell their bakeries. There was a streetcar, connecting Krasnaya square (in Podol) with the Philarmonic. But it cost money, and mamma couldn’t afford it. Mamma, to save some money, walked up the hill holding a basket with little pies. They were doing this for some time before NEP [New Economic Policy] was introduced. During NEP it was possible to sell things, but taxes were more than the family could bear. They were poor again. Then they bought a special machine for making stockings. They were selling them at Bessarabka and thus could afford to buy some food. But the children needed to study. Mamma only studied in the primary Jewish school in Zhytkovichi.  Later on she didn’t have an opportunity to study. She was reading textbooks while making stockings, and then she passed her entrance exams to the construction school.
Mamma studied very well. Only Ukrainian was difficult for her. Mamma never told me about celebration of Jewish holidays in the family. I don’t think they celebrated any. Six children was quite a load for grandmother. They had enough to eat, but they didn’t have enough money or time to celebrate holidays.  Mamma attended Jewish school in her childhood, but after moving to Kiev the family didn’t observe any Jewish traditions or celebrate holidays.
At that time something happened that mamma couldn’t talk about without tears until the last days of her life. People called this period of the early thirties “zolotushki’ (from word zoloto – gold). Authorities needed money. They turned to those who were doing some business during NEP or had a license. Mamma was summoned to come to NKVD [People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs], where they said to her: “Give us your gold”. This sounded ridiculous to her. But they in the police  didn’t believe she didn’t have any and put her behind bars, in the basement of that building. She told us later that each coming woman was put in a circle of big women and they pushed her from one to another until the person fell from exhaustion. Mamma was very strong – she had ideal health, but staying at this place affected her health a lot. Her sisters addressed management at the school where she studied asking them to help her. People from the school knew that sisters from this family shared one pair of shoes. They talked to the police, telling them that Shub was their best student, and that they couldn’t have any gold. After that they let her go. This was in 1932. 
After finishing this technical school mamma took a job of estimator in Dnepro river fleet.
Mamma told us that she was very fond of the komsomol league activities. She told us about voskresnik (voluntary work on Sunday), their trips to collect the crops, and also, they went to get some gravel. They thought it was a whole world and there was no other world – America, England or Europe. Here was gravel, that truck, difficulties and tribulations – this was their life. They entertained together as well. They went to the beach, located across the street from our home. They sang komsomol and Soviet songs together – they enjoyed it so! That is what mamma told us. Her circle of friends consisted of Jewish people, basically. However, they did not think of themselves as part of the Jewish nation nor were they interested in the Jewish history, culture or religion. My mother said that representatives of different nationalities got along very well.
Mamma met my father during one of such komsomol trips. It might have never come to going out with him, had he not been insistent and even rude. Mamma was dating a Jewish boy at that time. My father met him once and said: “If you keep coming here I will cut off your head”. That guy stopped coming, and in the end my mamma married my father.  Neither her sisters and brothers nor  my grandmother could treat him as member of the family. He was different, because it was other social and spiritual level. He was Jewish, of course, but different. It was a tragedy for my mother.
My father was born in 1905 in Belopolie village in Ukraine. His name was Shyko Noiyahovich, his last name was Bitman. He came from a family of working people. But his parents had passed away by then. His father had been a carpenter, he had worked in the cultural center “Pischevik”.  My parents got married in 1936 and they were living in our apartment. Older sister Asia had already been married by then. Mother and father were living in a 12-meter room. I was born in 1937 and there were three of us sharing that little room. .
I can hardly remember anything from my childhood before the war. I remember my grandmother – she was always taking care of me at home. Grandmother spoke Yiddish with those who could understand it. I remember there was matsa at home. I do not remember any Jewish celebrations at home, but I remember matsa.  I liked it very much. Another thing I remember is that they always gave me money at Hanukkah.  Mother and grandmother spoke Yiddish to one another, and the sisters spoke Russian.
I don’t remember mamma telling me whether they had known anything about the coming war or about fascism in Germany. She didn’t say a thing about repression in the thirties either. Repression swept over the country. But komsomol members continued their voskresniks and singing songs. They thought everything was as it should be. One thing that mamma told us was about the secret campaign in support of Trotskiy, I believe. He had been sent away from the country by then, and the people were speaking in support of him. Somebody in technical school wanted to involve mamma into that campaign, but she stayed away. She was fond of the construction of socialism and ultimately believed everything the authorities were saying or doing.
The war was a surprise for our family or anybody else. On Sunday, 22 June 1941, mamma was waiting for her friend to go to the beach. We were waiting, too. We called mamma’s friend and she said: “Basia, don’t you know? Haven’t you heard what happened?”  And she told mamma about the war. Then they started crying. We had a housemaid, Tonia, a village girl, at that time. When she heard about the beginning of the war, she took me in her hands and cried out: “War!”. I got so scared that I couldn’t talk for about two weeks. And then I was stammering for the rest of my life actually. During my last year at school I took some medical treatment and it helped a little. But always, when I get nervous I stammer, This is a kind of memory that I have of the first day of war.
The family was at a loss – what did they have to do? They were so far from the policy that they didn’t have any idea what fascism or Hitler were about. And they found themselves at the crossroads. They had to decide where or whether they had to leave. They had different opinions. Some thought it was necessary to go and the others were recollecting the Germans in 1918. They were polite then. Grandmother was saying so and it was true. They couldn’t decide whether they should go or not.
Mother’s youngest brother Gershl (Grisha), 22 years of age, had finished DOSAAf (Voluntary community of Army, Air Force and Navy Support school) before the war. Grisha was a driver. They recruited him immediately to support evacuation of officers to our army. Grisha was once driving those officers past Kiev, and he dropped by home for a second. All he could say was that Hitler was killing all Jewish people and that we should leave. He kissed everybody and continued on his way. This was the last time that we saw him. In Darnitsa, near the Paton Bridge a German bomb hit on this bus, killing all of them, including Grisha. Thus, one son died right away. All he managed to tell us was to go away.
  The family started preparations to evacuate. Older brother Zalman was called up to the army on the first day of the war and was killed in 1944.
Mamma’s brother Shelik Shub died tragically. He worked as mechanic at the factory of knitted wear. When the Germans were approaching Kiev he decided to stay in the underground to help struggle against them – collect information and transfer it, etc.  He stayed in Kiev when Germans came, and during Babiy Yar he was still alive. He might have survived if he hadn’t decided to visit his own home and the yard where he grew up. But when German came some people started working for them and became traitors. As soon as Shelik showed up in this yard, someone immediately informed Gestapo, and motorcyclists appeared there in five minutes. Shelik was captured. They took him to the pier and shot him. Such was the destiny of brother Shelik. But I would like to mention here what grandmother must have felt knowing the person that betrayed her son. After the war he spent some time in exile and returned home. We were living at the entrance to the yard. Grandmother was alive and she saw the man who was murderer of her son passing by every day.
My father was called up to the army and sent to the construction unit. And we started preparations to get on the way. We took only the most necessary things with us. I don’t remember how we got to the railway station. But I remember well what was happening afterwards. It was all very hard for mamma and she often thought about it. The thing is the Germans did not only want to defeat the army. They also enjoyed bringing maximum chaos into the people’s life. We almost went as far as Dnepropetrovsk, seems we went ten or eleven hours, when they started bombing our train. A bomb exploded ahead of us. Mamma understood it was the end of all of us. She took me – I was 3 years old a half – and went into the forest. She thought it was better to die together. But the bombing was over and all of us survived.
Grandmother Haiya, mamma’s older sister Asia and her daughter Natasha and mamma’s sister Dvosia were going with us. So, we continued our trip. I was 3 years and a half at the time and I couldn’t remember all difficulties that we faced. However, I remember something. We lived some time in the east of Ukraine that was unoccupied. My memories of this period are dim. We were travelling in a freight railcar, and we were always afraid to be late during short stops of the train. We were approaching the Caspian sea. I remember big salt mines, like pyramids. It was strange that salt that we usually have on the table could be lying on the ground. Mountains of it. On the way I fell ill with measles, and mamma thought I wouldn’t survive in such terrible conditions. This is what this trip was like, all of it, painful and incredible. I had fever, so, I just wasn’t quite there. I remember them telling me a story and I remember part of it myself. Here is what I remember. Or, to put it more correctly, I was told the beginning of it and saw the end. Older sister Hashke – Asia - was a pretty woman. The sisters were different: my mother was hardworking and intelligent woman. She liked to study. And her sister liked to show off.  They always bought one piece of clothing or one pair of shoes, but she was the first to try them on. She was the first to wear new clothes. And she is really very beautiful. There was an officer in the railcar and he started paying his addresses to Asia. He liked her. He asked her where she was going. Asia said it was Nalchik. “Nalchik has been taken by the Germans”, he said.
The next thing I remember was some strange station where we were sitting while the train was moving past us. Then I saw a pillow, blanket, some bundles falling out of the train and mamma and my aunts jumping out of there. We actually escaped death. Someone we knew that was on this train and went on died there, because Nalchik was already in the hands of Germans. All of them who stayed on that train died. And we moved on and came to the town of Frunze, it is now called Bishbek.
We lived in Frunze until the end of the war. I remember terrible heat. It was such a happy feeling to find a current and lie down in it, having your whole body in the water. Another thing I remember were Levitan’s words: “From the Soviet Informbureau..” Levitan announced all political events on the radio, he had a remarkable voice and was well-known by every Soviet citizen. “From the Soviet Informbureau..” – these were the first words in any political information, all political news started from these words.
Mamma worked very hard. She was a laborer. Sisters went to work, too. They also made a vegetable garden of their own to survive. In Kirghizia we lied with a Russian family. I remember the name of the hostess, it seemed unfamiliar to me. Her name was Panna. I don’t remember the relationships between evacuated Jews, our family, Russian and Kirghiz. I only remember my coming home and asking: “Grandma, am I “zhyd”? Somebody must have called me so. I don’t remember her response, but mother and grandmother must have had a discussion. I remember my mother crying and saying that although we ran away from fascists we couldn’t escape from all evil that reached us even there.  That was my first lesson of the relationships between nations near an aryk [not natural water channel for irrigating, built by people] in Kirghizia when I was about five years old.
We returned to Kiev in 1945. I was eight years old, and I went to the first form at school # 19 and studied there ten years.
Before we left Frunze my father got a vacation and went to Frunze to visit us. We were not there at the time. Father demobilized in 1945. He was in the construction unit in the army. He didn’t talk much about the war. Once, when I was grown up, he told me that went across the whole country and abroad during the war. But he didn’t participate directly in combat action.  He had common awards like any other participant of the war: “For the Victory over Germany”, etc.
Our apartment in Kiev was occupied by our neighbors. They didn’t want to let us in. So we had to fight. We lived with some acquaintances for some time. Later when we moved into our apartment we found it empty – there was no furniture, clothes or utilities left. I remember grandmother saying indignantly: “Why would they need the plinths!?” Generally speaking, our neighbors, who we seemed to be getting along well with before the war behaved like marauders.
But our life was gradually improving. I remember well how we managed without furniture. One would take a carton box, put another one on it, cover it with table-cloth – and there, a piece of furniture was ready! We lived on the first floor. The toilet was outside. But we took little notice of such things. We were happy to be alive.
Wen we returned to Kiev it was a different town and different relationships between people. Same people that were our friends before the war developed hatred towards the Jews. They teased me in the yard: “So, where is Gershik or Shelik?” – those were my relatives, mamma’s brothers that died. I didn’t even quite understand then that they were gloating over the death of the Jewish people. They were saying so about my uncle Shelik that was in the underground and was shot. I believe that it was neighbor Natasha – everybody called her Natka - who told our family about who betrayed Shelik. She knew everything.
She told me some things that I cannot forget. We used to go to the public bath-house. Across the street from it there lived an old Jewish man. For some reason he didn’t go to the Babiy Yar. The Germans came to his home, tied him by the legs to their motorcycle and kept pulling him, his head hitting on the pavement until he died. Just killing a Jew wasn’t enough for them, they wanted to torment them publicly. Natka told me about this terrible happening when I was eight years old, but I still remember it.
  Father was in the army for some time in 1945. I remember him coming home riding a horse. We even have a picture of him on a horseback.  After demobilization from the army he returned to work in the club of food workers where he had worked before the war. Later he worked in commerce and then - at a gas station.
Mamma went to work in the fleet again. I remember her wearing a uniform at work. The youngest Dvosia that was affectionately called Doushke, took a job in the canteen at Kalinin plant. Aunt Asia also went to work at some store. She didn’t have any profession.   Mamma was the only one who had education.
Grandmother Haiya was living with us. Every day she saw the person that betrayed her son to the Germans. This was eternal torment for her. Grandmother lived until 1964.
Grandmother spoke Yiddish to all that could understand her. And I must confess that I felt ashamed if Granny spoke Yiddish at home in the presence of my friends. I was so ashamed. I didn’t know where to put myself. That was what the system did to us – that people were ashamed of their own mother tongue. When I grew older I went to the Caucasus and I saw smaller children speaking Georgian, Azerbaijan. And I began to think why my Granny’s mother tongue seemed such a burden to me. I understood Yiddish a little but I couldn’t read or write
  When I grew older I tried to figure out why the word “zhyd” was so widely used to abuse the Jews. Podol where we were living was historically the place where many Jewish people were living. And so, we had about 80 per cent of Jews in our class and for some time we didn’t feel any anti-Semitism because there were quite a few of us. Eizenstein, Rubinstein, Golberg were my classmates. Then it occurred to me that when it was said: people, friendship of the people, we all went through the war – Ukrainians, Russians, Byelorussians, Lithuanians, Uzbek – they never mentioned Jewish people. Not even as an example. It happened so that there was a small group of Jewish students in our class – about seven of us. We were friends, spent much time together, but we never spoke about our nation then. Nobody talked about Babiy Yar then. If, for example, somebody asked: “Where is Zhenia Goldinova?” – “She went away to Babiy Yar”. This could only be said in everyday conversation, and with lowered voice. Nobody said then that Kiev was a place of mass tragedy like Treblinka, Auschwitz, Buchenwald.
In 1951 my younger brother Yephim Bitman was born. There were already four of us living in that 12-meter room.
Now I am surprised at our complete unawareness of what was going on in our country. There wasn’t even a hint to guess. We went for walks on the embankment and we had discussions, but never did we talk about the repressed or exterminated people. Much later I learned about the “case of doctors”, struggle with the cosmopolites when they put that time in the open. Maybe we didn’t subscribe to newspapers in our family – I don’t remember. But it is true that neither my friends nor I ever talked about something we were not supposed to know. Perhaps, we were afraid of each other. This generation got used to be silent, you know.  Osip Mandelshtam, a great Soviet poet, a Jew, that was repressed and perished, wrote in a poem that we did not feel our country under our feet and were talking so low that our voices were not heard in 10 steps’ distance.
I remember when Stalin died I didn’t feel either like mourning or grieving. We behaved the way we were expected to, expressing deep sorrow. I wouldn’t say we felt gladness either. It was neither joy nor grief. Our family just took it as death of the first person after Lenin. We never thought that he caused so much suffering to the Soviet people. But grandmother just kept saying: “Ah, melihe..” ["power"].
Although there were quite a few Jews among my friends we all spoke Russian to one another. Nobody knew Yiddish. We didn’t know either the national culture or history but at least nobody called one another “zhyd”.
In 1955 I finished school. We knew in our circles that a Jew practically had no chances to enter an institute in Kiev. Again, we never mentioned this in our discussions, we just knew that one had to go to Novocherkassk or Kursk or Bryansk if one wanted to study in a higher educational institution. One needed acquaintances that would support him or have a birth certificate reissued. We knew what it meant to be a Jew in this city or in this country. It didn’t make sense to discuss it, we just knew that one wouldn’t get a job at the Arsenal plant [Arsenal - one of the most large wailled plants on Ukraine, executes an order defense industry], for example.  It was all clear to us, you know. At that time there were shops that manufactured smaller products – haberdashery, hardware, etc. These shops were a kind of ghettos employing Jewish people...
I wanted to continue my studies, and I even tried to take entrance exams. But I noticed that the moment they heard my last name their attitude changed. It was next to impossible for a Jewish person to enter a higher educational institution due to the quota for Jewish students. The Jews did enter – I am not trying to say that Jewish people did not study. I’m just saying that of two people (Ukrainian and Jewish) with equal knowledge the Jewish person had no chance to be accepted. I entered the extramural department at Kiev technological institute of food industry named after Anastas I. Mikoyan.  I studied well. However, at some faculties there were staunch anti-Semites, and it was impossible to pass exams at their subjects from the first. But I managed to graduate from this Institute in 1961.
I studied at the extramural department. To study there I had to submit a certificate, confirming my employment. Therefore, I had to get a job. It took me some time to find a job of a technician or lab assistant with the minimal salary of 400 rubles. As soon as they heard my last name at the human resources department they said that the vacancy had already been taken. I remember my visit to Kiev Institute of food industry machine building. I didn’t quite look like a Jew then. Director, hearing that I studied at the Food Industry Institute said it was good as it followed the direction of their Institute. He asked me where I lived to make sure that I didn’t need an apartment. Director told me to fill in the application form and submit it to the personnel department. He also told me to ask the head of that department when I had to start work. And I, going backwards to the door, thought: “That’s good luck. I’ve got a job”. It was like a miracle, yes. I was at the doorway when Director asked my last name. The moment I pronounced it he said: “All right, then. Come back in about two weeks”. Now filling up the form or starting work were out of the question. I understood everything and left. This was some time in 1958-59.
Until my graduation from the Institute I worked as oilman at the motorcycle plant. I worked in the molding shop and there I trained to be a mechanic. After graduation I found out that they were opening an institute for special type of print – on tin, stereoprint, etc. This was Kiev Special Affiliate of the Soviet Union Scientific Research Institute of polygraphy for special types of print. This Institute employed me, they had a very loyal attitude towards Jews, and there were quite a few Jewish employees there. Director was a very honest person. I worked in this Institute my whole life. During my first years I was just learning. And when I got the feeling of all specifics of this work I just plunged into it. I decided to go to the post-graduate school. I had many publications, patents and I entered the post-graduate school in the head Institute in Moscow. I defended my candidate thesis at 37 years.
My father died rather early, in 1964. Mamma wasn’t working by then After my younger brother was born she became a housewife. Grandmother Haiya that couldn’t come to terms with my father. She lived just few weeks longer than my father and also died in 1964. Before the most deaths in 1997, ma a vein in Kiev. Helped we live, brought up our with the brother a children.
My personal life, basically was not good. I got bad luck twice. It was bad luck indeed. I wanted to have a good life but I failed. I met a girl in 1964. I liked her very much. Besides, she was Jewish. She was 7-8 years younger than I was. It was important for that age. I was 26 and she had just finished school. Her name was Victoria Sapozhnikova. We got married and had a wedding, common, mundane wedding in restaurant. All our relatives and friends attended it. Victoria was a very pretty girl. She was wearing a lovely white dress and everything was just fine. In 1966 our son Valeriy was born. But we didn’t have a good life. As I said Victoria was a very pretty girl and I loved her dearly. But she didn’t like the idea of family. She loved to visit people and show off her new dresses. However, family is something different. But Victoria didn’t understand it and didn’t want to do the housework. Perhaps, I was wrong somewhere as well. We got a divorce in some time, but I suffered a lot. Later I got married a second time. I married a Russian girl that came from Lvov. My second marriage failed, too. My second wife met all my requirements to the wife and hostess of the house, but. In this case I must have taken attraction for love. I grew totally indifferent to her in the course of time. And I can’t live in marriage without love. We separated.
I had two children in my second marriage. Older son Vadim was born in 1975. His last name is Kulpinov (he took his mothers’ last name). My son lives in Kiev, but we have nothing in common, we just do not understand one another. Perhaps, he couldn’t forgive me divorcing his mother. My daughter Veronika Kulpinova, 1981 of birth,  meets with me regularly. We are friends and she lived at my place a few years.
I don’t think she identifies herself as representative of any nationality. Se has a very loyal attitude towards the nationality that I belong to - Jews. But I never noticed that she was eager to learn something about the Jewish culture or history or study at Solomon University rather than Slavic University. She entered the Slavic University and studies successfully there.  My daughter also must think well of Israel, but she cannot have that heady feeling just from the sound of this work, the feeling that I used to have in those years and still have.
My first wife Victoria married a Jewish man and they emigrated to Israel. They failed to make a good life in Israel. I don’t think this happened because they faced some objective hardships. They were just very different people. The three of them – Victoria, her husband and my son Valeriy moved to Germany. Hoping that life would improve. There she left her husband. I keep in touch with her., we are friends. She meets with other men but I remain her friend. I even visited her and my son in Germany. 
My son married a German girl and he got adapted to life in Germany. My son identifies himself as a Jew, he loves Israel and goes there almost every year. He probably took this anxious attitude towards the Jewish state from me. I understand that one may want to ask me why I never left Israel considering such attitude. It would not be easy for me to put it into words.  I have been interested in Israel and I was glad that Jewish people formed their own state over 50 years ago.  In 1957 I went to the Festival of youth and students in Moscow on purpose. I met there members of the delegation from Israel, I traveled with them in their bus. We took pictures and I asked them about their country.   I didn’t care that it was dangerous to do so in those years. There was State Security Committee (KGB) watching everybody and I could be punished. But I didn’t care then. I was happy to communicate with real people from Israel. There were several reasons why I hadn’t left for Israel: my mother that didn’t want to go, and my Russian wife that didn’t even want to hear about leaving for Israel. Well, it happened so that I never left for Israel and was never happy in my private life. And now, I believe, it is way too late to go to Israel. One has to go there when one is young to be able to do something for your country.
Young Jewish people take great interest in Israel, they study in Jewish schools and lyceums. There is a number of Jewish organizations for younger people. And those young people that go to Israel now are much closer to the traditions and culture of this country learning them in Ukraine. Of course, I am concerned about the political situation around the country, actually the war, led by terrorists. But this issue will probably be resolved some time and there will be peace there.
I have lived alone in the recent years. My mother Basia Bitman (Shub) died in 1997. Mamma’s sister Asia that lived in Kuntsevo in Moscow died in 1987. There is only mamma’s younger sister Dvosia living with her children in the USA. I have a picture of Dvosia near her house in Kuntsevo. My younger brother Yephim lives in the USA.
I take absolutely positively those changes that perestroika has brought. It is for the first time that one can talk freely and not be afraid of doing or saying something wrong. One can feel free. Of course, life is not easy, but I do not miss the Soviet system that guaranteed cheap sausage to all with no freedom whatsoever.  The Soviet system was very hard for me. I believed it to be odd and terrible. One could only compare it with Germany when Hitler was its leader.
I have a positive attitude towards independent Ukraine. However, everything has different sides. For example, I’m a little concerned about suppression of the Russian language and TV Russian programs. There are problems with crossing the border – I mean problems with the customs. However, the country must live an independent life with its own government.
Attitude towards Jewish people has also changed in Ukraine. Maybe its not the people’s attitude but the level of democracy and civilization when one nation wouldn’t be tormented by another.
Synagogues function freely in Ukraine, Kiev, in particular. There’s a Jewish culture community, Israel cultural center, and charity organizations. I can read a number of Jewish newspapers that are published in Ukraine. I am very happy about the Jewish community and cultural life in Ukraine. However, I haven’t identified myself in this life. But let us be optimistic and look into the future with hope. I might even see the land of promise – Israel some day.
 

Chasia Spanerflig 
Vilnius 
Lietuva 
Pašnekovė: Žana Litinskaja 
Pokalbio data: 2005 m. vasaris 

Chasia Spanerflig – labai graži moteris. Elegantiška, žilstelėjusi, išpuoselėtomis rankomis, puikiu makiažu ir madingais papuošalais pasipuošusi moteris neprimena žmogaus, patyrusio daug sudėtingų išgyvenimų. Pirmą kartą Chasią, aktyvią savanorę, sutikau Vilniaus žydų bendruomenėje. Čia ji lankosi beveik kiekvieną dieną ir daug savo laiko skiria žydų socialiniam gyvenimui. Chasios siūlymu susitikome jos namuose. Ji gyvena kartu su savo sūnumi vieno kambario bute, statytame dar 1980 m. Susitikome jaukioje ir švarioje virtuvėje, pokalbiui pasibaigus, Kasia atkimšo saldaus vyno butelį ir paprašė išgerti už nužudytų artimųjų atminimą.

• Mano šeima
• Karas
• Pokaris
• Aiškinamasis žodynėlis

Mano šeima

Gimiau mažame Zdziscioto miestelyje, kuris iki 1939 m. priklausė Grodnensko provincijai Lenkijoje, dar prieš Vokietijai padalijant Lenkijos teritoriją 1. Dabar miestelis vadinamas Djatlovu ir priklauso Gardino rajonui, Baltarusijoje (170 kilometrų į vakarus nuo Minsko). Mano mergautinė pavardė buvo Langbord (jidiš kalba reiškia „ilga barzda“). Visi mūsų giminės vyrai nešiojo ilgas barzdas, kaip skiriamąjį religingų žydų bruožą. Mano giminėje buvo itin gerbiamų žydų kultūros atstovų: rabinų, Toros mokytojų, sinagogos iždininkų.

Kiek man yra žinoma, mano protėviai buvo kilę iš Zdziscioto. Mano tėvo senelis Aronas Langbordas gimė 1870 m., turėjo ilgą barzdą ir buvo labai gerbiamas žmogus. Jis buvo ne tik prižiūrėtojas vienoje iš dviejų sinagogų, bet ir Mela Hesed pirmininkas. Tai buvo žydų tarpusavio paramos fondas. Žydai padėdavo vieni kitiems skolindami pinigus be palūkanų – tai buvo visuomeninės pareigos. Senelis užsidirbdavo iš savo mažos, tipiškos žydų miesteliui parduotuvės, kurioje buvo prekiaujama pagamintomis prekėmis, medžiagomis. Jo klientai buvo kaimo žmonės. Senelis nedideles prekių partijas įsigydavo Vilniuje ir Varšuvoje.

Močiutė Chaja dirbo parduotuvėlėje kartu su seneliu. Ji buvo smulkutė moteris su išskirtinai apgaubta galva. Močiutė, kad padėtų seneliui, eidavo nuo vieno prekystalio prie kito. Senelio Arono mūrinis, trijų kambarių su virtuve namas buvo netoli turgaus. Tualetas buvo lauke. Vasarą dengtoje verandoje prie medinio stalo seneliai pietaudavo. Namas buvo apstatytas kukliais baldais. Nors ir buvo pasiturintys, tačiau gyveno kukliai, netgi asketiškai. Nežinau, kodėl jie taip gyveno, ar tai buvo šykštumas, ar dorybės siekis. Šiokiadieniais jie valgydavo paprastą maistą: rupią maltų miltų duoną, svogūnus, silkę, kartais – sriubą. Gausesnis stalas būdavo kartą per savaitę, šabo dieną. Penktadienio vakarą ir šeštadienį stalas būdavo nuklojamas gausiomis vaišėmis: įdaryta žuvimi, česnaku pagardintais liežuviais, marinuota silke, riebiu vištienos troškiniu, įvairių daržovių (morkų, pastarnokų) arba slyvų ir bulvių troškiniais 2. Desertui tiekdavo štrudelį su naminiais vyšnių arba juodųjų serbentų džemais ir riešutais. Vis dar menu tą skonį, niekada nesu valgiusi nuostabesnio štrudelio.

Aronas ir Chaja buvo labai draugiški. Senelis, rodos, buvo intelektualesnis ar labiau išsilavinęs nei močiutė Chaja. Ji buvo paprastesnė. Tiesą sakant, nežinau, koks buvo jų išsilavinimas, tačiau abu buvo labai religingi. Senelis kiekvieną dieną eidavo į amatininkų sinagogą, jis ten buvo prižiūrėtojas. Melsdavosi, skaitydavo Torą ir Talmudą. Jis meldėsi ir 1942-aisiais, kai per vieną nacių akciją jis ir močiutė Chaja, kartu su kitais religingais miestelio žydais buvo nuvesti į sinagogos kiemą ir ten visi sušaudyti.

Aronas ir Chaja turėjo vienintelį sūnų, mano tėvą, Abramą Langbord. Jis gimė 1895 m. Manau, ji negalėjo turėti daugiau vaikų, kadangi religingi žydai paprastai susilaukia tiek vaikų, kiek Dievas jiems siunčia. Be chederio mano tėtis taip pat gavo gerą išsilavinimą, tačiau nežinau, kokią mokyklą baigė. Jis gerai mokėjo hebrajų kalbą ir dėstė žydų religijos istoriją Tarbuto 3 septynmetėje mokykloje.

Priešingai nei mano tėtis, mama užaugo didelėje, trylikos vaikų, iš jų išgyveno vienuolika, šeimoje. Mano seneliai iš mamos pusės gimė Zdzisciote 1860-aisiais. Jie taip pat buvo gerbiami ir religingi žydai, tačiau ne tokie religingi kaip senelis Aronas. Senelis, Velvlis Israelitas, buvo labai gražus ir įspūdingas vyras. Jis nešiojo trumpą barzdą, būdingą tam laikotarpiui. Velvlis buvo pirklys ir didmenininkas. Už jo namo buvo didelis prekių sandėlis. Jis supirkdavo kiaušinius iš aplinkinių kaimų ir kaip didmenininkas parduodavo juos į Angliją. Parduodavo grūdus, pakulas ir dar daug kitų prekių.

Jo žmona, mano močiutė Lėja, labai tiko mano seneliui. Ji buvo gražuolė, tikra ponia. Ji nei maistą gamino, nei namuose tvarkėsi, jie visada turėjo tarnaitę, o vaikus prižiūrėjo auklės ir guvernantės. Nors Velvlis ir buvo pasiturintis, tačiau turėjo mažiau pinigų nei senelis Aronas. Turėjo būti sunku išlaikyti tokią didelę šeimą. Vis dėlto mano mamos namai, kuriuose ji užaugo, buvo atviri ir dosnūs visiems, skirtingai nuo tėčio tėvų namų.

Abu seneliai Velvlis ir Lėja turėjo savo vietas didelėje sinagogoje. Tai nebuvo amatininkų sinagoga, kur senelis Aronas buvo prižiūrėtoju. Senelis turėjo garbingą vietą dešinėje, tai buvo atskiras krėslas su drožinėtu aukštu atlošu ir Dovydo žvaigžde. Močiutė turėjo tokią gražią kėdę viršuje, kur melsdavosi moterys. Senelis eidavo į sinagogą kiekvieną dieną. Kai suseno ir nusilpo, į sinagogą eidavo penktadieniais, šeštadieniais ir per šventes. Močiutė neidavo ten kasdien, tačiau ji daug prisidėdavo prie sinagogos reikalų. Šventėms užsakydavo gražius religiniais motyvais siuvinėtus audinius, sidabro indus ir taures. Senelio namuose būdavo švenčiamos visos šventės ir laikomasi šabo. Beveik visada senelis kviesdavosi neturtingus žydus prie stalo švęsti šabą. Su jais bendraudavo pagarbiai ir kultūringai.

Aš nepamenu visų savo motinos brolių ir seserų. Senelis Velvlis suteikė jiems visiems gerą išsilavinimą. Vyriausioji Bluma gimė 1880 m. Jaunystėje ji studijavo Rusijoje, tada persikėlė į Gruziją, ištekėjo už Gruzijos žydo. Prisimenu, kad jo pavardė buvo Saakian, tačiau nepamenu jo vardo. Jie gyveno Tbilisyje. Bluma buvo mokytoja. Per Antrąjį pasaulinį karą Bluma, jos vyras, dukra Nina ir sūnus pasiliko Tbilisyje. Bluma mirė 1960 m. Aš kurį laiką bendravau su jos vaikais, keletą kartų aplankiau juos Tbilisyje, paskutiniu metu nieko apie juos negirdėjau.

Mamos brolis Džošua gimė po Blumos. Namuose jį vadino Ovseij 4. Būdamas jaunas ir nevedęs, jis išvyko į JAV. Nerašė laiškų nei seneliui, nei močiutei ar mamai, kuri jį labai mylėjo. Džiaugdavosi gavusi bent menkiausią žinutę apie sūnų iš tolimų giminaičių ir pažįstamų. Nežinau, kas jam nutiko.

Mano mama Pesva Israelit gimė 1890 m., buvo trečiasis vaikas šeimoje. Po jos, 1891 m., gimė jaunesnis brolis Solomonas. Jis gyveno Latvijoje, iš pradžių dirbo pardavėju didelėje parduotuvėje. Kai vedė turtingą Latvijos žydaitę su geru kraičiu, tapo didelės parduotuvės savininku. Nepamenu nei žmonos vardo, nei jo vaikų vardų, tik prisimenu, kad turėjo dvynukus: berniuką ir mergaitę, tačiau visi žuvo Rygoje, nacių okupacijos metu.

Miriam gimė 1893 m., namuose ją vadino Mikle. Ji gyveno Varšuvoje. Ištekėjo už žydo žurnalisto Janovski, dirbusio žydų laikraštyje. Abu jie žuvo Varšuvos gete 5, o jų sūnus, kuriam pavyko išgyventi, gyvena kažkur Amerikoje. Aš nebendrauju su juo, net nežinau jo vardo.

Mamos sesuo Maria, namuose vadinta Mania, baigusi licėjų, išvyko į Vilnių. Dirbo, vėliau ištekėjo už buhalterio Reheso, dirbusio didmeniniame arbatos versle. Aukštos kokybės arbata buvo vežama iš Rytų, sveriama, fasuojama ir pardavinėjama įmonėje. Manios vyras anksti mirė 1930 metais ir ji liko su dviem sūnumis Izraeliu ir Džozefu. Pastarąjį patraukė sionistinės idėjos ir jis išvyko į Prancūziją dar prieš Antrąjį pasaulinį karą. 6 Vėliau išvyko į Palestiną ir mirė ten jau po karo. Teta Mania ir Izraelis pateko į Vilniaus getą 7. Izraelis žuvo per vieną iš akcijų, tetą Manią fašistai išvežė į Aušvicą. Laimei, ji išgyveno ir dar porą metų po karo gyveno Lenkijoje, po to emigravo į Izraelį. Ten ji ištekėjo antrą kartą, pagimdė du sūnus, ilgai ir laimingai gyveno.

Mamos brolis Mulia gimė 1898 m., gyveno Vilniuje. Vėliau jis įsitraukė į medienos prekybą ir praturtėjo, vedė žydaitę Marią. Per Antrąjį pasaulinį karą Mulia, jo žmona Maria ir dukra Aesija buvo Vilniaus gete. Išgyvenę Antrąjį pasaulinį karą, išvyko į JAV. Ten Mulia ėmėsi verslo ir vėl praturtėjo. Mulia ir Maria mirė 1980-aisiais, o Aesija dar tebegyvena.

Mamos jauniausia sesuo Eiga gimė 1900 m. Ji taip pat išvyko į Vilnių ir apsistojo pas dėdę Mulią. Tada ji buvo ištekinta už iš anksto parinkto sutuoktinio Chaimo Kopelevič. Jis buvo turtingas, turėjo knygyną Gėlių gatvėje. Chaimas buvo sionistas 8, labai aktyvus visuomenininkas ir visuomet galvojo apie Izraelį. 1936 m. jis, Eiga ir du sūnūs imigravo į Izraelį. Tai išgelbėjo jų šeimą nuo katastrofos. Eiga ir Chaimas mirė po karo, vienas jų sūnus, Izraelis Kopelevič, tapo profesoriumi, o kitas, kurio vardo nepamenu, taip pat sėkmingai siekė mokslo ir gyveno Kalifornijoje.

Mano motinos visi broliai ir seserys buvo labai draugiški. Zdzisciote nebuvo darbų, todėl visi jie išvyko į didžiuosius miestus. Radę ten vietą, padėjo jaunesniesiems susirasti darbus ir įsikurti. Šeimos vyresnieji nusprendė, kad mano motina turėtų pasilikti Zdzisciote su savo tėvais, ir ji tam neprieštaravo. Šios sprendimo pagrindinė priežastis buvo mano motinos medicininis išsilavinimas. Baigusi licėjų, ji įstojo į medicinos seserų mokyklą kažkur Rusijoje. Motina buvo labai gera specialistė ir kartais atstodavo net gydytoją. Todėl jos broliai ir seserys nusprendė, kad ji turėtų rūpintis tėvais iki jų mirties. Prieš ištekėdama motina dirbo ligoninėje. Visi pacientai ją pažinojo ir dažnai prašydavo jos pagalbos. Būdavo ir tokių momentų, kai jai tekdavę keltis naktimis ir suteikti pagalbą. Mano motina niekam neatsisakydavo padėti.

Aš nežinau, kaip mano tėvai susitiko ir susituokė. Manau, tai buvo iš anksto suplanuota santuoka. Nepaisant amžiaus skirtumo, mama buvo penkeriais šešeriais metais vyresnė už tėvą, jie įsimylėjo vienas kitą. Tėvo tėvai greičiausiai priešinosi jų santuokai dėl amžiaus skirtumo ar dėl kitų priežasčių. Bet kokiu atveju, nei mano motina, nei jos tėvai nesisvečiuodavo Langbordų namuose nei per šventes ar gimtadienius. Tai buvo labai skirtingos šeimos: Langbordų asketiškumas, nuobodumas ir šykštumas prieš Izraelitų dosnumą ir atvirumą.

Mano tėvai susituokė 1920 m. Manau, kad vestuvės buvo pagal žydų apeigas: po chupa, su giminėmis iš abiejų pusių. Aš gimiau 1921 m., o mano brolis – 1926 m. Jį pavadino mano motinos brolio Jeshua vardu, kurį namuose vadino Ovseij ir kuris vėliau persikėlė į Ameriką ir niekada su mumis nesusisiekė. Kai buvau maža, gyvenome nuomojamuose butuose ir aš jų nepamenu. Tada mūsų šeima persikėlė pas mano motinos tėvus. Seneliams dažnai reikėjo pagalbos, nes močiutė sirgo diabetu, o senelis turėjo astmą.

Gyvenome nuostabiame mieste. Tai buvo žydų miestas tikriausia to žodžio prasme: su didinga jidiš kultūra, įvairiomis žydų institucijomis, puikiai išsilavinusiais žmonėmis, įspūdingomis asmenybėmis. Centrinėje miesto dalyje buvo gražus parkas. Dažnai ten pasivaikščiodavau su mokyklos draugais. Parke buvo lenkų mokykla ir labai graži maža stačiatikių bažnyčia. Vinguriavo maža upelė Pomaraika su vaizdingomis krantinėmis. Miesto centre daugiausia gyveno žydai, o lenkai ir baltarusiai – priemiesčiuose ir kaimyniniuose kaimuose. Prisimenu didelę vaistinę miesto centre. Ją valdė žydas, tačiau jo pavardės nepamenu. Mieste buvo kurpalių, siuvėjų ir kepėjų dirbtuvės, parduotuvės, kuriose buvo pardavinėjama gražios raštuotos moteriškos skarelės bei šaliai. Visi meistrai buvo žydai. Mažame pasaže buvo parduotuvės. Mėgdavau čia pasivaikščioti. Kai po karo sugrįžau į gimtinę, praėjus tiek daug laiko, jis pasirodė man toks mažas.

Antradieniais būdavo didžiojo turgaus dienos. Buvo smagu, kai namų šeimininkė mane ten nusivesdavo. Po to prisijungdavo mano brolis bei keli draugai, ir mes mėgdavome pasivaikščioti tarp vežimėlių, ragaudavome ir pirkdavome skanius ir sultingus vaisius, tirštą ir riebų pieną, rinkdavomės vištas ir žąsis. Ten taip pat buvo pardavinėjama kiauliena, kiaulės taukai ir rūkytos mėsos gaminiai, tačiau to mes negalėjome ragauti, nes mūsų šeima griežtai laikėsi kašruto. Kažkas grojo armonika ar ryla. Mažuose restoranėliuose, kurie priklausė žydams, buvo pardavinėjamas vynas. Vyravo linksmumas ir svaiginanti nuotaika. Netoli turgaus, viename kieme, buvo senelio Arono parduotuvė. Man patiko užsukti ten ir stebėti savo senelius, ir kaip jų prekystaliais riedėdavo dideli audinių rietimai. Parduotuvėje buvo parduodamas kartūnas, flanelė ir kitos paprastos medžiagos, jas dažniausiai pirkdavo kaimo žmonės.

Miesto centre buvo dvi sinagogos: didžioji, dviejų aukštų, kurioje lankydavosi senelis Velvlas ir senelė Lėja, ir kita mažesnė, kurioje Aronas Langbordas buvo prižiūrėtoju. Katalikų katedra buvo į šalį nuo pagrindinės aikštės. Čia iš kaimų atvykdavo lenkai su savo vežimais. Vietiniai lenkų inteligentai, policininkai, keletas gydytojų, advokatų taip pat atvykdavo čia.

Miesto pramonę sudarė medienos perdirbimo gamyklos, sūrių perdirbimo įmonės ir kitos, kurias valdė žydai. Visi žydai buvo įsitraukę į socialinį ir kultūrinį gyvenimą. Buvo puiki bendruomenė: mėgėjų dramos teatras, kuriame vaidino mano tėvas, suaugusiųjų choras ir nuostabus vaikų choras, įvairūs literatūriniai būreliai, šokių grupė ir žydų biblioteka. Mūsų miesto žydai buvo raštingi ir apsiskaitę. Jie pirko arba prenumeravo tiek žydų, tiek lenkų laikraščius.

Miesto centre buvo senelio Velvlo namas. Gerai pastatytas, bet nelabai didelis. Namų šeimininkė visada kažką gamindavo virtuvėje. Ji buvo baltarusė. Išmokė mane ir mano brolį keletą frazių jos gimtąja kalba. Tėvai su mumis ir tarpusavyje kalbėjo jidiš, nors tėtis gerai mokėjo hebrajų kalbą. Senelių namuose visada būdavo pilna žmonių, nes jie dalyvavo socialiniame darbe. Mano brolis ir aš būdavome vieni arba su šeimininke. Tėvai visada buvo užsiėmę.

Prisimenu, kaip su broliu vaikščiodavome gatve ir stebėdavome mūsų namo langus. Dviejų kambarių langai, kuriuose gyveno mūsų šeima, šviesdavo iki vėlumos. Viename iš kambarių rinkdavosi tėvo draugai ir bendražygiai sionistai. Visi jie buvo Žabotinskio 9 ryžtingų idėjų šalininkai, tačiau laikėsi demokratinės nuostatos, kad palestiniečių žemė turi būti išpirkta. Jie rinko pinigus šiam tikslui, o mano tėvas buvo už tą procesą atsakingas.

Mamos draugės susirinkdavo kitame kambaryje. Nors mano motina nepriklausė komunistų ar kitai partijai, ji laikėsi „kairiųjų“ pažiūrų. Motina buvo labai gera moteris ir manė, kad jos pareigos yra labdara ir parama. Ji rinko pinigus, kad padėtų neturtingoms nuotakoms susituokti, rūpinosi našlaičiais ir siekė užtikrinti, kad neturtingiems vaikams mokykloje būtų duodami pusryčiai.

Mūsų šeima nebuvo turtinga, buvo paprasta, kultūringa vidurinės klasės šeima. Tėvas neuždirbo daug pinigų, o motina stengėsi turėti papildomų darbų. Ji atlikdavo injekcijas ligoniams ir lankydavo pacientus. Kartą net dirbo gydytoja Tarbut žydų mokykloje, kurioje anksčiau dirbo tėvas. Motina organizavo nemokamas laisvalaikio veiklas žydų vaikams (sergantiems tuberkulioze), kurie gydėsi kurorte Novojelnoje, netoli Dyatlovo. Motiną nuolat supo daug moterų: vienišų ir našlių, jos jai padėdavo įvairiuose darbuose.

Novojelnoje gydėsi ir tėvas. Vienintelis sūnus savo šeimoje buvo ligotas ir labai rūpinosi savo sveikata. Kartais per vasaros atostogas su juo į Novojelną važiuodavau ir aš.

Mano tėvai dažnai ginčydavosi. Motina buvo tvarkinga. Ji buvo nuostabi, liekna moteris su dideliu kuodu. Ji buvo viena iš pirmųjų miesto moterų, pradėjusi darytis manikiūrą naujai atidarytame miesto salone. Mama buvo uždara ir rami, o tėvas – kūrybingas žmogus, lengvai užsiplieksdavo. Jis dažnai bendravo su žmonėmis, kurie motinai atrodė keisti. Kviesdavo juos pas save į namus, vaišindavo ir siūlydavo nakvynę. Manau, kad motina jį įtarinėdavo dėl neištikimybės. Be to, kaip dažnai pasitaiko ne tik žydų šeimose, močiutė Chaja dar pakurstydavo ugnį tarp mano tėvų nesutarimų. Ji negalėjo priprasti prie jų santuokos, kuri, jos įsitikinimu, buvo nelygiavertė. Labai bijojau tokių ginčų, kurie bet kurią akimirką galėjo įsiplieksti, ir tai buvo vienintelis dalykas, kuris apnuodijo mano vaikystę.

Dabar suprantu, kad, be jokios abejonės, mano tėvai tikrai vienas kitą mylėjo. Jie dažnai leisdavo laiką kartu su savo bendrais draugais. Pas mus dažnai užsukdavo gydytojas ir jo žmona, veterinaras, žydų kilmės teisėjas. Mano tėvai turėjo ir kitų draugų. Deja, negaliu atsiminti jų vardų. Prisimenu, kad ant stalo nebūdavo alkoholio. Svečiams pasiūlydavo arbatos, šviežiai virtos uogienės ir ką tik iškeptų pyragėlių. Tokiais atvejais ir mes, vaikai, sėdėdavome prie stalo. Senelė Lėja taip pat mumis pasirūpindavo. Dažnai eidavau į sinagogą su močiute. Ji labai mane mylėjo. Veždavosi aplankyti savo vaikų Vilniuje. Prisimenu, kad mano motinos broliai ir seserys nebuvo tuo patenkinti ir pykdavo. Gal tai buvo tiesiog pavydas dėl kitų anūkų, nes aš buvau močiutės numylėtinė.

Mūsų namas buvo tradicinis žydų namas. Kiekvieną ketvirtadienį mano tėvai lankydavosi mikvoje. Negaliu pasakyti, kad buvo labai griežtai laikomasi kašruto, tačiau būdavo atsižvelgiama į pagrindinius jo principus. Mėsa buvo perkama specialiose košerinėse parduotuvėse. Turėjome atskirus indus mėsos ir pieno produktams, pradedant nuo pjaustymo lentelių ir baigiant sidabriniais įrankiais. Kiekvieną penktadienį ruošdavomės šabui. Kruopščiai išvalydavome namus, stalą užtiesdavome balta staltiese, padėdavome sidabrines žvakides. Prisimenu, jog buvo trys žvakės. Mama buvo atsakinga už daugumos patiekalų ruošimą, svarbiausius valgius gamindavo ji pati.

Šabo išvakarėse mama vilkėdavo šventinius rūbus, liepdavo ir mums persirengti. Tėvui ir seneliui sugrįžus iš sinagogos, stalas jau būdavo padengtas. Vyriausiasis vyras palaimindavo ir vakaras prasidėdavo. Ant stalo būdavo šviežiai iškepta chala, košerinis vynas, įdaryta žuvis, daržovių troškiniai, mėsos ir vištienos patiekalai. Paprastai mama kepdavo labai gardų štrudelį su riešutais. Šeštadieniui gamindavo tokius patiekalus, kurių nereikia šildyti – tai įvairūs makaronų ir razinų patiekalai, troškiniai ir, žinoma, chulent – tradicinis šeštadienio patiekalas. Jis buvo gaminamas iš mėsos, bulvių, svogūnų ir pupelių. Penktadienį chulent nuveždavo į kepyklą ir padėdavo į dar šiltą orkaitę. Orkaitėje būdavo ir kitų kaimynų chulent. Būdavo atvejų, kai chulent netyčia sumaišydavo. Po šabo mes su tėčiu, o kartais ir aš viena, eidavome pas senelius Langbordus. Ilgai ten neužsibūdavau, močiutė pavaišindavo sausainiais ir saldainiais, o senelis duodavo pinigų ledams.

Per didžiąsias žydų šventes senelis Aronas aplankydavo mus. Prisimenu, kad jis visada ateidavo pas mus per Roš Hašaną. Tą dieną sinagogose pūsdavo šofaro ragą. Mūsų namuose padengdavo šventinį stalą. Būdavo daug saldumynų: mamos štrudelis, obuolių pyragai su medumi. Jom Kipurą tėvai praleisdavo sinagogoje. Tą dieną tėvai laikydavosi pasninko, o vaikams nereikėdavo pasninkauti. Man patikdavo kita rudeninė šventė, Sukot. Sukkah (palapinė) būdavo įrengiama kieme, ir visa mūsų šeima ten valgydavo aštuonias dienas. Senelis Aronas ateidavo pirmąją šventės dieną su palmės ir citrinmedžio šakomis ir jas papurtydavo keturiomis kryptimis. Būdama vyriausia dukra šeimoje turėdavau kartoti tam tikrus žodžius paskui senelį. Švenčiant linksmąją Simchat Tora šventę, sinagogose giedodavo giesmes, žydų mokyklose giedodavo chorai. Linksmos procesijos, išėjusios iš sinagogos, nešdavo Toros ritinį. Per šią šventę ir per Purim šventę moterys kepdavo visokiausių saldumynų. Jos taip pat gamindavo dirbtines gėles ir žiedlapius, turtingi žydai tikėjo, kad jie privalo nupirkti šiokių tokių smulkmenų labdarai.

Žiemos šventė Chanuka būdavo taip pat labai graži. Prisimenu, kad menora, susidedanti iš aštuonių žvakių, pagal seną tradiciją būdavo uždegama ir padedama ant stalo ne tik mūsų namuose, bet ir kitų žydų namuose. Atrodė, kad nuo menoros žvakių liepsnelių ant palangių žydų namuose visas miestelis linksmai mirgėdavo. Aliejuje kepdavo bulvinius blynus, spurgas, pyragėlius. Darželyje ir mokykloje mums pasakodavo istorijas apie Chanukos kilmę. Prisimenu dainą apie Chanuką: „О, Chanuka, nuostabi šventė, mes linksminsimės žaisdami ir valgydami bulvių blynus!“

Pesach buvo mano mėgstamiausia šventė. Namai būdavo ruošiami šventei, tarsi nuotaka prieš savo vestuves. Paskutinį ketvirtadienį prieš šventę visi mes eidavome prie upės ir maudydavomės. Ištuštindavome visas kišenes, kad ten nebūtų užsilikusių senų trupinių – chametc (pastaba: chametc hebrajų k., reiškia „raugą, rūgimą“). Visi šeimos nariai per šią šventę apsirengdavo naujus drabužius. Kol buvo gyvas senelis, sederis (pastaba: Pesacho vakarienė vadinama Sederiu) būdavo gražus. Jis sėdėdavo stalo gale tarp dviejų pagalvėlių, kur paslėpdavo macus. Mes su broliu turėdavome surasti macus ir paimti slapčia, kad nepastebėtų senelis.

Be gardaus šventinio maisto buvo ir privalomi Pesacho patiekalai: kiaušiniai, karčiosios žolelės, macai ir patiekalai iš macų. Mūsų namuose visada būdavo svečias, paprastai vargšas žydas. Senelis turėjo tokią tradiciją, kad kiekvienas prie stalo sėdintis asmuo turėdavo perskaityti Pesacho maldą, o mes visi giedodavome giesmes. Prisimenu vieną iš jų: „Visatoje yra tik vienas Dievas!“ Tokius žodžius kartodavome po septynis ar aštuonis kartus per sederį. Būdama vyriausia iš vaikų, aš užduodavau seneliui keturis tradicinius klausimus apie šventės kilmę. Prieš pasibaigiant sederiui, padėdavo taurę vyno pranašui Elijui. Sėdintys žmonės stebėdavo taurę, jei vynas šiek tiek sujudėdavo, tai reiškė, kad Elijas atėjo ir atsigėrė iš jos.

Pirmąjį žydišką ugdymą gavau žydiškame darželyje. Ten mums, mažiems vaikams, pasakodavo apie Izraelį, paprastai ir suprantamai aiškino sionistines idėjas. Aš jau nuo vaikystės buvau sionistė. Mes dainuodavome įvairias dainas ir šokdavome pagal jas, kaip ir bet kuriame darželyje. Miestelyje buvo trys mokyklos: lenkų mokykla, jidiš mokykla ir Tarbut. Pastarąją pradėjau lankyti būdama šešerių. Mokykla buvo pasaulietinė, bet turėjo savitas tradicijas. Mus mokė pagrindinių mūsų religijos dogmų, šio dalyko mokė mano tėvas. Pamokos vykdavo hebrajų kalba. Mokėmės žydų literatūros, daugiausia Bialiko poezijos 10. Mokėmės lenkų kalbos ir literatūros. Aš dalyvavau socialiniame gyvenime: dainavau mokyklos chore, vaidinau dramos studijos spektakliuose. Apibendrinant, mano mokyklos metai buvo nuostabūs. Prisimenu, kaip važiuodavome į mokyklą rogėmis, kurias traukdavo trys arkliai. Tai buvo lyg lenktynės rogėmis, o mes garsiai ir iš širdies traukdavome lenkiškas ir žydiškas dainas.

1932 m. baigiau Tarbut mokyklą. Tais pačiais metais nutiko įvykis, kuris pakeitė mūsų šeimos gyvenimą. Vieną liepos mėnesio naktį stipri vėjo audra atnešė kibirkštis nuo medienos gamyklos, liepsnos palietė ne tik mūsų namo šiaudinį stogą, bet persikėlė ir į miestą. Visi mes – mano tėvai, tuo metu sergantys seneliai, aš, brolis – išbėgome iš namo. Buvome vien tik su naktiniais. Tėvas liepė paeiti į šalį, iš kur stebėjome, kaip dega mūsų namas. Tą naktį pusė miesto sudegė. Sudegė ir senelio Arono namas, bet liepsna nepalietė sinagogos. Tą akimirką mūsų šeima tapo vargšais. Tą naktį praleidome pas kitus žydus, kurių namai nesudegė. Ryte miestiečiai ėmėsi gelbėti tuos, kurie nukentėjo nuo gaisro. Visiems nukentėjusiems buvo suteiktos patalpos namuose, kurie nesudegė. Žmonės davė jiems geriausias patalpas ir pasidalino kai kuriais daiktais, surinko ir pinigų, kad galėtų pradėti statyti naujus namus nukentėjusiems.

Po keleto valandų iš Vilniaus pas mus atvyko dėdė Mulia. Jis atsivežė pinigų, surinktų iš mūsų giminaičių, man pasiūlė vykti su juo tęsti mokslų didmiestyje, kadangi mūsų mieste nebuvo švietimo įstaigų. Taigi, 1933 m. vasarą aš atvykau į Vilnių ir įstojau į Tarbuto hebrajų licėjų, pavadintą pirmojo jo vadovo, įkūrėjo ir rėmėjo Daktaro Epšteino vardu. Licėjus buvo įsikūręs Pylimo gatvėje, Nr. 4, tai buvo prestižiškiausia žydų švietimo įstaiga Vilniuje. Čia mokėsi turtuolių prekybininkų, pramoninkų, advokatų ir gydytojų vaikai. Tais laikais mokestis buvo gana didelis: 15 zlotų per mėnesį. Po nelaimės mūsų šeima sau to leisti negalėjo. Mano dėdė Solomonas padengė mokestinį įnašą, jis siųsdavo pinigus tetai Miriam, o ši atnešdavo juos mums.

Aš neturėjau kur apsistoti. Mano tetos ir dėdė gyveno Vilniuje, bet jie neturėjo vietos man. Vienas iš jų turėjo tik du kambarius, o kitais – penkis, bet jame buvo studija, miegamasis, svetainė, jie galėjo mane apgyvendinti tik koridoriuje. Iki šiol stebiuosi svetimųjų šiluma ir savų giminaičių abejingumu. Mano mama atvyko į Vilnių ir išnuomojo man kambarį pas nepažįstamus žmones. Pradžioje, ilgėdamasi namų ir artimųjų, daug verkiau. Vėliau pasinėriau į mokslus, susiradau draugų ir kažkaip pripratau. Dažniausiai spalio mėnesį, per žydų šventes, grįždavau į namus, po to – trumpam į Vilnių, ir gruodį, per Chanuką, vėl būdavau namie.

1933 m. patyrėme dar vieną išbandymą: per Chanuką mirė mano senelė Lėja. Jai buvo surengtos didžiulės žydiškos laidotuvės, į kurias atvyko giminės iš Vilniaus, Varšuvos ir Rygos. Aš prisimenu senelę, pašarvotą drobulėje. Žmonės sėdėjo aplink ją perplėštomis apykaklėmis – tai buvo gedulas, kurio laikėsi tėvai ir artimieji. Mano brolis ir aš taip pat gedėjome, bet ne taip griežtai. Tada senelės kūnas, apgaubtas drobule, buvo nešamas per miestą į žydų kapines. Moterys verkdamos ėjo procesijoje, nešėsi kibirėlius rankose aukoms, labdarai.

Mamos broliai ir seserys surinko pinigų naujo namo statybai. Mama taip pat pradėjo dirbti, nes po gaisro miesto gyventojai gausiai kreipėsi į draudimo bendroves, todėl mama tapo draudimo agente. Po senelės mirties senelis Velvlis sunegalavo. Sirgo astma. Visi jo vaikai nupirko jam vasarnamį 11, Novojelnioje, o mama samdė moterį, kuri senelį prižiūrėjo.

Mano gyvenimas Vilniuje buvo gana sunkus. Pietaudavau pas vieną žydę už 30 kapeikų per dieną. Paprastai sunkiai sutardavau su šeimininkėmis: dorų ir gerų moterų būdavo retai. Mama man dažnai siųsdavo maisto siuntas: sviestą ir sūrį, šviežiai keptą duoną, vištieną, mėsą, apie 60 kiaušinių. Kartą gyvenau pas žydę, vadinamą Molčanskaja, kuri su savo dukra suvalgydavo visus mano produktus, o tada sakydavo, kad aš neturiu ką valgyti. Tada aš, springdama ašaromis, eidavau į kepyklą, kurioje visi mane pažinojo, ir nemokamai duodavo duonos. Maisto dažnai trūkdavo, todėl tekdavo eiti miegoti ir alkanai.

Licėjuje mokėsi turtingų žmonių vaikai, o aš dažnai slėpdavau savo skurdą valgydama sušelptą bandelę apsimesdama, kad jos viduje kažkas yra, nors kartais jos viduje netgi sviesto nebuvo. Vaikai, kurie žinojo apie mano skurdą, su manimi elgdavosi gražiai. Kai klasė vykdavo į ekskursiją, už kurią tekdavo mokėti, vienas iš turtingų vaikų sumokėdavo už mane, kad galėčiau vykti kartu su visais. Jie tai darė ne dėl pasipuikavimo, bet slapčia, kad aš nesužinočiau.

Turėjau savo artimą draugą Michailą Brancovskį. Jis buvo mano klasės draugas, jo tėvai buvo turtingi žmonės: Michailo tėvas užsiėmė gamyba. Draugavau ir su Michailo pusbroliais Chaya Kushnir, kuris atvyko iš provincijos ir gyveno Brancovskių namuose. Michailo mama, Dina Brancovskaja, buvo labai gera moteris. Jos namai visada buvo atviri jos sūnaus draugams. Buvo laikas, kai didelė draugų kompanija ateidavo pas Michailą ir pasilikdavo namuose iki vėlumos. Aš dažnai ten eidavau viena. Teta Dina visuomet rūpinosi, kad būčiau pamaitinta, ji suprato, kad aš nepakankamai pavalgydavau. Kartais ten ir nakvodavau, kad naktį neklaidžiočiau gatvėse.

Maša Nemze taip pat buvo mano draugė. Jos tėvai turėjo didelę kailių parduotuvę miesto centre. Jie turėjo vasarnamį ir mane pakviesdavo keletą savaičių per atostogas ten paviešėti. Per žydų šventes licėjus būdavo uždaromas ir aš vykdavau į savo gimtąjį miestelį. Vasaros atostogas praleisdavau namuose. Į namus grįždavau nenoromis, nes bijojau savo tėvų nesutarimų, kurie su laiku darėsi vis dažnesni. Bet vis dėlto aš mylėjau savo miestelį, mokyklos draugus, su kuriais maloniai praleisdavau laiką. Mama rūpindavosi manimi, kad kompensuotų tą laiką kai būdavau viena didžiuliame mieste. Ji pirkdavo audinius kreditan ir užsakydavo naujus drabužius, kad neatrodyčiau prasčiau nei mano turtingi bendramoksliai. Vasarą kartais lankydavau senelį Novojelnioje. Senelis Velvlas sunkiai sirgo. Dabar jis gyveno iš savo vaikų siųstų pinigų. Jie juo labai rūpinosi, siųsdavo jam visokius saldumynus, medų, džiovintus vaisius ir pinigus, o jam tai labai patiko.

Man atvykus, senelis atidarydavo savo brangią dėžutę ir pavaišindavo saldumynais. 1937 m. tėvai ir brolis persikėlė į naujai pastatytą namą. Mano gyvenimas Vilniuje pagerėjo. Nors nebuvau geriausia mokinė, gaunanti tik gerus pažymius, kartais gaudavau ir patenkinamus, mokytojai, žinodami situaciją, mane rekomenduodavo turtingų tėvų vaikams kaip pagalbininkę mokymuisi. Per dieną vesdavau po dvi pamokas ir galiausiai pradėjau užsidirbti šiek tiek pinigų.

Tuo metu mirė tetos Manios vyras ir mano giminaičiai nusprendė, kad turiu gyventi su ja. Pas ją persikėliau 1939 m.

Priešpaskutinėje klasėje turėjome pasirinkti vieną dviejų tolimesnio mokymosi krypčių: techninę arba humanitarinę. Aš pasirinkau humanitarinę kryptį. Dabar jaučiau didesnį pasitikėjimą savimi mūsų kompanijoje. Buvau mylima bet kurioje kompanijoje, nes niekada neskubėdavau į namus, todėl kad jų neturėjau. Be to, buvau linksma ir dėkinga. Po pamokų eidavome į kavinę, valgydavome ledus, užsukdavome pas kažką į namus arbatos arba kartais eidavome į kiną. Vilniuje buvo daug sionistinių organizacijų, įskaitant jaunimo organizacijas. Man pradėjo patikti vaikinai. Paprastai į šias organizacijas eidavau su savo vaikinu. Tai buvo organizacijos „Beitar“ 12, arba „Maccabi“ 13. Jos skyrėsi savo požiūriais, bet buvo visiškai sionistinės. Taigi mano paauglystės metai buvo kupini sionistinių idėjų. Susitikimuose dažnai kalbėdavo apie Palestiną, apie gyvenimą kibucuose. Jaunimas buvo kviečiamas vykti į Palestiną, kad statytų žydų valstybę.

1939 m. žiemą, per atostogas, kai buvau namuose, kažkas pabeldė į duris ir pranešė, kad Novojelnijoje mirė senelis Velvlis. Jis buvo atvežtas į mūsų miestą ir palaidotas taip pat, kaip ir senelė, laikantis visų tradicijų. 1939 m. baigiau licėjų. Namų nesiilgėjau, nors ir mylėjau savo gimtąjį miestą, bet nebuvau pasiruošusi ten gyventi. Nusprendžiau užsidirbti šiek tiek daugiau pinigų, kad galėčiau tęsti mokslus Užsienio kalbų institute. Buvau įdarbinta mano studijų draugės tėvų parduotuvėje, kurie prekiavo kailiais. Pradėjau dirbti buhalterio pagalbininke. Vyresnysis buhalteris, kuris mokė mane, surado kasininkės darbą parduotuvėje, kurioje buvo prekiaujama siuvimo reikmenimis, siūlais, sagomis ir pamušalais. Parduotuvė priklausė dviem prekybininkams: vienas iš jų, Friedmanas, buvo labai turtingas žmogus. 1939 m. rugpjūtį iš Prancūzijos į Vilnių atvyko Friedmano sūnus Borisas, kuris mokėsi Tekstilės kolegijoje. Nors Borisas buvo 13 metų vyresnis už mane, jis iš karto susidomėjo manimi, kuklia mergina. Jis užsukdavo į mūsų parduotuvę ir kviesdavo mane valgyti ledų arba žiūrėti filmą. Borisas buvo sionistas, „Beitaro“ narys, o tai – aktyviausia sionistinė organizacija. Jis buvo sionizmo šalininkas ir daug pasakodavo apie organizacijos idėjas. 1939 m. rugpjūtį Žabotinskis atvyko į Vilnių, Borisas mane pakvietė dalyvauti jo paskaitoje, kuri vyko Filharmonijos draugijoje. Mes ten stovėjome itin sužavėti! Jis buvo puikus oratorius. Aš niekada gyvenime nebuvau girdėjusi tokios uždegančios kalbos. Tai buvo įsimylėjimo tarp Boriso ir manęs pradžia.

Karas

1939 m. rugsėjo 1 d. Lenkiją okupavo nacistinė Vokietija, prasidėjo Antrasis pasaulinis karas. 14 Sovietų kariai įžengė į Rytų Lenkiją, kur buvo mano gimtasis miestas. Nuo to momento jis tapo sovietinės Baltarusijos miestu. Aš labai pasiilgau savo namų ir 1939 m. rugsėjį nuvykau į Zdzisciot, praktiškai neatsisveikinusi su Borisu. Mūsų miestas labai pasikeitė, žmonės buvo labai nusiminę. Prasidėjo represijos prieš sionistus ir mano tėvas buvo tikras, kad jį suims. Namuose aš buvau gal savaitę. Vieną dieną iš autobuso išlipo pritrenkiančiai apsirengęs jaunuolis ir pradėjo klausinėti, kaip pasiekti mūsų namus. Tai buvo Borisas Friedmanas. Jis pasakė, kad jo mama siuntė jį parsivežti mane atgal į Vilnių ir gyventi jų namuose. Mano tėvai nusprendė, kad man geriau bus Vilniuje, pas turtingą šeimą. Atsisveikinau su tėvais ir išvykau į Vilnių su Borisu. Apsigyvenau prabangiame bute, Vilniaus centre, nuostabiame baltame name. Vilniuje nebuvo saugu, miestas buvo grąžintas Lietuvai 15 ir vėl tapo jos sostine. Visos politinės permainos dažnai baigdavosi pogromais žydams. Vilniuje taip pat buvo mažas pogromas: niekas nežuvo, tiesiog buvo išdaužti langai ir apiplėštos žydų parduotuvės. Iki 1939 m. spalio 20 d. valstybės sienos buvo atviros. 1939 m. spalio 13 d. atvyko mama, Borisas ir aš kukliai susituokėme po chuppah, Vilniaus rabino biure, nes tuo metu sinagoga buvo uždaryta. Mama iš karto išvyko ir daugiau jos niekada nebemačiau.

Mes su Borisu labai gražiai sutardavome. Buvome pasiturintys: parduotuvėje buvo daugybė prekių. 1940 m. žiemą iš Zakopanės, Lenkijoje, Borisas parvežė nuostabių avikailių, juos pelningai pardavė. Borisas dažnai pasirodydavo viešumoje: mes eidavome į teatrą, dalyvaudavome sionistų susirinkimuose. Su vyru man nebūdavo nuobodu, sunku pasakyti, ar aš jį mylėjau. Jis buvo daug už mane vyresnis ir jam jaučiau labiau pagarbą nei meilę. Be to, buvau dar jauna ir norėjau laiką leisti su draugais, tačiau Michailas Brancovskis ir kiti vaikinai į mane žiūrėjo jau kaip į ištekėjusią moterį, labiau bendravo su kitomis merginomis. Buvę mokytojai, sutikę mane, neišreikšdavo pritarimo mano ankstyvai santuokai. Neilgai trukus pastojau. Trečiąjį nėštumo mėnesį nukritau nuo vežimo, patyriau persileidimą ir ilgai gulėjau ligoninėje.

Mūsų ramus ir turtingas gyvenimas pasibaigė 1940 m. birželio mėn., kai į Lietuvą atėjo Sovietų armija 16. Aš žinau, kad dauguma, ypač skurdžiai gyvenantys žydai, džiaugsmingai sutiko Sovietų armiją. Sovietų režimas nebuvo palankus. Netrukus iš parduotuvių išnyko prekės: duona buvo itin nekokybiška. Kurį laiką mūsų šeima dar turėjo prekių atsargų ir jų netrūko, tačiau mūsų parduotuvę nacionalizavo. Prasidėjo represijos, suėmimai ir trėmimai 17, vyro tėvai, tikėdamiesi išvengti tremties, persikėlė į mažesnį butą. Jų niekas neieškojo, bet Borisas, žinomas sionistas, turėjo slapstytis. Iš pradžių jis gyveno pas vieną iš savo draugų. Dažnai keitė vietas, bet tai irgi nebuvo saugu, nes visi jie buvo sionistai. Aš vėl pastojau ir 1941 m. balandžio 20 d. pagimdžiau sūnų. Gimdžiau privačioje ligoninėje, atskirame skyriuje, gimdymas buvo normalus. Sūnų pavadinau savo mylimo senelio Velvlo vardu.

Po gimdymo Borisas pasiėmė mane ir sūnų į Vilniaus priemiestyje išnuomotą mažą vasarnamį. Gyvenome ten visi trys kartu, kartais Borisas išeidavo į miestą pas tėvus ir parnešdavo maisto. Jis, bijodamas suėmimo, stengėsi nevaikščioti gatvėmis. Nežinojome, kas mūsų laukia, tikėjomės, kad mus suims ar ištrems. Man prasidėjo stiprus krūtų uždegimas, Borisas nuvedė į žydų ligoninę, kuri vis dar veikė, ten mane ir operavo. Po to ligoninėje lankiausi kas antrą dieną, kad pakeistų tvarsčius. Negalėjau maitinti sūnaus krūtimi, todėl pradėjome pirkti karvės pieną.

Tai buvo birželio antroji pusė. Mūsų gyvenamoji vieta buvo greta karinio oro uosto. Ankstų sekmadienio rytą, išėjusi į balkoną, pamačiau dūmus, sklindančius iš abiejų oro uosto pusių – jis degė. Prasidėjo Antrasis pasaulinis karas. Mano vyras išėjo į miestą. Visi buvo panikoje. Žmonės, dauguma komjaunuolių 18 ir komunistų, bandė palikti miestą. Birželio 22-osios vakarą iš Vilniaus traukinių stoties išvyko paskutinis traukinys. Mes su vyru niekada nebuvome aptarę, kaip bėgtume iš miesto. Pirmiausia, mes neturėjome jokių ryšių su sovietų režimu, o antra, tuo metu nežinojau, kad naciai naikina žydus. Be to, dėl mūsų mažojo sūnaus ir mano ligos – tai buvo tiesiog neįmanoma.

Birželio 23-ąją naciai įžengė į Vilnių. Po keleto valandų jie pasirodė ir mūsų gyvenvietėje. Iš pradžių buvo ramu, mums išdavė korteles, leidžiančias įsigyti tam tikrų produktų: grūdų ir duonos. Borisas išvyko į miestą, kad nupirktų produktų pagal korteles. Aš išėjau kartu su juo, nes man reikėjo keisti tvarsčius. Tarp lietuvių ir lenkų plito gandai, kad vokiečiai žudo žydus. Netgi nugirdau mūsų šeimininkę tai aptarinėjančią su savo pažįstamais. Ji vis dar man pardavinėjo pieną ir daržoves kūdikiui, nors žiūrėjo įtartinai.

Mieste jau buvo vykdomos akcijos. Kiekvieną dieną nacių okupacinė valdžia pakabindavo plakatus su taisyklėmis, apribojančiomis gyventojų teises ir gyvenimą mieste. Žydams buvo paliekama vis mažiau teisių nei kitiems. Pasirodė įsakymas atiduoti radijo aparatus, įsigaliojo komendanto valanda. Žydams judėjimas buvo dar labiau ribojamas, jiems buvo leidžiama vaikščioti tik keliu, šaligatviais vaikščioti draudžiama. Mes negalėjome eiti į restoranus ar kavines, buvo kelios specialios mažos parduotuvėlės žydams. Dabar jau turėjome nešioti geltonas žvaigždes, šių ženklų formos dažnai keitėsi, o mes turėjome suspėti pasikeisti laiku. Jei kokia nors taisyklė būdavo pažeidžiama, žmonės būdavo šaudomi.

Gatvėje lietuviai policininkai 19 sulaikydavo žmones, daugiausia vyrus, ir vesdavo į kalėjimą. Po to juos siųsdavo į Panerius 20, tuo metu Vilniaus priemiestį. Iš pradžių Vilniaus gyventojai manė, kad ten buvo kažkokia stovykla. Vėliau paaiškėjo, kad ten buvo šaudomi nepageidaujami žmonės, tokie kaip komunistai, komjaunimo nariai, o visų pirma, žydai. Nerimavau, kai Borisas išėjo į miestą aplankyti savo tėvų ir išmainyti daiktus į maisto produktus turguje. Mūsų gyvenvietėje buvo ramiau. Galima sakyti, kad iki rugsėjo vidurio tikrai nejautėme nacistinio siaubo. Rugsėjo pabaigoje lietuviai ir lenkai, gyvenę miesto centrinėse gatvėse: Strašūno, Rūdininkų ir Mėsinės, buvo išvaryti iš savo butų, kad persikeltų į kitus namus. Miesto centre buvo įsteigtas getas. Rugsėjo pradžioje į Vilniaus getą buvo perkelti žydai. Po kelių dienų policininkai atvažiavo į mūsų gyvenvietę su keletu vežimų ir liepė mums išsikraustyti. Mūsų gyvenvietėje gyveno penkios ar šešios žydų šeimos, visus mus įkėlė į vežimus. Neleido nieko pasiimti. Vienoje rankoje laikiau savo sūnų, o kitoje – pieno buteliuką, tai buvo vienintelis daiktas, kurį galėjau pasiimti su savimi.

Laimei mus atvežė į getą, nes daugelis žydų buvo tiesiai siunčiami į Panerius. Be to, mus atvežė į didįjį getą, o ne į mažąjį getą (Vilniuje buvo įsteigti du getai – didysis ir mažasis, su Stiklių gatvėje įkurtu centru). Mažasis getas veikė ne ilgiau nei du mėnesius: 1941 m. spalio pabaigoje visi to geto gyventojai buvo išsiųsti į Panerius.

Gete gyvenau su drauge, kuri anksčiau gyveno Rūdninkų gatvėje Nr. 13. Deja, neprisimenu jos pavardės. Netoliese gyveno Brancovskių šeima, norėjau užsukti pas juos, bet ten buvo per daug žmonių. Niekas neklausdavo savininkų leidimo. Žmonės tiesiog įeidavo vidun, jei buvo vietos bute, ten ir pasilikdavo. Mano draugai buvo laimingi mane matydami. Mes apsigyvenome kambaryje, kuriame buvo dar 25 žmonės. Visi gulėjome ant grindų pasidėdami drabužius vietoj pagalvių. Mano sūnus verkdavo, jis buvo alkanas ir nešvarus. Naktimis vokiečių policininkai ateidavo į kambarį su prožektoriais ir žiūrėdavo į miegančių žmonių veidus. Jei jiems kas nepatiko, juos išvesdavo į Panerius. Viena tokia akcija vyko dieną: mano sūnui ir man pavyko pasislėpti kažkur sandėlyje ir palaukti, kol naciai rinko vaikus. Aš laikiau užspaudusi burną savo sūnui, kad nepradėtų verkti. Tie, kuriems tą dieną nepavyko pasislėpti, buvo sušaudyti. Palaipsniui kambaryje žmonių sumažėjo: kai kurie buvo išsiųsti į Panerius, kiti rado ramią ir patogesnę pastogę.

Boriso tėvai, jo vyresnysis brolis su žmona ir dvejų metų dukra gyveno gete Strašūno gatvėje, mes persikraustėme pas juos. Namas nebuvo šildomas ir vaikai iškart pradėjo sloguoti. Velvlas susirgo plaučių uždegimu. Tada Borisas ir jo tėvas pagamino krosnį su kaminu pro langą. Sūnui kiek pagerėjo. Aš vis dar negaliu suprasti, kaip tai įvyko. Netrukus Boriso brolis ir jo žmona nusprendė palikti getą ir vykti į Ašmeną Baltarusijoje, kur jie turėjo draugų. Savo dukrą Sofiją paliko mums tikėdamiesi ją paimti su savimi, kai tik įsikurs. Juos sulaikė per siaubingą pogromą Ašmenoje ir nužudė. Jų dukra liko pas mus. Dabar turėjau du vaikus.

Borisas pradėjo dirbti geležinkelyje, vėliau statybose. Jo tėvas taip pat dirbo prie kažkokio objekto. Jie prisitvirtino mažus maišelius prie savo drabužių ir namo atnešdavo šiek tiek maisto: gabalėlį duonos, porą bulvių, morkų kūdikiui. Sudėtingiausia buvo maitinti vaikus. Duonos ir grūdų gaudavome pagal maisto korteles, vaikams virdavome košes. Neturėjome nei riebalų, nei vieno mėsos gabalėlio ar sviesto. Vaikai silpo ir buvo apatiški. Mano sūnus verkdavo, dėl neįprasto maisto ir bado jam skaudėdavo pilvą.

Gete buvo Žydų taryba 21, sudaryta iš gerbiamų ir turtingų žydų. Taryboje buvo keli skyriai: vienas jų paskirstydavo darbus, kitas – bendruomeninis, teikiantis apgyvendinimą ir sveikatos priežiūrą – gete buvo net maža ligoninė, buvo ir aprūpinimo skyrius bei kultūros skyrius. Mes žinojome, kad geriau jau nepapulti į ligoninę, nes jos pacientai buvo iškart siunčiami į Panerius. 1942 m. vyko akcija, kai visi ligoninės pacientai ir personalas buvo sušaudyti.

Aš beveik nieko nežinojau apie tai, kas vyko gete, nes nuolat buvau su savo vaikais. Tik kartą per savaitę nueidavai į dirbtuves pasiimti darbų į namus: adžiau kojines, pirštines, taisiau drabužius. Mano vyras mane saugojo kaip vaiką, jis man nieko nepasakojo, kad nesirūpinčiau. Borisas gavo darbo leidimą – geltonos spalvos popierių. Jis įrašė savo šeimos narius: motiną, tėvą, mane ir abu vaikus. Tuo metu pas mus gyveno ir mano teta Mania. Ji buvo vieniša, jos sūnus Izraelis buvo žuvęs per vieną iš pirmųjų akcijų. Borisas teigė, kad teta Mania taip pat yra jo artima giminaitė. Po poros mėnesių Mania nebegrįžo po vienos iš akcijų, paaiškėjo, kad ją išvežė į Aušvicą.

Kartą išleido įsakymą, kuriuo buvo nurodoma, jog žydai turi atvykti į Judenratą, Žydų tarybą, su savo asmens kortelėmis. Tai buvo viena baisiausių dienų gete, lijo kaip iš kibiro, o žmonės stovėjo kieme prie Žydų tarybos. Ten buvo du maži parkai. Žmonės su geltonais pažymėjimais buvo siunčiami į vieną parką, o su baltais, išduodamais senyviems ir nebedirbantiems žmonėms, buvo siunčiami į kitą parką. Žmonės dejavo ir verkė, tie, kurie turėjo baltus pažymėjimus, buvo siunčiami į Panerius. Hitlerio kariai ir policininkai atskirdavo šeimas: senelius ir vaikus siuntė tiesiai į mirtį... Aš visą dieną laikiau savo kūdikį. Mums pasisekė, kad buvome jauni ir dar galėjome tarnauti Reichui. Tų vargšų šauksmas išliko mano širdyje. Po kurio laiko Borisas man pasakė, kad jis tarnausiąs policijoje. Jis man nieko nepaaiškino, tik pasakė: „Aš turiu padaryti tai, ką turiu padaryti“. Tai buvo 1942-ieji.

Sunku pasakoti mūsų gyvenimą gete, kalbėti apie nacių vykdytus žiaurumus ir nuolatinę artėjančio sušaudymo baimę. Žmogus gali prisitaikyti prie visko ir man tuo metu atrodė, kad mums neįmanoma gyventi kitaip. Žmonės stengėsi pagerinti savo gyvenimą. Gete buvo atidarytos dvi slaptos mokyklos, kuriose buvo mokomi vaikai, veikė turtinga žydų biblioteka, mėgėjiškas teatras. Čia buvo pastatyti nuostabūs Šolomo Aleichemo 22 ir kitų dramaturgų spektakliai. Keisčiausia tai, kad netgi Hitlerio kariai laisvalaikiu lankydavosi tuose pasirodymuose. Jie užjautė personažus ir net verkdavo žiūrėdami jų kančias. Atrodė, kad žmogiški jausmai jiems nebuvo svetimi, bet juos užmiršdavo, kai turėdavo vykdyti savo komendanto įsakymus.

Gete buvo ir mėgėjiškas choras, kartais aš nueidavau į jo repeticijas. Kai kurie geto jaunimo nariai laikėsi nuomonės, kad nepadoru linksmintis, lankytis teatre, dainuoti chore. Jie kabindavo plakatus su šūkiais, tokiais kaip „Žmonės, nedainuokite kapinėse“ ir t. t. Aš buvau optimistė ir maniau, kad visos priemonės yra priimtinos, kad žmonės galėtų jaustis visaverčiais ir bent jau patirti kokį nors malonumą.

Mano vyras buvo aktyvus pogrindžio organizacijos, įsteigtos gete, narys. Jis tai slėpė nuo manęs, apie tai sužinojau daug vėliau. 1942 m. sausį buvo įsteigta partizanų organizacija, jai vadovavo Icchakas Vitenbergas. Ją sudarė komunistai, sionistai, bundistai 23 ir žmonės, kurie prieš karą buvo apolitiški. Visi jie buvo vieningi susidūrę su bendru priešu – nacizmu. Borisas ir jo draugas Beitaras Glazmanas taip pat prisijungė prie organizacijos. Nuo pat pradžių pasipriešinimo nariai įsitraukė į diskusiją, kurią pradėjo Vitenbergas. Jis manė, kad gete reikia organizuoti kovą su okupantais, bet kai kurie žmonės, įskaitant ir Borisą, tam prieštaravo. Jie manė, kad reikia žmones išvesti į mišką ir ten organizuoti partizanų būrį kovai už geto gyventojų išlaisvinimą.

Borisas tapo savo paties pasipriešinimo organizacijos įkūrėju, kurios pagrindinis uždavinys buvo išvesti jaunimą į mišką, mokyti juos naudotis ginklais ir tik tada pradėti kovoti su naciais. Jis netgi įtraukė žmones, tarnavusius policijoje, ir ten įsteigė pogrindinę pasipriešinimo grupę. Pirmiausia reikėjo gauti ginklų, organizacijos nariai juos pirkdavo iš korumpuotų lietuvių policininkų ir kažkokiu būdu juos atnešdavo į getą. Grupė, vadovaujama Boriso, įsitraukė į ryšių už geto ribų užmezgimą ir surado ryšininkus, kurie pažadėjo išvesti žmones į mišką. Gete sklido gandai apie grupes žmonių, keliaujančių į mišką. Tada geto policijos viršininkas Gensas išleido įsakymą, kuriame buvo teigiama, kad geto šeimos, kurių nariai paliko getą ir įstojo į partizanų būrius miške, kitą dieną bus išvesti į Panerius ir sušaudyti. Žinojau apie tą įsakymą, bet maniau, kad manęs jis nepalies, nes dar nežinojau apie savo vyro veiklą.

1943 m. balandžio 6 d. vakare Borisas sugrįžo namo iš darbo ir pasakė, kad anksti ryte išvyks į mišką. Jis man nepasakojo jokių smulkmenų, tik pasakė, kad neturi kitos išeities. Jis tikėjo, kad būdamas miške galės išgelbėti visus: mane, vaikus ir tėvus. Borisas pasakė, kad jo žmonės ateis pas mane ir duos tolesnes instrukcijas. Mano vyras netgi neatsisveikino su tėvais, tik pabučiavo mane ir vaikus (giminaičių dukrytė Sofija mums buvo kaip tikra duktė) ryte ir išėjo. Kartu su juo Baltarusijos link išvyko dvylika žmonių, kiti prie jų prisijungė kelyje.

Ryte kažkas pasibeldė į duris ir išsivedė visą mūsų šeimą. Nuvedė į geto kalėjimą Strašūno gatvėje. Mus uždarė vienoje kameroje ir pasakė, kad vakare nuveš į Panerius ir nužudys. Žinojau, kad kiekvieną dieną, 11.30 val., ten buvo siunčiami visi nepageidaujami žmonės. Niekada nepamiršiu tos baisios dienos kalėjime. Be mūsų šeimos ten buvo daugybė žmonių: tokių, kurie atnešdavo maisto į getą ar bandžiusių patekti į jį per tvorą, arba sąmoningai sabotavusių darbą. Tačiau mūsų šeimos atvejis buvo neįprastas. Boriso tėvai iš namų pasiėmė šiek tiek maisto, buteliuką su košele vaikams. Vaikai verkė, kameroje tvyrojo baisus tvaikas. Mūsų niekas nevedė į tualetą, mes turėjome tai daryti kameroje. Mano mintys buvo sutelktos tik į artėjančią naktį ir artėjančią mirtį, kuri reiškė mūsų kankinimų pabaigą.

Vakaras buvo dar sunkesnis. Vaikai buvo mieguisti, bet mes nusprendėme, kad neturime jiems leisti užmigti, nes greitai pasakys išeiti. Aš akimirkai užsimiršau ir susapnavau, kad stoviu prie sušaudytų žmonių duobės kranto. Staiga durys atsivėrė: „Friedmanai, išeikite!“ Mes išėjome. Tai buvo šaltas balandis, bandžiau apmuturiuoti vaikus savo striuke. Mus nevedė link išėjimo, iš kurio žmonės buvo siunčiami į Panerius, o stūmė gatve. Atėjome į kiemą Strašūno gatvėje Nr. 1, mus nuvedė į rūsį ir liepė tyliai sėdėti.

Ryte atėjo policininkai. Tai buvo mano vyro pogrindžio bendražygiai, mano vyro ginklo broliai, kurie mus išgelbėjo. Aš manau ir visada atvirai sakau, kad Gensas kažkaip su tuo buvo susijęs. Jo vaidmuo buvo siaubingas ir tragiškas. Taip, jis įvykdė nacių nurodymus. Jei kas nors kitas būtų buvęs jo vietoje, jis būtų pasielgęs taip pat. Aš nežinau kaip, bet Gensas žinojo, kad jo policininkai mus neišvežė į žudynių vietą, bet išgelbėjo mus. Aš nemanau, kad jis išgelbėjo tik mūsų šeimą. Mes prabuvome toje patalpoje apie dešimt dienų. Vaikinai reguliariai atnešdavo mums maisto, vandens ir kai kurių smulkmenų vaikams. Kai Boriso pabėgimas gete buvo užmirštas ir kilo naujų sunkumų, mus sugrąžino atgal, į tą patį butą. Niekas nieko neklausinėjo, o mes pradėjome gyvenimą be Boriso.

Iš Boriso nebuvo jokių žinių. Dvylikos kitų žmonių, kurie su juo išvyko, giminaičiai taip pat nieko nežinojo. Aš nežinojau nei ką daryti, nei į ką kreiptis, nežinojau, kas yra draugas, o kas priešas. Boriso tėvas vėl ėjo dirbti, jo mama ir aš likome su vaikais. Taip mes pragyvenome tris mėnesius. Liepą mirė Vitenbergas. Tai buvo įrodymas, kad Borisas buvo teisus, geto kova buvo pasmerkta. Dėl to jie baigė nesėkmingai. Naciai sužinojo apie pasipriešinimą, Vitenbergas buvo pasislėpęs. Jis pasidavė, nes nacistai grasino sunaikinti getą. Rugsėjo pradžioje vaikinai atėjo pas mane. Jie mane nuvedė į Ašmenos gatvę, kurioje buvo geto štabas. Tai buvo Boriso bendražygiai ir draugai, kurie būdami laisvi ir toliau traukė žmones iš geto. Tą kartą jis paprašė išvesti mane ir man buvo liepta sutikti. Pirmas klausimas, kurį uždaviau, buvo: „Ar galiu pasiimti vaikus su savimi?“ Buvo pasakyta, kad negaliu, be to, neturėsiu galimybės atsisveikinti nei su jais, nei su Boriso tėvais ir turėčiau išeiti iš karto. Man paaiškino, kad žmonės pogrindžio organizacijoje žinojo, jog getas bus sunaikintas per kelias dienas, o būdama laisvėje galėčiau, galbūt, išlaisvinti ir savo vaikus. Jei pasilikčiau gete, tikrai mirčiau kartu su kitais.

Susidūriau su baisia dilema: mirti kartu su vaikais arba išeiti ir bandyti juos išgelbėti. Sutikau palikti getą. Po keleto valandų sutemo. Per tą laiką man pavyko susisiekti su Michailu Brancovskiu ir jo draugais. Jiems taip pat buvo pasiūlyta išeiti su manimi. Vakare išėjome iš geto, mus lengvai išleido pro vartus: prie geto įėjimo budintys policininkai buvo papirkti. Keliavome per Vilnių įsivaizduodami, jog esame nerūpestinga kompanija. Kalbėjomės lenkiškai, juokavome ir netgi darydavome karvės akis policininkams, kurie saugojo tiltą per Nemuną. Ėjau lydima vaikinų, jaučiau liūdesį ir nusivylimą. Buvo jau tamsu, kai palikome miestą. Kelias valandas keliavome pėsčiomis ir patekome į pasalą. Vaikinai šaudė, mane lengvai sužeidė į koją. Jie sutvarstė mane ir keliavome toliau. Rytą jau buvome miške.

Čia susitikome su dviem žmonėmis, kurie išvyko anksčiau. Iš jų sužinojau apie savo vyro mirtį. Grupė, su kuria jis paliko getą, buvo nusiųsta į Vakarų Ukrainą. Jie kovojo nelygioje kovoje ir žuvo. Man buvo labai sunku, neprisimenu, kaip praėjo mano pirmosios dienos miške. Per vieną dieną praradau viską: vyrą, kurį tikėjausi pamatyti, savo vaikus – sūnų ir dukterėčią, mano vyro tėvus. Buvau labai išsekusi, būdama gana aukšta, svėriau tik 45 kilogramus. Po keleto dienų žmonės, atėję iš geto, pasakė, kad visi jo gyventojai buvo sunkvežimiais išvežti į Panerius. Supratau, kad mano vaikai yra mirę.

Netrukus prie mūsų prisijungė lietuviai ir lenkai. Tai buvo komjaunuoliai, pabėgę iš kaimų, esančių šalia miško. Michailas Brancovskis ir jo draugai nusprendė ir toliau ieškoti žydų, kad būtų galima bendromis pastangomis suformuoti žydų partizanų būrį. Tiek morališkai, tiek fiziškai aš buvau per silpna kur nors eiti: mano sužeistą koją vis dar skaudėjo.

Iš mūsų grupės taip pat buvo formuojamas partizanų būrys, tai buvo ne žydų, o tarptautinis būrys. Aš ir kita žydė Čiužaja likome būryje. Pradėjome dirbti įvairius namų ruošos darbus: gaminome maistą, skalbėme ir darėme kitus reikalingus darbus. Netrukus iš mūsų grupės buvo suformuotas didelis būrys, sudarytas iš 150 žmonių. Jį vadino „Už Tėvynę“. Būrio vadovas buvo Ušakovas, o komandos vadovas – Afoninas. Būrys sureguliavo ryšius su neokupuota teritorija. Mus pasiekdavo lėktuvai, išmetantys ginklus, maisto produktus, vaistus. Į būrį buvo siunčiami gydytojai ir chirurgai. Vaikinai išvykdavo kovoti prie geležinkelio. Aš nedalyvavau toje kovoje, man buvo pavesta rūpintis virtuve. Vėliau būryje buvo įkurta ligoninė, pradėjau ten dirbti padedant slaugytojoms ir gydytojams. Su manimi labai gražiai elgėsi dauguma iš jų.

Žinoma, antisemitų buvo visur, net ir būryje. Būdavo laikų, kai mane įžeisdavo dėl to, kad esu žydė. Vadas visada mane užstodavo. Jis į mane žiūrėjo kaip į savo dukrą. Visada prižiūrėdavo, kad geriau pavalgyčiau. Jei jis gaudavo vištos ar mėsos, pats nueidavo į virtuvę ir liepdavo pamaitinti Chasią. Aš buvau jauna, todėl, būdama gryname ore ir valgydama būrio maistą, priaugau svorio.

Ankstyvą 1944 m. pavasarį į būrį atėjo trisdešimt vaikinų, buvusių Leningrado vidaus reikalų ministerijos instituto studentų. Jie buvo suimti ir išvežti į Vokietiją kaip karo belaisviai. Kelionės metu per Lietuvos teritoriją vaikinai sugebėjo pabėgti. Jiems pasisekė sutikti gerų žmonių, kurie pasakė, kaip pasiekti mūsų būrį. Labai užjaučiau juos – vaikinai buvo alkani ir išsekę – priminė mane, kai pirmą kartą atėjau į mišką. Vakare, sėdint prie laužo, vaikinai pasakojo apie save. Vienas iš jų, aukštas ir įspūdingas, pažvelgė į mane ir tarė: „Ši ponia bus mano žmona!“ Jo vardas buvo Michailas Spanerfligas, jis buvo dvejais trejais metais vyresnis už mane, kilęs iš Vinitsos, dabar - tai Ukraina. Mes juokavome, prisiminėme prieškario gyvenimą, dainavome sovietinius šlagerius, nes truputį mokėjau rusiškai (po poros mėnesių pradėjau gana gerai kalbėti rusiškai). Sekančią dieną vaikinai buvo išsiųsti į kitą būrį, kur buvo formuojama šaudymo grupė.

1944 m. vasarą sovietinė armija artėjo prie Lietuvos. Mes laukėme išvadavimo. Nors nedalyvavau mūšiuose, aš jaudinausi dėl vaikinų, kurie išvykdavo į karines operacijas. Ne visi jie sugrįžo, ypač gailėjau tų, kuriuos būdavau mačiusi prieš jų mirtį. Liepos 12-osios naktį staiga įjungė garsiakalbius ir mes išgirdome būrio vado kalbą Lietuvos būriams – visi partizanų būriai turėjo prieiti prie Vilniaus kelių. Negalėjome patikėti, kad sulaukėme tokios dienos.

Ankstų liepos 12-osios rytą mes išvykome, o 13-ąją stovėjome netoli Vilniaus. Ten sutikome visus partizanų būrius, veikusius Lietuvos teritorijoje. Mačiau Michailą Brancovskį. Jis mane supažindino su savo sužadėtine Fania. Paaiškėjo, kad Miša manęs ieškojo dvi dienas. Vieną akimirką pamačiau Michailą Spanerfligą, mes pasikalbėjome ir išsiskyrėme. Tada visi partizanų būriai sekė sovietų armiją į mano mylimiausią miestą Vilnių. Koks jis buvo aptriušęs ir apgriuvęs! Mes žengėme Pylimo gatve ir pasiekėme Vinco Kudirkos (buvusią Černiachovskio) aikštę. Vakare buvo fejerverkų šou ir šventė, skirta Vilniaus sostinės išlaisvinimui. Negaliu žodžiais išsakyti tos akimirkos jausmų: tai buvo laimė, džiaugsmas kartu su praradimo kartėliu.

Pokaris

Mūsų būrys buvo išformuotas. Lietuviai ir lenkai grįžo į savo kaimus, o kai kurie vaikinai buvo siunčiami į frontą. Pora žmonių, kurie neturėjo kur eiti, įskaitant mane, užėmė vieną iš negyvenamų namų. Po kelių dienų gatvėje sutikau savo dėdę Mulią. Labai džiaugiausi sutikusi ką nors iš savo šeimos narių. Dėdė pasakė, kad jis ir jo šeima buvo atskiroje stovykloje, esančioje Subačiaus gatvėje Vilniuje, netoli nuo geto. Dėdė turėjo laimės sutikti vokietį, kuris širdyje nebuvo nacis. Jis įspėjo dėdę apie stovyklos ir geto likvidavimą, Muliai ir jo šeimai padėjo jo draugas lenkas ir jiems pavyko pabėgti iš miesto. Lenkas priėmė dėdės Mulios šeimą, ir jie sulaukė išlaisvinimo. Dėdė Mulia priėmė mane, persikėliau į jo šeimos nuomojamą butą. Teta Ženia ir Asia labai apsidžiaugė pamačiusios mane. Joms papasakojau, ką teko patirti, kaip žuvo Borisas.

Vis dar turėjau mažytę viltį, kad mano vaikus kas nors išgelbėjo ir pradėjau klausinėti žmonių, gyvenančių šalia geto, bet niekas nematė mano Velvlo ir Sofijos. Nepraradau vilties ir nusprendžiau, kad eisiu iš kaimo į kaimą, ieškosiu getą išgyvenusių žmonių ir klausiu, galbūt jie kažką žinos apie mano vaikus. Nieko nežinojau apie savo tėvus ir brolį, taip pat tikėjausi ką nors sužinoti apie juos.

Po kiek daugiau nei dešimties dienų aikštėje netikėtai sutikau Michailą Spanerfligą. Buvo malonu susitikti. Žodis po žodžio ir mes išsikalbėjome apie pirmąsias mūsų susitikimo minutes štabe. Michailas pasakė, kad jis ir kiti vaikinai, turintys aukštąjį išsilavinimą, buvo priskirti Vidaus reikalų ministerijai. Jis gyveno pas savo draugą. Jis taip pat pridūrė, kad vietoje lovos miegojo ant vakarienės stalo. Tada prasidėjo bombardavimas ir mes nusileidome į oro gynybos slėptuvę.

Pakviečiau Michailą pas mus į svečius. Tą dieną mes turėjome nuostabius pietus: dėdė iš kažkur gavo bulvių. Sėdėjome prie stalo ir Michailas mums papasakojo apie save. Jis buvo iš Vinicos. Jo tėvai ir jaunesnysis brolis liko ten, o Michailas nežinojo, kas jiems atsitiko. Mano artimiesiems jis labai patiko ir pasiliko ilgiau. Komendanto valanda prasidėjo 22 val. ir Michailas negalėjo jau eiti namo. Dėdė jį įkalbino pasilikti ir Michailas praleido naktį tamsiame tuščiame kambaryje. Ryte Michailas išėjo ir kurį laiką nesimatėme. Po dviejų savaičių Michailas atėjo pas mus su dovanomis, jis gavo maisto kortelių 24. Pradėjome dažniau susitikinėti ir greitai įsimylėjome. Tai buvo tikra meilė, kurios aš anksčiau nepatyriau.

1945 m. žiemą mano brolis Jošua rado mus Vilniuje. Jis man papasakojo apie baisią tėčio mirtį vienoje iš pirmųjų akcijų Diatlove – naciai sušaudė miestelio žydų inteligentiją. 1942 m. mano mama mirė nuo dėmėtosios šiltinės gete. Senelis Aronas ir senelė Chaja buvo sušaudyti sinagogoje 1942 m. Mano broliui pavyko palikti getą ir pabėgti į mišką. Mes visi šventėme Pergalės dieną džiaugdamiesi išlikusiais ir pagerbdami mūsų žuvusius artimuosius ir draugus.

Tuo metu prasidėjo kampanija, skirta buvusių lenkų piliečių imigracijai į Lenkiją. Kiekvienas Lietuvos pilietis, kuris prieš karą gyveno Lenkijos teritorijoje, turėjo teisę imigruoti į Lenkiją, nepriklausomai nuo savo tautybės. Traukinių stotyje laukė traukiniai, kelionė buvo nemokama. Mano artimieji: dėdė Mulia, jo šeima ir mano brolis, nusprendė išvykti. Jie tikėjosi per Lenkiją patekti į Izraelį arba JAV. Artimieji bandė mane įkalbinti kartu su jais išvykti, aš negalėjau priimti tokio sprendimo. Viena vertus, mane viliojo mintis išvykti į Izraelį, visą gyvenimą svajojau apie Palestiną, kita vertus, vis dar tikėjausi ką nors sužinoti apie savo sūnų.

Be to, aš mylėjau Michailą Spanerfligą, o ir Michailas nusprendė likti gyventi Vilniuje. Ieškodamas savo tėvų sužinojo, kad jie mirė Vinicos gete, o jo brolis arba žuvo kare, arba buvo dingęs be žinios. Su Michailu mes nebuvome labai artimi, bet negalėjau įsivaizduoti savo gyvenimo be jo. 1945 m. rugpjūčio mėn., kai mano artimieji nusprendė išvykti, Michailas buvo Maskvoje. Tuo metu jis buvo puikus sportininkas ir dalyvavo sportininkų parade Maskvoje. Atsisveikinusi su savo šeima, Vilniuje likau viena.

Po keleto dienų Michailas sugrįžo iš Maskvos, jis iš karto atėjo į mūsų butą, kurį man paliko dėdė Mulia. Po keleto dienų mus iš jo išvarė. Išėjo taip, kad mes, pirmieji atvykę į išlaisvintą miestą, kuriame buvo apstu tuščių butų ir namų, likome benamiai. Mano vyro kolega buvo perkeltas į Šiaulius (miestą už 230 km į šiaurę nuo Vilniaus) ir Michailas nusipirko jo butą už litrą degtinės. Tai buvo šaltas ir drėgnas dviejų kambarių butas miesto centre, tačiau jame buvome labai laimingi.

1945 m. lapkričio mėn. mes susituokėme rajono civilinės metrikacijos biure. Buvome visiški vargšai: turėjau sijoną, švarką ir seną paltą. Mano vyras turėjo vienerias uniformos kelnes. Kartą Michailas paskolino jas savo draugui, kuris ruošėsi šokti, o šis išmainė jas į alkoholį. Ryte Michailas neturėjo kuo apsirengti. Neprisimenu, kaip mes išsprendėme tą problemą. Viena tikrai temdė mūsų laimę – tai, kai suvokiau, kad mano mažasis sūnus miręs. Man teko pradėti naują gyvenimą, gimdyti vaikus ir gyventi su vyru, kurį mylėjau. Kaip ir daugumai moterų gete, kurį laiką man buvo dingusios mėnesinės. Tai įvyko 1942 m., tik vėliau, 1946 m., pagimdžiau sūnų. Jį pavadinau Velvlu. Kaip savo mirusį sūnų.

Liūdesys visą laiką buvo su manimi. Sūnus, būdamas dešimties mėnesių, susirgo meningitu. Beveik visi vaikai, kurie buvo gydomi toje ligoninėje, mirė. Tik Velvlas ir dar vienas berniukas išgyveno. Mūsų sūnus labai ilgai sirgo, ilgai nepradėjo vaikščioti, o kalbėti pradėjo tik ketverių metų. Mano sūnus negalėjo mokytis ir vos baigė pradžios mokyklą. Supratome, kad jam teko sunki dalia. Nusprendėme rizikuoti ir 1954 m. pagimdžiau mergaitę. Pavadinome ją Sofija, kaip mano įvaikintą mažąją dukterėčią, kuri žuvo gete. Mergaitė buvo stipri ir išsivysčiusi.

Mūsų gyvenimas po truputį gerėjo, vyras gavo paaukštinimą darbe. Nepaisant to, kad jis užėmė gana aukštas pareigas, buvo rajono milicijos skyriaus vadovas, jis nepatyrė visų tų rūpesčių 25, kurie žydams kilo 1940-ųjų pabaigoje ir 1950-ųjų pradžioje. Daugelis mano vyro draugų žydų, kurie buvo partizanai, buvo atleisti ar net suimti. Mano vyras išgyveno šį išbandymą, jis netgi nenorėjo stoti į partiją, nors primygtinai buvo rekomenduojama. Vis dėlto jį paaukštino ir Michailas tapo pulkininku. 1960-ųjų pradžioje jam paskyrė dviejų kambarių butą. Mes abu išgyvenome, kai Izraelis kariavo Šešių dienų karą 26. Net negalvojome apie emigraciją, nes mano vyras buvo tikras sovietinis žmogus, nors ir nebuvo komunistų partijos narys.

Po karo aš dirbau buhaltere ryšių departamente. Tada Michailas Brancovskis, kuris buvo batų gamyklos vyriausiasis inžinierius, pasiūlė man darbą. Pirmiausia buvau specialistė, nustatanti normas, tada dirbau planavimo skyriuje. Dirbdama gamykloje baigiau kursus ir mane paaukštino iki žmogiškųjų išteklių ir atlyginimo skyriaus vadovės. Labai aktyviai dalyvavau profesinės sąjungos veikloje, mėgėjiškuose pasirodymuose, dainavau chore nepriklausomai nuo to, kokias pareigas užėmiau.

Michailas buvo nuostabus sportininkas. Jis buvo tarp penkių geriausių plaukikų ir dažnai dalyvaudavo varžybose. Buvo toks gražus, jam taip tiko uniforma. Kai eidavome pasivaikščioti, į teatrą ar kino teatrą, žmonės visada atsisukdavo pasižiūrėti į mus. Mūsų gyvenimas buvo gana geras. Namų šeimininkė rūpinosi namų ruošos darbais, man nebereikėjo jų daryti. Mes gyvenome pasiturinčiai, vyras ir aš neblogai uždirbdavome. Vasarą važiuodavome atostogauti į Krymą ir Kaukazą. Turėjome daug draugų, bet ištikimiausi mūsų draugai buvo Michailas ir Fania Brancovskiai. Savaitgaliais dažnai praleisdavome laiką kartu, važiuodavome iškylauti arba į paplūdimį.

1967-ųjų rugsėjis buvo itin šiltas. Sekmadienį, rugsėjo 10 dieną, susitarėme kartu su draugais eiti į paplūdimį. Michailas jau kurį laiką skundėsi, kad jam skauda koją, bet, būdamas iš prigimties sveikas, į gydytojus kreiptis nenorėjo. Anksti ryte mano vyras išėjo pasiimti laikraščio, o sugrįžęs pasiskundė, kad jam sunku kvėpuoti. Aš netgi pyktelėjau ant jo, nes norėjau dar bent kiek pailsėti. Jis atsigulė ir paprašė pakviesti gydytoją. Iškviečiau greitosios pagalbos automobilį ir nubėgau pas kaimynystėje gyvenusį kariuomenės gydytoją, taip pat paskambinau mūsų draugui, medicinos profesoriui. Greitosios pagalbos automobilis atvyko, gydytojai suleido injekcijas ir išvyko, o Michailas užmigo. Kai profesorius jį apžiūrėjo, pasivedė mane į svetainę ir pasakė: „Chasia, Miša mirė!“ Jis pradėjo man kažką aiškinti apie trombus ir plaučių arterijos trombozę. Aš nesupratau, kaip žmonės gali taip numirti. Apkabinau Michailą ir pradėjau bučiuoti jo atmerktas ir gyvai atrodančias akis. Negalėjau patikėti, kad jis mirė, mirtis negalėjo būti tokia, ji negalėjo ir neturėjo teisės įsiveržti į mano gyvenimą. Neprisimenu, kaip praleidau pirmąsias dienas po vyro mirties. Brancovskių šeima buvo visada šalia manęs, o Michailas Brancovskis pasilikdavo su manimi naktimis. Michailas buvo iškilmingai palaidotas kareivių kapinėse.

Aš likau viena su dviem vaikais ir 800 rublių taupomojoje sąskaitoje – tai buvo vienintelis mūsų turtas. Neturėjome nei automobilio, nei vasarnamio, beveik mėnesį buvau kaip nesava. Draugai užeidavo pas mane ir kažką pasakodavo, netgi pamaitindavo vaikus. Gyvenimas yra gyvenimas. Savo vaikams buvau ne tik motina, bet ir tėvas. Visą savo gyvenimą paaukojau jiems. Mes gana gerai gyvenome, vaikams buvo skirtos pašalpos. Nors buvau jauna ir graži moteris, bet vyrai manęs netraukė. Nenorėjau rūpintis savo gyvenimu ir neturėjau tam laiko, nebeidavau nei į kiną, nei į teatrą. Draugai man teikė džiaugsmą, galiu nuoširdžiai prisipažinti, kad Brancovskiai man buvo kaip giminės, su jais dalinausi ir skausmą, ir džiaugsmą. Michailas padėjo mano dukrai įstoti į institutą, mano sūnus kurį laiką studijavo vakariniame skyriuje, o vėliau dirbo įvairius darbus.

Sofija universitete baigė Ekonomikos fakultetą. Mano vaikai tuo pačiu metu užaugo ir susirado poras. Teko pasikeisti butą, Michailas padėjo. Vaikai įsigijo savus butus, o aš likau savo vieno kambario bute. Mano vaikams nepasisekė asmeniniame gyvenime: Velvlas susituokė su žydaite Eugenija iš Moldovos. Iš pradžių viskas buvo gana gerai, jie susilaukė dukros Marinos. Bet... tik motinai reikalingas sergantis vyras. Eugenija išsiskyrė su Velvlu ir išvyko į Izraelį su dukra. Pasirodė, jog mano sūnus buvo išvytas iš buto, dabar jis gyvena su manimi vieno kambario bute ir miega ant sulankstomos lovos virtuvėje. Dažnai pabendraujame su jo buvusia šeima. Mano marti ir anūkė dažnai parašo mums laiškus.

Sofija susituokė su vaikinu, pavarde Katzas. Jie turėjo sūnų, pavadintą Michailu savo senelio garbei, Sofija bandė išsaugoti šeimą, kaip ir bet kuri kita moteris. Kai jos vyras įkalbėjo ją išvykti į JAV, ji išvyko su juo 1980 m. tikėdama, kad bendri sunkumai sutvirtins šeimą. Tik geroms ir draugiškoms šeimoms pavyksta sustiprėti. Sofija išsiskyrė su savo vyru ir pasiliko Amerikoje su sūnumi. Iš pradžių mano artimieji jai labai padėjo. Tuo metu dėdė Mulia ypač praturtėjo (netgi pagal amerikietiškus standartus), mano pusseserė Asia susituokė su gana pasiturinčiu vyru. Sofija rado darbą ir įsitvirtino ten kaip gabi asmenybė. Departamento, kuriame Sofija dirbo, direktorė, išėjusi į pensiją, paskyrė Sofiją savo pavaduotoja. Dabar Sofija yra departamento direktorė. Ji gyvena pasiturinčiai ir turi savo namą. Aplankiau savo dukrą tik kartą, 1989 m., kai Sofija dar nebuvo turtinga. Dabar ji šiek tiek padeda ir man. Beveik kasmet atvyksta į Vilnių. Mano anūkas Michailas vedė graikę, jų sūnaus vardas yra Teile.

1960-ųjų metų viduryje manęs ieškojo teta Mania. Laimei, ji išgyveno Aušvicą, keletą metų pragyveno Lenkijoje, o tada persikėlė į Izraelį. Ten ji ištekėjo antrą kartą ir pagimdė du sūnus. Teta Mania mirė 1980-ųjų pabaigoje. Man nepavyko pas ją nuvykti, aš nepažinojau jos sūnų.

1945 m. mano brolis Džošua pasiekė Kiprą, jo tarnyba buvo atsarginėje bazėje. Vėliau jis tarnavo Izraelio kariuomenėje, dalyvavo Šešių dienų kare. Baigęs karo tarnybą, jis pradėjo verslą, užsiima oro uostų aprūpinimu. Mano brolis ilgai gyveno su savo žmona, ji mirė prieš keletą metų. Džošua turi du vaikus: sūnų Abi ir dukrą Doris. Brolis padėjo man finansiškai. Kartais jis vis dar siunčia pinigų per žmones, kurie čia lankosi. Kai aplankiau jį Izraelyje, brolis elgėsi gana šaltai. Aš vis dar negaliu suprasti, kodėl jis buvo toks šaltas su manimi. Galbūt jis neturėjo laiko rūpintis manimi. Aš iš namų išėjau gana anksti, kai jam buvo tik septyneri metai.

Dabar aš gyvenu su savo sergančiu sūnumi. Nenoriu persikelti pas dukrą į JAV, nes esu nepriklausoma. Noriu gyventi savo šalyje. Aš galėjau gyventi Izraelyje, apie tai svajojau dar vaikystėje, bet niekas manęs ten nekviečia. Mes su vyru buvome tikri sovietiniai žmonės, bet aš suprantu visus negatyvius dalykus, kuriuos sovietai padarė Lietuvai. Su džiaugsmu priėmiau visus tuos įvykius, kurie vedė prie Lietuvos Nepriklausomybės 27, nes prisiminiau prieškario gyvenimą nepriklausomoje Lietuvoje. Tikiuosi, kad mūsų šalis taps stipresnė ir taps klestinčia valstybe, kurioje kiekvienas jaustųsi asmenybe.

1990-ųjų pradžioje mirė Michailas Brancovskis, Fania irgi tapo našle. Kai buvo įkurta žydų bendruomenė, Fania ir aš buvome vienos iš pirmųjų, kurios ten atėjome. Mes pasisiūlėme savanoriauti. Aš norėjau dirbti karo veteranų skyriuje, o Fania – geto kalinių skyriuje. Abi mes esame buvusios geto kalinės ir karo veteranės. Aš turiu medalį už dalyvavimą partizanų būryje 28. Mes su Fania daug dirbome, eidavome iš namų į namus, organizuodavome susitikimus veteranams, viešindavome jų pasakojimus, kad visi sužinotų, jog žydai kovojo taip pat, kaip ir kitų tautybių žmonės.

Dabar bendruomenė man labai svarbi. Aš dirbu kas antrą dieną ir jaučiu motyvaciją. Rūpinuosi savimi ir stengiuosi nepasiduoti ligoms. Į bendruomenę atsivedžiau ir savo sūnų: jis išnešioja pietus tiems seneliams, kurie negali ateiti patys. Mes su Fania esame labai gerbiamos šioje bendruomenėje. Mus dažnai kviečia kalbėti šventėse ir jubiliejiniuose renginiuose. Su Fania esame artimos draugės. Mus nuo jaunystės sieja tiek daug bendrų dalykų: getas, partizanų būrys, pokario gyvenimas. Dabar mes savo pašaukimą radome žydų bendruomenėje. Aš nesu religinga asmenybė ir nenoriu keistis, bet su džiaugsmu grįžtu prie žydų tradicijų: švenčiu šabą ir žydų šventes bendruomenėje, pasninkauju per Jom Kipurą, taip aš priartėju prie savo žydiškų šaknų.

Aiškinamasis žodynėlis

Chasia Spanerflig
Vilnius
Lithuania
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: February 2005

Chasia Spanerflig is a very beautiful and smiley woman. This gray-haired, elegant woman, with nice lipstick and eye makeup, fashionable jewelry, and well-groomed hands, doesn’t appear to be a woman who had to go through the ordeals that I heard in her story. I first met Chasia in the Jewish community of Vilnius. She goes there almost every day, being an active volunteer. She devotes much of her time to the social Jewish life. Chasia suggested that we should meet at her place. She lives with her adult son in a small one-room apartment in a house constructed in the 1980s. We met in her kitchen. It looked neat and well-furnished. When the interview was over, Chasia brought out a bottle of sweet wine and asked me to drink it with her to commemorate her deceased relatives.

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

My family background

I was born in the small town of Zdzisciot, which until 1939 belonged to the Polish province Grodnensk, before the division of Polish territory by Germany 1. Now it is called Dyatlovoo and belongs to Grodno region, Belarus [170 km west of Minsk]. My maiden name is Langbord. It means ‘long beard’ in Yiddish. In accordance with the family legend all males in our kin had long beards, which was one of the attributes of religious Jews. There were synagogue gabbaim, interpreters of the Torah and rabbis among my ancestors. In short, they were revered in the Jewish world.

As far as I know my ancestors came from the town of Zdzisciot. My paternal grandfather, Aron Langbord, born in the 1870s had a long thick beard. He was a respectable man, warden in one of the two town synagogues. Besides, he was the chairman of Mela-Hesed. It was a Jewish Mutual Aid Fund. The Jews helped each other, lending money without interest. It was a social task and Grandfather wasn’t paid for it. He made money running a small shop, which was typical for Jewish towns, where manufactured goods and fabric were on offer. His customers were mostly peasants. Small batches of goods were purchased in Vilnius and Warsaw.

Grandmother Chaya also worked in the store with Grandfather Aron. She was a petite woman, and always had her head covered in a peculiar way. She was going back and forth from one counter to another, helping Grandfather. Grandfather Aron’s house wasn’t far from the market. It was a good, well-built stone house, consisting of three small rooms and a kitchen. The toilet was outside. In summer my grandparents dined on the covered veranda, sitting at a wooden table. The house was very modestly furnished. In spite of being rather rich, the family had a very moderate living, I would even say ascetic. I don’t know what the reason for that was – either stinginess or the desire of my grandparents to be righteous. During the week they had simple food, roughage-bread, onion, herring and sometimes soup.

They had lavish food only once a week – on Sabbath. On Friday evening and on Saturday the table was abundant in all kinds of treats and delicious dishes: gefilte fish, garlic-seasoned tongues, marinated herring, fatty chicken stew, all kinds of tsimes 2, for desert there was strudel with homemade cherry or blackcurrant jam and nuts. I still remember the taste of it. I have never eaten more scrumptious strudel.

Aron and Chaya were very friendly. Grandfather seemed to me more intellectual or at least more educated than Grandmother Chaya. She was simpler. I don’t know for sure what education they got. Both of them were very religious. Grandfather went to the craftsmen synagogue every day. He was a warden there. He prayed, read the Torah and Talmud. He kept praying also in 1942 when he, Grandmother Chaya and other religious Jews of the town were taken to the synagogue square during one of the Fascist actions. All of them were shot on that square.

Aron and Chaya had an only child, my father Abram Langbord. He was born in 1895. I think she couldn’t have more children, as usually religious Jews give birth to as many children as God sends them. Apart from cheder my father got a good education, but I don’t know which institution he finished. He was fluent in Hebrew. He taught the history of Jewish religion at the Tarbut seven-year school 3.

In contrast to my father, Mother grew up in a large family of thirteen children, eleven of whom survived. My maternal grandparents, born in Zdzisciot in the 1860s, were also honorable and respectable religious Jews, but they weren’t as religious as Grandfather Aron. Grandfather Velvl Israelit was a very handsome and stately man. He had a small beard, which was customary for his contemporaries. Velvl was a merchant and a wholesale trader. There was a large storage facility behind his house, where he kept the goods. He purchased chicken eggs from the peasants from nearby villages. Then he sold those eggs wholesale to England. Besides, Grandfather sold grain and oakum. He probably was involved in more work.

His wife, my grandmother Leya was well-suited to my grandfather. She was a beauty, a real lady. She neither cooked nor did any work about the house. They always had a housekeeper. Children were raised by baby-sitters and governesses. Though Grandfather Velvl was well-off perhaps he had less money than Grandfather Aron. It must have been difficult to support such a large family. Nonetheless, the house, where my mother grew up, was generous and open to people unlike that of my paternal grandparents.

Both Grandfather Velvl and Grandmother Leya had seats in a large synagogue; it was not the synagogue for craftsmen, where Grandfather Aron was the warden. Grandfather had an honorable seat to the right: it was a separate arm chair with a high carved back and magen David. Grandmother also had such a beautiful chair on the top, where women used to pray. Grandfather went to the synagogue every day. When he grew old and weak, he started only attending synagogue on Fridays, Saturdays and on holidays. Grandmother didn’t go there daily, but she did a lot for the synagogue. For holidays she ordered beautiful religious embroideries for the synagogue, as well as silverware and silver goblets. All holidays were celebrated in Grandfather’s house, and Sabbath was observed. Almost always poor local Jews, who didn’t have money to celebrate Sabbath, were invited by my grandfather to sit at his Sabbath table. They weren’t treated any differently.

I don’t remember all of my mother’s brothers and sisters. Grandfather Velvl gave all of them a good education. The eldest, Bluma, was born in the 1880s. When she was young, she studied in Russia. Then she happened to be in Georgia. She married a local Georgian Jew. I think his last name was Saakian, I don’t remember his first name. She lived with him in Tbilisi. She was a teacher. During the Great Patriotic War Bluma, her husband and children, their daughter Nina and their son, stayed in Tbilisi. Bluma died in 1960. I kept in touch with her children for a while. I went to visit them in Tbilisi for a couple of times. Recently I haven’t heard from them.

After Bluma, Mother’s brother Jeshua was born. At home he was called by the Russian name Ovsei 4. When he was young and single he left home for the USA. He didn’t write letters to Grandfather, Grandmother or my mother, who really loved him. She was happy to receive skimpy news coming from her distant relatives and acquaintances. I don’t know what happened to Jeshua.

My mother, Pesya Israelit, born in 1890, was the third child in the family. Her younger brother Solomon followed her. He was born in 1891. Solomon lived in Latvia. First he worked as a salesman in a large store. When he married a rich Latvian Jew with a good dowry, he became the owner of a large department store. I remember neither his wife’s name nor his children’s names. He had twins: a boy and a girl. All of them died during the occupation of Riga.

The next one, Miriam, born in 1893, was called Mikhle at home. She lived in Warsaw. She was married to a journalist of some Jewish paper, a Jew named Yanovskiy. Both of them perished in the Warsaw ghetto 5 and their son, who managed to survive, lives somewhere in America. I don’t keep in touch with him. I don’t even know his name.

Mother’s sister Maria – she was called Manya at home – left for Vilnius upon graduation from a lyceum. She worked. Later she married an accountant, Rehes, who worked in a large-scale tea business. High-grade tea was brought from the East, weighed, packed and sold by the enterprise. Manya’s husband died at a young age and in the 1930s she remained with her sons, Israel and Joseph. The latter stuck to Zionist beliefs and left for France before the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War 6. Then he went to Palestine and died there in the postwar period. Aunt Manya and Israel happened to be in Vilnius ghetto 7 – Israel perished during one of the actions. Aunt Maria was taken to Auschwitz by the Fascists. Luckily she survived and lived a couple of years in Poland after the war. Then she immigrated to Israel. There she got married for the second time and gave birth to two sons. She lived a long and happy life there.

Mother’s brother Mulya, born in 1898, also lived in Vilnius. Later he was involved in timber trade and was rather well-heeled. He married a Jew, Maria. During the Great Patriotic War Mulya, his wife Maria and daughter Aesya were in Vilnius ghetto. They survived the Great Patriotic War and left for the USA. There Mulya regained his business and came to big money. Mulya and Maria died in the 1980s and Aesya is still alive.

Mother’s youngest sister Eiga was born in 1900. She also left for Vilnius and stayed with Uncle Mulya. Then she had a prearranged marriage with Chaim Kopelevich, a wealthy man, who owned a book store on Gelio Street. Chaim was a Zionist [Revisionist Zionism] 8, very socially active, and was always with Israel in his thoughts. In 1936 he, Eiga and two of his sons immigrated to Israel. It saved his family from the catastrophe. Eiga and Chaim died in the post-war period and one of their sons, Isroel Kopelevich, became a professor, the other one, whose name I don’t remember, also was successful in science and lived in California.

My mother’s siblings were all very friendly. There was no place to work in Zdzisciot, so all of them went to big cities and having found a place there, helped the younger ones find a job and get settled. It was decided by the family council that Mother should stay in Zdzisciot with her elderly parents and she wasn’t against it. The main reason for such a decision was my mother’s medical education. Having finished lyceum she went to a school for medical assistants somewhere in Russia. Mother was a very skillful expert and she stood in for a doctor in many cases, so her siblings decided that she should look after the parents until they die. Before getting married, my mother worked in the hospital. All patients knew her and often asked her for help. There were times when she had to get up at night to render assistance to somebody. My mother never turned anybody down.

I don’t know how my parents met and got married. I think it was a prearranged marriage. In spite of the age difference –  Mother was five-six years older than Dad – they fell in love with each other. Father’s parents must have been against their marriage either because of the age difference or for some other reasons. Anyway, neither my mother, nor her parents attended the house of the Langbords, even on holidays or birthdays. These were vastly different families – asceticism, aridness and miserliness of the Langbords versus generosity and open-heartedness of the Israelits.

My parents got married in 1920. I think the wedding was in accordance with Jewish rites – under a chuppah, with the relatives from both sides. I was born in 1921, and my brother in 1926. He was called after my mother’s brother Jeshua – he was called Ovsei at home – who moved to America and didn’t keep in touch. When I was a toddler we lived in rented apartments and I don’t remember them. Then our family moved in with my mother’s parents. Grandmother was afflicted with diabetes and Grandfather with asthma, so they often needed help.

Growing up

We lived in a wonderful town. It was a Jewish town in the best sense of this word: with great Yiddish culture, different Jewish institutions, magnificent cultured people, great personalities. There was a beautiful park in the center of the town. I used to walk there with my school friends. There was a Polish school in the park and a very beautiful small Orthodox church. There was a small meandering river, the Pomaraika, with scenic banks. The center of the town was mostly inhabited by Jews, and Poles, Belarusians lived on the outskirts and in adjacent villages. I remember a large pharmacy in the center of the town. It was owned by a Jew. I don’t recall his last name. There were cobbler’s, tailor’s and hatter’s shops, stores where beautiful patterned lady’s kerchiefs and shawls were sold. All craftsmen were Jews. There were shops in a small passage. I enjoyed strolling in that passage. It looked so small to me when I came to my native town after the war, when so much time had elapsed.

There were great market days on Tuesdays. I was so happy when the housekeeper took me there. Then my brother and some friends joined us and we enjoyed walking between the bogies and carts, tasting and buying scrumptious and succulent fruits, thick and fatty milk, choosing chicken and geese. Pork, pig’s fat and spicy smoked meat was also sold there, but we couldn’t taste that as the kashrut was strictly observed [in our family]. Somebody played harmonica or hurdy-gurdy. Jews who owned small restaurants sold wine. There was an air of mirth and inebriation. There was Grandfather Aron’s shop not far from the market, in a lane. I liked to drop by there and watch my grandparents at the counter unrolling huge rolls of fabric. Calico, flannel and other simple fabric were sold at the store and mostly peasants bought them.

There were two synagogues in the center: a large two-storied one that Grandfather Velvl and Grandmother Leya used to attend, and another small one, where Aron Langbord was the warden. A Catholic cathedral was to the side from the central square. Here Poles from villages came in their carts. The local Polish intelligentsia – police, some doctors and lawyers – used to come here as well.

The town’s industry consisted of timbering plants, cheese processing plant and others controlled by the Jews. All Jews were involved in social and cultural life. There was a great amateur society – the amateur drama theater, where my father used to play, a choir for adults and a wonderful children’s choir, all kind of literary circles, a dancing circle and a Jewish library. The Jews of our town were literate, well-read. They bought or subscribed to both Jewish and Polish papers.

Grandfather Velvl’s house was in the center of the town. The house was well-built, but not very large. The housekeeper always used to cook something in the kitchen. She was Belarusian. She taught my brother and me a couple of phrases in her mother tongue. My parents spoke Yiddish with us and between themselves, though Father was fluent in Hebrew. My grandparents’ house was always teeming with people as they were involved in social work. My brother and I were on our own or with our housekeeper. My parents were constantly busy.

I remember how my brother and I were walking along the street and watching the windows of our house – the windows of two rooms occupied by our family were lit until late. One of the rooms was used for meetings of my father’s friends and comrades: Zionists. All of them were followers of the resolute ideas of Jabotinsky 9, but they stuck to the democratic approach – buying out Palestinian lands. They collected money for that purpose and my father was in charge of that.

Mother’s friends got together in another room. Even though my mother didn’t belong to the Communist or any other party, she adhered to ‘leftist’ views. Mother was a very kind woman and she thought that her duty was charity – to help. She collected money to help marry off poor brides, took care of the orphans, made sure that poor children were given breakfast at school.

Our family wasn’t rich – just an ordinary cultured middle-class family. Father didn’t make much money and Mother tried to have odd jobs. She gave injections and went to see patients. Once she even worked as a doctor at the Jewish school Tarbut, where Father used to work. Mother organized free recreation for Jewish children, afflicted with tuberculosis, in the spa town of Novoyelnya, located not far from Dyatlovo. There were a lot of women around my mother – lonely and widowed ones. They helped her with work. Father also went for treatment in Novoyelnya. The only son in his family was very valetudinarian and took good care of his health. Sometimes I went with him to Novoyelnya during my summer holidays.

My parents often quarreled. Mother was well-groomed. She was a gorgeous, slender woman with a thick plait. She was one of the first women in the town who started having manicure done in the newly-opened salon. She was reserved and calm, but Father was a creative person, easily carried away. He often communicated with some people, who were fishy in my mother’s opinion. He invited them home, treated them and asked them to stay overnight. I think that Mother even suspected him of adultery. Besides, as it often happens in Jewish families and not only in Jewish ones, Grandmother Chaya added fuel to the fire in my parents’ tiffs as she couldn’t get over their marriage, which to her was an unequal one. I was very scared of the squabbles which might break out any minute and that was the only thing that poisoned my childhood.

Now I understand that my parents truly loved each other, without leaving a trace of indifference in their relationship. They often spent time in the company of their mutual friends. A doctor and his wife, a veterinarian, a judge, who was Jewish, often called on us. My parents had other friends. Unfortunately, I can’t recall their names. I remember that there was no alcohol on the table. Guests were treated to tea, freshly-cooked jam and freshly-baked pies. In such cases we, the children, sat at the table as well. Grandmother Leya also paid attention to us. I often went to the synagogue with my grandmother. She loved me very much. She took me to see her children in Vilnius. I remember that my mother’s brothers and sisters weren’t pleased with that and nagged my grandmother for that. Maybe it was mere jealousy on the part of the other grandchildren, as I was Grandmother’s favorite.

Our house was a traditional Jewish one. Each Thursday my parents went to mikveh. I can’t say that the kashrut was very strictly observed, but its main principles were kept. Meat was bought in special kosher stores. We had separate dishes for meat and dairy dishes, starting from the cutting boards and up to the silverware. Each Friday we would prepare for Sabbath. The house was thoroughly cleaned, the table was covered with a white cloth. Silver candlesticks were put on the table. As far as I remember there were three candles. Mother was in charge of the cooking of most of the dishes and the most important ones were cooked by her.

On the eve of Sabbath Mother put on dressy attire and told us to change as well. The table was laid by the time Father and Grandfather came back from synagogue. The eldest man said a blessing and the evening started. There were freshly baked challot on the table, kosher wine, gefilte fish, tsimes, meat and chicken dishes. Usually Mother baked a very nice and tasty strudel with nuts. As for Saturday, such food was cooked that doesn’t have to be warmed – different casseroles from noodles and raisins, tsimes and of course chulent – the traditional Sabbath dish. It was cooked from meat, potatoes, onions and beans. On Friday chulent was taken to the bakery and put in the oven, still warm from baking. There was other neighbor’s chulent in the oven. There were cases when chulent was swapped or confused with someone else’s. After the Sabbath meal, I, with my father or by myself, went to my Langbord grandparents . I didn’t stay there long. Grandmother treated me to cookies and lollipops and Grandfather gave me money for ice-cream.

On the major Jewish holidays Grandfather Aron came to see us. I remember he always came to us on Rosh Hashanah. They blew the shofar on that day in the synagogues. A festive table was laid in our house. There were a lot of sweets – Mother’s strudel, apple pies with honey. My parents spent Yom Kippur in synagogue. The children didn’t fast, but parents always did on that day. I liked the next fall holiday of Sukkot. A sukkah was installed in the yard and our entire family dined there for eight days. Grandfather Aron came on the first day of the holiday with branches of estrog and lulav and shook them in four directions, and I had to pronounce some words after him, being the eldest child in the family. On the mirthful holiday of Simchat Torah songs were sung in synagogues, choirs sang in Jewish schools. Jovial processions left the synagogue carrying the Torah scroll. On this holiday and on Purim women baked all kinds of sweets. They also made artificial flowers and buttonholes and rich Jews thought that it was their duty to buy some of the knick-knacks for charity.

The winter holiday Chanukkah was also very beautiful. I remember that the menorah consisting of eight candles was lit and put on the table in our house as well as in other Jewish houses, in accordance with the local tradition. It seemed that the whole town was twinkling with merry lights – menorahs on the window sills in Jewish houses. Potato fritters, doughnuts and patties were fried in oil. In kindergarten and in school we were told stories about the origin of Chanukkah. I remember a song about Chanukkah: ‘Оh, Chanukkah, a wonderful holiday, we are having fun, eating potato fritters and playing!’

Pesach was my favorite holiday. The house was prepared for the holiday like a bride for her wedding. On the last Thursday before the holiday all of us went to the river and bathed. We took everything out of our pockets as there might have been old breadcrumbs – chametz. All the family members were given new clothes for the holiday. While Grandfather was alive, seder was held beautifully. He sat at the head of the table between two pillows, where the afikoman was hidden. My brother and I were supposed to find that afikoman and snitch it so that grandfather wouldn’t notice.

Apart from the festive delicious food there were mandatory Paschal dishes: eggs, bitter herbs, matzah and dishes made from matzah. There was always a guest in our house, a poor Jew as a rule. Grandfather had a habit: each person sitting at the table had to read a Paschal prayer in turn and all of us sang songs. I remember one of them: ‘There is only one God in the universe!’ Such words were repeated for seven-eight times during seder. I, being the eldest of the children, asked Grandfather the four traditional questions about the origin of the holiday. Before seder was over, a goblet with wine was placed for Elijah the Prophet. The seated people would look at the goblet and if the wine swung a little bit, it meant that Elijah had come over and sipped from the goblet.

I got my first Jewish education in a Jewish kindergarten. There we, the little kids, were told about Israel. Zionist ideas were inoculated in a simplified form. Thus, I have been a Zionist since childhood. We used to dance and sing different songs like in any kindergarten.

There were three schools in the town – a Polish school, a Yiddish school and the Tarbut. I entered the latter when I was six. The school was secular, but it had its own traditions. We were taught the main rules of our religion. My father taught that subject. The classes were held in Hebrew. We studied Jewish literature, mostly Bialiks’s poetry 10. We also had a subject of Polish language and literature. I was involved in social life: I sang in the school choir, took part in the performances of the drama studio. In general, my school years were wonderful. I remember how we used to go to school on a sleigh drawn by three horses. It was a sleigh’s race and we, robust and red-hot, were singing Polish and Jewish songs.

In 1932 I finished the Tarbut school. The same year an event occurred that changed the life of our family. One July night there was a strong gust of wind and the sparks from the timber plant touched the thatched roof of a Belarusian house, wherefrom they moved to the town. All of us – my parents, grandparents, I – being sick at that time – and my brother ran out of the house. All of us were in our night gowns. Father told us to move to a safe distance wherefrom we were watching our house burning. That night half of the town burnt. Grandfather Aron’s house also burnt, but the synagogue wasn’t touched by the fire. Somehow it was spared from the flames. In a moment our family turned indigent. We spent that night in the house of some Jews, whose house didn’t burn down. In the morning the town took measures to save those who had been affected by the fire. All those who’d suffered from it were given rooms in the houses which weren’t burnt. People gave them the best rooms and shared some things. Money was collected for the victims to start construction of new houses.

In a couple of hours Uncle Mulya came over from Vilnius. He brought money collected from our relatives and suggested that I should go with him, as I had to continue my education in a large town anyway, for there was no educational institution for me in our town. Thus, in the summer of 1933 I came to Vilnius and entered the Hebrew lyceum Tarbut named after its first headmaster, founder and sponsor Doctor Epstein. It was located on Pilimo Street, 4. It was the most prestigious Jewish educational institution in Vilnius. Here children of rich merchants, manufacturers, lawyers and doctors studied. The tuition was rather high for that time: 15 zloty per month. Our family couldn’t afford that after the fire. My uncle Solomon covered my tuition. He sent money to Aunt Miriam and she brought it to us.

I didn’t have a place to stay. My aunts and uncle lived in Vilnius but they didn’t have a room for me. One of them had only two rooms; the other one had five, but there was a study, bedroom, drawing room and they could put me only in the hall. Until now I am astounded by the kindness of strangers and callousness of my kin. My mother came to Vilnius and rented a room for me from some strangers. At first, I was crying a lot, feeling homesick and missing my parents. Then I was immersed in my studies, made friends and got used to it somehow. Usually in October I went home on Jewish holidays, then came back to Vilnius аnd in December I was home again for Chanukkah.

The year of 1933 brought about another tribulation – on one of the Chanukkah days Grandmother Leya died. She had a Jewish funeral, attended by many people from Vilnius, Warsaw and Riga. I remember Grandmother was on the floor in a shroud. People were sitting around her in clothes with torn collars. It was the shivah, observed by parents and relatives. My brother and I also observed the mourning, but not so strictly. Then Grandmother’s body, covered in the shroud, was carried through the town to the Jewish cemetery. The procession was accompanied by weeping women. Each of them had a jar in her hand for Zeddakah.

Mother’s siblings collected money to construct a new house. Mother also went to work and now after the fire many inhabitants of the town turned to insurance companies and Mother became an insurance agent. After Grandmother’s death Grandfather Velvl felt unwell. He was asthmatic and all his children together bought him a dacha 11 in Novoyelnya and Mother hired a lady to look after him.

My life in Vilnius was rather hard. I dined with one Jewish lady for 30 kopecks a day. As a rule I couldn’t get along with landladies. Decent and kind women were rare. Mother often sent me parcels with provisions: butter and cheese, freshly-baked bread, chicken, meat, about 60 eggs. Once I lived at the place of a Jewish lady called Molchanskaya, who deliberately ate all my products with her daughter and then she said that I had nothing to eat. Then I, choking with tears, went to the bakery, where people knew me, felt sympathetic and gave me bread for free. I was undernourished, I went to bed hungry.

Generally, children of wealthy people went to my lyceum and I took a split roll with me to conceal my poverty and to show that there was something in it, thought at times there wasn’t even butter inside the roll. Children who knew about my poverty treated me very well. When the class was going on an excursion which wasn’t free of charge, one of the rich children paid for me so I could go with everybody. They didn’t do it to show off, but stealthily, for me even not to know about it.

I had friends. My bosom friend was Mikhail Brantsovskiy. He was my classmate. His parents were wealthy people – Mikhail’s father was involved in manufacturing. I was friends with Mikhail’s cousin, Chaya Kushnir, who came from the province and lived in Brantsovskiy’s house. Mikhail’s mother, Dina Brantsovskaya, was a very kind woman. Her house was always open for her son’s friends. There were times when a large company of friends came to Mikhail’s and stayed in the house until late. I often went there by myself. Aunt Dina always made sure that I was fed. She understood that I was undernourished. Sometimes I stayed overnight, not to walk around in the street at a late hour.

Masha Nemze was also my friend. Her parents owned a large fur store in the heart of the city. They had a dacha and they invited me to come over there for a couple of weeks during vacation. On Jewish holidays, the lyceum was closed and I went to my home town. I spent summer holidays at home as well. I didn’t want to go home as I was afraid of my parents’ tiffs, which became more frequent with the years. But still, I loved my town, my school friends and I enjoyed spending time with them. Mother took good care of me to make up for the time of my being alone in a big city. She bought fabric on credit and ordered me new dresses, for me not to look worse than my rich classmates. In summer I was sometimes sent to Grandfather in Novoyelnya. Grandfather Velvl was very sick. Now he lived on the money sent by his children. They treated him really well and sent him all kinds of sweets, honey and dried fruits apart from money. He enjoyed all that very much. When I came over, Grandfather opened up his cherished chest and treated me to sweet things.  

In 1937 my parents and brother moved to a newly-built house. My life in Vilnius got better. Though I wasn’t the best student, getting mostly good marks and at times satisfactory marks, my teachers, aware of the fact that I was needy, recommended me to the rich houses for tutoring. I gave two classes a day and finally I started making some money. In that period of time Aunt Manya’s husband died and my relatives decided that I should live with her. I moved to her place in 1939.

In the penultimate grade we were to choose between two directions: technical and humanitarian. I chose the humanitarian one. Now I felt more confident in our company. I was loved in any company as I was never in a hurry to go home because I didn’t have one. Besides, I was merry and appreciative. After classes we went out to a café, ate ice-cream, called on somebody to have a cup of tea, or sometimes went to the cinema. There were a lot of Zionist organizations in Vilnius, including youth organizations. Boys started wooing me. Usually I went to these organizations with my boyfriend. It was either Betar 12 or Maccabi 13. They were different in their approaches, but all of them were purely Zionist. So, the years of my adolescence were full of Zionist ideas. During the meetings we often were told about Palestine, about life in a kibbutz. Youth was called upon to go to Palestine to build the Jewish state.

In winter 1939 during one of the winter holidays, when I was at home, somebody knocked on the door and informed us that Grandfather Velvl had died in Novoyelnya. He was brought to our town and buried the same way as Grandmother, with all traditions observed. In 1939 I finished the lyceum. I didn’t yearn for home. I loved my home town, but I wasn’t willing to live there. I decided to earn a little bit more money in order to continue my education at the Institute of Foreign Languages. I was employed by the parents of one of my fellow students, who owned a large fur store. I started to work as the accountant’s assistant. The chief accountant, who trained me, found a cashier job for me at a store, where all kinds of sewing goods, threads, buttons and lining material were sold. The store belonged to two merchants. One of them, Friedman, was a very rich man.

In August 1939 Friedman’s son Boris came to Vilnius from France, where he studied at the Textile College. Though Boris was 13 years older than me, he at once took an interested in me, a modest girl. He started calling on our shop and invited me out to eat ice-cream or watch a movie. Boris was a Zionist, member of Betar, the most active Zionist organization. He was a follower of Jabotinsky and told me a lot about his ideas. Then in August 1939 Jabotinsky came to Vilnius and Boris invited me to attend his lecture, which took place in philharmonic society. We stood there agape! He was a brilliant orator. I had never heard a more ardent speech in my life. It was the beginning of the affection between Boris and me.

During the War

On 1st September 1939 Poland was occupied by the Fascists. World War II broke out. Soviet troops entered the eastern part of Poland, where my native town was located 14. Now it became Soviet Belarus. I felt homesick and in September 1939 I went to Zdzisciot practically without saying good-bye to Boris. Our town had changed a lot. People were really despondent. Repressions against Zionists commenced and my father was expecting to get arrested. I didn’t stay home for longer than a week. One day a young man, dressed to kill, got off the bus from Novoyelnya. He started asking how to get to our house. It was Boris Friedman. He said that his mother had sent him to bring me to Vilnius to live in their house. My parents decided that it was better for me to be Vilnius, in the house of a well-heeled family. I said good-bye to my parents and left for Vilnius with Boris.

I settled in a posh apartment in downtown Vilnius, in a gorgeous white house. It wasn’t safe in Vilnius. The city was given to Lithuania 15 and it became the capital once again. All political changes often ended up with a pogrom for the Jews. There was a small pogrom in Vilnius. Nobody died, just windows were broken and Jewish stores were plundered. Up to 20th October 1939 the borders were open. On 13th October Mother came, and Boris and I had a modest wedding under a chuppah in the Vilnius rabbi’s office as the synagogue was closed down at that time. Mother left at once and I never saw her again.

Boris and I got along very well. We were rich. There were a lot of goods in the store. In winter 1940 Boris brought a batch of wonderful sheepskins from the Polish town of Zakopane. The sales were very good. Boris often appeared in public. We went to the theater, attended meetings of Zionists. I didn’t feel bored with my husband. It is difficult to say whether I loved him or not. He was much older than me and I felt respect for him rather than love. Besides, I was a girl and I wanted to go out with my pals, but Mikhail Brantsovskiy and the rest of the guys treated me like a married woman and went out with other girls. School teachers who met me, disapproved of my early marriage. Soon I got pregnant. When I was in the third month, I fell from a cart. I had a miscarriage and stayed in hospital for a long time.

Our calm, rich and serene life ended in June 1940, when the Soviet army came to Lithuania 16. I know that many, especially poor Jews, hoped for and gladly welcomed the Soviet Army. The Soviet regime didn’t bring about anything good. Soon goods vanished from the stores. Bread was only of the lowest grade. Our family had products in stock and didn’t feel the need of them. Soon our store was nationalized. Repressions, arrests and deportation 17 commenced and my husband’s parents moved to a smaller apartment, hoping to escape exile. They weren’t disturbed, but Boris, a famous Zionist, had to go into hiding. First he lived with one of his friends. He changed places, but it wasn’t safe as all of them belonged to Zionist circles. I was pregnant again and on 20th April 1941 I gave birth to a boy. I gave birth in a private maternity hospital, in a separate ward. The parturition was normal. I named the boy after my favorite Grandfather Velvl.

After parturition Boris took my son and me to the dacha settlement on the outskirts of Vilnius, where we rented a small dacha. The three of us lived there. Sometimes Boris went to the city to his parents and brought food. He tried not to walk around in the streets fearing arrest. We didn’t know what was ahead of us. We were awaiting a possible arrest or exile. I had very severe mastitis. Boris took me to the Jewish hospital, which was still functioning, where I was operated on. After that I had to go there every other day to change bandages. I couldn’t breastfeed my son and we started buying cow milk for our boy.

It was the second half of June. There was a military airport not far from our settlement. Early Sunday morning I walked out on the balcony and saw the smoke coming from both sides of the airport. It was on fire. The Great Patriotic War had started. My husband went to the city. There was panic. Many people, mostly Komsomol members 18 and Communists were trying to leave the city. On 22nd June in the evening the last train left the Vilnius train station. My husband and I didn’t bring up the issue of escaping from the town. First, we weren’t connected with the Soviet regime, and secondly, at that time I didn’t know that Fascists exterminated Jews. Besides, our small baby and my illness made it impossible for us to leave.

On 23rd June Fascist troops entered Vilnius. In a couple of hours they appeared in our settlement. First, things were calm. We got cards allowing us to get some products: grain and bread. Boris went to the city to get the products by cards. I went with him as well, when my bandages were to be changed in the hospital. There were rumors among the Lithuanian and Polish population that Jews were killed by the Germans. I even heard our landlady discussing it with her friends. She still sold me milk and vegetables for the baby, but she looked at me with suspicion.

Actions had already commenced in the city. Each day Fascists hung up posters with rules restricting the rights and life of the population of the city. Jews had even less rights than anybody else. There was an order stating that everybody ought to give away their radios. There was a curfew. Jews were more restricted in their movements. They were allowed to walk only on the roadway. Jews weren’t allowed to step on the pavement. We weren’t allowed to go to restaurants and cafes. There were two or three special small stores for the Jews. Now we had signs, yellow stars, the forms of those differential signs was frequently changed and we were supposed to do it in time. If any rule was violated, people were shot.

There were policemen 19 in the street, they were grabbing people, mostly men, and taking them to prison. Then they sent them to Paneriai [Ponary] 20, a suburb of Vilnius at that time. First, the inhabitants of Vilnius thought that there was a kind of camp. Then it became known that some unwanted people were shot there such as Communists, Komsomol members, and Jews in the first place. I was really worried when Boris went to the city to see his parents and exchange things for products on the market. It was calmer in our settlement. I can say that until mid-September I didn’t truly feel the horror of Fascism.

In late August Lithuanians and Poles, who lived in the central streets of the city: Strashuna, Rudnitskaya and Mesino were forced out of their apartments and told to move to other houses. The ghetto was established here in the downtown area. In early September Vilnius Jews were taken here. In a couple of days policemen came to our settlement in several carts and told us to leave with them. There were five or six Jewish families in the settlement. All of us were loaded on the carts. We weren’t allowed to take any things. I held my son in one hand, and a bottle of milk in the other – it was the only thing I could take with me. We were brought to the ghetto. We were lucky, as many Jews were sent straight to Paneriai. Besides, we were taken to the large, and not to the small ghetto, [two ghettos were established in Vilnius – a big and a small one, with the center in Sticle Street], as the  small ghetto existed for no longer than two months – in late October 1941 all dwellers of this ghetto were sent to Paneriai.

In the ghetto I stayed with my friend who used to live on Rudnitskaya Street, 13. Unfortunately I don’t remember her last name. The Brantsovskiy family lived close by. I wanted to call on them, but they had too many people. Nobody asked for permission of the owners. People just came in, if there was room in the apartment, and stayed there. My friend was very happy to see me. We settled in the room. There were 25 people beside us. All of us slept on the floor, using our clothes instead of pillows. My boy was crying. He was dirty and hungry. At night German policemen came in the room with torches and looked at the faces of the sleeping people. If they didn’t like somebody, they took them to Paneriai. Once such an action took place at daytime. My son and I had managed to hide in some larder and were waiting while the Fascists were taking children. I was covering my baby’s mouth for him not to burst out crying. Those who didn’t manage to hide on that day were shot. Gradually there were less people in the room. Some of them were taken to Paneriai; others found a calmer and more comfortable lodging.

Boris’s parents, his elder brother with his wife and two-year-old daughter lived on Strashuna Street in the ghetto. We moved in with them. The house wasn’t heated and children got a cold right away. Velvl had pneumonia. Then Boris and his father made an oven, with a chimney through the window. The child got better. I still can’t comprehend how. Soon Boris’s brother and his wife decided to leave the ghetto and get to the Belarusian town Ashmyany. Their pals lived there. They left their girl Sofochka with us, hoping to take her with them after they had settled. They were caught in the middle of a horrible pogrom in Ashmyany and perished. Their girl stayed with us. Now I had two children.

Boris went to work. First, he worked with the railroad, then at some construction site. His father also worked at some plant. They tied up some little bags to their clothes and brought some food home: a piece of bread, a couple of potatoes, a carrot for the baby. The hardest thing was to feed the children. We got some bread and grain by food cards. We cooked porridge for the kids. There was no fat, not a single piece of meat or butter. Children were feeble and apathetic. My baby was crying. His tummy hurt because of the unusual food and hunger.

There was a Judenrat 21 in the ghetto, consisting of respectable and rich Jews. There were several departments in the Judenrat: one of them allocated work, another one, communal, provided lodging and healthcare – there was even a small hospital in the ghetto – there was a provision department and even a culture department. We knew that it was better not to go to the hospital as its patients were sent to Paneriai right away. In 1942 there was an action, during which all patients and personnel of the hospital were shot.

I knew hardly anything about the things taking place in the ghetto. I was constantly staying in with my kids. Оnly once a week I went to the workshop to take work to be done at home: darn socks, mittens, mend clothes. My husband treated me like a child and didn’t tell me about things so as not to upset me. Boris got a working certificate, a yellow-colored paper. He wrote in his relatives on it: his mother, father, me and both children. At that time we took my aunt Manya to our place. She was by herself. Her son Israel had died during one of the first actions. Boris said that Aunt Manya was also his close relative. A couple of months later Manya didn’t return after one of the actions. It turned out that she was taken to Auschwitz.

Once, an order was announced, saying that it was necessary for people to appear at the Judenrat with IDs. It was one of the most horrible days in the ghetto. It was raining cats and dogs. People were outside in the yard of the Judenrat. There were two small parks there. People with yellow certificates were sent in one park and those with white ones, issued for elderly and non-working were sent to another park. People were lamenting and sobbing. Those who had white certificates were sent to Paneriai. Hitler soldiers and policemen broke up families: senile people and children were sent to face death. I stood holding my baby all day long. We were lucky: we were still young and could serve as working force for the Reich. The cry of those wretched is still in my heart. Then in a while Boris told me that he would serve in the police. He didn’t explain anything to me, just told me this phrase: ‘I have to do what I have to do’. It was in 1942.

It is difficult to describe our life in the ghetto, to speak of the atrocities committed by the Fascists, and our constant daunting fear of imminent execution. A human being can get used to anything and it seemed to me then that we couldn’t have a different life. People tried to make their lives better. Two surreptitious schools were opened in the ghetto, where children were taught. There was a Jewish library with a pretty good selection of books. Even an amateur theater was organized. Here wonderful unforgettable plays by Sholem Aleichem 22 and other playwrights were staged. The strangest thing was that even Hitler’s soldiers attended those performances at leisure. They sympathized with the characters and even cried, watching the suffering. It seemed that humanity was not alien to them, but they forgot human feelings when they had to fulfill the orders of their commander.

There was an amateur choir in the ghetto and sometimes I attended its rehearsals. Some of the ghetto youth thought it to be indecent to attend such amusements as theater and choir. They hung flyers with slogans such as ‘People do not sing at the cemetery’ etc. I was optimistic. I thought that all means were justified for people to feel whole and get at least some sort of pleasure out of life.

My husband was an active member of an underground organization, founded in ghetto. He kept it secret from me and I got to know that much later. In January 1942 a partisan organization was founded and led by Itskhak Vitenberg. It consisted of Communists, Zionists, Bundists 23 and people who used to be apolitical before war –all of them having been united to face one common enemy: Fascism. Boris and his friend Beitar Glazman also joined the organization. From the very beginning, the members of the underground had a discussion initiated by Vitenberg, who thought it necessary to organize a struggle against the occupants in the ghetto, but some people including Boris were against it. They reckoned that some people should be taken to the forest and organized into a partisan squad there to struggle for the liberation of the people in the ghetto.

Boris became the founder of his own underground organization, whose main task was to take youth to the forest, teach them how to use weapons and only after that start fighting the Fascists. He even enlisted people who served in the police, and an underground unit was founded there as well. The first thing to do was to get weapons. The members of the organization bought them from corrupt Lithuanian policemen and they somehow managed to bring them into the ghetto. The group, led by Boris, was involved in making connections out of the bounds of the ghetto and they found messengers who promised to take people to the forest. The rumors were spread in the ghetto regarding groups of people heading to the forest. Then the chief ghetto police officer Gensas issued an order, stating that family members of those who left the ghetto for partisans in the forest would be taken to Paneriai and shot the next day. I knew about that order, but I thought it didn’t refer to me as I wasn’t aware of my husband’s activity yet.

On 6th April 1943 Boris came home from work in the evening and said that he would go to the forest early in the morning. He told me no details, just said that he didn’t have any other way out. He hoped that being in the forest he would be able to rescue everybody: me, the children and parents. Boris said that his people would come to me and give me further instructions. My husband didn’t even say good-bye to the parents, just kissed me and the children – my niece Sofochka was like a daughter to us – in the morning and left. Twelve people left with him. They headed towards Belarus. Some people joined them on their way.

Somebody knocked on the door in the morning and took our entire family. We were taken to the ghetto prison on Strashuna Street. We were thrown in one cell and told that by the evening we would be taken to Paneriai and done away with. I knew that every day at 11.30pm the unwanted were taken there. I will never forget that dreadful day in jail. There were a lot of people apart from us: those who brought products to the ghetto, tried to get there over the fence or deliberately sabotaged work. But the case of our family was unique. Boris’s parents took some food from home, a bottle with porridge for the children. The children were crying. There was a terrible stench in the cell. We weren’t taken to the toilet and we had to do everything in the cell. My thoughts were focused only on the coming night and coming death, which would mean an end to our ordeal.

The evening was even more difficult. The children were sleepy, but we decided not to let them sleep, as they would be told to leave soon. I was oblivious for a moment. I had a dream that I was standing on the brink of a trench for the executed people. Suddenly the door opened: ‘Friedmans, step out!’ We went outside. It was a cold April and I tried to swathe children in my jacket. We weren’t taken to the exit, wherefrom people were sent to Paneriai, but pushed along the street. We came to the yard at Strashuna, 1, were taken to the basement and told to sit still.

In the morning policemen came. They were members of the underground cell, my husband’s brothers-in-arms, who saved us. I think and I always say openly that Gensas had something to do with that. His role was terrible and tragic. Yes, he fulfilled the orders of the Fascists. If somebody had been in his place, he wouldn’t have acted differently. I don’t know how, but Gensas knew that his policemen hadn’t taken us to the execution place, but rescued us. I don’t think he had rescued only our family. We stayed in that basement for about ten days. Guys regularly brought us food, water and some things for the kids. When they forgot about Boris’s escape and new problems emerged in the ghetto, we were taken back home. Nobody asked us anything and we started living without Boris.

No news was coming from Boris. The relatives of twelve other people who left with him didn’t know anything either. I had no idea what to do and whom to address, without knowing who was a friend and who was an enemy. Boris’s father went to work again. His mother and I stayed with the children. We lived like that for three months. Vitenberg died in July. It was proof that Boris was right. The struggle in the ghetto was doomed. As a result they failed. Fascists found out about the underground. Vitenberg was in hiding. He surrendered as Fascists threatened to exterminate the ghetto.

In early September the guys came to get me. They took me to Oshmyanskaya Street, where the ghetto headquarters were located on small premises. They were brothers-in-arms and friends of Boris, who being on the free side, kept on getting people out of the ghetto. That time he asked to take me and I was supposed to give my consent. The first question I asked was whether I could take my children with me. I was told that I couldn’t, moreover I wouldn’t even have a chance to say good-bye to them or to Boris’ parents – I had to leave at once. I was told that the underground people were informed that ghettoes would be exterminated in a couple of days and being on the free side I might be able to liberate my children. If I was to remain in the ghetto, I would die with them for sure.

I had to face a dreadful dilemma: to die with the children or to leave and try to rescue them. I gave my consent to leave the ghetto. It got dark in a couple of hours. Within that time I managed to get in touch with Mikhail Brantsovskiy and his fellows. They were also offered to leave with me. In the evening we left the ghetto. We were easily let out the gate: the policemen who were on duty by the entrance of the ghetto were bribed. We headed to Vilnius, picturing ourselves as carefree company on the spree. We spoke Polish, laughed and even made cow eyes at the policemen, who guarded the bridge across the Neman River. I walked with the guys, feeling void and despondent. It was dark when we left the city. We had been walking for a couple of hours and were caught in an ambush on our way. The guys were shooting and I was slightly wounded in the leg. They bandaged me and we moved on. We were in the forest by the morning.

Here we met two people, who had left earlier. From them I found out about my husband’s death. The group he left the ghetto with was sent to Western Ukraine. They had an unequal fight and perished. I felt terrible. I don’t remember how my first days in the forest went by. Within a day I lost everybody:  my husband, whom I hoped to see, my children – my own son and my niece, my parents-in-law. I was on the verge of dystrophy. Being rather tall I weighed only 45 kilograms. In a couple of days people came from the ghetto and said that all its dwellers were taken to Paneriai in trucks. I understood that my children were dead.

Soon Lithuanians and Poles joined us. They were Komsomol members, who ran away from adjacent villages and loitered in the woods. Mikhail Brantsovskiy and his comrades decided to go further to look for Jews in order to form a Jewish partisan squad with joint efforts. I was too emaciated to go anywhere, both from the moral and physical standpoint. My wounded leg was still hurting.

A partisan squad was being formed from our group as well. It was not Jewish, but international. I and another Jew, Chuzhaya, were left in the squad. We started doing all kind of accommodation work: cooking, laundry and other necessary things. Soon a large squad, consisting of 150 people was formed from our group. It was called ‘For the Motherland.’ Ushakov was the commander of the squad and the team leader was Afonin. Communication with unoccupied territory was arranged. Planes came to us dropping weapons, food products, medicine. Doctors and surgeons were sent to the squad. The guys left for the rail track fight. I didn’t take part in that, I was to take care of the kitchen. Then a hospital was organized in the squad and I started working there, assisting nurses and doctors. They mostly treated me very well.

Of course, anti-Semites were everywhere, even in the squad. There were times when I was insulted for being a Jew. The commander always stood up for me. He treated me like his own daughter. He always made sure that I was fed better. If he got a chicken or meat, he personally went to the kitchen and told them to feed Chasia. I was young, so being out in the fresh air and eating the squad’s food, I put on weight.

In early spring 1944 thirteen guys came to the squad. They were students of the Leningrad Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. They had been captured and taken to Germany as POWs. On the way via Lithuanian territory the guys managed to escape. They were lucky to meet good people who told them how to get to our squad. I was sympathetic with them – hungry and gaunt – resembling me, when I had first come to the forest. In the evening, when we were sitting by the fire, the guys told us about themselves. One of them, tall and stately, looked at me and said, ‘That lady will be my wife!’ His name was Mikhail Spanerflig, he was two or three years older than me. He was from Vinnitsa [today Ukraine]. We were making jests, remembering prewar life, singing Soviet songs, which I knew by heart, as I could hardly speak Russian. Within a couple of months I started speaking pretty good Russian. The next day the guys were sent to another squad, where a group of shot-firers was formed.

In summer 1944 the Soviet Army was approaching Lithuania. We were looking forward to the liberation. Though I didn’t take part in battles, I empathized with the guys who were leaving for military operations. Not all of them came back. I was especially sorry for those whom I saw on the eve of their death. On the night of 12th July loudspeakers were turned on all of a sudden and we heard the address of the commander to the squads of Lithuania – all partisan squads were to get access to roads to Vilnius. We couldn’t believe that we met that day.

Early in the morning on 12th July we took off and on the 13th we stood near Vilnius. There we met all the partisan squads, acting on the territory of Lithuania. I saw Mikhail Brantsovskiy. He introduced me to his fiancée Fanya. It turned out that Misha had been looking for me for two days. In a moment I saw Mikhail Spanerflig. We chatted and left. Then all partisan squads followed the Soviet Army to my favorite city: Vilnius. How dilapidated and ramshackle it was! We marched along Pilimo Street and reached Chernyakhovskiy Square. In the evening there were fireworks in honor of the liberation of the capital of Lithuania. I can’t put in words what I felt at that moment: it was happiness, joy along with the bitterness of loss.

After the War

Our squad was disbanded. Lithuanians and Poles headed to their villages and some guys were sent to the front. A couple of people, who had no place to go, including me, took one of the unoccupied houses. In about three days I bumped into my uncle Mulya in the street. I was so happy to meet someone from my kin. Uncle said that he and his family were in a separate camp, located on Subbot Street in Vilnius, not far from the ghetto. Uncle was lucky to meet a German, who was not a Fascist in his heart. He warned Uncle about the liquidation of the camp and ghetto, so Mulya and his family were helped by his Polish friend and managed to leave the city. The Pole sheltered Uncle Mulya’s family and they lived to see the liberation. Uncle Mulya took me in and I moved to the apartment, taken by his family. Aunt Zhenya and Aesya were happy to see me. I told them what I had to go through, how Boris perished.

I still had a forlorn hope that my children were rescued and I started asking people, who were living not far from the ghetto, but nobody saw my Velvl and Sofia. I didn’t lose hope and decided that I would go from one village to another and look for people, who survived the ghetto – maybe they would know something about my kids. I also didn’t know anything about my parents and brother, and I hoped to find out about them as well.

In ten days or so I bumped into Mikhail Spanerflig in the street. We were glad to see each other. One word after another and we remembered the moments when he came to the squad and how we met. Mikhail said that he and the other guys with higher education were allocated to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. He lived at his pal’s place with friends. He also added that he used a dinner table instead of a bed. Then the bombing started and we went down to the air raid shelter.

Then I invited Mikhail to our place. On that day we had a wonderful lunch: Uncle got potatoes somewhere. We were sitting at the table and Mikhail was telling us about himself. He was from Vinnitsa. His parents and younger brother stayed there and Mikhail had no idea what happened to them. My relatives liked him a lot. He stayed late. The curfew began at 10pm and Mikhail couldn’t go home. Uncle talked him into staying and Mikhail spent the night in a dark unoccupied room. In the morning Mikhail left and we didn’t see each other for a while. In about two weeks Mikhail came to us with presents. He got a food ration 24. We started seeing each other and soon fell in love. It was true love, which I hadn’t known before.

In winter 1945 my brother Jeshua found us in Vilnius. He told me about Father’s dreadful death during one of the first actions in Dyatlovo – the Fascists shot the Jewish intelligentsia of the town. In 1942 my mother died from typhus in the ghetto. Grandfather Aron and Grandmother Chaya were shot on Synagogue Square in 1942. My brother managed to leave the ghetto and escape to the forest. He was in one of the partisan squads. All of us celebrated Victory Day, rejoicing for the survivors and commemorating our perished relatives and friends.

At that time the campaign on immigration of former Polish citizens to Poland commenced. Any citizen of Lithuania, who had lived on the territory of Poland before the war, was entitled to immigrate to Poland, no matter what nationality he had. There were trains at the railway station. The trip was free of charge. My relatives – Uncle Mulya, his family and my brother decided to leave. They hoped to get to either Israel or USA via Poland. My relatives were convincing me to leave with them, but I couldn’t make such a decision. On the one hand, I was attracted by the idea of going to Israel. I had dreamt of Palestine all my life. On the other hand I hoped to find out about my son.

Besides, I loved Mikhail Spanerflig. And Mikhail decided to live in Vilnius. In the quest for his parents he got to know that they had died in Vinnitsa ghetto, and his brother either was killed in action or reported missing. Mikhail and I weren’t that close, but I couldn’t envisage my life without him. In August 1945, when my relatives decided to leave, Mikhail was in Moscow. At that time he was an excellent athlete and took part in the parade of athletes in Moscow. I saw off my family and remained by myself in Vilnius.

A couple of days later Mikhail came back from Moscow. He came to our apartment at once. It was left to me by Uncle Mulya. In a couple of days we were evicted. It turned out that we, the first who came to the liberated city abundant in empty apartments and houses, were left without lodging. One of my husband’s colleagues was transferred to Siauliai [a town 230 km north-west of Vilnius] and Mikhail bought his apartment with a liter of vodka. It was a cold and damp two-room apartment in the downtown area. We were so happy there.

In November 1945 we registered our marriage in the marriage registration office of our district. We were practically indigent. I had a skirt, a jacket and an old coat. My husband had one pair of uniform pants. Once Mikhail lent them to his friend who was going dancing, and he squandered them on drink. Then Mikhail didn’t have anything to put on in the morning. I don’t remember how we tackled that problem. One thing really darkened our happiness: I understood that my little son had died. I had to start a new life, bear children and live with the man I loved. For some time my periods stopped, which was common for most women in the ghetto. It happened in 1942. Only in late 1946 I gave birth to a son. I called him Velvl after my deceased son.

Sorrow was on my doorway all the time. When my son was ten months, he was afflicted with meningitis. Almost all children died in the hospital where he was treated. Only Velvl and one other boy survived. Our son became really ill. He couldn’t walk for a long time and started talking at the age of four. My son couldn’t study either; he could hardly finish elementary school. We understood that he had to bear that cross. We decided to take a risk, and in 1954 I gave birth to a girl. We named her Sofia after my adopted little daughter, who perished in the ghetto. The girl was normal and made us happy. She was healthy and developed.

Our life was getting better. My husband was promoted at work. In spite of the fact that my husband had a rather high position – head of the district militia department – he wasn’t touched by all that trouble 25, which Jews had in the late 1940s, early 1950s. Many friends of my husband, Jews, who were partisans, were fired and even arrested. My husband survived this ordeal. He didn’t even want to join the Party, though he was insistently recommended. Nevertheless he was promoted to a rather high rank: lieutenant colonel. In the early 1960s he got a good two-room apartment. Both of us were worried when Israel was at war: the Six-Day-War 26. We didn’t even think of immigration as my husband was a true Soviet man, though he wasn’t a member of the Communist Party.

Right after the war I worked as an accountant in the communications department. Then Mikhail Brantsovskiy, who was a chief engineer at a shoe factory, offered me a job. First, I was a rate setter, then I worked for the planning department. Later I finished courses, while working at the factory. I was promoted to chief of the Human Resources and salary department. I was very actively involved in trade-union work, amateur performances, singing in the choir, no matter what position I had.

Mikhail was a wonderful sportsman. He was among the five best swimmers and often went on competition. He was so handsome. He looked so good in his uniform. When we were strolling, or went to the theater or cinema, people were looking back, admiring us. Our life was pretty good. A housekeeper took care of the housework. I didn’t have to do the chores. We didn’t live from check to check. My husband and I made pretty good money. In the summer we went on vacation to the seaside in the Crimea and the Caucasus. We had a lot of friends, but the most loyal were our bosom friends: Mikhail and Fanya Brantsovskiy. We often spent time together on the weekends, went for a picnic or to the beach.

September 1967 was really warm. On Sunday the 10th, we agreed to go to the beach with our friends. Mikhail kept saying that his leg was hurting, but being naturally healthy he didn’t want to see a doctor. Early in the morning my husband went to get the paper and when he came back he said that it was difficult for him to breathe. I was even angry with him, as I wanted to sleep a little bit. He lay down and asked me to call a doctor. I called the ambulance and ran to my neighbor, a military doctor. I also called our friend, a medicine professor. The ambulance came and the doctors gave him some injections and left. Mikhail fell asleep. When the professor examined him, he took me to the drawing-room and said: ‘Chasia, Misha is dead!’ He started explaining to me something about thrombus and thrombosis of the pulmonary artery. I didn’t understand how people could die like that. I started hugging him and kissing his open and alive-looking eyes. I couldn’t believe that he was dead – death couldn’t be like that – it couldn’t and had no right to interfere in and ruin my life. I don’t remember how I spent the first days after his death. The Brantsovskiys were constantly by me, and Mikhail Brantovskiy stayed with me at nights. Mikhail was buried with honors, at a military cemetery.

I remained on my own with two children and 800 rubles in the saving bank – it was the only thing we had. We had neither a car nor a dacha. For about a month I was beside myself. My friends came over and told me something, even fed the children. So…life is life. I was to be a mother and a father to my children. I devoted my entire life to them. We were rather well-off. I got benefits for the children. I was a very young and beautiful woman, but I didn’t want to look at men. I didn’t want to take care of my life and I had no time for it. I didn’t go to the theater or cinema. My friends were my joy. I can say from the bottom of my heart that the Brantsovskiys were like kin, sharing my joys and troubles. Mikhail helped my daughter enter the institute. My son studied in the evening department for a while, then did all kinds of odd jobs.

Sofia graduated from the Economics Department of the university. My children simultaneously grew up and found partners. I had to exchange my apartment. Mikhail helped out. So, my children got their own apartments, and I stayed in my one-room apartment. My children weren’t lucky in their private life. Velvl married a Jewish girl, Evgenia. She was from Moldova. First, things were pretty good. They had a daughter, Marina. But…only a mother needs a sick man. Evgenia divorced Velvl and left for Israel with her daughter. It turned out that my son was deprived of his apartment. Now he lives with me in a one-room apartment and sleeps on the folding bed in the kitchen. His family keeps in touch with us. My daughter-in-law and granddaughter often write letters to us.

Sofia married a guy named Katz. They had a son, named Mikhail after his grandfather, and Sofia tried to save a family like any other woman would do. So, when her husband talked her into leaving for the USA, she left with him in 1980, hoping that common problems would make the family stronger. Only good and friendly families grow stronger. Sofia divorced her husband and stayed in America with her son. My relatives helped her a lot at first. By that time Uncle Mulya had become rather rich, even according to American standards, and my cousin Aesya was also married to a rather well-off guy. Sofia found a job and proved herself to be a gifted person. The director of the department Sofia worked for made Sofia her successor when she retired. Now Sofia is the director of the department. She earns good money and even has her own house. I visited my daughter only once in 1989, when Sofia wasn’t rich. Now she helps me a little bit. Almost every year she comes to Vilnius. My grandson Mikhail is married. His wife is Greek. My great-grandson’s name is Teile.

In the mid-1960s Aunt Maria looked for me. Luckily she survived Auschwitz. She had lived in Poland for a couple of years. Then she moved to Israel. There she got married for the second time and gave birth to two sons. Aunt Manya died in the late 1980s. I didn’t manage come to her for a visit and I didn’t know her sons.

In 1945 my brother Jeshua reached Cyprus, where he was in a replacement depot. Then he served in the Israeli army, took part in the Six-Day-War. When his military service was over, he started his business. He is involved in procurement of aerodromes. My brother lived a long life with his wife. She passed away a couple of years ago. Jeshua has two children: son Abi and daughter Doris. My brother helped me with money. He still sometimes sends me money with people who come here for a visit. When I visited him in Israel, he gave me a cold shoulder. I still can’t comprehend why he was so cold with me. Maybe he didn’t have time to care for me. I left home rather early, when he was only seven.

Now I live with my sick son. I don’t want to move to my daughter in the USA as I am independent. I want to live in my country. I could have lived in Israel and I even dreamt of it in my childhood, but nobody invites me there. My husband and I were truly Soviet people, but still I understood all the negative things brought by the Soviet regime to Lithuania. That is why I gladly accepted all those events, which lead to the independence of Lithuania 27, as I remembered the prewar life in independent Lithuania. I hope our country would grow stronger and become a flourishing state, where everybody would feel themselves as a personality.

In the early 1990s Mikhail Brantsovskiy died, and Fanya became a widow as well. When the Jewish community was founded, Fanya and I were some of the first who came there. We suggested working there as volunteers. I wanted to work for the department of the veterans of war, and Fanya for the department of ghetto prisoners. Both of us are former ghetto prisoners and veterans of war. I have a medal for participation in the partisan squad 28. Fanya and I worked a lot, went from house to house, arranged get-togethers for veterans, published their stories for everybody to find out that Jews had struggled as well as other people of other nationalities.

And now the community means a lot to me. I go to work every other a day and I feel an incentive. I take care of my looks and try not to give in to illnesses. I also brought my son to the community: he takes lunches to those old people who can’t come and get lunch. Fanya and I are very much respected. We are honored members of the community. We are often invited to take the floor on the occasion of holidays and anniversary events. Fanya and I are bosom friends. We had a lot in common when we were young: ghetto, partisan squad and also the post-war life. Now we see our calling in the Jewish community. I am not a religious person and I am not going to change, but I am happy to go back to Jewish traditions: celebrate Sabbath and Jewish holidays in the community, fast on Yom Kippur. It brings me closer to my Jewish roots.

Glossary:

Samuel Eirus
St. Petersburg
Russia
Interviewer: Anna Shubaeva
Date of interview: April 2005

At first glance Samuel Maxovich Eirus looks much younger than he is. And he is already about eighty.

Samuel is short, slender and rather vigorous (possibly because of his athletic background), but we can see that at present some extra steps turn to be a heavy duty for him.

He is sitting next to his wife at their kitchen table: he is deeply touched recollecting episodes of his life and his wife is laughing softly at him.

Many young couples will be envious of the warm-heartedness of their relations after so many years of their married life, after birth of their son and grandsons.

And at that moment looking at Samuel and his wife, you understand what makes them look so young: their bright shining eyes.

• My family background
• Growing up 
• During the war
• After the war and recent years
• Glossary

• My family background

My name is Samuel Maxovich Eirus; I was born in 1929 in Tartu. [Tartu is a small town in Estonia, it is situated 185 km south-eastward from Tallin.]. My mother and father lived there. My paternal grandmother and grandfather also lived in Estonia, but I do not know in what town they were born.

My grandfather’s name was Samuel Eirus. My grandmother’s name was Sara Meirovna Eirus and her sister’s name was Rive Meirovna Brand. Brand was her 2nd husband’s surname and I know nothing about her 1st husband, except his surname: Kalyu. Rive arrived in Leningrad together with her 2nd husband and my grandmother. 

Unfortunately I know nothing about my great-grandparents. In fact I was not interested in it. You see, when I was little (we left Estonia when I was 4 years old) I was interested only in my toys and childish emotions. At that time I was not old enough to concern myself with my ancestors.

Only later I started to be interested in my ancestors, but... unfortunately I had no system: I asked Rive questions from time to time. She outlived my grandmother by many years; she went through the war together with us and died in 1950s. Sometimes in the evening we had long talks, and I used to ask her different questions.

It was Rive who told me that my grandfather and grandmother were professional revolutionaries. And Rive was a revolutionary too.

I do not know what they were engaged in besides that. I have no idea about their financial situation… But if they were revolutionaries and managed to provide an education to their children, I guess they were not poor. My father knew two foreign languages (German and French), and I think that at that time most Jews knew only their shtetl dialect and Russian. To my mind they were too much oppressed to become educated and study foreign languages. It was possible for Jews to receive formal education only if their parents already had got money and were persons of high position. All the rest were underprivileged.

Probably my grandparents were members of a political party (I do not know exactly what party). Their activity resulted in the attempt of making revolution, but it failed. My grandparents were arrested, tried and sentenced to death. They were kept in the death ward. Grandfather was executed by shooting, but Estonian authorities had no time to do it with my grandmother and her sister: our government exchanged them for some Estonian political figures arrested in Russia. Probably my grandmother and her sister were granted a political asylum in Russia and made Petrograd their home in the beginning of the XX century.

My grandmother and her sister (like all revolutionaries in the USSR) enjoyed certain privileges. Grandmother was a merit pensioner of Russian Federation. [Merit pension of Russian Federation was established for persons of priceless services to the country in the field of revolutionary, state, public and economic activities or for outstanding merits in the field of culture, science and engineering.] At that time they were very few. They used special shops and special medical service. Authorities appreciated old revolutionaries.

I do not remember the date of their arrival, but in 1933 they invited my father (son of Sara Meirovna), my mother, me and probably someone from our family to come to Leningrad from Estonia.

My Mom told me about her childhood very little. Her family lived in the town of Opochka. [Opochka is situated 130 km far from Pskov.] Her mother had got 3 children: 2 girls and a boy.

Her father (my maternal grandfather) was a true Jewish small trader: he had got a horse and carried junk from village to village, changing it for money or for different things. Mom said that he traveled much and worked as a real commercial traveler. So the family was rather poor. But my grandfather’s wife did not work and he had a horse, therefore he was wealthier than the others. On the other hand, they lived in out-of-the-way village: life was cheaper there than in cities.

They observed no Jewish traditions. The same was with my paternal grandparents: it goes without saying, because they were revolutionaries!

I know nothing about the way my mother and her relatives got to Estonia. I was born in Tartu where my father and mother lived at that time. I think that they lived there for a rather long period of time: my mother’s husband and her brother Mulya, for example, played together in the orchestra - I guess it means that the family settled down for good in Tartu.

My father was born in Estonian city Vyru in 1905. I already told you that my paternal grandfather was a professional revolutionary, and he managed to educate all his sons. My father spoke Russian, Estonian (I do not take these 2 languages into consideration), German and French. By the way I do not know if he knew Yiddish or Hebrew. Besides, he finished a musical school and played in the Estonian National Orchestra. I keep a photo showing him together with the orchestra musicians. Pay attention that musical education was not free at that time.

• Growing up

My father was a real professional:  he was able to perform serious musical compositions. I remember my Mom mentioned that he wrote notes himself. Some musical scores he arranged for his balalaika [a national Russian musical instrument]. I remember him frequently writing notes at home…

I was not much interested about the way my father earned the living: in fact he was arrested when I was little. It was Rive who told me some facts about him when I asked her (for example) what I had to write down about my father in different questionnaires.

I know that after my father’s arrival in Leningrad he managed to find a job at LENEXPORTLES (at that time there were a lot of foreign firms), because he knew German language well. [LENEXPORTLES was founded in 1926 and was engaged in timber export.] He worked there as a quality control inspector. Possibly later this fact helped authorities to fabricate a charge against my father: he worked in a foreign firm and was in touch with foreigners.

Mikhail Kushnarev, a cousin of Rive and a coeval of my father graduated from the Leningrad Timber College. Probably it was him who helped my father to get that job. I guess that my father was educated in the sphere of timber industry, but I know nothing about the College he graduated from.

Later (after NEP 1 was abandoned) all foreign firms were closed, and my father found a job of a goods manager at the Krasnaya Zarya factory (I got to know about it much later). [Krasnaya Zarya factory was founded in 1897 and produced telephone sets.]

And here in Russia my father did not forget his musical knowledge. We arrived in Leningrad in 1933. We lived near Fontanka River and there was a Club named after Kalinin 2 next door. Like in other houses of culture they arranged different meetings including cinema shows. Different orchestras used to give small concerts before the beginning of cinema shows. And I remember very well that my father organized an ensemble (some sort of orchestra) to perform before cinema shows. He played balalaika.

I remember it very well because father used to take me with him, so that I could watch cinema show. I was absolutely not interested in performances of his ensemble. But to tell the truth, at present I remember only his performances and nothing about those feature films.

My father used to wear ordinary suits (secular).

I know nothing about the way my father got acquainted with my Mom: I was not interested and Mom didn’t tell me about my father much.

My mother was born in Opochka (a town near Pskov) in 1901. Her parents were poor. She finished only 4 classes, therefore it was possible to call her illiterate. But she was very beautiful!

Mom worked as a hairdresser. In the beginning she was a master; later she was appointed a manager of her hairdressing saloon because of her diligence and good service.

My Mom’s circle of acquaintance was rather wide because of her work: several theaters were situated near her hairdressing saloon. One of them was the Bolshoy Drama Theater named after Tovstonogov [it was founded in 1919 and is one of the most popular theaters of the city]. Another one was the Drama Theater named after Pushkin [one of the oldest professional theaters of Russia was founded in 1756]. There was also the Comedy Theater [founded in 1935] situated in Nevsky prospect. Therefore a lot of her customers were actors. Mom knew many actors personally. It was very interesting.

So we lived in that house near Fontanka River since 1933. The house was 4-storied, but later the 5th floor was built for the College of Film Engineers. It was a true mansion with marble stairs and tile floors. In the hall near the front door there was a small door leading to a special room which had been occupied by a door-keeper in the former times. Near the same front door there was a fireplace. I remember copper bars fixing the carpet on the staircase. Later the carpet disappeared, but the bars remained on the footsteps during a long period of time. So it was a real manor-house! To my mind it looked like a museum. Sometimes now I wish to go there and make a glance at it again. You see, I got married and left for another apartment. Later my brother also got married and they changed that apartment for a 3-room flat. At present my relatives do not live there any more.

The house was richly decorated, but we lived in 2 communicating rooms of a communal apartment 3. The apartment was very large, and our rooms were very large, too: about 50 and 25 square meters. And the fretted ceiling was 5 meters high.

We lived there 9 together: father, mother, grandmother, aunt Rive, her husband, 3 brothers of my father, and I. Of course my grandmother placed my aunt and her husband in the smaller communicating room. All the rest slept in the larger room on the floor or in folding-beds.

At that time my parents decided to cabin off (probably they already got to know about the future birth of my brother). But it was not easy to make 3 rooms of 2 communicating ones. We considered it to be absolutely inconvenient to disturb each other passing through the rooms. You see, in our rooms there were 3 windows and in the apartment there was a long corridor. So we used a part of our rooms to lengthen the corridor. We cut 2 doors in the wall and got 3 separate rooms.

My aunt’s husband Grigory Brand was an artist and a restorer. He could paint ceilings using oil paint. We had fretted ceiling. I guess earlier it was pictured, because once when the room was under repair I found there a painting which had been covered with plaster. My aunt’s husband managed to clear that painting and we saw angels and Amours there. All visitors used to hold their heads high and take a good look at it. And it arrested their attention for a long time.

My aunt’s husband told me a lot about his military service in the tsarist army. He said that Jews were not oppressed there. He was an infantryman and they devoted a lot of time to drilling and physical exercises. Many soldiers were not able to pull themselves up, and officers caned them on their backside until they pulled up. But it could not help. The officer used to order my aunt’s husband ‘Well, show them how it has to be done!’ And Grigory answered ‘Yes, Sir!’ He usually demonstrated excellent pull-ups and he was always pointed at by officers as an example. Unfortunately I can tell you nothing about the time of his service. I am not sure if he participated in the WWI, because I do not know how old he was at that time. I guess that he was younger than my grandmother; he seemed to be a coeval of Rive. He outlived my grandmother by many years. He outlived his wife too, but by a short period of time because after her death he took to drinking. After Rive’s death he managed to marry a Russian woman, and I think that after his death she made much money changing his large room for a smaller one.

Our room was 12 square meters large, and grandmother had a larger room. They lived there 3 together: my grandmother, her younger son Emil and one of her elder sons Grigory (he was younger than my father). To tell the truth, Grigory did not live with us: he had been arrested and exiled (we hoped that he would come back one day). Practically I do not remember him, but I remember that he was the shortest in the family.

There was stove heating, electricity and water supply. We had got a large copper gas-bath. We washed in turn: there were 12 rooms in our communal apartment.

The kitchen was very large: about 50 square meters. There was a large tiled gas-stove, but I remember that it was not in use: at that time people preferred kerosene stoves.

Every family had got a little table in the kitchen. And later when they supplied gas and central heating, there appeared 4 gas-stoves: one stove for 3 families.

I remember that we all lived in peace and friendship. Families were large (by the way, at present 2 persons often are not able to get along together). We were less fastidious…

In the day time all adults worked, children were in kindergartens or in day nurseries. And in the evening all members of the families gathered in the kitchen to have supper, because their rooms were rather small for it. They moved tables to the middle of the kitchen making one large table. All people sat at that table eating their own meals and talking about everything.

And children (including me: at that time I was 5 or 6 years old) ran around the table, collecting clips and gathering some tasty things. Adults usually sent us to the corridor. The corridor was very long (it consisted of 3 long parts). We used to ride bicycles in competition with each other…

I do not remember many Jews among father’s or mother’s friends. Most visitors were father’s colleagues or musicians. I remember that talking to them, father often played his balalaika and they argued about something. We (children) were usually sent to the corridor not to distract adults.

Neither my father nor anyone from our family was religious. I mean they never showed it anyhow… I also remember no icons, nothing of that kind. Our family members were indifferent to prays and kippot. I am sure in it because they were communists, especially my grandmother and her sister Rive (they were true revolutionaries, faithful to principles of communists). But! Recently I found a photo of my father where he wore some sort of a badge in the form of magen David (it was fixed to his coat’s lapel).

My grandmother knew Yiddish: she spoke Yiddish with her sister and my Mom.

And I cannot speak Yiddish at all. Unfortunately I did not listen to my grandmother speaking Yiddish to her sister or my Mom. I was not interested.

They did not speak German language. I am sure in it, because nobody of my relatives could help me when I started studying German at school. If they knew, I would have no problems.

All of us were hundred-per-cent Jews. I know that Grigory, the 2nd husband of Rive was Jewish, too. When I was going to receive my passport, authorities asked my certificate of birth from Estonia, where I was born. According to the inquiry Estonians sent us my certificate in Estonian language. It was written there that my parents were Jewish.

My paternal grandmother had got 4 sons: my father Max, his elder brother Jacob, his younger brother Grigory (all of them were adult when they arrived in Petrograd) and the youngest one Emil (he was a schoolboy at that time). Though I was born in Tartu, I remember almost nothing about our life there. We left in 1933.

I already told you that Grigory, my father’s younger brother was arrested before the beginning of the war for some reason and exiled to Kamchatka. Sometimes he sent us letters. Therefore now it seems to me that he was arrested not for political reason. You see, it happened even before the beginning of mass repressions. Besides he was allowed to correspond with his relatives. We often sent him parcels. Many times I watched my grandmother making up a parcel for Grigory. We sent him warm clothes. Unfortunately during the war our correspondence was not maintained (I do not remember the reason).

In 1937 authorities started mass repressions 4. My grandmother’s sons were arrested first. They took all her sons except Emil, the youngest, who was a schoolboy at that time.

Special NKVD 5 Troika (no public trial) sentenced my father and his elder brother Jacob to 10 years of camps without right of correspondence. As we got to know much later (after Stalin’s death) it meant execution (at bottom of fact).

I do not know when Jacob was born. In Leningrad he married a Russian girl Antonina. They had got a daughter. When he was arrested in 1937, his wife changed her surname for her maiden name. I think she also changed their daughter’s surname … At that time a lot of people did it: they were afraid to be relatives of enemies of the people 6. Authorities used to inform former coworkers of every new enemy of the people. I know nothing about Antonina’s profession, but they often visited us and I remember that they were a family of real intellectuals. You see, that was the time of liquidation of Russian intelligentsia. They were engineers, very good specialists. Unfortunately I know very little about them. Asking my Mom, I tried to learn something only about my father. Of course I had to ask more… 

Jacob was the 2nd to be arrested in our family. Grigory was the 1st one among my grandmother’s sons. In 1937 it became clear for us that my father was in danger, too.

At that particular time (I remember it quite well) Misha Kushnarev, a cousin of Rive came to visit us and had a talk with my father. He said ‘Max, things look black; you are near to be arrested.’ Misha worked as an engineer in the sphere of timber industry (somewhere in Leningrad region). He said ‘You should leave. You should come with me, you should disappear!’ My father was very stubborn, he answered ‘I am not guilty, there must be some misunderstanding.’ And so on and so forth. So he did not take the advice and you know the result…

Mom told me that my father was very sociable, very cheerful and liked to talk. I guess he had said too much in a company, and somebody informed NKVD against him (somebody who was evil-eyed). But when my father was taken away, we were not informed about any charges against him.

It happened in summer when we were at dacha 7. Father was alone at home. Our neighbors told us later that he was taken at night (we knew that it always happened at night time). They arrived in a black car (people called in Cherny Voron). They used to come together with a street cleaner, and father had to open the door. They made a search. Everything was turned upside down: all linen was thrown out of the wardrobe, all books were on the floor… Our neighbors informed us, and we immediately rushed home…

Mother addressed municipal officials and got to know that father was in the Kresty prison [a well-known prison on the territory of Leningrad]. At first Mom brought father food packages. And then one day they refused to take her package and informed that father was sentenced to 10 years of camps without right of correspondence. We never got to know where he was taken from Leningrad. I told you already that only much later we found out what it meant. My father was hopeful of justice, but alas: at that time there was no justice.

In 1958 my Mom received a certificate of father’s death. It was written there that he was rehabilitated posthumously 8.

In 1992 I officially asked for additional information about my father’s destiny (a victim of political repressions). I received another certificate (archival) in reply to my inquiry. It read that my father had been accused of espionage activity for the benefit of Estonia. In 1938 he was sentenced to execution, and executed by shooting. In 1938 victims of mass repressions used to be buried near Levashevo of Leningrad region. I got no more information about the burial place. Every year I visit Levashevo.

You already know that my grandmother was a merit pensioner of the Russian Federation, an old revolutionary. During mass repressions she was not arrested. I remember her gathering friends at home in the evenings. Probably there were lawyers among them, and they wrote letters to Voroshilov 9 and Zhdanov. [Zhdanov Andrey (1896-1948) was a Soviet communist party figure, a close companion-in-arms of Stalin.] They considered them to be important persons, worth to pay their attention to the facts. The answer was usually formal: do not worry, all circumstances would be investigated, innocent people would be released, guilty persons would be punished.

In 1940 my grandmother died from rupture of the heart. She was a hypertensive patient and suffered much...

After father’s arrest in 1937 Mom had to work hard at her hairdressing saloon. She came home very late: it was necessary to earn money to feed children.

I remember that we never were rich. Possibly if we remained in Estonia we could have lived better… But we moved to Leningrad.

Authorities could have banished us from the city: a lot of family members of enemies of people had been banished to Siberia or to Kazakhstan. One day they said ‘We are leaving.’ And that was all. Nobody knew where they moved… Fortunately we remained in Leningrad (I think due to my grandmother’s merits).

On a lower floor there lived a family of Charles Shreder, a German engineer. I studied in the same school with his children (they were 3 or 4). I remember that the youngest boy had 6 fingers on his hand and used to show it everybody (he was little: 3 or 4 years old). One day I came to them and saw them very much upset: they had to leave. They were not arrested, they only had to leave somewhere: to Kazakhstan or to the Far East (to uncrowded regions). It was awful: people usually were taken directly to woods and given spades to dig earth-houses for living... It happened before the beginning of the war, in 1938 or 1940. Later I heard nothing about them.

A lot of foreigners lived in our house. Our neighbor in the flat overhead was an engineer from America. He had got a family and lived in a large room. I knew that engineer’s son, we called him American. He was very orderly, self-restrained, and quiet. Besides he wore boots, long socks and shorts. Here nobody wore those things. We were dressed like tramps, we ran and shouted! He was absolutely different. I do not understand how we managed to become friends. He invited me to visit their apartment. There I saw different electric toys (for example, a toy railway which we could only dream about!). I remember that when I was going to visit them, Mom used to say ‘Don’t forget to say Good evening!’

His father, an engineer used to smoke a pipe. I remember their large room: one half of it was occupied by the engineer (his secretaire, his desk): he used to work there smoking his pipe. And we played in the opposite corner. In the middle of the room there was a large table separating 2 parts of the room.

In our communal apartment there lived two Germans. The woman’s name was Elza (I do not remember her surname). She helped me in mathematics. Later they left Leningrad. They were not arrested. Probably they were German citizens and worked in Russia according to contract.

In fact there were many foreigners working in Russia at that time. There were Englishmen, too. I read the book by Evgenia Ginzburg (she was an active communist party figure). She wrote there that many Germans (foreign communists) had been taken to Stalin’s camps. She did not explain the reason.

At present I got to know a lot from different books. I read there that mass repressions started in 1935. In 1935 authorities arrested communists who participated in Trotsky 10 and Bukharin coalition. [Bukharin Nikolay (1888-1938) was a well-known Soviet state and party figure.] And at school teachers told us that they were parricides. In fact the charges were trumped-up: Stalin wanted to destroy the old guards, who created the USSR. Stalin destroyed people without distinction 11, and engineers, too.

At present I read much. I always liked to read books, but now a lot of things move me to tears (I am old!). Authors of the books I read speak about many people lost during Stalin’s repressions. People know about them almost nothing, only the fact that they were banished.

Time was getting on. The war burst out.

Most probably my father’s elder brothers were executed by shooting. Grigory stopped sending letters to us (I guess he was also killed in the camp). Nobody of them was found alive.

Only Emil, my grandmother’s younger son remained with us. Shortly before the war he finished his school (he was 18 years old). It was a good boy: he could draw very well, he studied very well. He was drafted. He went to the local military registration and enlistment office and what a surprise! They called him to serve in the navy. Why? He had got a congenital heart disease. Nevertheless… He showed us his new identity card with an anchor and a star.

Emil was appointed a political officer 12. During the war we corresponded. In 1943 he fought somewhere near Leningrad. Emil loved my younger brother very much. He used to send us his ration certificate. I keep one of those certificates till now.

In 1943 we received a notification that Emil was wounded, died and was buried in the town of Pitkyaranta [in Karelia]. My younger brother (before his departure to Israel) and I visited Pitkyaranta twice. There is a common grave, but we did not manage to find Emil’s name. We went to the local Ispolkom 13, showed them a letter (a notification about Emil’s death in Pitkyaranta). They promised to inscribe Emil’s name on the stele (all victims had to be named there). We promised to check the result later, but did not manage: my brother left for Israel, and it is too much for me alone.

War began in 1941 when I was 12 years old. Mom said that at that time I was a typical idler (capricious and unmanageable child). I think I was simply spoilt: I had got too many tutors… Before the war burst out I finished 4 classes. Our form-master Ekaterina Nikolaevna, a very good teacher used to say that I was very lazy, but very capable. Nobody could set me on the right track. In the 4th form our math teacher considered me to be a dunce and tried to beat me on my head with a ruler.

In 1941 we hoped to start our school studies. But one clever local official decided to evacuate children of different ages to the Leningrad suburbs (later I read about it in a newspaper). Children were placed in pioneer camps 14. It happened in August, possibly authorities were afraid of bombardments. I guess they believed that the war would be finished quickly (like the Soviet-Finnish War 15) and children would return home soon. But in fact everything turned out tragically. I remember that in the pioneer camp we spent about 2 months. And then one day Germans appeared very close to our camp… I am not sure that they understood who we were, but they started bombing and firing upon us as if we were a military unit. Our teachers jumped out of their cottages and shouted ‘Children! Run into the wood! Germans are here!’ And we ran in various directions into the wood. We never returned to the camp because we were very frightened, ran very far away and lost our way.

I found myself in a group of 7 or 8 children. Among us there was an elder girl. We weaved our way through the forest. At last we came up to the railroad and argued about the way to choose. Younger children got tired and started to cry ‘We want to eat! We want to sleep!’ Hobbling, we reached a railway station. There we saw a troop train ready to move to Leningrad. We asked soldiers to take us with them and described our situation. What could they do? The train commander agreed. Soldiers gave us food and the train moved. It moved very slowly because Germans controlled most roads. We arrived in Leningrad in the morning. Moscow railway station was situated not far from my home and half an hour later I already was at home.

My younger brother also was in a pioneer camp in the suburb of the city. After my return home Mom rushed there and managed to bring him home safely. So for us that was the beginning of the war, blockade 16 and starvation.

From the very beginning of the war we got to know about fascist atrocities. We read newspapers. As for me I was subscribed to Leninskiye Iskry [a Soviet newspaper for pioneers], then to Komsomolskaya Pravda [a Soviet daily newspaper for youth audience] and later to Leningradskaya Pravda. We also listened to the radio. By the way, we used to know about bomb raids and bombardments from the radio (we also heard factories, steam locomotives, and automobiles honking in the beginning of bomb raids). On the radio they informed us about atrocities of fascists: probably informers were people who managed to escape from encirclements, came from partisan detachments, or gave information from occupied regions.

• During the war

So the war burst out and we all remained in the besieged Leningrad: my younger brother Mark, Mom, my aunt Rive, her husband and I. We managed to survive during terrible starvation.

After the beginning of the war, people were ordered to liquidate all wooden constructions which could be burnt by fire-bombs. And in our yard there was a laundry (a wooden house). Yard keepers were mainly women (men were at the front), therefore boys of my age and older helped to demolish that building. We worked under direction of the yard keepers: leaned our weight upon the walls. We also had to paint wooden joist ceiling with special compound and prepare containers with water and sand in case of fire-bombing. Earlier we played, but during the war we had to work.

Later we got another job: to check blackout of windows. At that time in Leningrad electricity supply was still in order and we had to go around our house and check the blackout. If we noticed light, we ran to that apartment and informed our housemates. People listened to our requirements, because our lives depended on it. We were on duty almost every evening and it was interesting for us, because at that time we had nothing else to do and it was our responsibility. We were engaged in it till the beginning of winter when authorities cut off electricity supply.

At first they cut off water supply, and we had to bring water from Fontanka River (the gradual descent to the river was near our house). Adults made there a hole in ice. I used to take a long serving spoon and a three-liter bottle. Water was rather deep there in the hole, therefore I had to kneel on ice and draw the water. I remember that people stood in line to take water.

When the electricity supply was cut off, people thought out the so-called Leningrad wick lamps: a small bottle with kerosene (kerosene was on sale all the time) and a wick. I perfected the construction by using a toy metal wheel with a hole for fixing wick. People also had no firewood. We burnt chairs, tables, etc. Later we started burning books. We had a lot of them. I especially remember one book Maugli (it was large and colorful, its paper was of high-quality, its cover was red with beautiful gold stamping). The book was of great value for me; but one day I had to permit Mom to burn it, because she wanted to make tea…

At that time my brother attended a kindergarten: I took him there early in the morning and took him back home at 6 o’clock in the evening. Parents gave kindergarten employees their children’s ration cards and they arranged 3 meals a day for children. But it was necessary to give Mark something to eat in the evening when he came home (Mom managed to give him something, I do not remember what exactly). My brother kept himself to himself and was sleepy all the time: he could sleep both in the sitting and standing positions. At that time we all were sleepy and hungry, but I managed to keep control upon myself due to my important duties: I had to go shopping, bring water and firewood (in bombed-out houses we used to collect everything that could burn, including wall-paper).

Once in winter (in February) people could not get their ration of bread during 3 days. The reason was unknown: shop assistants explained that fascists had destroyed waterpipe by bombing. I guess it was not the reason, because people took water from Neva, from Fontanka and I think the employees of bread-baking plant did the same. People were informed about nothing, in spite of the fact that radio worked 24 hours a day. People stood in line near bakeries hoping to get bread. They stood 3 days and 3 nights: at night they did not leave for home because they were afraid to loose their place in line. People suffered much, because most of them were already exhausted and it was very frosty at night.

I remember myself standing in line near bakery keeping our ration cards in my right mitten. I was very sleepy and rested my back against the counter. I felt nothing, but when I woke up, I found out that my right mitten disappeared. I cried ‘Oh! Where are my cards?’ I searched the bakery for the mitten, but uselessly. I became very anxious, because the month was only in its first decade. I could not imagine myself telling Mom that I had lost the cards. Probably if Fontanka River was not covered with ice, I would have committed a suicide... I went along the street and cried. When I came home, Mom was at home. I said ‘Mom, kill me: I lost our ration cards!’ Mom embraced me, we cried together, and then she said ‘Well, we have to survive…’

At that time people had no stocks. But Mom knew that in Leningrad there was a black market where it was possible to buy bread for jewelry. In the beginning of the war many people voluntary gave their jewelry to authorities to help the army. Mom kept small golden wrist-watch in memory of Daddy: he had given it to her as a wedding present. Mom went to the black market and swapped it for 3 kilograms of bread. It saved our lives.

When fascists were going to storm Leningrad once again, authorities decided to evacuate mothers with 2 or more children. Therefore in spring of 1942 we were evacuated.

We received an order to be ready for leaving. A car brought us to the railway station. And we left, though we did not want to. We already heard about the Road of Life, knew that it was regularly bombed… Earlier it was on a voluntary basis, but at that moment we were ordered to leave and had to obey. Of course it was up to Mom (we were ready both to stay with her in Leningrad and to follow her everywhere).

In evacuation we were in Bashkiria, in a local village called Malomeleus (it was situated near the city of Belebey). [Belebey is situated 180 km far from Ufa.] In that village people burnt wood for heating. My brother and I had to chop firewood, and Mom worked. Local people showed us (boys) how to saw and cut wood. Mom worked as a hairdresser, but there was no hairdressing saloon, she had to go from one house of the village to another and offer her services. Not many people agreed… They used to give her food or clothes for her services.

Later I worked in the field: harrowed. We worked together with local guys, elder boys of 16 or 17 years old were our leaders. All the boys were good friends.

Evacuated people were given American humanitarian help: we received a lot of clothes. It was just in time, because we had already worn out our clothes. I got yellow trousers. Local boys ran after me crying ‘American!’ (they wore linsey-woolsey clothes). In reply I threw stones towards them, because they bothered me very much. Certainly I did not want to hurt anybody.

Later we moved to Bishbulyak town, because Mom was a hairdresser and nobody needed a hairdresser in the village. In the town she worked in the club where they showed movies every evening. There we lived a little bit better, because they gave a vegetable garden at our disposal. And we cut wood ourselves as we did before.

In evacuation I studied at school 2 years. I studied in winter, and worked in summer. We left for evacuation in 1942. There I repeated the 4th form (they checked my knowledge and found out that my level was rather low) and finished the 5th and the 6th ones. When we returned to Leningrad, it seemed to be too late for me to go on studying.

In evacuation Rose (wife of Mulya, my mother's brother) and her little daughter Raya lived with us for some period of time. Raya was about 4 years old at that time. At first they were evacuated to Kara-Kalpakia [autonomy of Uzbekistan]. Rose’s surname was Vareyatova (the surname of my mother’s brother and my mother’s maiden name). Rose’s husband perished at the front line. Raya was ill. They corresponded with us and Mom invited them to us (to Bashkiria).

They lived with us about a year. But Rose did not like it, because she could not find a job. You see, she was a fashionable dressmaker. But who was interested in fashionable underwear at that time? Besides there was no fabric at all (only sackcloth).

• After the war and recent years

After the end of the war we got to know that my mother's mother who remained in Estonia (she refused to leave for evacuation because of her age) had been betrayed by her neighbors. When Germans occupied those territories, they started to destroy communists and Jews. Grandmother did not look like a Jewess (she was very old and gray-haired), but someone informed fascists that she was Jewish. They came and took her away. This information came to us from Rose, who returned to Estonia after the end of the war. I do not know who told her about grandmother. In Estonia they did not and do not like Jews in contrast to other western countries.

Raya graduated from the Pedagogical College and became a teacher. Later she worked in the district communist party committee. She was a Komsomol 17 member and later a Communist Party member.

I was already adult and more or less independent when I spent my first summer holiday with them. I do not remember how old was Rose at that time, but we were in touch with her, we corresponded. She often visited us together with Raya. In fact it was not a problem to go to Estonia from Leningrad: we used to go there by bus (no visa was required, because Estonia 18 was of one of Soviet Republics). Much later when Rose died, we attended her funeral…

We were in touch with Raya for a long time. She married a Russian guy, they had got 2 children. The boy’s name was Igor and I do not remember the girl’s name. Raya’s surname was Zhanzharova. When everything was balled up [Perestroyka 19 in Estonia, Estonians started oppressing communists and Russians and people wanted to run away from Estonia. A lot of them arrived in Russia. But Raya had got friends abroad and decided to leave for Canada together with her children. Unfortunately she suddenly died from heart attack. We attended her funeral together with my brother, who is in Israel now. But Raya’s children did left for Canada. We lost touch with them… Much later my brother’s daughter found them through the Internet, they corresponded and already visited Raya’s children in Canada!

My mother’s sister Alexandra was married to Eugeny Shuster. They had got 2 children: Roman and Simon. Simon, the younger brother died during the war. Before the war he studied at the musical school (he played the violin). When the war burst out, he started working as a milling-machine operator at a plant. When the blockade began, all plants were evacuated, and his factory moved to Chelyabinsk. There he could not survive under unbearable conditions (he was only a boy, mamma's darling) and decided to run away from Chelyabinsk to Leningrad. They caught him on his way and sent to penal battalion [penal battalions consisted of military men who committed crimes during wartime], where he was killed. You see, the boy was considered to be a deserter!

Roman was a student of the 3rd course when he was drafted in 1939. He finished a school of younger commanders and fought at the German front line and later in Japan 20. When we finished war against Germany, our armies were moved to Japan [the interviewee is mistaken: they moved to the Far East, Soviet armies never were in Japan]. Roman returned home with a lot of military awards. I remember that he was an orderly of a high commander. After the end of the war he started working at the Leningrad cartographical factory. He considered himself to be too old for studying. All his life long he worked. Recently he became a pensioner, but unfortunately while crossing the street he was run over and died. Roman was married to a Russian woman, but they divorced long time ago (he did not marry for the 2nd time). He had got a son Anatoly Shuster. Anatoly lives in St. Petersburg. He is married to a Jewess.

I do not remember when aunt Alexandra arrived in Leningrad. I remember her and her husband well because we often visited each other. She stayed in Leningrad during the blockade. Aunt Alexandra received an award for defense of Leningrad: she was in fighting battalion 21 (they put out fire bombs on city roofs).

Alexandra died in 1980s and her husband died in 1975.

When we arrived in Leningrad after evacuation, we placed ourselves at aunt Alexandra’s room, because our room appeared to be occupied. At that time Roman was still in the army. They lived in a 2-room communal apartment (occupied 1 room). And next door there lived Valya, a girl whom Roman married later. She was very nice and I often gave her the look. I was 16 years old, and she was older (maybe 20). She was very sociable and we frequently talked about nothing.

Rive, my grandmother’s sister survived the war: she evacuated from Leningrad in February 1942 (through the Road of the Life 22), but I do not know where they went. Rive together with her husband returned to Leningrad in autumn of 1945.

We were in evacuation till 1945 and then returned to Leningrad. At that time it was possible to be hired for disassembling blockages in Leningrad. Recruiters made contracts and gave people advance payment. So we signed a contract. You know that only Mom was able to work there, but we all were hired. I do not know how she managed to arrange it (possibly she bribed the recruiter or did something else). That was the way we returned to Leningrad 23.

When we returned to Leningrad, it was difficult time for us, because our room had been occupied. We lodged at mother's sister and they had only one room. We slept in the kitchen, in the corridor, everywhere. You see, our room (warm and cozy) was occupied by a woman (our former neighbor). We were at law with her during all summer long. We still had our residence permit 24 and had the right to get our room back. We successfully got it back and moved from Rive’s place to our empty room.

Mom told me ‘You should continue your studies.’ But I was already 16 years old. I answered ‘Mom, I’ll enter an industrial school.’ [Industrial schools gave young people who finished 7 classes a worker’s profession.] I went there myself, while at that time a lot of young people received an order from authorities to become a student of an industrial school.

I realized that it was necessary to help Mom earning money for living. She worked as a hairdresser and her salary was not adequate to support our family. Mom cried when I told her about my decision. She asked me to enter a technical school and promised to do her best to make both ends meet. [Technical School in the USSR and a number of other countries was a special educational institution preparing specialists of middle level for various industrial and agricultural institutions, transport, communication, etc.] But I refused: technical schools offered a small stipend and industrial schools gave students packed meal. So I made my decision (it happened in 1945).

I remember that when I came to the local communist party committee to get a permit, they were very surprised: a Jew was going to study at industrial school on voluntary basis! I explained them everything regarding financial situation in our family. I said that I wanted to help my Mom.

I had some plans. Before I made that decision I got advice from some elderly men. They said that wood or metal turner was a very good profession: I would have large salary and there would be no need to get higher education.  I understood it, but planned to work and become a part-time student.

Well, indeed I was the only Jew at our industrial school. I know that Jewish families were skeptical regarding working class.

At my industrial school and later in the army I came across no manifestations of anti-Semitism. Soldiers in the army sometimes laughed at me, but friendly. But later (I am sure in it!) my nationality 25 played a trick on me. I was sent to penal battalion and found myself among young guys who had been not lucky to be on the occupied territory. They told me that during the war they were forced by Germans to serve in police under the threat of execution. Most of them were 16-19 years old at that time. Later they gave themselves up on voluntary basis, but were taken to the penal battalion. They laughed ‘We know the reason why we are here, and what about you?’ At that time it did not come to my mind that it could be connected with my item 5. It was necessary to fight there (in the penal battalion) and for me it made no difference.

Now I realize that my item 5 influenced my life greatly… Perhaps it was additional minus to my status of a member of family of the enemy of people. I never told anybody about my father. I hoped that most people would not rake over the dust and ashes of my past. If I was asked about my father, I answered that he had been killed in fights with fascists. Probably, real facts were recorded somewhere in my documents and interested people were able to find them, but the rest were not concerned. For instance, at our industrial school people did not care. To tell the truth, it surprised me a little: our school was situated at a military factory. That factory was a former shipyard, adjoining the Admiralteysky dockyard [the Admiralty dockyard was founded in 1704]. At that time our factory produced submarines - so it was in the secret list. Of course they had a valid reason not to admit me into the school. Probably I was a small fry for them. Anyway it happened.

I finished my industrial school and got the 5th grade (rather high for a final-year student of industrial school). My school-leaving certificate was full of good marks (do you remember my school teacher of mathematics?), because I liked studying at my school!

Due to my 5th working grade I got draft deferment. Therefore I was called up for military service at the age of 21, when all draft deferments were cancelled by authorities. I already told you that they sent me to a penal battalion - and I know nothing about the reason.

In the army I was a private. My fellow and I got axes and arm-saws. We were taken to the forest and got an order to cut 8 cubic meters of wood. Every day.

All my life long I went in for sports. I liked different kinds of sport and managed to get the 2nd category in track-and-field athletics and the 1st category in skiing.

In the army my physical fitness was of great assistance for me. At first we (together with my partner) could not fulfill our norm. Our political officer said ‘I see that your team works rather badly.’ And he took my partner away from me. Instead of him he gave me another guy, a real muscleman. That guy looked at me appraisingly and said ‘He will not be able to follow my working pace.’ I was silent. And the political officer said ‘Try him!’ So we started. I decided not to ask for his mercy until he himself stopped sawing. At last he became covered with sweat, I was wet also, and both of us got tired. But I won. Later he said ‘I never expected it from a guy like you’.

To tell the truth, I looked rather weak: I was only 1,68 m high and my weight was 60 kg… But probably sport works wonders. For example, in order to ski 15-20 kilometers you need both spirit and strength. I liked sport. I considered skiing to be sport for horses. I dreamed to become a coach (to enter a school for coaches at the Leningrad College of Physical Culture named after Lesgaft). [Leningrad College of Physical Culture named after Lesgaft was founded in 1896.] But in order to become a student I had to finish 7 classes. After my army service I went to the 6th form (again) of the evening school. By the way, later I did not manage to enter the College of Physical Culture, because I failed at the Russian language examination. But my achievements in sports were much better.

After 3 months in the army during the evening roll-call an officer suddenly read out an order: ‘Private Eirus is placed under the orders of the Leningrad military department beginning from tomorrow morning.’ Soldiers’ eyes started from their sockets. The same was with my eyes. What was the matter? The point was that all qualified workers from our factory had been drafted and the factory failed to fulfill the production plan. The director was reprimanded. He tried to explain that the factory lacked qualified workers and authorities brought all of us back to the factory. It happened in 1951.

After that I worked at our factory. Meanwhile I finished 10 classes. Then I entered and 6 years later graduated from the Timber College (evening course) in 1964. I decided to tread in my father's steps. I expected to be sent somewhere according to mandatory job assignment 26. But they gave me my diploma and let me go to the four winds. I found a job of engineer-designer and worked at different research institutions.

On graduation from my College I got acquainted with my future wife. We are still married. We have got a son. My wife Margarita Goldina was born in Khabarovsk in 1938. She graduated from the Sanitary College in Leningrad. She works as a department head at a regional sanitary and epidemiologic station. I got acquainted with her when I was 35 years old: I had no time earlier. 

My wife’s mother Maria is Russian. She worked in hospital as a doctor. My wife’s father Efim Goldin was a Jew from Mogilev, a retired lieutenant colonel. All his life long he worked in the Far East. He knew Japanese language very well. He used to say that it was Japanese language that saved his life when a lot of professional soldiers suffered from repressions. Efim was able not only to speak, but also to make leaflets, write newspaper articles in Japanese, he also worked with prisoners. Efim knew that if he was in Leningrad, he would have been arrested for sure. He served in different regions on the country; therefore my wife (being a little girl) studied at different schools in great number of towns. By the way, it engraved in my mind that there was a period in their life when they lived in Birobidzhan 27.

Family of my wife observed no Jewish traditions, because her father was a political worker and a military man. They were absolutely not religious. You see, civilians were able to have private life, but political workers were treated more strictly 28, especially in the army. Military men use to live in military camps together with their families. Very often their families live in the same house with families of other officers as in large communal apartment; therefore it is difficult to keep secrets. And we must take into account that at that time there was a terrible number of informers. Anyway my wife came from not religious family.

At first I worked at the Research Institute of Mechanical Engineering. There I had problems with the chiefs. My work was interesting. I was fond of new industrial technologies and I worked in the department of new technologies. I already chose my future dissertation topic and it was approved. I only needed to make an agreement with the head of laboratory, because it was necessary for me to have access to laboratory for carrying out tests.

I addressed the laboratory chief with a suggestion to change my working place for his laboratory. He asked me about the reason. I answered frankly that I was going to write a dissertation and it was necessary for me to work on vibrating machines. He refused. I guess my item 5 played its role. Besides he was a PhD and was afraid of rivals. You see, I heard rumors about him: he was that sort of a department head who had to receive and approve suggestions of different development engineers in his duty bound. People said he collected a number of those innovations, summarized and gave himself out to be the real author of them. I think it was possible. 

This story had its background. Some time before I suggested my first invention. Talking to him, I hinted that I had no objection to his participation in my work. I said that I appreciated his experience. In fact it was an invitation to become my co-designer. He seemed to agree and took my data. But several months later when I reminded him about our talk, he said ‘No, we will not work together. We will submit our ideas separately’.

In our Institute there was a Patent Department, where employees checked every invention before applying for a patent in Moscow. The process of checking usually took about a year and covered both our country and foreign ones. Regarding my first invention, I made that check together with my coworkers earlier and the Patent Department employees knew me very well. One day they called me and informed that they received another application for patent from that laboratory head. They said that the topic was very similar to mine. They also asked me why I was not present in the list of authors. I visited the Department and found out that he took my idea as a basis and added some details! Point at issue! But as I had registered my invention first, the Institute director decided to send my application first.

So the laboratory head nursed a grievance against me, in spite of the fact that I had invited him to become my co-author. It was him who appeared to be unscrupulous! And certainly he started to press me. I understood that it was time to leave the Institute. And I left my service.

Later (since the beginning of 1970s) I worked in different institutions, I already told you about it. I have six copyright certificates. But it brought me no profit...

When my brother left for Israel (it happened approximately in 1996), he called me to follow him, but I refused. The point is that I am an engineer and I like to work. In the beginning of 1990s (when Perestroika came) they simply knocked me out from the institute and said that I could take comfort in my pension (at least), while many other people had got nothing. But I considered myself to be still able to work; I considered my head to be still worth something. You see, in fact Israel is a large village! They have no industry: mainly rural economy. They certainly try to regulate, but it is very difficult for them. Even now when my brother comes to visit me (he usually does it every 2 years), he says that it is very difficult to find job in Israel.

Germany is absolutely different. Everybody knows that it is a hi-tech industrial country with advanced exact science. I wanted to go to Germany. It also happened many years ago: approximately when my brother left for Israel. Germany offered to cover traveling expenses and free-of-charge accommodation. At present it is better not to go there: it is useless. Recently a friend of mine had to come back from Germany: welfare payment was the only income she could get there. But those people, who managed to leave for Germany earlier, live there much better. I remember a lot of people standing in line to get into the German embassy! At that time I wanted to leave for Germany together with my son. But later everything changed: my son found good work and decided that it would be silly to give up his new work.

My son Igor was born in 1964. He finished 7 classes, then technical school. He was sent to work at a car pool. But later he changed it for a bread-baking plant. He worked there as a driver till Perestroika. At present he repairs automobiles at a privately owned car repair service: it means that his salary is high. He is married for the 2nd time. And I have two grandsons; Alexey and Mikhail (Alexey is by my son’s previous marriage). His wife’s name is Elena.

And my brother and his family live in Israel. They are very pleased to have left. At present we are often informed about firing in Israel. I suggest my brother’s family to come back if they are frightened. They answer ‘No, we’ll never return!’ They left about 10 years ago, when Israel already became independent. Sorry, I am not sure about the Israeli historical events: I do not keep my eye on it...

My brother’s daughter Julia was the 1st to leave for Israel. She graduated from the Architectural College. [The Architectural College was founded in 1832.] She started working at the beginning of Perestroika and soon realized that she had no future there as an engineer. She also had nobody in sight regarding marriage: all men around her were married.

Here in St. Petersburg we used to receive appreciable assistance from the Hesed Avraham Welfare Center 29: food packages and medical care. But it depends on your pension: the poorer you are the greater assistance you get. To tell the truth, since my pension had been increased (I have a status of the former citizen of the besieged Leningrad), I did stopped addressing the Hesed Center.

We never received any assistance from Germany.

• Glossary:

Leonid Aptekar
Kiev
Ukraine
Date of interview: July 2004
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya

I interviewed Leonid Aptekar at the Jewish Cultural Society facility where the Kiev organization of Jewish veterans has its meetings. Leonid is a short and stout man growing bald. He is full of energy and quick in his movements and manner of speaking. He is a very open and friendly person. He is always busy despite his age. In 1992 he received a plot of land and spends a lot of time in his garden. He’s planted few cherry trees in the memory of his mother and his Skvira hometown.  Leonid reads a lot and enjoys discussing what he has read.  He takes an interest in the Jewish life in Kiev, actively participates in Hesed and the Kiev organization of Jewish veterans related activities. 

My maternal grandfather Lazar Brodskiy and grandmother Denia (nee Volodarskaya) were born in Volodarka town, Belaya Tserkov district Kiev province [37 km from Belaya Tserkov, 115 km from Kiev]. I don’t know my grandparents’ dates of birth.  

The Belaya Tserkov district was located within the [Jewish] Pale of Settlement 1 existing during the czarist regime. The Jewish population constituted a bigger part of the population. [about 40% of the population]. Most settlements, including Volodarka, were Jewish towns. The Jewish population was religious. Jews observed Jewish traditions, went to the synagogue, celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays at home and followed kashrut. There were atheists of Jews in bigger town, but this was not to happen in little towns. Of course, there was a synagogue, cheder, a general education Jewish school in the town. There was a Jewish cemetery in the suburb of Volodarka. 

There were five children in my mother’s family. My grandmother may have had more children, but those five survived. My mother Heisura, the oldest of the children, was born in 1895, and my mother’s brother Gersh, born in 1910, was the youngest. Between them came mama’s brother Teviye and sisters Boba and Udl. My grandfather Lazar died in 1918, before I was born. He was buried according to Jewish traditions in the Jewish cemetery.

My mother’s parents were religious. On Sabbah and holidays my grandmother and grandfather went to the synagogue with their children. They celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays at home. I don’t know how my grandmother and grandfather celebrated these holidays: my grandfather had died before I was born and my grandmother lived with us, when I remember her.  They spoke Yiddish at home, but they also spoke fluent Russian with their non-Jewish neighbors.

My grandmother had to support her family and took over any job to earn their living. She baked bread for sale at home and did cooking and baking for other families in her clients’ homes where she worked, but the family was big and it was difficult to provide for all of them. Mama became an apprentice of a dressmaker. When she learned this vocation she began to take orders herself. It was still hard to find clients in Volodarka: many of its residents were poor. In 1916 Jewish pogroms 2 overwhelmed Volodarka. Bandits broke into the town robbing and killing Jews and burning the Jewish houses. My grandmother decided to move to Skvira [40 km from Belaya Tserkov, 105 km from Kiev]. 

My mother and grandmother told me about the town and I also remember it very well. It was a small town with the population of about 12 thousand people. Jews constituted over a half of the population. There were three synagogues in Skvira. The biggest one was the 2-storied choral synagogue. The two other synagogues were smaller. After the revolution of 1917 3 the Soviet regime started its struggle against religion 4 and the synagogues were gradually closing. The biggest synagogue operated till the early 1940s. Later it was also closed and housed a knitwear factory. 

There were no pogroms that had overwhelmed Ukraine during the revolution and the Civil War 5 in Skvira where Jewish self-defense units 6 were formed. Their leader was local Jew Meyer Treletskiy. He was a fearless and smart man. People feared and liked him. He did not look heroic whatsoever: he was short and fat. It was thanks to his efforts that the situation in Skvira was calm and quiet through this period. The flocks and Denikin 7 troops preferred to pass by the town. 

There were 2-storied stone houses in the central part of the town. They housed administrative offices or belonged to wealthier people. The others were clay-walled huts. The clay was a mixture of clay, chopped straw and horse manure [air-brick]. Our house where we lived before the Great Patriotic War 8 was one of them. My mother’s brother Teviye, a tinsmith, installed the tin sheet roof on our house.  There were 3 rooms, a fore room and a big kitchen with a Russian stove 9 in the house. There was a store shed and a living stock shed in the yard. My grandmother kept ducks, geese and goats. There was a meadow and a river near our house. There was a water mill with a mill-pond on the river where our ducks and geese swam. There was an orchard and a vegetable garden by the house. My grandmother was the head of the family. The children obeyed her strictly. None of us ever argued with her or doubted what she said. Jews lived in Jewish neighborhoods and if one of them decided to sell his house he started looking for Jewish clients and would have never sold the house to Ukrainian buyers: they wanted to have Jewish neighbors.  

My grandmother told me that during the period of NEP 8 Jews owned all stores in the town. The shops were full and people had a good life. When the NEP was over the state took over all commercial activities, but the former Jewish store owners kept their jobs and shop assistants.  Before the revolution Jews also owned shops and factories, but the Soviet regime nationalized their property. A number of wealthier Jews moved to America after the NEP was over. They understood it was not safe for them to stay since the NKVD 9 expropriated their property at best and at worst they might be executed. These immigrants purchased land near New York and founded the town of New Scriba: it forms a part of New York state now. During perestroika 10 their descendants visited Skvira to take a look at the place where their ancestors had lived. 

There was a market in the center of Skvira. Ukrainian farmers were selling their food products on them. They knew that Jewish housewives would only want to buy the living poultry, and there was a shochet near the market, and the housewives could use his services.  Farmers also sold vegetables, fruit and berries – cherries were just great!

When the soviet power was established cooperative companies started to develop in Skvira. I remember the Metallist plant from Kiev created the ‘Metallist’ cooperative company manufacturing metalwork. This plant also did much to accomplish improvements in the town: it asphalted the streets and installed electric power lines. There was a shoemaking company, a repair company and a tailors’ company where my mother worked. 

During the period of collectivization 11, a kolkhoz 12 and a Jewish kolkhoz 13 were established in Skvira. The chairman of the Jewish kolkhoz  was the man whose family name was Zub. When the kolkhoz was established people had to give their cattle, tools and also, sewing machines for some reason to the kolkhoz. This kolkhoz was closed in 1936 for being non-profitable, all property of the Jewish kolkhoz to the neighborly non-Jewish kolkhoz and the former employees of the Jewish kolkhoz also went to work there.

The district and town authorities, director of the only plant in Skvira, executive authorities and militia were represented by Jews. There were hardly any Ukrainians among them. Jews always helped and supported each other. They spoke Yiddish at home and in the streets. They openly celebrated Jewish holidays even during the Soviet rule. All boys had brit milah rituals. The family installed tables in the yards and treated all neighbor children with sweets and cookies.

When my mother’s family moved to Skvira uncle Gersh was working as a clerk in a store. He could write and count well. I don’t know about my uncle Teviye, but my mother and her sisters had no education. After the revolution of 1917, when they were quite grown up, they finished a likbez 14 where they learned to write and read. After the revolution uncle Gersh joined Komsomol 15 and became a Komsomol activist.

Gersh became a butcher after the revolution and Teviye was a roof maker. Mama’s sisters went to work at the Metallist shop, which manufactured beds. They were laborers.

Even after the revolution Jews commonly turned to matchmakers to prearrange weddings. Matchmakers also visited my grandmother. They arranged Boba’s marriage with Idl Damskoy, a Jewish man from Pavoloch, Zhitomir region [25 km from Skvira, 105 km from Kiev]. My aunt had a real Jewish wedding with the chuppah and the rabbi. After the wedding the newly weds stayed to live in Skvira and both worked at the Metallist shop. They received an apartment in 1940, but I don’t remember where they lived before. They had two children: an older son and a daughter. I don’t remember their names. They were poor and grandmother supported them. Mama’s sister Udl was single.

My mother’s brothers also married Jewish women through matchmakers’ services. Gersh’s wife Lisa was born in Skvira in 1900. Gersh and Lisa had two daughters. Vera was born in 1933, and Inna was born in 1939. Teviye and his wife Hana had two daughters and a son: Sonia was born in 1927, Riva was born in 1933, and their long-awaited son was born in 1935.

During the Civil War a partisan unit was deployed in Skvira. My future father Iosif Aprekar, a Jew from Odessa 16 served in it. My mother liked him and they got married. They had a chuppah and klezmers at their wedding. Mama told me no details. My father stayed to live in Skvira. I was born on 25th July 1925. I was given the Russian [common] name 17 of Leonid. My Jewish name is Luzer after my maternal grandfather. Some time later my father left us for Odessa. He sent money for some time before he disappeared completely. We had no information about him. We were very poor and in 1934 mama decided to find him in Odessa and make him support us. However, I never met my father. We found his second family in Odessa: his wife and two daughters. They told us that my father worked in a store and peculated the money. He disappeared escaping from trial. Mama and I went back home and never tried to find him again. My grandmother and mother raised me to be a decent and honest man and I am very grateful to them for this.

They taught me to do any work about the house. I took the goats to the pasture, geese and ducks to the pond and weeded the vegetable garden. In winter the geese and ducks were kept in the attic of our house. We always had goose fat and meat. My grandmother melted the fat with onions: it was very delicious. I liked it spread on my bread. My grandmother did the cooking on the Russian stove in the kitchen: she made broth, borscht and stew. She also baked delicious pastries. Nobody else could cook as delicious as my grandmother! In summer and autumn my grandmother made stocks for winter. There were barrels with sauerkraut and pickles. My grandmother liked making jam. For some reason cherries were to be beaded on a thread and this was my chore. My grandma made cherry, apple, plum and pear jam. I enjoyed the process as well gathering foam and tasting it. My grandmother baked bread for a week and this was the most delicious bread I had ever had in my life. In 1934 the Skvira residents were forbidden to make bread at home. There was a bakery and a baker’s store opened. People lined up to buy bread since this was the only baker’s in the town. Komsomol activists made the rounds of houses to make sure nobody violated the order. My grandmother went to the store to buy one loaf of bread, the allowed ration. Some residents wet to buy bred in Kiev. It was not allowed to take bread from out of town, but people managed to do it in secret.  

My grandmother was very religious. We always celebrated Sabbath at home. On Friday morning my grandmother made a general clean up. We had ground floors and she swept it clean. My grandmother also cooked food for two days. There was always gefilte fish, sweet and sour stew, chicken broth and strudels with nuts and jam to eat. On Friday evening my grandma lit candles and prayed. Then the family sat down to dinner. On Saturday morning my grandma went to the synagogue. Later she read her prayer book and told me about the Jewish history. 

Of all holidays I remember Pesach. The blacksmith living in our street closed his forge one week before Pesach and engaged in baking matzah. Women joined him to make and roll the dough. Each family needed plenty of matzah: there was no bread in the Jewish houses through 8 days of Pesach.  On the eve of the holiday a general cleanup was done and all crumbles swept out. My grandmother checked how clean the house was. The Pesach crockery was taken down from the attic where it was stored during the year. My grandma followed kashrut and had all kosher crockery, but it was not appropriate for Pesach. Geese and chicken were taken to the shochet before Pesach. My grandmother made chicken broth, roasted chicken and geese, stuffed chicken necks with liver and fried onions and made gefilte fish. She made strudels with raisins and jam and honey cakes.  Grandma made potato and matzah and egg puddings. There was plenty of food at home. I am sure there was seder conducted, but I can’t remember. On Pesach grandma and mama went to the synagogue. I sometimes went there with mama. Mama and I sat on the upper tier. 

Many men of Skvira wore beards. Older women like my grandma wore kerchiefs, but my mother or other women of her age only wore shawls to go to the synagogue. 

Mama worked and grandma took care of the housekeeping. I went to a kindergarten before going to school. There were just two groups in the kindergarten. The food was very good, I remember we were given chicken legs with noodles, nice soups, boiled cereals with butter for lunch and a glass of milk and a bun for the afternoon snack.  

There were few general education schools in Skvira and two Jewish schools, the curriculum was the same, but the language of teaching was different. I went to a Jewish school at the age of 6. All subjects were taught in Yiddish, but it was no problem for me. We had Jewish teachers. I remember all teachers. Our history teacher Zaslawski was awarded an Order of Lenin 20 after the Great Patriotic War. It was a very high award. I became a young Octobrist 21 and then a pioneer 22 at school. I was not quite successful at school since I did not behave myself in class, I was a rather vivacious boy and it was next to impossible for me to sit still for 45 minutes. I was often naughty and  did not behave at times. Many of my classmates wanted to continue education after finishing school. Many became doctors and professional military.

Most of my friends were Jewish boys, my neighbors and classmates. We did our home chores and then went tobogganing, swam in the river or went fishing. There was an abandoned orchard on the bank of the river where we picked apples and pears. 

1932-33 were hard years. This was the period of terrible famine 23 in Ukraine. Many people were starving to death. My grandmother managed to feed us during this period and we survived.  The shop where my mother was working provided free meals to its employees, this was rather miserable food: a slice of dipped bread, some poor soup with potato peels, but we appreciated even this little food that we were provided. Mama shared her lunch with me. Now I know that she gave me a bigger part of it. Mama always waited for me to come home before sitting down for a meal. 

In 1933 something happened that affected our family during the war. Our Ukrainian neighbor dug a passage to our house and broke in at night thinking that women would not repulse his attack. We heard there was somebody in the house. Grandma ran to the kitchen, saw our neighbor and started beating him. She bit him hard, even his nose bled. He rushed home. We shouted to him that we would not report this to the militia, if he closed up the sap. He did it and we thought this was the end of the story, but he took his revenge on my grandma during the war reporting to the Germans that her son served in the Soviet army.

In 1936 arrests [Great Terror] 24 began. None of our relatives was arrested or declared an ‘enemy of the people’ 25. I don’t think any Jews were arrested in Skvira at that time. They only arrested Russian and Ukrainian residents. They arrested director of a Ukrainian school and few others, but that was all.  Of course, we believed those people were guilty. Nobody could even imagine that Stalin, the ‘father of all peoples’ was a horrible criminal. When we had concerts in the house of culture, the first was always to be a song about Lenin 26, or Stalin. At one time I was on the edge of becoming ‘an enemy of the people’. I was in the 4th form and was a terrible naughty boy and a fidget. There was a portrait of Stalin in our class where he was painted sitting at the table wearing his military kittel. The other boys and I were throwing paper balls into one another and my ball incidentally hit the portrait of Stalin. Of course, there was no evil intent of mine, but really what a mess it caused.  Mama was invited to school, I was crying, the management wanted to expel me and I was trying to explain that it was not my fault. Fortunately, they left me alone some time afterward. 

When the 1932-33 famine was over, life started to improve gradually, though the state introduced high taxes on those who kept livestock and had gardens. These taxes could be paid in money or agricultural products. I remember my grandmother saving eggs to pay the tax. We fed pigs for sale. Mama’s brother Gersh slaughtered them and sold at a market in Kiev. This helped us to make ends meet. Later mama’s brothers and their families moved to Kiev. Teviye worked as a tinsmith in the construction agency of the Council of Ministers. Gersh went to work at the industrial trade trust.  Gersh supported or family. He often visited Skvira bringing us clothes, food products and things for home. Of course, this was all lost during the war.

In the late 1930s the situation with food grew worse again. This was caused by the need to feed the army fighting against Finland [Soviet-Finnish War] 27, and then the need to create state food stocks in case of a war with Germany. As for the population, it had no big concerns about the war after the Finnish campaign and particularly, after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact 28 was executed. We were convinced there would be no war and that ‘who came with a sword would die from sword’.  We were patriots and believed in the strength and invincibility of our army. However, this conviction was no longer strong in 1941. When people say they did not know about the war then, it’s not true.  About 2 weeks before the war military troops were marching via Skvira toward the border day and night. Of course, one couldn’t help guessing why this was happening.

I finished the 8th form of my Jewish school in 1940. This was the last graduation before the school was closed. One could tell that the authorities intended to eliminate anything Jewish from our life. 

In summer 1940 all guys of 1923-1925 years of birth were gathered in a Ukrainian school. I was to be recruited to the army 2 years from then. This was the so-called ‘labor mobilization’. We were to be under the command of veteran of the Civil War Dubyrintsev, a representative of the military registry office. We were given food ration, which I gave my mother. I knew I would manage somehow, but I also understood that it would be difficult for my mother and grandmother. We walked to Donetsk region. On the way we were provided meals. We walked across villages where we stayed overnight. When we reached Stalino [ 620 km from Kiev], we were assigned to different sites: some went to mines and the others were sent to work at plants or in kolkhozes. I was sent to work in the Stalino kolkhoz. I worked there for about a year. When I heard that Germany attacked the USSR on 22 June 1941 without an announcement of the war, my first thought was about my mother and grandmother. I did not know what was to happen to them. I still believed that the war would be instantaneous and victorious for us. When Germans advanced as far as Donetsk region, we were told to move out of Stalino. We were given shoes and food rations for few days. I took a train to the Caucasus. The trip was long, it took about 10 days considering that I changed trains and  there were long stops. At a station in the Caucasus I bumped into my acquaintances from Skvira and joined them. We had some money to buy food products and were also provided meals at stations. Everything was organized well. However, it was not safe to stand in lines at railway stations. Local authorities had an order to send certain numbers people to the arrangement of trenches, and militia just captured people from lines to send them to the digging of trenches. I hardly managed to escape once. Of course, this was illegal, but there was nobody to complain to…

We reached the Caspian Sea and from there we took a boat across the sea. I arrived at a settlement in Andijon region in Uzbekistan over 6000 km from home. I was short and did not look my age of 16.  I was sent to a local boarding school. There were not many children at the boarding school and we had sufficient food. Some time later a children’s home evacuated from Nemirov Kiev region [220 km from Kiev] arrived at the boarding school. From then on we were given less food. Later I was sent to a vocational school in Tashkent. I was assigned to a construction group.  In the morning we had classes and in the afternoon we went to work at the construction site. The students were involved in the construction of an aircraft plant. I worked as a bricklayer. We had breakfast in the school canteen and had lunch at the construction site. Once a woman on a street asked me to carry her luggage. We talked on the way and later this woman supported me through my study at the school. She was a common Russian woman from Tashkent. Her name was Vera, but I did not ask her surname. Her husband and son were at the front and she sympathized with me. I was away from home and alone. Vera invited me for a meal and I could wash myself and stay overnight in her cozy home. There were numbers of homeless children in Tashkent. The local authorities arranged charity shelters for homeless children to provide food and clothes to them. They did it to involve these children in work later and then recruit them to the army.

In autumn 1941 I finished my vocational school and got an assignment to work at the construction of a metallurgical plant  in Zlatoust town Chelyabinsk region. I was a foreman at the construction site. It was given the status of a military construction site since metal was to be produced for army needs. We were provided 3 meals a day and 700 grams of bread.  An old foreman working at this construction site supported me. His sons were at the front and he treated me like his own son. I worked at the construction till December 1942. From there I was recruited to the army. I received a food ration for the trip to the military registry office. I had flat feet and was not fit for the army service, but it was the wartime and I believed it to be my duty to go to the front line. The medical commission confirmed that I was fit for service and I was sent to a sniper school. We lived in barracks and were trained in accurate shooting. We also studied military disciplines. We were provided sufficient food: besides the ration (three hot meals per day: macaroni and boiled cereals, bread and soup with a little piece of meat) we had white bread, frute preserve and 50 grams of sugar per day.

I studied 10 months. In November 1943 we were given military uniforms, warm underwear and winter jackets. We lined up and marched to the railway station to the music. We boarded a train. I was to go to Rechytsa [250 km from Kiev] town Gomel region in Belarus where the 48th army headquarters were located. I was assigned to the 291st regiment, 170th infantry division, Army 48, as a private. I was sent to the front line without delay. There were minor battles occurring, the so-called combat survey. Our regiment was in defense. No snipers were needed and I became a machine gunner. In 1944 an overall offensive in Belarus began. Our 170th division went first.  We beat the Germans as efficiently as they beat our troops at the beginning of the war. There were marshes on our right and left and this was advantageous for us. The Air Forces also supported us. I marched as far as Warsaw with my division. I had joined Komsomol before my first battle. Our colonel used to say: ‘If one is to die, one better dies a Komsomol member’. During this offensive I was wounded in my leg. Severely wounded patients were taken to rear hospitals, and the others could take treatment in a front-line hospital. I was taken to the army hospital and when I recovered, I was assigned to a reserve regiment where I was promoted to the rank of sergeant. We also took part in combat actions. It was good for me to have been taken to the army hospital since I managed to return to my regiment afterward. I was wounded again near Warsaw on 15 February 1945. My battalion commanding officer sent me to the combat position. I came onto the road, when a bullet hit me on my arm. This was severe injury and I was taken to a rear hospital in Orekhovo-Zuyevo near Moscow by the sanitary train. There was skilled medical personnel on this train and everything arranged for taking good care of the wounded.  When I was released I was assigned to the 91st infantry division belonging to the 39th army. We were urgently relocated to Konigsberg [Konigsberg battle] 29. There were severe battles in this area. The Konigsberg fortress was bombed day and night, Soviet, English and American Air Forces, all of them, but in vain. There was one circumstance, of which nobody was aware. Our commanding officers had detailed maps of the area, showing the roads, paths and even wells, but nobody knew that there was a whole underground town with the military forces, tanks and mortars in the forest surrounding Konigsberg. There were underground passages that Germans knew very well. In early April 1945 storm troops began to be formed reassigning a battalion or a company from each regiment. Of course, those were the strongest and bravest soldiers. Storm troops were to advance ahead of the army. On 6th April our storm troops went into attack and perished. There was a deep channel before the fortress: when our troops went in attack, the Germans filled the channel with water and our soldiers drowned. Then German tanks were released from underground passages. They attacked us and we had to retreat. Our next offensive took place on 15th April and on 16th April 1945 we moved into Konigsberg.  Our division took part in these battles.

Of course, there were intervals between operation on the front line. During such intervals one of 3 regiment divisions was left in defense and the two others were in its rear. We undertook military training, running, shooting and overcoming obstacles. Here was mandatory political training. We had political information in each class. Later we had to answer when Lenin or Stalin was born. There were concerts and each concert started from the ‘Cantata about Stalin’ [Composed by M. Inyushkin and Alexandr Alexandrov in 1937 it was to be glorifying and praising the leader.], which we sang in choir. Then one of these two regiments replaced the one in defense: in this way the regiments took turns to take some rest.  Such intervals lasted one or two weeks or one month.  Then we went into an offensive, and again two regiments were following the one moving ahead. If the front line was stretched out, the regiments were also arranged in one line. Even when we were in defense, our reconnaissance guys always had work to do. I served in the reconnaissance squad. During intervals between battles our mission was to identify German weapons emplacements, and mark their mortar locations on the map. We did reconnaissance and captured prisoners for interrogation.  They were to describe their troops’ positions. Their input and our maps indicating the enemy’s weapon emplacements made preparation for an offensive. At the beginning of an offensive our batteries shot about 200 shells and mines to eliminate those emplacements. After the artillery preparation we got on our feet: ‘Vpered! Za rodiny! Za Stalina’ [‘Forward! For Motherland! For Stalin!’] and went into offensives.

There was no anti-Semitism during the war. Nobody gave any thought to the nationality issues.  We fought and lived like friends. Of course, things happen at wars. Many perished in battles, but there were incidental and absurd deaths. Once we were sitting in a dot-pillbox [the word ‘dot’ is an abbreviation meaning a ‘long-term weapon emplacement’], it was strong and reliable with the roof of three layers of beams, when a blank shell feel and broke one of our comrade’s legs. He died on the way to the medical battalion. I also remember another accident: we were sitting in an earth hut one night. There were trenches to the left and to the right from us. Of course, we left the watch posts on the left and on the right and one ‘secret’ post in the neutral zone to warn us if Germans started an attack. There were wires to mines all around and one soldier stepped onto an anti-tank mine on a bet that it would bear his weight.  The anti-tank mines were supposed to explode under a tank weighing over 200 kg, but to remain intact under lower weights. Anyway, he stepped on it and it blew up. Many people died from other reasons than on a battlefield or from a stray bullet…

Each regiment had NKVD and SMERSH units [Abbreviation (‘Smert Shpionam’ meaning death for the spies). It was the 9th division of the KGB, dedicated to Terror and Diversion. It worked within the Soviet Army, ferreting out dissident soldiers, former prisoners-of-war, or those who had been in encirclements, and summarily executing them.] representatives. I did not encounter working with them and it’s hard to say what their mission was. Our army liberated Soviet prisoners-of-war from camps and then SMERSH dealt with them. If they detected no crimes against the Soviet regime they gave them uniforms and assigned to the front line forces, while bandits, policemen and German accomplices were convicted and sent to the GULAG 29 in Siberia. 

The war with Germany was over for me after the seizure of Konigsberg, but I don’t mean to say that I was demobilized. Our forces were still fighting in Germany, but our unit relocated to the rear and started preparations to relocate to the Far East, to the front line with Japan 30. The Soviet Union had an agreement for providing military assistance to the USA. When we were still in the rear we heard the news that the war was over and Germany had capitulated. Moscow was preparing for the victory parade. I was notified that General Major Dragunskiy [Dragunskiy, David Abramovich (1910-92), Jew, Soviet commander, General Colonel (1970), twice Hero of the Soviet Union (1944, for crossing of the Wisla River; 1945, for the Berlin operation). During the Great Patriotic War he was Commander of a Guard tank division. In 1969-85 chief of the higher ‘Vystrel’ (‘Shot’) course.], the current Army Commander and a Jew, by the way, had appointed few representatives of our division, including me, to participate in the parade. My army headquarters declared that I could not take part in the parade, being a short guy. I am sure that it had to do with my Jewish identity, but they did not mention this, of course. I felt hurt: when they were sending me to where bullets and shells were flying my shortness was of no account, but it was not appropriate for the parade… So I did not go to the victory parade. We were in the rear till late May 1945, а when we relocated to Mongolia in cattle transportation trains. Out rip lasted for about a month and we were in high spirits – victory!, and life went on; we had good food, American tinned food, white bread, people were greeting us and cheering to us as liberators and winners and threw flowers to us on the train. We were accommodated in tents. In late July 1945 we were given the alarm at night and ordered to move on to the Mongolian border where we were told that the Japanese occupied Manchuria. [Editor’s note: The Japanese occupied Manchuria (North-Eastern province of China, bordering with Mongolia) in 1941. The Soviet Army begun to attack the Japanese occupiers from Soviet and Mongolian territory in August 1945.] At 2 o’clock in the morning we were read Stalin’s order stating that we were fulfilling our agreement with the USA, and it was our duty to attack and take revenge over the Japanese. And we went into the offensive. This was the first time I witnessed a self-shooting. One guy from our regiment shot his own leg to avoid the battle. This was a disgrace for all of us. We advanced 200 km across Mongolia with no battles. There were no Japanese or Mongolians. We walked few days before we saw out tanks. We followed them to Bolshoy Hingan and Malyi Hingan. Our rear supplies were some distance behind us and we had to follow the tanks. We were hungry and had no food or water with us. The Chinese locals sympathized with us and brought us rice and flat bread. This was a hard passage. When we reached Hingan, our armed forces had already accumulated there: the Katyusha [The 82mm BM-8 and 132mm BM-13 Katyusha rocket launchers were built and fielded by the Soviet Union in World War II. The launcher got this unofficial, but immediately recognized in the Red Army, name from the title of a Russian wartime song, Katyusha.] missile units, air forces and artillery. There was artillery preparation conducted and we went into attack. We were fighting with a Samurai [Editor’s note: The Samurai caste was abolished in late 19th Century. The cavalry the Soviet Army fought with could not be made of Samurai warriors] cavalry division. We defeated them. The battle was over and we went on. We marched across some fodder plant bushes resembling our corns. Every now and then some Samurais with bunches of grenades tied to them threw themselves under our tanks. For them this kind of death was a deed of honor: they were fighting for their emperor. At the time of peace a Samurai is allowed to live peaceful life: have a family, women, eat and drink to his heart’s content, but during the war a Samurai had to fight and die for his emperor, or the disgrace would fall on his kin and affect many generations. They threw themselves under our tanks to die honorably. These were hard battles. Our forces were exhausted by the long war. There were boys and old men in our army while the Japanese were selected warriors, well-armed and strong.  Our selected armed forces perished at the beginning of the war in 1941. We didn’t have such equipment as Germans and many people had to go to attacks unarmed. There were 700 recruits from Skvira, my hometown, but only 200 of them returned home. They survived thought they became invalids, but they lived. They told us how they went into attacks having nothing but one rifle of the World War I type, the three-linear one, for three of them. I don’t know what the result of this war might have been for us, had America not dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  I think this was the right decision considering the situation at the front line. This decided on the outcome of the war, which might have been negative for us otherwise. All newspapers wrote about it at that time. Everybody rejoiced about this turning point in the course of the war.

The Japanese surrendered. Their squads, companies and battalions were not disbanded. All of the higher rank officers had their weapons and horses with them. The Japanese had prepared for a long war and built hospitals and barracks for their troops. We used them to accommodate the prisoners. The Japanese officers were kept separately from soldiers and sergeants. We also lodged there. The Japanese prisoners refused to eat bread. They only ate boiled rice, corn flat bread and fish. We stayed in this area for 2 years. The situation changed radically through this period.  Struggle for the power began in China. America supported Chiang Kai-shek and the USSR stood for Mao Tse-Tung. Their armies fought in China. The Chan Kai-shek troops intended to land on the Kuan Tung Peninsula and our troops relocated to the seashore. To support the Mao Tse-Tung troops we gave them our 46 mm mortars. We were to delay the advance of the Chan Kai-shek troops. I was on this Peninsula until 1947. By that time the tension of situation reduced. The Chinese revolutionary army advanced to attack. In 1949 the Chan Kai-shek troops won the victory. Mao Tse-Tung and Chou En-lai were the leaders of China at the time.

In November 1944, during the war, I heard that Skvira was liberated from fascists. At that time our division was near Babruysk town in Belarus. I wrote my mother, but had no reply. Then I wrote the Sidoruk family, our Ukrainian neighbors asking them whether they knew anything about my family. They wrote me what happened. In September 1941 German troops invaded Skvira. The German commandment appointed the time for all Jewish families to gather in the central square of Skvira. Some had evacuated and some managed to hide away, but not my family. They failed to evacuate. They were taken out of town and killed. In 1941 Riva, my mother’s brother Teviye’s daughter, was spending her summer vacations with my family. Riva perished along with my grandmother, mother, my mother’s sisters Udl and Boba and Boba’s family. These neighbors helped me to get in touch with my mother’s brothers Gersh and Teviye. They also wrote their addresses to our neighbors. I wrote my uncles and since then we corresponded. Gersh was at the front and Teviye and his family evacuated with the Soviet of Ministers and its employees. Gersh was in the army since the beginning of the war. He was wounded near Kiev in August 1941. He was taken to a hospital and after the hospital he was sent to an artillery school. After finishing the school he went back to the front as an artillery battery commanding officer. He took part in battles near Konigsberg and had a number of combat awards. After the war my mother’s brothers returned home. Uncle Gersh sent me parcels with apples, pork fat and garlic to the front line in the Far East.

When the term of my service on the Kwan Tung peninsula was over, another order was issued. It required guys of 1925 year of birth to serve 3 years of mandatory service. I was to serve at the Lazo station in the Primorskiy Krai.  I demobilized in April 1950.

I have combat awards. In 1945, after we captured Konigsberg I was awarded a medal ‘For valor’ [Established in 1938, awarded for personal courage and valor in the defense of the Homeland and the execution of military duty involving a risk to life.] it’s a high award; I was also awarded an order of the Great Patriotic War 31.  I have medals ‘For Konigsberg’ [Established June 9, 1945.  The medal was awarded to all servicemen who were directly involved in the capture of Konigsberg as well as for the officers who led the operations.  Over 752 thousand medals were awarded], ‘For Victory in the Great Patriotic War’ [Medal ‘For Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45’, Established by Decree of the Presidium of Supreme Soviet of the USSR to commemorate the glorious victory, 15 million awards]; and ‘For victory over Japan’ [Medal ‘For victory over Japan’ established on 30 September 1945 by Decree of the Presidium of Supreme Soviet of the USSR to commemorate  the victory over Japan. 1 million 818 thousand awards].  I was awarded an order ‘For personal courage’ [Order ‘For Personal Courage’, established by Presidential Decree in 1996, to honor the personal courage and heroism demonstrated under critical circumstances] by the 55th anniversary of the victory. 

I headed to Skvira after my army service was over. I was eager to see my acquaintances and hear details about my dear ones.  Jews had already returned from evacuation and from the army. Two residents of Skvira were Heroes of the soviet Union 32, one of them was Colonel Margulis, a Jew,  commanding officer of an artillery brigade. He was a nice, decent and fair person. He undertook responsibility for making arrangements for the Jews who were returning from evacuation. If there were other tenants in their houses they went to see rabbi Zavele to resolve this kind of issues.  They did not have to go to court. Even Ukrainians followed the rabbi’s decisions. Meyer Treletskiy, another Jewish man from Skvira, started his persecution of German accomplices, when he returned from the army. He tracked down policemen of informer in villages to have them prosecuted. Many of them were executed. Our house was disassembled for wood. A woman built her own house in its place. I went to the place where my dear ones, friends, neighbors, the people, whom I had known and loved, were buried and then I went to Kiev to visit my mother’s brothers Teviye and Gersh. I was going to go back to Skvira then, but my uncles insisted that I stayed in Kiev. It was very difficult to obtain a residence permit 33 to stay to lie in Kiev. My uncle Teviye, who was a roof maker in the Council of Ministers, managed to obtain a permit for me to reside in his place. I wanted to rent a room, but my uncle insisted that I stayed with him. I went to work at the ‘Kist’ company [‘hand’ in Russian] as a founder. The state anti-Semitism was quite visible already, but there were still many Jews in the shop. They were readily employed as workers: the management knew they were decent and dedicated employees. Workers were not so oppressed as intelligentsia. Besides, Jews did not drink alcohol while many people drank after the war, even at their work places. So many managers preferred to employ Jews. Besides, managers were reluctant to employ those who had stayed on the occupied territory while Jews were returning from evacuation and had a more advantageous position than those Ukrainians who had stayed in Skvira during the rule of Germans.

There were good earnings and bonuses in the shop. Shops also contributed money to the restoration of Kiev. During the Khrushchev 34 rule our shop was converted into a small plant. A short while later I went to work at the photo goods factory where I worked 42 years. I started working with plastic and in due time I became a caster.  

Soviet authorities undertook open persecution of Jews in 1948, when I was still in the army. It all started from the elimination of the Jewish anti-fascist committee 35, formed in April 1942. It’s members were well-known actors, artists, musicians and public activists. Solomon Mikhoels 36, an outstanding Jewish actor, headed the committee. During the war the Jewish anti-fascist committee provided great assistance to the front. Members of the committee gathered money in America and England to buy tanks and aircraft. They were almost declared fascist accomplices, arrested, and most of them were executed. The rest of them were sent to the GULAG.  Solomon Mikhoels, chairman of the committee, was murdered. It was officially announced that he was hit by a vehicle, but nobody had any doubts that this ‘accident’ was thoroughly planned and executed by NKVD. Then persecution of Jewish intelligentsia began. Lecturers of higher educational institutions, actors and artists were fired. Newspapers published articles denouncing another Jewish cultural or scientific activist. Then the words ‘rootless cosmopolitan’ were applied to Jews and trials charging ‘cosmopolitans’ [Campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’] 37 were conducted, i.e., a person was just convicted for being a Jew.  Everybody, even those who were devoted to the party and Stalin, knew this. This persecution did not affect workers. In January 1953 the ‘doctors’ Plot’ 38 began. Stalin’s doctors were convicted of an intention to poison Stalin. Almost all of those doctors were Jews. This resulted in another wave of anti-Semitism. At first people just refused to see Jewish doctors, but then Jews were accused of many other crimes. I don’t know what it might have resulted in, if Stalin had not died on 5 March 1953. There were rumors that Stalin intended to deport all Jews to Siberia. It was impossible to ignore this rumor: everybody understood how the Crimean Tatars and Chechen people had been deported [Forced deportation to Siberia] 39. In one night people were forced into the trains taking them to the virgin lands in Siberia and Kazakhstan. This might have happened to Jew, but God saved them. Stalin died on Purim and people were saying that God rescued Jews from extermination. However, this was later, but on the day of his death people were crying. The mourning lasted 3 days, and these days happened to be the time of common grief. Everybody thought about the same – how they were going to live without Stalin. Life seemed impossible without him: he was the symbol of the USSR for all, and for this reason he was called the ‘father of all peoples’. Later, after the Twentieth Party Congress 40, when Khrushchev spoke about Stalin’s crime, we understood what a monster he was in reality. I knew that he had ordered to remove the high-ranked Jews from the army before and during the Great Patriotic War. They were arrested and executed. Since there were many Jewish commanders in the army, Stalin actually beheaded the army. We knew that the wives of many members of the government were taken to the GULAG. I think that Beriya 41 removed Stalin from his way. He did not have to kill Stalin. It was enough to not call a doctor to his attendance, when Stalin had another attack of his disease. Beriya was executed. Of course, I did not believe what Khrushchev said at once. I was thinking and comparing. However, I knew that what Khrushchev said was true, while many people did not believe it then and do not believe it now.

My acquaintances introduced me to my future wife. My wife Enna, nee Beilis, a Jew, was born in Kiev in 1921. Her father Volko Beilis was born in a village near Kiev. He was engaged in farming when he was young. Enna’s mother was a housewife. After the revolution of 1917, when the Pale of Settlement was canceled, the family moved to Kiev. Enna was a middle sister of three of them: Tsylia, the oldest daughter, was born in 1916, and Lubov, the youngest one, was born in 1923. Their parents were religious and observed Jewish traditions, but their daughters grew up to be atheists. Tsylia and Lubov were members of the party. Tsylia worked in NKVD before the war. During the war she evacuated to Chelyabinsk region with her family. Her husband Matvey Basilovskiy went to the front. Tsylia had no information about him.  When Kiev was liberated Tsylia returned home. Her husband returned in 1945. He told Tsylia that he was in German captivity in a concentration camp and that our army liberated him. At that time the wife of a former prisoner-of-war could not keep her job at the NKVD. Tsylia was fired, but the NKVD office offered her a job in the personnel department of a bed manufacturing factory. Her husband also found a job. People supported and helped them. Only our authorities had the position that former prisoners were traitors. Enna’s sister Lubov was married. Her family name was Kaminer. Lubov worked at the personnel department of a knitwear factory. Her only son was severely ill, unfortunately. Tsylia died in 1968. Lubov died in 2002.

Enna and I got married in 1951. Enna’s family was poor and we had to borrow money for the wedding. We had a common wedding. We had a ceremony at the registry office and in the evening we invited our close ones to the wedding dinner. I received an apartment from my plant.  Our only daughter Svetlana was born in December 1952. In 1953, shortly after our daughter was born, Enna’s father died. He was buried in Lukianovka Jewish cemetery 42 in Kiev: it was still open for burials.

When I turned 28 [the age of 28 was the end of Komsomol membership], I did not apply to the party. It was compulsory for key personnel to be members of the party and the town party committee watched that all managers were communists, but it was not quite necessary for workers. I worked decently and this was sufficient. My colleagues treated me with respect. At this time one could not go to the synagogue or celebrate Jewish holidays openly, but my wife and I celebrated holidays to the extent we could afford. It was difficult to get matzah for Pesach and we just had sufficient to keep it as a symbol of the holiday. We also had traditional Jewish food: sweet and sour stew, chicken broth, gefilte fish. It was a tradition, but also, the memory of my mama and grandma for me. It’s hard to find words to describe how much I loved them and how I cherished my memories about the time, when they were with me… I went to Skvira on all anniversaries of their death. I suffered so thinking that mama and grandma did not live long for me to make their life easier and take care of them. It causes me pain, but it also gives me right memories about the time we were together. Skvira is different from what it was like in the years of my childhood. They had destroyed the old town, but what they built instead is nothing special making it one of many small towns. The war destroyed everything I loved. 

We celebrated Soviet holidays at home: 1 May , 7 November [October revolution Day] 43, Soviet army Day 42, New Year. Of course, my favorite holidays is Victory Day 44. If our army had not chased away the enemy from the USSR and other European countries the fascist black death would have spread all over the world. I had ambiguous feelings on this day. I was happy to have survived, of course, and have a family, have my daughter growing and then grandchildren, but there was always sadness and sorrow about those who became victims of this horrible war: my dear ones, friends and comrades. I always remember them. One cannot forget this.

Anti-Semitism, which mitigated after Stalin’s death and during the Khrushchev’s rule started growing again. I remember Khrushchev’s visit to Kiev. He visited our plant. He made a tour of the shops and then asked without any confusion: ‘How come you have so many Jews working here?’ Later he repeated this question at the district party committee. Jews were removed from their high posts. Our shop superintendent, a very decent and highly qualified person, was fired. We missed him a lot. Our new superintendent was mostly engaged in conducting meetings where drunkards were condemned. Perhaps, this was also useful, but this was the only thing he did. 

In the 1970s Jewish mass emigration to Israel began. When Israel was officially recognized as a state in 1948, the USSR was one of the first countries to establish diplomatic relations with Israel supporting it. However, at that time Jews were not allowed to leave the USSR. My uncle Gersh always wanted to move to Israel, but he died before he could implement his idea. He died in 1958 and was buried in the Jewish sector of the Baikovoye town cemetery. His daughters Vera and Inna moved to Israel and live in Jerusalem. Inna and I were friends and I was upset hearing that she was leaving.  There was a war in Israel and there was little hope that it would ever end.  However, they left. Her older son Mikhail had finished an Agricultural Academy in Kiev and got a job assignment [Mandatory job assignment in the USSR] 45 to work in a distant village in Kazakhstan. Inna knew he would never find a job in Kiev being a Jew. Her second son Vitaliy studied at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematic of the University, he did not have a hope to get a job in Ukraine either. Inna said that her sons would find work in Israel despite the war, but not here.  This came true. They have a good life in Israel and have jobs. Mikhail has become chief veterinary doctor in Jerusalem. Of course, he could not even dream about this kind of career here. Mikhail loves Israel, but he misses Kiev: he grew up here and knows each street and stone. His daughter is a pharmacist and works in a pharmacy. Mikhail has grandchildren. Of course, it would be much better, if they could have their life here. Nobody can feel safe in Israel. They live every day as if they were at the front. Mikhail travels to Kiev every year and visits us, of course. Inna’s younger son teaches physics in Tel Aviv. 

My friends and acquaintances also left the country at that time. I sympathized with those, who decided to leave their home: everybody has the right to choose a place to live. I understood that many of them were escaping from anti-Semitism, because their children could not go to study in higher educational institutions and their parents could not find jobs. As for me, I was not considering leaving my home. I was a worker and faced no anti-Semitism. I grew up here, I fought for this country and my dear ones were buried here. I thought that my place is here and my wife shared my opinion.

My uncle Teviye died in 1976, his wife Hana did not live much longer. They were buried in the Jewish sector of the Berkovtsy cemetery. Gersh’s wife Lisa is 104 years old.

Before perestroika I visited the place where my dear ones were buried every year. The Jewish cemetery was kept in order. I visit the graves in the cemetery and go to the monument on the common grave at the shooting spot. I recite Kaddish for the deceased and think about them.  If only they were beside me… There are no more Jews in Skvira. In the early 1990s, when industry decayed, people could find no jobs, there were no pensions paid. Many people moved to Israel. Older people receive pensions and younger people found jobs. The others moved to where their children or relatives lived. There is nobody I can visit or talk to in Skvira…

After finishing school my daughter Svetlana studied in Kiev Industrial high school. After finishing it she worked as a rate setter at a plant and later she became an economist. Later she went to work as an economist at the district trade department.  In August 1975 Svetlana married Igor Benyumov, a nice Jewish guy. Igor was born in Kiev in 1951. He finished a college and worked as an engineer. They had a secular wedding. Traditional Jewish weddings were very rare at that time. My older grandson Vladislav was born in 1977, and Mikhail, the younger one, was born in 1985. 

In the late 1980s General Secretary of the CPSU Gorbachev 46 decided to change the course of the party and initiated Perestroika 47 in the USSR. Of course, not everything was right, but Perestroika brought much positive. I think that the most important thing is that the Jewish life revived during Perestroika. At first these were books of Jewish writers, which had not been published in the USSR since about the 1930s. There were plays by Jewish writers staged in theaters and there were concerts of Jewish music. We were happy about it. Jewish newspapers and magazines started to be published, and various Jewish societies were established. Of course, I did not appreciate the final outcome of perestroika, the break up of the USSR [in 1991]. But now, I think, the situation is getting better. The national segregation in Ukraine has mitigated. Jews can enjoy the freedoms and we are second-rate people no longer. However, there are outbursts of anti-Semitism like the attack on the Brodskiy synagogue in Kiev [in 2002 hooligans broke windows at the Kiev synagogue, and it is not known where this was a demonstration of anti-Semitism or just the hooliganism of drunk teenagers], desecration of Jewish cemeteries, but now we can talk about such occurrences and fight with them. It is most important that the state policy condemns such occurrences. There is a number of Jewish organizations, but the most significant among them for older people is Hesed 48. Jews get assistance from all over the world and Hesed is an evidence of this. At one time they were collecting questionnaires and assessing, who the war had affected at the utmost. They took the right decision: it’s hard to provide for each and every one, but it’s possible to provide for all. The Hesed helps us a lot. We also receive food packages ad medical care. Hesed pays for surgeries and hospital bills. This is important since older people could hardly find such money. However, this is not all. The Hesed also takes care of the young generation. I have two grandchildren and one great grandson and Hesed did a lot to raise them Jewish. Svetlana’s husband, my son-in-law, also works in the Hesed.

When the Jewish school was opened, my grandsons went to study there. They were eager to learn about Jewish traditions and the Jewish history. They also have classes where they study prayers.  When in my older grandson’s class the teacher asked who wanted to be circumcised, my grandson Vladislav was the first to raise his hand. The ceremony was conducted at the synagogue. My grandson went there with his father. At first the children had treatments and then the brit milah was conducted. Later my younger grandson was also circumcised.  My grandchildren are religious. They have everything a Jew needs for a prayer: a tallit and tefillin. My older grandson is married and has a son. He had a traditional Jewish wedding. Chief Rabbi of Ukraine Yakov Bleich conducted the wedding ceremony of my grandson. It was beautiful and festive: the holiday that they would remember for life. My grandson’s son is 11 months old.  He had a brit milah, as the Jewish tradition requires. My grandson and his wife observe Jewish traditions, go to the synagogue and pray. My younger grandson is also religious. My grandsons study at the International Solomon University  [Jewish University in Kiev, established in 1995] , a higher educational institution. It teaches highly qualified professionals and also, the students observe Jewish traditions, and study Jewish subjects. My older grandson has graduated from Law Faculty, and the younger one is a 2nd-year student.  Their life is still ahead of them and I hope they will be all right.

I try to take part in the Jewish life. I subscribe to Jewish newspapers and magazines ‘VEK’ [monthly newspaper issued by the World Jewish Congress, circulation 5 000 copies], ‘Evreyskie Vesty’ [‘Jewish news’, the newspaper of the Jewish council of Ukraine, issued twice a month since 1990], magazine ‘Ot Srdtsa k Srdtsu’ [‘From Heart to Heart’, monthly magazine of the Chabad Lubavich movement, issued since 1992] and read them with interest. I also got enrolled in the organization of Jewish veterans of the war, when it was established in the Jewish cultural society. I attend all meetings of the organization. They are always interesting. Veterans share their memories; we watch movies and discuss what we have read.  There are concerts and lectures.  We celebrate Jewish holidays, Victory Day and the Soviet army Day. Though the average age of our veterans is 80, we try to be active. Our veterans often make speeches at schools and higher educational institutions telling young people about what things were like. This must not be forgotten or it may happen again. It cannot be allowed.

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