It was strange, because it was the USSR who was one of those who initiated the foundation of the state of Israel in May 1948. It was a joyful event for me. Finally, the Jews had their own state after so many years of wandering. Maybe the reason of the streamlined anti-Semitism was Stalin's anticipation that Israel would become a USSR satellite. But Israel had chosen another way, and had no ties to socialist countries.
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Displaying 181 - 210 of 50826 results
Miron Manilov
I was given an assignment to the academy in the military circuit, and I went to Moscow. There were quite a few Jews among the entrants. I passed the exams successfully, but I wasn't accepted in the academy along with the other Jews who were trying to enter that institution. Of course, nobody told us explicitly that the reason was our nationality. They just said it evasively - we didn't meet the competition requirements. If it was only referred to me, I might have believed that - there might have been people who were better prepared for the exams than I - but I knew that out of all the Jews, who were taking entrance exams with me, only two were accepted.
In late 1940, the family moved to Moscow, before the outbreak of war. Leib Kilman was drafted into the lines, and Eva was evacuated to Bashkiria with her mother. They lived in a hamlet. Eva went to school, and her mother worked in a kolkhoz [39]. After classes, Eva helped her mother with the field work. Of course, they went through hard times, but they managed to survive. They went back to Moscow in 1943. Eva completed school and entered the Institute of Foreign Languages.
The next year I went to Moscow to enter the academy once again, and again I flunked the exams. None of the Jews who submitted the documents with me was admitted.
I was dating Eva during my stay in Moscow. I proposed to her and she agreed to marry me. In March 1949 we got married. We had an ordinary wedding in those times. We got registered in the state registration office and had a modest wedding party in the evening. We got together in a close family circle. My parents and sisters came to my wedding from Kharkov. When my leave was over, my wife and I left for Gorokhovets. The commandment gave us a room in the officers' barracks. There were a couple of more families of the officers. I kept on serving in the army.
The financial position of many people worsened considerably. Many necessary products weren't found in the stores, and prices escalated. All those things, in the end, caused the breakup of the USSR [in 1991]. I disapproved of those things before, and I don't approve of them now. Our country was a great and powerful state, respected, valued and feared by everybody in the world. And who are we now? From the standpoint of the economy, Russia has become a semi-colonial country and our power and strength aren't determined by our machine-building plants, or prosperity of military and mining industries. We were the main source of raw materials supply to the capitalist world. There is hardly anything good in our independence. It would have been better to preserve the good things that were in the USSR, and not bring everything to the naught and build nothing in the shambles.
Jewish life began to revive after perestroika. In 1987, two Jewish officers, the colonels Sokol and Goldsberg, acquired permission in the central committee of the Communist Party to open a Jewish library in Moscow. At first, that library was housed in Sokol's apartment as they couldn't find any other premise for it. It was the first step, and then the Jewish Cultural Center was founded in Moscow. The all-Russian society of the Jewish veterans of war and ghetto prisoners was established by that center. Then our council of the Jewish War Veterans was founded. Since the foundation of the council I have been the executive secretary.
I didn't become religious. I have always been an atheist and cannot believe in the existence of God. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm too old to change my views. I started respecting Judaism in 1991.
I have been a member of the Party for fifty years, sincerely believing the words of Karl Marx regarding religion being the opium for the peoples. After the funeral of Krichevskiy, I started deeply respecting religion, considering it a spiritual incentive and force. I understood that religion had equal rights with the other ideologies. There should be a place for religion in this world.
I cannot say my wife also was indifferent to the Jewish life. She began working in a Moscow synagogue for free. She was involved in charity work assisting the elderly people and indigent families. All other thematic events were supported by the synagogue. The latter provided the premises for the veterans and also took care of the catering for the festive get- togethers. Then other Jewish charitable organization started to appear. It was a big help for the needy, especially for the old people.
I'm not sure whether I would have managed to do all the things with my crippled hand without the support and assistance of the Jewish charitable organizations. Twice a week a visiting nurse from Hesed [46] comes to us. She cleans the apartment and cooks food for us. Once in two days we receive meals on the wheels from the synagogue for the both of us. It helps us out a lot.
After graduation Diana worked at the school as a music teacher. Her husband worked for the Machine Building Scientific Research Institute, as an engineer. Diana's son, Alexander, graduated from the mathematics department of Moscow University [M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, the best University in the Soviet Union, also well know abroad for its high level of education and research], and was employed by some good company as a programmer. In 1994 Alexander got married and in 1995 my great-grandchild, Nikita Manilov, was born.
Having finished school, my son Vladimir entered the physics and mathematics department of Moscow University. After graduation, he got an assignment to one of Moscow's scientific and research plants.
In the 1970s, mass immigration to Israel started. My wife and I weren't going to immigrate. Both of us worked, and made pretty good money and the children were also settled. There was no need for us to leave our relatives and comfortable life. If our children wanted to leave, we would do our best to leave with them. Our children didn't intend to leave, so there was no sense for two elderly people to leave their dearest ones. Many of our relatives left at that time. My cousin Jacob, son of my father's brother Sunya, is currently living in Israel. He is a retired colonel. We write letters to each other, sometimes he calls. Both of my sisters immigrated with their families in the 1990s. The eldest, Sarah, lives in Kholon, Israel with her family. My younger sister, Raisa, immigrated to New York, USA. Both of them are happy with their new lives.
When in the middle of the 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev [44] declared the new course of the Party, perestroika [45], I took it as a breath of fresh air. I liked Gorbachev as a personality as well. Finally our leader was a young man, who spoke distinctively and literately, was well-read and sociable, not like the previous leaders. We were happy with the things introduced by Gorbachev at the beginning of perestroika, thinking it a panacea from all troubles in our society. Then the pace of perestroika was hindered and it wasn't clear what was going on. It was as if somebody wanted to make things worse for the people so as to be disappointed in perestroika.
I graduated from the institute with honors and managed to do my post- graduate in spite of the fact that anti-Semitism didn't vanish after the Twentieth Party Congress. After graduating, I kept working at the school, but teaching a different subject - the history of the USSR. I hoped that I would be able to teach history at the Institution of Higher Education. I was told that there was a vacancy in the Aviation Technology Institute. The job opening was that of a teacher of the history of the Communist Party. I called them, introduced myself and I was scheduled for an interview. I went to the human resources department. The head of the HR department looked at my diploma and asked me directly about my nationality. My response was that it was the same as Karl Marx's. The director of the HR department had a good sense of humor. He said that if Karl Marx had been alive, it would also have been difficult for him to be a history teacher.
I gave up looking for a job at the institute and post-graduate studies. I worked at the school until 1970 and went to work for the technical vocational school as a teacher of history and esthetics. I worked there for ten years, until 1980. I was of pension age and I was told that it was time for me to retire. Maybe it was connected with my nationality as well. But I couldn't stay without work and was employed at a hydro equipment plant as a planning engineer. My office wasn't far from my house. In 1990, I quit my job as there was a job opening in the policlinic and I went to work there as a deputy chief physician on the issues of civil defense. I am still working there. In the middle of the 1970s my wife, Eva, went to work with the Council of Tourism. Eva found her job interesting. She worked as a guide accompanying groups of tourists. She worked there until 1982, before retirement.
Our family had a way of life, common for the rest of the Soviet families. My wife and I weren't religious and raised our children as atheists. We didn't mark religious holidays at home. We celebrated birthdays of the family members and such Soviet holidays as 1st May and 7th November, Soviet Army Day [43], and Victory Day. On those days my wife cooked festive dishes and we invited guests. On vacations the whole family either went to the seaside or to the country house we rented for the holidays.
The children went to school. They were pioneers, then Komsomol members.
Back in that time, almost the entire population of Yagotin consisted of Jews. Jews and Ukrainians were very friendly towards each other. There were no conflicts on the nationality ground. There were several two-storied houses of the local rich men in the center of the town. Well-off people were mostly Jews. As far as I remember from my childhood, the rest of the houses were one-storied. Market square was the town center. There were also small private stores and shop, owned by Jews. Things were mostly sold at the market by Ukrainians, who lived on the outskirts of town. They provided the city with food products.
Jews lived mostly in the town center, where the land was more expensive. Garden plots were small in the town, so there was no room to make a kitchen garden or an orchard. That is why Jews were craftsmen: tailors, cobblers, hair-dressers, harness-makers, tinsmiths, etc. There were orchards, fields and gardens on the outskirts. The Ukrainian peasants took into consideration that their customers were mostly Jews, so they sold only live poultry, because none of the Jewish ladies would buy butchered poultry, which wasn't cut by the shochet, who worked right by the market. The ladies stopped by the shochet on their way from the market so that he could butcher the bird in accordance with all the rules. On Thursday, a lot of fresh fish was brought as they knew that on Friday gefilte fish would be cooked for Sabbath.
There was an Orthodox church and a synagogue in Yagotin. The synagogue was a long one-storied building. Women prayed in a separate room. There was a dormer window so that they could hear the prayers. There was a cheder in the yard of the synagogue.
Jews lived mostly in the town center, where the land was more expensive. Garden plots were small in the town, so there was no room to make a kitchen garden or an orchard. That is why Jews were craftsmen: tailors, cobblers, hair-dressers, harness-makers, tinsmiths, etc. There were orchards, fields and gardens on the outskirts. The Ukrainian peasants took into consideration that their customers were mostly Jews, so they sold only live poultry, because none of the Jewish ladies would buy butchered poultry, which wasn't cut by the shochet, who worked right by the market. The ladies stopped by the shochet on their way from the market so that he could butcher the bird in accordance with all the rules. On Thursday, a lot of fresh fish was brought as they knew that on Friday gefilte fish would be cooked for Sabbath.
There was an Orthodox church and a synagogue in Yagotin. The synagogue was a long one-storied building. Women prayed in a separate room. There was a dormer window so that they could hear the prayers. There was a cheder in the yard of the synagogue.
There was a cheder in the yard of the synagogue. Of course, I didn't see it, because after the revolution [see Russian Revolution of 1917] [3], the Soviet regime started the struggle against religion [4], and it was closed down. The cheder was turned into a four-year Jewish school.
Jews in Yagotin tried to live close to each other. The street where my grandfather lived in Yagotin was over-populated by Jews, and the majority of them were Grandfather's relatives - cousins and second cousins and even more distant relatives. The street was about 500 meters long. In general, Jews clustered together and kept in touch with their relatives. I suppose Ukrainian and Jewish families were getting along. It might be possible, but there were no cases like that in my family. They respected each other, had good neighboring relations, but there was no friendship.
Before the revolution and during almost the entire period of the Civil War [5] there were Jewish pogroms [6] in Yagotin. Gangs [7] came and Denikin [8] troops as well. Local Ukrainians never took part in pogroms. During the pogroms, there were several cases where the Jews were murdered, but there was no massacre. Young Jewish lads organized defense squads [see Jewish self-defense movement] [9]. Of course, they didn't have proper weapons. Clubs, spades and pitchforks were used instead. The squads stood in defense and the pogrom-makers fled.
My grandfather, Meishe-Ber, was a stubby man. He was always dressed in black and wore a black hat on his head. He had a kippah under his hat. He took off the kippah only before going to bed. He had a long beard and plaits, and was strict and tacit. My grandmother, Mariam, was a short, buxom woman and her character was totally opposite to that of my grandfather's. She was always smiling and amiable. Ukrainians called her Mariasya. Grandmother was a smart woman with a sharp tongue. She always wore dark blouses and pleated skirts. Jewish women didn't wear wigs in Yagotin. How could you find wigs in the village? They just covered their heads with kerchiefs.
My grandmother was a housewife like most Jewish women back in that time and my grandfather was involved in commerce. He had a small grocery store near the market, where cereal, salt, sugar and tea etc. were sold. Some of the children helped my grandfather with the store. Apart from trade, my grandfather also was an assistant to the rabbi in the synagogue. He assisted the rabbi in all financial issues i.e. collection and allocation of donations. My grandfather was well known for his honesty and was respected by everybody in the town. He had to work a lot as he had a large family of ten children. Of course, it was hard to provide for food and clothes for the whole caboodle. The family didn't beg. They had a modest living - not luxurious, but rather comfortable. They had all necessary things, and could get by without excess.
My grandparents were religious. They marked Sabbath and religious holidays at home, and observed the kashrut. My father and his brothers went to the synagogue with grandfather when they were young. At the age of 13, each of them went through his bar mitzvah. After that, they were considered to be grown-up men. I don't know what education my father's sisters got. I know that Father and his brothers were educated in cheder. They didn't have any other education. All of them started work at an early age. They had to help out the family.
My father was an apprentice at a young age. He had been an apprentice of the tinsmith and then started working independently. He first began in the workshop of his master, and then he started his own business. He repaired locks, made buckets, tubs, drain pipes, mugs and other tin ware. When my grandfather realized that my father was a good laborer, he assisted him in getting a workshop at the market, not far from Haim's.
I wrote to Eva about it. In 1952, she came to live with me with our two-year old daughter. She moved to the officers' barracks, i.e. a one-storied log house without conveniences. There was a common kitchen; toilet and water were outside.
In January 1953, the Doctors' Plot [40] started. In spite of the fact that it only referred to the Jewish doctors, there was a sudden splash of anti-Semitism, which was reflected on all the Jews, not only doctors. People were afraid to see Jewish doctors considering that they were 'murderers in white robes,', as they were called by the press. Propaganda worked and people believed in that. Anti-Semitism was displayed so often and so conspicuously that certain civilians were scared to go outside thinking that they might be insulted or beaten. It was hard for me to believe that the doctors really wanted to poison Stalin. I was confounded.
The Soviet regime raised us in such a way that we had no right to question the verity of the Party actions. Like many other Soviet people I accepted the words of the Party as a religious person took the words of God, without discussing and doubting. The military Jews felt uncertainty. We were walking around downcast feeling ashamed that there were some Jews who could attempt assassinating Stalin. I noticed how my colleagues changed their attitude towards me. Before the Doctors' Plot, we had good and open relationships, and after the publication of the articles about the doctors being poisoners, they started looking at me doubtfully with a simper as if thinking, 'we know what you, Jews, are doing.' Of course, all of that was very unpleasant, but I couldn't change anything as I didn't know the truth.
The Soviet regime raised us in such a way that we had no right to question the verity of the Party actions. Like many other Soviet people I accepted the words of the Party as a religious person took the words of God, without discussing and doubting. The military Jews felt uncertainty. We were walking around downcast feeling ashamed that there were some Jews who could attempt assassinating Stalin. I noticed how my colleagues changed their attitude towards me. Before the Doctors' Plot, we had good and open relationships, and after the publication of the articles about the doctors being poisoners, they started looking at me doubtfully with a simper as if thinking, 'we know what you, Jews, are doing.' Of course, all of that was very unpleasant, but I couldn't change anything as I didn't know the truth.
I remember Stalin's death very well. We carried out artillery firing exercises. We were firing from the guns - by means of direct firing at the tanks, and during the trainings, carried out on 5th March 1953, we were informed that Stalin had died. Our eyes were streaming with tears. Our tears weren't false, we really were mourning over the death of such a great person. We considered him an idol. We thought we won World War II because of Stalin. When attacking we cried out, 'for Stalin!' At that time we were influenced by propaganda and believed in everything like real zealots. We didn't comprehend that it was mendacious. We were merely pawns in that war.